Your mom was right: eat your green vegetables! The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has released an update to the classic food pyramid - that great visual aid that reminds us we eat too much garbage. The new pyramid, though, is much more individually tailored, interactive, and interestingly is more like a pie than a pyramid.

The classic food pyramid is built from the bottom up: the lowest layer being the foods you should eat the most, the top layer the stuff that's tasty but not so good for you. The new pyramid is like a slice of pie that has been cut into several smaller slices. Each slice represents one of the following food groups: grains, vegetables, fruits, oils, milk and protein. The thickness of each slice represents the relative amounts of each type of food we should be eating.

On the surface, the changes to the new pyramid are mainly cosmetic, but delving a little deeper, we see that there are specific recommendations regarding each slice of the diet pie. At least half of our grains consumption should be whole grains, such as brown rice, whole wheat breads and pastas, and (hooray!) popcorn. We should be eating more dark green and orange vegetables, as well as lots of fruit. The guidelines, however, encourage more actual fruit and less fruit juice, though 100% vegetable juice is still okay.

Another major change to the pyramid is the description of "discretionary calories" and a recognition that not everyone eats the same way. Discretionary calories are the other stuff of food - desserts, snacks, pop and booze. The pyramid recognizes that most of us are going to consume things that aren't entirely good for us, and that we can plan for these moments of weakness and maintain good eating habits while occasionally indulging ourselves. This pyramid also easily includes vegetarian diets, offering many alternatives to meat, though it continues to recommend dairy products.

Exercise is the pyramid's third dimension, visualized as a figure running up steps on the side of the pyramid. This emphasis shows a strong focus on overall health rather than just diet, and physical activity is strongly promoted throughout the accompanying discussion. This exercise focus seems like a new attempt to address the sedentary lifestyle of much of the US population.

All this information is found at the USDA's food pyramid website, which offers an interactive way to tailor the guidelines directly to you. There are details on all the types of foods and a handy way of measuring units of food. The charts showing common servings converted to cups or ounces alone are worth a trip to the site. For example, I now know that 2 medium carrots is about a cup. I expect my recipes to turn out a little better now.

The term "undiscovered species" often conjures brazilian rain forests full of exotic medicinal herbs and deep ocean caverns populated by strange glowing sulfur breathing organisms.  Not so for the latest entry to our world's ever growing database of living things -- scientists found this one roasted on a stick in a market in Laos.  The animal is locally referred to as Kha-nyou, loosely translated as "rock rat", and was only classified with a scientific name this past April. 

Particularly notable is the fact that the little rock rat is actually the first member of a new family of rodents.  In case anyone had forgotten that Kittens Pounce Clumsily On Furry Green Spiders, Family is the third rung up the taxonomic ladder.  While the discovery of a new species is a common occurrence, its been over 30 years since a new mammalian family has entered the books.  In other words, the morphology of the rock rat is different enough from all other rodents to require an entirely new designation. 

Taxonomists use a variety of characteristics in arranging organisms into their different sub-groupings.   For example, every member in the Phylum Chordata is distinguished by displaying a backbone like structure during embryological development.  When you get down to classifying members of Order Rodentia, you're dealing with a narrower set of traits like tail bushiness and skull shape.  The rock rat has a thick tail and long head, and although it looks like a cross between a rat and a squirrel, it actually is most closely related to the guinea pig.  After long consideration, Kha-nyou's qualities necessitated the creation of Family Laonastidae and as the taxonomic gods feasted, King Arthur rested his sword on each shoulder of the small rodent, welcoming it into the scientific community and bestowing it the new name Laonastes aenigmamus.  Huzah!

What's the deal with Magic Eye pictures? How do they work? How come some people can 'see' them and others can't? Who are these people and what do they do? Let's try to get to the bottom of this.

Autostereograms, made famous under the name Magic Eye, contain pseudo-three-dimensional objects within two-dimensional images. The viewer's brain infers a third dimension by analyzing the spacing between similar parts of the image. In a way, this is no big deal because it's what most brains do all day long. Two 2D images from two eyes, which are spaced slightly apart, fuse into a 3D perception.

