Link Banana

…by barring them from popular culture(?!). Maybe it’s just me, but this thesis seems a little absurd:

And many of those who imagined chimpanzees to be safe reported that they based their thinking on the prevalence of chimps in advertisements, on television and in the movies.

Having said that, I also didn’t know that chimpanzees are endangered. But I attribute it to insuffient publicity for that fact, not their presence popular culture.

It’s a pretty well-understood truth that public perception of the economy’s welfare is disproportionately focused on the price we pay to fuel our cars. Dan Ariely’s recent op-ed explores why:

For the several minutes that I stand at the pump, all I do is stare at the growing total on the meter — there is nothing else to do. And I have time to remember how much it cost a year ago, two years ago and even six years ago.

Yet I have no such memory about the prices of items in any other category. I have no idea how much milk was six years ago, how much bread was three years ago or how much yogurt was a week ago. But I suspect that if I stood next to the yogurt case in the supermarket for five minutes every week with nothing to do but stare at the price, I would also know how much it has gone up — and I might become outraged when yogurt passed the $2 mark.

Another odd thing about the way we buy gasoline is that we usually buy multiple units. I just bought 13 gallons for a little more than $55. The sticker shock isn’t as intense when I see the price per gallon as it is when I’m faced with the total cost. Fifty-five dollars! I remember when I filled my tank for $20 and $25 and $30! Maybe if we bought 13 loaves of bread at a time or 15 gallons of milk we might become just as sensitive to how much we spend on those items.

I thought this little collection of lists from yesterday’s New York Times was enjoyable enough to share. It, as Matt observed about “Fourteen Passive Aggressive Appetizers,” straddles the line between clever banter and the tired redeployment of a tired idea to reach your word count. A sample:

STUFF GRANDPARENTS LIKE

Anything cinnamon
Any Brach’s candy
Craftmatic adjustable beds
Quilted toaster covers
Water aerobics
Buicks

I haven’t been following too closely, but I found both of these pieces on the (recommended) indictment of the Sudanese president to be useful:

• John Boonstra clarifies a few points — like that Bashir hasn’t yet been “indicted” — that don’t come across clearly in most reporting of the story.
• Richard Goldstone considers whether this will help or hinder the prospects for peace.

Attached to a story on the topic, the New York Times has an illustrated and annotated map of the boldest new buildings in Beijing. I’d seen or heard nothing of the interesting new egg-like National Theater.

(via CP)

Pat Nelson’s Sunday op-ed about street sweeping (and alternate-side parking) mostly reminded me or the only Calvin Trillin book I’ve read. But it also made an interesting point about the questionable efficacy of sweeping at all:

Consider Park Slope, Brooklyn, where sweeping has been suspended for the past three months so that thousands of signs could be replaced to reflect a shorter street cleaning window of 90 minutes, down from three hours (itself progress).

Despite the foul and filthy outcome predicted by many, Park Slope does not look or smell like an urban wasteland. The drains have not overflowed; Union Street and Seventh Avenue are not buried under garbage. Nonetheless, the alternate side parking rules are scheduled to go back into effect tomorrow.

This rather brief story from mental_floss is entertaining, even as it makes me wish for both greater length and depth. Cosmopolitan is perhaps the most surprising:

It wasn’t always about sex. Actually, when Cosmo started up in 1886, it wasn’t about sex at all, nor was it targeted at women, nor was it lowbrow: In 1892, a single issue featured stories by Henry James, James Russell Lowell (the poet and founding editor of The Atlantic Monthly), and Theodore Roosevelt. Early stories, according to Charles Panati, covered “such disparate subjects as how ancient people lived, climbing Mount Vesuvius, the life of Mozart, plus European travel sketches and African wild animal adventures.

Citing Leona Helmsley’s generous-sounding donation to dogs, Ryan Madoff take offense at something most people happily forget:

The charitable deduction enables people to donate as much of their assets as they like for charitable purposes without paying a tax. While some choose to contribute to broad public goals, the law does not require it. In recent years, charitable status has been recognized for organizations with purposes as idiosyncratic as promoting excellence in quilting and educating the public about Huey military aircraft. Indeed, Mrs. Helmsley might have limited her beneficence to the Maltese breed of dogs she favored, and that, too, would have been allowed as a “charitable” purpose.

If this were only a matter of Leona Helmsley wasting her own money, no one would need to care. But she is wasting ours too.

