Month: September 2016

 
Welcome to fall! Cooler temperatures are here. Now for the bad news: We’re in the peak of hurricane season. This dreaded time of the year is also known as Cape Verde season, after the islands where the so-called “hurricane highway” originates. Here are seven facts about this awesome—and sometimes deadly—weather phenomenon.

1. WHERE THE HURRICANE HIGHWAY BEGINS

The Cape Verde Islands, located off the northwest coast of Africa, are where the hurricane highway begins. Thunderstorms destined to become hurricanes often form into a tropical depression near the islands, slowly organizing and strengthening over the following week as the system moves toward the Caribbean. These storms have a long time to get their act together, but they also have to cover a lot of distance without losing their power to reach the East Coast as a hurricane. Some storms are able to thrive with little wind shear, ample warm water, and moist air, while others starve and dissipate if they encounter cooler waters, strong winds, or ingest dry, dusty air blowing off the Sahara Desert.

2. WHY HERE?

It’s hard to imagine from North America that a couple of thunderstorms on another continent thousands of miles away can swirl up into a monstrous storm, but it happens almost every year. The extreme temperature gradient between the blistering heat of the Sahara desert and the more temperate climate of the savanna to its south creates an easterly jet stream that triggers clusters of showers and thunderstorms. These clouds then move from east to west, emerging off the western African coast near the Cape Verde Islands. Every year, the right conditions turn a handful of these localized storms into tropical storms that make their way across the Atlantic.

3. THE BIGGEST HURRICANE ALWAYS STARTS FROM THE SMALLEST THUNDERSTORM.

 
Hurricanes, cyclones, typhoons—these are all actually names for the same force of nature, like the storm that hit the east coast in 1992. Cyclones like Hurricane Andrew don’t just form out of thin air. All tropical cyclones require a relatively tiny “nucleus” of thunderstorms in order to develop. When the air and water temperatures are right, these groups of thunderstorms sometimes spin up into a fierce low-pressure system capable of causing a lot of damage. We see lots of these seedling thunderstorms over the ocean every year, but only a small number of them actually become hurricanes.

4. TROPICAL CYCLONES FORM IN DIFFERENT AREAS IN DIFFERENT MONTHS.

Where a tropical storm or hurricane begins its trip across the ocean depends on what time of the year it forms. Storms that form early in the season usually get their start from thunderstorms or cold fronts that stall over the water very close to land; almost all of the storms that form in the Atlantic in June come to life within a few hundred miles of land. When we reach the peak of hurricane season, though, they start to form farther and farther out in the ocean—all the way out to the shores of Africa.

5. WE’RE IN THE PEAK OF HURRICANE SEASON.

Hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean runs from June 1 through November 30. Storms are most common during that six-month stretch of the year, but sometimes they can form earlier or later too. That said, the period between the middle of August and the middle of October is typically the climatological peak of the season. That’s because as the ocean water gets warmer, the atmosphere becomes conducive to vigorous storms, increasing the risk for hurricanes and tropical storms.

6. CAPE VERDE STORMS CAN EASILY LAND IN THE HISTORY BOOKS …

 
Tropical waves traveling west from the coast of Africa in the middle of the summer are the culprits behind some of the worst hurricanes we’ve experienced in the United States. For example, on August 8, 2005, a small tropical wave emerged off the coast of Africa, soon becoming Tropical Depression 10. That depression would fall apart a few days later, but its remnants kept moving toward the U.S., redeveloping into a new tropical depression over the Bahamas on August 23. That new tropical depression became Hurricane Katrina, the costliest hurricane to ever strike the United States.

It’s a similar story for many—but not all—major hurricanes in recent history. Hurricanes Andrew, Dennis, Ivan, Isabel, and Ike were all Cape Verde–type storms that sprang to life thousands of miles away from where they would ultimately wreak havoc.

7. … BUT NOT ALL DEVASTATING STORMS GIVE US A WEEK TO PREPARE.

