In 1907, Anna H. Sturla boarded a ferry, slipped on a banana peel, and demanded $250 in compensation from the boat’s operators. Three doctors had examined her, she claimed, and told her she needed an operation. She received $150—a significant sum at the time, although less than the $500 she received after her first banana-peel incident, a fall on the train-station steps at 125th Street and Park Avenue.
“Not six months went by after that,” a New York Times reporter wrote, “before Mrs. Sturla was once more in trouble with these arch-foes of hers, banana peels.” In total, Anna Sturla received $2,950 from 17 accidents in four years. In 11 cases, Sturla blamed banana peels. When the Times wrote about her, Sturla was on trial for making fraudulent complaints.
Usually if I have a bananna peal or an apple core in the woods, I'll toss it somewhere away from the a trail or a campsite, or bury it in the woods. It probably feeds wildlife, but so be it.
For millions of American college students, the first taste of adult freedom comes in a bite of Stouffer’s French Bread Pizza or a salty slurp from a Cup Noodles. Hemmed in by fire-safety rules and tight budgets, dorm dwellers have long embraced such microwaved delicacies, honing cook times in shared lounges with low-powered appliances balanced atop mini fridges. When I was in school, my first microwaved drug of choice was Kraft Easy Mac, a mid-2000s classic, which gave way to Lean Cuisines and Smart Ones dinners once fluorescent cheese powder started weirding me out.
I have to say I like my microwave, but rarely have much in the way of microwave package food, mainly because I'm too cheap to buy it. But the microwave is a fast and easy way to cook food that really doesn't use much power -- although I dislike how my microwave has a 2 watt consumption of power when it's not operating, so I always unplug it when it's not in. While the current draw might be as much as 1200 watts, it's usuall Plus it's quick to use.
So to test your new antidepressant, you need an efficient method of making a lot of rats exhibit anhedonia — that is, making them lose interest in things they used to enjoy, like sugar. How do you think you’d do that? It turns out you don’t need to traumatize them. The most reliable protocol is “chronic mild stress.”
There are many methods of making the lives of experimental animals mildly but chronically miserable — a cage floor that administers random electric shocks; a deep swimming pool with no way to rest or climb out; a stronger “intruder” introduced into the same cage. One neuroscientist actually nicknamed his apparatus the Pit of Despair. But they’re all variations on the same theme: remove all predictability and control from the animal’s life. Then take notes as they gradually lose interest in being alive.
In the U.S.—where Americans now waste 70% more food than they did in the 1970s—food waste is responsible for roughly the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions as 37 million cars. Globally, if food waste was a country, it would be the third-largest polluting country in the world. When food rots in landfills, it releases the potent greenhouse gas methane. But the largest source of emissions comes from growing the food; even if it’s composted, food waste also wastes the fertilizer, fuel, and other resources that went into producing it.
If you body consumes 2,000 calories a day, that means you are consuming 2.3 kWh a day of energy from food or roughly 96 watts an hour.
That means your body is consuming 856 kWh a year to stay alive. If you could plug your body in the electric grid at 15 cents a kilowatt hour rather then eating food, you could eat for an entire year for $128.40 a year.
But then again, humans stomachs aren’t very efficient at converting food to energy — only about 25% efficient.
Electricity might be converted to work at a much higher rate by theoretical humans in the future — maybe your food bill would be like $30 a year if you could eat electricity rather than food.