The charitable deduction constitutes a subsidy from the federal government. The government, in effect, makes itself a partner in every charitable bequest. In Mrs. Helmsley’s case, given that her fortune warranted an estate tax rate of 45 percent, her $8 billion donation for dogs is really a gift of $4.4 billion from her and $3.6 billion from you and me.

To put it in perspective, our contribution to Mrs. Helmsley’s cause equals approximately half of what we spend on Head Start, a program that benefits 900,000 children.

Since I already made one belated July 4th post, there can be no harm in another. Ted Widmer addresses the oft-forgotten fact that that there are many different versions of the Declaration of Independence. For example, I’d never considered this fact:

Most of us would answer that [the Declaration of Independence is] the manuscript written on vellum, dated July 4, 1776, now displayed in a baroque case at the National Archives, where it is protected by bulletproof glass, argon gas and the 55-ton underground vault it is lowered into every night. But like everything connected to the Declaration, the situation is complicated, for that document was not written on July 4; it was a handwritten copy that Congress ordered later that summer and post-dated. The version that was in the room as the vote was taken has never been seen since then.

I’ve not encountered this new way of packaging a gallon — non-Americans wonder: what’s a gallon? — of milk, but I’m interested to try it after seeing the decidedly mixed reviews so far.

The jugs are cheaper to ship and better for the environment, the milk is fresher when it arrives in stores, and it costs less. […]

“I hate it,” said Lisa DeHoff, a cafe owner shopping in a Sam’s Club here.

“It spills everywhere,” said Amy Wise, a homemaker.

I’m personally torn about whether I’d find Peter Lovenheim a clever or annoying neighbor, but he’s got some interesting — right is another issue — things to say about the state of the American living.

The previous evening, as I’d left home, the last words I heard before I shut the door had been, “Dad, you’re crazy!” from my teenage daughter. Sure, the sight of your 50-year-old father leaving with an overnight bag to sleep at a neighbor’s house would embarrass any teenager, but “crazy”? I didn’t think so.

There’s talk today about how as a society we’ve become fragmented by ethnicity, income, city versus suburb, red state versus blue. But we also divide ourselves with invisible dotted lines. I’m talking about the property lines that isolate us from the people we are physically closest to: our neighbors.

Dan Koeppel raises the spector that American may have to stop counting Cavendish bananas as a staple food. In addition to a thorough history, he includes this astounding fact:

Americans eat as many bananas as apples and oranges combined,

Speaking of newspapers, Felix Salmon defends Alfonso Serrono interesting idea for ownership of the New York Times (or any paper):

Personally, I think this is a really good idea: give every print subscriber one Class B voting share of NYT stock, and then give them one more share every three months thereafter, assuming their subscription is still in good standing. The securities would automatically convert to Class A shares if they were sold or transferred, or if the subscriber let his subscription lapse.

(via Snarkmarket)

Charles Blow’s chart yesterday was rather interesting. It profiles along race, gender, and age — the rate at which people enter treatment for given drugs.

You may have seen this already, but it’s too cool not to share. A New York apartment with puzzles and mysteries built right in.

Pictures of abandoned filling stations.

Plants can do way more than you thought. Consider, for example, this:

If the sea rocket detects unrelated plants growing in the ground with it, the plant aggressively sprouts nutrient-grabbing roots. But if it detects family, it politely restrains itself.

Mark Bittman has some practical advice for omnivores looking eat less — not no — meat.

1. Forget the protein thing. Roughly simultaneously with your declaration that you’re cutting back on meat, someone will ask “How are you going to get enough protein?” The answer is “by being omnivorous.” Plants have protein, too; in fact, per calorie, many plants have more protein than meat.

Hymenoplasty — recreating a hymen for a woman whose has broken — is gaining in popularity, especially for Muslims. One quote justifying having it done:

“In my culture, not to be a virgin is to be dirt,” said the student, perched on a hospital bed as she awaited surgery on Thursday. “Right now, virginity is more important to me than life.”

And while Dave Pell thinks that’s depressing, William Saletan defends the procedure.

This fact seems to be the key to “optical illusions” which seem to be moving when they are not:

In an experiment originated by Dr. Nijhawan, people watch an object pass a flashbulb. The timing is exact: the bulb flashes precisely as the object passes. But people perceive that the object has moved past the bulb before it flashes. Scientists argue that the brain has evolved to see a split second into the future when it perceives motion. Because it takes the brain at least a tenth of a second to model visual information, it is working with old information. By modeling the future during movement, it is “seeing” the present.

PS: This is the 1000th post on this blog. Just thought you should know.