Red on the Outside, Gray on the Inside

Long ago, I learned that hamburger meat (and other 'red' meats) were only red because they had been exposed to air.  Obviously, it preserves better if  you keep it air tight - but customers expect their 'red' meat to be red and so the butchers purposefully expose the meat to the air so the outside is red! 

I hadn't thought about this for years but mentioned it casually at the dinner table the other night and everyone thought I was crazy.  So I checked, and it's true (references here and here)! 

What a crazy world we live in, huh?  It's all about appearances: from the face we present to the world right down to the meat in the grocery store.  Style over substance every time! 

I want to open a grocery store chain called "Ugly, Safe & Tasty" - how's that for a new marketing angle?

Wilder, Progress, and Technology

Every generation likes to think it faces unique problems (it's all going to hell in handbasket, right?). 
How I enjoyed reading this passage in The Long Winter (set in 1880) to Isabelle this evening:

"These times are too progressive.  Everything has changed too fast.  Railroads and telegraph and kerosene and coal stoves - they're good things to have but the trouble is, folks get to depend on 'em."

Amen, Pa - we still feel that way!

Supertasting, Languages, and Neuronal Development

A while back, I posted about the advantages of exposing the young mind to different languages and the connection of that to the fact that infants are actually pruning the connections between their over-connected neurons.  (Development for the very young is not the forming of new connection as it is for adults, but rather the abandonment of pathways not needed).

Now it occurs to me that the same thing might be happening for smell.  Irene and I have noticed that our kids seem to be supersensitive to trace odors and tastes.  (chop an onion near their open container of milk and Isabelle will tell you about it when she takes a sip later).  Apparently the development of taste is not well understood and undergoing considerable research, but we do know that there are bona-fide supertasters among us.  That might not have anything to do with neuronal development but now I can post another They Might be Giants video!:

Glocalisation and Coopertition

Can we please stop trying to impress everyone with our cool new hybrid words? 
So smartsightful, aren't we?
I think we are just being dumart.  Or would it be smaumb?
Hmmm... maybe I'm just jealous that I don't have the skills to do the combo artfully?
I'm disgusted and intrigued at the same time... intrigusted?

Can't have enough Thomas

Chongers can't get enough of Thomas the Tank Engine...