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Science
2:30 am
Tue July 3, 2012

When Ice Cream Attacks: The Mystery of Brain Freeze

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Credit Benjamin Morris / NPR
NPR interns (from left) Angela Wong and Kevin Uhrmacher participate in an experiment to induce brain freeze.
Credit Maggie Starbard / NPR
Joe Palca explains how to induce a brain freeze.
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Originally published on Tue July 3, 2012 1:12 pm

If it hasn't happened to you, count yourself as lucky. For many people, eating ice cream or drinking an icy drink too fast can produce a really painful headache. It usually hits in the front of the brain, behind the forehead.

The technical name for this phenomenon is cold-stimulus headache, but people also refer to it as "ice cream headache" or "brain freeze."

The good news is that brain freeze is easy to prevent — just eat more slowly. The other bit of good news is these headaches don't last very long — a minute at the outside.

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Money & Politics
2:29 am
Tue July 3, 2012

Gay Donors Open Wallets On Both Sides Of The Aisle

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Credit Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP
President Obama is introduced by singer Ricky Martin at a fundraiser hosted by Martin and the LGBT Leadership Council at the Rubin Museum of Art on May 14 in New York.
Credit Steve Marcus / Reuters /Landov
Paul Singer, shown at a conference in Las Vegas on May 9, is a top supporter of GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney and has also started a superPAC to back Republican candidates who favor same-sex marriage.
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Originally published on Tue July 3, 2012 7:26 am

In politics, money talks. And money from gay and lesbian donors is talking louder than ever in this election cycle.

That's partly a result of President Obama endorsing same-sex marriage, and it's partly because Republicans are starting to see contributions as well.

That's a huge change from just a few decades ago.

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Books
2:28 am
Tue July 3, 2012

Dog Memoirs Will Fetch, Sit And Stay On Your Shelf

Credit Julie Rovner
Gromit is the purebred Pembroke Welsh corgi belonging to NPR's Julie Rovner — who says she's hoping to eventually adopt a companion pooch named Wallace.
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Originally published on Tue July 3, 2012 1:13 pm

The Morning Edition mailboxes are always overflowing with books sent by publishers. And recently, a fair number have fallen into a category you might call "dog memoirs" — books about how dogs transform their owners' lives.

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Space
2:28 am
Tue July 3, 2012

Fledgling NASA Nonprofit Starts To Liftoff

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Originally published on Tue July 3, 2012 9:24 am

A new nonprofit organization that's supposed to take charge of expanding scientific research on the International Space Station has had a rocky first year but now is starting to show what it can do.

The Center for the Advancement of Science in Space just signed one agreement with a company not traditionally linked to research in space: the sporting goods company Cobra Puma Golf.

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Author Interviews
2:20 am
Tue July 3, 2012

A Cautionary Tale About Transforming Afghanistan

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Credit Courtesy of the U.S. National Archives via Foreign Policy
Scores of Americans engineers worked in southern Afghanistan from the late 1940s to the late 1970s to build two large dams and a canal network. The development project soon became a vast experiment in social engineering. New villages were constructed, with schools and health clinics. A new, modern society was to rise from the desert.
Credit Courtesy of the U.S. National Archives via Foreign Policy
Scores of American engineers worked in southern Afghanistan from the late 1940s to the late 1970s to build two large dams and a canal network. The development project soon became a vast experiment in social engineering. New villages were constructed, with schools and health clinics. A new, modern society was to rise from the desert.
Credit Courtesy of Rebecca Ansary Pettys via Foreign Policy
The clubhouse, set along the river, featured nightly card games and a Filipino barkeeper who could mix a potent gin and tonic. Nearly every week brought another dance or party.
Credit Courtesy of Rebecca Ansary Pettys via Foreign Policy
The streets were lined with trees. The brick and white-stucco homes with green front lawns resembled subdivisions in the American Southwest.
Credit Courtesy of Rebecca Ansary Pettys via Foreign Policy
"It was an enchanting time," remembered Rebecca Pettys, who lived there for six years starting in 1958, when she was 12 years old. Her Afghan father had received a doctorate from the University of Chicago and married a Finnish-American woman he met in Illinois. The family moved to southern Afghanistan so he could participate in the development effort.
Credit Courtesy of Rajiv Chandrasekaran via Foreign Policy

In the early 1950s, Americans working on a huge engineering project in southern Afghanistan lived in a self-contained community. It looked like a piece of America dropped into the Afghan desert and was known as "Little America."

Credit Courtesy of Bettina Nordby via Foreign Policy
Seven-year-old Lawrence Odle and his 9-year-old sister, Bettina, stand in front of their home in Lashkar Gah in 1956.
Credit Courtesy of Bettina Nordby via Foreign Policy
The residents lived as they would have in an American town at the time. Men dressed in coats and ties. Women wore knee-length skirts. They had dinner parties and picnics, where alcohol was served.
Credit Courtesy of Bettina Nordby via Foreign Policy
Children sit on the diving board at the community pool. It was the country's only co-ed pool.
Credit Courtesy of Bettina Nordby via Foreign Policy
Children could play on the tennis court or frolic in the clubhouse. They often gathered in each other's homes to drink lemonade and listen to records of Elvis Presley and the Everly Brothers. They spent many afternoons playing along the banks of the Helmand River.
Credit Courtesy of the U.S. National Archives via Foreign Policy
In 1946, Afghanistan's king, Mohammed Zahir Shah (pointing), hired the American engineering firm that built the Hoover Dam and the San Francisco Bay Bridge to construct dams and irrigation canals in southern Afghanistan. He believed the project could transform the arid valley into a fertile and thriving oasis.
Credit Bill O'Leary / Washington Post
Rajiv Chandrasekaran is a senior correspondent and associate editor for The Washington Post.
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Originally published on Tue July 3, 2012 12:05 pm

The plan in Afghanistan was ambitious. Americans would set up a base in one of the most remote parts of one of the world's most isolated countries. The project would last many years and cost large sums of money. And in the end, Afghanistan, or at least one small part of it, would be a new, modern country.

When Americans think of large-scale U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, most would point to the Sept. 11 attacks that prompted the American invasion of the country in 2001.

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