Month: May 2012

A young Indian cools off in the Dhansari River, Dimapur, India on May 19, 2012. Many parts of India are experiencing a heat wave as temperatures rise with the onset of summer. Bt Strdel/AFP/Getty.

Paul Adams crinkles his nose:

For food to survive on a shelf for a year, it has to be free of nearly all microbes, and the most common FDA-approved method of ensuring that is fairly primitive. In fact, it is the same sterilization technique that Napoleon’s army used in 1810: Kill all the pathogens by heating food to 250°F in a pressurized vessel called a retort. Hormel Compleats Beef Tips, as a result, taste a bit like canned dog food smells.

Newer methods of food sterilization are in production:

In France, the food manufacturer Knorr just introduced the first line of boxed soups that are sterilized with electric current—a more efficient approach that leaves the vegetables in the potage more firm and flavorful than a retort can. But new approaches like these, despite their advantages, take decades to make their way into the entrenched and conservative food industry. For now, convenience comes with a cost.

A reader sends in a photo from Santa Monica yesterday (no more required, thanks). It was "annular":

Why an annular eclipse instead of a total one? Because the moon, constant in size as it may appear to us, does not move in a perfect circle around Earth. Its orbit is slightly elliptical. On average, it's about 239,000 miles away, but at its closest it comes within about 225,000 miles of us. At its farthest — as it was today — it's a little more than 250,000 miles away. It's just enough of a difference so that the moon will only cover 88 percent of the sun.

The anti-climate change group, fresh from its Unabomber billboard campaign, is now in a tailspin.

"The Iranian nation is standing for its cause that is the full annihilation of Israel," – Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Hassan Firouzabadi.

Laura Colarusso profiles Univision and its biggest star, Jorge Ramos, "the Walter Cronkite of Hispanic news". Why Republicans can't ignore the network, which they claim leans left:

The mainstream media often provides a convenient foil for Republicans who say there is an unfair liberal bias in the press that muddies their message. To get around this perceived problem, conservatives have built alternative news outlets like Fox News and much of talk radio to directly get their point across to voters. But in a testament to its general indifference or hostility to Latinos, the right hasn’t bothered to develop Hispanic stations more sympathetic to their cause—though some in the movement are belatedly trying.

(Partial view of an infographic detailing the Latino demographic via Chris Cillizza)

Bryce Covert explains why a "quarter of all 'poverty spells'—falling into poverty for two months or more at a time—begin with the birth of a child":

Less than half of the country’s private-sector workers are covered by [the Family and Medical Leave Act], which may explain why over a quarter of all workers—in situations similar to [Sonya] Underwood’s—either quit or are let go of their jobs when they need to take leave. Of course, employers are free to be more generous with paid leave, but a recent report from the National Partnership for Women & Families found that many employers cut back over the past decade. Almost 30 percent of employers offered paid leave for new mothers in 1998; only 16 percent did in 2008.

Kevin Baldwin opines:

Lawns collectively comprise the largest irrigated crop in the U.S., covering about 163,800 square kilometers, plus  or minus 35,850 square kilometers, an area larger than Ohio. Another estimate puts lawn area at more than twice that of cotton. … We need to reimagine the entire lawn aesthetic. Variation, diversity, and dynamism need to become acceptable possibilities for lawns. More locally appropriate vegetation, greater biodiversity, fewer applications of harmful chemicals and fertilizers make this a win-win opportunity.

Last year's anti-lawn postings here and here.

(Photo by Rob Hogeslag)

By looking beyond the "purpose" of objects:

The most famous cognitive obstacle to innovation is functional fixedness — an idea first articulated in the 1930s by Karl Duncker — in which people tend to fixate on the common use of an object. For example, the people on the Titanic overlooked the possibility that the iceberg could have been their lifeboat.

Newspapers from the time estimated the size of the iceberg to be between 50-100 feet high and 200-400 feet long. Titanic was navigable for awhile and could have pulled aside the iceberg. Many people could have climbed aboard it to find flat places to stay out of the water for the four hours before help arrived. Fixated on the fact that icebergs sink ships, people overlooked the size and shape of the iceberg (plus the fact that it would not sink).

Carl Zimmer ensures you'll have trouble sleeping at night:

Before they become adults, tapeworms spend time as larvae in large cysts. And those cysts can end up in people’s brains, causing a disease known as neurocysticercosis. … As a tapeworm cyst grows, it may push against a region of the brain and disrupt its function. It may get stuck in a passageway, damming the flow of cerebrospinal fluid. This impasse can cause hydrocephalus, or water on the brain, along with dangerously high pressure. A resulting brain hernia can result in stupor, coma, or death.

Cassie Murdoch is aghast at the estimates in developing countries:

You really need a brain scan and blood tests to confirm a diagnosis, and this isn't usually done in the areas where the disease is most common. But Nash and some colleagues set about traveling in Latin America giving scans and doing the tests, and they found in Peru, for instance, that 37 percent of the people they tested showed signs of being infected at some point. Ahhhh! They've also done a review of scientific literature and figured out that there are likely between 11 million and 29 million people in Latin America alone who have neurocysticercosis. That is insane.

(Image by Theodore Nash)