Tag Archives: smithsonian magazine

Sunday Reading 10-23-16 #77

October 24, 2016

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Oh boy this week has been crazy. I FINALLY updated all 400 posts to make sure all the images are working and optimized. Finally. The pictures should get bigger whenever I update the layout… if I ever do that. XD Last weekend Jon and I had our baby shower, and it was a lot of fun. We got lots of stuff and our nights have been putting together some of the gifts, and washing every single thing. Yup, I think I did a load of laundry every day of the week except for maybe one night. Yikes! We don’t do a several loads in one day since we air dry our laundry, but that probably won’t happen as often once the baby is born.

We also finished painting the baby’s room, and now we can really start to settle into that space. We are making sure everything is working (like having a closet door that fully closes) and organized. We ordered a new mattress for baby, all the cloth diapers, and I just found out about Once Upon a Child and got a bunch of newborn onesies for cheap. Thank god for second hand kids shops.

Annoyingly tonight I need to drop off my car to the car repair shop. For like the past year (or two) we’ve had a leak and therefore a bucket in the car. Well, a week ago the gas station attendant didn’t twist on the gas cap all they way, making the check engine light go off. We tightened it and it eventually went away, but made an appointment already. I wanted to cancel the appointment, but Jon wants to get the leak fixed. 9__9 I kind-of like my weird janky bucket. I always like the idea that it makes it less likely that the car will be stolen XD

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Cod May Have Regional “Accents” That Could Spawn Trouble When Breeding

I love reading about how complex animals are. To me it really re-enforces many aspects of veganism, particularly conserving the environment. There is also something very humbling that most of the things we think of as being “human” aren’t exclusive to just us. Well, this article pretty much points out that most cods can have issues with breeding with other cod fish that live far away. This gives bigger incentive to classify cod fish as a non-sustainable fish.

The Only living Girl in NY: Trump Taj Mahal

I loved the timing of this post. The blog The Only Living Girl in NY is similar to The Dainty Squid- lots of photos of random destinations ranging from nature to kitchy tourist traps. Which is why I kind-of love that she took photos of Trump’s Taj Mahal. It was technically opened when she visited but it might as well been closed. When I mentioned the irony to my boss, he was telling a story about how he took a friend to Atlantic City to check out all the casinos. What he found very odd about the Taj Mahal, which was their last stop, was how hard it was to actually FIND the slot machines. If anyone has been to Las Vegas, they know that the slot machines are the FIRST thing you see in the main entrances. It seems pretty obvious why the place was a flop.

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Hedi Gh Gorgeous Cosmic Donuts + Vegan Galaxy Salad Cakes

I have a confession- I am not a huge donut fan. I know, I’m in the minority. I also don’t really like bacon, even in the pre-vegan days. But I always CRAVE donuts because they always look so gosh darn pretty! Especially these new trendy cosmic donuts. I can’t even comprehend how people make them! Both recipes are vegan, but I recommend checking out the “salad cakes” from Vegan Doll House, since she sneaks a few veggies in there. I like cakier donuts anyways.

Posted by Jennifer in Sunday Reads Tags: atlantic city, cod, donuts, galaxy, smithsonian magazine, sunday reading, sunday reads, the only living girl in ny, trend land, trump taj mahal, vegan doll house

2 comments

Sunday Reading 07-17-15 #69

July 17, 2016

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It is too early for the nesting bug to be biting? I have a large urge to plan and move things around in the house. See, we are planning on moving our office to the third floor and using the second floor bedroom as a nursery. Problem is that we hate our crummy Target desk and we have a huge workout machine that is oddly shaped. So there has been a lot of arguing about how big we can build a new desk (we want real wood guys, and we have budget) while still having space for this monster. Once we actually get the 3rd floor painted, and desk built we need to move our stuff and organize it, paint my dresser, rebuild the baby’s crib (taking my sister’s old one) and possibly paint it, paint the nursery, and… geez there is a lot to do XD

I think the sudden motivation comes from the fact that we have lived in our house for an ENTIRE YEAR NOW! A year ago Alexa took over the Sunday Reading post, since I was spending the days unboxing stuff and eating pizza almost everyday. That is pretty crazy, and I am probably feeling bad that our house is largely a big, generic, boring mess. We only painted our bedroom, and we haven’t gotten too much furniture. It would be nice to get a few personal touches before the baby comes, which yeah, we have until December, but I have a feeling that will roll by much faster than what I am expecting.

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Nettie Stevens discovered XY sex chromosomes. She didn’t get credit because she had two X’s.

I love learning about the many women who have contributed to science. I use to love science class, but hated doing the experiments (which ultimately discouraged me from continuing with it in college.) Some people might of seen the nod to Nettie Stevens on google and if so, here is the whole story, and the reason why she often isn’t credited for her discovery.

