Lawns are a Soul-Crushing Timesuck and Most of Us Would Be Better Off Without Them

A recent essay by an Ohio woman who refuses to mow her lawn has struck a nerve. Thirteen hundred people have weighed in with a comment on Sarah Baker's tale of flouting a neighborhood mowing ordinance in the face of a $1,000 fine.

As Baker notes in her essay, lawns are a big part of contemporary American life. There are somewhere around 40 million acres of lawn in the lower 48, according to a 2005 NASA estimate derived from satellite imaging. "Turf grasses, occupying 1.9% of the surface of the continental United States, would be the single largest irrigated crop in the country," that study concludes. Conservatively, American lawns take up three times as much space as irrigated corn. The authors mapped the entirety of the nation's turf grass, below. You'll notice that it's basically a population density map of the U.S. — where there are people, there are lawns.

You'll notice, if you look closely, that the colors start at light green in the urban cores and get darker as you move outward — lawn density increases in the suburbs.

In some states, a significant chunk of the landscape is covered in turf grass — meaning residential lawns, commercial lawns, golf courses, and the like. Delaware is 10 percent lawn. Connecticut and Rhode Island are 20 percent. And over 20 percent of the total land area of Massachusetts and New Jersey is covered in grass, according to that 2005 NASA study.

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You will be better off growing food, than mowing the lawn.

California Legalized Selling Food Made At Home And Created Over A Thousand Local Businesses

A government official appears at a man’s door.  The man has been breaking the law: He has sold bread baked at home.

This isn’t a page from Kafka—it happened to Mark Stambler in Los Angeles.

For decades, Stambler has followed traditional methods to bake loaves of French bread.  The ingredients are simple: distilled water, sea salt, wild yeast and organic grains.

Stambler even mills the grain himself.  To make it easier to steam loaves, he built a wood-fired oven in his own backyard.  Stambler’s loaves came in first place at the Los Angeles County Fair and the California State Fair.

Soon after that, Stambler got the idea to expand his hobby into a home business, which became Pagnol Boulanger.  Word of mouth spread.  In June 2011, The Los Angeles Times profiled Stambler and his bread in a full-page feature.

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Chia Seeds: Superfood That Are Packed With Goodness

Acai, Wheatgrass and Goji berries are common place on the shelf of any health conscious person's kitchen cupboards.

And it seems rarely a year passes without at least one new health-food frenzy.

The latest product which is set to take Briton by storm is Chia seeds. 

Already a hit in LA and New York, they were once worshipped by the Aztecs as the food of the Gods, the tiny seeds are from the same family as mint.

They are rich in omega-3 fatty acids, protein, minerals and antioxidants. They are also meant to help make dieters lose weight as they make feel fuller (mixed with liquid they expand).

Now the seeds could be approved for use in products in the UK.

They are currently only sold here as a bread ingredient but the Advisory Committee on Novel Foods, an expert panel which helps the Food Standards Agency, looks set to give it the go ahead.

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