War's Deeper Scars

As it turns out, war is hell on mitochondria, too. Researchers studying veterans of the 1990-91 Gulf War who have been suffering from the mysterious "Gulf War illness" have found that their mitochondria are impaired. Mitochondria are the organelles responsible for creating energy for the cells. They are in almost every cell of our body. "Gulf veterans are known to have been widely exposed to acetylcholinesterase inhibitors, a chemical class found in organophosphate and carbamate pesticides, nerve gas and nerve gas pre-treatment pills given to troops," says principal investigator Beatrice A. Golomb, M.D., Ph.D.: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140327222210.htm
   To learn more about mitochondria, go to http://www.lhsc.on.ca/Patients_Families_Visitors/Genetics/Inherited_Metabolic/Mitochondria/AllAboutMitochondria.htm

Airport Report

Changi Airport is No. 1.                                                                               AP

Which are the 10 best airports in the world and why? The Skytrax World Airport Awards, which are based on 12.85 million customer nominations involving 410 airports and 39 criteria, suggest that you might want to make sure your flight stops at Changi Airport in Singapore ~ even if you're only going from Phoenix to Duluth. No one who's traveled from or to a U.S. airport will be in the least bit surprised that not one of them got anywhere close to being in the top 10 (story, slideshow): http://www.ibtimes.com/worlds-10-best-airports-2014-1564966

Burying the Evidence

Vattenfall

As more of the world turns to coal for its power, two companies, one in the U.S. and one in Canada, are building coal-fired power plants that will capture their own carbon dioxide emissions and store them underground. The technology is called carbon capture and storage (CCS). Is it an ingenious innovation or a dangerous distraction? And perhaps the next question should be, Then what?: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2014/03/140331-carbon-capture-kemper-coal-climate/
   And, yes, I am aware that this National Geographic page is sponsored by Shell. I just hope that isn't coloring the editorial decisions.

Jail House Art

detail from the finished oeuvre                                                    Jesse Krimes

When artist Jesse Krimes (yeah, I know ~ ironic last name) was sentenced to close to six years in prison, he decided to spend the time doing what he loves: making art. To do so, though, he had to get creative in more ways than one (thank you, Kris): http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2014/03/19/philadelphia_artist_jesse_krimes_uses_a_70_month_jail_sentence_to_create.html

A Kid in the Kitchen

the chef at 14                                                                  diningwithflynn.com

What did you enjoy doing most when you were 15? How about when you were 12? Flynn McGarry, who is 15, has been hosting his own supper club for the last three and a half years ~ and his customers pay $160 each to savor his rendition of "progressive American cuisine." "I have a very weird, like, creative brain that I can't, like, not go a long time without creating dishes and having people try them," he explains. Not surprisingly, his goal is to open a restaurant by the time he's 19 (story, video): http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/30/magazine/the-chef-at-15.html?_r=1
   Sibling revelry: Flynn's sister has a blog on which she posts lovely photos of some of his creations: http://thesisterofaculinaryprodigy.blogspot.com/

Their 15 MInutes of Shame

submitted by Bill to awkwardfamilyphotos.com

Bad enough that your pesky sibling posted your most embarrassing family portrait to a website (http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/), but now you learn that it might be one of the ones that will be exhibited at the California Heritage Museum in Santa Monica for four months starting March 27 (story, lots of pix): http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/awkward-family-photos-exhibit

Whole Joe's

Sure, this was created for Washington Post readers and so a couple of the references are not universal, but all the rest of them are. This chart is indispensable for anyone trying to decide between Whole Foods and Trader Joe's (and, yes, I'm being facetious!) (oh, and thank you, Mary): http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/trader-joes-or-whole-foods/2014/03/21/33a0232e-b144-11e3-95e8-39bef8e9a48b_graphic.html?hpid=z1

What's Goin' Down

Central California's Delta Mendota Canal                                      www.usbr.gov

I always wondered how we can keep taking liquids ~ water, oil ~ out of the ground without it sinking. It just didn't make sense. Well, apparently, California's Central Valley, made desperate by the current drought, has been pumping enough subterranean water that large areas are sinking. "We've got some serious issues," Reggie Hill, who manages the Lower San Joaquin Levee District, says in what may be a huge understatement: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140325-california-drought-subsidence-groundwater/#.UzJDp16jXgc

Looks Good on Paper

Shigeru Ban, this year's winner of the Pritzker Prize in architecture, is by all accounts an average guy ~ except when he's not. One of the ways in which he's not is his work with paper. He has built churches and homes of cardboard and has taken this idea to areas of crisis, putting up shelters and other buildings quickly and cheaply to house the dispossessed: http://gizmodo.com/9-paper-buildings-by-the-winner-of-architectures-top-p-1550683840

A Good Writer Is Hard To Find

In honor of Flannery O'Connor's birthday on March 25 (1925-1964), here is her "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction." O'Connor's works can indeed be labeled grotesque in many ways, but, of course, while she herself does not shy from that word, she sees it as a deeply useful aspect of communication between a writer and her reader. "Whenever I'm asked," she writes, "why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one. To be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man, and in the South the general conception of man is still, in the main, theological": http://www.en.utexas.edu/amlit/amlitprivate/scans/grotesque.html

   To hear O'Connor read this essay, go to http://www.openculture.com/2013/04/listen_as_flannery_oconnor_reads_some_aspects_of_the_grotesque_in_southern_fiction_c_1960.html

