The Coffee Shop Where Everyone Pays for Everyone Else's Drinks

The main conceit of the 2000 Kevin Spacey film Pay It Forward is that if one person does a kindness for three strangers, and those three people each do kindnesses for three strangers, and so on, one person can change the world.

Rarely do we see this acted out in the real world the way it was cinematically—one scene finds a man giving away his brand-new Jaguar to a guy having car troubles—but on a smaller scale, these sorts of random niceties happen far more often than you might think. Today, it's selflessness at a small coffee house in Bluffton, South Carolina.

It all started two years ago at Corner Perk, a small, locally owned coffee shop, when a customer paid her bill and left $100 extra, saying she wanted to pay for everyone who ordered after her until the money ran out. The staff fulfilled her request, and the woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, has returned to leave other large donations every two to three months.

"People will come in and say, 'What do you mean? I don't understand. Are you trying to buy me a coffee today?'" the shop's owner, Josh Cooke, told the local news. "And I say, 'No, somebody came in 30 minutes ago and left money to pay for drinks until it runs out.'"

It took a while, but word has started to spread around the tiny coastal town, home to about 12,000 people. Now, more and more customers have been leaving money to pay for others' food and drink. Cooke says some people don't even buy anything when they come in; they just stop to donate and head right back out.

A medium cup of coffee at Corner Perk costs $1.95. That may not seem like a lot, but for a family struggling to save money in these tense and difficult economic times, two bucks saved at the right moment probably feels like a million. And a jolt of generosity is a better pick-me-up than caffeine any day of the week.

Lessons from Butterflies

Butterflies start off as caterpillars feeding on leaves until they finally cocoon themselves turning into butterflies.  The process of the butterfly breaking out of the cocoon is quite strenuous and can take a while to do so.  However, this process actually strengthens the butterfly’s wings and allows the butterfly to have the strength in it wings to fly away from the cocoon.

If someone decided to help the butterfly in the cocoon by removing the layers of the cocoon, the butterfly would be denied the opportunity to strengthen its wings. Once free from the cocoon the butterfly would fall to the ground and die.
 
When helping others never deny them the opportunity to strengthen their wings, so they too can fly like a butterfly.

Vertical Farming - Better For The Environment

I have been dreaming of Vertical Greenhouses and Vertical farming for almost 20 years and have spoken to numerous people about this concept.  The vision I always had was of an enclosed building that from the inside looked like a high rise parking structure.  It would be powered using a combination of solar, wind and thermal energy.  And because of its enclosed structure it would use less water and would use less pesticides. 

I am so thrilled to see that this concept has finally manifested through a Swedish company called Plantagon that has apparently been working on this concept for 12 years.  Their Plantascrapers could end up changing the age-old practice of farming using large tracts of land that are at the mercy of the weather, pests and other natural phenomenon. 

Here is the article from Good Environment:

The future of urban farming is under construction in Sweden as agricultural design firm Plantagon works to bring a 12-year-old vision to life: The city of Linköping will soon be home to a 17-story "vertical greenhouse."

The greenhouse will serve as a regenerating food bank, tackling urban sprawl while making the city self-sufficient. Plantagon predicts that growing these plants in the city will make food production less costly both for the environment and for consumers, a key shift as the world's population grows increasingly urban—80 percent of the world's residents will live in cities by 2050, the United Nations estimates. "Essentially, as urban sprawl and lack of land will demand solutions for how to grow industrial volumes in the middle of the city, solutions on this problem have to focus on high yield per ground area used, lack of water, energy, and air to house carbon dioxide," Plantagon CEO Hans Hassle says.

The greenhouse is a conical glass building that uses an internal "transportation helix" to carry potted vegetables around on conveyors. As plants travel around the helix, they rotate for maximum sun exposure. Hassle says the building will use less energy than a traditional greenhouse, take advantage of "spillage heat" energy companies cannot sell, digest waste to produce biogas and plant fertilizers, and decrease carbon dioxide emissions while eliminating the environmental costs of long-distance transportation. And growing plants in a controlled environment will decrease the amount of water, energy, and pesticides needed. 

