Easy one

I have the following piece of code in an app:

    @states = LookupValue.find(:all,                                 :conditions => ['record_type = ?', 'STATE'],                                 :order => "char_value_1").map {|u| [u.char_value_1, u.id] }

This builds a list of codes and descriptions from a common values table. The values are used in a "select" on a page. The page works fine, however, we would like to have an empty <option> inserted at the beginning of the list to force the user to actually select an item from the list. Any suggestions how I can insert an empty/blank code/ description to @states ??

Thanks,

rails.impaired