Articles by Jess Zimmerman

Cantaloupe food poisoning outbreak is now the deadliest in 12 years

Don't tell Michele Bachmann, but it turns out that when food isn't adequately regulated, you can get giant deadly food poisoning outbreaks. Most recently, a crop of listeria-tainted cantaloupe has now killed 13 people officially, and possibly as many as 16 -- shooting right past the salmonella episode three years ago that killed nine. This is the most deaths from contaminated food since a 1998 listeria outbreak that killed 21.

No, the EPA is NOT expanding 1,350 percent

Apparently the right-wing blogosphere, not to mention some "news" organizations, will believe just about anything about the EPA. The most recent ridiculous rumor is that the agency, which currently employs 17,000 people, is on track to hire "230,000 new bureaucrats" -- at taxpayer expense, natch -- while bumping its $8.7 billion budget up to $21 billion.

How did this happen? Basically, the world's dumbest game of telephone.

Terrifying recycled playground will eat your children

Let's say you want to build a playground for refugee children from Myanmar. And let's say you also want to recycle some rubber tires. You could tie the tires to ropes and make swings out of them, like kids have done pretty much since the tire was invented, or maybe you could put them on the ground to make an obstacle course. Or, hey, you could fashion them into a sort of Gigeresque nightmare squid! That one sounds good, let's do that.

Would you believe Mark Zuckerberg killed a bison?

Does this look like the face of a man who could kill a bison? Does this look like the DOG of a man who could kill a bison? WELL IT IS. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg is continuing his yearlong challenge of eating healthier and more sustainably by only eating meat he kills himself, rather than meat from environmentally unfriendly factory farms. And now he's going after the deadliest game. Or wait, no. But pretty big game nonetheless.