Weekend Briefing

Fri, Oct 23 2009 at 8:55 AM EST

DISCOMFORT FOOD: Cultural trends emerge and fade faster than they used to, but the world of food has been especially hot in recent years. Farmers, chefs and even food critics are becoming superstars, and Americans in general are hungrier than ever for a taste of what's next. Many new food trends are refreshing, such as organic farming and locally sourced ingredients, while others run the gamut from pretentious to preposterous. The Chicago Tribune's Christopher Borrelli takes aim at some of the latter this week, rounding up the "10 worst dining trends of the last decade," and the website Serious Eats follows with its own criticism of his criticism. Borrelli's approach is alternately populist and preachy, as he condemns $40 entrees, molecular gastronomy and "the menu as book" one minute, then fried onion blossoms and "proudly obnoxious fast food" (such as Hardee's 1,420-calorie Monster Thickburger) the next. He's rarely wrong, though, and tempers his gripes with this quote from New York chef David Chang: "Bad trends were usually good trends. They just got watered down into a really bad, overdone trend." Serious Eats' Michael Natkin nonetheless takes issue with Borrelli's list, offering a point-by-point rebuttal, although the critics agree on at least two things they both hate — thick menus and Thickburgers. (Sources: Chicago Tribune, Serious Eats)

WATCH THIS SPACE: Jupiter and some of its biggest moons are on full display throughout October, and this weekend the International Year of Astronomy 2009 is planning more than 75 events across the United States to celebrate and popularize "sidewalk astronomy." The IYA2009 aims to "stimulate worldwide interest, especially among young people, in astronomy and science," according to its website, in honor of the 400th anniversary of Galileo Galilei's first use of an astronomical telescope. "We hope to give many people their first glimpse of the marvels of the Universe through a telescope," an IYA2009 spokesman said earlier this week, "showing them breathtaking sights such as the cloud bands of Jupiter, and the rocky desolation of craters and mountain ranges on our Moon." In addition to public viewing events at observatories, planetariums and museums around the country, the group is also encouraging amateur astronomers to photograph what they see to enter in the Galilean Nights photography competition. (Sources: SpaceRef.com, IAY2009)

BIOFOOLISH: An accounting error in the way we count biofuels' contribution to greenhouse gas emissions could derail efforts to curb climate change, according to a new study published Friday in the journal Science. The problem is that virtually all emissions calculations — including those in the Kyoto Protocol, the EU's cap-and-trade law and the proposed U.S. climate bill — treat biofuels as if they have no effect on levels carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, even though they do release CO2 when burned. That's because biofuel crops like corn absorb CO2 while they're growing, offsetting what they later emit as fuel. But in many developing countries, farmers are increasingly clearing forests to grow biofuel crops, which removes a large, dense carbon sink and replaces it with rows of corn, soybeans or sugarcane. If the world continues pursuing ethanol and other biofuels as it does today, the researchers warn, climate change could actually worsen as more and more forests fall. The solution, some suggest, is to reward the owners of such forests for not tearing them down. (Sources: Washington Post, New York Times, e! Science News)

A FUR PIECE: Alaska's threatened polar bears will soon have a place to call their own, the Obama administration announced Thursday, more than a year after they were named a threatened species. The Interior Department plans to set aside 200,000 square miles of Alaska sea ice, coastline and barrier islands as critical habitat for polar bears, making it the largest such habitat zone ever established in the United States. Polar bears were added to the endangered species list last May, becoming the first species listed due to climate change, which is melting the sea ice that's crucial to their survival. Of course, setting aside all that sea ice is pointless if carbon emissions just continue melting it, a point that Assistant Interior Secretary Tom Strickland acknowledged. "We recognize that the greatest threat to the polar bear is the melting of sea ice," he told reporters Thursday. "We also recognize that the Endangered Species Act is not the tool to directly address carbon emissions, which are the root cause of climate change." While a climate bill that would address that larger problem meanders through Congress, there's still a skirmish over the habitat designation itself. Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell is fighting the listing, arguing that it will hurt economic activity, namely oil and gas development. But environmentalists point out that just this week, the Interior Department gave Royal Dutch Shell the go-ahead to drill exploratory oil wells within the polar bears' new habitat zone, a move that one environmental lawyer calls "schizophrenic." (Sources: Los Angeles Times, Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, Reuters)

RED SCARE: NASA satellites have spotted several enormous wildfires burning in North Korea, with giant smoke plumes billowing all the way into the Sea of Japan, but the reclusive communist state's official media have made no mention of them. The Aqua satellite took true-color images that show smoke covering the country's northeastern skies and reaching far eastward toward the Pacific Ocean, as well as red hotspots that may indicate the locations of the blazes. South Korean officials say they're still not sure what's going on. "We are still trying to analyse it," AFP quotes one official as saying. "One possibility is forest fires. But we are not certain about what it is, what caused it and what it looks like at the moment." (Source: AFP)

GATORADE FOR FROGS: A group of Australian biologists has finally cracked the mystery of a deadly frog pandemic that's been annihilating amphibians around the world since 1989, although a cure remains elusive. Scientists didn't even know what was causing the illness until 1998, and even then, they couldn't figure out why it was so lethal. It's a fungus that creates a superficial skin disease, called chytridiomycosis, that doesn't seem like it should stop frogs' hearts like it does. But in Friday's edition of the journal Science, the Aussie researchers report that a chytrid infection does more than just irritate frogs' skin — it makes it much harder for them to absorb electrolytes from water, which drastically reduces the levels of sodium and potassium ions in their blood and eventually causes a heart attack. There is hope, however: By feeding frogs an oral electrolyte solution similar to Gatorade or Powerade, the scientists were able to at least delay death for a while, potentially representing the first step toward a cure. (Sources: USA Today, BBC News, New Scientist)

— Russell McLendon

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Photo (onion blossom): flavio oota/Flickr

Photo (Jupiter and moons): NASA

Photo (corn): U.S. Department of Agriculture

Photo (polar bears): U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Photo (blue poison dart frogs): cabq.gov