more @ b3ta

Edited: 06/07/2008 at 04:08 AM by WG

Norway





Telegraph

"The Five-Second Rule states that it's okay to eat a dropped piece of food, as long as you pick it up before you can count to five.

In 2003, a high school intern at the University of Illinois named Jillian Clarke conducted a survey and found that half the men and 70% of the women knew about the five-second rule. Jillian then conducted this experiment: first, she contaminated a ceramic tile with E. coli bacteria, then she
placed gummy bears and cookies for 5 seconds and analyzed the food: they sure were contaminated.

In 2007, professor Paul L. Dawson of Clemson University and colleagues repeated the experiment. This time, the test surfaces were tile, wood flooring, and nylon carpet; the food were bread and bologna; and the bugs were salmonella. They discovered that a) salmonella can survive for 28 days on a surface and b) in just 5 seconds, anywhere from 150 to 8,000 bacteria transferred to the food.

So what does this mean for the Five-Second Rule? Do what you like, but remember: the infectious dose (the smallest number of bacteria that can actually cause illness) is as low as 10 for salmonella and 100 for E. coli."

neatorama

Edited: 05/23/2008 at 12:40 PM by WG

"The average family throws away £610 of perfectly good food each year - much of it totally untouched - according to figures released this week. That works out at £11.73 a week. And all of that adds to the £10billion of waste across the country. But are these figures really representative of an ordinary family? Femail challenged Ursula Hirschkorn, 36, who lives in North London with her husband Mike, 32, and two sons, Jacob, four, and Max, two, to keep a diary for a week to discover just how much food her family throws out."

Daily Mail

Edited: 05/10/2008 at 11:36 AM by WG

FreeRice has two goals:

1. Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

"Have you heard about it? It's a website that distributes rice to poor nations (some have waves!!!) This is great for H.S. kids to help them prepare for SATs as well as anyone who wants to practice vocabulary by playing this game."
-Mama G

http://www.freerice.com/

Edited: 04/21/2008 at 07:59 AM by WG

"Call them Pavlov's fish: Scientists are testing a plan to train fish to catch themselves by swimming into a net when they hear a tone that signals feeding time.

If it works, the system could eventually allow black sea bass to be released into the open ocean, where they would grow to market size, then swim into an underwater cage to be harvested when they hear the signal.

"It sounds crazy, but it's real," said Simon Miner, a research assistant at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Wood's Hole, which received a $270,000 grant for the project from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Miner said the trained fish could someday be used to bolster the depleted black sea bass stock. Farmed fish might become better acclimated to the wild if they can be called back for food every few days.

The bigger goal is to defray the costs of fish farming, an increasingly important source of the world's seafood. If fish can be trained to return to the farmer after feeding in the open ocean for several days, farms could save money on feed and reduce the amount of fish waste released in concentrated areas. "

telegram

Edited: 03/28/2008 at 06:29 AM by WG

chris yates

"Unable to afford food, poor people in Haiti resorted to eating mud cookies made from dried yellow dirt:

Merchants truck the dirt from the central town of Hinche to the La Saline market, a maze of tables of vegetables and meat swarming with flies. Women buy the dirt, then process it into mud cookies in places such as Fort Dimanche, a nearby shanty town.

Carrying buckets of dirt and water up ladders to the roof of the former prison for which the slum is named, they strain out rocks and
clumps on a sheet, and stir in shortening and salt. Then they pat the mixture into mud cookies and leave them to dry under the scorching sun.

The finished cookies are carried in buckets to markets or sold on the streets."



AP

Edited: 02/01/2008 at 08:52 AM by WG

neatorama

"about US $1340 at today's exchange rates

It contains all kinds of delicacies, from various kinds of regional sushi (it features masu zushi, sushi made from trout), beluga caviar, karasumi (salted dried mullet roe, considered to be a great delicacy or chinmi), locally grown organic rice, and a lot more. And yes, you get to keep the boxes and the chopsticks. The main box is handcarved by a master craftsman in elaborate nikko bori style, and decorated with gold dust. Both the large and small box are hand lacquered."

just bento



Edited: 01/07/2008 at 08:46 AM by WG

"Short news clip of people in Hokkaido camping on an ice-covered pond, fishing for tiny smelt, then grilling and eating them on the spot."

japanprobe.com via boingboing

Edited: 12/31/2007 at 06:01 PM by WG

batterblaster

yt

Edited: 12/25/2007 at 08:37 PM by WG