rebecca's pocket

» Don't miss the most entertaining bit of media literacy I've ever seen: Charlie Brooker - How to Report the News. (thanks, jjg!)  [ 02.02.10 ]

» Starting From Scratch is a blog detailing 6 New York City families' preparations to survive between July 22nd-July 29th, 2010 exclusively on food they have hunted, fished, farmed, or foraged. Many of the challengers have started foraging and planning gardens already. (via fpf)  [ 02.08.10 ]

» Compare and Contrast with yesterday's entry: Modern "Cavemen" in New York City who fast for days, eat mostly meat, and exercise by sprinting and jumping.

[72-year-old retired economics professor Arthur De Vany's] blog promotes what he calls Evolutionary Fitness. Like his disciples in New York, he believes that ancient humans could perform physical feats that would awe the gym rats of today.

His followers believe that he too is capable of fearsome feats. When Mr. Durant told a gathering of New York cavemen that he had seen Mr. De Vany at a seminar in Las Vegas, Matthew Sanocki, 34, asked if Mr. De Vany looked as muscular in the flesh as in pictures on his blog.

"He looks great," Mr. Durant said. "You feel like he could, at a moment's notice, charge at you and trample you."

 [ 02.09.10 ]

» For 60 years, a mysterious visitor dressed in black has left roses and a half-bottle of cognac on Edgar Allen Poe's grave on his birthday - until this year, when he didn't show up.  [ 02.11.10 ]

» Why is the food you buy so sugary? Blame the demonization of fat. I learned a lot from this refreshingly undogmatic interview with Brian Wansink, head of the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab, and author of the book Mindless Eating.

The thing is, there was a kind of witch-hunting phase where we demonized sugar back in the late '80s. But if you look at it, there's a really nice case to be made for sugar. Let's use chocolate milk as an example. If you're trying to get kids to drink milk, and you add just a little more chocolate and a little more sugar, and add 30 more calories to it, you know, I don't really think that's bad compared to them ordering Goofy Grape punch with the same number of calories and really nothing in it.

 [ 02.16.10 ]

» It's worse than I thought:

The report concludes that only 15 percent of [Bay] area housing stock is affordable to "workforce households," compared with 50 to 60 percent in "peer metropolitan regions." In the greater Boston area, 61 percent of the housing is affordable to workforce households; in the Washington, D.C., area the number is 65 percent.

The ULI Terwilliger Center for Workforce Housing defines workforce households as those with incomes between 60 and 120 percent of area median income, which is between $56,000 and $112,000. Approximately 30 percent, or 820,000, of the Bay Area's 2.7 million households fell into this income range. The report used a 3.5 income-to-home price multiplier to determine the affordable home price for each income bracket and household size. So a family earning $100,000 could afford a $350,000 home.

Oh, and renters?

More than 30 percent of rental households earning between $50,000 and $75,000 spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent. That is a higher percentage than New York or Los Angeles. And rents are not only high in the neighborhoods of San Francisco closest to downtown; even Napa County, which has the lowest rents in the greater Bay Area, has higher median rents than greater metropolitan Boston, New York, or Los Angeles.

 [ 02.22.10 ]

» Far from being an adjunct to the spoken word, research shows that touch is an expressive language of its own.  [ 02.23.10 ]

» Absolutely: A sense of entitlement amplifies hypocrisy in individuals who feel they deserve their status.  [ 02.24.10 ]

» Do expensive things taste better? Actually, they do. This explains all those ugly, expensive, designer handbags and shoes.

When tasting the wine out of the $10 bottle, the medial orbitofrontal cortex - an area of the brain that is strongly related to experiences of pleasure - showed only very little activity. When the exact same wine was poured out of a $90 bottle however, this brain area showed levels of activation which indicate that the participants were indeed drawing much more enjoyment from the same wine this time around. In other words, the price tag seemed to have a real physiological influence on the taster's taste experience.

[...] Interestingly enough, the primary taste areas show no significant differences in activation for the different experimental conditions.

 [ 02.25.10 ]

» The Great Recession seems to be coming to an end, but based on the past 2 jobless recoveries, the millions thrown out of work may face unemployment for many years more.  [ 02.25.10 ]

» The joy and diversity of Belgian beers.  [ 02.26.10 ]

» Harold McGee: Better Bread with Less Kneading. Trust Mr. McGee to cut through the no-knead hype to identify when that method is best and when to knead. Science bonus: flour/water proportions necessary for a good loaf of bread.  [ 02.26.10 ]