A Crazy-Making Day in the Life of an Apple Store Creative

A Crazy-Making Day in the Life of an Apple Store Creative

I didn’t know this until I went to work for Apple Retail, but their credo is "Enriching Lives." I never had a job with a philosophy attached to it. I know the Marines have one. It’s Semper Fi. If you see that on a bumper sticker, it’s Latin for, "Mess with this car, and you’re dog meat."

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The Fascinating, Untold History of Jell-O

The Fascinating, Untold History of Jell-O

For over a century, Jell-O has been a part of American culture and, according to a 1904 edition of the Ladies Home Journal, "America’s Favorite Dessert" (conveniently enough named such in an advertisement paid for by Jell-O before anyone was really buying it all). That said, ever since then it really has been one of the most popular deserts in America. The story of this fruit-flavored, gelatin-based icon includes good old-fashioned American ingenuity, brilliant marketing, and a wobbly start.

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What Happens To Music After Net Neutrality?

What Happens To Music After Net Neutrality?

Years ago, I believed experts who said Net Neutrality wasn’t a big deal for two reasons. First, It never really existed in the first place (because many ISPs prioritize traffic in some way, say, for or against online gaming). Second, the free market would solve the problem, because ISPs that threw up bad content roadblocks would be abandoned.

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How Low Earth Orbit Astronauts Are the New Pioneers

How Low Earth Orbit Astronauts Are the New Pioneers

The first element of the International Space Station (ISS) launched over fifteen years ago, on November 20, 1998. For more than thirteen years at least two human beings have been continually living off the surface of our planet. Assembly of the Space Station is now complete. It is being utilized by its crews and scientists from around the world to execute its primary mission – scientific investigations that can only be accomplished in the microgravity environment of Low Earth Orbit (LEO).

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How Many Earths Would We Need to Live As Far Apart As Alaskans Do?

How Many Earths Would We Need to Live As Far Apart As Alaskans Do?

I’ve always been interested in the distribution of the human population across the globe. It’s far from an even spread—this map shows where people are most squished in (dark colors) and where they’re spread out (light colors):

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How Credit Card Numbers Work

How Credit Card Numbers Work

Most of us carry credit cards and ATM cards. These, typically, have sixteen digits on the front. These digits are the unique account number for the card. For obvious reasons, just any sixteen digits will not work, they follow pattern.

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When Tech Culture And Urbanism Collide

When Tech Culture And Urbanism Collide

The city is the most complex machine ever invented. Running optimally, the city generates opportunity and provides a platform for interaction, ideas, and improvement. As a concept, the city has been iterated-upon, smashed and burnt to the ground, rebuilt, deliberately-designed, haphazardly-organized, and generally resilient for many millennia. But the city is still a human invention and every single one is flawed, many horribly so.

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How Gravity Would Be Different If the World Were a Cube

How Gravity Would Be Different If the World Were a Cube

Perhaps the main difference if the earth were a cube would be that students would become much more frustrated trying to calculate the gravitational field. For a uniform cube with side length L and density rho, the gravitational force on mass m at position (x,y,z) is given by

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The Origin of the Candy Cane

The Origin of the Candy Cane

First, let’s start by dispelling a somewhat popular myth that more or less goes like this:

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Everything That Goes Into a Cup of Eggnog

Everything That Goes Into a Cup of Eggnog

Traditionally, yes, eggnog included raw eggs. However, some countries today, such as the United States, severely restrict the use of raw egg in products, due to health concerns; thus, most commercial eggnog does not include raw eggs. (The FDA actually limits the egg yolk solids in eggnog to less than 1%.) You can, however, buy pasteurized eggs first before making your own eggnog (or partially cook the raw egg in milk to make a custard), but eggnog connoisseurs tend to frown upon this as it supposedly alters the flavor and consistency of the final product.

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