« September 2011 | Main | November 2011 »
Smithsonian magazine, November 2011. By Charles C. Mann
Brought to Europe from the New World by Spanish explorers, the lowly potato gave rise to modern industrial agriculture.
Today the potato is the fifth most important crop worldwide, after wheat, corn, rice and sugar cane. But in the 18th century the tuber was a startling novelty, frightening to some, bewildering to others—part of a global ecological convulsion set off by Christopher Columbus.
Read more at smithsonianmag.com
The Oreo. "Ubiquitous, overlooked, and yet embodying the highest design standards in both form and function—are worthy of recognition as "humble" masterpieces." Compared to its lesser and now former competitor, the Hydrox cookie, the design "is the more American-looking of the two -- its even pattern, however dowdy, has an industrial, stamped-out quality. It might be said to combine homelike decoration with an American love of machine imagery, and in that combination lies a triumph of design." {MORE}
