19-09
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All photographs by Eric Michael Johnson for The New York Times The author cuts Swiss chard and basil from her Brooklyn garden for the night's frittata. I’M not interested in being hip or a hippie. Nor does my happiness particularly hinge on artisanal cheese.
I Went Back to the Land to Feed My Family
How Mark Boyle Lives on $0 a Year
In these lean times, people want to reduce their spending. It’s easy to cut back on non-essentials like video games and restaurant meals, but once you eliminate discretionary spending you’re stuck with an essentials budget that’s hard to reduce. At least that’s what most of us think. Mark Boyle had different ideas.
Reversal of fortunes for Europe's 'gentle' giant
Europe's largest mammal, the bison, is slowly returning from the brink of extinction after a series of successful breeding programmes as Rob Cameron in the Czech Republic found out. I do not think the man from the ministry liked journalists very much. Certainly he seemed less than impressed with us as we clambered from the sweaty confines of our car. I suddenly felt ridiculous in my shorts and sandals, appropriate for a blistering afternoon in Prague but hardly suitable for a bison hunt. My colleague meanwhile, a friend from French radio, was wearing his favourite flat cap - at least it was not a beret, I suppose - and had a cigarette dangling from his mouth. Jiri Janota, the head of the military forests and farmland department of the Czech defence ministry, took one look at us and checked his watch.
Recent Human Evolution Detected in Quebec Town History | Wired Science
<img src="http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2011/10/babies.jpg" alt="" title="babies" width="660" height="468" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-78323" /> Though ongoing human evolution is difficult to see, researchers believe they’ve found signs of rapid genetic changes among the recent residents of a small Canadian town. Between 1800 and 1940, mothers in Ile aux Coudres, Quebec gave birth at steadily younger ages, with the average age of first maternity dropping from 26 to 22. Increased fertility, and thus larger families, could have been especially useful in the rural settlement’s early history. According to University of Quebec geneticist Emmanuel Milot and colleagues, other possible explanations, such as changing cultural or environmental influences, don’t fit. The changes appear to reflect biological evolution.
Paris launches electric car-sharing scheme
30 September 2011 Last updated at 19:11 ET Electric rental cars will be available to hire across Paris from next week Paris is launching its first car-sharing project as it aims to clear its traffic-clogged boulevards. The backers hope the scheme will be a major boost for electric vehicles. The Autolib system is intended to build on the success of the Velib bicycle-rental service, similar to that operating in many European cities. A two-month pilot project will allow motorists to hire the battery-powered Bluecar for 30 minutes at a cost of four to eight euros.1 October 2011 Last updated at 12:33 ET Some scientists think saturated fat may be the wrong target Denmark has introduced what is believed to be the world's first fat tax - a surcharge on foods that are high in saturated fat. Butter, milk, cheese, pizza, meat, oil and processed food are now subject to the tax if they contain more than 2.3% saturated fat.
Denmark introduces world's first food fat tax
A research team at MIT has managed to create a self-contained artificial leaf that can split water into oxygen and hydrogen using solar power . The artificial leaf can be seen to work just by dropping it into a glass of water and placing it in direct sunlight. The solar cells the leaf contains go to work generating energy, which is then used to release the oxygen and hydrogen from the water surrounding it. The leaf is created from earth-abundant materials and is very cheap to manufacture. At its core is a sheet of solar cells made from silicon. This is what generates the required electrical energy for the process to happen.
MIT create an artificial leaf that can split water, power fuel cells
29 September 2011 Last updated at 20:43 ET Archaeologist Jessica Cooney told the BBC's David Sillito that the most prolific artist was a five-year-old girl Prehistoric etchings found in a cave in France are the work of children as young as three, according to research. The so-called finger flutings were discovered at the Cave of a Hundred Mammoths in Rouffignac, alongside cave art dating back some 13,000 years. Cambridge University researchers recently developed a method identifying the gender and age of the artists.
Prehistoric cave etchings 'created by three-year-olds'
Really? The Claim: Fingers Wrinkle Because of Water Absorption
Christoph Niemann Anyone who has ever been out in the rain too long or soaked for hours in a tub knows the prunelike effect it can have on your hands and feet. Conventional wisdom suggests it is nothing more than the skin absorbing water . But a number of questions have puzzled scientists.
Fixes looks at solutions to social problems and why they work. TimeBank In Manhattan, Zu Dong taught calligraphy to members of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York’s Community Connections TimeBank, which lets people exchange services. School went badly last year for José, Angel and Estefani. The 8-year-old twins and their 7-year-old sister are recent immigrants to the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan.
Where All Work Is Created Equal
A partir du 27 septembre, l'humanité aura consommé toutes les ressources naturelles de l'année
Selon l'ONG américaine Global footprint network, qui calcule chaque année le jour où la consommation mondiale de ressources naturelles dépasse ce que peut fournir la planète, l'échéance a été fixée le mardi 27 septembre pour 2011, date à laquelle l'humanité commencera à puiser dans les ressources. En 2010, le jour de dépassement des ressources (earth overshoot day) était tombé le 21 août. La tendance reste néamoins la même avec un épuisement en hausse des ressources en dépit de la crise économique mondiale , selon l'organisation. Pour finir l'année, l'humanité reste donc réduite à vivre écologiquement à "découvert" et à puiser dans des stocks. Depuis plus de 30 ans, l'humanité vit au-dessus de ses moyens et il faudrait ''1,2 à 1,5 Terre pour assumer aujourd'hui les besoins d'une population toujours croissante' ', selon l'ONG.Leroy-Merlin se passionne pour le phénomène des fab labs, ces lieux citoyens dédiés au partage d'outils de fabrication et de production. Par pur amour du client et de son développement (financier) durable. Imaginons : il s’appelle Jean, il pousse les portes de son Leroy-Merlin avec en tête un plan de bibliothèque spéciale bandes dessinées. Direction le fab lab (pour fabrication laboratory , c’est-à-dire un lieu citoyen ou universitaire, non lucratif, dédié aux fabrications d’objets).
Leroy-Merlin se paye les labos citoyens
On January 6, 1973, the anthropologist Margaret Mead published a startling little essay in TV Guide . Her contribution, which wasn’t mentioned on the cover, appeared in the back of the magazine, after the listings, tucked between an advertisement for Virginia Slims and a profile of Shelley Winters. Mead’s subject was a new Public Broadcasting System series called “An American Family,” about the Louds, a middle-class California household. “Bill and Pat Loud and their five children are neither actors nor public figures,” Mead wrote; rather, they were the people they portrayed on television, “members of a real family.” Producers compressed seven months of tedium and turmoil (including the corrosion of Bill and Pat’s marriage) into twelve one-hour episodes, which constituted, in Mead’s view, “a new kind of art form”—an innovation “as significant as the invention of drama or the novel.”
Reality Television and American Culture
Update: After a delay during which the Supreme Court considered a stay, Troy Davis was executed at 11:08 P.M . Troy Davis is scheduled to die in a couple of hours; it is now very hard to see any way that he won’t be. He was convicted of murder, and sentenced to death, and his appeals, including a last-minute one to the Georgia parole board, for clemency, have been denied. An execution in America is not a singular thing: there have been more than thirty this year, and Davis isn’t even the only one scheduled to die today. (There’s also Lawrence Russell Brewer , in Texas.) But the Davis case has struck a chord because of the number of people—thoughtful people who have spent years engrossed in the details—who have real doubts about his guilt, and can cite the affidavits of witnesses who’ve recanted, or who should have been called, but weren’t.