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Tens of Thousands of Artifacts Have Been Found in Colonial Philadelphia Toilets

Okay, I’m not going to lie, I might of clicked on this link because of the funny title. But it makes TOTAL sense. Major cities had big pits to dispose of human waste, and everyone used them as their own personal landfills. I am finding historical trash REALLY interesting. We like to think waste is a modern problem, but there has been waste disposal issues in the past as well. Just check out this podcast on Victorian horse poop disaster (which is similar to the factory farming waste issues.) Apparently thowing out perfectly good items isn’t completely new either. Many of the items found for Philadelphia’s new museum were thrown out items.

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The Mind-Boggling Bullshit of Health and Fitness

Never read anything from this blogger until now. And I LOVE this article. She pretty much sums up everything that is wrong with the fitness industry, and many things people get confused about. Finding great fitness bloggers and instructors can be hard. Hell, I recently found out a fitness personality who has done some videos I liked had their own YouTube channel. I checked it out… and man was I disappointed. The workouts were fine, she was fun and motivational, but she had lots of pseudo science to share. T_T And don’t even get me started on the lack of body positivity in the fitness industry! Weight and body shape is complicated. When I got weighed at the doctors it was a little adorable seeing the nurses try and weight me at around 120lbs. They inches so slowly up the scale I almost blurted out my weight so they could just jump to 140. I mean I am not THAT muscular, I got fat on me but BMI isn’t so straight forward.

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Understanding Hillary: Why the Clinton America See Isn’t the Clinton Colleagues Know

Yup politics guys. I am a firm believer that we need to talk more about politics with people, and I try not to be obnoxious about it. I found this article interesting since I am clueless about why so many people hate Hillary! I am not saying you aren’t justified to not like her, or not to vote for her, but when I hear liberals say they will vote Trump because they will never vote Hillary… I just can’t. WTF guys, vote Jill Stein not Trump. I am perplexed why fiscally conservative republicans don’t like Clinton either, since she is obviously the better choice over Trump. I mean her tax plan pretty much stays the same, meaning we won’t go in the red. And voting libertarian is just a vote for slashing government involvement, not making better financial decisions. Plus, didn’t Bill Clinton say he would work to boost the economy as First Man?

Anyways, this article goes into why so many politicians like Hillary. They also talk about the shift candidates made once the people started to vote for party candidates. It really opens up some interesting issues, and really makes me like Hillary more. I do think many people who don’t know much about the political system tend to not like Hillary because she is woman (or are influenced by media coverage that is skewed because of her sex), whether they are conscious about it or not. The article is a long read, but still important.

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We asked hundreds of scientists what they’d change about science. Here are 33 of our favorite responses.

If you aren’t reading lots of scientific articles, this might be a great summary of the issues with science today. We read lots of articles about nutritional science, and most of it can be ignored. This article sums up why, no one is replicating experiments, no one is publishing negative results, and there is such pressure scientists are fishing for results. What is interesting is that some scientists give their own recommendations on how to fix these issues as well.

Posted by Jennifer in Sunday Reads Tags: dna, Hillary Clinton, nia shanks, science, smithsonian magazine, sunday reading, sunday reads, Vox

Sunday Reading 05-01-15 #63

May 1, 2016

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Hi everyone! Sorry I’ve been a bit of a bum lately. I have been pretty busy… sort of. It is mostly a case of I haven’t had much a chance to be on the computer, and when I did, I wouldn’t be in the mood. I am much more interested in snuggling with a blanket on the couch, which has really given me lots of reading time. If I had a laptop, I probably would be blogging just as much as I did before. But until the day someone just hands me their laptop, I will be using the one I have in my office.

I’ve fallen behind with my links for reading, so some of these article might seem pretty old, so sorry guys! XD I am rarely on top of these things lol. Well hopefully I will be writing more again this week and will get back into the swing of things.

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Members of the U.S Women’s National Team File Federal Equal Pay Complaint

It is about time this happens. I really enjoyed the recent women’s world cup, but I was also a little sad hearing about how little these women were being paid. When complaining, someone replied with “well these girls won’t have to worry anymore with all their endorsement deals” like that solves the root of the problem. My biggest regret is not being able to support the Women’s Soccer League more since there aren’t any teams nearby.

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What I Learned From Tickling Apes

I have been finding a lot of article lately about animals and how science treat their emotions. I get why scientists are so hesitant to say if animals feel pain, have emotions, and have similar problem solving skills to humans, but it seems equally naive that they wouldn’t have any.

