Bottle Greenhouse

This "Bottle House" created by artist Jasmine Zimmerman is an open-roofed greenhouse made from hundreds of the plastic drink bottles that we use 70 million of everyday. The project will be exhibited in empty lots, rooftops, parks, and vacant buildings in order to spread the word about recycling and reporposing everyday objects in our environment. Pretty cool design that might just be a bit tricky to keep clean. (via make)

This is kind of neat. I mean, I don't know how effective it is, but it sure is better than throwing bottles in a landfill. 

Where GM's Eggs Are

Tanaholoic

ScienceDaily (Sep. 4, 2008) — A new study conducted at a large university finds more than 25 percent of those surveyed reported symptoms of tanning dependence, including symptoms similar to alcohol and drug-addicted individuals.

Suggestively, the study also found those with a tanning dependence tend to be more likely to be thin and smoke cigarettes than others. The study by researchers at Fox Chase Cancer Center is published in the September/October issue of the American Journal of Health Behavior. (Full Story at sd)

This is just odd to me.

Rat Prices

The price of rat meat has quadrupled in Cambodia this year as inflation puts other meat beyond the reach of poor people, officials say.

With consumer price inflation at 37 per cent according to the latest central bank estimate, demand has pushed a kilogram of rat meat up to around 5,000 riel ($1.48).

Spicy field rat dishes with garlic thrown in have become particularly popular at a time when beef costs 20,000 riel a kilogram. (Full Story at abc)

OK. I am officially not complaining about food prices anymore. . . well, at least for the rest of the day.

Food for Fuel

In experiments, sweet potatoes grown in Maryland and Alabama yielded two to three times as much carbohydrate for fuel ethanol production as field corn grown in those states, Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists report. The same was true of tropical cassava in Alabama. (Full Story at sd)

Not a good idea. I hope this doesn't end with high prices on sweet potatoes.

Kids Don't Care About Others

If you’ve ever spent time with toddlers, sooner or later you’ll hear the word “Mine!” It’s usually followed by an adult saying, “Now, now, you have to learn to share.” But a study in the August 28th issue of Nature suggests we may be wasting our breath. Because kids in the preschool set have no interest in making sure everyone gets their fair share.

Scientists from Switzerland wondered if, and when, young children begin to consider the welfare of others. So they gathered up over 200 Swiss schoolchildren and a small mountain of candy. And one-by-one they gave each child a choice that goes something like this: I can give one M&M to you and one to one of the other kids. Or I can give one to you—and none to anyone else.

Children who were three or four years old didn’t much care whether or not their friends also got an M&M, or a jellybean or any other sweet. But that attitude changed by the time the kids were seven or eight, when almost 80 percent of them opted to be fair. Okay, that doesn’t exactly make them candidates for a Nobel Peace Prize. But maybe magnanimousness begins with an M…&M. (From sciam)

I don't think they aren't telling the whole story. My 3 year old is often very concerned that her younger brother gets a treat if she is getting one. Of course there is a sibling connection there and it may be learned behavior, but I still am skeptical of this study. Maybe they just need to clarify if they found certain relationship qualities trump the child's natural inclination.

Attracting Money

IT'S an uncomfortable truth that beautiful people make more money: in the US, attractive workers earn 10 per cent more than their less winsome colleagues. Although it is plausible that the "beauty premium" arises because we favour pretty people, it might be that ambitious employees spend more time on grooming, or that attractive people are more confident employees.

Now a study of a TV game show supports the prejudice hypothesis. The effect is so strong that contestants often lost out on hundreds of euros because they made poor judgements about fellow players. (From newscientist)

One of the reasons I should pay more attention to my appearance. . .

Getting Ready

The time women spend putting on make up and getting dressed works out at 3,276 hours over their lifetimes while men only devote 1,092 hours to looking their best.

A survey of 1,000 women also showed that 67 per cent thought that the time spent getting ready was actually a chore.

Only a third of women said they enjoyed preening themselves.

