Tim De Chant at Per Square Mile has noted that rich urban areas have way, way more trees than poor areas in the same city. In fact, the difference is so stark that income inequality can be seen from space. The satellite images above are low-income West Oakland and high-income Piedmont, and I probably don’t have to tell you which is which.

De Chant has collected images from four U.S. cities and two international cities, and in every one, the wealthier areas are conspicuously more leafy. Since trees increase property values, this is a classic case of the rich being given whatever they need to get richer. And considering the other things trees do for us, it’s also a case of the rich getting to be smarter, cooler, and have fewer allergies.

According to this chart from the CDC, fast-food burgers have more than tripled in size since the 1950s, going from four ounces (i.e. a quarter pound) to a whopping 12. And if you think that’s bad, the average soda is six times as big as it used to be.

I don’t know what’s worse, the idea that we’re eating three times as much unsustainably raised snout-meat, or the idea that we’re throwing the overage out and thus wasting tons more food. It’s probably some of both, and neither is great.

Obviously a lot of people, even conscientious people, will eat fast food sometimes, for reasons of convenience or finance or being stuck at a rural rest stop and not really having a choice. I hear some people even like the taste and occasionally eat it deliberately. But just be aware that when you eat that McDonald’s meal, you’re actually essentially eating three of them.

When this seal pup arrived at the New England Aquarium, he was orphaned, underweight, and blind in one eye, and his unusual mottled coat wasn’t thick enough to keep him warm. Now he’s getting healthy and adorable (you can see him playing with a toy and kicking himself in the head like an itchy dog in the video below). But he still doesn’t have a name to go with his goofy little face, and the aquarium is soliciting suggestions.

Obviously, the folks at the aquarium feel strongly about preserving fur seals, and they’re inclined to choose a name that reflects that:

Here’s a hint: We especially love names that include a conservation message that teaches people about protecting Northern fur seals!

Based on that guidance, I’ve already put in my suggestion: Forchrissakescanweputthehealthofanimalslikethisabovemonetarygain-
forcorporations, Jr. Got a better idea? I doubt it, but if so, you can submit it until May 29.

How do you make fruits and vegetables fun, instead of just good for you and better for the planet than meat? Well, probably not by doing elaborate tattoo designs on a banana. But it’s easy, so why not?

Basically, you just punch little holes in the banana skin with a pin, then put the banana in the fridge so that the skin will brown where punctured. Then you eat the banana. Or don’t, your call.

Phil Hansen, banana-tattoo pioneer and maker of the video above, has a book about banana tattooing (and other everyday artistry) that includes templates. But you can make your own — just print or draw a picture and tape it to your banana as a guide for your pin holes. Or just sack up and freehand it. Michelangelo definitely tattooed his Sistine Banana without any sissy template.

Denialist think tank the Heartland Institute likes to have all its besties over once a year to watch movies, braid each other’s hair, and talk about how they don’t believe in science or, when it comes down to it, really know what it is. Well, I have bad news for journalists looking for telling quotes, and for people like Lord Monckton who don’t get invited to any other parties: This year’s shindig was the last one for the foreseeable future.

The Heartland Institute has gotten in a lot of hot water lately, enraging not just activists but allies. People started giving the group the side-eye after some of its secret documents came to light, but the final straw was a hilariously asinine billboard campaign insinuating that people who care about the planet are psychos. So many funders walked out over that one that Heartland doesn’t have the money to put on its annual Jerkapalooza anymore.

Oh, denialists — will you never again go to the ball? Perhaps your fairy godmother will come and save you. She’s at least as plausible as the other things you believe in.

OK, this is a pretty oversimplified depiction of the relationship between corporate interests, farmers, and consumers — but that means it’s a good starting point for anyone who isn’t sure how subsidies for corn and soy led to a food system where processed crap is not only common but, for many people, inescapable. And it takes less than four minutes to watch!

The Biggest Loser framing doesn’t really work for me, though that may be because I don’t watch the show and there are some inside jokes I don’t get. (I assume? Because I’m definitely missing something — why is that lady with the tennis racket weeping openly?) But you can just ignore that part. It’s still worth showing to your friends who need a quick, simple primer on how this stuff interrelates and why you care.

