I was so glad to see Sugihara getting some more attention lately, although I'm rather surprised you didn't mention the Academy Award winning short film based on his life, Visas and Virtue.
I miss Berkeley Bowl and the awesome bakery across the street from it. Sure, it was always chaotic at best, but it had a sense of character I've never found at another grocery store, and I never had a problem with sampling. I feel like that part of the article is being played up in a lot of places, and I think it's misleading. There'd always be produce guys around who would be happy to give you a taste of something if you asked if they weren't already handing out slices of whatever impossibly fresh peaches or mangoes or whatever they had handy. I used to buy more produce from the farmers markets, but there was always something wonderfully breathtaking about coming into the store and seeing a truly massive amount of fresh fruits and vegetables.
Yarr! Talk Like a Pirate Day do be coming from these gents: http://www.talklikeapirate.com/ and 'twas made infamous when the salty cur Dave Barrrrrrrrrry gave mention of them in his writings.
(And for those that would dismiss it as a lame fad, I grew up in California, but this was hardly Hollywood's doing. For a long while this was an underground geek thing to do, not exactly "cool", then the Pirates of the Caribbean movies came out, and pirates were suddenly in. Go figure. Mostly though, then, as now, it's just good, somewhat crusty fun if you have some suitably goofy and creative friends. Linguistic inventiveness and a overflow of rrrrrr's is a must.)
If someone actually thought putting that many nutmeg nuts into a recipe was a good idea, they probably shouldn't be in the kitchen. I'm actually pretty impressed that so many people managed to choke down enough of the cake to get sick; it must've tasted awful.
I find it pretty amusing that they would put a room in Gilman (chemistry building) on the Register because of its involvement in the Manhattan Project, but none of Le Conte (physics building) is held in such high esteem, even though I'm pretty sure a lot of the action was going on there too. Plutonium ftw? Maybe it's because Seaborg was sexier than ol' Oppie.
I suppose that since it's depicting a pretty silly idea, it should be no surprise that the video would be so wrong, but still. I know that that we call it a black "hole", but that doesn't mean it makes a literal sinkhole in the middle of Europe. If it starts to suck, it's going to start sucking from all sides, up, down, left and right, not just make it look like "a bukkit in da Earf."
That said, I'm inclined to agree with Mattie about the paranoid hysteria claim; even if you're just having a bit of fun, there's a nauseatingly large number of people out there who do take this seriously, and I don't know if it's necessarily good form to make light of people's fears or encourage public ignorance.
Oh, fun, it's my geographical trek in reverse. I just moved out to Boston from Berkeley, and I'm worried that in a year or so I'll start talking like I grew up a block over from Havahd Yahd. I guess I'm just going to have to learn how to embrace Beantown and its wicked local flavor.
I think calling the mini black holes a "well-founded fear" might be overstating it a bit. There is a chance that when I walk outside, an opera-going, Samoan sumo wrestler might fall out of a tree and land on me, leading to my rather messy demise, but the odds of that occurring is probably still more likely to happen than the LHC destroying the earth.
I can understand the anxieties attached to the unknown, but this whole mini black holes getting out of control is really rather silly. I'm not a physicist myself, but I am in constant contact with them, including a few at CERN, and I feel very confident in their assurance that this should not be a major concern to anyone (and probably shouldn't be a minor one either).
I've got an adorable, highly qualified physicist sitting at my feet who assures me that black holes won't be eating the earth anytime soon, and there's a visiting CERN physicist downstairs who agrees with him. The CERN guy stands to lose the security deposit on his flat pretty definitively if he's wrong, so I'll give 'em the benefit of the doubt. Still, they like to argue about the absurd possibility from time to time for a hearty guffaw.
(And for those that would dismiss it as a lame fad, I grew up in California, but this was hardly Hollywood's doing. For a long while this was an underground geek thing to do, not exactly "cool", then the Pirates of the Caribbean movies came out, and pirates were suddenly in. Go figure. Mostly though, then, as now, it's just good, somewhat crusty fun if you have some suitably goofy and creative friends. Linguistic inventiveness and a overflow of rrrrrr's is a must.)
That said, I'm inclined to agree with Mattie about the paranoid hysteria claim; even if you're just having a bit of fun, there's a nauseatingly large number of people out there who do take this seriously, and I don't know if it's necessarily good form to make light of people's fears or encourage public ignorance.
I can understand the anxieties attached to the unknown, but this whole mini black holes getting out of control is really rather silly. I'm not a physicist myself, but I am in constant contact with them, including a few at CERN, and I feel very confident in their assurance that this should not be a major concern to anyone (and probably shouldn't be a minor one either).