It’s known as Shepard Tone. Neat-o!
Monthly Archive for July, 2008
Last Lecture Professor Randy Pausch, 47, Dies
Randy Pausch, best known for his “The Last Lecture” video and for the book of the same title, has died this morning of pancreatic cancer he had been fighting for long time…
What’s Lurking in Your Countertop? - NYTimes.com
WTF?! Does your countertop glow green at night??
As the popularity of granite countertops has grown in the last decade — demand for them has increased tenfold, according to the Marble Institute of America, a trade group representing granite fabricators — so have the types of granite available. For example, one source, Graniteland (graniteland.com) offers more than 900 kinds of granite from 63 countries. And with increased sales volume and variety, there have been more reports of “hot” or potentially hazardous countertops, particularly among the more exotic and striated varieties from Brazil and Namibia.
The Coffee Fix: Can the $11,000 Clover Machine Save Starbucks?
So $tarbucks acquired CEC, the maker of the Clover Machine. Has anyone had a cup from Starbucks?
A few days after my cupping room challenge, I’m standing in line at a hilltop Starbucks in Seattle’s Queen Anne neighborhood — one of Clover’s beta sites. I do a taste test: a cup of Clover coffee versus brewed coffee. A young barista tells me they’re out of the first two specialty coffees I request and suggests instead Starbucks’ everyday blend, called Pike Place. During brewing, the barista stirs the grounds into the Clover with a clunky rubber spatula — not a metal whisk — and pours the concoction into a crummy paper cup. I smell, I sip, I inhale. I can’t tell which cup of coffee is which — and neither is anything special. Is it the beans? My palate? After a few minutes, I finally pick it out: This coffee tastes a little bit like hype.
That’s a shame. There’s still hope for coffee snobs though - they can still get $10 coffee from blue bottle cafe, made with $20,000 siphon bar coffee machine
Anyway, here’s an interesting paragraph from the article:
Stumptown sells beans from Nicaragua called Las Golondrinas for $80 a pound. On the international market, Esmeralda Special, a rare kind of Panamanian bean, can go for $130 a pound wholesale. And consider Kopi Luwak, also known as catshit coffee: It’s an Indonesian bean that’s eaten by a civet cat, then “harvested” from the animal’s dung. (The bean’s bitter flavor is apparently greatly improved by passing through a cat’s digestive tract.) A single cup of Kopi Luwak at the Peter Jones espresso bar in London goes for $100, and a pound of the beans can cost as much as $600.
Stig takes Nissan GT-R around the Power Lap!
Apple - iPod touch - What’s New
So I shelled out $10 yet again to upgrade the firmware on my iPod Touch to 2.0. I just don’t get why iPod Touch owners, who paid just as much as the iPhone users, need to pay $10 for every upgrade?!
Anyhow, this time I don’t feel as ripped-off as the last upgrade, because 2.0 is much more significant upgrade. With the latest firmware upgrade, iPod Touch (and iPhone) sets itself up as a true mobile platform. Already, there are hundreds of applications available for download, many for free. Some of the applications are crap, but most are pretty useful. For instance, Remote, a free app from Apple, by itself is worth the upgrade fee. And Cube Runner is an excellent game that utilizes the internal Accelerometer as the controller — it’s very simple, but nice proof of concept of what iPod Touch is capable of as a mobile game platform. Also, with Pandora and Last.FM app, I can use iPod as an internet jukebox (I hope Y! Music app is in the plan soon).
Story of Absinthe, once illegal liquor now mostly legal in US.
I had a chance to try Absinthe few weeks ago at a housewarming party. It was quite strong, even watered down. It tasted like a mix of concentrated liqourice and nyquil, and like some liqourice candy, left numbing sensation in my tongue. This particular variety, with a psychedelic painting of Van Gogh on the box, came with an Absinthe spoon, which we had no idea how to use :D
Features : Radar Online : Bottom Feeder
The cause of these unfortunate gastrointestinal disasters is usually escolar. The reason is simple and biological. According to Dr. Ian Reichelderfer, chief of clinical gastroenterology at the University of Wisconsin, escolar is laden with an overwhelming amount of wax esters, just like the ones found in notorious olestra, the original ruinous food additive found in Wow! chips and other miracle fat-reducing snacks of the late-’90s. Dr. Reichelderfer explains that the 20 percent wax ester content found in escolar causes the orange, oily discharge to blast out of some people.
“It’s like taking a big slug of mineral oil,” he says.
Yikes!
Five Easy Ways to Go Organic - Well - Tara Parker-Pope - Health - New York Times Blog
by choosing organic versions of just a few foods that you eat often, you can increase the percentage of organic food in your diet without big changes to your shopping cart or your spending.
- Milk — I’d switch to Rice / Almond / Soy Milk (see my post on dangers of drinking milk)
- Potatoes
- Peanut butter — also try Sunbutter
- Ketchup — I can vouch that organic ketchup do taste better than non-organic.
- Apple
I would add to this list, eggs (also check to make sure that they are free range)
[via]
Rick Smolan tells the story of a girl | Video on TED.com
A bitter-sweet photo-story of a young Amerasian girl in Korea, told by a Time photographer.
Latest Comments
RSS