I admit it: I’m a worry wart. Among the myriad topics that can perturb me is the question: is it safe to eat a strawberry? Sure, strawberries are rich in Vitamin C: just eight of them contain more of the vitamin than a medium size orange, according to the California Strawberry Commission. But conventionally-grown strawberries […]
Food/Drink
I confess: my secret vice is reading celebrity wedding news. So naturally I read voraciously all the news reports on Chelsea Clinton’s wedding last weekend to Marc Mezvinsky, spending several precious moments examining the ruffles on her gorgeous Vera Wang wedding gown. But I’m also a keen environmentalist, so I was eager to read of […]
It’s one of the pitfalls of science journalism: Assigned a story, we rush madly off, interviewing scientists galore, gathering mountains of eclectic facts we’re sure our readers will love. Alas, it’s often impossible to cram all these facts on the printed page, because magazines have space constraints. C’est la vie. But hey, this is the […]
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Ian McEwan’s entertaining new novel, Solar, contains one of the best descriptions of a bag of potato chips (or “crisps” to the Brits) that I have ever read: “It was a plastic foil bag of finely sliced potatoes boiled in oil and dusted in salt, industrialized powdered foodstuffs, preservatives, enhancers, hydrolizing and raising agents, acidity […]