THE DECENT OF

VENICE

CHANGING THE

WORLD

SUNSETS TO

DIE FOR5 SUNSETS YOU MUST SEE

BEFORE YOU DIE

INNOVATION NO ONE ELSE COULD SEE

SINKING INTO HISTORY

PEACH

DO I DARE TO EAT A

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CONTENTSFEATURES

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DO I DARE TO EAT A PEACH

For those who fantasize about greeting the dawn, there is hope.

For those who fantasize about greeting the dawn, there is hope.

Mitiga Airport in Tripoli has a series of signs with the word “No” in capital letters next to illustrations of automatic weapons, but these warnings are liberally interpreted.

Perhaps it’s time to just put our differences aside and be friends.

So You Think You CanBe a Morning Person?

Packing Heat at the Gate

Rethinking That SpecialRelationship

By TARA PARKER-POPE

by BILL MAGRITY

By DAOUD KUTTAB

By GEOFFREY WHEATCROFT

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Venice is Sinking

Spider Powers

The Global Price of Gas

Sunsets to Die for

3-D Mummy

Changing the World

The Secret to Success

Slowly sinking into the sea.

Do tarantulas shoot silk from their feet.

Find out why it varies from nation to nation.

Don’t miss your opportunity to see them.

A patient waits 550 years for a CT scan.

One mans briliant journey.

Dealing with failure may be the key to success.

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WATCH OUT

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5 SUNSETS YOU MUST SEE BEFORE YOU DIE

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2 41Anchorage, Alaska Great Pyramids, Egypt

Grand Canyon, Arizona

Key West, FloridaParadise Island, Bahamas

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CHANGING THE WORLD

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Youthful founder gets booted from his company in the 1980s, returns in the 1990s, and in the following decade survives two brushes with death, one securities-law scandal, an also-ran prouct lineup, and his own often unpleasant demeanor to become the dominant personality in four distinct industries, a billionaire many times over, and CEO of the most valuable company in Silicon Valley.

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Steve Jobbs did not invent the wheel, he was who made everyone realize how bad

they wanted it.

“We don’t get a chance to do that

many things, and every

one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief,

and then you die, you

know?

And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So

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Do I Dare to Eat apeach

ABecause as a kid, I wouldn’t go near one. Or a cheeseburger. Or soup. Or anything that had touched a pickle. My parents said I was the fin-ickiest child they’d ever seen, and our meals to-gether gave new meaning to the phrase “food fight.” So now that I’m thinking about starting

Do I Dare to Eat a

by Bill Magrity

As a child i have never eat-en a pickle, at least not on purpose. It’s not a claim I make with pride, though it comes up somewhat often, especially in the summer months. Backyard-beer-

and-burger-flip season. For much of my life, such occasions were actually harrowing af-fairs, hardly conducive to the relaxation for which they were purposed. The stress typically kicked in at the end of hour one, just as the congregants moved to the fixings table. The sun might shine and the birds might sing. A piñata might even hang in the yard. But the spread would stretch

out like a minefield. Plates stacked with on-ions, tomatoes, and lettuce, items that, to my mind, had no more business on a burger than peanut butter. Bowls filled with potato salad and coleslaw, two concoctions whose very names I preferred not to let pass my lips. For dessert, the dreaded watermelon. My only solace would come when the chef called, “Who wants cheese on their burger?” at which point, if I was lucky, I’d spot a five-year-old wearing my same look of disgust. A compatriot. We’d get our burgers first—less time was spent in their construction—then go eat at the swing set. “You know,” I’d ex-plain, “I’ve never eaten a pickle, at least not on purpose.”

peach

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On one such occasion a friend’s son got cu-rious. “Does that mean you’ve had one on accident?” he asked.“Actually, your father once snuck four pickle slices and some mus-tard on a hamburger he fixed for me. It was

at a cookout shortly after we got out of col-lege, an engagement party for him and your mother.”“What did you do?”“I took one bite and spit it all over the table. I think your grandmother was pretty grossed out.”He looked up at me skeptically, causing me to worry for a moment that he might be pro-pick-le. But as he turned to examine the burger on the paper plate in his lap, I knew it didn’t mat-ter. I could make him understand by likening the pickle to the beet. Or to broccoli. For that is the essence of the picky eater’s dilemma: Whatever that foodstuff is that he finds most objectionable, nothing will be as terrifying as the thought of having it in his mouth. I say that with intimate authority. I grew up the worst eater I’d ever heard of, the kid that my friends’ parents always sent home at supper-time, a sufferer of bizarre food phobias that

