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The Best Snack Food From Every State

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Arkansas fried dill pickles

New York is well on its way to making yogurt the official state snack

It turns out that several other states have already designated official snack foods: Jell-O was declared the official snack of Utah back in 2001, and Illinois  a top producer of corn  made popcorn its official snack in 2003.

We think every state should have an official snack food, and researched the best snack from every state in the U.S. Disagree with our taste? Let us know in the comments.

ALABAMA: Moon Pies — a treat made of 2 graham crackers with marshmallow filling, coated in chocolate — are so beloved in Alabama that a 12-foot version of the cookie drops from one of Mobile's tallest buildings on New Year's Eve.



ALASKA: The state’s great salmon run is seasonal, but healthy, smoky salmon jerky can be enjoyed year-round.



ARIZONA: Prickly Pear Cactus Candy is chewy, sweet, and made with prickly pears straight from Arizona's arid land.



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Researchers Are Chopping Up The Massive Blue Whale The Washed Up In A Canadian Town

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On Thursday, a team from the Royal Ontario Museum began the process of recovering one of the two blue whale carcasses that washed up on the coast of Newfoundland last month. The whales — one found in Trout River and another in Rocky Harbour — died after getting caught in heavy ice.

The Trout River whale, which measured more the 70 feet in length, was towed up the coast to Woody Point where biologists are currently going to work on it. The goal is to preserve the bones and collect tissue samples that can be used for research.

Don Bradshaw, a reporter from Canadian new agency NTV who has been following the story, posted some incredible pictures of the recovery process earlier this morning on Twitter.

Before the whale skeleton can be moved to the museum, scientists must strip away the skin, blubber, and skeletal muscles, a messy process that takes about a week, according to CTV News.

"You go ahead and cleanse the whale, so you remove the blubber and the skin," museum deputy director Mark D. Engstrom told CBC News. "And then you remove the the skeletal muscle, and the viscera ... and then you're left with the skeleton which you disarticulate and put into a container and drive it away."

The team posted a photo as they started to chop up the whale.

There are plans to recover the whale carcass beached in the nearby town of Rocky Harbour once preparations for the Trout River whale are complete.

The Trout River whale gained international media attention after the creature became massively bloated and threatened to explode. That never happened and the whale — now very deflated and getting very stinky — remained in the same spot for the past several weeks.

Jacqueline Smith from the Royal Museum arrived in Trout River on Wednesday and described her first impressions of the blue whale in a blog post.

"[The whale] is heavily deflated and the seagulls have begun to pick at the decaying bits underneath the body," Smith wrote. "Large chunks have been carved out of the sides, apparently to feed some local huskies, and the taste of what can only be described as a bitter sourness stink is coming from a large wound on the side. Bare cartilage and bone are showing from where someone has managed to chop one off one of the flippers."

Engstrom and the museum's assistant curator of mammalogy discussed the recovery efforts in a Google Hangout on Thursday morning. You can watch a recording below.

The whales are two of at least nine blue whales that were killed by severe ice conditions in the North Atlantic this winter, the museum said.

In a statement, Engstrom said the loss represents up to 5% the species, which is listed as endangered.

"This is an important opportunity to further our understanding of these magnificent animals," he said, "and provide an invaluable resource for Canadian science and education now and in the future."

SEE ALSO: Scientists Found Something Completely Unexpected In Photos Of A Rare Goblin Shark

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12 Things Every College Student Should Do Before Graduation

Is Draft Beer Better Than Bottled Beer?

There's A House In Germany That Was Built Upside Down

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This is one of the more unusual tourist attractions we've seen — a house that was built completely upside down in Affoldern, Germany.

Reuters has photos of the house, which took six weeks to build and cost about 200,000 euros ($277,000 US).

Upside-down houses have been constructed all over the world— they can also been found in China, Russia, and Austria.

The inverted furnishings can be extremely disorienting. 

Check it out:

Upside down house

Upside down house

Upside down house

Upside down house

Upside down house

Upside down house

Upside down house

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Here's How Many Days A Person Can Survive Without Water

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Bottled waterBI Answers: How many days can a human survive without water?