Consumer Reports in the Age of the Amazon Review

I first was introduced to Consumer Reports by my Father in Law. He suscribed to the magazine, and I liked their rating system. They didn’t just go with the “best” they also took in practical things like money into consideration. In fact, a lot of the time the Walmart brand foods often would be ranked the best for the price (for things like ketchup.) I now rarely pick it up since the subscription is a hefty chunk. Instead I learned to use online product reviews, whether it be Amazon, Modcloth, or Target. This article brings up some great points like online reviewers are only reviewing one item. For example the person probably bought one TV, not 12 different ones to compare to each other. And they point out something I wasn’t aware of, which make sense, people being given free products to review on Amazon. The person still can say they live the product, but overall are less likely to take price into consideration.

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Do Insects Have a Consciousness Ego?

Bugs get the short end of vegan stick. I sometimes have a hard time getting the warm and fuzzies for a fly. But it seems science is slowly starting to defend bugs as conscious creatures that deserve a little more respect. Although the article isn’t claiming much, it is an interesting step in the field to assume bugs are running on a little more than 100% automated instinct.

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How the Media Got a Study About Vegetarianism Really, Really Wrong

Another case of bad journalism snowballing out of control. Apparently articles about how adopting a vegetarian diet put you at risk for heart disease and colon cancer. It’s udder crap. How much crap is it? Well apparently the authors of the study had to release a statement saying that wasn’t what they found in their study. To put it simply, the scientists found that societies who had adopted a vegetarian or near vegetarian diet developed a way to produce their own omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. If they then adopt a meat eating diet, their bodies will be flooded with too many fats, and will have health issues. Most writer confused hundreds of years of a vegetarian diet with a few years within ones lifetime. Nor does producing your own omega-3 and omega-6 make you sick, if you stick to a vegetarian diet.

Posted by Jennifer in Sunday Reads Tags: amazon, consumer reports, motherboard, new york times, npr, opinion, smithsonian magazine, soccer, sunday reading, sunday reads, the atlantic, women's soccer, women's sports

5 comments

Sunday Reading 03-13-15 #60

March 13, 2016

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So our computer turned off and wouldn’t turn back on last week. So my husband was extremely stressed by this since we could technically afford a new computer, but it wouldn’t be the best thing for our wallets. Not to mention the computer we currently have is really sweet. Luckily it wasn’t that bad, we just had a bad memory stick and the wonderful Mac Store scanned all our memory to find out which ones were the bad ones. So we have half the RAM… but we still have 16 gigs, and I don’t notice any difference in speed. So I’ve been spending most of the week trying to catch up on blogs and articles that I’ve been wanting to read from earlier.

I am also starting to feel the spring cleaning bug. I am cleaning out my garden of all the stones so we can start planting some flowers. It might take awhile though, we have SO MANY stones in our small garden space. I am also wanting to start painting out bedroom. It was suppose to be the first room we redo along with our powder room. And now we have settled down and probably will have the time to actually start making our house FEEL like ours. And maybe even start to organize our framed art in a manner that makes sense. Most of the stuff is just smacked on random walls, partly because I was trying to wait until we painted the rooms. So maybe there will be pretty pictures of the newly decorated house in the future.

I also was able to hang out with Alexa last Monday and we will be having THREE new vegan restaurants to feature. Two in central Jersey and one from Delaware. And I just found out of a new all vegan restaurant in Collingswood, so I am pumped to try that out sometimes soon with Alexa or my beau. But Alexa started talking about how she is trying hit certain macros and I thought I would try as well. Well, I am never as close to the protein requirements that the one website calculated for me, but it has been getting me thinking about my calorie intake and protein intake. I definitely do not think this is a way of eating I would enjoy continuing, but it is an interesting way to think since I know there are some people trying to hit a large amount of proteins.

Anyways, I’ve been keeping all these articles in the same post draft to share with you guys. I hope you’ll find them as interesting as I did.

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Mermaid Ivory Stirs Controversy Over How Extinct Species are Studied

This is an interesting article talking about how a scientist who could of possibly discovered expanded territory of an extinct species. How? Well he used DNA from a knife handle that was made from mermaid ivory. I found this article really interesting as it talks about a old animal product that I’ve never heard the term for. Mermaid ivory is the tusks and bones of sea mammals like walruses and the like. It is an interesting article about the flaws in this man’s methods.

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Chow Down on a Plastic Eating Fungus

Part art insulation, part science. This is an interesting look at a potential answer to the question of what to do with all the plastic. This fungus breaks down the plastic, but the scientists took it a step further, they make meals from them. The article has two videos but has a link to their website to show some of the special tools they made to eat these fungi eggs.

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Gastropod: The Maple Boom

Gastropod is starting to become my favorite podcast. Yes, I like many others but I love how much research and technical skills go into their podcasts. But remember that review of maple water I did in the past? I wasn’t a huge fan of it, but I wouldn’t help but think there IS a bunch of benefits of maple water over coconut water (mostly economical and environmental). But at the end it made me want to pick up some more for a cocktail! This is a great episode about the all American maple tree with interesting insight for the future of the maple industry.

