A cheeseburger cannot exist outside of a highly developed, post-agrarian society. It requires a complex interaction between a handful of vendors—in all likelihood, a couple of dozen—and the ability to ship ingredients vast distances while keeping them fresh. The cheeseburger couldn’t have existed until nearly a century ago as, indeed, it did not.
Grazing life.
- to graze
- v. (informal) To eat a variety of appetizers as a full meal.
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2011-12-07
Source: waldo.jaquith.org
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2011-11-27
…rules that are decades old persist without evidence to support the idea that someone reading an e-book or playing a video game during takeoff or landing is jeopardizing safety. Nevertheless, Les Dorr, a spokesman for the F.A.A., said the agency would rather err on the side of caution when it comes to digital devices on planes.
— Fliers Still Must Turn Off Devices, but It’s Not Clear Why - NYTimes.com
Source: The New York Times
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2011-10-28
‘Would you teach them enough biotechnology to pass?’ And she said, ‘How would I do that? I don’t know the subject.’ I said, ‘No, use the method of the grandmother.’ She said, ‘What’s that?’ I said, ‘Well, what you’ve got to do is stand behind them and admire them all the time. Just say to them, ‘That’s cool. That’s fantastic. What is that? Can you do that again? Can you show me some more?’’ She did that for two months.
— Sugata Mitra quoted on Minimum viable Montessori
Source: sarahdillard.wordpress.com
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2011-10-22
Let’s pay a visit to Whole Foods’ splendid Columbus Circle store in New York City. As you descend the escalator you enter the realm of a freshly cut flowers. These are what advertisers call “symbolics”—unconscious suggestions. In this case, letting us know that what’s before us is bursting with freshness.
Flowers, as everyone knows, are among the freshest, most perishable objects on earth. Which is why fresh flowers are placed right up front—to “prime” us to think of freshness the moment we enter the store.Source: Fast Company
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2011-10-21
if you use Gmail, please use Google’s new “two-step verification” system. In practice this means that to log into your account from any place other than your own computer, you have to enter an additional code, from Google, shown on your mobile phone. On your own computer, you enter a code only once every 30 days. This is not an airtight solution, but it can thwart nearly all of the remote attacks that affect Gmail thousands of times a day. Even though the hacker in Lagos has your password, if he doesn’t have your cell phone, he can’t get in.
Source: The Atlantic
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2011-10-07
Last year a former Apple employee related his favorite Steve Jobs story to me. I have no way of knowing if it is true, so take it for what it’s worth. I think it nicely captures the man who changed the world four times over. When engineers working on the very first iPod completed the prototype, they presented their work to Steve Jobs for his approval. Jobs played with the device, scrutinized it, weighed it in his hands, and promptly rejected it. It was too big. The engineers explained that they had to reinvent inventing to create the iPod, and that it was simply impossible to make it any smaller. Jobs was quiet for a moment. Finally he stood, walked over to an aquarium, and dropped the iPod in the tank. After it touched bottom, bubbles floated to the top. “Those are air bubbles,” he snapped. “That means there’s space in there. Make it smaller.
— In Praise of Bad Steve - D.B. Grady - Technology - The Atlantic
Source: The Atlantic
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2011-07-29
Close to three quarters of U.S. households buy orange juice. Its popularity crosses class, cultural, racial, and regional divides. Why do so many of us drink orange juice? […] how is it that we don’t know the real reasons behind OJ’s popularity or understand the processes by which the juice is produced? In this enlightening book, Alissa Hamilton explores the hidden history of orange juice. […] She tells the stories of the FDA’s decision in the early 1960s to standardize orange juice, and the juice equivalent of the cola wars that followed between Coca-Cola (which owns Minute Maid) and Pepsi (which owns Tropicana). Of particular interest to OJ drinkers will be the revelation that most orange juice comes from Brazil, not Florida, and that even “not from concentrate” orange juice is heated, stripped of flavor, stored for up to a year, and then reflavored before it is packaged and sold.
— Mmmm. Juice. Squeezed - Hamilton, Alissa - Yale University Press
Source: yalepress.yale.edu
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2011-07-26
Competence is highly overrated,” says Pfeffer, the Thomas D. Dee Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. In his latest book Power: Why Some People Have it — and Others Don’t, Pfeffer debunks the belief that virtue is rewarded. But it pays to have the right political skills.
— Forbes India Magazine - Jeffrey Pfeffer: If Everybody Thinks You Are A Genius, You Are
Source: business.in.com
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2011-07-24
[This American Life] goes into clear detail about the idiocies of the patent system — how even software engineers with patents don’t believe that software processes should be patentable; how patents are regularly awarded for ideas which have been around for years; how multiple patents are often awarded for much the same idea; how IV is essentially running an intellectual-property protection racket; and how big companies are amassing patent portfolios not so that they own the intellectual property behind their products, but rather so that they can threaten to sue any company which sues them
— The cost of patent trolls (by Felix Salmon) about When Patents Attack on NPR.
Source: blogs.reuters.com
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2011-07-18
Consumption of good food—whatever “good” happens to be—entitles you to good health. This equation of privilege with health drives me crazy: The way that an experience of privilege now means exerting an exacting control over your food whether you’re making sure to eat every color of your chakra (true story!) or only alkalines. I like the food sold at the farmers’ market. I want it to be widely available. That can’t happen if organic and sustainable food is marketed and consumed as something special. Everyone deserves antibiotic-free cheese.
Source: themorningnews.org