We can't live on air and sunshine alone. The human body needs food and water to survive. 

A human can go for more than three weeks without food (Mahatma Gandhi survived 21 days of complete starvation), but water is a different story. 

At least 60% of the adult body is made of it and every living cell in the body needs it to keep functioning. Water acts as a lubricant for our joints, regulates our body temperature through sweating and respiration, and helps to flush waste.

The maximum time an individual can go without water seems to be a week — an estimate that would certainly be shorter in difficult conditions, like broiling heat.

The week limit is based on observations of people at the end of their lives, when food and water intake has been stopped, Randall K. Packer, a professor of biology at George Washington University told Maggie Fox of NBC News last year

However, one week is a generous estimate. Three to four days would be more typical. 

"You can go 100 hours without drinking at an average temperature outdoors," Claude Piantadosi of Duke University told Fox. "If it’s cooler, you can go a little longer. If you are exposed to direct sunlight, it’s less." 

water in the body

The Danger Of Dehydration 

Our bodies are constantly losing water, which is why drinking a glass of H20 once a day is not enough to keep the body replenished. We lose water when we sweat, go to the bathroom — even when we exhale.

“Under extreme conditions an adult can lose 1 to 1.5 liters of sweat per hour," Packer wrote in 2002 article for Scientific American. "If that lost water is not replaced, the total volume of body fluid can fall quickly and, most dangerously, blood volume may drop."

When you have too little blood circulating in your body, blood pressure falls to levels that can be fatal. Body temperatures also rise when we stop sweating. 

Dehydration that causes "a loss of more than 10% of your body weight is a medical emergency," according to the University of Rochester Medical Center, "and if not reversed can lead to death."

Water Sources

We get some water from food, "but drinking water is your main, and best source, of water," according to a website maintained by the National Institutes of Health

Other beverages like juice or milk also help keep the body hydrated. The only fluid you would want to stay away from is alcohol because it actually causes the body to lose more water than normal through excessive urination

This post is part of a continuing series that answers all of your "why" questions related to science. Have your own question? Email dspector@businessinsider.com with the subject line "Q&A"; tweet your question to @BI_Science; or post to our Facebook page.

SEE ALSO: Why Humans Evolved To Like Alcohol

DON'T MISS: More BI Answers

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7 Hacks To Help You Get Way More Out Of Google Maps

London Is Now The Most Popular Tourist Destination In The World

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6 new years thames river london

London is officially the most popular destination in the world for foreign tourists. 

A new report from the UK's Office for National Statistics shows that the British capital city saw 16.8 million foreign visitors in 2013— more than Paris, New York, and other top tourist cities. 

(By comparison, New York City saw nearly 53 million visitors in 2012, but only 10.9 million were from foreign countries.)

This has been a huge boost to the economy, with foreign tourists spending over £11 billion ($18.6 billion) on hotels, restaurants, attractions and shopping in London.

The report also showed that most of the international visitors are from the U.S., France, and Germany. Americans also spend the most, dropping over £1.5 billion ($2.5 billion) on travel expenses. Travelers from the Middle East are also big spenders, dropping about £888 million ($1.5 billion) in the UK. 

See the infographic below for more statistics:

londontourismtotalvisitorsandtheirspending2013info_tcm77 362518

SEE ALSO: Take A Tour Of The New Luxury Hotel Inside London's Shard

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The 10 Best BBQ Joints In America

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08 Captain's BBQ_Palm Coast_FL 02

The U.S. is a smorgasbord of the finest BBQ joints, engulfing all styles from sweet and saucy to simple and smoky.

TripAdvisor, the world's largest travel site, set out to find the crème de la crème of restaurants serving up low-and-slow cooked meats. It came out with a list of the 10 best BBQ joints in the U.S., ranked by millions of user reviews. It only considered establishments that have a minimum of 100 reviews, and gave more weight to reviews written in the past year.

Let's dig in.