While the far eastern part of the Atlantic Ocean is a hotbed of activity this time of the year, it’s not the only place you need to watch if you live near the coast. Storms that form close to land can quickly spin themselves into catastrophe. Hurricane Sandy formed just south of Jamaica and hit New Jersey in a matter of days in 2012. A tropical depression that developed east of Florida on September 18, 2005, exploded into Hurricane Rita just three days later, with 180 mph winds—the most intense storm ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico.

Meteorologists are currently predicting 2 to 4 serious storms this hurricane season. So it may be worth preparing: NOAA suggests gathering a few key disaster supplies to have on hand, getting an insurance check-up, and locating the safest high ground.

We hate to squash your autumnal dreams, but baking a pumpkin pie might not be as easy as you think. That’s because the canned pumpkin that normally makes pie prep such a breeze isn’t made of pumpkin at all. Food & Wine reports that cans of pumpkin puree—even those that advertise “100 percent pumpkin”—are actually made of a range of different squashes.

Most pumpkin purees are a mix of winter squashes, including butternut squash, Golden Delicious, and Hubbard. Meanwhile, Libby’s, the largest pumpkin puree brand, has developed its own unique brand of squash called the Dickinson, which is more closely related to a butternut squash than a pumpkin. The FDA is vague about what counts as “pumpkin,” which allows companies to pack unspecified squashes into their purees and still list pumpkin as the sole ingredient.

While it’s a little unsettling to find out your favorite pie is not what it seems, pumpkin puree brands have a good reason for their deception. While pumpkins are a quintessential part of autumn, they don’t actually taste that great. Most pumpkins are watery and a little bit stringy, and turning them into a puree takes more work, and involves less reward, than other, sweeter winter squashes.

[h/t Food & Wine]

October 31 is still more than a month away but Lotteria—a fast food chain with restaurants located throughout Japan and East Asia—is already giving customers a taste of the Halloween spirit. The company recently introduced a few new menu items, including a vampire-themed cheeseburger, The Daily Meal reports.

The “Purple Magic Bacon Double Excellent Cheeseburger” features two beef patties, cheese, and a slice of smoked bacon on top that’s arranged to resemble a monster’s “tongue”—all topped with a dollop of “purple sauce,” the chain’s regular cheese sauce dyed purple with Japanese Okinawan sweet potato. The entree is packaged in wax paper decorated with vampire fangs on it and delivered inside of a purple coffin-shaped box.

The fast food company is known for its over-the-top burgers, such as the Potato Chip Burger and the “Burger with Everything on It” (which includes a hamburger, cheeseburger, fried shrimp, ribs, bacon, slices of cheese, and a soft-boiled egg topped with the usuals, as well as a special sauce—a mix of teriyaki, mayo, spicy mayonnaise, tartar sauce, meat sauce, and ketchup). And the Halloween-themed additions to the menu are no different. Alongside the “Purple Magic Bacon Double Excellent Cheeseburger,” Lotteria will serve the Halloween Shrimp Burger, made with diced Japanese Ebisu pumpkins.

The themed dishes are all available from October 6 to October 31 for 800 yen each (about $8).

[h/t The Daily Meal]

Know of something you think we should cover? Email us at tips@mentalfloss.com.

Oregon-based design studio Waaypoint has a new way of showing tribute to America’s landscapes. Using digital elevation mapping data from NASA, the company creates jewelry pieces that are accurate recreations of mountainous areas, My Modern Met reports.

The jewelry features 3D-printed tiny mountains that are then cast in silver, plated rose gold, or plated 18k gold. The rings and pendants are then engraved with the geographic coordinates of where the mountain is located.

Each piece is meant to be a personal totem that connects the wearer to a certain place, including the first and only location currently featured: Mt. Hood, located near the company’s Portland headquarters. But you can follow the company’s progress on Instagram for more updates.

[h/t My Modern Met]

Know of something you think we should cover? Email us at tips@mentalfloss.com.

