Radio New Zealand - Te Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa

QUICK HIT

12:10 Foraging - onion weed
12:30 Zips
12:50 Non-melting chocolate
12:55 Hi-tech choc in San Francisco
13:15 Gambling in Macau
13:30 Technology time
13:45 Keeping track of trash
13:55 Why prawns go orange when you cook 'em

SMALL PRINT

First up we're foraging for more free food and this week, onion weed. It's a bit like a wild spring onion and you'll have probably got a whiff of it around and about. Well we see how tough it is to find and what you can cook with it. wildpicnic.blogspot.com

At about 1:30pm zips keep our flies up, our loose coins in our wallet, and the rain out...it's also probably the first mechanism most of us learn to use. But although they're everywhere nowadays, the zip was hardly an overnight sensation. The idea took about 40 years to get off the ground, two world wars got in the way and tragedy struck one of its main inventors. In fact, it was only when a fashion-conscious prince got his tailor to put them on his trousers that people started thinking zips might actually be quite a good idea!
Robert Friedel, author of Zipper: an Exploration in Novelty.

Then at 12:50pm Swiss chocolate makers think they've developed a non-melting low calorie chocolate. It could open up a whole new market in hot countries and no more melted mess in the car! And sticking with chocolate, before the news we're heading to San Francisco where a new producer's using all sorts of hi-tech wizardry in the manufacturing process.

After the news at about 1:10 - the southern Chinese city of Macau has become the biggest gambling destination in the world. It makes more money from gambling than Las Vegas and Atlantic City combined. Now the big American casino operators are moving in to get a piece of the action and transforming this once sleepy fishing village in the process.

Then at 1:25pm, technology time with Bill Thompson and this week a new study of music downloading and young people's listening habits commissioned by the UK music industry. The average computer hard drive of the 16 to 24-year-olds taking part in the research contained more than 8,000 songs or 17 full days of music...probably fair to assume they're not all legal downloads either! Also employers in the US are facing lawsuits from "hyperconnected" workers....these people have to check emails and answer work-related phone calls outside normal office hours but don't get paid overtime. Sound familiar anyone?!

At 1:40pmTrash Track's the name of a project in the US that's using location tags to track the journey all your rubbish takes after you leave it on the kerbside. The results all get mapped in real time so people can see what happens to their stuff after they throw it away.

And before we go, scientists in Australia have solved the mystery of what makes crabs, prawns and lobsters change colour when you cook them.

TRACKS PLAYED

Track: Take it easy
Artist: Jorge Ben
Album: Tropicalia
Label: Soul Jazz
Catalog #: SJR CD118
Broadcast at: 12:25

Track: Crystallised
Artist: the XX
Album: The Label Promo May 2009
Label: n/a
Catalog#:
Broadcast at: 13:10

Track: Dancing Time
Artist: The Funkees
Album: Nigeria 70
Label: Strut
Catalog #: STRUT044CD
Broadcast at: 13:50