10. Madd Jacks Grillin Shack – Cape Canaveral, Florida

6006 N. Atlantic Ave.

This beach-themed BBQ hut is where East Coast flare meets West Coast style. Chef Robby O'Connor serves up generous portions of California-style barbecue, including his signature sliced tri-tips and brisket.



9. Poppa's BBQ – Clearwater, Florida

12211 49th St. N.

The deliciously simple (and dirt cheap) menu at Poppa's BBQ includes an assortment of Memphis-style baby back ribs, slow-smoked pulled pork, and chicken legs so tender that the meat slides off the bone. And owner Mike DeWeese isn't afraid to show off — lining the counter with his competitive barbecuing trophies.



8. Captain's BBQ – Palm Coast, Florida

5862 N Oceanshore Blvd.

At this oceanfront spot, you can dock your boat out front and re-stock on bait, tackle, and meat. Part-fishing-shop, part-restaurant — Captain's slow-cooks all of its meats and hot sides in a wood-burning specialty smoker to give them a delicious smoked wood flavor.



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Here's How People In The 70th Century Will Learn To Speak English

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In 1939, electric company Westinghouse buried one of the most ambitious time capsules ever as part of an exhibit at the World's Fair in New York. It won't see the light until 6939 — 5,000 years after its creation.

The creators included the "Book of Record," a description of roughly all known history in the capsule. For one the book's sections, linguist John Peabody Harrington wrote what he called the "Key to English," an explanation of our modern language intended it to instruct inhabitants of the 70th century how to speak like we do today.

By 6939, Harrington, a permanent ethnologist at the Smithsonian Institute, theorized that English will have either disappeared or changed so drastically it would require a "key" to understand, much like what the Rosetta Stone provided for Egyptian hieroglyphs.

So Harrington set out to teach American English to a future society who had probably never spoken it. That challenge included roughly four tasks: conveying an alphabet, pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar. 

To start, many linguists in the 1930s were fans of the International Phonetic Alphabet. Harrington considered using that. But in the end, he stuck to 26 letters to represent the 33 sounds in English — with some substitutions.

The letter "c," for example, "isn't needed for regular consonant duty," Professor Ives Goddard, curator of the Department of Anthropology at the National Museum of National Natural History, told Business Insider. In English, "c" always makes either an "s" or "k" sound. And the trigraph "tsh" can represent the "ch" sound.

So Harrington instead juxtaposed it next to two letters — "u" and "i" to represent a long vowel sound, instead of short. For example, Harrington spelled the word "future" as "fyuctur." The additional "c" changes the first "u" sound to differentiate it from the second "u" sound. Harrington represented long and short pronunciations between other vowels using digraphs, like "ae" for a long "a" sound.

Harrington also repurposed the letter "j." Because a combination of "d" and "z" make the "j" sound easily, Harrington replaced the schwa sound, denoted by an upside "e," with a "j." He also used "j" to signify a sound similar to the schwa, the "u" sound present in "up," Goddard explained.

To demonstrate basic pronunciation, Harrington created this "mauth maep" shown below, also included in the book and capsule.

 

key to English

 

He also explained where each letter occurs in the mouth (for further explanation after future generations had already grasped translating English). All pronunciation happens somewhere between the larynx and the lips, Harrington wrote.

But pronunciation is actually a minor detail. "In a way, you don't need to know how to pronounce a language to understand it. Through years of translation, you just sort of figure it out," Ives said. We know and understand many ancient languages today without perfect pronunciation.

Next, Harrington tackled grammar. In the image below, the person on the left demonstrates personal pronouns like "he" (hic), "I" (ai), and "you" (yuc). The person on the right shows the concept of "remoteness," including words like "that" (dhaet) and "this" (dhis). 

key to English

And here, Harrington tries to explain past, present, and future tenses. 

key to English

Aside from the various tenses, future people must know the actual verbs. The image below shows "lie," "sit," "stand," "walk," "run," "kick," "jump," "crawl," "climb," and "descend," in that order from top left to bottom right. The Key includes numerous other examples of common vocabulary, too. 