One person’s trash is another person’s art, at least for Mierle Laderman Ukeles, the artist who became the New York City Department of Sanitation’s first and only artist-in-residence in the late ’70s. She isn’t paid for the position, but she does keep an office within the city agency’s headquarters in Lower Manhattan, as The New York Times reports.

Mierle Laderman Ukeles: Maintenance Art, a retrospective of the artist currently on display at the Queens Museum, displays the fruits of that decades-long municipal partnership. In the museum’s introduction to the exhibit, the curators explain why the Department of Sanitation was the perfect place for Ukeles to create art:

Ukeles’ main body of work flows from a four­ page manifesto written in 1969. In the manifesto she identifies two categories into which Western culture has divided all activity: Development (which is valued) and Maintenance (which is not). As an artist, she considered her work part of the first group but with the birth of her first child she felt—shockingly—relegated to the second. Rather than accepting this, she designated Maintenance as Art and herself a ‘Maintenance Artist.’

Half a century later, America’s crumbling infrastructure has made Ukeles’s point about the lack of respect for maintenance even more salient. Deferred maintenance and a dearth of public spending for infrastructure upkeep have created a system of roads, trains, and airports that is out-of-date, and, in some cases, dangerously neglected.

Some of the works included in Ukeles’s retrospective include Trax for Trucks and Barges II, an audio piece using field recordings of the city’s sanitation system and snippets from the artist’s conversations with the “sanmen” who care for it; Pulse II, a facade of three-light blinkers salvaged from old trash trucks; and photos of her early ‘70s series Maintenance Art Performances, in which she washed steps, raked leaves, and scrubbed sidewalks to highlight the fundamental, overlooked tasks performed by maintenance workers that keep society running.

You can even see the piece that spurred her collaboration with the Sanitation Department: the 1971 project “I Make Maintenance Art One Hour Every Day,” when she took 704 Polaroids of 300 maintenance workers at a downtown office building and asked them whether the photos captured them during a period of Maintenance Art or of work.

“I have been very lucky to have officials and workers and the art world willing to open all the doors, to take a risk and say ‘Yes. Yes!’” Ukeles writes in her artist’s statement. “Welcome to the results.”

The show runs until February 19, and anyone who has worked or currently works for the Department of Sanitation in New York gets in free with their family.

[h/t The New York Times]

Know of something you think we should cover? Email us at tips@mentalfloss.com.

Nobody quite knows what causes asthma—but experts say that urban dwellers often have a tougher time managing their symptoms, thanks to a variety of environmental exposures. Here are seven tips for breathing a little easier in the big city.

1. CALL THE EXTERMINATOR.

Cockroaches are a gross—but common—part of urban life, and they live in most buildings and neighborhoods without discrimination. Sadly, their feces and shedding body parts can trigger allergies and asthma attacks in people who are sensitive to cockroach antigen, or proteins in the debris. And even if you don’t spot the bugs scurrying through your own apartment, there are still traces of them nearly everywhere you go in the city, says Dr. Minsoo Kim, an allergist at Columbia University Medical Center.

You can’t totally escape roaches, but taking proactive measures to reduce exposure to cockroach allergen can definitely improve your symptoms. Make sure your home is clean and clutter free, keep food and garbage in tightly sealed bags and containers, and ask your super or homeowner to address any obvious infestations. If they refuse to cooperate, show them a letter from your doctor. Also, consider getting allergy shots. (The same goes if you’re allergic to mice.)

2. GET ALLERGY SHOTS YOU DON’T THINK YOU NEED.

Believe it or not, three of the biggest allergy and asthma triggers in urban areas are dust mites, cockroaches, and—get this—cats. You can reduce the amount of dust in your home, but even if you don’t own a kitty, chances are many strangers on the subway and in the streets do.