were absolutely nonnegotiable. I’d refuse to eat cheese, except on pizza, and then only with pepperoni. Mac and cheese and grilled cheese sandwiches were out. By a similar log-ic, french fries were in but mashed potatoes

were out. Condiments were unthinkable, and so too soup, fruit, and any vegetable that wasn’t corn. Those few foods I did eat could never be allowed to touch on the plate; “cas-serole” was the dirtiest word I could think of. I would eat a peanut butter sandwich but had no use for jelly and would refuse to take a bite within an inch of the crust. Chicken was fine, turkey was not, and fish was just weird. Essentially, all I ate willingly was plain-and-dry hot dogs and burgers, breakfast cereal with “sugar” in bold let-ters on the box, and anything with Chef Boyardee’s picture on the label. Or, rather, almost anything. I didn’t fully trust the shape of his ravioli; something told me cheese might be lurking within. Such proclivities came at a cost. In elementary school, I was regularly disciplined for not eating enough of my lunch, sequestered to the “baby table,” where talking was forbidden and cafeteria monitors would loom overhead, pushing me to eat. When summer came, my

parents would no doubt have loved to ship me off to camp but didn’t out of a legitimate fear that I’d starve. That was fine by me. I was similarly terrified that some camp counselor would force me to drink iced tea.

At home, my parents did what they could but never had much heart for the battle. According to my dad, the opening skirmish was

over a sweet potato, when I was two. Though I remember nothing of the encounter, my guess is—given that my parents were chil-dren of the Depression and were neither ad-venturesome eaters nor particularly adept in the kitchen—that the sweet potato had been boiled, probably for longer than it needed to be. I looked at it and told him that I didn’t eat those. He responded that this was the first sweet potato I’d seen. At his strong insistence

5TIPS FORPICKY EATERS

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KEEP HEALTHY SNACKS ON HAND: Bring healthy snacks where ever you go, and at other times when you know their stomachs will be grumbling.

GIVE THEM A SAY IN WHAT THEY EAT:Help your kids make the right food and drink choices from an early age. If they have a say in decisions they will be more excited about what they eat. It’s a great way to get them to take charge of their health.

GET THEM INVOLVED IN THE KITCHEN: Let them help you with jobs in the kitchen such as mixing ingredients, putting away plastic dishes, turning on the blender etc. Be sure to thank them for their help.

GET THEM EXCITED ABOUT HEALTHY FOOD: Let them smell, touch, taste, ask questions and try fruits, veggies, yogurts along with other healthy foods in the kitchen. Ask them what they think of the foods.

I took a bite, then airmailed it onto his chin.Meals became a combination of accom-

modation and subterfuge. My mom served dinner on steel cafeteria trays purchased at an Army surplus store. That allowed her to segregate my food. She’d sprinkle Jell-O mix on banana slices to make them seem closer to candy. She’d even turn a blind eye—oc-casionally—when I’d slide objectionable items to my two younger brothers, neither of whom suffered from finickiness. One of them actually ate crayons and cigarettes.My palate did broaden as I got older, though none of these victories were won at my par-ents’ table. And so ingrained were the food phobias that I can clearly remember each time I branched out. I first tried ketchup as a tenth grader, at the old Holiday House on Austin’s Ben White Boulevard, in an effort to look sophisticated in front of two much cool-er upperclassmen. I was a University of Texas sophomore standing on the corner of Speed-way and what is now Dean Keeton when I became an acknowledged fan of caramelized onions. A friend argued that they were the primary attraction in the $1.50 fajitas we’d

just bought from a campus vendor, then opened one up to prove it. I was shocked. t that point I’d been enjoying them unwit-tingly for more than a year. And then there were tomatoes. I’d long heard that garden-fresh tomatoes were nothing like the canned ones I’d picked out of my mom’s spaghetti. I could even recite the lyrics to Guy Clark’s celebratory hymn “Homegrown Tomatoes.” But I’d never been willing to try one until an afternoon twelve years ago at the home of the writer Jan Reid. The occasion was a reunion of sorts. Four months earlier some friends and I had been with Jan in Mexico City. Our cab had been hijacked by two pis-toleros, and Jan had fought back, ending up with a gunshot wound in his belly and a bul-let near his spine. While rehabbing in Hous-ton, he had asked me to water his cherished tomato plants. When he finally got home,

the Gang of Four, as he called us, met at his house for dinner.

We sat down, he announced he was serving BLTs, casually mentioning how good it had felt to have been able to pick

the tomatoes that afternoon. He thanked me for keeping them alive while he’d been in the hospital. It didn’t seem an appropriate time to say, “I don’t eat those.” They tasted as great as food served by someone who’s saved your life should. And the affinity held up; the next time I encountered a homegrown toma-to I bit into it as if it were an apple. By then I was 33 years old. And though nowadays I’lleat just about anything and have never re-ally wondered what my life would have been like if only I’d met tomatoes sooner—a new concern has arisen. At 44, I’ve finally gotten married, and my wife and I are talking about starting a family.

