Prohibition and the Transformation of American Food
In our latest Freakonomics Radio on Marketplace podcast, “How American Food Got Bad,” Tyler Cowen gives some specific, surprising reasons why food got so bad. (You can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, or read the transcript here.)
One big historical factor: Prohibition. Restaurants that relied on alcohol sales closed their doors, often replaced by diners, soda fountains, and candy shops. This new breed of restaurant served hot dogs, hamburgers, chop suey, and what we now know as classic American fast food. We traded quality for speed and convenience. Here are some photos of that transformation, when cheap food outlets popped up to meet the demands of our growing consumer society. Read More »
What Do the NFL and Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Have in Common?
Answer:
They are both reliant on the talents of the Rooney and Mara dynasties.
The Pittsburgh Steelers are majority-owned by the Rooney family. The late Art Rooney (“the Chief”) ran the club for many years, ultimately giving way to son Dan, who has since given way to son Art Rooney II.
The New York Giants are 50 percent owned by John Mara. The late Tim Mara ran the club for many years, ultimately giving way to his son (and John’s father) Wellington; there have been a variety of other Maras involved in the team. Read More »
Good Climate News: The “Methane Time Bomb” Apparently Isn’t
“At least one nightmare scenario can be safely crossed off worst-case climate list,” Andy Revkin writes by e-mail. “Even with intense ocean warming through this millennium, thawing won’t reach the big subsea methane deposits. There were ample signs this was overblown but new work goes farther.”
He has the full story on his Dot Earth blog:
Read More »Given that methane, molecule for molecule, has at least 20 times the heat-trapping properties of carbon dioxide, it’s important to get a handle on whether these are new releases, the first foretaste of some great outburst from thawing sea-bed stores of the gas, or simply a longstanding phenomenon newly observed.
If you read the Independent of Britain, you’d certainly be thinking the worst. The newspaper has led the charge in fomenting worry over the gas emissions, with portentous, and remarkably similar, stories in 2008 and this week.
If you read geophysical journals and survey scientists tracking past and future methane emissions, you get an entirely different picture. …:
[T]he authors found that roughly 1 meter of the subsurface permafrost thawed in the past 25 years, adding to the 25 meters of already thawed soil. Forecasting the expected future permafrost thaw, the authors found that even under the most extreme climatic scenario tested this thawed soil growth will not exceed 10 meters by 2100 or 50 meters by the turn of the next millennium. The authors note that the bulk of the methane stores in the east Siberian shelf are trapped roughly 200 meters below the seafloor… [Read the rest.]
FREAK-est Links, Voter-Fraud Edition
1. Russian election fraud analysis now in English; no matter the language, Putin disagrees
2. Using a natural experiment to find voter fraud in Japan (abstract; PDF)
3. And, not quite voter fraud, but: politicians who cut budget deficits don’t necessarily get booted out of office.
and 
. You can also watch it on 