 
Some people’s hearts beat faster when handed a bursting bouquet of flowers. For others, it’s chocolate. But for me, it’s metaphors. When I read one, something inside alights, as if a spark flew off the page. There’s a sense of surprise and also recognition, as if I’m simultaneously seeing something new and also recognizing something I’ve always known.
Gertrude Stein once wrote about the difficulty of writing in a period of late language, when readers have inherited so much good writing. It seems to me good metaphors are a way to address this late language problem.
A metaphor consists of an object (A) and an image (B), likening A to B, with B heightening the reader’s sense of A. “Simply stated, a metaphor is a riddle, since if the object is clear, the reader always asks how is A like B,” writes Stephen Dobyns in Best Words, Best Order. And who can pass up a riddle? Before you know it, your mind is scrambling to find the answer. To write a successful metaphor is to engage the reader and enlarge the story. Metaphors “float a rival reality,” writes James Wood in How Fiction Works. “Every metaphor or simile is a little explosion of fiction within the larger fiction of the novel or the story.”
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Monday, November 2, 2015
Sparks on the Page
Europe almost banned the thing that made Monet’s and Van Gogh’s paintings so vivid
Europe almost banned the thing that made Monet’s and Van Gogh’s paintings so vividby Kabir Chibber |
The blood reds and sunset yellows found in some of the greatest paintings ever made are, of course, down to the deft touch of the masters. And a highly toxic chemical called cadmium.
Cadmium pigments have been used in paints since the 1840s, not too long before a series of young artists—Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Vincent Van Gogh, and so on—revolutionized art. The vividness of the red spectrum in their work is partly down to the chemical.
“Any good paintings that have lasted a hundred years, which is from the Impressionist period onwards, if they have a good yellow, orange, or red, they were made with cadmium pigments," according to Welsh artist Julia Brooker. “It has the purity, the light fastness, and it keeps its brilliance the way other colors just don't."
Unthinkable without cadmium.
But in 2014, Sweden—perhaps bitter that it has no artists of its own in the pantheon of great masters—called for a ban on cadmium and its compounds in artists' paints(pdf). The country warned that as artists wash their paintbrushes, cadmium enters the sewage sludge, which is then used as fertilizer, and eventually enters the food chain. (Sweden is not alone in this; the US tried to ban the stuff in 1990.)
Artists were up in arms over the loss of cadmium in acrylic, oil, and watercolor paints. One called it “sunshine in a tube.”
Well, they can all rest easy. In February, the European Chemicals Agency said there was no cause for a ban—it noted that Sweden itself said that only a tiny amount of cadmium in European agriculture stems from artists' paints, so a ban would reduce consumption of the chemical by 0.006% of the total. And last week, the EU finally put the kibosh on a cadmium ban.
“Not only is the change of heart over cadmium a joyous occasion," one paintmaker told the Art Newspaper, "the fact that the artist fraternity is recognized as a community in its own right is an exciting development and one that should help us protect our mutual interests in the future.”
China has created a hotline you can use to report a suspected spy
China has created a hotline you can use to report a suspected spyby Richard Macauley |
Amid heightened sensitivity to cyber attacks and digital espionage, China is going back to basics in its efforts to seek out and stop foreign spies. Citizens concerned that they have encountered a spy can call a nationwide hotline, free of charge, to report a potential snooper to the police (link in Chinese).
The terrorism research center of China's Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, a government think-tank, told the state-backed newspaper Global Times that although China is in peacetime, several recent developments have shown that "some countries remain relentless in their targeting of China."
China's government has made its own concerns over spying increasingly evident this year. In September alone, China said that it had detained two Japanese citizenssuspected of spying, and that it had also detained a US citizen. And the government has long been fond of hotlines for turning in strangers, too; earlier this year when Beijing banned smoking in public places, it created one so that citizens could tell on smokerswho light up where they shouldn't.
But how does one tell if they have encountered a real-life spy? Thankfully for some, one Weibo user has posted a helpful list of traits that could help identify a foreign agent. It is unclear where the list came from, but it has been shared almost 20,000 times so far, and is reportedly also doing the rounds on WeChat, China's major social network:
Those eight traits, should you need them, are as follows:
- People who work several jobs, with no clear line of work but are well-funded.
- People who start controversial conversations at gatherings to incite debate, and then pull back to quietly observe.
- Foreign correspondents, missionary workers, and some NGO staff.
- People whose business card has a legitimate job but who actually work for a shell company at odd hours.