The world inside a snow globe is usually pretty idyllic — just pure white snow falling lightly on famous landmarks. Not really an accurate reflection of the environmental toll of mass-produced tourist kitsch. So the artists of the Dorothy collective have produced a limited run of two coal power plant globes, complete with ash-flake “snow.” One has already been sold — but the other can be yours for £2,000, or a little over $3,100.

I’m not saying all airport tourist crap should display an accurate depiction of mass-manufacturing. Nobody wants smog-flavored bon-bons, or a shirt saying “I Went To Spain And All I Got Was An Increased Carbon Footprint From That Flight And This Lousy T-Shirt.” But this is a cool piece of art — the detail is amazing! — and a cool visual reminder of the effects of coal on the climate. It’s just too bad you’d need a government subsidy to buy one.

The International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University has convened a committee of scientists to determine the 10 best newly discovered species of 2011, and some of them are doozies. Even the monkey, which by all rights should be the cute one, is a noseless Voldemortian horror — and that’s not even to mention the spongy fungi, blue tarantulas, devil worms, and six-inch “leg sausages.” Please enjoy this trip through our weird, weird world of biodiversity — or, alternately, read this and then crawl under the bed with a can of Raid. Both seem legit.

Photo by Thomas Bruns.

Spongebob Squarepants fungus. Spongiforma squarepantsii doesn’t live in a pineapple under the sea, but it does smell faintly like fruit. Though it wears no pants and nothing about it is particularly square, its spongy structure — which allows it to absorb moisture from tropical rainforest air — is notable enough that scientists saw fit to honor everyone’s favorite irritating spongecreature when naming it.

Sneezing Voldemort monkey. This “snub-nosed” (read: basically noseless) monkey from Myanmar, Rhinopithecus strykeri, has so little protection for its nostrils that it sneezes uncontrollably in the rain. Locals say the monkeys sit with their heads between their knees in rainy weather, like they’re bracing for an airplane crash (though of course they’re just trying to keep raindrops out of their nose-holes).

Photo by Jianni Li.

Walking cactus. This one’s kind of a cheat: It’s not really a cactus, and while it was discovered last year, it’s no longer a living species. Still, Diania cactiformis is pretty cool — it’s a member of prehistoric phylum Lobopoda, or lobopods. Basically, it’s a segmented worm with spiny jointed legs, which might demonstrate an evolutionary step between lobopods (most of which have soft legs) and modern arthropods (the phylum that includes insects and crustaceans).

Photo by José-María Gómez Durán, Cornelis van Achterberg.

Teeny parasitic wasp. Watch your feet, at least if you’re in Madrid, Spain: Kollasmosoma sentum flies just a centimeter above the ground. Then again, you probably wouldn’t notice if it bit you — the wasps are less than a 20th of an inch long, no bigger than the heads of the ants they lay their eggs in. (It’s worth watching that video — these wasps lay eggs faster than some bugs sting.)

Photo by Gaetan Borgonie.

Devil’s worm. Metal fans and Satan worshippers: You are going to be disappointed. The devil worm (Halicephalobus mephisto) is a 0.02-inch nematode that doesn’t even have an attitude problem — if you’re looking for something flashy, look back up at the walking cactus, which kinda deserves the “devil worm” moniker. What’s cool about these nematodes, though, is that they are the deepest-living multicellular organisms outside of the oceans. H. mephisto was discovered eight-tenths of a mile deep in an African gold mine, living in water that had not seen the surface for more than 4,000 years.

Photo by Caroline Sayuri Fukushima.

Marge Simpson tarantula. The females of this tarantula species are super pretty, you guys. That’s about it — it’s not the first blue tarantula or anything. But it does come from isolated “island ecosystems” in Brazil, making it rare and vulnerable.

Photo by Ned Deloach.

Venomous jellyfish named after what you will yell when it stings you. This jellyfish species, Tamoya ohboya, was named via online competition. The winning name alludes to the exclamation you might make if you had a run-in with the Caribbean box jelly, whose sting could potentially put you in the hospital. Presumably “Tamoya ohshita” was not considered scientifically appropriate.

Photo by G. Brovad.

