
Woodcuts by by Bryan Nash Gill. Also available in book form.

The 21 year progression of agricultural expansion in the Wadi As-Sirhan Basin, Saudi Arabia.
Looks almost like a disease.
I have an ongoing argument with my family about whether or not spiciness is actually a flavor/spice. I don’t think it is.
Perhaps we seek out the painful experience of snacking on chillies while consciously maintaining awareness that there is no real danger to ourselves … it is this cognitive mismatch itself that provides the thrill: … the burn of capsaicin only seems to be threatening.
This is my opinion of why people like spiciness, and I think it has some roundabout evolutionary answer as well.
The Guardian World News
via Why do we eat chilli?.

A sensationalist title (see below). The article is about how much more efficient C4 plants are than C3 and how agricultural scientists are trying to increase yield by ideally turning C3 plants into C4. Of course it hasn’t been working. We really need to be able to fully understand and manipulate genetics (genetic programming? seems that term is already taken by something a lot less relevant), but for now, scientists hope that some educated swapping of genes will do the trick.
Supercrops: Fixing the flaws in photosynthesis – life – 14 September 2010 – New Scientist.
Edit Sorry, when I’m at school I can’t tell when things are behind a paywall. Try here for the full article.