“Cat is one of the most mobile allergens, so if someone has a cat and interacts with you, there’s enough allergen floating in the air just from their clothing to actually cause sensitization, and potentially cause problems for people who have cat-associated asthma,” says Dr. Morris Ling, an allergist-immunologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. “You’re going to interact with more people in a city, and because of that you will inevitably encounter a threshold level of cat allergen that could make your symptoms worse.”

In short, going out of your way to avoid your neighborhood bodega cat sometimes isn’t enough. If you live in a city and you know that cats trigger your symptoms, get allergy shots.

3. MOVE AWAY FROM THE HIGHWAY.

“Studies show that the closer you are to an urban center, or high traffic area, the higher the prevalence of asthma severity is,” Ling says. “The reason is that pollutants like diesel exhaust particles, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxides, and volatile organic compounds irritate the airway, and they actually stimulate the immune system.”

Just moving a half-mile or a mile away from a high traffic area can radically improve your quality of life—so consider looking for apartments near, say, a quiet park that’s far away from downtown.

4. WASH YOUR HANDS OFTEN.

“Respiratory viruses are actually the most common exacerbating factor in making asthma worse,” Ling says. “They are responsible to 50 to 80 percent of asthma exacerbations, and the most common cause is actually rhinovirus.”

Since cities are so crowded, you have a greater chance of being exposed to someone with the rhinovirus than you would in a less densely populated area—especially if you use public transportation. Some people, particularly in Asia, wear woven-cloth surgical masks to avoid catching sickness from strangers. But these thin mouth coverings might not be an effective means of protection (plus you’ll likely get some stares on the subway). However, you can minimize your chances of falling ill by frequently washing your hands, staying home when you’re sick, and minimizing contact with people who are.

5. WORK FROM HOME ON BAD AIR QUALITY DAYS.

Media outlets often broadcast “ozone-advisory,” “ozone-alert,” or “ozone-action” days, which refer to local smog conditions that might be harmful to people with asthma and other respiratory conditions. Ozone is far more common in urban areas, so make sure to monitor your city’s air quality levels on a regular basis and stay inside if it’s bad. Can’t skip work? Ask your boss about working from home on days that might cause your symptoms to flare up.

6. SWITCH CITIES.

Love city life and can’t imagine moving to the suburbs? Take a close look at your asthma triggers, and try to find an urban area that doesn’t exacerbate your symptoms. “Asthma is a very heterogeneous condition, and it has different manifestations for different people,” Kim says. If your problem is poor air quality, look for a city that has cleaner air. Constantly catching colds on the subway? Consider going somewhere where you can own a car.

7. PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR TRIGGERS (AND TAKE YOUR MEDICATION).

It’s tempting to stop taking your asthma medication if you’re feeling better or if you’re concerned about side effects. However, it’s important to adhere to your doctor’s treatment plan—and to educate yourself about your condition, Ling says. “I think patients have a very important role to play. They need to know about their asthma, and the more aware they are of their own triggers, symptoms and treatments, the better outcome they’ll have. In the busy city, it’s easy to ignore these things.”

Want to ship a bike without breaking it? Just pretend it’s an expensive television set. As The Independent reports, Dutch bicycle manufacturer VanMoof recently did just that after seeing many of their international orders getting damaged. They started printing images of flat screen TVs on their boxes, and incidents of damage dropped immediately.

genius idea alert: @vanmoof bikes had problem with shipping damage. So it put flat TVs on its boxes. Problem solved. pic.twitter.com/dsomNATUoY

— Jason Gay (@jasongay) September 4, 2016

VanMoof wanted to keep their sneaky plan under wraps, but it was eventually leaked on Twitter, prompting the company to confirm the strategy. In a blog post titled “Our secret’s out,” VanMoof’s creative director Bex Rad explained that prior to the disguise tactic, customers were getting annoyed, and the company was experiencing financial losses. And since VanMoof is aiming to sell 90 percent of its bikes online by 2020, they knew they had to find a solution.