Body and Brain in Motion

As a parent and during my time in the classroom, I noticed that many (if not most or all) children need to move while they're thinking things through. Of course, this is difficult in the traditional classroom, and most teachers discourage their students from getting up and walking around, which I always found to be nothing short of tragic. Now there is scientific evidence showing that the quickest way to learn ~ and this is equally true for adults ~ is to use gestures and body movement: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140321-how-to-learn-fast-use-your-body

Bubbles of Infinity

We've all heard the theory that we are not the only ones here, that there are, in fact, multiple universes stretching out forever. The recent discovery of gravitational waves from the Big Bang (http://somanyinterestingthings.blogspot.com/2014/03/waves-of-wonder.html) only lends more credence to this suspicion. A multiverse could explain some of the seemingly contradictory points and inconsistencies scientists have noted in otherwise unassailable theories. At the same time, of course, it's extraordinarily difficult to truly register: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140318-multiverse-inflation-big-bang-science-space/
   While this is a propitious development for experimental physicists, it is distressing to theoretical physicists, author and MIT professor Alan Lightman, himself a physicist, wrote in an interesting anticipatory piece a couple of years ago: http://harpers.org/archive/2011/12/the-accidental-universe/

Behind the Bandages

Interactive Institute Swedish ICT

In Victorian England, there were mummy "unwrapping parties." Really ~ think about it: How fun would that be if the desecration and historical-artifact angles never entered your sphere of thought? And before you judge the lords and ladies too harshly, understand that in the United States, Egyptian mummies were used as kindling or for making paper (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/mummies_01.shtml).
   Visitors to a museum in Sweden can enjoy their own unwrapping party without having to worry about destroying items of historical significance. Courtesy of modern technology, they can digitally unwrap the mummy of one Neswaiu, who lived in Thebes in the third century BCE. (Of course, the issue of an ancient individual's right to privacy remains) (story, video): http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/mummies_01.shtml
   There are more pictures on the museum website: https://www.varldskulturmuseerna.se/en/medelhavsmuseet/exhibitions/exhibitions/bring-your-family-to-the-the-land-of-the-pharaohs/mummies-on-a-virtual-autopsy-table/

Dumb and Dumberer?

The more we learn about ADHD, autism, and other neurobehavioral development disorders ~ with which an estimated 10 to 15 percent of U.S. babies are now born ~ the more we learn what many have deduced and argued for a long time: that the cause is, in the great majority of cases, environmental. In a paper summarizing the results of their study on the subject, Philippe Grandjean, of Harvard, and Philip Landrigan, of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Manhattan, named 12 chemicals that they believe cause these disorders and lower IQs in babies whose mothers were exposed to them. These chemicals can be found in furniture, household products, pesticides, building materials, drinking water, and more. Many of them were proved to be hazardous years ago, and yet we're still using them. Which leaves us with the obvious question: Why isn't our government doing a better job of protecting its people ~ us ~ from these dangers?: http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/03/the-toxins-that-threaten-our-brains/284466/

Which Way Home?

screen shot

China? Israel? Berlin? No, it's the U.S./Mexican border.                                                 screen shot

A record number of undocumented immigrants have been deported under this president ~ almost 2 million since 2009 (see http://somanyinterestingthings.blogspot.com/2014/02/yerrrr-outa-here.html). For them, "going home" means leaving home, family, friends, and what, for many and despite the sometimes overwhelming hardship, is still "the land of opportunity" (story, video): http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26533046

Fashion Moment

Excuse me, but may I just say WOW!

Tommy Ton

A Proletarian Paradise

"View of Constantinople and the Bosphorus" (1856), by Ivan Konstantinovich Alvazovsky

By all accounts, Russians cheered when they heard that their president had reclaimed Crimea from Ukraine. Sure, the little spit of land is strategically important, being the home of Russia's Black Sea Fleet, sure its population is 60 percent Russian (thanks in large part to Joseph Stalin: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140314-crimea-tatars-referendum-russia-muslim-ethnic-history-culture/), and sure, it's important for its agriculture and wine production (see http://somanyinterestingthings.blogspot.com/2014/03/half-league-onward.html and http://somanyinterestingthings.blogspot.com/2014/03/its-putins-port-now.html), but to Mother Russia and her people, it's so much more than that (story, video): http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26610276

It's All Happening at the Zoo

Ukraine's Kharkov Zoo was built in 1896 and opened to the public in 1903, and given its location, has probably seen its shares of ups and downs over the years. One of those downs ~ followed, thankfully, by one of those ups ~ took place recently as city residents, facing an unknown future themselves, rallied to answer the zoo director's call for help. Emigrée Alina Simone and her father recall his brief stint there after he was blacklisted by the KGB (print, audio versions): http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-03-14/soviet-born-migr-remembers-working-kharkov-zoo

As Water Flows, So Goes the World

The World Water Development Report is coming out on March 21, and March 22 is World Water Day, a day set aside by the United Nations to focus on the importance of wise water usage and the need for clean water around the world. This year's theme is Water and Energy (website): http://www.unwater.org/worldwaterday
   Some ideas for teachers and parents on how to celebrate it: http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2014/mar/17/how-to-teach-world-water-day-lesson-ideas-resources
   A preview of the World Water Development Report (video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJxoAi-9yoc#t=55

A Reflection of Nature

Alyson Shotz's "Mirror Fence"

In 2003, artist Alyson Shotz built a fence out of acrylic, wood, and aluminum. It's been installed in a few different places since then, always beautifully either blending in or contrasting with the scenery behind it (story, lots of pictures): http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2014/03/a-fence-of-mirrors-by-alyson-shotz-reflects-the-changing-landscape/?src=footer