HFC

Slate article about high fructose corn syrup. The part I was surprised by is that sugar contains almost as much fructose as high fructose corn syrup. Does that sound right to the medical crowd reading this? I used to think HFC is worse for you than regular sugar, but this is making me question that.

work worth doing

it is what i strive for, and it happens to be what Sandra Day O'Connor believes is the secret to happiness.

-from Slate.com "The Happiness Project" blog

on eating ethically

This article from Salon.com talks about whether eating ethically is affordable. A reporter does an experiment to find out, and succeeds.

I heart eating ethically.

Air Force Flyover

News has felt slow and uninteresting to me lately. It's been a while since an article moved me in any direction. Finally, this article made me feel totally empathetic to the new yorkers who, having been traumatized by 9/11, were furious about this photoshoot.

DIY Nation

The tanking of the economy, and also perhaps increasing awareness of our negative impact on the earth, have recently led to a do-it-yourself movement (imho). Here's a fun article on Slate about the cost-effectiveness of making your own kitchen staples. I've also seen lots of articles on how to DIY garden & compost, make gutter-water barrels to use for gardening or car-washing, etc etc... some of which I have saved in bookmarks, so let me know if you want me to point you in the right direction.

Whimsy & Wisdom

How could anybody not love Maira Kalman?
I adore her. I want to name my first born female child after her.

More on strip searches

One from the NYT and one from slate. Both seem to love the line:

Justice Breyer elaborated on what children put in their underwear. “In my experience when I was 8 or 10 or 12 years old, you know, we did take our clothes off once a day,” he said. “We changed for gym, O.K.? And in my experience, too, people did sometimes stick things in my underwear.”

SCOTUS says: an update on strip searches

the Supreme Court of the United States is likely to overturn the opinion finding that strip searching is unconstitutional.

SCOTUS says Nay to drugs and therefore Yay to strip searches.

Slate article

Financing for Alternative Energy

Slate article about how it is advances in financing, more than advances in technology, that are required to step up the use of alternative energy.

gun (out-of-)control

lately there has been much buzz about gun control, or lack thereof. i wrote a post on my blog expressing my distress about the Pittsburgh event. i don't mean to self-advertise; i'm just too lazy to copy the entry in.

yesterday, bob herbert of the NYT wrote an op-ed piece about the recent surge in murderous gun usage. i was surprised to see the numbers: 120,000 since 9/11. 25 times the number of Americans that have died in Iraq and Afghanistan.

i can't say i know much about the argument for and against gun control, but i do think it is an issue to be looked upon.

Shooting Pirates

Q: How hard is it to shoot someone in a lifeboat 100 feet away?
A: If the pirates' heads were fully exposed, it would have been an easy shot.
I'm both amazed by the conditions of the instantaneous shots as well as the swagger the author brushes them off like "it ain't no big thang."

Lost Robots

Feel good about Americans. We help robots get to where they want to go.
(Beware: associated video. I almost didn't post this link. I don't want this site to be taken over by videos. That said, I'm linking to the ARTICLE; if you end up watching the video, that's on you.)

The Other White Meat

Eric always talks about pork as white meat, and I always correct him and say that pork's reputation as "the other white meat" comes from a successful marketing campaign & that red meat comes from mammals vs white meat comes from fowl, but this article says it's a lot more complicated than that. Really we should all just be eating matzo ball soup and non-carnivorous fish.

Science & Ethics

Interesting that these two articles came out at the same time: The End of Philosophy and Humanity Even for Non-humans.

I think the latter article disproves the claim of the former. And as this critic pointed out, it wouldn't even be the end of all philosophy- just the ethics part. But less trivially-speaking: just because it's natural, doesn't make it right. 

Cat Poop Coffee

Coffee too bitter? Try cat poop coffee! For a price...

A friend of a friend told jess and me about this. The biochemistry fascinates me... The price gives me pause. As does the ethics. Most generally, the existance of cat poop coffee causes me concern about the culture of which I'm a mid-level card-carrying enthusiast (coffee lovers and snobs association-- abvr. CLASA). The idea of perfecting coffee by having an animal ingest and then excrete makes me intrigued, I mean, shudder. Where's PETA on this?

Doga

Yoga with dogs. Seriously like, the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of. I can't believe people pay for/get paid for/get paid to write about this nonsense.

A-Rod

Funny encompassing column on A-Rod.

Texting and Twittering

One article about organizing protests using twitter.

And one article about dealing with other people txting instead of paying attention to you.

Request For Comments

TODAY is an important date in the history of the Internet: the 40th anniversary of what is known as the Request for Comments. Reading this, I remembered what Jess had to say about modern comments. :)

Protests

Kind of short, but the article describes why some protests work and some don't.