“Our team sat together and we imagined that couriers would be more careful with packages if they knew even more precious goods were in them,” VanMoof co-founder Taco Carlier told The Independent. “As our boxes are exactly the size of a huge flat screen television, we decided to print a television on them. It works great.”

The shipping scheme has worked especially well for American orders. VanMoof’s store in Brooklyn had previously been cluttered with refurbished broken bikes that had to be sold at discount prices—but after the new boxes were introduced, damaged goods were reduced by 70 to 80 percent, Carlier told reporters.

[h/t The Independent]

Know of something you think we should cover? Email us at tips@mentalfloss.com.

Humans have a food waste problem: Every year about one third of the food we plan to consume ends up lost or thrown away, and supermarkets are among the worst offenders. Now, a new store in Pudsey, England is offering an alternative to conscientious shoppers. As Metro reports, The Warehouse sells food that would have otherwise been tossed on a “pay-as-you-feel” basis.

The shelves of the newly-opened supermarket are stocked with donations from local businesses, including restaurants, caterers, food photographers, and conventional grocery stores. A lot of the items have exceeded their sell-by date—a vague label that doesn’t necessarily mean that food is unsafe to consume. The dates on their so-called “expired” bottled water, for example, are pretty much meaningless.

The supermarket is run by a UK-based organization called the Real Junk Food Project. Like The Warehouse, the cafes in their global network sell food that would have been wasted and urge their patrons to pay however they can. This means that customers can pay with money, volunteer hours, or pay nothing at all.

Their flexible payment policy makes the market a valuable resource for citizens in need, but the organization makes it clear that they serve the whole community. According to the organization’s website:

“In order for us to prove the value and safety of food waste, we couldn’t just feed specific demographics of people. We believe food waste is absolutely fit for human consumption and so that’s who we feed—human beings.”

The Warehouse is reportedly the first supermarket of its kind in the UK, but similar food waste projects have been launched elsewhere on the continent: In March, Denmark welcomed a grocery store chain that sells “expired” food exclusively.

[h/t Metro]

Know of something you think we should cover? Email us at tips@mentalfloss.com.

Good news for dogs and the people who love them: Over the weekend, California governor Jerry Brown signed into law a bill giving concerned citizens permission to break into a hot car if the pooch inside appears to be in danger, The Los Angeles Times reports.

Under “The Right to Rescue Act,” or Assembly Bill 797, individuals are required to report the situation to law enforcement officials if they think a car-bound animal is threatened. But if the threat is immediate, the vehicle is locked, and officers are taking too long to get there, concerned citizens can now smash windows (or use other means of force) to set the dogs free without fear of prosecution, ABC 10 reports. (Of course, it’s important to think of both your own and the pet’s safety when deciding the most effective method of removal.) Rescuers won’t be punished for their actions, but they will be required to remain at the scene of the incident until authorities arrive.

The bill comes in response to a string of incidents in which dogs died after their owners left them in closed vehicles on hot days. It was drafted by California Assembly members including Marc Steinorth, Ling Ling Chang, and Kristin Olsen, who even filmed themselves sitting in a hot car for more than 20 minutes to demonstrate how dangerous it was to leave a dog in one, according to ABC 7.

“We’re very excited about the lives this new law will save,” Steinorth said in a Facebook statement. “Thank you to everyone who helped us raise awareness of this serious issue and showed their support.”

The Humane Society of the United States and other animal rights groups support the bill—but some people are worried that dog lovers might take things a little too far under the new law.

“I think that should just be logic,” dog owner April Rocha told ABC 7 in May, when the bill was first proposed. “If you see a dog in distress, break the window if you can’t find the owner. I think some people might take it a little far, like they see a dog in there and go a little nuts. I think it depends on the condition, but I think people may take advantage and go extreme.”

California is one of nearly two dozen states with some type of “hot car” law on the books.

[h/t The Los Angeles Times]

Know of something you think we should cover? Email us at tips@mentalfloss.com.