Helpful Hints
Try baby oil to untangle a necklace and dental floss to hang lightweight artwork.
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Thursday, September 2, 2010
Are you being over-charged
The sky-high price hikes on items like printer ink and bottled water may give you pause.
Also: FDA looks to curb abuse of cough medicine
Federal health regulators are weighing restrictions on Robitussin, NyQuil and other cough suppressants to curb cases of abuse that send thousands of people to the hospital each year.
What 'Grade A' label for eggs really means
Many shoppers have no idea what the USDA stamp on cartons stands for.
Also: Culinary DeLites
Culinary DeLites
Perfect patties start with mixing cuts of beef and getting the burger-to-bun ratio right.
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Make Labor Day easy on yourself with these tips for cooking meat and veggies.
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A study reveals that many bottled teas aren't such a healthy alternative to soda.
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The iconic, black-studded wedge seems destined to become a slice of vanished Americana.
Also: Fixing Burger King
The struggling chain's new owners must offer more than its famous flame-broiled burgers, experts say.
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How Technology Made Us Humans
The Man of Year Million
In his book, “The Artificial Ape,” anthropologist and archaeologist Timothy Taylor makes the startling claim that we did not make tools, tools made us.
He reminds us that the oldest stone tools we’ve found are 2.5 million years old. But the genus to which we belong, Homo, is only 2.2 million years old, at least according to the current fossil record. Our species, Homo sapiens, has been around for less time than the gap between tool creation and our genus.
In a fascinating interview with New Scientist, Taylor believes “earlier hominids called Australopithecines were responsible for the stone tools . . . The tools caused the genus Homo to emerge.”
How does that reverse the human-technology equation? Taylor believes that the creation of tools – in his example a sling to carry an infant – is “how encephalisation took place in the genus Homo.” The creation of technology to take care of infants allowed them to be born more helpless. In other words, the development of initial tech allowed evolutionary forces to shape us in a particular fashion. In fact, perhaps forced them to do so.
The Highest-Paid Athlete in Western History was a Roman Charioteer
If you think that modern athletes make a lot of money, they’ve got nothing on the ancients. Peter Struck, a classics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, states that a particular Roman chariot driver far exceeded the earnings of today’s top athletes:The very best paid of these—in fact, the best paid athlete of all time—was a Lusitanian Spaniard named Gaius Appuleius Diocles, who had short stints with the Whites and Greens, before settling in for a long career with the Reds. Twenty-four years of winnings brought Diocles—likely an illiterate man whose signature move was the strong final dash—the staggering sum of 35,863,120 sesterces in prize money. The figure is recorded in a monumental inscription erected in Rome by his fellow charioteers and admirers in 146, which hails him fulsomely on his retirement at the age of “42 years, 7 months, and 23 days” as “champion of all charioteers.”
His total take home amounted to five times the earnings of the highest paid provincial governors over a similar period—enough to provide grain for the entire city of Rome for one year, or to pay all the ordinary soldiers of the Roman Army at the height of its imperial reach for a fifth of a year. By today’s standards that last figure, assuming the apt comparison is what it takes to pay the wages of the American armed forces for the same period, would cash out to about $15 billion. Even without his dalliances, it is doubtful Tiger could have matched it.
Evolution in Action
Lizard Lays Egg and Births Babies
Photo: Rebecca A. Pyles
Evolutionary records shows that nearly a hundred reptile lineages have independently made the transition from egg-laying to live birth in the past, and today about 20 percent of all living snakes and lizards give birth to live young only.
But modern reptiles that have live young provide only a single snapshot on a long evolutionary time line, said study co-author James Stewart, a biologist at East Tennessee State University. The dual behavior of the yellow-bellied three-toed skink therefore offers scientists a rare opportunity.
"By studying differences among populations that are in different stages of this process, you can begin to put together what looks like the transition from one [birth style] to the other."
More than you want to know about bedbugs
[V]ery little is known about the creature whose Latin name [Cimex lectularius] means “bug of the bed.”Photo credit Allen Brisson-Smith for The New York Times
Ask any expert why the bugs disappeared for 40 years, why they came roaring back in the late 1990s, even why they do not spread disease, and you hear one answer: “Good question.”
...bedbugs, despite the ick factor, are clean... South African researchers have fed them blood with the AIDS virus, but the virus died. They have shown that bugs can retain hepatitis B virus for weeks, but when they bite chimpanzees, the infection does not take...
Why the bugs disappeared for so long and exploded so fast after they reappeared is another question. The conventional answer — that DDT was banned — is inadequate. After all, mosquitoes, roaches and other insects rebounded long ago... Before central heating arrived in the early 1900s, they died back in winter...
Early remedies were risky: igniting gunpowder on mattresses or soaking them with gasoline, fumigating buildings with burning sulfur or cyanide gas. (The best-known brand was Zyklon B, which later became infamous at Auschwitz.)
