The Really Big Picture

THAT OLD FOOD’S STILL GOOD

James Valente: “Thought you would find stilltasty.com right up your alley. Just enter a food and it will tell you the best way to store it to maximize the time it will keep and exactly how long it will keep. I’ve tried it twice – with refrigerated yogurt and ham from the deli – and both times it was accurate and I avoided the dreaded ‘does this smell bad or is it just in my head’ dance.”

☞ As a guy who yesterday ate sausages marked “sell or freeze by October 18, 2008,” not being able to remember when or whether I had ever even put then IN the freezer, this site is right up my alley. Enjoy!

AN IVY LEAGUE EDUCATION FOR FREE*

Stephen Willey: “Thousands of free video lectures from the world’s top scholars.”

☞ This is another example of how we can live better, richer lives even as our consumption of energy and raw materials, of necessity, becomes more frugal and efficient. And you can listen to these lectures while taking a walk, something no tuition-paying Yalie can do.

*with degree: $200,000 additional

A STRAIGHTFORWARD LIGHT BULB COMPARISON/SUMMARY

Here.

PHOTOS OF REALLY BIG LIGHT BULBS

Here – taken with the Hubble telescope. My favorite (scroll down) is of the Sombrero Galaxy, 28 million light years from Earth, that they say contains “800 billion suns and is 50,000 light years across.”

I hear stuff like this and can only think of that line at the end of Casablanca where Rick tells Ilsa, “ . . . it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans . . . ” He wasn’t talking cosmology, but his tone of voice – frustrated that she was looking at things too narrowly – would have fit that context, too.