Science + Health

The Skinny on School Lunches

Elementary students in the Berkeley Unified School District have some strange eating habits. No Pop-Tarts, no cheese-flavored Doritos, not even those little doughnuts with the powdered sugar. They prefer weeditos—their own version of burritos. At recess, the kids run to the garden—all 16 of the schools in the district have one—tear themselves off a big chard leaf, fill it with a handful of edible flowers and a plump radish, roll it up, and chow down. Sometimes they go back for seconds and thirds.

Then they go home and ask for spinach.

From the May June 2009 Go Bare issue of California.

Here Below

Several months ago, as winter had begun darkening the afternoon landscape and we were driving along the rolling fields of central France, my friend Christophe said, “There’s something almost erotic about these bare fields.”

“Comment?” I said, as he had made the comment in French, which came out just a bit differently: “Il me semble qu’il y a une presence d’erotisme dans les champs nus.”

From the May June 2009 Go Bare issue of California.

A Campus Kyoto

These days , all the cool kids are “carbon neutral.” Presidential candidate Senator Chris Dodd is into it. So are the nation’s mayors. Even the Presbyterian Church says it will neutralize emissions. So it is only fair that the colleges and universities housing most global warming scientists take a stab at it, too.

From the September October 2007 Green Tech issue of California.

Lab & Field Notes

Some eBay users are falsely boosting their reputations online by paying for positive feedback on the site, says business professor John Morgan. In online communities, ratings and reputation lead to more, and larger, transactions. Morgan found the transaction was often initiated by sellers offering a “Buy-It-Now” item—sometimes listed as a “Positive Feedback Ebook”—for 1 cent.

From the March April 2007 Centennial Edition issue of California.

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