chocolates, Baci, in Italy? The Italian chocolate also sports a similar but not identical swirl on top. Baci offers no plume, but includes a love note (in four languages) inside every chocolate. Oh, one other thing: Baci just happens to mean kisses in Italian.
Submitted by Anthony Cusumano of Ashburn, Virginia.
How Does the Vending Machine Know When It’s Sunday and That the Newspaper Is More Expensive?
N ever underestimate the intelligence of a newspaper vending machine. It knows darn well when you try to pay the price for a daily newspaper on Sunday. You can try to get away with inserting fifty cents when you owe two dollars, but our money is on the vending machine shutting you out.
When you insert coins into the vending machine, the quarters don’t just drop into an empty vessel, but into a mechanical or electronic receptacle (“mech”). Even the more primitive machines can account for at least two different price structures—most commonly, to account for a more expensive Sunday paper. As Bob Camara, sales representative for K-Jack Engineering Company put it: “The coin mechanism is changed over to a Sunday setting.”
The people who service the racks reset all the mechanisms to a Sunday setting to assure that bargain hunters are frustrated. Pamela Davis of Rak Systems, Inc., explains:
There are mechanisms that have to be set manually each time the price changes. There are also electronic mechs that can be changed with the click of a button. Some of the electronic mechs can also collect data…what time and day papers are bought, what coins are used, etc., to help the newspapers know what their best markets are.
A collection of Rak’s mechanisms are on display at http://www.raksystems.com/mechs.htm. There you’ll see that the preoccupations of Rak’s clients are few but persistent—multiple pricing options, ability to collect coins other than quarters, and the most nagging issue since the advent of the vending machine: rejection of slugs.
Submitted by Jim Barton of Phoenix, Arizona.
What Happens to Olives After the Oil Is Squeezed Out?
L ucy Ricardo might have been able to crush grapes with her feet to make wine on I Love Lucy, but extracting olive oil from olives is a little trickier than juicing a grape or an orange. Olives don’t contain as much moisture content as grapes, and possess nasty, hard pits.
The first important process in making olive oil, after separating the olives from dirt, leaves, and other contaminants, is pushing them through a mill or grinder, which turns them into a fine paste. Usually, the olive pits are left in before processing; the pits don’t have much effect on flavor, and contribute little to the volume of oil—but “destoning” olives adds another step, and expense, to the process.
After the olives are mashed into paste form, the paste is mixed malaxation”) for about one half hour, which allows larger bubbles of oil to coalesce. The next stage is crucial—extracting the oil from the water in the paste, usually accomplished by one of two types of machine: a press or a centrifuge.
Although the valuable oil has been extracted, and the olives have lost all of their original texture, olive oil producers don’t toss the waste product, which is called “pomace.” Paul Vossen, a University of California farm advisor, told Imponderables about the fate of the pomace:
The pomace can be used for compost, or if the pit fragments are removed and it is somewhat dried, it can be fed to livestock. In Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, the pomace is placed into solvent tanks and the remaining small amount of oil is removed; the solvent-extracted oil is refined and sold as pomace oil. The spent pomace is usually burned to generate heat and dry the pomace before it is solvent-extracted.
The pomace olive oil is controversial in the trade. As we discussed in When Do Fish Sleep? , virgin
Submitted by Anthony Cusumano of Ashburn, Virginia.
How Does the Vending Machine Know When It’s Sunday and That the Newspaper Is More Expensive?
N ever underestimate the intelligence of a newspaper vending machine. It knows darn well when you try to pay the price for a daily newspaper on Sunday. You can try to get away with inserting fifty cents when you owe two dollars, but our money is on the vending machine shutting you out.
When you insert coins into the vending machine, the quarters don’t just drop into an empty vessel, but into a mechanical or electronic receptacle (“mech”). Even the more primitive machines can account for at least two different price structures—most commonly, to account for a more expensive Sunday paper. As Bob Camara, sales representative for K-Jack Engineering Company put it: “The coin mechanism is changed over to a Sunday setting.”
The people who service the racks reset all the mechanisms to a Sunday setting to assure that bargain hunters are frustrated. Pamela Davis of Rak Systems, Inc., explains:
There are mechanisms that have to be set manually each time the price changes. There are also electronic mechs that can be changed with the click of a button. Some of the electronic mechs can also collect data…what time and day papers are bought, what coins are used, etc., to help the newspapers know what their best markets are.
A collection of Rak’s mechanisms are on display at http://www.raksystems.com/mechs.htm. There you’ll see that the preoccupations of Rak’s clients are few but persistent—multiple pricing options, ability to collect coins other than quarters, and the most nagging issue since the advent of the vending machine: rejection of slugs.
Submitted by Jim Barton of Phoenix, Arizona.
What Happens to Olives After the Oil Is Squeezed Out?
L ucy Ricardo might have been able to crush grapes with her feet to make wine on I Love Lucy, but extracting olive oil from olives is a little trickier than juicing a grape or an orange. Olives don’t contain as much moisture content as grapes, and possess nasty, hard pits.
The first important process in making olive oil, after separating the olives from dirt, leaves, and other contaminants, is pushing them through a mill or grinder, which turns them into a fine paste. Usually, the olive pits are left in before processing; the pits don’t have much effect on flavor, and contribute little to the volume of oil—but “destoning” olives adds another step, and expense, to the process.
After the olives are mashed into paste form, the paste is mixed malaxation”) for about one half hour, which allows larger bubbles of oil to coalesce. The next stage is crucial—extracting the oil from the water in the paste, usually accomplished by one of two types of machine: a press or a centrifuge.
Although the valuable oil has been extracted, and the olives have lost all of their original texture, olive oil producers don’t toss the waste product, which is called “pomace.” Paul Vossen, a University of California farm advisor, told Imponderables about the fate of the pomace:
The pomace can be used for compost, or if the pit fragments are removed and it is somewhat dried, it can be fed to livestock. In Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, the pomace is placed into solvent tanks and the remaining small amount of oil is removed; the solvent-extracted oil is refined and sold as pomace oil. The spent pomace is usually burned to generate heat and dry the pomace before it is solvent-extracted.
The pomace olive oil is controversial in the trade. As we discussed in When Do Fish Sleep? , virgin
Similar Books
