Best Thing Of The Day

Best Thing Of The Day

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Some very welcome news today for doughnut and coffee lovers living in the UK – Dunkin’ Donuts is preparing to launch itself onto our shores, with ambitious plans to open 150 restaurants over the next five years.

Yes please.
Yes please.

The Telegraph reports:

The chain, which pulled out of Britain in the mid-nineties as its sugary offerings and coffee failed to whet appetites in the UK, plans to develop 150 restaurants around in country.

Dunkin’ Donuts said on Thursday it had signed agreements with two franchise groups – The Court Group and DDMG – to open restaurants in North and East London. It is also in advanced talks with other franchise partners.

North London, as well! Bloody marvelous. I have always favoured Dunkin’ Donuts over Krispy Kreme (who established themselves in Britain back in 2003), not just for the doughnuts themselves but also the delicious breakfast food.

I had no idea that Dunkin’ had a UK presence back in the 1990s – apparently, as was the case with Taco Bell, the insular British palate was not yet ready for tasty, exciting things in those dark ages. We have come a long way in the intervening decades.

Of course, The Guardian cannot resist chiding us for allowing our mouths to water at the prospect of more choice in the doughnut market, publishing a less-than complimentary list of Dunkin’ Donuts facts, including:

1. There are 49g of sugar in a single one of its donuts. That’s more than half the guideline daily amount. The first casualty of the doughnut war is health.

Thanks, Mr. Buzzkill. But no matter; let us celebrate by enjoying this amusing Dunkin’ Donuts commercial from the United States:

 

I will, of course, be posting a review as soon as the first outlet opens. Stay tuned.

Best Thing Of The Day

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

If you have not already discovered TED Talks, the online channel featuring short, insightful lectures by prominent people from all fields and walks of life about topics that interest them, I highly encourage you to take a visit, either to their YouTube channel or their homepage.

For those who don’t know: With the slogan “Ideas Worth Spreading”, TED began as a conference for people from the worlds of technology, entertainment and design (hence the acronym), but has since expanded to cover just about every conceivable topic. One of the principle outputs from the TED conferences, which take place in cities all over the globe, are the TED Talks, in which an expert in their given field must give an informative, entertaining talk in eighteen minutes or less.

Which brings me to this excellent example from Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, whose work is notable for using sustainable building materials such as cardboard tubes and paper. As well as their obvious usefulness in terms of providing temporary shelter and accommodation during humanitarian disasters, these principles can also be applied to longer term constructions, as Ban’s talk demonstrates:

 

I had no idea that it was conceivably possible to construct multi-story structures out of such materials, and much as I love watching the rise of the new steel and glass skyscrapers in my home city of London, it is wonderful to appreciate these radically different, more natural structures too.

Pushing the boundaries of possibility even further in another TED Talk, architect Michael Green proposes building safe, multi-purpose structures such as skyscrapers out of wood:

 

As Green says (and I am in no position to refute despite my love of the steel frame skyscraper):

“Every time I go into my buildings that are wood, I notice that [people] react completely differently. I’ve never seen anybody walk into one of my buildings and hug a steel or a concrete column, but I’ve actually seen that in a wood building, I’ve seen how people touch the wood. And I think there’s a reason for it. Just like snowflakes, no two pieces of wood can ever be the same, anywhere on Earth. That’s a wonderful thing.”

Definitely my best discovery of the day.

Best Thing Of The Day

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

A retro one this time, from the 1997 movie “Good Will Hunting”:

 

Even when I was at Cambridge I never saw a guy try to pick up a girl using the “let me dazzle you with memorised passages from a pretentious textbook” approach (though that is not to say that it never happened).

Plagiarism – how not to do it.

Best Thing Of The Day

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

The advertising in this bus stop is a little more…let’s say interactive, than your average.

 

And the resulting YouTube ad for Qualcomm, a mobile technology company, becomes Best Thing Of The Day.

Best Thing Of The Day

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

Apparently, continuing his penchant for calling regular people out of the blue and surprising them, Pope Francis has made a telephone call to a young gay Catholic man in France, in response to a letter the man sent him expressing his emotional turmoil and stress at the thought that his nature was in some way against God or church teaching.

Pope Francis

The Huffington Post reports the account as follows:

“He said ‘Christopher? It’s Pope Francis’. I was unsettled, of course. I asked, ” Really? ” He replied : “Yes.”

“I received the letter that you sent me. You need to remain courageous and continue to believe and pray and stay good,” the Pope told him during the nine-minute conversation in Spanish.

“Your homosexuality. It doesn’t matter. One way or another , we are all children of God. This is why we must continue to be good,” the Pope told him.

Though many writers have argued that Francis’ more inclusive and friendly tone does not necessarily mark any great upcoming shift in church teachings on homosexuality, it is certainly a good beginning, and a vast improvement from the cold, clinical indifference that was the hallmark of the Benedict XVI papacy:

While Francis’ predecessor Benedict XVI was an extreme opponent of gay rights – once describing homosexuality as a “defection of human nature” – the most recent Pope has expressed his tolerance towards homosexuality.

During his recent visit to Brazil he said: “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?”

Once this spirit of friendship and true empathy is established, as Pope Francis is working so hard to achieve now – not just in terms of Church attitudes toward gay people, but also the poor, underprivileged and dispossessed – the opportunity may eventually present itself for a revision of Church teaching in this regard.