Today’s collection of news chum all fits in the categories of stories related to seminal inventions or time points:
- Air Conditioning. Mental Floss has a nice piece about life before air conditioning, and how houses were designed specifically to be cool without A/C. Nowadays, we really take A/C for granted, but it really was a profound change for our society.
- Birth Control. The Ferrett has a nice post about birth control, and how it profoundly changed society. Many of the societal strictures that were place on women and their behavior were put in place precisely because of the lack of birth control. Again, another profound change.
- Cassettes. This one is less profound. Buzz Feed has a list of 34 things you miss about mixtapes. Now I never made mixtapes as something to give someone else. However, I did extensive recording of my LPs to cassettes, and would be very creative in how I did filler. I also made what were essentially mixtapes for myself — energy tapes, relaxation tapes, etc. My systems were horribly complicated with 4 hexidecimal digits and card catalogs. Now I just listen to all my music on my iPod Classic on shuffle. Life is much easier.
- Dextrose. National Geographic has a nice article on the various forms of sugar substitutes and how they stack up. Of course, the best answer is to either eschew sugar completely, or only use sugars that are found in nature in the form you use them. Refining and chemicals are not so great.
