Thanksgiving feasts will be on the tables of millions of Americans in less than a week, but for this Friday before said feast is completely on everyone’s mind, let’s talk about sandwiches. Social media exercises frequently make the rounds regarding where people have traveled, so I read this article by Terry Ward for CNN about some of the world’s best sandwiches, and I thought this was just as interesting a score to tally… and far…
In case you didn’t think I’d be interested in how the federal government may or may not be getting into regulating outer space, you might not have realized I already have a tag on this website for space law. Of course I’m interested! And that’s where Rebecca Heilweil’s article about the FCC getting into space regulation comes in. I mean, I get the FCC being interested in regulation of communications satellites and the like. But…
For my work, I’m often focused on continuous improvement — and the silver lining of broken processes means there’s always room for improvement. On the one hand have you ever met those people for whom 99.9999% just isn’t close enough to 100%? Can more optimization be too much of a good thing? Derek Thompson over at The Atlantic feels that might be the case, starting, with that most American of statistics obsession: baseball. If you…
In the video post from Monday, John Green briefly mentioned how one of the challenges to his book Looking for Alaska amounted to a person talked to a school official about a page in his book. The problem is, this kind of scenario happens a lot for challenging books. A single person is bringing this to the attention of a single official and there’s no process in place to review requests, challenges, or concerns. And…
Next week is Banned Books Week, and as longtime readers may know, I always make a point of reading a banned or challenged book at this time of year. You can check out the most challenged books of 2021 or just do a bit of web searching to find historical lists and find something that might tickle your fancy in a way that scolds and censors feel your fancy should not be tickled. The books…
Next week, September 18-24 is Banned Books Week, an annual celebration of, depending on who you ask, the freedom to read, sticking it to The Man, both, or perhaps all of them and so much more. Odds are I read challenged or banned books throughout the year, but for the life of this blog, I’ve tried to make sure to do so during the coming week. In part, the most challenged books of a given…
I’ve had a busy week, so I’m just pointing you to the recap of all the reveals and videos and tidbits from yesterday’s Star Trek Day.
Full confession: I wrote and scheduled the first version of this post in the depths of Summer, convinced that “Fall flavors” would be in stores before the end of August. I was not wrong. “But why?” you may ask. “Why must the end of Summer be sullied with an impatient corporate lust for seasonal profits that ignore all seasonal boundaries?” You know why. Allecia Vermillion covers the intriguing origin story of the Pumpkin Spice Latte…
Continuing my Friday theme of food posts, I switch from savory to sweet. This week, it’s Emily Mangini’s article for Serious Eats which goes into the history of Nutella. Okay, apart from a lot of hazelnuts, it might not be that nutty, but if you like food histories like A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage, you’ll find this a nice appetizer of an article. A connection to last week and…
Look, I’ve been doing food posts for the past few Fridays, so I’m not going to stop now… certainly when I can share the story of Sriracha, which is a surprisingly American story. Okay, maybe it’s surprising to me because I first noticed Sriracha when I was in Indonesia, which was sometimes next to homemade sambal on the table. I got so used to its omnipresence at Indonesian food stalls, the first time I saw…