Eating Guilt-Free Icecream, Ben and Jerry’s Makes it a Reality

So, no, Ben and Jerry’s has not come up with the elusive no-calorie Chunky-Munky, but they have taken some of their already people-conscious policies a step further. In 2005, the company decided to start using Fair Trade Certified products. For those unfamiliar with this certification, it means that the products bearing this label were produced with important social, economic, and environmental considerations in mind.

Ben and Jerry’s now have decided to make as many of the ingredients as possible contained in their ice creams fair trade certified. Read the full press release here. This is just a step of many the company has taken to improve the world around them (as if their ice cream wasn’t enough!). Check out the Ben and Jerry’s Foundation, and their activism webpage.

Now I will enjoy my favorite Ben and Jerry’s flavor, Turtle Soup, just a little bit more.

So how do you feel about hellameters?

I found this amusing in part because I’m an east coast girl who enjoy the use of “hella-” as a descriptive. For the full article, check out the California Aggie, the excerpt below should give you the gist however:

The Southern versus Northern California slang rivalry may soon be put to rest thanks to the help of UC Davis physics student Austin Sendek.

“Hella,” the popular NorCal slang word meaning “a lot” or “very” is commonly contested among Northern and Southern Californians and until this point has not been associated with any specific measurement.

Now, Sendek hopes to give hella new meaning – representing 10 to the 27th power to be exact.

After joking about “hella volts” in an electric field in an in-class experiment, Sendek created the Facebook group “The Official Petition to Establish ‘Hella-‘ as the SI Prefix for 10^27.” Within one week, group membership grew to over 8,000, with people hailing from all over the United States.

“I made it a group on Facebook as a joke,” Sendek said. “But when a professor from Rhode Island signed the petition I realized that we might actually be on to something.”

Currently, the International System of Units has prefixes up to 10^24, and because the system increases by increments of three, 10^27 is the next in line. Measurements for the universe could be indicated with the prefix at 1.4 hellameters, and the sun’s energy, at 0.3 hellawatts.

“Hella” is typically used by Northern Californians and tends to be unpopular among Southern Californians, creating a colloquial war between the two.

Delta Spirit – Spreading a Whole Lotta Soul

So I ♥ these guys, I mean it. Course I do share my heart with many musicians but these guys have got so much soul I can barely stand it. I found out I just missed them by a couple days when I recently checked their tour dates. I do this often. I hear tell there’s a site where you can get updates on when all your favorites are touring- I will need to scope this out and share. Anyway, here’s a bit of what I’m talking about:

Weight-Lifting Ant Wins Photo Contest

So, I have a sick delight in writing an incorrectly modified sentenced. The ant did not win the contest per se; Dr Thomas Endlein did for taking a picture of said ant. (Susan, if you’re reading this, I’m kinda sorry; but not entirely. I also don’t know if I just punctuated that sentence correctly. I fear you may be squirming a little right now…)

According to the BBC article:

The image shows an Asian weaver ant hanging upside down on a glass-like surface and holding a 500mg (0.02oz) weight in its jaws.

It was taken by zoology specialist Dr Thomas Endlein of Cambridge University as he researched insects’ sticky feet.

Dr Endlein won £700 in photographic vouchers from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.

The research shows how ants change the size and shape of the pads on their feet to enable them to carry heavier loads.

He hopes it could help scientists develop better glues.

“The pads on ants’ feet are self-cleaning and can stick to almost any type of surface,” he said.

“No man-made glue or adhesive system can match this. Understanding how animals can control their adhesive systems should help us come up with clever adhesives in the future.”

Visual Economics – What the Recession Actually Looks Like

My friend posted this the other day. I’ve seen it before but it’s still as impressive seeing it again. I’ve been swept up in the difficulty of the economic times searching for work and working a little slight of hand with my bank account (trust me, this is not a complaint – in general, I manage to keep my chin up and my efforts moving forward) but one thing that has made this instability a little easier is knowledge that it’s not really me per se; this is a stagnation hitting the entire country.  We hear a lot about the numbers in news talk but I like when I get to see information visually (one of the reasons I like GIS – Geographic Information Systems, which allow you to express and manipulate data in visual form) – certain patterns are more visible, all the information can be seen at once, and it tends to be more striking. So this, dear readers, is what the recession looks like:

(a glossier, sharper version of this is available on the abc website, I just couldn’t embed it within this post)

To acclimate you – lighter colors mean lower unemployment rates, darker colors – reds, maroons, navy blues, blacks – mean higher rates of people without work, and on many accounts, it’s likely these are underestimated to some degree.

I am more heartened, regardless, as I see more listings for jobs than I did a year previous, even if the competition is still fierce. Certainly, most of this amounts to a big waiting game but in a lot of senses this has allowed me to re-prioritize some things and get more creative – both things unlikely to hurt in the long run. This seems to be happening on a country-wide level, as more people are spending time with their families. If you do an internet search, you can find many takes on what may also be considered the positives of this downturn in our pockets. I’m not trying to sugarcoat desperate times, but sometimes the ability to learn what truly fulfills us and the ability to cast of the rest can slip in with all the ugly stuff…