“But before Netflix became a dotcom darling with millions of subscribers, it had to figure out the details of how to mail DVDs cheaply and economically. Learning the ins and outs of the post office’s operations was key: Every ounce of weight in the mailer added to postage costs - but if the mailer was […]
“30 to 50 litres of clean water is considered the basic daily need of every human for drinking, cooking, and sanitation. Africans consume 37 litres of water a day on average; Americans consume 420 litres a day.” Social Studies, The Globe and Mail
Tags: consumerism, environment, global
“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with […]
“Today the world grows twice as much food as it did a generation ago, but it uses three times as much water to grow it. Two-thirds of all the water abstracted from the environment goes to irrigate crops. This use of water is massively unsustainable…” New Scientist
Tags: biology, environment, food, global, statistics
“When MLS kicked off in 1996, it did so with team names like the Crew, the Mutiny and the Rapids — American names. After the 2004 season, the thinking shifted to accommodate the league’s fastest growing fan base. The Dallas Burn was renamed FC Dallas (‘F’ for futbol rather than football), acknowledging that the club’s […]
“Researchers recorded muscle activity in octopus limbs, and found that an arm generates two waves of muscle contractions that propagate toward each other. When the waves collide, they form a part-time joint.” LiveScience, MSNBC.com
Tags: biology, design, evolution, simplicity
“What, you’ve never had Cadbury Egg cereal?” Robin, Shortpacked
Tags: food, funny
“The Christian thing freaks out my Jewish friends, who know me as a know-it-all, self-educated Marxist intellectual with leftist tendencies. My response to them is that throughout history, potent political force comes when spiritual fervour is mixed with the struggle for social justice. That’s the essence of Jewish and African-American traditional music. This is a […]
“In 1956, a Japanese entrepreneur named Mr. Y. Okada stumbled on an innovation that would end up making life better for homeowners around the globe. It happened one day at lunch, while he was breaking apart sections of a chocolate bar and thought, “Why not apply this same concept of snap-off sections to a factory-sharpened […]
“I had seen every picture of the new machine released on the web, watched every video, and I was still not prepared for this pygmy iteration of the device. What made the other one so big? I think this is a fair question. Is there a man inside? What is in there? Perhaps it is […]