Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Coffee and Provocation


Iced Coffee

Harvard Has a Therapy Dog for Students
Apparently, the burden of being one of The Chosen is so great, that the mental patients students at Harvard need cuddle time with a dog.  It's a Shih Tzu, of course. No one at Harvard knows Jack.

Dogs Are Friends as Well as Food
This is a public service announcement from the People's Republic of China.

Early Coffee Research
In the British Medical Journal of June 15, 1996 we learn that "Coffee drinking was compared with tea drinking in monozygotic twins in the 18th century," (Lars Breimer, BMJ, vol. 312, June 15, 1996, p. 1539). The author, at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine in London, explains:
“One of the more peculiar attempts to throw light on the question of whether drinking coffee is bad for one’s health’ was carried out in the 18th century by King Gustaf III of Sweden…. A pair of monozygotic twins had been sentenced to death for murder. Gustaf III commuted their death sentences to life imprisonment on the condition that one twin drank a large bowl of tea three times a day and that the other twin drank coffee. The twin who drank tea died first, aged 83-a remarkable age for the time. Thus the case was settled: coffee was the less dangerous of the two beverages. The king, on the other hand, was murdered at a masked ball in 1792 at the age of 45 and became the subject of an opera by Verdi.”
Bachelor Party Stumbles Upon Huge Fossil Skull
A bachelor party of hikers in Elephant Butte Lake State Park near Albuquerque, NM found and partially excavated a stegomastodon, a prehistoric ancestor of modern day elephants that roamed the Earth during the Ice Age.

Fancy Meeting You Here!
In a rather wild coincidence, the same biologists who banded a bird in the Dominican Republic captured the same bird -- a Bicknell's Thrush -- in Vermont.

Killing the Ocean for Other People
Even though the United States controls more ocean than any other country, 86 percent of the seafood we consume is imported, while one third of what Americans catch is actually sold to foreigners.

Here Comes the Sun!
Worldwide solar power capacity is 53 times greater today than it was 9 years ago.

Starbucks Liars
Having told the world they had made a massive grant to Arizona State to help underwrite the education of their baristas, we now learn that Starbucks is not actually funding an employee scholarship. It seems Arizona State University is simply dropping the price of admission and low-wage Starbucks workers can then apply for federal student aid. Starbucks does have a tuition assistance program, but it is not new, and it does not pay for all or even most of college. Meanwhile, at Starbucks, this how the folks behind the counter spelled "Virginia."


4 comments:

Peter Apps said...

Dogs at college ? Didn't Charles Darwin get into trouble for that ?

Gina said...

Re: Starbucks. This is the second time a company got tons of great PR for a lie. Petco did when they announced they were no longer going to sell Chinese jerky treats. The fine print: They weren't going to pull them, or even stop stocking them, until existing contracts ran out. So maybe sometime in 2015 ... maybe.

Chas S. Clifton said...

Is that Arthur Godfrey?!

PBurns said...

Yes! He pitched coffee (sanborns) and cigarettes (chesterfields).