- Students who have more foreign studies experience than their age allows for.
- People who like to ask sensitive questions, not only about politics, the military, business, or the media.
- People who regularly travel to specific locations to exchange goods or documents.
- People who throw out reactionary or pro-foreign sentiments at business meetings or seminars.
Students at West Catholic HS design observatory
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GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) -- A West Michigan school is bringing the stars to their students.
West Catholic High School is one of the few schools to have an observatory right next to its building and received grant money to buy a telescope a couple of years ago.
Pre-engineering students wanted to take the project even further by designing an observatory.
(The observatory at West Catholic High School.)
"This is a GPS telescope so I can say, 'Let's look at the moon or Venus or Saturn or Jupiter' and it will point directly to the object," said Tim Nawrock, West Catholic High School Science Department Chair.
The images are projected on to the wall for the students to see.
"We did one class last year, two classes this year and the kids seem to really enjoy it, being hands-on in astronomy," Nawrocki said.
Nawrocki said he's giving his students something they won't get in the classroom.
"To be able to look at Jupiter and see the moons around it is, it's something that you don't forget," he said.
West Catholic is refining the telescope, the staff hopes to eventually share it with others, including partner schools.
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subscribe to clothing share. Is that an eco-friendly move
I subscribe to clothing share. Is that an eco-friendly move — or just wasteful?by kwroth |
Q. I recently subscribed to a clothing subscription, where you rent the clothes and send them back for a new lot in a few days – kinda like old-school Netflix DVDs in the mail. I know being fashion-forward is usually not so great (quick turnover, impactful industry), but subscribing to clothes means lots of people wear them vs. buying them, right? Though the service may purchase in bulk at less than ethical prices and discard too quickly? How does this balance out?
Taylor
San Francisco, Calif.
San Francisco, Calif.
A. Dearest Taylor,
You know how in futuristic dystopian movies, fashion expression is the first of our privileges to go? Goodbye, individual style, hello, utilitarian jumpsuits? This is usually presented as a bad thing -- the loss of our freedom, etc. -- but I confess part of me wouldn’t mind a jumpsuit edict. It would certainly simplify the complicated, environmentally taxing, globally significant task of getting dressed every morning.
Without the mandated uniforms, we’re left to navigate the cloudy waters of fashion on our own. We do know that clothing has a major impact on the planet: Fiber production iswater- and energy-intensive, manufacturing is highly polluting, labor is linked to human rights abuses, and Americans’ “fast fashion” consumption is hugely wasteful. So anything that might reduce the flood of clothing flowing through our closets sounds like the greatest idea since sliced bellbottoms. But is bringing fashion into the sharing economy really the answer?
There’s lots to love about the idea of rotating pieces of clothing among a group of subscribers. Instead of 10 people buying the same top and letting it lie fallow in their closets most of the time, one top can do the job for those 10 people. Presumably, that means one-tenth of the resources, pollution, and waste. The clothing comes right to your door, which should represent a better deal, environmentally, than multiple shopping trips: Delivery routes are often more efficient than individuals driving to and fro. And maintaining a warehouse of stylin’ duds is less resource-intensive than lighting, heating, and cooling a series of brick-and-mortar boutiques. If you’ll allow me to conjecture a bit, this kind of clothing subscription might even enable increasingly efficient urban living -- dramatically smaller mounds of clothes means less physical space needed for storage means more tiny, cute, resource-sipping apartments.
But as you point out, there are downsides to this “Netflix model” of fashion, too. For one, clothing subscriptions create more packaging through repeated shipping -- a cycle of cardboard boxes or plastic bags that we don’t have when people are shopping in the traditional way. You have less choice about where your clothes are coming from, so it may be harder to avoid manufacturers who are contributing to human rights issues or pollution in third-world countries. And then there’s the matter of cleaning these items. If companies must dry-clean that rental LBD every time it changes hands (whereas dress owners can employ greener laundering methods or at least wear it a few times between dry cleanings), then that represents a big jump in the use of volatile chemicals. Pee-yew.
Like so many of our thorny environmental dilemmas, this one doesn’t have a clear answer. I don’t know how this all shakes out, and as this interesting piece on Netflix and the sharing economy shows, hard data on this topic is scarce. I did pose your question to Elizabeth L. Cline, author of Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion, and she shared a few musings of her own. “The problem is that [these services] require people to get new items of clothing every month, not on an as-needed basis,” she said over email. “Maybe the impact is mitigated a bit by sharing a garment, but the total number of new garments members ‘consume’ is going to go up dramatically. The sites create a lot of demand for new clothes, and members are complicit in that -- even if a few other people have worn the same dress.”
