Organics

"You don't drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there." -Edwin Louis Cole Our Solar System is -- at least from our perspective -- the most well-studied system of planets, moons, asteroids and comets in the entire Universe. Image credit: Olaf Frohn, from earlier in 2012. And in this system, the closest planet to our Sun, Mercury, was also one of the most poorly understood planets until very recently. Because Mercury is so close to the Sun, it's very difficult to view it under good conditions with a telescope; the risk of ruining your optics by exposing them to direct sunlight…
A Stanford University analysis of over 200 nutritional studies found little evidence that organic food is better for you than conventional food. But health is affected by more than vitamins and minerals; for example by the chemical chlorpyrifos, which was banned for indoor use but continues to be sprinkled on our food crops. In California’s Salinas Valley, which grows greens for the entire nation, children exposed to chlorpyrifos and other pesticides are, well, stupider. As Elizabeth Grossman writes on The Pump Handle, “the higher the exposure, the lower the IQ score.” Researchers observing…