For half a century, meat producers have fed antibiotics to farm animals to increase their growth and stave off infections. Now scientists have discovered that those drugs are sprouting up in unexpected places: Vegetables such as corn, potatoes and lettuce absorb antibiotics when grown in soil fertilized with livestock manure, according to tests conducted at the University of Minnesota.

Today, close to 70 percent of all antibiotics and related drugs used in the United States are routinely fed to cattle, pigs and poultry, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. Although this practice sustains a growing demand for meat, it also generates public health fears associated with the expanding presence of antibiotics in the food chain.

People have long been exposed to antibiotics in meat and milk. Now, the new research shows that they also may be ingesting them from vegetables, perhaps even ones grown on organic farms.

From the archive:

The reality is that, despite fears that our children are "pumped full of chemicals", everything is made of chemicals.

This return to the preantibiotic era has become a reality in many parts of the world.

... Sarah Palin, the incarnation of red-meat, know-nothing Christian nationalism ...

Even a buffalo separated from the herd has reasonable chances.

Just as surely as the SUV will yield to the hybrid, the half-pound-a-day meat era will end.

Worried about Antibiotics in Your Beef?

David Samuels offers a knife-sharp pen portrait:

The pay-per-view broadcast starts at 7 p.m. on Saturday night and goes until ten. By five, maybe 3,000 people are already in their seats, most of them gathered in the upper reaches of the arena.

Behind us, Tito Ortiz and Jenna Jameson are taking their seats. Ortiz’s face looks puffier than it did when he was fighting regularly, while the famous porn star looks ghastly. Her stick-figure legs are covered with tattoos, and a pair of angel wings sprouts from her back. Her eyes make her look like a Siamese cat, less vacant than otherworldly. She talks to Ortiz, greets her fans, looks exasperated, and plays with her hair, but the weird look in her eyes never goes away. It’s like she is looking into an arctic hell where the sun never shines.

Ouch.

From the archive:

The distant future evolution of our Sun might be controlled (literally, asteroengineered) so that it maintains its present-day energy output rather than becoming a highly luminous and bloated red giant.

I wonder if you could create a meth algorithm to alter photos of people so that they looked like they took it.

Had there been cameras at Calvary, would twenty centuries of believers have been moved to hang photographs of the scene on their altarpieces and in their homes?

Many sit vacant and dilapidated for months as lenders go through the process of taking them back through foreclosure and then putting them on the market.

Rampage

I figured I'd start compiling a list of 1,001 things to do with bacon, and I invite -- or, rather, challenge -- you to join along.

1,001 things to do with bacon

What is the relationship between wine varieties and flavor components? This visualization attempts to show the strength of these relationships. I culled descriptive flavor words from over 5,000 published wine tasting notes written between 1995-2000 in a major Australian wine magazine. Written by Carl Tashian for Visualizing the Five Senses, a class at ITP @ NYU.

See also, from the archive:

In 1991, Cisco's tendency to cause a temporary form of inebriated insanity led the Federal Trade Commission to require its bottlers to print a warning on the label.

How do different wines taste?

Calvin Trillin:

“What did you do when you heard that you were No. 1?” I asked.

“When we found out we were No. 1,” Bexley said, “we just set there in each other’s arms and we bawled.”

And now for something completely different, from the archive:

Even a buffalo separated from the herd has reasonable chances.

Dept. of Gastronomy: By Meat Alone

Oh, to be young, and innocent

Lying here diagonally across the top of a dining table in the back room of Ambassador Wines and Spirits, naked except for the scallop shells covering my nipples and the silk scarf sheltering my crotch, while guests gorge on sushi and sashimi pieces plucked from my torso, I require your cooperation.

There is more than raw fish at stake.

See also, from 2007:

Japan as a country never stops amazing us.

Confessions of a Naked Sushi Model | Vanity Fair

Each sushi dictator has his own pet peeves, but there is common ground. Most do not allow sushi bar patrons to order off the menu. Instead, diners must accept whatever the chef gives them, a tradition known as "omakase" -- a Japanese expression that can be loosely translated as "trust the chef." They reserve special enmity for spicy tuna rolls -- typically made with scraps of raw tuna, mayonnaise and chili powder -- which they say were only invented so that restaurants could mask the taste of substandard fish. And they generally loathe the ubiquitous California roll. Not only is it a newfangled American invention that combines avocado and cucumber, but it usually contains imitation crab -- anathema to chefs who have spent so much of their energy and money securing pristine seafood.

From the archive:

To the uninitiated, few things can be more intimidating than a sushi bar.

Though the process of ordering and eating sushi isn't nearly as involved as some would think, it does require a certain amount of knowledge and etiquette to dine properly.

Sushi Bullies

Reactions to Bristol Palin’s pregnancy have exposed a cultural rift that mirrors America’s dominant political divide.

Religion is a good indicator of attitudes toward sex, but a poor one of sexual behavior, and that this gap is especially wide among teen-agers who identify themselves as evangelical. Evangelical teen-agers are more sexually active than Mormons, mainline Protestants, and Jews. Evangelical Protestant teen-agers are also significantly less likely than other groups to use contraception.

For too long, the conventional wisdom has been that social conservatives are the upholders of family values, whereas liberals are the proponents of a polymorphous selfishness. This isn’t true, and, every once in a while, liberals might point that out.

From the last Presidential election cycle:

"Moral values."

By near universal agreement the morning after, these two words tell the entire story of the election: it's the culture, stupid.

There's only one problem with the storyline proclaiming that the country swung to the right on cultural issues in 2004. Like so many other narratives that immediately calcify into our 24/7 media's conventional wisdom, it is fiction.

If anyone is laughing all the way to the bank this election year, it must be Rupert Murdoch. The Murdoch cultural stable includes recent books like Jenna Jameson's "How to Make Love Like a Porn Star" and the Vivid Girls' "How to Have a XXX Sex Life," which have both been synergistically, even joyously, promoted on Fox News.

Red Sex, Blue Sex

A handful of new studies suggest surprising changes in the marital landscape. Infidelity appears to be on the rise, particularly among older men and young couples. Notably, women appear to be closing the adultery gap: younger women appear to be cheating on their spouses nearly as often as men.

From the archive, Vladimir Nabokov:

We both, Vasili Ivanovich and I, have always been impressed by the anonymity of all the parts of a landscape, so dangerous for the soul, the impossibility of ever finding out where that path you see leads — and look, what a tempting thicket!

Love, Sex and the Changing Landscape of Infidelity