key to English

Harrington also explained adjectives, focusing on the concept of opposites, which often explain different people or objects. The first combination shows young and old, then short and tall, and finally, black and white. 

key to English

Adjectives also appear in comparative and superlative forms, like good, better, and best, shown below in the picture of the target. 

key to English

As a summary of his English lesson as well as a exercise for practice, Harrington included a short story, The Fable of the Northwind and the Sun, for future generations to translate. The first few lines look like this:

Dhj Northwind aend dhj Sjn wjr dispyucting whitsh woz dhj stronggjr, hwen j traevjljr kecm jlong raepd in j worm klock. Dhec jgricd dhaet dhj wjn hue first meed dhj traevjljr teck of hiz klock shud bic konsidjrd stronggjr dhaen dhj jdhjr. 

Here's the modern version:

The Northwind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger, when a traveler came along wrapped in a warm cloak. They agreed that the one who first made the traveler take off his cloak should be considered stronger than the other.

"Harrington was original, and he was brilliant," Goddard said. Because of his work preserving various Native American languages, "he was used to both scientifically and practically inventing how to spell things." 

But could a future society even begin to grasp a language probably totally unknown to them? Goddard thinks yes. "[The future] is going to have really good computers," he said. 

One type of translation method, called the "combinatory method," looks for patterns in foreign language, which an advanced computer could easily accomplish. "Let's say you see a string of words that always appear together, and you guess it means the word 'man.' Then, you'll see all sentences with 'man' and 'woman,'" Goddard explained. The translation starts with that assumption and continues to plug in words from there. 

Regardless of Harrington's efforts, Goddard speculates that future generations will already know English.

"I have a feeling English is going to be a pretty important language. I think people are going to keep track of it," he said.

 

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Momofuku Ssäm Bar Has A Mind-Blowing Steak Dinner

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Momofuku steak

Perfecting steak usually requires a kind of singular dedication. The kind of dedication that makes it impossible for a restaurant to focus on anything else.

That is why it is rare to find a steak outside of a steakhouse with the transcendental capabilities that a peerless steak possesses (yes, we've thought about this a lot).

But of course, Momofuku Ssäm Bar is no regular restaurant. David Chang's dedication to perfection in all things is well known all over the world. So when Business Insider found out that his East Village restaurant, Momofuku Ssäm Bar was launching a dry aged ribeye large format dinner, we had to try it.

Here's how it works: Like many things that have to do with Momofuku making a reservation for this dinner requires patience. The meal is family style, feeding 3-6 people. Figure out your squad, fill out this online application, put down a deposit, and prepare to wait a few weeks before you can get a seat.

It will be well worth the $244.97 (this includes tax, not tip).

Now, Momofuku is not a steakhouse experience. Wall Street, I'm sorry, but you will not have friendly white-clad waiters fluffing your sunshine-smelling linen napkins for you. The quarters are tighter. There's little leg room.

That said, what banker can resist a dinner that their assistant has to schedule weeks in advance? Not one I've ever heard of.

The meal comes with a Caesar salad and fries. That's it and that's all you need. The steak comes from cows that have been humanely raised without anti-biotics. The meat is dry aged for a minimum of 50 days.

momofuku steak dinnerEat it rare. Maybe medium rare — cook it any more and you're a Philistine.

The steak is served with the cap and exterior fat left on and a laundry list of condiments —beef jus, dry aged fat and brown butter roasting juices, red wine and shallot marmalade, béarnaise sauce and bacon ketchup.

It's a great list (we especially recommend the wine and shallot marmalade, and obviously the bacon ketchup) but if it weren't there, you'd never notice. The steak is perfect. It melts in your mouth with that rich, velvety flavor that only comes from well-cooked cow. You'd be hard pressed to find a better steak anywhere in Manhattan. (Yes, I realize what I just wrote and I don't care.)

On top of all this, Momofuku's steak dinner is an incredible deal. Throw a $50-60 bottle of red on it, invite a full party of 6 (there's more than enough to go around), and you'll leave the place having spent less than $80 a person. That's highway robbery for a steak this memorable.

David Chang, thank you for caring.