Taylor, I encourage you to ask your subscription service some nitpicky questions. How many “uses” does each jacket or sweater get before it’s retired? Is said jacket thrown away, or donated/recycled? Where does the service get its clothes in the first place, and do they offer sustainable and/or ethical options? How are returned clothes cleaned?
You should also think about how this service relates to your personal dressing and shopping habits. The average American buys 64 garments per year; if you’re on the shopaholic end of this consumption scale, and a clothing rental subscription will actually cut down on the clothes you wear, it might be a good bet. If you’re the type who still clings to her favorite outfits from high school (babydoll dresses are coming back, I just know it), this sort of thing could actually increase your fashion footprint.
In short, Taylor: I’ve given you some homework. Take a closer look at your service’s practices and your own shopping habits, and I think your answer will become clearer. As for me, I’m waiting for the season when jumpsuits patched together from worn-out, organic jeans are the next big thing.
Trendily,
Umbra
Umbra
Leave it to Scotland to discover that whisky can help clean up radioactive waste
Leave it to Scotland to discover that whisky can help clean up radioactive wasteby Aamna Mohdin |
Who knew whisky could be so useful?
Researchers from the Environmental Research Institute in Scotland are hoping to clean up toxic waste at the infamous Dounreay nuclear site using biosorption—where biological materials use their metal binding capacity to absorb radioactive isotope. In particular, researchers are testing out waste coffee grounds, seaweed, and crab shells to absorb strontium—and the grains left behind after making whisky.
Dounreay was used to dump radioactive waste, which stopped following an explosion in 1977. The explosion is thought to have worsened existing issues of contamination. The situation was so dire, in fact, that in 2011 the Scottish Environment Protection Agency had abandoned its goal of removing all radioactive contamination on the north coast of Scotland.
Mike Gearhart, who leads the Dounreay Shaft and Silo project team, told the BBC: "We are pleased to be working with ERI to identify a sustainable solution that can be sourced locally," adding, "We still have a number of issues to address but results to date have been very promising."
Biosorption has been used to extract gold and silver and used to remove metals that present environmental risks such as copper, arsenic, and mercury from water waste. Researchers are comparing the ability of natural material to remove non-radioactive strontium from waste with the range of commercial adsorbents currently used.
Read this next: Why did the Queen use whisky instead of champagne to launch her new warship?
Mark Bittman’s plan to make you fall in love with vegan food
In mid-September, Mark Bittman announced in his New York Times opinion column that he was leaving the Times to join a startup. As he wrote:
Here are those details: Bittman has joined Purple Carrot, an already up-and-running meal delivery service based in Boston. It's like Blue Apron, or Plated, but vegan. Subscribers get the recipes and all the ingredients for two or three meals a week. The company went public Monday with the news that Bittman was joining, and also took the opportunity to announce that it's expanding its service to the West Coast.
I met Bittman at the house he's renting in Berkeley, Calif., to find out why he was leaving the Gray Lady for the Purple Carrot. Our conversation has been edited and condensed.
Q. So you are joining a startup -- can you give me the elevator pitch?
A. Yeah, this is a meal kit company with a mission. And the mission is not to convert everyone to veganism, but to expose people to plant-based foods and allow people to eat plant-based foods more easily. My sense -- and this is not market research, it's me talking -- is that people know they should be eating more plants, and a lot of people don't know how.
If you look at Sunbasket or Blue Apron or any of these meal delivery services -- a lot of it is very much the way I represented cooking for many many years: If you grill a piece of meat and you make a bunch of rice and steam some broccoli and have some salad, you have a pretty easy meal in 20 minutes. Vegan food is more complicated than that. Plant-based food is harder.
Q. When you cook meat, the butcher does your chopping for you ahead of time.
A. Well there is that, you also have this concentrated lump of protein -- you put salt on it and it tastes pretty good. It's hard to say that about tofu. It's very hard to argue that a cauliflower steak is as satisfying as a beef steak. I wouldn't argue it.
Vegan recipes need to be more creative, or complex. Our job is to simplify that complexity so I ship you something that you can put together in half an hour that's vegan, really satisfying, really delicious, that makes you happy.
That's like a 40-story elevator pitch. With a few stops in between.
Purple Carrot
Q. Do you know how many of these meal delivery services there are?
A. There must be like 20 -- do you know?
Q. No, I certainly couldn't name 20. It seems like a big part of finding the winner will be whoever figures out logistics.
