Salon.com > North America

How to survive a plague

Tue, 14 May 2013 12:11:00 +0000

As you’ve surely seen, the East Coast is preparing for a pending cicada invasion. And by “preparing,” I mean “hyperventilating in front of a computer screen.” Sure, everything happening remotely close to New York always gets blown out or proportion—that big gray cloud you just Instagrammed is going to release water, which is called “rain”; everyone will be fine—but, I mean, there are going to be a lot of cicadas, like multiple-hundreds per person. Despite the pending invasion of these mutating alien-shrimp pods, you’re all probably going to be fine. Probably. To get the low-down on what the upcoming cicada onslaught will be like, I exchanged some emails with Dr. Angie Shelton, a biology professor at Indiana University. Here’s what she said.

2 arrested in Canada terror plot

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 21:37:00 +0000

TORONTO (AP) — Two men were arrested and charged with plotting a terrorist attack against a Canadian passenger train with support from al-Qaida "elements" in Iran, police said Monday.

Chiheb Esseghaier, 30, and Raed Jaser, 35, who live in Montreal and Toronto, were planning to derail a Via Rail passenger train in Toronto but posed no immediate threat, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said.

"This is the first known al-Qaida planned attack that we've experienced in Canada," Superintendent Doug Best told a news conference.

RCMP Assistant Commissioner James Malizia said the two men had "direction and guidance" from "al-Qaida elements located in Iran," though there was no reason to think the planned attacks were state-sponsored. Police said the men did not get financial support from al-Qaida, but declined to provide more details.

"It was definitely in the planning stage but not imminent," RCMP chief superintendent Jennifer Strachan said. "We are alleging that these two individuals took steps and conducted activities to initiate a terrorist attack. They watched trains and railways."

This sheepshead fish with human teeth will haunt your dreams

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 20:16:00 +0000

There’s nothing like the thought of a delicious piece of meat with human teeth wrapped in prison stripes to put you to a gentle, dreamless sleep.

Despite the way it looks, the sheepshead fish (Archosargus probatocephalus) has at least one thing going for it. While other members of the Sparidae family are trying out various forms of hermaphroditism, including changing from female to male (protogyny), doing the opposite (protandry), or being unisexual (gonochorists), the sheepshead is just sitting at home watching cartoons and leaving its genitals where they are. So that’s something.

U.S. energy independence is a pipe dream

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 15:31:00 +0000

Last winter, fossil-fuel enthusiasts began trumpeting the dawn of a new “golden age of oil” that would kick-start the American economy, generate millions of new jobs, and free this country from its dependence on imported petroleum. Ed Morse, head commodities analyst at Citibank, was typical. In the Wall Street Journal he crowed, “The United States has become the fastest-growing oil and gas producer in the world, and is likely to remain so for the rest of this decade and into the 2020s.”

Why is airport art so lame?

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 21:36:00 +0000

BERKELEY, California — These days, we experience the world on a much more international level. Whether online or through travel, the world feels smaller to us. As this trend continues, artistic experiences hosted online, available for anyone in the world with a internet connection to access, grow increasingly diverse and interesting. Unfortunately, that same diversity can’t be ascribed to the physical counterpart of global space, where the base unit of artistic experience just might be the airport.

The public art on display in airports often forms a traveler’s introduction to a city. I have been to many cities only in the sense that I had a layover in the local airport. As travelers make their way from plane to exit or from pick-up to hotel, their travel weary eyes are still hunting for cues about the new environment. Airport art provides those cues, giving hints as to what a new city might be like.