You're kinda, sorta, basically, pretty much always on my mind. -- psacake.com

Why Americans eat sliced bread

In the early 20th century, Americans were highly concerned with the purity of their food supply. In the case of bread, hand-kneading was suddenly seen as a possible source of contamination... Mass-produced bread, on the other hand, seemed safe. It was made in shining factories, mechanically mixed, government regulated. It was individually wrapped...

But factory breads were also incredibly soft... Softness, Borrow-Strain writes, had become customers proxy for freshness, and savvy bakery scientists turned their minds to engineering even more squeezable loaves. As a result of the drive toward softer bread, industry observers noted that modern loaves had become almost impossible to slice neatly at home. The solution had to be mechanical slicing.

Factory-sliced bread was born on July 6, 1928 at Missouri's Chillicothe Baking Company. While retailers would slice bread at the point of sale, the idea of pre-sliced bread was a novelty... The bakery saw a 2,000 percent increase in sales, and mechanical slicing quickly swept the nation.

[Source]

0 Comments | Perm-a-link | 7/5/2012

50 Amazing but Useless Facts

You can't kill yourself by holding your breath
Beetles taste like apples, wasps like pine nuts, and worms like fried bacon.
Of all the words in the English language, the word "set" has the most definitions!
What is called a "French kiss" in the English speaking world is known as an "English kiss" in France.
"Almost" is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.
"Rhythm" is the longest English word without a vowel.
In 1386, a pig in France was executed by public hanging for the murder of a child
A cockroach can live several weeks with its head cut off!
Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete.
There is a city called Rome on every continent.
It's against the law to have a pet dog in Iceland!
Your heart beats over 100,000 times a day!
Horatio Nelson, one of England's most illustrious admirals was throughout his life, never able to find a cure for his sea-sickness.
The skeleton of Jeremy Bentham is present at all important meetings of the University of London
Right handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people
Your ribs move about 5 million times a year, everytime you breathe!
The elephant is the only mammal that can't jump!
One quarter of the bones in your body, are in your feet!
Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different!
The first known transfusion of blood was performed as early as 1667, when Jean-Baptiste, transfused two pints of blood from a sheep to a young man
Fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails!
Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin!
The present population of 5 billion plus people of the world is predicted to become 15 billion by 2080.
Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian, and had only ONE testicle.
Honey is the only food that does not spoil. Honey found in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs has been tasted by archaeologists and found edible.
Months that begin on a Sunday will always have a "Friday the 13th."
Coca-Cola would be green if colouring weren't added to it.
On average a hedgehog's heart beats 300 times a minute.
More people are killed each year from bees than from snakes.
The average lead pencil will draw a line 35 miles long or write approximately 50,000 English words.
More people are allergic to cow's milk than any other food.
Camels have three eyelids to protect themselves from blowing sand.
The placement of a donkey's eyes in its' heads enables it to see all four feet at all times!
The six official languages of the United Nations are: English, French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Spanish.
Earth is the only planet not named after a god.
It's against the law to burp, or sneeze in a church in Nebraska, USA.
You're born with 300 bones, but by the time you become an adult, you only have 206.
Some worms will eat themselves if they can't find any food!
Dolphins sleep with one eye open!
It is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open
The worlds oldest piece of chewing gum is 9000 years old!
The longest recorded flight of a chicken is 13 seconds
Queen Elizabeth I regarded herself as a paragon of cleanliness. She declared that she bathed once every three months, whether she needed it or not
Slugs have 4 noses.
Owls are the only birds who can see the colour blue.
A man named Charles Osborne had the hiccups for 69 years!
A giraffe can clean its ears with its 21-inch tongue!
The average person laughs 10 times a day!
An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain

What They Said:

french-guy says mistake on 10/16/2012
"What is called a “French kiss” in the English speaking world is known as an “English kiss” in France. "
Well I'm french and I never heard about any "English Kiss" ^^

1 Comments | Perm-a-link | 6/23/2012

Facts About You

Your brain has the potential to remember everything you have ever experienced, read, heard and seen. The only problem is you can't recall it, but it's all in there somewhere.
Your body is constantly replacing cells, so much so in fact, you have a completely different body than you did seven years ago.
The amount of information your brain can hold is believed to be up to 1,000 Terabytes. The IBM Super Computer Watson the one Jeopardy! contestants competed against, has 16 Terabytes of RAM (Dumbass).
With the sperm in your testicles right now (guys), you could repopulate Dallas, and it would take you 6 months to repopulate the entire planet.
Everyone in your dreams you have seen while awake at some point in your life.
In your lifetime you will eat about 50 tons of food. (Fat Bastard)
To excercise your legs the same amount of excercise your eyes get, you would need to walk 50 miles every day.
In the next four years, you will shed your body weight in dead skin. (gross)
Your hair grows about 12mm a Month. (time for a haircut)
You constantly sweat. (about 2 pints a day)
Pound for pound, when you were a baby, you were stronger than an ox.
You react at speeds of 170mph.
25,000,000 cells of you died while you read this sentence. The good news is your body made 300 billion more today, so don't worry!
You were one cell for about a half an hour.