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An Artist Turned Beach Trash Into These Breathtaking Sea Sculptures

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A few years ago, photographer Jeremy Underwood visited the San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site in Texas and was shocked to find the beaches nearby overrun with plastic, wood, metal, and other debris.

“I found the strangest things, from a case of oranges to funny little figurines covered with languages I couldn't read. It was nuts,” Underwood told Business Insider.

Underwood — who has documented the aftermath of the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl— thought about heading back out to the park to photograph the devastation. But then he decided he didn't just want to take pictures of the trash. He wanted to transform it.
DSC_8590Underwood began collecting the debris into piles and constructing makeshift sculptures out of whatever he found. Some of the sculptures took weeks to make, while others took only a day. As the weeks and months went on, other beach-goers came to help build or collect debris.DSC_9253The San Jacinto site sits along the Houston Ship Channel, which runs to the Gulf of Mexico and has been a major source of pollution in Texas. In 2007, the University of Texas suggested that children living near the channel developed cancer at a higher rate than the national average and, in 2014, two ships collided and caused an oil spill in the channel. DSC_9464Over the years, Underwood has continued to work on his project there, called Human Debris. He works slowly, periodically heading out to collect debris or add to the sculptures. When his works are in progress, he hides them on a particularly polluted part of the beach that people generally don't frequent.

The process of collecting, building, and photographing is both “physically and mentally exhausting,” Underwood says.

Underwood pursues this tiring project because he wants to start a conversation with Houston residents about the pollution in their backyard. That pollution may be more obvious to Underwood — who grew up in the woods of Missouri — than it is to people who have lived their entire lives in Houston.

DSC_0214While he generally leaves the sculptures on the beach for others to view and respond to, buildings and galleries have approached him and asked if they could show his work. He's skeptical about moving his sculptures indoors, though.

“These sculptures are nasty and messy,” says Underwood. “They are covered in oil stains, bugs, and stuff that you don’t even know what it is.”DSC_8180

SEE ALSO: The Most Irreplaceable Sites On Earth

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9 Babies Who Will One Day Rule The World

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kate william prince george

Spring has sprung, and it's brought with it a slew of new babies. 

In the last month alone, Olivia Wilde and Jason Sudeikis had a son, Roger Federer's wife gave birth to twin boys, and Chelsea Clinton announced that she's pregnant.

In honor of mother's day, we found the most powerful babies who have either been born recently or will be born this year. 

These babies might still be drooling and crawling, but they're already poised to become major players who will one day rule the world — and that means that their moms have a lot to be proud of. 

Future Politician: Margaret Laura ‘Mila’ Hager

Parents: Jenna Bush Hager and Henry Hager

The former First Daughter and husband Henry Hager welcomed their baby girl last April.

As the  first grandchild of a former U.S. President (George W. Bush) and the great grandchild of another former U.S. President (George HW Bush), this baby will have some serious political clout.



Future Hollywood Royalty: Dashiell Weinstein

Parents: Harvey Weinstein and Georgina Chapman

Harvey Weinstein, Hollywood's biggest producer, and his wife Georgina Chapman, fashion designer and founder of Marchesa, welcomed a son last April, named Dashiell.

This is the couple's second child together, but their first son. With his parents' high-profile Hollywood connections, this baby will be a major player in the entertainment world.



Future Oligarch: Leah Lou Abramovich

Parents: Roman Abramovich and Daria 'Dasha' Zhukova

Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich and his model girlfriend Dasha Zhukova welcomed their second child together—a baby girl named Leah Lou—last April. The baby was born at a hospital in New York, and will therefore have American citizenship.

This is the seventh child for Abramovich, who owns the Chelsea Football Club.



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Here Are The New Most Popular Baby Names In America

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The high-school classes graduating in 2032 are going to have a disproportionate number of Noahs and Sophias.

The Social Security Administration compiles the most popular names for newborns every year based on its naturally very comprehensive records of births. 

We were curious to see what the recent history of these names looked like, so for the 10 most popular names for each gender in 2013, we took SSA's data on the percent of all babies of each gender born with those names over the last 10 years.