The greenhouse, which will open in late 2013, is already serving as a model for other cities—Plantagon hopes to install the transportation helix technology in regular office buildings around the world, eliminating the need to build entirely new structures. The tallest models even have a name: Plantascrapers.

Merry Christmas To My Friends Around The World

Peer Into The Future

Watch "A Day Made of Glass" and take a look at Corning's vision for the future with specialty glass at the heart of it.

Disappearing Post Offices of America

The post office has long been a core part of almost every community in America, yet the future looks bleak for the United States Postal Service.

In a bid to dig itself out of a $10bn deficit, the USPS is considering cutting 120,000 jobs and shutting more than 3,500 post offices.

Evan Kalish, a 25-year-old graduate student, is trying to visit as many as possible before they disappear. So far he has collected post marks at more than 2,700 post offices across the US.

Crisscrossing the country, even going as far as Hawaii, Evan is chronicling the slow death of an institution originally founded in 1775.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16192806

Seriously Odd Laws

During the 6th Century, it was customary to congratulate people who sneezed because it was thought that they were expelling evil from their bodies. During the great plague of Europe, the Pope passed a law to say “God bless you” to one who sneezed.

There still are some weird laws on the books. In Washington state, it is against the law to boast that one’s parents are rich. In Maryland, it’s illegal to play Randy Newman’s “Short People” on the radio. In Alabama it is illegal to play Dominoes on Sunday. And in Minneapolis, double-parkers can be put on a chain gang.

In 1313, King Edward II enacted that “You are forbidden from dying in parliament.”

An old statute in Kentucky states that men who push their wives out of bed for inflicting their cold toes on them can be fined or jailed for a week. A 100-year-old law in Willowdale, Oregon makes it illegal to swear during sex. An odd law in Minnesota makes it illegal to hang male and female underwear on the same washing line. In Melbourne, Australia it is illegal for men to parade in strapless dresses – but they are allowed to cross-dress in anything with sleeves.

An old law in Russia allows a police officer to “beat a peeping tom soundly.” In Texas, two categories of men are exempt from peeping tom charges: men over 50 and men with only one eye.

A pregnant woman can urinate anywhere she wishes, including a policeman’s helmet, according to a London local by-law. But in Vermont, women require their husbands permission to wear false teeth.

In Virginia, horses of more than one year old are prohibited in a place of worship. In Tennessee, shooting any game other than whales from a moving automobile is against the law. In Normal, Oklahoma you could be sent to prison for “making an ugly face at a dog.”

Spectacular Starling Sights

Nearly 10,000 Starlings come to roost around Aberystwyth Pier in Wales each year creating an amazing wildlife spectacle.  Part of the spectacle involves the birds taking flight turning the sky black at the start of winter.   

Arriving from Northern Europe more and more birds join the flock as the days go by as the birds seem to have learned that there is safety in numbers.  The huge flocks help to keep the birds warm at night.

The birds also work together, flying to feeding locations miles from where they roost.  They are also not very popular as they go into people’s gardens and seem to bully other birds whilst looking for food.  This might be because the starlings having traveled a long way are hungry and desperate to refuel.

The Science of Self Control

In the classic Stanford Marshmallow Experiment, researchers gave children a choice between one marshmallow right away, or two later. Most struggled to resist the treat and held out for less than three minutes.

"A few kids ate the marshmallow right away," Walter Mischel, the Stanford professor in charge of the experiment, remembers. "They didn't even bother ringing the bell. Other kids would stare directly at the marshmallow and then ring the bell thirty seconds later."

About 30% of the children, however, successfully delayed gratification until the researcher returned, some 15 minutes later. These kids wrestled with temptation but found a way to resist. The most interesting results came years later: children who waited fifteen minutes had SAT scores that were, on average, 210 points higher than those of those who waited only 30 seconds. This New Yorker article delves into the mental processes behind self-control.