Actually, it doesn't really matter. Some argue that industrialized agriculture is in fact playing right into the plants' design. We contribute to their survival and spread by continually re-planting them -- corn, for example, is arguably the king of this kind of adaptation. For more on this, I highly recommend Michael Pollan's "Botany of Desire" or, for a shorter version, his TED talk on the same subject.
I'm fine with that argument (although it seem to apply to raising animals as well). I was responding more to the parent's suggestion that certain parts of certain plants are designed to be eaten (and then pass through your digestive system and re-seeded). That bit of natures design doesn't work so well in the face of modern plumbing.
I would guess that the money was probably inherited rather than earned -- likely from James, as Lily was muggleborn. Even though they may have been a power couple, or as you say, a highly skilled witch and wizard team, they were only 20 when they died -- not really enough time to amass obscene amounts of wealth.
Remember that people in the magical world come of age one year earlier than muggles. I do think some wealth was inherited, but I also suspect James was something of an adventurer (remember his outings with Moony, Padfoot, and Wormtail), maybe Lily as well (they were both Phoenix Order members), which would have given opportunities to come across gold and rare items like the invisibility cloak.
Why would someone downvote my comment above? I did agree a source of the wealth was likely inheritance. But why couldn't James, with his clever, some would even say mean (to Snape), talents not also be likely to go out and get into adventures, take a few risks? (before Harry arrived, of course) He was still young after all. Remember, Sirius was the wealthy one in school. James went to stay over his house as a kid. Nothing was ever said about James Potter having a significantly wealthy family. Also, Hagrid says "D'yeh think yer parents didn't leave yeh anything?" That sounds like Lily and James made at least some of the money.
I don't know that they'll be outsourced. For those who buy crafts from Etsy, the whole point is that you have direct contact with the seller and you're getting a handmade, one of a kind item. I know several individuals who buy things from Etsy, and being able to get a cheaper version made in China doesn't deter them. I tend to lump the growth of Etsy in with the increase in people buying local, organic food and fair trade products -- the buyer consciously avoids supporting that kind of outsourcing.
Diet almost certainly plays a role. The diet of the Tarahumara Indians (the subject of the 'Born to Run' book mentioned in the article) is practically meatless and consists of about 75% corn, with the rest made up mostly of beans and various types of squash. As a result their diet is about 80% complex carbohydrates, which is what allows them to run for those insane distances.
This doesn't seem to jive with the persistence hunting theory, since meat is one of the worst fuels for distance running (or any endurance sport).
It seems a little strange/unintuitive that the play/pause button isn't in the middle anymore. The body also seems strangely long. Maybe I'm missing the point of this redesign? Apple usually has good reasons for what it does; can someone explain why this new design is an improvement in usability?
"How about designing software that optimizes daydreaming? For example, one problem with drifting is that we’re often unaware we’re doing it. We can hit upon a cool idea but never even realize it. Imagine an app that randomly pings you to see if your mind is wandering — and if it is, lets you record what you’re thinking about."
Wow. That sounds insanely annoying. This suggests that, since we don't realize when we've hit upon a cool idea, we should just write down everything we're daydreaming about. Imagine having to read through all of that junk just to potentially find something good you might have thought of.
I suspect that the premise is wrong - we're probably not all constantly having genius ideas that we don't recognize in between daydreaming about dinner and youtube videos. If an idea comes up while I am daydreaming that is useful and relevant, I almost always realize it, even though I may not always write it down. Cultivating the habit of writing these ideas down is useful and necessary, but I don't see how a constantly-pinging app would help with that.
Sometimes your mind comes up with solutions to problems you don't know that you have yet, so the thought may not seem particularly relevant at the time. Later on, that information is sometimes hard to reconstruct intentionally. Sometimes what I do is to go back and repeat whatever it was that I was doing when I had the thought to see if I can re-trigger it. I'd love to have something that I could use to manually re-trigger a train of thought somehow. Something like that could allow you to follow convoluted branches of thought more easily also.
The article describes the new fast-casual restaurant style, which sounds a lot like a modern startup in its ethos:
>>Bill Kim’s [fast-casual] restaurant...“We’re going to serve really good, vibrant flavors. It’s going to be $15. [Customers are] going to be in and out. I’m not going to serve dessert or drinks..."
In other words, make what people want, make it really damn good, and strip away everything else. We know this works for startups, but I wonder if it will work as well for (higher-end) restaurants, which generally try to sell an atmosphere and experience.
If you think about it, there's a class of restaurants that does something like this. What I'm thinking of is a local burrito place that is a little grungy, the employees quick and efficient (but not very polite), and with damn good food.
They've stripped everything that wasn't the core product, and they have a line out the door every day, all day. Even their branding has been word of mouth, I don't know if I've ever seen a real advertisement for them.
I'm sure this kind of restaurant exists in practically every city.
but sometimes even the really good authentic places do poorly because of location. I'm not sure how it would apply to internet startups. I have a friend who owns an authentic chinese restaurant in south beach florida. He says he makes most of his money selling fried rice by the 5-gallon bucket and lipton hot tea. There weren't enough residents in the area to appreciate high quality authentic chinese food (they don't normally serve kung pao chicken)
The mexican place I was talking about is certainly not "authentic", but it's near a university, and serve delicious food (but not really mexican). I don't think slavish attention to old-world detail is the path to a successful restaurant, so much as just making something good and accessible. Think of it as usability. Sure their potato burrito isn't really very mexican at all (really, not at all), but it's good, adjustable spice level, and an easy word-of-mouth sales instrument.