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In Flint, Mich., Moving The Farmers Market Drew More Poor Shoppers

A great NPR article about how a farmers market moved in Flint. It moved to a lower income area that was closer to a bus stop and surprise, people started to come. I hear a lot of people complain poor people eat garbage, and that is an unfair judgement. I’ve been to low priced markets, and sometimes they just don’t have many fresh foods. This is proof that lower income families are happy to get healthy fresh foods.

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Maybe It’s Time to Take Animal Feelings Seriously

I would say I am very interested in science. In fact sometimes I wonder why I didn’t try and study more biology, then I remember it is because I just didn’t feel like dealing with animal poop. Granted there are lots of questionable way to deal with animals to research them, but this opinion piece is pleading for scientists to start accepting animals have feelings. It seems pretty silly but I am always a little shocked to hear scientists dismiss animal behaviors, saying it is naive to assume animal think like humans. I always think it would be naive to think they are completely void of feelings.

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Women’s products cost more. Here’s how to avoid the “pink tax.”

There is a lot in this article I already knew, but it introduced me to the term “pink tax.” I do get comments from my husband how some of the things I buy are so expensive, which is funny since I don’t think I buy particularly expensive things it is just expensive compared to what he gets. It is a great article that makes you stop and think before you buy something.

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What no one talks about when they extol the benefits of fasting

Love, love, loving this article! If you are half aware of the body love movement or are aware of various eating disorders you might of read a bunch of people who are totally against fasting. And I know where they are coming from, and mostly agree. But there are various studies that show that fasting limiting calorie intake could be good for our health. This article does a great job explaining what fasting is, what type of fasting they are talking about, the short comings of the studies. A nice read for anyone who is interested in dietary health but don’t want all the worthless hype of fasting.

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SNAP Challenge Recap

Gena from The Full Helping had to take the SNAP challenge for her nutrition class. The SNAP challenge is to live off of $40 for a week per person to simulate relying on food stamps. Gena does a great job talking about the challenges other people faced, and talks about how the challenge isn’t accurate. It is very much worth the read and it thoughtfully written.

Posted by Jennifer in Sunday Reads Tags: gastropod, npr, NY Mag, science of us, smithsonian magazine, sunday reading, sunday reads, the full helping, Vox

2 comments

Sunday Reading 01-18-15 #56

January 18, 2016

Alexa is ready for the snow!

Hi everyone. I feel like I am failing blogging in 2016. The main two reasons is that one week I went to go visit my Grandfather in Florida. He hasn’t been in the greatest health lately, and even has been in a hospital for most of December with a bad case of clostridium difficile, which I read about in this article about feces enemas. Anyways, we booked a trip for the weekend to visit him once he got better. Let me tell you that trip was EXHAUSTING! I kid you not when I say it was non-stop socializing affair. It also was a humbling experience, I am so picky about the quality of my food but I had to take a deep breath and think about why I was there. I did NOT do any research about vegan friendly places. And I messed up. I eat out so little I forget what things are usually not vegan, like onion rings. But mistakes will be made, and I am just glad I don’t need to eat (crappy) salad again for lunch AND dinner.

All week I was trying to catch up on things from the previous weekend, and then the weekend after I went into NYC to celebrate Alexa’s birthday. It was tons of fun, except the karaoke bar that Alexa booked didn’t put in her reservation for the right day. So we had to book it to someplace different that wasn’t BYOB. Our bottles of soju got opened, and confiscated. No big deal, it was like $10. I was tipsy, and doing fine, then when we leave the guy hands me an open bottle of soju back… which was nice but I had no idea what to do with it. I was drunk enough to think chugging it would be a good idea. Uh… wrong. I quickly got super drunk, I am so glad Jon was with me because I don’t remember much from that night. And I had the worst hangover all Sunday, it even lingered into Monday morning. So let’s just say I was pretty frustrated with my very stupid decision. I should of asked that nice guy to just dump the stuff.

So I have a bunch of articles that I wanted to share over the course of several weeks. So sorry that the list is so long. But I need to break the silence on the blog. I hope everyone had a better weekend than me! I will also have some reviews on some restaurants from Disney and NYC.

Health

A cool study on the effects of ultra marathoners

Women’s health is being ignored because of fat-shaming

I have to agree with this article- don’t join a gym.

I was thinking about making an exercise post like this, but this person got it so right.

People are surprised that I am not anti-GMOs. This article kind-of breaks down why, it is hard to define GMOs.

Extreme health diets are not new. Not saying everyone doesn’t have a grain of truth to their statements, but always use your brain. There is a lot of room food various types of food in your diet.