Fighting back: New Orleans Saints and Pelicans owner Tom Benson scoffed at a suggestion that he sell his NFL and NBA teams because of his age and a protracted legal struggle with estranged heirs. The Associated Press reports the 88-year-old Benson issued a written statement disseminated by the team the same day a front-page Times-Picayune editorial urged Benson to sell to local buyers, saying the teams, city and state would be better off. “What strikes me the most is the pure irony of the Times Picayune imploring me to sell for the benefit of the city,” the statement continued. “I recall in May 2012, reaching out to the Newhouse family, imploring them to sell to me or other local ownership as they threatened to become and then became a part-time newspaper. Since then the newspaper has done nothing but layoff (sic) staff and move operations out of town.” The Associated Press has the full story.
Matters of taste: Research by LSU neuroscientist John Caprio on measuring the nerve impulses from a catfish’s taste buds is featured in the December issue of National Geographic in an article titled “Beyond Taste Buds: The Science of Delicious.” Caprio studies catfish, called the supertasters of the animal kingdom because their skin, gills, lips and barbells are covered in tastebuds similar to those found on the human tongue. Those taste buds help them find food in murky water, Caprio says. “Taste buds were first described in fish back in the 1820s—40 years before they were identified in mammals,” Caprio says in the article. “We’re the product of what evolved in the water.” The article explores how people taste food and the science of how those tastes are produced and deciphered by the human body. Read the full article.
Staggering statistics: The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas estimates more than 70,000 oil and gas jobs have been lost since October 2014, a 14.5% drop. FuelFix.com reports the bank also notes nine Chapter 11 court filings in the fourth quarter, which equals about one-third of oil and gas Chapter 11 filings. But the sacrifice of dozens of U.S. oil producers, thousands of oil field workers and more than 1,200 drilling rigs still hasn’t stalled U.S. crude production enough to shrink the global oil glut that has sent oil prices below $40 a barrel. U.S. output has fallen more slowly than expected, with production declines leveling out in recent weeks, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, as the market absorbs crude production from drilling activity that happened early last summer, when oil prices were $60 a barrel. Big-ticket oil projects coming into production in the Gulf of Mexico boosted U.S. supplies by 500,000 barrels a day from July to September, which tempered the decline in the nation’s shale plays. FuelFix.com has the full story.
