February 2015 Archives

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Walk into virtually any American McDonald’s and the menu is roughly the same, as is how that food is prepared. The french fries, for example, are processed at a central plant before sent off the local restaurants for deep frying soon before sale.


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Jewish dietary law – kashrut, or, keeping kosher — prohibit the mixing of milk and meat.


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In May of 1993, then-U.S. President Bill Clinton decided he needed a little grooming. While aboard Air Force One and sitting on the tarmac at Los Angeles International Airport, President Clinton got a haircut.


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When writing JavaScript, I spend a lot of time fixing basic mistakes. I often rename a variable and test my app, and then find I didn’t rename the variable in one spot. I rename functions, same thing. I type things wrong, and again waste time clicking around in the browser.


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Back to the Future celebrated its 25th anniversary this past summer.


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Ketchup is the most widely used condiment in the United States.  It’s present in over 95% of households, matched only by staples such as salt, pepper, and sugar.  Pictured, right, is a label from Heinz’s ketchup.


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The weather started getting rough. The tiny ship was tossed. If not for the design of the tugboat’s loo, Harrison Okene would probably not be alive today. On May 26, 2013, Okene was aboard a tugboat off the shores of Nigeria.


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Clement Vallandigham (pictured) was, by modern standards especially, a pretty terrible Congressman (and for that matter, person).


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This article was originally posted to Feltpresence.com in June 2011. I gave a talk at Refresh Chicago last week, and afterwards a fellow came up to me with a question. He does UI on a team of mostly engineers, and the engineers are big fans of the “Minimum Viable Product” concept.


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You’re on your cell phone, talking about something or another. Suddenly, you realize that the other person is strangely quiet — too quiet. “Still there?,” you ask the void, hopelessly, as you already know the answer. The other person didn’t just stop talking.


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The minimum wage in the United States is $7.25 per hour. It is €6.66 per hour in the United Kingdom and €8.40 per hour for some trades in Germany. In 2004, Juergen Graefe, a German lawyer, did about an hour of work and earned a bit more than that. No, make that a lot more than €8.


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One of the most dramatic sights in the night sky—and inspiration for poets, artists, and lovers for millennia—full moons captivate us like nothing else. Every month Earth's moon goes through its phases, waning and waxing in its constant transformation from new moon to full moon and back again.


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War is disruptive to the everyday lives of people who live in the belligerent nations. This is obvious and arguably a truism. In World War II, for example, wartime rationing was the norm, affecting nearly every consumer product in countries on both sides.


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“Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert,” begins Allan Savory in this quietly powerful talk. And it's happening to about two-thirds of the world’s grasslands, accelerating climate change and causing traditional grazing societies to descend into social chaos. Savory has devoted his life to stopping it. He now believes -- and his work so far shows -- that a surprising factor can protect grasslands and even reclaim degraded land that was once desert.


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Here's a story that I read:




In 1987, British singer Rick Astley debuted in the music world with “Never Gonna Give You Up,” seen above. The song was a big success at the time, topping the charts in the UK, the U.S., Australia, Canada, throughout Europe, and even in South Africa.


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