Science Project: Coffee
Here’s the scoop on coffee’s flavor: the taste comes from compounds locked into roasted coffee beans. Add hot water, and those flavors escape into your pot — but not all flavors escape at the same time, says Harold McGee, food science writer and author of On Food and Cooking. For example, sour flavors, acids, come first and the plant carbohydrates responsible for coffee’s body come later. Taste for yourself with this counter-top chemistry experiment.
via .
npr:
Anthropologists have long documented the differences in the extent of sexual coercion — including rape — in different human societies. But is it a vestige of evolutionary history, indicative of cultural activity or governed by power dynamics between females and males?
— What Does ‘Sexual Coercion’ Say About A Society?
Photo: iStockphoto.com
Trans Scientists
Ben Barres M.D., Ph.D., Chair of the Neurobiology department at the Stanford University School of Medicine, Barres went through imost of his medical schooling as a woman.  He has written extensivel…Small compilation of trans scientists; however, still important in terms of representation of gender diversity.
Diagnosed with autism at age 2, told he would never learn to read, now 14 years old and working on a Master’s degree in quantum physics.
If you’re looking for an inspiration today, look no further than Jacob Barnett.
I like his mom’s concept of “muchness”: Surrond children with what they love, be it art, science, sports or whatever, and they will develop more fully than molding them to a design would ever allow.
Yesterday we watched an ancient Mayan ceremony. Here you can see them painting their faces.
Last night at the National Book Critics Circle Awards Andrew Solomon won in non-fiction for his book Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity. Here’s the Fresh Air interview with Solomon about the book:
On how Karen Robards, whose son has Down syndrome, learned to cope
“And I said, ‘Look you’ve given your lives to this.’ I said, ‘Do wish you wish you’d never heard of Down syndrome? Do you wish you could make it go away?’ And his mother said, ‘You know for our son, David, I wish I could make it go away because for David, it’s a difficult way to be in the world. And I would do anything to make David’s life easier.’ She said, ‘But speaking for myself, while I would never have believed 30 years ago that I would get to such a point, speaking for myself it’s made me think so much more deeply and appreciate humanity so much more broadly and live so much more richly. That speaking for myself, I wouldn’t give it up for anything in the world.’
Other winners include Robert Caro for The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Ben Fountain for his novel Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Leanne Shapton’s memoir Swimming Studies, poet D.A. Powell’s Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys, and Marina Warner’s Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights for criticism.
reading one of these over SB 13
(via Listen to Azealia Banks cover The Strokes)
Azealia Banks just covered The Strokes’ Is This It track Barely Legal. Listen Here
(bag detail)
This might be the most self-deprecating pedal board ever illustrated. —Lars
"the greater honesty of the younger children isn’t a mark of their moral purity, but simply a side-effect of their “fragile executive functioning skills."