Success finally arrived in the 1950s as the bugs were hit first with DDT and then with malathion, diazinon, lindane, chlordane and dichlorovos, as resistance to each developed. In those days, mattresses were sprayed, DDT dust was sprinkled into the sheets, nurseries were lined with DDT-impregnated wallpaper...
One theory is that domestic bedbugs surged after pest control companies stopped spraying for cockroaches in the 1980s and switched to poisoned baits, which bedbugs do not eat.
But the prevailing theory is that new bugs were introduced from overseas, because the ones found in cities now are resistant to different insecticides from those used on poultry or cockroaches...
Many pesticides don’t work, and some that do are banned — though whether people should fear the bug or the bug-killer more is open to debate.
“I’d like to take some of these groups and lock them in an apartment building full of bugs and see what they say then,” Dr. Potter said of environmentalists...
Both Mr. Cooper and Dr. Goddard said they routinely pull apart beds and even headboards when they check into hotels. Dr. Goddard keeps his luggage in the bathroom. Mr. Cooper heat-treats his when he gets home...
'Stonehenges' Made From Recycled Materials
Stonehenge, the prehistoric monument made of massive standing stones in the heart of England, has inspired many an artist. For decades, people have been making their own reconstructions of the ancient site of worship, with whatever materials are at hand.
The craze, however, hit a new pace in the summer of 1986, when Stonehenge became a world heritage site and was fenced off. Since then, various Henges have cropped up all around the world, their spirit unbroken - and some of the greatest take the druid's credo as their own, reusing and recycling materials to create truly green creations.
Most Dangerous Mountain Peaks In The World
Before you go hiking, backpacking, mountaineering, rock climbing, ice climbing, downhill skiing, snowboarding or any other activity enjoyed on mountains, you better prepare yourself. Here are the 20 most dangerous mountain peaks in the world.
Recovering bubbly, divers find beer
Divers who found what's believed to be the world's oldest drinkable champagne say they have also discovered two-centuries-old bottles of beer at a shipwreck in the Baltic Sea.
In this image released Thursday Sept 2 2010 by the Aalands Provincial Government, bottles of what are claimed to be the world's oldest surviving beer are displayed at an unknown location.
(AP Photo/Alands landskapsregering/Marcus Lindholm)
Canadian Rockies Yields Fossil Trove
- One of paleontology's most revered fossil sites now has a baby brother.
World's First Feast: Beef, Turtles and a Dead Shaman
It may be too late to RSVP for the world's first feast, which took place around 12,000 years ago. But take a look what's on the menu here.
Ancient pre-Inca royals uncovered
Archaeologists in Peru discover a burial site from an ancient civilization that predates the Inca.
Charles Darwin's secret 200 year old experiment
Or ...
A lonely island in the middle of the South Atlantic conceals Charles Darwin's best-kept secret. Two hundred years ago, Ascension Island was a barren volcanic edifice. Today, its peaks are covered by lush tropical "cloud forest". What happened in the interim is the amazing story of how the architect of evolution, Kew Gardens and the Royal Navy conspired to build a fully functioning, but totally artificial ecosystem.
By a bizarre twist, this great imperial experiment may hold the key to the future colonization of Mars.
Ascension Island, a British overseas territory in the south Atlantic, was originally a nearly-lifeless, uninhabited rock. It had no freshwater except for rainfall which quickly evaporated. But in an experiment, Charles Darwin and his friend Joseph Hooker introduced non-native plants that they hoped would encourage water retention. The result is that today Ascension Island has lush, vibrant forests:
How Charles Darwin Terraformed a Barren Rock
A lonely island in the middle of the South Atlantic conceals Charles Darwin's best-kept secret. Two hundred years ago, Ascension Island was a barren volcanic edifice. Today, its peaks are covered by lush tropical "cloud forest". What happened in the interim is the amazing story of how the architect of evolution, Kew Gardens and the Royal Navy conspired to build a fully functioning, but totally artificial ecosystem.
By a bizarre twist, this great imperial experiment may hold the key to the future colonization of Mars.
Ascension Island, a British overseas territory in the south Atlantic, was originally a nearly-lifeless, uninhabited rock. It had no freshwater except for rainfall which quickly evaporated. But in an experiment, Charles Darwin and his friend Joseph Hooker introduced non-native plants that they hoped would encourage water retention. The result is that today Ascension Island has lush, vibrant forests:Egged on by Darwin, in 1847 Hooker advised the Royal Navy to set in motion an elaborate plan. With the help of Kew Gardens – where Hooker’s father was director – shipments of trees were to be sent to Ascension.
The idea was breathtakingly simple. Trees would capture more rain, reduce evaporation and create rich, loamy soils. The “cinder” would become a garden.
So, beginning in 1850 and continuing year after year, ships started to come. Each deposited a motley assortment of plants from botanical gardens in Europe, South Africa and Argentina.
Soon, on the highest peak at 859m (2,817ft), great changes were afoot. By the late 1870s, eucalyptus, Norfolk Island pine, bamboo, and banana had all run riot.
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