February 5th, 2016:
- The Army Corps of Engineers turned off Niagara Falls in 1969. It was surprisingly easy to do.
- One of the reasons Americans got so fat starting about 1980 may be the explosion in the use of vegetable oils from about that time. It’s not simply solvents left over from seed-oil extraction, nor the estrogen-mimicking properties of soybean products, including oil. It’s a subtle matter involving the balance of two chemicals that allow our mitochondria to do their job. This piece is long and in places quite technical, but it may be the most important article on health I’ve seen in the last several years.
- A Harvard study suggests that moderate coffee drinking correlates with longevity. This is good news, but I wonder if it’s less about the coffee than about what I call “lifestyle panic” on the part of people who abstain from coffee…and almost everything else.
- Deep frying vegetables makes them more nutritious than boiling them. Stop the presses: Fat is good for you!
- Somebody told me about this, but I lost the referral: The Raspberry Pi has a hardware random-number generator on its SoC that generates true (not pseudo) random numbers from thermal noise in analog components. There’s now a driver allowing programmers to use it, and the article shows the difference between true random and pseudorandom numbers with some very nice graphics.
- This is why Americans don’t think global warming is a serious problem. When the elites start acting like they believe it’s a serious problem, I may start thinking it’s a serious problem too. (Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link.)
- CO2 isn’t all bad news: New science from Australia suggests that more CO2 improves tree growth and drought tolerance. I keep wondering if higher CO2 levels are bad news at all.
- Also from Glenn Reynolds: The 17 equations that changed the course of history.
- From Cedar Sanderson: Magnetically levitating bonsai trees. I couldn’t see that without thinking of The Little Prince.
- Rickets, a bone disease causing crippling limb defomity in children, is coming back worldwide. The disease is caused by vitamin D deficiency, and researchers suspect that its resurgence may be due to parents’ irrational fear of dairy products and sunlight.
- The 27 Worst Things About Stock Photo University. And he doesn’t even mention how every last person attending there is drop-dead gorgeous and thin as a rail.
- Just when you thought that shabby chic was firmly and permanently planted in the trash can, Anthropologie starts selling a shabby chic trash can. This is meta. Or ironic. Or meta-ironic. Or maybe just dumb.
- From the There Are More Things In Heaven And Earth, Horatio Department: bull penis canes. (I am not making this up. I doubt I could make this up, and I am pretty damned good at making things up.)
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