Time lapse videos can be breathtaking, lovely, and a joy to watch… but they can also show you something you may not have thought about before. Before I even read the caption for Murray Fredericks’ video called "IRIDIUM", I knew it was filmed in the southern hemisphere. Can you guess how? [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation
on Oct 23, 2011 -
14 comments
Why Wal-Mart Is Making Our Health Its Problem - "So what's behind
the [healthier-eating] initiative? In a word: scale. In
a recent article in HBR, Chris Meyer and I argued that we'll see companies taking more and more ownership of externalities they could ignore because of changing sensibilities and better sensors (meaning detection and reporting of impacts by third parties). But we also identified a third driver: the scale of modern business. Whereas in the past, a single grocer could not have much impact on society, in today's highly consolidated market, Wal-Mart touches a significant percentage of the nation's food intake. Once you reach a scale where your decisions have ramifications for millions, it is hard to pretend that the impacts, even as distant ripples, are not your problem."
posted by kliuless
on Jan 24, 2011 -
75 comments
The globe’s networked ecologies of food, water, energy, and waste have established new infrastructures and forms of urbanism. While these ecologies exist at the service of our contemporary lifestyles, they have typically remained hidden from view and from the public conscience.
Infranet Lab is studying the shifting / changing conditions.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Apr 20, 2009 -
2 comments
Blood Falls - The iron rich red liquid gushing from a buried Antarctica lake shows how life may have existed on a snowball Earth, or on Europa.
posted by Artw
on Apr 18, 2009 -
52 comments
Following the death of his sister to brain cancer,
Motoi Yamamoto adopted salt as his primary artistic medium. In Japanese culture salt is not only a necessary element to sustain human life, but it is also a
symbol of purification. He uses salt in loose form to create
intricate labyrinth patterns on the gallery floor or in
baked brick form to construct large interior structures. As with the labyrinths and unnavigable passageways,
Motoi Yamamoto views his installations as exercises which are at once futile yet necessary to his healing.
posted by netbros
on Mar 20, 2009 -
25 comments
Is blood plasma salinity the same as seawater? No, but that proves evolution.
"The answer is most definitely NOT that oceans were 1/3 as salty back then. It most definitely IS that the earliest vertebrates did evolve in salt water and then moved into fresh water....They have devised an extremely clever trick in kidney structure to allow salt transport pumps which really take salt back INTO the body from the urine but still manage to use them to produce urine much more concentrated that their body fluids and so excrete salt FROM the body."
posted by Brian B.
on Feb 10, 2007 -
66 comments
Salt: Not just a condiment, salt is a
major force shaping our world. In Australia,
what do you get when you combine ancient salt-pans with European farming practices? In one state alone, we're losing a football field an hour to the salinity crisis.
What do you farm when all you have is salt?
posted by ninazer0
on Nov 25, 2006 -
33 comments
Is Salt The New Olive Oil? The
New York Times [
registration required] thinks so and
Peter Hertzmann, on his superb
a la carte website, offers an expert analysis of the difficulties of seasoning well. Even the greatest chefs feel insecure with salt, even though most of them would consider it to be, by far, the most important ingredient of all. At least those I've asked. [
I always ask them what 3 ingredients they couldn't do without]. It's cheap; it's essential and there are now so many kinds to choose from. Will this current brouhaha be enough to convince the larger population that
much is lost in using only the industrial, refined stuff? [
Of course, for someone from Southern Europe, olive oil and good sea salt aren't exactly new, so take this with a grain of you know what.]
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Feb 24, 2004 -
28 comments
Talk about holding a grudge. Thirty-six years after its initial publication, the Wacky Pack sticker for "
Moron Salt", a toothless parody of
Morton Salt, has become perhaps among the more sought after of all non-sports collectible cards. Why? Because to this day, the makers of Morton Salt are vigorously attempting to banish it from the face of the earth, including going so far as to
threaten legal action against eBay to get them to delist anyone trying to sell it. Details on the legal battle (as well as much more Wacky Pack goodness) available at
MoronSalt.
posted by jonson
on Jul 31, 2003 -
18 comments
