Dunedin is a small city on the South Island of New Zealand, with a 2009 population of 125,000 (2009). The city rose to prominence and prosperity during the gold rush of the 1860s. Subsequently there has been a population drift northwards, and the city is now a relatively quiet “heritage town” full of Edwardian and [more...]
The Blind Side, the 2009 film featuring Sandra Bullock in a dramatic role, is promoted as a true story — and, indeed, it stays closer to history than many “true” films. It tells the story of Michael Oher, a societal nobody who seemed destined to be a another grim statistic of the slums before he [more...]
The amount of salt in packaged breakfast cereals varies considerably. Sometimes cereals with lower sugar content have higher salt content, presumably in an attempt to “boost the flavor”. Here is the salt content of some products on sale in the UK in November 2009. In this list, “trace” means anything under 0.1%: Sainsburys Basics Corn [more...]
Since the bird we know as the turkey originated in North America, it may seem strange that it has the same name as a country that straddles Europe and Asia. But there is a connection between the words. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary and other sources, the word “turkey” as applied to birds dates [more...]
Phoenix is the state capital and largest city in Arizona. It, like Juneau, Alaska, is one of the largest cities in the country by area. It also happens to be the 5th largest city in the United States by population. Phoenix was founded in 1868 and incorporated as a city in 1881. Why a city [more...]
Juneau has been the capital of Alaska since 1906. In area it is one of the largest cities in the world, larger than Rhode Island and Delaware and almost as large as the area of both those states combined. It is also the only U.S. state capital to border another country. Beyond the eastern city [more...]
There are several ways in which a swimming pool can be solar powered. Not only can the water be heated by solar power, but you can also use free energy from the sun to light the pool and to operate the pool’s filter pump. In this Quezi guest post, Rickey Juneau answers some questions about [more...]
Casinos are among the largest employers in Atlantic City according to CareerOneStop, a U.S. Department of Labor-sponsored Website. Here is a list of the largest employers in Atlantic City. BORGATA HOTEL CASINO & SPA ~ 6,500 Employees BALLY’S ATLANTIC CITY ~ 5,700 Employees HARRAH’S ATLANTIC CITY ~ 4,500 Employees POLISTINA ~ 4,500 Employees CAESARS ATLANTIC [more...]
Although much of the world celebrates Christmas on Dec. 25 as the supposed birthday of Jesus of Nazareth, and our calendar is based on the assumption that year-counting began the year of his birth, the chances that he was born on Dec. 25, 1 BC (there was no year 0), are extremely remote. Christmas is [more...]
Montgomery is state capital and second largest city in the state of Alabama. The city was incorporated in 1819, became the state capital in 1846 and in February 1861, was selected as the first capital of the Confederate States of America. In the 20th century, Montgomery was also a major location of the civil rights [more...]
Thanksgiving is a popular tradition and official holiday in the United States, where it is popularly believed that the observance comes from a spontaneous 1621 celebration in which Pilgrims and the indigenous Indians celebrated a successful harvest together in a way much like Americans do today. In fact, thanksgivings were celebrated in what later become [more...]
The Konami Code is a short sequence of keystrokes, used to unlock extra functionality in a video game or on a website. It is so-named because the sequence was first used in 1986 by Konami Corporation, whose developer Kazuhisa Hashimoto inserted it into a game that he was porting, in order to unlock a “cheat [more...]
Life often involves putting great trust in people you may not know very well. Hiring a new employee, say. Asking a babysitter to look after your child, or a contractor to work on your home. Even going on a date, or meeting a new college roommate, may leave you wondering if the person you’ll be [more...]
There are a few legitimate reasons for needing to know a person’s Social Security number (and a fair number of illegitimate reasons, but we won’t go there!). Perhaps you need to handle some estate matters for a deceased relative. File some records for a former employee. Confirm the Social Security number (SSN) of a new [more...]
If you didn’t know better, you might think that the act of balancing yourself on a bicycle would be extremely difficult — after all, how many other times in your life do you attempt to balance yourself on something only a 2 or 3 centimeters wide? The reason it is easy to balance oneself on [more...]
I used to see the paisley design as a curled leaf or feather, without thinking about its history. Paisley fabric is “patterned with distinctive, ornate, teardrop- or feather-shaped figures, based on an Indian pine cone design”, according to the dictionary. Textile experts have called it a “drooping bud” or a “Kashmir cone”. It’s also been [more...]
In most countries there are not many reasons to eat slugs: for a dare perhaps, or when a small slug accidentally gets eaten with the lettuce or chopped into the spinach soup. Toddlers probably eat a few, and historical literature records cases of prisoners eating slugs for survival. In inland southern Italy there’s a different [more...]
In the late 1600s shawl was not yet an English word, though it was beginning to turn up in travellers’ descriptions of clothing they had seen in southern Asia. In the 1700s fine cashmere shawls from Kashmir and India arrived in Western Europe. At first they were not treated as clothing, but used to ornament [more...]
The Nintendo DSi is the 2009 version of the videogame console company’s market-leading portable gaming system. Undeniably, it’s a great little machine for kids, but is there anything on it for adults who don’t play videogames? The answer is a resounding yes — if you can handle its inherent limitations, such as its small screens [more...]
If you ask someone why a bicycle doesn’t fall over when you ride around a corner, they’ll probably give you the standard answer, and that answer is wrong. The real reason is so subtle and unintuitive that even experienced cyclists may have trouble believing it when they first hear it. The standard explanation says that [more...]