Bionic eyesight, cell-phone microscopes

An article I wrote for C&EN, here.

"Snickers is almost a perfect food"

A blog post I wrote for C&EN about food texture, here.

Breaths of chocolate, no sweat research

Now, you can indulge in one of the world’s finest flavors without gaining weight. How so, you ask? It has become possible to, say, sit at a chic café and inhale chocolate to your heart’s content without the threat of accumulating cellulite. All you have to do is online-order a pack of Le Whifs: lipstick-sized tubes filled with chocolate particles that you puff into your mouth for a cocoa sensation. Calorie count? Less than one.

Continue reading on C&EN, here.

Work-and-play fabric, translucent concrete

Say it's raining on the day of a board meeting, but you still want to bike to work—and afterward ride to that new restaurant that opened downtown—without changing your clothes. Now you can.

Continue reading on C&EN, here.

Narrative for the Soul of a City: Interpreting the Artwork of Nick Haas

Event Horizon

South Loop and Urban Artery

Haas’ collages present a unique interplay between urban structures, as he creates decorative patterns inspired by the urban environment without completely abstracting its individual elements. Things radiate from all sides, giving the sense that the city’s lifeless objects play as equal a part in the life of the city as its inhabitants. Lights move purposefully toward a goal (Event Horizon), a building protects a passing train from the heat of the sun (South Loop), and train tracks pump energy into the streets they intersect (Urban Artery). We get a vision of a city that breathes with life independently of the living. It’s as if each element has its own personality, a unique character that adds a new angle to the piece as a whole. In turn, each piece acts out its own drama, and together they form a collection that provides a narrative for the soul of the city.

Can Décor

I actually started this blog a while ago just so that I could write about these sardine cans (below) and other foods and containers that blow my mind, but the material turned out to be too limited to keep me interested so I quickly gave up on the idea. Now I’ll go at it again, and just be less focused.


These cans are awesome. I had a house full of sardines when I saw them but I bought them anyway. Why not? I’ve had much better sardines than these, but no others whose empty cans I want to scrub clean of sea scum and fish fragrance until my fingers go pruney and I’m bleeding out of aluminum splinters. (This procedure comes after a lazy three days of suds-soaking.)