If You Fix This, You Fix a Big Piece of the Climate Puzzle
There’s no single solution for climate change, but there is one that would be more effective than others. What do you think it is?
(Source: The New York Times)
This blog is an eclectic collection of interesting things I've found on Tumblr, the rest of the web, and beyond. Its name is taken from this quote by Dinah Craik: "Oh, the comfort — the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person — having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away."
There’s no single solution for climate change, but there is one that would be more effective than others. What do you think it is?
(Source: The New York Times)
A Theory Strikes Out: Weighted Bats Don’t Quicken the Swing
Warming up with the 24-ounce weight is supposed to increase bat speed in a sport where a split second can mean the difference between a hit and a whiff.
But swinging a loaded bat like Mike Trout or a bunch of bats at once like Babe Ruth or a sledgehammer like Willie Stargell or a steel rod like Frank Thomas, or really, anything other than a normal game bat, probably isn’t helping a batter’s swing, and may be hurting it.
Studies conducted over several decades have concluded that the ritual popular among professionals and emulated by amateurs doesn’t increase bat speed. It may actually slow it down.
“The best is your own bat,” said Coop DeRenne, a hitting consultant who began researching bat speed in the 1980s.
(Source: The Wall Street Journal)
— Why Schools Should NOT Be Run Like Businesses (via azspot)
(via azspot)
The Way We Think About Sugar Is Going To Change
“I’m meeting my boss later,” my patient said. “I’m worried she’s going to tell me I’m not pulling my weight, and that I should volunteer to work more hours to show my commitment.”
This tension had been building at her job for months, and she feared that there would be a tacit threat in this meeting: work longer hours, uncompensated, or we will push you out. She was already finding it hard to spend so much time away from home. But she couldn’t afford to risk unemployment.
“What am I supposed to tell my children?” she asked, breaking down.
My stomach knotted. Such worries among my patients are becoming so common, so persistent, that I find myself focusing less and less on problems and neuroses that are specific to individual patients, and more and more on what is happening to the fabric of daily life.
WATCH: As war ravages Syria, the light is literally being replaced by the darkness.
Bull Nye changed his mind about GMOs after reading the science. You should too.
Over the years, as peer-reviewed scientific studies on GMOs have piled up, scientific organizations ranging from the National Academy of Sciences to the World Health Organization have analyzed them and reached similar conclusions: GMOs on the market today are no riskier for your health than their non-GMO equivalents.
A recent analysis of the scientific literature also found that GMO crops haven’t been worse for the environment than their non-GMO counterparts and, in some cases, have been better, for instance by reducing pesticide use. That finding echoes a 2010 NAS report that said GMO crops, generally speaking, “have had fewer adverse effects on the environment than non-GE crops produced conventionally.”
A Giant Picture of Snow Cover across the United States in February 2015.
(Click through to compare maps from 2013 and 2014.)
(Source: The New York Times)
Why Vaccines Work
Minnesota shows exactly why we should raise taxes on the rich
Over the past four years, Minnesota has undergone a series of policy reforms that most of the corporate world decries: It has imposed higher taxes on the wealthy and raised the minimum wage. Guess what happened to their economy?
(via micdotcom)