“Plastic takes thousands of years to decompose — but 16-year-old science fair contestant Daniel Burd made it happen in just three months.
The Waterloo, Ontario high school junior figured that something must make plastic degrade, even if it does take millennia, and that something was probably bacteria.”
“Some researchers have proposed that the sharp rise in asthma and allergy cases over the past century stems, unexpectedly, from living too clean. The idea is that routine exposure to harmless microorganisms in the environment—soil bacteria, for instance—trains our immune systems to ignore benign molecules like pollen or the dandruff on a neighbor’s dog. Taking this “hygiene hypothesis” in an even more surprising direction, recent studies indicate that treatment with a specific soil bacterium, Mycobacterium vaccae, may be able to alleviate depression.”
[Note: This is from March 2007]
I am rejoicing in the upswing of philosophical sci-fi. Action sci-fi is nice, but I like cake with my frosting, and sometimes a good cake doesn’t need any frosting. Moon gets extra points for stopping where Sunshine should have.
Also, another great Clint Mansell score.