Wandering leg sausage. That’s what locals in Tanzania call this giant millipede, which is six inches long. Scientists call it Crurifarcimen vagans. I call it six inches too long for a millipede. (And, indeed, it’s a record-holder — the longest millipede ever found, which is a dubious honor if I ever heard one.)

Photos by P. Egan, André Schuiteman.

Boring flowers. Actually, I like flowers, but they don’t always make for weird or exciting science news. The Nepalese autumn poppy sounds pretty and is pretty. The night-blooming orchid sounds pretty and is all right if you like that sort of thing. Neither one sneezes in the rain or lays its eggs in anything — although the night-blooming orchid is the only known night-blooming orchid, and the Nepalese poppy grows at very high altitudes.

Are you against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, seizing family farms for risky oil pipelines, or opening more offshore real estate to operations like Deepwater Horizon? Do you think there are better ways to get energy than by tearing up the land and sea and endangering all who live there? Well, then you are a Satanist, or at very least some kind of spooky heathen. Focus on the Family’s James Dobson and I just thought you would like to know.

Here’s the explanation, from Dobson’s interview with Muslim whisperer Michael Youssef.

Dobson: I have great difficulty understanding why, here in the United States, 300 million people have more or less acquiesced to the refusal to drill our own oil and we remain silent when that’s really the core of the finances behind this anger and threat against our country.

Youssef: Well, I just think there are people who don’t really love America. Let’s just be blunt about it. I think that America is not primary in their thinking. I think sometimes as an immigrant who loves this country so deeply and I look and I see how people who were born in this country not only take it for granted but they literally don’t care about it and they don’t care about the exceptionalism, they don’t care about its future. And therefore the policies are reflected, so many of those people are behind the scenes, we don’t see them but they are the policymakers, they write the policy.

Dobson: Are we going to wait until the blow away a city, or two, or three, or four? It just seems to me that there’s something Satanic about this.

Youssef: You have another religion also at play here, so it’s not just Islam. We have a very fanatic religious people who worship Mother Earth, the environmentalists. They are as militant about their religion and protecting their goddess – and I’m not exaggerating – and therefore, to them, the environment and planet earth is the most important thing to defend. They are not going to allow anything to happen to their goddess – Gaia, the Mother Earth – and therefore, again, this is back in the policy area, all those who are running the EPA and all those folks, they are motivated by a powerful religion called earth worship.

The fact that we don’t love America is old news — after all, as the poet said, “if you love something, destroy it for a few years’ worth of Hummer fuel.” The Satan worship/Earth worship thing is a new one on me, though. But, you know, I’m convinced — after all, who knows more about obsessive, cultish religious lunacy than James Dobson and his friends? Guess I’d better find a goat and get sacrificin’.

Photo by Ben Williams.

Filmmaker Hailey Wist’s documentary The Garden Summer is the true story of five strangers picked to live on a farm, work together, and have their lives taped. Wist recruited four other good-looking 20-something suburbanites to spend the summer on an Arkansas farm, getting all their food (except booze, coffee, and cooking oil) either from their own garden or from within a 100-mile radius.

So what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real on a farm? Well, like the original MTV reprobates, they drink, get in arguments, and have romantic entanglements, sometimes with the same people. But they also learn about where their food comes from, and about wasting less and living simpler.

The cast — I’m calling them The Filmmaking One, The Wholesome One, The Ethereal One, The Sardonic One, and The Mustache, based solely on their pictures — makes the original Real World look like a Benetton ad. I’m pretty sure every season had The Token Minority One, sometimes even The Token Minority Several, but this cast is whiter than the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. And every single one of them is in a creative field — filmmaking, writing, illustration, photography. Now, I’m not saying that necessarily means they’re all incredibly privileged; I’m just coughing really loudly and it happens to sound like that’s what I said.

So OK, maybe this is less the Real World of farms, and more the Girls of Real Worlds of farms. But it looks like they’ll touch on a lot of questions that many of us have — could I be completely self-reliant for my food? Could I learn to waste less? Could I get by eating entirely local? It sounds fun to watch other people doing the experiment, so you can learn from their experience before you try anything yourself. Because you know your version would be way less picturesque and have no soundtrack.