While doing this internship with Greenanswers.com, I’ve come across many, many questions that I find to be quite ridiculous. Sometimes, it made me wonder what kinds of people are posting questions on this website, and if they ever received any basic understanding of science from their schooling. I don’t mean to be offensive by saying this, but it just boggles my mind that there is a huge number of these types of questions being posted on the website.
Disclaimer: I don’t have anything against the actual website, but the types of questions that populate it. I think that the greenanswers.com people are trying to do a great thing and I’m glad that a site like this exists. I had a great experience working with them and often enjoyed answering questions. I look forward to the future development of the site and will go back to check it out often.
Of the ridiculous questions, here are some of my all-time favorites (mostly from the past two weeks):
• If nature is so smart, why can’t it take care of global warming?
• Why does it get so dark at night?
• What is the best meal for the environment? Breakfast, lunch or dinner?
• Has there ever been proof of dragons? (This was posted under the Mammals section.)
• Are pancakes greener than waffles?
• Self powering energy, is it possible?
• What is the difference between a sun and a moon?
• What is the crop that is essential to human life?
• How long does the West Coast last?
• How are we going to get poor nations to make green changes to their way of life?
• Why don’t more people view soil as a non-renewable resources? Is it because they are dirty?
• From the environmental perspective, is there any need for the United States Postal Service?
• Does a tree scream?
• Is grass the ultimate survivor?
The main issues that I have with these questions are that Continue reading →
No, not in a balloon in a slingshot. Just in a slingshot.
Creator of the Segway, Dean Kamen, has come up with a device that can purify water and he calls it the Slingshot. This CNN article goes into detail about the inventor and the invention. The small machine takes up the space of a typical sized drinking water fountain. Check out the images on their page for a better idea of what it is.
The device works by “vapor compression distillation,” which probably means that it heats up the item containing water thereby vaporizing the water, compresses the vapor and distills it. He has stuck things in it like raw sewage, ocean water, and river water. Anything that has moisture would work. The Slingshot probably works so well because it can isolate the water molecules from everything else.
The problem is that it still costs several hundred thousand dollars to make one Slingshot. Kamen is hopeful, though, that after more engineering they can get the price down to $2,000.
At that price, more people could possibly afford it. The current model can supply 250 gallons a day, which he estimates is enough for 100 people. It might become part of a new water fountain system at a school, or be the central filtration system for a small village or apartment building.
Whatever it is, it is an invention that has the potential to change many lives. It would bring us one step closer to closing the resource usage cycle and living sustainably.
Image credit:
Flickr user au.st.in
Some more interesting quotes from the book Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams:
“We must encourage innovation without eroding the vitality of the scientific and cultural commons. We need an incentive system that rewards inventors and knowledge producers and encourages dissemination of their output.” Pg. 240
“The culture of generosity is the very backbone of the Internet.” Pg. 274
“Innovation is less about inventing and building physical things and more about orchestrating or coordinating good ideas.” Pg. 290
Dan Phillips builds houses…out of recycled or discarded materials. This New York Times article profiles Phillips and talks about his work. He uses things like picture frame corners that he got from a frame shop who was getting rid of samples and small pieces of wood that are leftover from the ends of boards that other construction companies discard. Phillips tries to sell all of his houses to low-income families, though after a while many of them cannot afford the mortgage.
(Photo is from Our United Villages and the Rebuilding Center, which also has a cool warehouse of recycled and reclaimed materials, see pictures here.)
One thing that I found to be very interesting was that he requires that the future owners help with the building. This adds another dimension to his projects that makes it more of a human project than anything else. People who help build their own homes will appreciate it more, and in turn they will appreciate the materials and things that go into building the house. Maybe I am being too hopeful to think that they will appreciate where the materials come from and think more environmentally, but this is a good start towards a more sustainable lifestyle.
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Also an article in the book The Best American Science Writing 2007 is a piece called “Cooking for Eggheads” by Patricia Gadsby on molecular gastronomy, which is the study of the physical and chemical processes that go into cooking food.
It is interesting to think about this field of science and compare it to what nutritionists do. Nutritionists try to break food down into their essential parts and attempt to inject things where they do not naturally belong. Molecular gastronomists, on the other hand, are scientists who want to know what is happening to the molecular structures in food when they are cooked or otherwise manipulated.
Gadsby talks about how one person she interviewed, Hervé This (pronounced Tiss), demonstrated that the texture of cooked eggs is completely determined by the temperature, not the time, at which they are cooked. A few degrees make a difference because different proteins in the yolk and white coagulate at different temperatures in the range of 142-184˚F.
Hervé This makes the point that what molecular gastronomists are interested in is figuring out the mechanisms, but people who throw around the term molecular gastronomy to describe fancy cooking techniques essentially should not be considered representative of this field of science. Molecular gastronomists are more like the physicists who are looking to find the laws of the universe, just instead of the universe they are interested in the laws of food and cooking. But like nutritionism giving the false perception of understanding the composition of food, showy restaurant chefs are giving the public a misconstrued image of molecular gastronomy.
But there is a good side to everything, and exposing people to new techniques draws attention and recognition to the field. The tricky part is then to convince those people that there is a greater purpose to experimenting with food than to just have a cool trick to show. Molecular gastronomy brings us closer to understanding the complex nature of different types of food applied to heat and other external forces. By understanding these processes, we may get closer to finding out what makes food nutritious and how to maximize that nutritional value.
Image credit:
Flickr user Marco Veringa
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Our country is overweight; Food Network needs a new image!
October 29, 2009
Commentary, Science, Society, Technology
4 comments
Watch the Food Network for a few hours of programming and count up the number of times a healthy eating habit is promoted. You won’t count very high.
Even with over 50% of the U.S.’s adult population overweight or obese (Wikipedia citation), healthy food and eating is on the backburner for the Food Network. As the premiere food oriented channel on basic cable, the Food Network should be more concerned with being the leading resource for good eating and lifestyle habits that can shape the country’s dietary future.
Image credit: Flickr user wallyg
I have been watching the Food Network a lot these past few weeks, and one thing seems to bother me incessantly about their programming. It is greasy, sugary, fatty, and generally unhealthy! Now, I don’t think we should tend towards the fanatic side of “nutritionism,” but more like eating less processed foods and more whole foods cooked in less grease.
A quick rundown of the shows (This is by no means a comprehensive study or accurate list of statistics. It is just an estimate from data I have gathered from viewing experience and online perusing.):
# fatty, meaty shows = 8
# sugary = 6
# of hosts who are overweight = at least 6
NONE of the primary programs have health themes
Continue reading →