We’ve seen enough friends have children to know that wearing regurgitated yams will be part of the bargain. But we’d like to find a way to make that stop sometime before the kids go to college. Since my genes will get the credit for any picky eaters produced, the burden of learning why they happen and how best to deal with them has fallen to me. So I started doing some research.Imagine a caveman is eyeballing a ham-burger. His reaction will be as instinctual as going to the bathroom or looking for love. The sight and smell will alert his brain that proteins and calories are available. With he first bite, chemical reactions between the burger’s ingredients and taste receptors in his tongue will send messages through his nervous system, primarily the chorda tym-pani nerve, which stretches around

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intopowerplays.Withastrong-willed

child,that’sthekindofproblemthatcan

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his eardrum to the stem of his brain. If there’s a tomato on it, or maybe some ketchup, he’ll get a sweet taste, which upon arrival upstairs will trigger a small dopamine release. His body will read that as good news. The same will happen with the salty fat in the meat and cheese. But if by chance there’s some arugula onboard, a bitter taste will register, signifier of potential poison. He’ll likely spit that out and pick it off the rest of the burger. As he continues, chewing and swallowing each bite, a second, internal smelling process will take place every time he exhales. This informa-tion will be more detailed than that from the tongue, which can read only the five basic tastes: salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and the newly discovered, ever-nebulous umami. The news will combine in the brain and be read as dis-tinct flavors. He’ll go about the rest of his day with a good supply of energy and remember that meal as a fine thing.

Now picture the caveman eating at Austin’s Counter Cafe, rightfully considered home to the city’s best burger. Sitting next to him

and regarding an identical lunch is a mem-ber of that class of Austinite that considers itself the town’s most evolved: the trendy hip-ster. (Though they share the same bedhead and beard, the hipster will be identifiable by the pair of Ray-Bans folded next to his plate.) His relationship with the burger will be much more complicated. Assuming his parents were middle- to upper-class, he’s at least one generation removed from foods of necessity, so he’s known only the luxury of choice. If he grew up in the seventies or eighties, his earliest exposure to vegetables was probably via Del Monte and Green Giant, black-magic alchemists who, through canning and freez-ing, confused an entire nation on the meaning of “garden fresh.” If he suffered from chronic ear infections as a kid, his chorda tympani may have been damaged and his sense of taste permanently altered. Or he may even be a supertaster, one of that quarter of the popu-lace whose tongues can have twice as many taste receptors as the average eater’s. In that case, every taste will be magnified, particu-larly the bitter ones. Given all the variables, if the hipster chooses to leave everything off his meat patty but the bun, there’d be plenty of potential reasons why.“When we talk about picky eating, we are talking about pleasure and people who don’t get the same hit from eating that others do,” instructs Linda Bartoshuk, the director of hu-man research at the University of Florida’s

Center for Smell and Taste. She was one of the first experts I called, a legend in the tight circle of neuroscientists, psychologists, and nutritionists who study the way people eat. She’s researched taste for 45 years, and among her discoveries is the supertasting phenomenon. “There are major categories of things that affect how much pleasure we take from food. One is sensory, and that’s where the supertasters fit in. We don’t all taste things the same way. That’s hardwired. The other is experience, the pathologies you have encountered. That is all learned.”Those lessons come early. When Bartoshuk explained the fundamental nature of con-ditioned food preferences and aversions, she pointed to baby rats, who sniff their mother’s breath to learn what is safe to eat. In finicky humans, the primary pathology is gastro-intestinal problems. If a person of any age throws up shortly after eating, he’ll automati-cally develop an aversion to whatever he just ate, regard-less of any causal connection between it and getting sick. “When I see a picky kid, the first thing I try to find out is his medical history. If the parents say he threw up a lot when he was young, I’ve got a pretty good idea why he finds many foods disgusting. It’s a brain mechanism he can’t help.” ∆

Zimmern the

world traveler

blames limited

diets on cultural

forces. “I’ve been

running a kind of

experiment with

my son, who’s six.

I’ve tried to get to

him before the cultural

guardians can. He had a

book called Yummy Yucky,

and it associated worms with

yucky. So he won’t eat worms,

which is very interesting to me.

Because he loves crickets and june

bugs and all of the other funky little

things that are edible in our garden in

the summertime. Sometimes we just sit

and eat them off the ground.”