Here are the boys' names:

2013 most popular boys' names

The 10 most popular boys' names started out in very different places a decade ago. Noah, this year's most popular name, became steadily more common over the last 10 years. Liam, the second most popular boys' name, wasn't even in the top 100 in 2004, and then saw a surge in the late 2000s.

The third most popular name for boys, Jacob, was dominant in the late 1990s and 2000s. Last year was the first year since 1998 in which Jacob wasn't the most popular name.

While they started out at very different levels, the 10 most popular boys' names of 2013 are all pretty close to one another now. About 0.90% of all baby boys were named Jacob, only a little more than the 0.71% of boys named Daniel, the 10th most popular name.

Here's how the popularity of 2013's top girls' names changed since 2004:

2013 most popular girls' names

While the top 10 boys' names were all pretty close to one another in popularity, the girls' names were much more spread out. Holding the number place for the third year in the row, Sophia was the name chosen for 1.10% of baby girls in 2013, while 0.49% of baby girls got the 10th most popular name, Elizabeth, making Sophias more than twice as common as Elizabeths.

One other interesting feature of girls' names is the trajectory of Isabella. The first movie in the "Twilight" franchise came out in 2008, and the saga's protagonist's name dominated baby girls' names for the next two years.

Overall, American baby names have gotten less concentrated over time. About 8.16% of baby boys in 2013 were named one of the 10 most popular names, and 7.91% of girls got one of the top 10 from their list.

In 1950, on the other hand, 33.27% of baby boys had names in the top 10, and 23.48% of baby girls did as well:

1950 most popular baby names

SEE ALSO: The Number Of Old Americans Is Going To Explode

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Charter This Megayacht With An Inflatable Water Slide For $425,000 A Week

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DREAM Yacht

The DREAM, a newly refit 197-foot megayacht complete with inflatable water slide and panoramic movie theatre, is ready to sail the high seas. Originally constructed in 2001 as the Excellence III, the DREAM emerged from a two-year renovation in 2013 with a new interior, a new paint scheme and a new name. 

According to the yacht's broker, Northrop & Johnson, the DREAM is ready to be chartered for $425,000 per week.

The DREAM's exterior styling is courtesy of the craftsmen at Abeking & Rasmussen.



The German-built yacht's 7 cabins have room for 15 guests.



Manned by a crew of 15, the DREAM can reach a maximum speed of 16 knots.



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7 Disney World Hacks Just For Adults

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No matter how many times you have visited Walt Disney World for vacation, these Disney hacks for adults will make you forget about those long lines and overpriced food. 

Leonard Kinsey has been visiting the park for 33 years, and has compiled some extensive tips in his book "The Dark Side of Disney," now the subject of a new Kickstarter initiative for a film. He knows Disney World like the back of his hand, and even has done some behind-the-scenes exploring. These are some of his best tips for travel. 

Produced by Justin Gmoser

NOW WATCH: 7 Maps Of Florida That Will Change The Way You See The Sunshine State

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New Yorkers Are Throwing A Huge Outdoor Dance Party To Get A Street Named After A DJ Who Died 22 Years Ago

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larry levan

On Sunday, New Yorkers will crowd onto King Street in Tribeca and dance for hours in daylight to remember DJ Larry Levan, a former de facto leader of underground nightlife. The party is sponsored by Red Bull Music Academy, and the purpose is to get the street named in his honor.

You see, starting in 1977, Levan held unquestionable dominion over it and the raging dance party he led on it at club Paradise Garage for an entire decade.

That was, of course, before AIDS truly ravaged New York City. Levan himself succumbed to the disease in 1992.

The stories you hear about 'The Garage' and Levan, its head DJ, are impossible not to retell. They slide off the tongue. There was the time Boy George broke the heel of his pump in the middle of the dance floor and just kept dancing, one legged and carefree.

There was the time — and some argue this flat out isn't true — that not even Diana Ross could talk her way into the club. She didn't have a membership card. Those that didn't sometimes dropped hundreds of dollars to go in with members.

