James' World 2

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Was ever a word so misused as “sustainable”? “Healthy” comes close, and indeed the two are often bandied around together, in trite “good for you, good for the planet” taglines that often appear on foods which are anything but. The question of what we should eat to help combat climate change and environmental degradation has never been more important – nor so confusing. While research on the subject is ongoing, there are definitely some foods which, with caveats, you can scoff with a clear conscience.

“Good eating starts at home, and one of the most important things we can do for the future of the planet is to minimize food miles – so our staples should be foods that can grow perfectly well in this country,” advises Patrick Holden, chief executive of the Sustainable Food Trust. Another basic principle is to do your best to understand the story behind what you’re eating – be it plant or animal: “If you know who produced your food, they are accountable to you, and more likely to care.”

Grass-fed beef and lamb

These meats are the most controversial, complex, and heavily caveated inclusion in this list, but Holden, one of the earliest proponents of regenerative agriculture (which involves rearing livestock within a mixed farming system in order to restore organic matter – and with it, carbon – to the soil) makes a case for eating them. Soil is an invaluable carbon sink; yet the separation of crops and livestock farming has left half of the country dependent on artificial fertilizers, the application of which “reduces organic matter and microbial diversity”, he says, resulting in the leaching of carbon. By rotating livestock with crops (as was done for centuries before the intensification of agriculture), farmers can “build soil carbon and so offset livestock emissions” – and make the most of grass, a plant we can’t eat, but which grows in abundance in the UK.

Consumed in moderation, red meat is highly nutritious and also increases the bioavailability of nutrients in plant foods. “There is a good reason humans have coevolved alongside animals which eat grass,” says Carolyn Steel, author of Sitopia: How Food Can Save the World. “Grass is rich in nutrients, but we can’t digest it. So we eat animals that can.”

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Wakame seaweed salad with sesame and green tea. Photograph: Westend61/Getty Images

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On 27 August 1883, the Earth let out a noise louder than any it has made since.

It was 10:02 a.m. local time when the sound emerged from the island of Krakatoa, which sits between Java and Sumatra in Indonesia. It was heard 1,300 miles away in the Andaman and Nicobar islands (“extraordinary sounds were heard, as of guns firing”); 2,000 miles away in New Guinea and Western Australia (“a series of loud reports, resembling those of artillery in a north-westerly direction”); and even 3,000 miles away in the Indian Ocean island of Rodrigues, near Mauritius* (“coming from the eastward, like the distant roar of heavy guns.”) In all, it was heard by people in over 50 different geographical locations, together spanning an area covering a thirteenth of the globe.

Think, for a moment, just how crazy this is. If you’re in Boston and someone tells you that they heard a sound coming from New York City, you’re probably going to give them a funny look. But Boston is a mere 200 miles from New York. What we’re talking about here is like being in Boston and clearly hearing a noise coming from Dublin, Ireland. Traveling at the speed of sound (766 miles or 1,233 kilometers per hour), it takes a noise about 4 hours to cover that distance. This is the most distant sound that has ever been heard in recorded history.

So what could possibly create such an earth-shatteringly loud bang? A volcano on Krakatoa had just erupted with a force so great that it tore the island apart, emitting a plume of smoke that reached 17 miles into the atmosphere, according to a geologist who witnessed it¹. You could use this observation to calculate that stuff spewed out of the volcano at over 1,600 miles per hour—or nearly half a mile per second. That’s more than twice the speed of sound.

This explosion created a deadly tsunami with waves over a hundred feet (30 meters) in height. One hundred sixty-five coastal villages and settlements were swept away and entirely destroyed. In all, the Dutch (the colonial rulers of Indonesia at the time) estimated the death toll at 36,417, while other estimates exceeded 120,000.

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A lithograph of the massive 1883 eruption of Krakatoa. From The eruption of Krakatoa, and subsequent phenomena, 1888; Parker & Coward; via Wikipedia.

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Even in an age of smartphones, crunching numbers quickly — and getting good at it — can give you snappy, useful answers to pressing real-life math questions such as, Is this shirt a good deal? Or How much should I tip my Uber driver? Here are some good mental math shortcuts to keep under your hat.

To sign your check in record time:

To calculate the amount of a 20 percent tip, calculate 10 percent (or remove the last digit) and double it. For instance, with a $42.50 bill, 10 percent is $4.25, and double it to get an $8.50 tip.

To ace sale shopping:

To find out how much you’ll pay for an item that’s a certain percentage off, first subtract the percent off from 100. So if it’s 30 percent off, use 70; 60 percent off, use 40, etc. Divide this number and the price by 10 and then multiply the resultant two numbers. For instance, if a $20 shirt is 60 percent off, multiply 2 by 4 for a total of $8. A $40 shirt at 30 percent off would be 4 multiplied by 7 for a total of $28 final price.

If you just want to calculate the amount that’s coming off (not the final price), divide both numbers by 10 and then multiply the resulting numbers. So 60 percent off $120 would be 6 x 12, for a total of $72 off.

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Photo by Bethany Robertson/Apartment Therapy

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Taylor Wang was deeply despondent.

A day earlier, he had quite literally felt on top of the world by becoming the first Chinese-born person to fly into space. But now, orbiting Earth on board the Space Shuttle, all of his hopes and dreams, everything he had worked on for the better part of a decade as an American scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, had come crashing down around him.

Wang was the principal investigator of an experiment called the Drop Dynamics Module, which aimed to uncover the fundamental physical behavior of liquid drops in microgravity. He had largely built the experiment, and he then effectively won a lottery ticket when NASA selected him to fly on the 17th flight of the Space Shuttle program, the STS-51-B mission. Wang, along with six other crew members, launched aboard Space Shuttle Challenger in April 1985.

On the second day of the mission, Wang floated over to his experiment and sought to activate the Drop Dynamics Module. But it didn’t work. He asked the NASA flight controllers on the ground if he could take some time to try to troubleshoot the problem and maybe fix the experiment. But on any Shuttle mission, time is precious. Every crew member has a detailed timeline, with a long list of tasks during waking hours. The flight controllers were reluctant.

After initially being told no, Wang pressed a bit further. “Listen, I know my system very well,” he said. “Give me a shot.” Still, the flight controllers demurred. Wang grew desperate. So he said something that chilled the nerves of those in Houston watching over the safety of the crew and the Shuttle mission.

“Hey, if you guys don’t give me a chance to repair my instrument, I’m not going back,” Wang said.

Exactly what happened after that may never be known. But thanks to new reporting, we may finally have some answers. And though this is an old story, it still reverberates today, four decades on, with lasting consequences into the era of commercial spaceflight as more and more people fly into orbit.

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The STS-51-B mission begins with the liftoff of the Challenger from Pad 39A in April 1985.

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