My neighbor Paul has a field that grows great carrots. That’s a good thing, because Paul makes his living off that field, but it’s also a bit of a surprise. At first glance, you wouldn’t expect it to grow great anything. It looks too high, too cold, and too poor. The soil is little more than ground-up schist. After a rain it looks like old pavement. Only after you’ve lived […]
Cary Fowler | The Future of Food
I’ve been fascinated with crop diversity for about thirty-five years now, ever since I stumbled across a fairly obscure academic article by a guy named Jack Harlan. He described diversity within crops — all the different kinds of wheat and rice and such — as a genetic resource. He said, “This genetic resource,” — and I’ll never forget the words — “stands between us and catastrophic starvation on a scale […]
Nathan Hill | No more mindless goldfish
A myth abounds in many of us, fed to us at an early age and carried with us into adulthood: a goldfish has a three-second memory. This supposed fact has resulted in numerous jokes, memes, and punch lines. It is the common- knowledge gem that any Joe on the street can tell you about our underwater neighbors. The fish brain has become synonymous with poor recollection, the humble, boggly-eyed bowl […]
Amazing animals
There are hundreds of great movies about animals—although perhaps more of them appear on public television and the Internet than in movie theaters. Fictionalized accounts of animal heroism, such as The Black Stallion and The Incredible Journey, have been popular among children and the young at heart for decades. In recent years, documentaries like March of the Penguins and the incredible Blue Planet series, have informed audiences of the real-life feats […]
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