They spend about half an hour washing and styling their hair followed by 20 minutes applying make-up and 15 minutes applying nail varnish. (Full Story at telegraph)

How much time do you spend getting ready? I would say I take about 30 minutes from prying myself out of the bed to getting out the door. I know I should care more about my appearance, but I'm just lazy I guess.

Walkability

Over at walkscore, they will rate how walkable your location is. Depending on how close things, such as a grocery store, are to your abode make it more or less walkable. Incidentally, they say my house is about as un-walkable as it gets.

Health Mapped

If you want to keep abreast of your areas medical situation check out healthmap. It basically allows you to look at where all the disease outbreaks are located and how severe they are. Of course if you are a little "hypo" you may want to just ignore this site.

The Poor Gamble

ScienceDaily (July 24, 2008) — Although state lotteries, on average, return just 53 cents for every dollar spent on a ticket, people continue to pour money into them -- especially low-income people, who spend a larger percentage of their incomes on lottery tickets than do the wealthier segments of society.

A new Carnegie Mellon University study sheds light on the reasons why low-income lottery players eagerly invest in a product that provides poor returns.

In the study, published in the July issue of the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, participants who were made to feel subjectively poor bought nearly twice as many lottery tickets as a comparison group that was made to feel subjectively more affluent. The Carnegie Mellon findings point to poverty's central role in people's decisions to buy lottery tickets. (Full story at sd)

Say what you want about the ethics of gambling, it's interesting that those who can least afford to play the lottery are the ones who make it profitable. My question would be: Do these people remain poor, in part, due to this type of irrational behavior when it comes to monetary decisions, or are they simply a victum of a broken socio-economic system?

Living on The Computer

Many of us pretty much live on the computer already. I, for one, interact with many people almost exclusively via IM or email. Well, now Google wants to help you create your virtual world. Go ahead and make an identical home for yourself and chat it up with your buddies in the living room. Check Lively out here.

Animal Ethics

Most of this post is simply me following a train of thought, so if it meanders from the initial point, or goes into some uncomfortable territory, please forgive me up front.

There is a basic argument in the food community that goes something like this:

Person 1: Eating meat is cruel

Person 2: What? How?

Person 1: Keeping animals in pens and then killing them amounts to suffering, and thus is immoral.

Person 2: How do you figure that? They're only animals.

At this point, the conversation can evolve into several different threads, either dealing with how humanity is supposed obtain protein, the ethics of farming, or whether animals feel pain in ways that we humans do. The latest internet variation on this topic comes from Jill Santopietro from the New York Times Blog, where she asks in her post Shell Shock "What is the most humane way to kill a lobster?"

Her conclusion?

After talking to several cooks, lobster shop owners, a lobster researcher and a food scientist, I concluded that the only one who really knows how the lobster feels is the lobster.

While her conclusion may seem a bit of a cop out, in fact, it enters the discussion surrounding morality into an entirely different arena, that of faith (That's faith with a lower-case 'f', by the way.)

Because if, in fact, the only on who really knows what the lobster feels, is the lobster, then no matter which side of the "animal cruelty" argument you take, your position comes down to an unproven thesis. As any body with a Master's degree can tell you, arguing an unproven thesis is a difficult proposition.

But here's the question I have - What does humane actually mean?

I know one interpretation of it: to be compassionate. This is the one that most people think of when the word comes up. But this is an ideal, not a reality.

No, the definition of humane that I focus on is the one found in the etymology of the word itself - "of or belonging to man," from the Latin word humanus. To me, this definition deals not in the ideal of humanity, but the current "snapshot" of us all - Good and evil, needs and wants, ideals and realities.

And then there's the real tough part - how does this definition fit when it comes to how we deal with the ethics surrounding meat?

I know how corporations deal with it. They purposefully ignore it, mostly for the sake of money. Cows and Lobsters become nothing more than commodities, vessels in which profits can be procured. This is the nature of corporations.

But at an individual level this approach does not, and should not, work.

