Poor BHK is feeling a little under the weather, and my headache is fading from the stabbing noggin-ache to a dull oceanic roar in my skull.

Tonight we had veggie-loaf with corn on the cob, potatoes and the last of our garden’s zucchini. Hopefully we’ll get to planting another batch for an autumnal harvest. The in-laws were over to watch the tennis semi-finals, but I wasn’t really into it… so I thumbed through the books BHK grabbed for me at the library.

The World Without Us is pretty neat. (I was first nudged there about this time )

From the Inside Flap
A penetrating, page-turning tour of a post-human Earth

In The World Without Us, Alan Weisman offers an utterly original approach to questions of humanity’s impact on the planet: he asks us to envision our Earth, without us.

In this far-reaching narrative, Weisman explains how our massive infrastructure would collapse and finally vanish without human presence; which everyday items may become immortalized as fossils; how copper pipes and wiring would be crushed into mere seams of reddish rock; why some of our earliest buildings might be the last architecture left; and how plastic, bronze sculpture, radio waves, and some man-made molecules may be our most lasting gifts to the universe.

The World Without Us reveals how, just days after humans disappear, floods in New York’s subways would start eroding the city’s foundations, and how, as the world’s cities crumble, asphalt jungles would give way to real ones. It describes the distinct ways that organic and chemically treated farms would revert to wild, how billions more birds would flourish, and how cockroaches in unheated cities would perish without us. Drawing on the expertise of engineers, atmospheric scientists, art conservators, zoologists, oil refiners, marine biologists, astrophysicists, religious leaders from rabbis to the Dali Lama, and paleontologists—who describe a prehuman world inhabited by megafauna like giant sloths that stood taller than mammoths—Weisman illustrates what the planet might be like today, if not for us.

From places already devoid of humans (a last fragment of primeval European forest; the Korean DMZ; Chernobyl), Weisman reveals Earth’s tremendous capacity for self-healing. As he shows which human devastations are indelible, and which examples of our highest art and culture would endure longest, Weisman’s narrative ultimately drives toward a radical but persuasive solution that needn’t depend on our demise. It is narrative nonfiction at its finest, and in posing an irresistible concept with both gravity and a highly readable touch, it looks deeply at our effects on the planet in a way that no other book has.

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via the Science blog & springheeljack –

If you eat the right grains for breakfast, such as whole-grain barley or rye, the regulation of your blood sugar is facilitated after breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It was previously not known that certain whole-grain products have this effect all day. This is due to a combination of low GI (glycemic index) and certain type of indigestible carbohydrates that occur in certain grain products. The findings are presented in a dissertation from the Faculty of Engineering at Lund University. The dissertation shows that even people who have had a breakfast low in GI find it easier to concentrate for the rest of the morning.

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1 year ago – flickr maps, out with TW and saw Pirates, no putt-putt, Rope swing for Danny, It must be love, words that make me laugh, cherry-chocolate milkshake

2 years ago – Katrina new orleans satmaps, on call again, cookies for genetic goodies, big rock candy mountain, elephant prosthesis

3 years ago – More Frances, Dan Snores, Newt Pics, observations.

4 years ago – neurologist, giant lizard in Beirut, grizzlies, Y-chromosome vanishing, work drama, Cathi’s dad gets’ trach, Egyptology, Ft. Laud ghosts, Scientology

5 years ago – freaky temple, edbook’s llamas, Bush behaves a bit, bad dream, Friendly street light.

6 years ago – contretemps , liverish, Rhinestone Cowboy, social lubrication, spiritual/paranormal/xenobiological poll (fascinating results), stopping b/w theft, Anne Heche a loony

7 years ago – No Norton, Supers Gaming, interests, met twinstar & estokes (via Scotto’s Wall Scrawls)