Introducing Japan’s Moomin Cafe, which seats those who are dining alone with large stuffed animals to keep them company.
Moomin Cafe is a theme restaurant, based on a series of Finnish picture books about a family of hippopotamus-like creatures.
At the link you also will find interesting pictures of the food. For the pointer I thank R.H. and also Jeffrey Lessard.
By the way, here is a parable about the “Hello Kitty” craze in Singapore.
Melissa Bell surveys three weeks of Vox and asks what you think. A few things strike me:
1. One of their innovations — which has occasioned lots of hostility — has been to shift the window of what is considered “reportable as accepted truth.” A MSM article does not put defenders and opponents of evolutionary theory on the same footing. Vox presents the workability of a health care mandate as something — if not quite to be taken for granted — as a matter where a pro-mandate journalistic stance can be considered a matter of fact. By no means do I agree with all of their judgments, but I see them as ahead of the curve and outflanking their critics.
2. The site looks great, works great, and they are consistently finding interesting topics to report on, at a higher rate than most better-established MSM outlets. If I go to the site I will find something new I didn’t know about, every day. I don’t feel a need to push them into an RSS feed. By the way, the site looks especially good on an iPad.
3. When I was in fifth grade, I was pulled out of some of the more boring classes and give “SRAs” to work with. SRAs were color coded material laid out on a series of cards and boxed tabs, which could be manipulated and re-ordered if the student so chose, and which allowed progression to increasing levels of difficulty. Vox.com reminds me of SRAs, and of some of the instructional theories of the 1960s, although of course on the web and thus with a superior presentation. I preferred SRAs to class, but anything I like is to be considered suspect from a broader market point of view. By the way, IBM eventually sold the SRA brand name and content to McGraw-Hill.
4. With any site you have to ask where the “pandering element” comes in. With MR the TC pandering is to yours truly — the unpaid author — and it comes in the form of puffins, Japan, movie reviews, and obscure Straussian references, among other things which make me giggle. With Vox the pandering is highly factual and tonally neutral coverage of some hot button issues, such as the racism of Donald Sterling or telling your parents your true profession (porn star). This strategy likely will succeed, although those articles tend not to interest me personally. I think they will do pretty well on Facebook and other social media sites.
5. I am most worried about a certain uniformity of voice across the articles. Think of the headings, photos, and prose style as geared to put the links high in eventual Google searches. But readers miss the presence of distinctive voices, including Matt and Ezra themselves, who of course have served this role in the past. I’ve liked all of Matt’s articles for Vox so far, but I miss hearing Matt. You know, the Matt of mattyglesias.typepad.com and wisecracks about the Wizards. Slate and Salon are full of voices, and they have found this to be a successful formula, at least relative to the alternatives if not always in terms of net revenue.
I’ve liked Joseph Stromberg’s science coverage, and been impressed by his depth, but he does not (yet?) ring as a distinct voice in my mind. I don’t even have an illusory picture of what he might be like, and I wonder if their writers can continue to attract readers with such a relatively low level of vividness. (On the other hand, this limits the bargaining power of the writers!) Yet can the writers be given greater voice while keeping the Google maximization strategy in place?
Over time this uniformity of tone also will make it hard for them to recruit or keep top writers or writers looking for a path to the top. And every outlet needs a few of these writers, even if many of the pieces are to be more cookie-cutter in presentation.
6. Costs will rise when they send people outside of the office to do stories, as eventually they must.
7. I am still a pessimist about the long-term economics of media, and I remain unconvinced they have solved the key problem of a weak advertising market for on-line material. Still, I am keen to see how they will extend the site.
On The Upshot I have a new piece, co-authored with Veronique de Rugy, here is an excerpt:
…the book’s timing may be behind the state of French debate. Had it been released in the halcyon days of Mr. Hollande’s 2011 presidential campaign, when many French considered soak-the-rich talk and 75 percent marginal tax rates to be practical fiscal strategies, Mr. Piketty’s book might have made a bigger splash in France. Today, with the economy still struggling, Mr. Hollande is talking about tax cuts rather tax increases. The 75 percent rate has suffered constitutional challenges, and even celebrity backlashes, such as when Gérard Depardieu pursued and received Russian citizenship to lower his tax rate. Mr. Hollande seems to be steering France away from its traditional role as a defender of high taxes and toward some structural reforms, albeit at a slow pace. During his New Year address, Hollande even turned into a rhetorical supply-sider, making the case for cutting taxes and public spending, improving competitiveness, and creating a more investor-friendly climate. In any case, the French appetite for stiff tax increases has diminished.