A. I think there are multiple winners. Blue Apron is valued at $2 billion -- that makes them a winner. I doubt Purple Carrot is ever going to be valued at anything like that, but I think we are a winner if our customers are happy and we are making some noise as part of the food movement.
Q. At the Times you've been in a position to counsel people through their ecological anxiety about food. I'm wondering if you see this as the next natural extension of that. You've written cookbooks -- you've given political advice -- now the hands-on approach?
A. I hope so. I will keep writing. For instance, we're debating putting nutritional information on the meals, and I don't want to. I'm saying: Look, this food is good for you. If you ate nothing but this food, you would thrive. That's nutrition. Everything else about nutrition is kind of stupid. You don't need to know how much calcium is in your food, you just need good food. We do provide nutritional information right now, but at some point I'm going to have an argument with my partners about that, and I'm going to write a blog post. And that blog post will read like a Times column, is my guess. We're going to be GMO free, not because I feel like GMOs are so scary or horrible but because it's not unreasonable to be GMO free. And I would blog about that.
I hope we can put good food in the hands of more people and I can talk about it. So maybe it's the best of both worlds.
Q. There is a big hurdle between reading a recipe in the Times and going out to buy the ingredients to put it together.
A. Yeah, when you talk to people who have ordered meal kits, they do complain about the packaging, and as soon as they get over that they say it's unbelievable. I didn't have to think about it, I didn't have to shop, I barely had to chop.
Q. That's the pattern? People complain about packaging then rave about convenience?
A. Welllll, a lot of people talk about the packaging. It's a big box, it's undeniable. I don't want to make light of it. When I first sat down with Andy Levitt, our founder, I said, I don't like these meal kits, it's just too much packaging.
Q. I did a little thing about Blue Apron because they have these instructions for how to recycle your packaging. And it's essentially ...
A. Bring it to the dump.
Q. Bingo.
A. I think at launch [on the West Coast] or soon thereafter we are going to include a return label, and it costs you $5 a box to send it back. That is a big loss, but I share recycling with a neighbor, and this is too big to throw away. The ideal, of course, would be to have packaging that you could recycle in your backyard, or that is somehow more compressible so you can fit it into your weekly recycling. There are people making packaging out of mushrooms that you could just put in a pile in your backyard -- when it rains it's gone.
Q. It fertilizes your garden.
A. Or it's dog food. Or it's like a mushroom kit! I don't know.
Q. And maybe if you actually did the energy comparison it might be just as climate friendly to throw it out as it is to mail it back, but there's also the hassle. It doesn't feel good to have this bulky thing and have to break it down.
A. Right. Put a label on that and put it on the porch. That's very convenient. No one has an excuse not to do that. The other argument is that there's less food waste. You are only shipping the amount you are going to cook.
Andy Levitt and Mark Bittman.Purple Carrot
Q. Can you give me the back story of Purple Carrot and how you got involved?
A. Andy Levitt founded it a year ago out of his garage in Boston. He was sitting around readingVB6 and watching Forks Over Knives or whatever, and said this is what I'm doing -- a vegan meal kit company. He found an investor, a guy named Dave Mayer, and Dave came to me and said this looks like it will be up your alley. We had a great meeting and I thought, this really is the right idea. Then Andy and I talked for two hours a day for a week and I said, don't pay me, I'm not ready to leave the Times. That was May and June, and by July, I was really in up to my neck and I told the Times I was going to leave.
Q. I think I've asked this already in a different way, but for my last question: Why leave journalism, the greatest job on Earth?
A. Ha! How much older am I than you? How much longer have I been doing journalism? I do love journalism. And I don't see myself not doing journalism. But I started in 1980. The weekly deadline thing was just hard. I felt like I didn't have anything new to say. When I started I thought there were three things that were low-hanging fruit: antibiotics, marketing junk food to kids, and CAFOs. I did the column for years and none of that changed appreciably.
Q. I do think we are seeing some movement on antibiotics. But maybe the bigger point is that, in journalism, you are sitting on the sidelines, criticizing or observing, and not doing or making.
A. Well, that's how I feel with Purple Carrot. Here's an opportunity to really get the kind of stuff I believe in to the hands of more people. And I do think I made a difference -- I just wanted a steeper learning curve and something different. To be an opinion columnist for the New York Times and lead food writer for the magazine at the same time -- that was great, but five years of that was also plenty.
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