A revised U.S. plant hardiness map has been put out by the National Arbor Day Foundation, based on numbers from 5,000 cooperative climate observation stations throughout the United States. The foundation forged ahead with their own revisions since the official USDA map update has stalled. One unofficial draft [PDF] does exist. A USDA spokesperson said their map delay is because of fine-tuning where to draw the zone lines; the agency also plans to incorporate other data such as wind.
posted to MetaFilter by rolypolyman at 8:29 AM on January 6, 2007 (8 comments)

A WTO victory came last week for the high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) industry. HFCS is that controversial stuff that seemingly permeates everything in American consumer foods, from Gatorade to cough drops. Mexico had slapped tariffs on HFCS dumping in 1998 but agreed to revoke them in 2007, a move that will expand HFCS outside what is almost exclusively a U.S. market. The industry is quite firm that HFCS is safe, but there are some naysayers.
posted to MetaFilter by rolypolyman at 2:15 AM on May 24, 2006 (45 comments)

"We wired the Ho Chi Minh Trail like a drugstore pinball machine and plugged into it every night." From 1965 to 1975, telemetry from thousands of microphones hidden in remote Vietnam jungles were fed to a massive data processing center in Thailand, where an IBM System/360 [wiki] mapped real-time Vietcong movements to display terminals. The details of Project Igloo White remained compartmentalized and highly classified until only several years ago.
posted to MetaFilter by rolypolyman at 10:37 PM on May 22, 2006 (33 comments)

For interrupting an NFL game, weathercaster George Flickinger was fired last week by Clear Channel owned KOKI Fox 23 of Tulsa. The reason? Breaking into the Seahawks-Giants game to warn the public during the wildfires [PDF] of November 27. The fires engulfed 50 homes and prompted the governor to declare an emergency the next day. Flickinger's termination was confirmed in the Tulsa World newspaper, unfortunately they want $7 for the article.
posted to MetaFilter by rolypolyman at 7:06 AM on January 13, 2006 (37 comments)

Mystery respiratory outbreak in Toronto: 73 sick, 4 dead. Yesterday the media quickly snapped up assurances [video] that ruled out influenza or SARS. Said officials, "We can certainly reassure people that this is not SARS, um, there is no SARS in the world ... Can I give you a guarantee that it's not influenza, at this time not, in a few hours, probably ... as the day goes on the public health lab has more and more results." A day has passed with no word on these tests. Affected areas are reportedly quarantined, and some Internet communities are growing alarmed over the contradictions at yesterday's press conference.
posted to MetaFilter by rolypolyman at 11:23 AM on October 2, 2005 (24 comments)

A double whammy for the U.S. economy this winter: Bankers have announced credit card minimum payments will double starting in early 2006 as a 10-year payback system is adopted. Meanwhile in October comes the controversial bankruptcy reform. All this on a blanket of spiralling gas prices. That Unahome may be the wave of the future for a lot of Americans.
posted to MetaFilter by rolypolyman at 10:22 PM on August 21, 2005 (37 comments)