Two interesting articles I enjoyed reading and thought you might as well. You need to actually read them though; they're not just pictures of
Lindsey Lohan's return to redheadedness (and really bad dresses), or anything like that.
The first is about
the impending world wide banana crash. I've heard of this in the past and sort of ignored it because I don't really like bananas, but this excellent article from Popular Science explains the problem in detail, discusses potential solutions, the history of the banana and mass-produced fruit in general, and more. The "cavendish" is the only type of banana many people ever see, and while that's helpful for branding issues, it's not a real good thing in terms of biodiversity.
For nearly everyone in the U.S., Canada and Europe, a banana is a banana: yellow and sweet, uniformly sized, firmly textured, always seedless.
...
Americans eat more bananas than any other kind of fresh fruit, averaging about 26.2 pounds of them per year, per person (apples are a distant second, at 16.7 pounds). It also turns out that the 100 billion Cavendish bananas consumed annually worldwide are perfect from a genetic standpoint, every single one a duplicate of every other. It doesn't matter if it comes from Honduras or Thailand, Jamaica or the Canary Islands -- each Cavendish is an identical twin to one first found in Southeast Asia, brought to a Caribbean botanic garden in the early part of the 20th century, and put into commercial production about 50 years ago.
That sameness is the banana's paradox. After 15,000 years of human cultivation, the banana is too perfect, lacking the genetic diversity that is key to species health. What can ail one banana can ail all. A fungus or bacterial disease that infects one plantation could march around the globe and destroy millions of bunches, leaving supermarket shelves empty.
A wild scenario? Not when you consider that there has already been one banana apocalypse.
...
Once a little-known species, the Cavendish was eventually accepted as Big Mike's replacement after billions of dollars in infrastructure changes were made to accommodate different growing and ripening needs. Its advantage was its resistance to Panama disease. But in 1992, a new strain of the fungus -- one that can affect the Cavendish -- was discovered in Asia. Since then, Panama disease Race 4 has wiped out plantations in Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia and Taiwan, and it is now spreading through much of Southeast Asia. It has yet to hit Africa or Latin America, but most experts agree that it is coming. "Given today's modes of travel, there's almost no doubt that it will hit the major Cavendish crops," says Randy Ploetz, the University of Florida plant pathologist who identified the first Sumatran samples of the fungus.
On a purely selfish nature, I don't think I'd much care if the Cavendish was largely wiped out, since I don't really like the taste of it. I don't like them green, but I do tolerate them when they're just turning yellow, and ideally when they are refrigerated. Once they get some brown spots though, I pass. I don't like the gooey, cloyingly-sweet taste and I can't stand the mushy texture. Happily for me, there are hundreds of other banana varieties, and they sound damn interesting. And if disease brought about the end of the Cavendish monopoly, I might actually see some of the others in US grocery stores:
In an area about the size of a U.S. shopping mall, Aguilar, 46, is growing more than 300 banana varieties. The diversity of fruit in Aguilar's field is astonishing. Some of the bananas are thick and over a foot long; others are slender and pinky-size. Some are meant to be eaten raw and sweet and some function more like potatoes, meant for boiling and baking or frying into snack chips.
...
The Goldfinger was developed by painstakingly cross-breeding samples from the more than 350 banana types originally collected by United Fruit scientists. It is a highly versatile fruit, suitable for cooking and eating; it has a slightly tart, apple-like flavor and is one of the few bred bananas to gain significant consumer acceptance.
...It transported well and caught on in certain markets, notably Australia. But it didn't taste like the sweeter Cavendish and never took hold in the Americas.
The article runs 5 full pages and as a secret bonus, it might turn into barnyard porn by page four; I only made it through three, so I can't say.
The second article is shorter and not nearly as tasty, but
it's intellectually tantalizing. One of DaVinci's surviving works is a famous mural, the Adoration of the Magi. Its history is unclear, with some evidence that DaVinci sketched it out before someone else finished most of the painting. The interesting thing is that with infrared light, DaVinci's original sketches and outlines are visible beneath the surface painting. Has someone spent four years analyzing the painting and painstakingly-mapping out the hidden images? Does George Bush not care about black people?
Mr Seracini has examined the painting minutely using a technique that exploits the fact infra-red light passes through paint but reflects off the under-drawing.
As the photographs show, he and his team have conjured from below the amber-brown layer with which much of the panel is covered a collection of Da Vinci's drawings that were hidden for more than five centuries. They contain numerous previously invisible - or barely discernible - details. Some will electrify conspiracy theorists.
The Adoration of the Magi could have been dreamed up as a playground for semiologists. Even the visible work is packed with figures, faces, beasts, buildings, foliage and an extraordinary amount of activity, much of which bears no relation to the biblical account of the three kings' visit to the Virgin Mary and her newborn child.
...
Mr Seracini said Da Vinci created the under-drawing as an underpainting because he used a brush and a mixture of lampblack and watery glue.
"Otherwise it would just have faded," he added.
Was he saying that Leonardo might have suspected his work would not stay the way he intended it, and may have deliberately preserved it that way? "I'm not going to speculate on that," Mr Seracini replied briskly. "That's for art historians to do. But I cannot rule it out."
The article talks about a few of the more interesting under images, so check it out if you want more details. Or just wait for Dan Brown to fictionalize them in a future novel with an
entirely-recycled plot.
The article includes a link to a large PDF photo of the images, but since it took me some hunting around to find,
here's a direct link. It's one of those 350k Adobe Acrobat files that pretty well bring your computer to a standstill as they load, so be warned.
