Sunday’s New York Times had an interesting look at the new SAT essays:
Last week, when the board released 20 top-scoring essays, all on the topic of whether memories are a help or a hindrance, it was impossible not to notice that many were — what’s the right word? — awkward …
Also in Sunday’s Times, a look at the best food at some state fairs:
In fact, the whole point of these folksy, vulgar blow-outs is to award excess: the biggest swine, the strongest ox, the fastest hot rods, the most meticulous map of the Americas made entirely of different colored beans and the prettiest brace of identical cobs of sweet corn.
A state fair is a picnic that everyone’s invited to …
And, an anthropoligist writes in Snakes on the Brain that snakes may have been good for our eyes:
That humans have been afraid of snakes for a long time is not a fresh observation; that this fear may be entwined with our development as a species is. New anthropological evidence suggests that snakes, as predators, may have figured prominently in the evolution of primate vision — the ability, shared by humans, apes and monkeys, to see the world in crisp, three-dimensional living color.