A monster lurks in Watsonville, California. It can poison your dog, give you diarrhea, and cause cancer in sea otters. The mayhem is unintentional – the monster, a microscopic bacterium, is just trying to make a living. But while the microbe thrives in the warm shallow waters of Pinto Lake, they clog the water column…
Today, the Food and Drug Administration will close down the outside comment period on changes proposed to the Food Safety Modernization Act, or FSMA. Field mice could give a crap. One of the proposed changes would establish rules to minimize the risk of crops becoming contaminated with bacteria, parasites and viruses from animal droppings. The…
Hand a glass of white wine to a professional wine taster—how will he rate it? Let’s say 88 on a scale of 80 to 100. Give the same wine to him again, even minutes later—the rating will be plus or minus four points, on average. After adding flavorless dye to one of the glasses, researchers at…
Dressed in orange and black, they have traveled epic distances, through the unforgiving environs of urban development, only to arrive with feverish anticipation for what’s to come. Who are these eager travelers? Legions of kids flooding into Natural Bridges State Beach in Santa Cruz, Calif. to view the return of migrating Monarch butterflies. Every autumn,…
Gamer culture has been put under the microscope ever since pop-culture critic Anita Sarkeesian faced a barrage of gender-based hate for announcing a project examining common sexist tropes of female characters in video games, such as the “damsel in distress” or the “background decoration.” Since then, many women in the video game industry and female…
A beach-baked couple beat me into Togo’s a few weeks ago. The sandwich maker, a 20-something fellow who was gloomily plopping mayonnaise onto bread, muttered hello. “We’re great. We’re in Santa Cruz,” the man chirped. “But I’m not doing as well as you are, I’m sure, you live here.” Sandwich dude looked up, managed…
The lights are dim, the music loud, and the dance floor crowded. Despite the alcohol and food, the large space smells refreshingly clean. People wander the hall with hopeful expressions, name tags stuck on shirts, drinks in hand, attempting to strike up conversations. This feels more like a singles event than an evening at a…
“You realize I’m sending you into that mosh pit by yourself, right?” my editor asked while we waited outside a giant white tent. I thought mosh pit was a little severe. The tent was more reminiscent of an overcrowded polka tent I had once worked in during an Oktoberfest celebration. But instead of lederhosen, oom…
For the past few months, my iPhone has been tracking my movements while I sleep. This isn’t because I’ve fallen victim to a National Security Agency sting (at least as far as I know). I have programmed my phone to keep close tabs on me – on purpose. Of the many “a-ha!” moments I had in college,…
Have you ever spent a relaxing afternoon at a local park watching as kid after kid joyfully files down a playground slide? And every now and then there’s that one wise aleck who refuses to get off the end of the slide and causes a congestion of children to pile up behind him. Well,…
