Grim Reaper Blog

One in six Virginia children live in families that struggle with hunger. Across the state, schools are ramping up efforts to ensure students are getting the meals they wouldn’t have otherwise — especially breakfast. Through the end of the year, Virginia schools are competing for prizes and recognition through increased school breakfast participation. The second annual Virginia Breakfast Challenge encourages state schools to get more students to eat breakfast through a program — “Breakfast After the Bell” — that aims to break the stigma of eating school breakfast. In the first Virginia Breakfast Challenge last year, 1,325 schools participated and about 25,000 more students had school breakfast compared with when the challenge started.  http://thefoodrevolution.org During the 2016-17 school year, Virginia schools served about 10 million more breakfasts than four years prior. The numbers are improving, but there’s still room for ...

A few days ago, this 1972 Lamborghini Miura P400 SV was brought to my attention. What made the car remarkable wasn’t the fact that Lamborghini made so few Miuras and seeing one in this beautiful color scheme was an absolute treat. No, it was that the seller, Kulu Motorcar Inc., wrote on its listing that it only had 150 miles on the clock. One-hundred and fifty miles. On a car from 1972. The listing is very light on the details, but for something like this, the mileage is usually that low either because it was only factory-driven up until this point or that its owners just never drove it. I’m not going to pretend to know anything about this Lamborghini or its backstory, but I really hope it isn’t the latter. Because if you don’t drive a car, you are effectively wasting it.  http://the-cars.org This kind of story isn’t new or really unique in our industry, especially when it concerns instantly special cars like a Miura or a McLaren F1. But, even as I went to visit that incredi...

Substantial amounts of salt could be removed from food after the government’s scientific advisers recommended that replacing it with potassium-based equivalents instead would improve public health. A committee of experts has urged ministers to ask food producers and supermarkets to look into how they can replace sodium with what is known as “potassium-based sodium replacers”. The scientific advisory committee on nutrition (SACN) has concluded that replacing between 15% and 25% of salt (sodium chloride) in food with potassium chloride would help reduce the risk of stroke and heart attack.  http://sustainablefoodworks.com Potassium is a mineral that is found naturally in fruit, vegetables, pulses, milk, nuts, seeds, fish and shellfish. It has been proven to reduce high blood pressure – a key cause of heart problems – and is given to some patients as part of their recovery from cardiac surgery. SACN has spent the last four years looking into potassium-based alternatives to sa...

During China’s 19th Party Congress in October, President Xi Jinping placed innovation at the center of China’s national strategy. His remarks called for building China into a “science and technology superpower,” particularly as an “aerospace superpower” and “cyber superpower.” He highlighted notable achievements, including Mozi, the world’s first quantum satellite, and China’s space lab, Tiangong. His remarks underscored that, under his leadership, China has pursued a strategy of innovation-driven development and sought to leverage the potential of the internet, big data and artificial intelligence (AI). If successful, China’s emergence as a leading power in innovation could shift the strategic balance.  http://spinstheworld.com Xi Jinping has recognized that innovation is a critical determinant of national power and competitiveness. This techno-nationalism is not new, but rather there is a long history of China’s pursuit of indigenous innovation. The “Two Bombs, One Satellite” ...

A TOP chef has revealed the simple mistakes that people make when cooking pasta with tomato sauce. It may be a simple and comforting staple dish, but it seems that we’ve been prepping our pasta all wrong. Celebrity chef Scott Conant. One chef believes there’s a very specific method when it comes to prepping pasta with the perfect tomato-based sauce.  http://sofood.me Scott Conant, who runs New York’s Fusco restaurant and who has been dubbed “the Maestro of pasta,” shared his guide to making perfect “pantry pasta” with  My Domaine . The ultimate secret, according to Scott, is adding a splash of the pasta water to the tomato sauce to bring out the “perfect” flavour. A handful of bucatini is perfect for one person, Scott Conant says. Picture: SBS Source:Supplied Conant says a tight handful of Bucatini (thick spaghetti style noodles) is the perfect amount for one person and says that just less than 10 minutes is the optimum time for cooking this type of...

Why don’t planes crash more often from mechanical failure? With all the moving parts inside a plane, it seems that something would break fairly easily. So, why doesn’t that happen? One primary reason: checklists.   Before pilots push the button for taxiing and take-off, they perform an extensive pre-flight checklist to make sure everything is functioning exactly as it should be. Entrepreneurs hoping for strong SEO (search engine optimization) rankings might take a lesson here. They can create a checklist of their own to make sure everything is perfect for their next website article. No, an SEO checklist won't protect you from crashing and burning. But it will help ensure that your post has the best chance it needs to rank high in Google.   http://sergethibodeau.com So, before you publish your next piece of web content, run it through the following 9-point checklist for the best SEO tips. 1. Pick a good keyword to focus on. The first step is to simply pick th...

Over the last six decades, according to one estimate, 9.1 billion tons of plastic has been produced worldwide and 7 billion tons of it has ended up as waste. Much of that waste has infiltrated our oceans. And, according to another estimate, more than 8 million tons of plastic is dumped into the sea each year. Researchers from the Helmholtz-Center for Environmental Research in Germany, think they’ve nailed down a crucial detail about plastic pollution: how it gets into the ocean. And, they found, just 10 rivers account for 90 percent of the plastics flowing into the seas. Their study is published in the journal  Environmental Science & Technology . The problem of our plastic-filled oceans has been studied for years, but until now there has been little information on how the plastic gets there. Christian Schmidt, a hydrogeologist at the center who led the study, believes that to get plastic out of the ocean, we must first figure out how it is getting in.   http://riverwatcher...