I'll admit that my position surrounding meat is not as ideal as some would wish. Sure I dress it up in snarkiness and dismissiveness, but the reality is that at the end of the day, an animal will have died due to my own menu choices.

But here's the key. I'm okay with this. Death, whether we want to admit this or not, is part of the human experience. I've said this before but it bears repeating - food is not rooted in the glamor of what The Food Network shows, or what is presented to us at The French Laundry. It is rooted in dirt and blood. As Michael Pollan pointed out in The Ominivore's Dillema, tens of thousands of animals die in the collection of grain crops. Ask a farmer how many field mice, rabbits, or moles are killed during harvest season, and you'll be surprised at the answer. A great majority of vegetarian meals still have blood upon them.

So does the ideal of compassion fit into food? Of course. The question is how? The only answer I have is that every person on this planet deserves at least 1200 calories per day. To me, it is inhumane that people go hungry.

But beyond that? I still don't have a good answer that will please everyone. (via accidnetalhedonist)

Interesting. I've thought about these questions before. I Think I have the proper ethics worked out, but they are difficult to actually implement. I do eat meat, but it's difficult to work out where the meat came from and how the animal was treated. How much responsibility do you think the consumer has? Do you think the lack of control the consumer has should cause one to become a vegitarian or vegan? Do you think it even matters?

Cats For Dinner

Eating house pets in the name of animal welfare is a quick way to raise the hackles of not only animal rights groups, but also the on-line community, a group of journalism students in Århus have discovered.

The group, all students at the Danish School of Journalism, had their Facebook accounts closed by the on-line community's administrators after they uploaded pictures of themselves cooking and eating a cat.

The meal had been intended as a way to shed light on the plight of food animals such as pigs and cows, but instead it has animal lovers hissing in protest.

'This is the worst way to draw people's attention to animal welfare,' said Ole Münster, director of animal welfare organisation Dyrenes Beskyttelse. 'The choice of a cat was an especially bad one, since we get most of our calls about them.' (Full Story at cphpost)

I've always thought it was interesting that cultures will declare particular meats edible and others not. Seems to me that you have to declare all animals edible or none, so I get what they were trying to do. I could have told them, however, that their little stunt was going to end badly.

Back From The Dead

THE case of a man whose heart stopped beating for 1-1/2 hours only to revive just as doctors were preparing to remove his organs for transplants is fuelling ethical debates in France about when a person is dead.

The 45-year-old man suffered a massive heart attack and rescuers used cardiac massage to try and revive him without success before transferring him to a nearby hospital.

Due to a series of complex circumstances, revival efforts continued for longer than usual for a patient whose heart was not responding to treatment, until doctors started preparations to remove organs.

It was at that point that the astonished surgeons noticed the man was beginning to breathe unaided again, his pupils were active, he was giving signs that he could feel pain -- and finally, his heart started beating again. (Full Story at news)



There are already people who claim that if you are an organ donor many hospitals will pronounce you dead quicker to get your organs. I don't know the veracity of the claim (I'm an organ donor and I'm not all that concerned) but this will certainly cause a stir for some folks - maybe even a lawsuit or two?. . .

Hitler Was My Great Uncle

FOR more than 50 years, the relatives of Adolf Hitler have hidden under false names in Long Island, New York. They have not spoken publicly since the Second World War. In a revelatory new book to be launched this week, they break their silence. David Gardner tells their story.

The faint lilt of German folk music floated through the open window of the dark-wood alpine bungalow as I walked down the short path to the front door. The property straddled two small roads on a forested private estate nestling into one of the bays tucked behind slivers of land protecting the New York coastline from the full impact of the Atlantic Ocean.

Neither close enough to New York city to be overrun by urban sprawl nor fashionable enough to compete with the wealthy weekend getaways in the Hamptons, it was a community left largely untouched by the passing of the years. (Full Story at telegraph)

Can you imagine being a relative of someone so universally hated? That's a tough row to hoe.

