Americans have a long tradition of dreaming up radical ideas for uber-healthy diets and trying to convince other people that their lives and bodies will be transformed if they just change what they're putting in their mouth. The country's first raw food restaurant opened in Los Angeles in 1917 and stayed open for 25 years. There were certainly some people who promoted these ideas potential profit, like Julian P. Thomas, M.D.:

But there were also people who had a more missionary zeal for their discoveries, like Eugene and Mollie Griswold Christian, the authors of Uncooked Foods & How to Use Them: A Treatise on How to Get the Highest Form of Animal Energy From Food. The book was originally published in 1904 by New York's Health & Culture Company, and a fifth-edition copy is currently available from the rare-books dealer Rabelais. There's "a bit of spotting to the publisher's gilt stamped dark blue boards," but the book, which is going for $90, is "otherwise near fine." Check it out:

Also, it's incredibly fun to read.

The Christians make a lot of the same arguments for healthy living and raw food that you hear today. Only they make them in turn-of-the-century style. Raw food, for instance, is good because God made it that way:

They have been finished by nature, by some supreme intelligence, and sown with prodigal hand over the face of the earth, and man has become the beneficiary thereof. And none of his work and puny efforts can possibly improve them.

Or, here's their argument against coffee, tea, and tobacco:

A being who subsists upon clean, elementary foods would have no more desire for stimulants and narcotics than a horse or a dog would have for a Manhattan cocktail.

By now you’ve probably seen the time-lapse of the funnel cloud raging through Moore, Okla., donated to the Red Cross, and thought to yourself, “Ohmygod, I am so glad I don’t live someplace where there are tornadoes.” Or maybe you do live someplace where there are tornadoes, and you’re wondering why God and/or the climate decided that your community should be blessed with this particular terror. Well, we wondered too.

Natural disasters are both devastating and frustrating, but particularly so when no one else in the world seems to get them. Seventy-five percent of all tornadoes on Earth occur in the United States [PDF]. To which we say, “Dammit America, why do you do this to us?”

Cue insightful map from the Weather Underground:

It’s possible the number of non-U.S. tornadoes could be much higher. Every continent except for Antarctica has reported tornadoes, but the numbers are sketchy. Some places, like Australia, are suspected of having lots of tornadoes, but many occur in less populated areas, so they are left to spin out uncounted and unnoticed. Other places, like the U.K., have lots of tornadoes (the most tornadoes per area, actually), but British tornadoes don’t have nearly the same magnitude.

From the good folks at PBS:

Icelandic officials had to rescue four American (OF COURSE) tourists who tried to picnic on an iceberg. The four had set up their table and folding chairs and were eating a meal when a gust of wind pushed the floe more than 30 feet from land. That's not very far to swim in general, even for an American, but it's kind of a long-ass way to swim in frigid glacial waters.

Here, would you like 1,142 calories for about $5, plus the price of a ticket to Japan? For the next little while, in Japan only, McDonald's is selling an item called the Mega Potato that is "double the size of an order of large fries." MSN writes:

At 350 grams, it's more than three-quarters of a pound of fries poured into a Golden Arches-stamped cardboard trough that McDonald's has advertised as "perfect for sharing."

This is actually the second coming of the Mega Potato. Back in 2010, McD's offered it in a slightly smaller iteration -- it was the equivalent of two orders of medium fries. But, as Zimmerman's law of fast food states, gross food can only get grosser and weirder.

The Night Heron was an invitation-only bar built illegally inside a Chelsea water tower in New York City that was open for just a few weekends this spring. Despite the arcane, timepiece-based invite process, Atlantic Cities and The New York Times both made it there. Here's how a guest would find her way to this spot, according to Atlantic Cities:

The entrance tickets ... are in the form of a pocket watch -- which can only be obtained as a gift -- with a reservation number and instructions inside advising against high heels and to be ready for a bit of climbing … After squeezing through a trap door, you are welcomed into a candlelit wooden cylinder outfitted with a bar, drink tables, and chandelier, all made from upright piano parts. You sip an aromatic amber concoction made by a dapper proprietor and survey this cedar jewel box, seemingly constructed by a pauper of exquisite taste.

Here's what that felt like:

All this was possible because, even in a city of gentrifying neighborhoods and investment, there are still building owners who don't pay much attention to their property.

May hasn't gone so hot for some of the sharing economy's most promising entrepreneurs. 2012 might have hinted of challenges to come, but so far 2013 has overdelivered. In the last two weeks, New York regulators and courts have essentially shut three of these companies down, at least temporarily.

SideCar Technologies, a donation-based rideshare start-up, ceased its New York business after a judge said even free rides from the company would violate the city's laws governing cars-for-hire, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Then last week, RelayRides, which allows car owners to rent out their vehicles, came under fire from the state Financial Services Department for what officials called "repeated false advertising and violations of insurance law, which are putting the public at risk." Basically: RelayRides told car owners that the company's insurance policy covered them 100 percent in the case of a car renter, say, mowing down a pedestrian, but the car owners could actually be found liable.

But the issue really came to a head this week, when a New York judge deemed vacation rental middle-people Airbnb illegal in New York City and New York state. Airbnb's services violate laws against underground and underregulated hotels, as well as a state-wide ban on short-term rentals enacted in 2011. Airbnb is now lobbying in Albany to change the law, but the East Village host who rented out his apartment for a few days and was made an example of got slapped with a $2,400 fine.

Last year, California cracked down on ridesharing and car-hire start-ups. The state hasn't shut them down -- it's looking for a way to regulate them within the current system -- but it's asking a lot of the same questions about insurance and liability that are vexing New York.

Bad news, Fage fans and Chobani lovers (we're gonna call you "Chobuccaneers"). All that Greek yogurt you're eating is creating a toxic byproduct: gallons upon gallons upon gallons of acid whey.

This is the same whey that Miss Muffett so enjoyed. Apparently she was a fish-hating sociopath in addition to being an arachnophobe. Modern Farmer reports:

It’s a thin, runny waste product that can’t simply be dumped. Not only would that be illegal, but whey decomposition is toxic to the natural environment, robbing oxygen from streams and rivers. That could turn a waterway into what one expert calls a "dead sea," destroying aquatic life over potentially large areas. Spills of cheese whey, a cousin of Greek yogurt whey, have killed tens of thousands of fish around the country in recent years.

Amtrak fans in the House of Representatives have finally stumbled onto that age-old marketing principle: "If you want people to use a service, fill it with animals." (I assume that's what they teach in marketing school, and if they don't they should.) Four House members have introduced a bill that would require all Amtrak trains to have at least one car that accommodates animals. Technically all the animals will be in kennels, but I'm going to cling to my fantasy of being whisked through the countryside in a pile of cats and dogs.

Artist Olafur Eliasson has an exhibit about glaciers called Your Waste of Time at MoMA PS1 in New York City. But the exhibit isn't just about glaciers -- it's also made of glaciers. Eliasson broke chunks off Icelandic glaciers and flew them to Queens, which I guess is OK if the point of the exhibit is to make a point about "time that is measured in thousands of years rather than mere decades," as MoMA says, but is kind of ironic if he's trying to make any kind of statement about preserving glaciers.

This tornado, guys. This tornado. I mean. I just. I can't. The whole town! The kids! UGH. I am at the point with national tragedies where I just lose my ability to respond in any coherent way. What do we even DO at that point? Well, one approach is to watch heartwarming animal videos, like this one where a shocked tornado victim discovers during a CBS interview that she didn't lose everything -- she just lost everything except her dog.