…Finally, some other French economists have taken the lead in challenging Mr. Piketty’s empirical claims. One recent paper by four economists at l’Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris challenges Mr. Piketty’s view that inequality has increased because the return to capital has been greater than general growth in the economy. The current shorthand is “r > g.”
The paper argues that the higher growth of capital rests entirely on returns to housing, and takes technical issues with the book’s treatment of housing, too. If Mr. Piketty’s argument depends on housing, it hardly seems to match his basic story about the ongoing ascendancy of capitalists.
There is much more at the link.
Political leaders have come to rely primarily on consultants’ carefully crafted, poll-based political advice, which can obscure the moral impulses necessary for leadership.
JackJust in time :P
Marshfield, Mass. residents this week voted to overturn a 1982 bylaw that banned coin-operated arcade games from all businesses in the town. A majority vote was required to overturn the bylaw, and it was a close one. The final tally was 203-175.
Town resident Craig Rondeau brought forth the petition to end the ban, which he says never made sense to him. "I was sitting thinking, 'why is this illegal in my town, to have fun with my friends," he told The Patriot Ledger (via Joystiq). He maintains that video games can help children learn social skills and practice problem-solving.
Not everyone agrees with the end of the ban. Marshfield resident Sue Walker said arcade games can disturb family gatherings at public restaurants. "There is gaming all over the place, and there's nothing fun about it," she said.
Marshfield originally banned arcade games in 1982 on the grounds that these games were too addictive for children. The ban gathered national attention and local business owners even attempted to have the case heard by the United States Supreme Court, but that never happened.
| Eddie Makuch is a news editor at GameSpot, and you can follow him on Twitter @EddieMakuch |
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| Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email news@gamespot.com |
Each of the six Star Wars films is being reimagined as a digital storybook with its own movie-specific game, Lucasfilm announced today.
Known as Star Wars Journeys, the mobile apps will retell the stories of their respective movies, reports Variety. The first one, available beginning today on iOS, is based on The Phantom Menace and is split into three parts, one of which is a podracing game.
Another component of this first release is described as a story mode (estimated to take roughly an hour to complete) where players interact with the environment as they make their way through the film's plot and unlock podracer upgrades. Also included is a database with information on the characters, locations, vehicles, and more from the movies.
The first Journeys app is priced at $6.99 on the iOS App Store, with plans for it to also be released on Android in the future. Journeys covering the later movies will be released between now and the launch of the next film--the cast of which was announced this week--in December 2015. There is, as of yet, no word on exactly when the new Journeys will be released (nor whether a trash compactor will be featured in A New Hope's game).
If Journeys sounds or looks simplistic, that's because Lucasfilm is gearing this toward kids in the 6-12-year-old range. That target demographic is also part of the reason Journeys is being released on mobile platforms.
While Star Wars-themed games have been released on iOS and Android in the recent past, including Tiny Death Star and Star Wars: Assault Team, Variety notes this is the first Star Wars digital release that Lucasfilm and Disney Publishing have partnered up to develop internally since Disney's Lucasfilm acquisition in 2012.
In addition to the cast of Episode VII, we learned this week that all future Star Wars content will be part of the franchise's canon--including the video games.
| Chris Pereira is a freelance writer for GameSpot, and you can follow him on Twitter @TheSmokingManX |
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| Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email news@gamespot.com |
Amazon has announced a new multi-year content licensing agreement with HBO, bringing their exceptional library of content online exclusively to Amazon Prime members through the Prime Instant Video service.
Series and mini-series that will be available for Prime members to watch include The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The Wire, Rome, Big Love, Deadwood, Eastbound & Down, Band of Brothers, John Adams, early seasons of Boardwalk Empire and True Blood, and much more. Other series, such as more recent hits like Girls, The Newsroom, and Veep, will eventually be made available to watch over the course of the new agreement, approximately three years after they first air on HBO.
Continue below for a full rundown of what will be available. [...]
The post HBO and Amazon Sign Exclusive Multi-Year Streaming Deal For Prime Members appeared first on Geeks of Doom.
JackHmm. Maybe I should try and watch this movie.
