More magazine excerpts

This week's Time "Milestones" page notes the passing of Arthur Lee, leader of the band Love. Most of you on LJ are not old enough to remember Love. Their album "Forever Changes" came out in 1967, and I bought it and still have it - the original vinyl. I also bought the CD when it got reissued, and that's what I'm listening to right now. Time describes the music as "psychedelic rock" but it wasn't really that far out; a lot of it was acoustic, and most of the electrified bits were only slightly electrified. Only a few wild electric guitar riffs. Perhaps the most psychedelic element was the lyrics, which made a lot more sense when I was an over-emotional teenager.

The New Yorker had an article on sugar in its May 22 issue. More precisely, it was "The Search For Sweet" and it was about both sugar and artificial sweeteners, and the search for newer artificial sweeteners that are more like sugar. Here's one paragraph I liked:

Humans are connoisseurs of sweetness. No other species is so particular. Cats can't taste sugar; neither can many dogs. Most other animals can't taste artificial sweeteners. (We know this, in part, thanks to an enterprising Swiss anthropologist named Dieter Glaser, who has offered them to fish, hedgehogs, tree shrews, primates, elephants, horses, cows, sheep, pigs, dogs, cats, mice, birds, reptiles, and swamp wallabies.)

Can't you just picture it, this Swiss guy in his lab, chasing a swamp wallaby around trying to force it to drink Tab? Go, wallaby!