The music was that good and that unique. The Garage, after all, was one of the first clubs to bring house music from Chicago to New York City. Levan is the man to thank for that.

In the DJ world he was so large a figure that people sent him music from all around the country. Unlabeled records flew in and out of the club carried by the radio jockeys who decided what songs ruled America's airwaves.

On Friday and Saturday nights Levan commanded a crowd of 3,000 dance addicts including pop stars, club rats, gay kids hiding from home, socialites who were tired of mirrors, and anyone else who knew what was really good.

And he wasn't afraid to play whatever he wanted, even if it was some weirdo synth band from Germany (Kraftwerk). Because of that, Levan had the power to make hits.

Mick Jagger was there, and so was Madonna. Grace Jones graced the stage as did Loleatta Holloway. The sound system was titanic.  No alcohol was served but, yes, there were drugs. Poppers and ethyl rags mostly (Google it). There was free food and drinks, a movie theater, and a party that didn't stop until noon on Sunday mornings.

The crowd was diverse but dominated by gay African Americans and Latinos. They called it by many names, including 'Church', 'Saturday Mass'. Some say it was because when partiers left the club they rode the same train home as people heading to church. Others say it was because Levan's DJing itself was a religious experience.

The Paradise Garage closed in 1987 not because it wasn't cool. It closed because people were dying. Imagine the panic of the AIDS crisis, when people saw their friends one weekend and those friends were dead the next. It happened so fast, no one knew what it was, and it hit the Paradise Garage community particularly hard. The club's owner Michael Brody, closed the club because he was too sick to scout for a new location when its lease ran out. People say that when Levan found that out, he went up to his DJ perch and turned up the club's speakers so loud that some of them blew out completely. 

Garage veterans still get together sometimes for reunion parties and raise money for Gay Men's Health Crisis, a charity Brody helped to found during the most terrifying days of the crisis. The DJs that learned under Levan, like David Depino and Joey Llanos, play those parties (as they will play on Sunday). They tell survival stories and dance.

"We came through a war," Depino once told me. "AIDS was a war. It was a battle."

Listen to one of Levan's DJ sets from 1983 below.

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America Will Represent Itself With Food Trucks At The Next World's Fair

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Expo Milano

The world's fair, Expo Milano, is already gearing up for its 2015 season.

The theme of the upcoming fair, which is held every two to three years, is "Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life," and the USA pavilion will focus on food trucks.

According to its head architect, James Biber, the Pavilion will include rotating food trucks, a cocktail lab on the rooftop, and a sit-down James Beard-recognized American restaurant with everything from "the most fantastic hamburgers" to "upscale, chef-driven food," Biber said.

While the group organizing the U.S. exhibit has not decided exactly which food trucks will represent the 50 states overseas,  Biber said there would be "lobster rolls ,for sure." He hopes the public will be involved in the selection process.

"American food is global food," Biber said. "America is the great aggregator of food. We're not just hamburgers, fries, and grilled cheese; we've absorbed ethnic influences and made them our own." 

The festival will be set near Milan and will run from May 1 to October 31, 2015. So far, there are 147 countries signed up, with over 20 million people expected to visit over the six months.

Here are renderings of what the American Pavilion will look like:

Expo Milano

Expo Milano

Expo Milano

Expo Milano

SEE ALSO: The 25 Best Restaurants On The Planet

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A Second Rice Revolution Could Save Millions Of Lives

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Indonesia rice fieldTechnological breakthroughs in rice will boost harvests and cut poverty. They deserve support.

When, in 1961, the government of India asked a celebrated wheat breeder, Norman Borlaug, for advice about new seeds, the subcontinent was thought to be on the verge of starvation. China actually was suffering from famine. Borlaug persuaded India to plant a new semi-dwarf variety of wheat in Punjab.

The next year, the country also tried out a dwarf variety of rice called IR8. These short-stemmed crops solved a basic problem: old-fashioned crops were long and leggy, so when fed with fertiliser they grew too tall and fell over. Borlaug’s varieties put out more, heavier seeds instead. They caught on like smartphones. Over the next 40 years the green revolution spread round the world, helping ensure that, where its seeds were planted, famines became things of the past.