Marvel’s chief creative officer, Joe Quesada, made an appearance on Kevin Smith’s Fat Man on Batman to talk about Captain America: The Winter Soldier and while he was on the topic of movies, he shared his thoughts on Man of Steel. Quesada didn’t hold back on just how much he didn’t like the movie and the reason all comes down to its treatment of Zod:
“As a comic book fan, I wanted to love that movie so much. I wanted to love it so much, and I didn’t love it so much. Again, there are little things here and there that you could pick at and things like that, but I just think at the end of the day, Zod was the hero of the movie to me… He wanted to save his race, and Superman didn’t let him.
Zod, in this particular incarnation, struck me as not necessarily an evil man, but a man of… he had a particular… he had his orders, he had a mission. He was a zealot of sorts, but he was a zealot… again, correct me if I’m wrong… but he didn’t say, ‘I want to rebuild Krypton, and then come back and destroy this little planet. All I want is to rebuild this planet. And the only reason I’m blowing everything to bits here is because you’ve got what I want, and you’re not giving it to me. So please, give me my people, and I’ll leave.’… When Superman said Krypton had its chance, I was like, ‘Will you just f***ing kill him, Zod?’””
He also noted that they could have written around the potential problem of Zod coming back to destroy Earth:
“You could have had a better solution if you had written a better problem. So I see things like that, and I’m like, ‘Aww, man.’ It was one of some things in the movie, that I just ended up feeling disappointed in it.”
Clearly, Man of Steel was a polarizing movie. Whether you liked it or hated it, what do you make of Quesada’s complaint?
(Comicbook.com via The Mary Sue / Image via Warner Bros. Pictures)
JackSo this is what Rupert Everett is doing now.
Earlier this week, the U.K.'s Channel 4 started airing Love for Sale with Rupert Everett, a new series in which the actor explores the U.K.'s sex industry by talking to its workers and consumers. The premiere's opening narration laid out its mission statement: "From the high class Mayfair escort, to the crack addict streetwalker, can there ever be such a creature as the happy hooker?"
George R.R. Martin has created an incredibly detailed world for his stories and although that detail brings everything vividly to life, it also makes it all a bit confusing. Sometimes it would be nice to have a little visual aid to help in figuring out where everything happens in the books and on the show. To that end, superfan SerMountainGoat has created QuarterMaester to help. It’s the perfect companion to this geological map of Westeros we previously posted.
The interactive map is fantastically detailed and could easily have fans of Game of Thrones whiling away hours absorbing it all. It’s got typical map locations with cities, towns, and ports, but it’s also got character locations and links to the Game of Thrones wiki so you can get even more detail. If you’re worried about spoilers, no need, because you control just how far you dig into it all, so you can always stop when you get to the point where you’ve read or watched and then go no further.
(The A.V. Club via Nerdist)
JackWow.
This huge balloon sculpture was created by John Reid aka Epic Balloons at Salt Lake City Comic Con. It’s the world’s largest balloon sculpture created by a single person and it’s fantastic. Now, if Poptimus Prime will just let him go, maybe he can make Bumblebee and the rest of the gang to match.
(via Geeks are Sexy)
JackLol. I haven't thought about Ducktales in a long time.
Who else remembers the theme from DuckTales? Just mentioning it is enough to get the “woo hoo” stuck in my head, and I bet it has a similar effect on you. Now imagine that familiar tune and put a ’90s R&B spin on it. You wouldn’t think it works, but pianist Scott Bradlee and his band work with vocalist POW!GRL and completely rock it. It’s all part of his Saturday Morning Slow Jams project where he focuses on putting new, smoother spins on themes from Saturday morning cartoons. Yes, it’s awesome – you can even buy the songs on iTunes.
Check out the reinvented theme as well as a similar take on Pokémon after the break.
(via Laughing Squid)
The high school senior accepted to all eight Ivy League universities has made The Decision. In a LeBron-like move, Kwasi Enin held a press conference at his Long Island high school to announce he's taking his talents to New Haven. Looks like Cleveland got robbed again.
JackHuh
The dog who mauled a 4-year-old boy's face in February will not be destroyed, but will rather serve an unusual sentence for his crime, a Phoenix judge has ruled.
JackAt least they sort of came to their senses finally.
The subject of the best interview of all time can now rest easy: The city of Portland has reversed course and decided not to flush more than 35 million gallons of treated water that a teenager allegedly pissed in last month. Instead, officials transferred the water to another reservoir, where it will be used as a pond-like "water feature."
