Things I tripped over on my way to the internet

I’ve always liked pie over cake for my birthday. Good to know I’m not alone. (Meant to post this last week, been saving it for a while.)

Good info on how your laptop battery actually works.

This whole series has been great but this most recent entry is a particularly good one.

Some good info here. If you haven’t already tried Picasa (free software from Google for managing photos) you should check it out.

Interesting observations about social media trends. Here’s the key quote:

“However, as everything becomes more social I believe there will be a boom in curation technologies that help us find the signal in the noise. These apps will help us spot trends from friends.”

I can’t find anything wrong with any of these. Except maybe #2. Would you add anything?

Looks like a good list.

My wife and I were just discussing this this morning and I remembered seeing this recently and looked it up. This doesn’t really tell the whole story because the real question is, how much sugar is too much?

Various googling reveals that the USDA recommends no more than 8% of the daily caloric intake should come from “refined” or “added” sugar. So how much is that?

According to the Sugar Stacks site (linked above), one of those sugar cubes is about 4 grams which equals 16 calories. For a child with, say, a 1500 calorie daily diet that would be 7 or 8 cubes. However, calorie needs for children can fluctuate wildly.

Also, check out the How Much Sugar in Snack Foods page. Those yogurt-covered raisins have less sugar than the same serving of real raisins!

Few months old but still relevant from the NYT.

This is a great list. (christianity)

Via @Atlantic_Food, a useful, non-gimicky list of fruits and vegetables. Buy organic for the items on the “Dirty Dozen” list. Selected quotes:

[P]eople can lower their pesticide exposure by almost 80 percent by avoiding the top twelve most contaminated fruits and vegetables and eating the least contaminated instead. Eating the 12 most contaminated fruits and vegetables will expose a person to about 10 pesticides per day, on average. Eating the 15 least contaminated will expose a person to less than 2 pesticides per day.

Nearly all the studies used to create the list test produce after it has been rinsed or peeled.

slateinbrief:

Four theories: 1)genetic differences could make Americans more resistant to the virus, 2)Mexico and America are actually dealing with different viruses, 3)another pathogen in Mexico is combining with swine flu to make it more deadly there or 4)the US and Mexico measure statistics related to the outbreak differently.

Two more. Inferior health care and sanitary conditions. More reality-check info here.

So there’s this really cool group blog about food and they said I could contribute stuff there so check out my post!