The trouble with autostereograms is that they ask us to decouple two components of vision which are usually synchronized and coordinated subconsciously. The first is focusing images on the retinas. Unless your eyes are very tired or you need new glasses, you probably have no reason ever to think about this task. The second is aiming both eyes at the same point. It's easy to bring this task to the conscious forefront by holding your thumb out front at arm's length. You can choose to aim both eyes at your thumb or at something farther away, like a wall, a tree, or an underwear model.

When you hold out your thumb and look at an underwear model, three key things happen: 1) you can see through your thumb, since one eye can see what your thumb blocks from the other eye. 2) You see two thumbs. Since your eyes aren't properly aimed at arm's length objects, the thumbs seen by each eye don't coincide. 3) Your thumb(s) goes out of focus, since your eyes are focusing instead on something farther away. If you could keep your eyes aimed at the underwear model but focused on your thumb, you'd be an autostereogram champ. But it's hard or impossible to get your brain and eyes to focus on an obviously nonsensical half-double thumb. The magic happens when a half-double image suddenly looks real and therefore worthy of focus. That's what autostereograms can do for you.

Try looking at the autostereogram above with your screen at about arm's length. Then, let your eyes relax and aim at a far-away, imaginary underwear model. When you do, it should feel just like it felt when you did the thumb thing -- it's kind of nice to let your eyes drift apart like that. As the columns in this image split into half-double columns, just like your thumb did, they'll start to overlap. When neighboring half-double columns are totally superimposed, you may notice that they suddenly lock into place. That's good. Your brain has found a reasonable-looking image to fix. If you can relax with your eyes like that for a few seconds, they may start to focus on the columns. This part can feel a little funny, since this arrangement of aiming and focusing is unusual. When focusing starts, it might be tempting to snap your eyes back to the screen as if you were reading. Take a deep breath and try to resist the urge. Eventually you'll see focused columns again, but with a vague impression that they're inside the screen or behind it! Since this autostereogram only contains a flat background, it can be difficult to appreciate its 3Dness. You might try this next one.

The technique for this image is the same as before. Try letting the blue and maroon columns overlap and superimpose. They're just like the columns in the first autostereogram. But the green and red columns work themselves out in a different way. Since they're spaced more closely, your brain will interpret them as being closer to you. Thus, you can distinguish two virtual planes in the image: a flat background with blue and maroon columns, and a raised, horizontal stripe with red and green columns. If you're feeling good, you might try this last image.

This one could take some patience. As always, regularly spaced columns make up the background. If you can get the background to 'work,' using the same technique as for the other two images, you'll also see two horizontal stripes, each in its own plane. But there's a twist. This image can be visualized in two ways: if you aim your eyes at a moderately distant underwear model, you'll see a flat background and two raised stripes. If you aim your eyes at a very distant underwear model, alternating columns in the background will move forward into a plane between the two stripes. Confusing? Remember that the horizontal spacing of squares and columns determines their apparent depth in the image. So, narrow yellow lines between squares make for a close-up stripe. Fat yellow lines between columns make for a far-away background. The alternating fat and thin lines between the background columns allow for the two different visualizations of this image. Good luck.

These three images are called wallpaper autostereograms since they use repeated, recognizable objects much like a wallpaper pattern. If you experiment with any simple repeated patterns, you can make your own wallpaper autostereograms. Cooler, more challenging autostereograms imbed objects like dolphins and dinosaurs within seas of random-looking, color-coded dots. Random dot autostereograms require computers to make, but the operating principle is the same: nearby, same-colored dots appear close to you, far-apart, same-colored dots appear farther away. The technique for visualization is also identical.

If you Google around, you can find many different flavors of autostereogram including wallpaper, dot, and even animated! So, if you can get a handle on these three relatively simple images, then the world is your magic oyster. Just think: someone somewhere is probably working on the porn version. That could be even better than imaginary underwear models.

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