A Blind Sherlock

ANTWERP, Belgium: Sacha van Loo, 36, is not your typical cop. He wields a white cane instead of a gun. And from the purr of an engine on a wiretap, he can discern whether a suspect is driving a Peugeot, a Honda or a Mercedes.

Van Loo is one of Europe's newest weapons in the global fight against terrorism and organized crime: a blind Sherlock Holmes, whose disability allows him to spot clues sighted detectives don't see. . .

When police eavesdrop on a suspected terrorist making a phone call, van Loo can listen to the tones dialed and immediately identify the number. By hearing the sound of a voice echoing off of a wall, he can deduce whether a suspect is speaking from an airport lounge or a crowded restaurant. After the Belgian police recently spent hours struggling to identify a drug smuggler on a faint wiretap recording, they concluded he was Moroccan. Van Loo, who has a "library of accents in his head," listened and deduced he was Albanian, a fact confirmed after his arrest. (Full Story at iht)

Cigarette Prices In NYC

"New York has traditionally had the highest cigarette taxes in the nation," said Patrick Fleenor, chief economist at the Tax Foundation, a non-partisan tax research group in Washington, D.C. "It's also the state with the most significant smuggling problems."

The state tax on a pack of cigarettes jumps today from $1.50 to $2.75, making it the highest tax in the country. In Central New York, a typical pack of smokes will cost about $7.

New York City charges an additional $1.50 excise tax, so the cost of a pack of cigarettes there will hover around $9.

At those prices, experts predict that many smokers will try to find ways to buy cheaper, untaxed cigarettes. Historically, when taxes surge, so do black-market cigarette sales. (Full Story at syracuse)

I'm not for people smoking; its just a bad idea in general. That said, I have a serious problem with the government policing my choices. They aren't banning smoking in NYC, but the tax is a round about way to force people to quit. Add to this the fact that they are knowingly creating a black market and this just becomes a ridiculous tax.

By the way, if you are looking for a new business opportunity you can start trafficking cigs to NYC along with your moonshine (ethanol via home pump).

I'm Stuck With You I Guess

ScienceDaily (Jun. 4, 2008) — The actor Sir Peter Ustinov once famously said “Contrary to general belief, I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who get there first.” Psychologists now believe there is some truth to this argument. Rather than picking our friends based on intentional choice and common values and interests, our friendships may be based on more superficial factors like proximity (think neighbors) or group assignments (your department at work). . .

As reported in a recent issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, sitting in neighboring seats as a result of randomly assigned seat numbers when meeting for the first time led to higher ratings of friendship intensity one year later. The same was true even if participants were merely in the same row.

The counterintuitive finding suggests that friendships may not be as deliberate we think. “In a nutshell,” write the authors, “people may become friends simply because they drew the right random number.” (Full Story at sd)

This actually makes sense to me. . . to a degree. I certainly have friends due to proximity, but my best friends all had something about them that made our relationship almost necessary. Their beginnings were not all of proximity. Actually some started with an argument (you know who you are . . . and you should still 'lay off Morgan').

Guerrilla Gardening

BRIMMING with lime-hued succulents and a lush collection of agaves, one shooting spiky leaves 10 feet into the air, it's a head-turning garden smack in the middle of Long Beach's asphalt jungle. But the gardener who designed it doesn't want you to know his last name, since his handiwork isn't exactly legit. It's on a traffic island he commandeered.

"The city wasn't doing anything with it, and I had a bunch of extra plants," says Scott, as we tour the garden, cars whooshing by on both sides of Loynes Drive.

Scott is a guerrilla gardener, a member of a burgeoning movement of green enthusiasts who plant without approval on land that's not theirs. In London, Berlin, Miami, San Francisco and Southern California, these free-range tillers are sowing a new kind of flower power. In nighttime planting parties or solo "seed bombing" runs, they aim to turn neglected public space and vacant lots into floral or food outposts. (Full Story at latimes)


Wish I had this problem in my yard.