"experiment" news and stories

Kyle Spencer, 23, and Xiao Yu, 24, are barely of drinking age and have been brewing beer for less than a year, but nonetheless wear their ambition, literally, on their sleeves.

"Brewing for a living is something we both wanted to do," says Spencer, promoting his nascent brand by wearing a gray, short-sleeved Beta Beer T-shirt alongside partner Xiao Yu. Despite his expert presentation, Spencer is nervous: For the first time his product will be tasted by "actual people who have beer backgrounds."

This kind of fledgling enthusiasm was par for the course at the Brooklyn Beer Experiment, a new cook-off in a city obsessed with cook-offs, part of the groundswell of our nation's craft-brewmania and a first from competitors turned co-organizers Theo Peck and Nick Suarez. "We were cook-off rivals," says Suarez, "and decided we could do this as well as anyone else could." Sunday afternoon at Brooklyn's the Bell House -- a space primarily used as a music venue -- more than 25 chefs infused their eats with beer, and local homebrewers like Spencer and Yu hawked their wares.

Have you heard about that science experiment where you drop a Mentos in a bottle of Diet Coke? The soda is supposed to explode into a fountain of cola.

This experiment was taken to greater heights this week in Leuvan, Belgium. 1,500 students simultaneously created the fountains in an attempt to break the previous record for the event. I have no idea what the previous record was, but I hope these kids broke it. With the mess they made, they deserve it.

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Recently, German researchers fed lab mice separate "human" and "chimp" diets, and within just two weeks, were able to notice distinct psychological and genetic differences in the rodents.

There were three different diets: a raw food-only diet; meals from the researchers' local cafeteria; and a pure fast-food diet. The researchers found a huge difference in the livers of the mice with a chimp diet versus those with a human diet (I'm scared to hear about the difference in their hearts and arteries!) They found thousands of differences in the genes expressed in the mouse livers, which they think may be caused by our differences in diets.

...You got all that? Okay. The scientists also found that said genes seemed to evolve faster than other genes.

So, basically, our ancestors' adoption of meat and cooked foods may have shaped us into the carnivorous, brownie-eating, beer-guzzling beings we are today.

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You don't have to be gregarious or adventurous to start or be part of a community garden. If you're lucky enough to live in a neighborhood with an available spot of ground, say 80'x80', you have the beginnings of a great social experiment. Here in Boulder, this was inclusive to the development plans in my neighborhood so procuring growing space wasn't a problem. I thought getting people to sign up and rent plots (this wasn't my job) would be an issue. Not so. It was what should be grown that got thorny. Most wanted veggies and flowers. Some wanted only flowers and vice versa. In the end it was an even mix. We even had edible flowers: I ate carnation petals right from the plant, and later steeped in sherry. The point is, a typical 9-5 person doesn't have time to tend a large garden. When folks come together and each grow their specialty, we all get to cook the many varieties of squash, cabbages, onions, roots and shoots. I never cared for Zucchini but my neighbor three houses down traded me some zukes for a futures claim on my pumpkins. The zucchini bread was eaten in one sitting; she plans to make pumpkin bread next month. It may sound corney, so to speak, but growing food with people you didn't know really brings food into focus. At least that's been my experience.

Our garden's first year was a success. Nothing was poached and there was a healthy competitive nature to the venture. The only "failure" was the tomatoes. Hard to grow at altitude with minimal care. Other than that, if you have the opportunity, you might start here.

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Earlier this month, a Spain-based blogger named Diana took on the project of blogging 30 days on a raw food diet. "From tomorrow I will begin a 30 day Raw Food experiment. I have researched the subject till the cows come home- tried and failed numerous times, but this time will be different!!" she says in her first post. By day five she'd already had a few beers, which apparently falls outside of the raw food program. Diana's stated goal for the project is weight loss, and she notes her starting and current weight at the beginning of each post. So far it looks to be mostly veggies, smoothies and sprouted grains. I'm curious to see how creative she gets with her meals and how conscious she'll be about nutrition. Hopefully the tone will keep to the upbeat and informative side and not drift too much into obsessing about weight loss.