Now a second green revolution is stirring in the fields of Asia. It will not be the same as the first one, since it will depend not on a few miracle varieties but on tailoring existing seeds to different environments. But it promises to bring similar benefits--this time to the poor lands and poorer farmers that the first version passed by (see pages 21-23).

Such lands are poor because they are prone to floods, drought and salinity. New seeds have been developed which can survive flooding, and soon there will be varieties that tolerate drought, extreme heat and saltiness, too, making the poorest lands fertile. So the second revolution could do even more to cut poverty than the first.

This revolution is all the more vital because the gains of the first are plateauing. Annual yield growth has fallen to less than a third what it was in the green revolution and below the current rise in population. Meanwhile demand for rice is rising by almost 2% a year in Asia and soaring by 20% a year in Africa.

The gap threatens to widen, because rice is exceptionally vulnerable to environmental change. Rice farmers use almost a third of Earth’s fresh water, and water shortages are pervasive. The world’s rice bowls are the deltas of Asia’s great rivers. These are subject to changing floods, rising salinity and growing heat stress. (Climate change is sometimes seen as a new problem to worry about now that the issue of providing food is settled. In reality it is a threat to future food supplies.)

A second revolution has been made possible by the sequencing of the rice genome in 2005 (the first cereal crop to be sequenced). This enabled breeders to discover the genes for flood resistance in one obscure variety from eastern India and transfer them to varieties all round the world. Breeders will soon do the same for genes that provide other valuable traits.

There are all sorts of things that governments could do to push this revolution forward, such as getting rid of price subsidies and letting farms consolidate into bigger, more efficient units. But they will also need to spend public money directly on research.

One grain at a time

The first green revolution was largely government-backed, with help from international research centres and American charities. You might think that nowadays the big agribusinesses would be desperate to lead the way, and they have indeed invested heavily in new strains of maize and wheat.

But rice, the focus of the second revolution, is different. Farmers can keep the seeds from one harvest and plant them in the next with no loss of yield (unlike maize). The market for rice seeds is thus tiny, so almost all research is carried out by the state.

The amounts needed are small. By one calculation, $3 billion of rice research spread over the next 25 years would pull 150m people out of extreme poverty. That is $20 a person, a bargain compared with any other anti-poverty programme. And it has worked before. The cumulative economic benefits from public research into rice are running at almost $20 billion a year, hundreds of times the cost of the investment.

Governments, though, are nervous. Some politicians worry about publicly backing genetic research, despite all the lives it could save (the latest Luddism is in Vermont--see page 41). Other health ministries have moved on to sexier causes, like fighting obesity. They should think again. It is hard to think of a way to improve more people’s lives for less money.

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The Fastest-Growing Boy's Baby Name In America Comes From Duck Dynasty

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Duck Dynasty

After looking at the most popular baby names of 2013 recently released by the Social Security Administration, we decided to take a look at the names whose popularity is growing the fastest.

A couple of interesting patterns jumped out at us.

We found the percent change in the number of babies born in 2013 and 2012 with a particular name for each name that showed up in the top 500 most popular names in both years. 

Here are the fifteen fastest-growing boys' names:

2013 fastest growing boys names jase highlighted

There were more than four times as many baby boys named Jase born in 2013 as in 2012. Jase Robertson is one of the stars of A&E's "Duck Dynasty," which has been growing in popularity for the last few years. 

And here are the fastest-growing girls' names:

 2013 fastest growing girls names aria and arya highlighted

While none of the girls' names had the explosion in popularity that Jase did for boys, both Arya and Aria jumped by over 50% between 2012 and 2013. Arya Stark is one of the protagonists of HBO's fantasy epic "Game of Thrones."

While it's certainly possible that these shifts in popularity are a coincidence, it's always fun to see how trends in baby names occasionally track with trends in pop culture.

SEE ALSO: Want To Meet A Single Millionaire? Try These NYC Neighborhoods

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