0 Comments | Perm-a-link | 4/11/2012

The REAL Mitt Romney

0 Comments | Perm-a-link | 3/27/2012

Driving in the Snow

Holy...

0 Comments | Perm-a-link | 3/2/2012

The Stranger Among Us

A few years before I was born, my Dad met a stranger who was new to our small town. From the beginning, Dad was fascinated with this enchanting newcomer and soon invited him to live with our family. The stranger was quickly accepted and was around from then on.

As I grew up, I never questioned his place in my family. In my young mind, he had a special niche. My parents were complementary instructors: Mom taught me good from evil, and Dad taught me to obey. But the stranger... He was our storyteller. He would keep us spellbound for hours on end with adventures, mysteries and comedies.

If I wanted to know anything about politics, history or science, he always knew the answers about the past, understood the present and even seemed able to predict the future! He took my family to the first major league ball game. He made me laugh, and he made me cry. The stranger never stopped talking, but Dad didn't seem to mind.

Sometimes, Mom would get up quietly while the rest of us were shushing each other to listen to what he had to say, and she would go to the kitchen for peace and quiet.
(I wonder now if she ever prayed for the stranger to leave.)

Dad ruled our household with certain moral convictions, but the stranger never felt obligated to honor them. Profanity, for example, was not allowed in our home - not from us, our friends or any visitors. After our long time visitor stayed longer he became more daring however, and even got away with four-letter words that burned my ears and made my dad squirm and my mother blush. My Dad didn't permit the liberal use of alcohol but the stranger encouraged us to try it on a regular basis. He made cigarettes look cool, cigars manly, and pipes distinguished. He talked freely (much too freely!) about sex. His comments were sometimes blatant, sometimes suggestive, and generally embarrassing..

I now know that my early concepts about relationships were influenced strongly by the stranger. Time after time, he opposed the values of my parents, yet he was seldom rebuked... And NEVER asked to leave.

More than fifty years have passed since the stranger moved in with our family. He has blended right in and is not nearly as fascinating as he was at first. Still, if you could walk into my parents' den today, you would still find him sitting over in his corner, waiting for someone to listen to him talk and watch him draw his pictures.

His name?....

We just call him 'TV.'
He has a wife now....we call her 'Computer.'
Their first child is "Cell Phone".
Second child was named "I Pod "
Third child is Video Games

0 Comments | Perm-a-link | 1/11/2012

The Two Percent

0 Comments | Perm-a-link | 11/2/2011

Students v. Prisoners

A Comparison of Spending Priorities

Students		Prisoners
	Free Health Care
	Internet Access
	Weight Room
	Cable Television
	Access to Libraary
	Free Sports Programs
	Computer Lab
	Laundry Services
	Funding to earn a degree
	Free Housing
	Three square meals a day
	Clothing
	Free Dental Care

$9,575 / yr	Average Spending	$28,570 / yr

0 Comments | Perm-a-link | 10/10/2011

Steve Jobs

0 Comments | Perm-a-link | 10/7/2011

Life Lessons at School

In September of 2005, a social studies schoolteacher from Arkansas did something not to be forgotten. On the first day of school, with permission of the school superintendent, the principal, and the building supervisor, she took all of the desks out of the classroom. The kids came into first period, they walked in; there were no desks. They obviously looked around and said, "Where's our desks?"

The teacher said, "You can't have a desk until you tell me how you earn them."

They thought, "Well, maybe it's our grades."

"No," she said.

"Maybe it's our behavior."

And she told them, "No, it's not even your behavior."

And so they came and went in the first period, still no desks in the classroom. Second period, same thing. Third period. By early afternoon television news crews had gathered in the class to find out about this crazy teacher who had taken all the desks out of the classroom. The last period of the day, the instructor gathered her class.

They were at this time sitting on the floor around the sides of the room. She said, "Throughout the day no one has really understood how you earn the desks that sit in this classroom ordinarily. Now I'm going to tell
you."

She went over to the door of her classroom and opened it, and as she did 27 U.S. veterans, wearing their uniforms, walked into that classroom, each one carrying a school desk. And they placed those school desks in rows, and then they stood along the wall. By the time they had finished placing the desks, those kids for the first time I think perhaps in their lives understood how they earned those desks.

Their teacher said, "You don't have to earn those desks. These guys did it for you. They put them out there for you, but it's up to you to sit here responsibly, to learn, to be good students and good citizens, because they paid a price for you to have that desk, and don't ever forget it."

[Trust but Verify]

0 Comments | Perm-a-link | 9/22/2011