Eye on Springfield

Tits and the City

This is pretty cool:

Dutch researchers found that urban species of birds sing short, fast songs rather than the slower melodies of countryside birds.

City birds also sing at a higher pitch and will try out different song types.

Experts said city birds have adapted to counter background noise and increase their chances of finding a mate.

The birds in question are Great Tits. Hence the heading. (What did you think it meant — bosoms? You have a filthy, filthy mind.)


Mostly Harmless?

From the "Duh" files: New Crops Needed to Avoid Famines.

What they mean is, new varieties of crop plants are needed that are better able to withstand the environmental stresses of global warming. Of course, the annual planetary agricultural yield is currently more than adequate to feed all 6+ billion of us Homos. The problem is not with production, it's with distribution. I find it hard to imagine that the existing distributional inequities will be ironed out while yields decline (because even with fancy-schmancy new varieties adaptation takes time, and during a period of change it'll be that much more difficult to maintain a reliable match between variants and contemporary conditions).


Whole Foods, My Shiny Metal Ass

In this New Yorker article about global water usage, it says,

Economists use the concept, known as “virtual water,” to illustrate a simple fact: it is often cheaper to import something like grain or cotton than it is to transport water. The amount of virtual water contained in ordinary products is often surprisingly large: a recent study from the Netherlands found that a standard cup of coffee required a hundred and forty litres of water, most of which is used to grow the coffee plant. This means that it takes more than a thousand drops of water to make one drop of coffee. Most of the water used to make that coffee is not actually Dutch, because the coffee is grown in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Virtual water is one way to use less water on agriculture in a place where it is needed for other purposes.

"Where it is needed for other purposes." Hmmm. What's that we hear about Third-World famines because of drought, while we Westerners slurp up all those Double-Tall-Triple-Skinny-Half-Caf-Mocha lattes: that is, in effect, while we Westerners slurp up 140 liters ( = 70 2-liter bottles) of Third-World water with every cup of coffee we drink? I began to feel a bit ashamed of my two-cup-a-day habit, and thought I would try a coffee substitute like chicory (because I am a softie for classics). Except that it cannot be found anywhere. One of the local groceries carries Café du Monde brand coffee-chicory blend, but I wanted to find straight chicory if I could (never mind that I hear it has a sort of sour taste to it: the way I drink coffee is more like taking coffee with my cream and sugar than vice versa, anyway [and, yes, I am perfectly well aware of the irony of my coffee-shame in the face of my cane sugar consumption]). After trying the local groceries and supermarkets, I thought I'd give Whole Foods a try. Given their philosophy, I thought surely they would would have it. Here's the exchange at the service desk:

Me: I'm looking for chicory...?
WF: What?
Me: Chicory.
WF: What's that?
Me: It's a coffee substitute.
WF: Can you spell it?
Me: C-h-i-c-o-r-y.
WF: Let me check.

[Long wait.]

WF: I'm sorry; we don't have any coffee substitutes.

How did coffee-drinking, if not coffee snobbery, come to be associated with a sense of environmental responsibility?