A blog about food, history, data visualization, and more
I’ve often wondered about the minds of litterbugs. What makes someone drop a piece of garbage on the ground instead of disposing of it properly? A recent article in Science magazine shows that a litterbug might be responding to signals from the surroundings. The article itself and a short summary require a subscription to the […]
Updated 1/14/23 Although noise pollution doesn’t get the same attention as air or water pollution, it can cause serious health impacts. An article in the S.F. Chronicle reports on a new study by S.F. and U.C. Berkeley researchers that finds that noise pollution from traffic increases the risk of maladies like high blood pressure for […]
About 2 weeks ago, David Lebovitz linked to five KitchenAid “hacks”: an ice cream making attachment, flame stickers, a copper bowl, a paddle with built-in scrapers, and a candy coating pan. I’d like to see a coconut scraper “hack” that would allow me to more easily extract the flesh from a fresh coconut. Right now […]
In the last few weeks I have been making many batches of slow-roasted tomatoes. These are tomatoes — typically Roma, San Marzano, or another sauce-friendly tomato — that have been sliced, tossed with olive oil, salt and pepper, and then roasted on a cookie sheet at 250 to 300 F for several hours. The slow […]
Quite a few months ago, The Atlantic Monthly had a review of a new translation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace. I have never read War and Peace, nor seen the movie adaptations, but I read the review anyway (sometimes one can pick up useful trivia in reviews, or at least read some good writing). The […]