NYPD officers apparently can't stop getting drunk and shooting people : Just before midnight Tuesday, Officer Brendan Cronin allegedly pulled up to a stop light in Pelham, N.Y. and fired 13 shots at a stranger's car, striking the man six times.
JackLol
As everyone knows, Taco Bell’s deeply authentic Mexican roots go back to the company’s humble beginnings in 1843 as Taco Campana, a family business selling flatbreads to hungry travelers outside of Hermosilo. For more than 150 years, the Bell has been a leader in bringing the finest in Mexican cuisine — from the Meximelt to the Chipotle Ranch Chicken Loaded Griller to the Crunchwrap Supreme — to U.S. diners aching for the exotic flavors one can only find south of the border. So it’s surprising that the company has announced a new initiative to create a chain serving “American-inspired” tacos… and booze.
The O.C. Register reports that Taco Bell is launching a test eatery called, cleverly enough, U.S. Taco this summer in Huntington Beach, CA.
The name is even more literal than it may sound, as the restaurant won’t just be serving American-style tacos, but tacos actually inspired by regional American foods.
So there would be a lobster roll taco to represent New England, a brisket taco repping Texas BBQ, etc.
“Taco Bell is Mexican-inspired, and U.S. Taco is American-inspired,” explained Taco Bell’s Curiously Australian CEO Greg Creed, who told the Register that this new venture won’t be selling things like burritos and tortilla chips.
The new place will also try to distance itself from the Bell and from competitor Chipotle by serving booze. Though the pilot location has hit a speed bump in getting its alcohol permit and probably won’t serve alcohol, the company says that future U.S. Taco locations would serve more than 50 types of draft and bottled craft beer, along with booze-infused shakes.
(C x 2)
A grandmother of a child at the school complained to local media about the practice, where the school served students trail mix and about three tablespoons of Mountain Dew before administering the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test each day, reports Florida Today.
That complaint caught the attention of the school district and has raised concerns among parents, among them, the risk of kids crashing from their sugar highs in the middle of the test. It’s also an interesting practice considering state law prevents schools from selling soda.
“Once that was brought to our attention, we eliminated that practice,” a spokesman for the public schools said, adding that they’ve advised the school to only provide water to drink.
The practice goes back 10 years, when the school principal read about it in an education journal.
“She felt that it was a professional practice and implemented it,” the spokeswoman explained. “Since then, there’s been new information (about what’s best for students).”
The principal still seems to think it was a fine idea, as the amount of Mountain Dew administered wasn’t very much, and was part of an overall program of encouraging kids to get ready for the FCAT withh a good night’s sleep and a healthy breakfast.
“We don’t think we were giving them enough to really get into” negative impacts of sugar highs and lows, she said. “We’ve done it for years. The kids look forward to the treats.”
That being said, if parents or others are worried, she can respect those concerns, she added.
Meanwhile, some enterprising fourth grader is probably setting up a black market trade in Mountain Dew.
*Thanks for the tip, Kelly!
School stops serving Mountain Dew before FCAT after complaints [Florida Today]
The Wall Street Journal reports that Amazon has quietly launched a pilot program working in the shadow of the vacant husk of a stadium that is Candlestick Park, using its own trucks and contracted drivers to make deliveries in the area.
Amazon has warehouses all around the country, but even when it’s delivering items down the street from one of its facilities, it has been paying others to do the work for them.
Operating its own to-the-home courier service could not only save it money on skyrocketing shipping costs, but also allow Amazon to offer same-day delivery of some items in certain areas. Of course, that will all depend on whether or not the local warehouse stocks an ordered item.
Amazon shoppers in the San Francisco area can apparently tell if their package is coming via the new service because the tracking info on Amazon.com will not link to an outside service and uses a different coding system than what you’d see from UPS or FedEx. The Journal reports that Amazon expects to expand this test to L.A. and NYC.
Amazon recently patented a system that would predict ordering behaviors of customers around the country, allowing the company to pre-ship items to distribution centers in order to more efficiently meet demand.
This last-mile type of courier service would seem to fit right into that system, employing FedEx, UPS, et al, to move large, bulk shipments around between distribution centers, and then employing its own service to make that delivery to the home.
Today’s launch of Prime Pantry also fits into this improved shipping model, but trying to minimize the packaging and tracking needed to deliver multiple items to one address.
Such a service would obviously mean fewer packages to deliver for UPS, FedEx, and USPS though presumably these would all still be used to make deliveries outside of areas immediately serviced by warehouses.
