Wave of Hope

Sopo Bicycle Coop Party, August 23.

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My mother's sweet tea was not the best. Perhaps this is because she was from West Virginia, a place where people drink sweet tea with some ambivalence. Or maybe because in Jacksonville, Florida, where I was raised, delicious sweet tea could be found for $1.99 at the local supermarket in sweaty gallon jugs with nothing but the word sweet and the date stamped on the plastic.

She still made sweet tea, of course, being a Southern woman of whom having iced tea on hand is expected. But instead of sugar, my mother used Sweet'N Low, which is kind of like making chocolate cake with dirt. She insisted no one could tell the difference: "They're both sweet."

Garden & Gun? Hahahaha

Garden & Gun Magazine: 21st Century Southern America - Stories & Media - Sweet Tea

The debate about what counts as a living thing is fuelled today by the discovery of the first virus that is able to fall "ill" by being infected with another virus.

Viruses can catch colds, says study that redefines life itself - Telegraph

Knocks his block clean off.

YouTube - Killer Clowns From Outer Space

Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who exposed Stalin's prison system in his novels and spent 20 years in exile, has died near Moscow at the age of 89.

a legend - from samizdat to history -- read Solzhenitsyn and know that the hammer and sickle is no different from the swastika

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Alexander Solzhenitsyn dies at 89

Undeterred, the firm simply dumped what seemed to work in America into this country. When Starbucks opened an outlet in Lygon Street — a store that has since sat empty surrounded by bustling cafes — it became an amazing example of just how comprehensively a company could fail to understand its target market.

The inability of Starbucks to adjust its product to local conditions is illustrated even more clearly when we compare it to the international strategy of that other evil American behemoth — McDonald's. Where Starbucks offers almost the same products around the world, McDonald's varies its menu depending on local culture and local tastes. In India, they sell the McCurry Pan. In Japan, the "Ebi Filet-O" is available — a shrimp burger. In Turkey, McDonald's offers kebabs. Some of these products may sound stupid — and Canada's "McLobster" sounds filthy — but their existence shows that McDonald's understands the importance of understanding its regional markets, and tries to understand the peculiarities of local culture.

The failure of Starbucks in Australia tells us a lot about globalisation too. It isn't enough — as some anti-globalisation activists seem to assume — for an American company just to blanket a foreign market with a mediocre product.nullnullnullnullnullnullnullnullnullnullnullnull

Memo Starbucks: next time try selling ice to Eskimos | theage.com.au

You've probably heard of Jonathan Ive: darling of the technology and industrial design worlds, and El Jobso's handsome, mountain of a right hand man in product design since the CEO's second coming at Apple. You might also know him as the dude that birthed the iMac, titanium Power Book and MacBook (Pro), iPod, iPhone, and just about every decent-looking Apple product in the last decade. Well, he's also apparently the guy the most people seem to be pontificating -- whether officially or not -- as Jobs's successor, according to the Times. Of course, there's another obvious, prominent theory about why the ever tight-lipped Apple hasn't done as most publicly traded companies and made a formal contingency plan for succession of the CEO gig: Jobs is immortal. As if you didn't already know that. There can be only one!nullnullnullnullnull

Jonathan Ive being groomed to take over for Jobs one fateful day? - Engadget

He isn't running on a "one man, one robot" policy yet but he is running.
Rufus For Mayor

I like Rufus as a person, but this in no way constitutes a political endorsement :)

Rufus For Mayor

Explanation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornhole_(game)

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