It’s time to look back at one of the momentous decisions of the year: Is a burrito a sandwich? According to one activist judge, the answer is a resounding no.
The burrito brouhaha began when Panera, one of the country’s biggest bakery cafes, argued that owners of the White City Shopping Center in Shrewsbury violated a 2001 lease agreement that restricted the mall from renting to another sandwich shop. When the center signed a lease this year with Qdoba, Panera balked, saying the Mexican chain’s burritos violate its sandwich exclusivity clause.
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In his ruling, Locke cited Webster’s definition of a sandwich and explained that the difference comes down to two slices of bread versus one tortilla: “A sandwich is not commonly understood to include burritos, tacos, and quesadillas, which are typically made with a single tortilla and stuffed with a choice filling of meat, rice, and beans,” he wrote.
Judge Locke thinks he’s so clever. Let’s see how he deals with the wrap: burrito, sandwich, or salad?
Ice drilled in Antarctica offers the fullest record of glacial cycles and greenhouse gas levels.
By Usha Lee McFarling, Times Staff Writer
An ice core about two miles long — the oldest frozen sample ever drilled from the underbelly of Antarctica — shows that at no time in the last 650,000 years have levels of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane been as high as they are today.
The research, published in today’s issue of the journal Science, describes the content of the greenhouse gases within the core and shows that carbon dioxide levels today are 27% higher than they have been in the last 650,000 years and levels of methane, an even more powerful greenhouse gas, are 130% higher, said Thomas Stocker, a climate researcher at the University of Bern and senior member of the European team that wrote two papers based on the core.
The work provides more evidence that human activity since the Industrial Revolution has significantly altered the planet’s climate system, scientists said.
Later, the scientists took the world’s largest cherry syrup container and made themselves a sweet icy treat.
TOPEKA, Kan., Nov. 8 — The Kansas Board of Education voted Tuesday that students will be expected to study doubts about modern Darwinian theory, a move that defied the nation’s scientific establishment even as it gave voice to religious conservatives and others who question the theory of evolution.
By a 6 to 4 vote that supporters cheered as a victory for free speech and opponents denounced as shabby politics and worse science, the board said high school students should be told that aspects of widely accepted evolutionary theory are controversial. Among other points, the standards allege a “lack of adequate natural explanations for the genetic code.”
The bitterly fought effort pushes Kansas to the forefront of a war over evolution being waged in courts in Pennsylvania and Georgia and statehouses nationwide. President Bush stated his own position last summer, buoying social conservatives when he said “both sides” should be taught.
“This is a great day for education. This is one of the best things that we can do. This absolutely teaches more about science,” said Steve E. Abrams, the Kansas board chairman who shepherded the conservative Republican majority that overruled a 26-member science committee and turned aside the National Academy of Sciences and the National Science Teachers Association.
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Sue Gamble said the board, by dropping a phrase that defined science as “a search for natural explanations of observable phenomena,” was opening the door to supernatural explanations.