The Journal points out that Amazon’s test of its own delivery service in the U.K. hasn’t exactly gone swimmingly, with customers going online to gripe about missed, late or inaccurate deliveries. And one consumer in San Francisco who now receives packages delivered by Amazon says two recent orders have repeatedly missed their delivery deadlines.
“After the first time, I asked them not to ship me anything using that service, but they did it again anyway” said the customer. “I don’t want to be Amazon’s test market for their new shipping idea—that’s not what I am paying for.”
One pulse-infused product has already hit mainstream store shelves: some varieties of
Triscuit’s new rice-based crackers use red beans to increase the snacks’ protein and fiber, and to polish its health halo a little bit. Most Americans are at least a little health-conscious, but not so conscious that we’re going to do anything crazy like not eat Triscuits.
Or pasta. Americans just can’t eat enough protein, but if we can get it in the form of chickpea-infused spaghetti, that’s what we’re going to do. Barilla has put these on mainstream store shelves, too: the Barilla Plus line contains a blend of pulse flours meant to add more protein.
The powders can make a logical substitute for wheat flour and even eggs in food products. General Mills is using yellow pea protein in a variety of Larabar, and the
The biggest issue in using these products is texture and freshness. Using pulses reduces the shelf life on some products, and also can make them, well, kind of dry.
You Will Eat Your Peas Now as Big Food Binges on Protein [Bloomberg News]
JackMakes sense :P
Uber is having a hard time in Europe. The San Francisco company has started its operations in quite a few cities now. This fact has raised protest by taxi-drivers (as any other human being, they do not like new competitors). Their remonstrances are likely to find a friendly ear: very often local decision makers can easily find some local regulations that Uber violates just by the virtue of existing. The discipline of taxi and black cars is, after all, the fruit of many successful years of restricting access to this trade. To allow for MORE competition, norms should be changed.
In Brussels the App has been banned, and it may be in Berlin too, where, as the Associated Press reports, "the head of the Berlin Taxi Association convinced a local court that the company's service breaks the law". European Commissioner Neelie Kroes has lamented that the Brussels ban is "not about protecting or helping passengers - it's about protecting a taxi cartel". She does not seem to realize that the taxi cartel is a product of specific norms all over Europe, not the result of unfettered capitalism: to be serious on the matter, she should advocate these rules to be revised.
But let's put politics aside. It's noteworthy that, on the other hand, a new rather interesting App has just been put on the market, in Berlin:
The latest Berlin-based start-up app idea has taken the online dating principle to the sex industry. Peppr.it, launched on April 1, allows prostitutes to upload profiles of themselves that potential clients nearby can browse.
Clients can search for male or female "Pepprs," and adjust their filters for special services and body type. They can then send an enquiry and make a date.
The prostitutes do not pay to put their profiles online, while clients pay the website a €5 or €10 booking fee.
Meet the Sand Flea:
Google-owned robotics company Boston Dynamics makes a number of stunning robots, perhaps most notably its Atlas humanoid and the "Big Dog" cargo-carrying robot.
But the "Sand Flea," weighing in at a mere 11 pounds (compared to Atlas' 330 pounds) can do something that none of these others can. It can jump, and it can jump high.
It moves along the ground like a remote control car, but when the operator wants to get airborne, the Sand Flea props itself up at an angle and fires a piston into the ground that sends the robot hurtling forward through the air at heights of up to 30 feet. That's high enough to jump onto the roof of an average house from the ground.
It's not all about height, however. Boston Dynamics boasts that this thing is also handy for "precision hops through windows or doors, on to tables," even up staircases. Developed with funding from the U.S. Army's Rapid Equipping Force, it's plain to see that this robot could be a handy surveillance bot that can get itself into otherwise inaccessible locations.
Check out the full video below:
Join the conversation about this story »
The New York Review of Books has a very interesting interview of George Soros. At one point he is asked about the recent revolution in the Ukraine. Here is part of his response, and then a follow-up question:
[Soros] Contrary to all rational expectations, a group of citizens armed with not much more than sticks and shields made of cardboard boxes and metal garbage can lids overwhelmed a police force firing live ammunition. There were many casualties, but the citizens prevailed. It was a veritable miracle.Schmitz: How could such a thing happen? How do you explain it?
