Headlines (Now I'm in the mood for a chicken patty; the obligatory Hilary/Obama story; intelligence in animals)

Soaring food costs forcing changes in your child's school menu

Here's what the soaring cost of food has meant to Broward County's school lunch menu: white bread instead of whole wheat, less-expensive fresh fruits and vegetables, and cutbacks in popular-but-pricey Jamaican meat patties and egg rolls. -- the Sun-Sentinel

Needless to say, with our nation's children as pudgy as they are, this isn't a good thing. Kids can eat as many as five (and if they're eating breakfast there too, as many as ten) meals a week at school, so getting stingy with the food funds can make for a very irresponsible situation. In these hyper-health conscious times, I'm surprised the school board can seriously serve garbage like Wonder Bread to students with a straight face. At this point, I'd actually prefer schools cut back spending in other extracurricular departments like computer labs and just reallocate that same money into getting the healthiest and freshest food for the cafeteria. We don't need a computer in every classroom -- it's the first thing kids hop onto when they get home anyway.

And it's a bummer about those Jamaican beef patties. I always got excited about them as a kid. They were way too salty, but good.

Options dwindling for Clinton

So Hilary won Indiana (barely) and Obama won North Carolina. Obviously, for my own personal benefit -- and, in my opinion, the benefit of the country -- I'm glad that Obama won one of yesterday's two primaries and still holds the inside track to the Democratic nomination. But the Devil's Advocate in me that likes to see controversy and conflict and intrigue ALMOST wishes that Hilary had swept both states last night. Even if you can't stand her, it would have undeniably made things all the more drawn out and, as a result, all the more interesting. A result like that would've really put the superdelegates in a tough spot -- nominate the candidate who leads in the popular vote and appears to be the politician Democratic voters want to see in the White House, or nominate the candidate that they personally may prefer or may passionately believe gives the party the better chance at the presidency.

I guess for now it's a moot point because Hilary's said that she's not dropping out yet and plans to move forward with her campaign. And she might even be on to something, because though the math and numbers crunch of the remaining superdelegates aren't in her favor, I think she still one last hope, one last saving grace that she can hang her hat on. Ultimately, those superdelegates may simply disregard the popular vote and go with what they feel -- what they gut-feel -- is the right thing to do. And that may all boil down to what they think will be more palatable (or less repulsive, whichever way you look at it) to the voting public: a candidate that's white, but is "unfortunately" a woman; or a candidate that's a man, but is "unfortunately" black.

I fully expect Obama to eventually get the nod, but I can definitely see how someone could make a convincing enough argument that Hilary's female whiteness trumps Obama's male blackness. And in the end, the Democratic party is gonna do what's best for them. So who knows what will happen.

For animals, smart isn't always better

"Why are humans so smart?" is a question that fascinates scientists. Dr. Tadeusz Kawecki, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Fribourg, in Switzerland, likes to turn around the question.

"If it's so great to be smart," Kawecki asks, "why have most animals remained dumb?"

Kawecki and like-minded scientists are trying to figure out why animals learn and why some have evolved to be better at learning than others. One reason for the difference, their research finds, is that being smart can be bad for an animal's health.

Dukas hypothesizes that any animal with a nervous system can learn. -- the Sun-Sentinel

I scanned the entire article and there was no mention of Velociraptors learning how to open doors.