Beets are everywhere during the fall. Roasted, sauteed, frittered…even flambéed. So why does it sometimes feel like these ruby-hued treasures are invisible to everyone but me? During the 2014–2015 academic year, Yale Dining Services served beets approximately every three weeks, usually on Thursdays. On Oct. 9, 2015, I received a jar of pickled beet balls as a belated birthday present from my mother. Incidentally, October 9, 2015 also marked the first time I’d ever felt that Mom really “got me.”
Daikon, parsnips, rutabaga—these are the Ugg-wearing basics of the taproot family. Beets have always been realer than the rest, since long before Dwight Kurt Schrute III helped spark the brief surge in beet-visibility that took the seasonal salad scene by storm in the mid-2000s. Assyrian texts place beets in the hanging gardens of Babylon. Ancient Romans used beets as aphrodisiacs, because they liked to get weird and they weren’t about to skimp on carotenoid intake. So as we approach peak beet harvest in the coming weeks, I implore the uninitiated to take a chance. Try a beet. Maybe your pee will be red, maybe it won’t—you’ll have to solve that mystery yourself, detective.
D: The obliquity of Earth’s axis
Earth’s a rad planet with a lot to offer: a nitrogen-rich atmosphere, over 1,200 species of bats, and Sugar Ray’s final and most under-appreciated album, Music for Cougars. But did you know that Earth’s also been rocking a tilted axis for a few billion years? Unsatisfied with living life perpendicular to its elliptical orbit (lol @ Mercury), Earth is 23.439281° off of vertical. Ipso facto: seasons. And I’m not about to protest the annual weather cycle. In a temperate climate like New England’s, jorts, sweater vests, and Arctic-grade down jumpsuits can all have a season in which to shine. Crisp autumn mornings? A-okay by me. Foliage? A joy! But let’s not forget what’s really causing the mercury in your old-school, chemically-hazardous thermometer to start dropping. Earth’s tilt, which initially seemed so trendy and chill, actually steals a few minutes of the north hemisphere’s daylight every day after the Summer Solstice — decidedly UNCHILL. By the time December rolls around, New Haven’s street lamps will flicker on before dinner even opens, and the solar zenith will be lower than your expectations for finals period. Comfort yourself with autumnal social media posts while you still can.
Fail: The Cloud
It is everywhere, it is nowhere, and, somehow at the same time, it is neither. It is how cousin Jared always insists on sharing the family’s pictures from Thanksgiving. It is why Aunt Barbara will be unable to find and open those family pictures. It is “The Cloud.”
At approximately 2:55 pm EDT last Friday, Google Drive crashed, forming a small hole in The Cloud for a few tormenting hours. Across the nation, people angrily shook their fists at The Cloud like wronged 1940’s actors. But what even is this Cloud that they’re gesticulating towards? I know I speak for all of America when I say it’s high time we got some answers. Perhaps it’s a nimbostratus Cloud, raining down on us when it becomes too weighed down by Cold War study guides and mistakenly released social security numbers. Maybe it’s more of a low-lying fog. There’s The Cloud, clouded judgment, “Strange Clouds,” Cloud Atlas—all dangers to society, and not one Silver Linings Playbook to be found among them. Personally, I haven’t trusted clouds since the day that my sixth grade earth science class made them with matches and Sprite bottles, and I’m not about to start.