by Nicola | Dec 14, 2009
IMAGE: Pujon Potato Starch Factory, from the International Starch Institute. Over at the Foreign Policy editor’s blog, Joshua Keating notes with surprise that North Korea’s Central News Agency chose not to make much of U.S. special envoy Stephen... by Nicola | Dec 9, 2009
IMAGE: From “Soil: A Series,” 2001, by Laura Parker: “Palette,” “Clod,” “Soil Bar,” and “Soil Survey Books.” “It used to be,” writes William Bryant Logan in Dirt, “that a good farmer could... by Nicola | Nov 28, 2009
As a curious coda to my previous post, in which Kew’s Plant Health and Quarantine Officer, Sara Redstone, notes the frequent mismatch between biological and political borders and discusses the role of quarantine in creating an artificial biological boundary, I... by Nicola | Nov 24, 2009
IMAGE: The Milkmaid (detail), Johannes Vermeer, about 1657–58, oil on canvas; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, via The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Johannes Vermeer’s The Milkmaid is currently on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, on loan... by Nicola | Nov 22, 2009
By the end of this month, Subway, the ubiquitous and mediocre American sandwich chain, will have installed a franchise on top of a crane. According to the New York Post, the shop will be “fitted into a shipping container-like structure,” which will then be... by Nicola | Nov 18, 2009
IMAGE: The Hindenburg zeppelin, which caught fire as it tried to dock in New Jersey at the end of a 1937 cross-Atlantic voyage. Last week, the New York Post reported that “a charred bottle of beer that survived the explosion of the Hindenburg will be auctioned...