Soros: It fits right into my human uncertainty principle, but it also reveals a remarkable similarity between human affairs and quantum physics of which I was previously unaware. According to Max Planck, among others, subatomic phenomena have a dual character: they can manifest themselves as particles or waves. Something similar applies to human beings: they are partly freestanding individuals or particles and partly components of larger entities that behave like waves. The impact they make on reality depends on which alternative dominates their behavior. There are potential tipping points from one alternative to the other but it is uncertain when they will occur and the uncertainty can be resolved only in retrospect.
On February 20 a tipping point was reached when the people on Maidan Square were so determined to defend Ukraine that they forgot about their individual mortality. What gave their suicidal stand historic significance is that it succeeded.
I don't find it all that paradoxical that people sometimes behave like individuals and at other times behave like members of a mob. But I do find the Efficient Markets Hypothesis to be somewhat paradoxical. This hypothesis says that individual traders cannot know more than the market, and hence deviations of assets prices from trend are essentially unforecastable. Consider the following example:
A very knowledgeable trader walks onto the floor of a market where gold is actively traded. To make things simple, let's assume that there is no risk premium, and that the futures price equal the expected future spot price. Suppose October 2014 gold futures are trading at $1300, but this very smart trader believes that gold will be trading at $1360 in October. Is this information valuable?
In one sense the answer is no. The market forecast is freely available, and is much more reliable. But in another sense the answer is yes. If the trader decides to act on his knowledge, the market will become even more efficient. The market price will immediately represent a more accurate forecast of the expected future spot price.
The average opinion of traders is dumb; the average of their opinions is brilliant. (Have I used 'average' the same way both times?)
Alternatively, let's suppose markets are efficient. What makes them efficient? Lots of traders who dig up information on the value of gold. And why do they do that? Because they believe markets are inefficient.
One of my favorite examples is the joke about the two university of Chicago professors walking along a sidewalk. One says "Look, a $100 bill." The other replies, " That's not possible, someone would have picked it up already." When I tell my students the joke, I ask them whether it is a pro-EMH joke or an anti-EMH joke. But here's the problem, I'm not quite sure myself. Consider the following two interpretations:
A. The EMH represents Truth with a capital T. In that case the joke seems to be mocking those who believe in the EMH.
B. The EMH is a highly useful theory. For philosophical pragmatists it doesn't get any better than that. In that case the joke seems to be supportive of the EMH.
I prefer B. I don't know about you, but I often see money lying on the sidewalk. But it's always coins or small bills. Not once in my life have I seen a $100 bill. And now the EMH tells me why I shouldn't waste my time walking around fruitlessly hoping I'll find a $100 bill down there. I should look up at the birds and the trees and the clouds. I should enjoy life.
But then who will pick up the $100 bills? Two groups of people. Those who foolishly think they will be able to find them if they look hard enough. (Oddly, some of those foolish people will find them.) And those who know it's a very long shot but enjoy treasure hunting. Or enjoy looking at sidewalks. Some of them will also be successful. Especially those who know where to look---like very early in the morning outside an expensive nightclub. Or in an area where there are lots of drug deals. There are enough people like that to keep sidewalks cleared of $100s.
I enjoy collecting old prints. And because I enjoy doing so, I help to keep the old print market efficient. But not sidewalks, and not stock markets. Someone else will have to do those jobs.
PS. I recommend the Soros interview---most of it is much better than the passage I quoted.
(18 COMMENTS)Not a surprise to me but yikes nonetheless:
In the first comprehensive study of the DNA on dollar bills, researchers at New York University’s Dirty Money Project found that currency is a medium of exchange for hundreds of different kinds of bacteria as bank notes pass from hand to hand.
By analyzing genetic material on $1 bills, the NYU researchers identified 3,000 types of bacteria in all—many times more than in previous studies that examined samples under a microscope. Even so, they could identify only about 20% of the non-human DNA they found because so many microorganisms haven’t yet been cataloged in genetic data banks.
Easily the most abundant species they found is one that causes acne. Others were linked to gastric ulcers, pneumonia, food poisoning and staph infections, the scientists said. Some carried genes responsible for antibiotic resistance.
“It was quite amazing to us,” said Jane Carlton, director of genome sequencing at NYU’s Center for Genomics and Systems Biology where the university-funded work was performed. “We actually found that microbes grow on money.”
This was, by the way, a relatively frequent complaint in 19th century monetary writings, with the advent of banknotes.
JackYikes. I still have an email account with Yahoo.
