In American whisky making, it’s common for distillers to use some of the fermented grain in the mash—before it goes into the still—to mix in with the next batch to be fermented. That portion is called the “backset,” and the whole process is called “sour mash,” just like it says on the bottles. The practice began in the 1800s, probably as a way to keep the same yeast strain consistent.
if a child has ADHD, some executive skills will be impaired. Chief among these are response inhibition, sustained attention, working memory, time management, task initiation, and goal-directed persistence.
Ending—neutral zone—new beginning. You need all three phases, and in that order, for a transition to work. The phases don’t happen separately; they often go on at the same time. Endings are going on in one place, in another everything is in neutral zone chaos, and in yet another place the new beginning is already palpable. Calling them “phases” makes it sound as though they are lined up like cubicles. Perhaps it would be more accurate to think of them as three processes and to say that the transition cannot be completed until all three have taken place.
Youngsters with weak task initiation also often have weak sustained attention—not only are they slow to get started on homework, they also are likely to quit before it’s done. These children generally have weak goal-directed persistence. However, we’ve found that if goal-directed persistence is a relative strength, we can encourage the child to use that skill to override his weaknesses in task initiation and sustained attention. These are the kids we can spur on to get their homework handed in consistently if we tell them that they can earn points for handing in homework on time and, once they have enough points, they can buy that video game they’ve been hounding us about.
Outright drunkenness is relatively easy to characterize, even though its symptoms vary from person to person, ranging from volubility to introspection, excitement to sadness. Concentration and coordination go out the window; maybe you slur your words. You get tired. You try to put your elbow on the bar and miss. That’s what happens when you have around 17 millimoles of ethanol per liter of blood, or 80 milligrams per every deciliter—sometimes also written “0.08 mg%,” or 0.08 blood alcohol content, the legal standard for intoxication in most parts of the United States. At higher concentrations, ethanol is a classic depressant of the central nervous system. Between 250 and 300 mg/dl, for example, it’s an anesthetic. You’re conked out, insensitive to pain. At 400 mg/dl ethanol is a solvent; that level of ingestion is fatal.
there’s a certain amount of creativity in design, but that’s just one part of a very meaty, robust toolkit. Teaching a designer to be creative without teaching them ethics is akin to a medical school teaching a surgeon how to open up a torso without teaching them how internal organs work. Anyone who wants a career as a designer is going to need to speak about someone’s business and organizational goals. They’re going to have to learn how to analyze data, and how to measure effectiveness. They’re going to have to learn how to build and extend brands and to do goal-driven work. Most of all, they need to learn how to measure the effectiveness of their own work. Not only for the company, but more importantly for society at large. Design is not about expressing yourself. Design is not about following your dream. Design is not about becoming a creative. Design is about keeping people from doing terrible things to other people.
Maybe histamines, the stuff of allergic responses. Red wine, white wine, sake, and beer all contain histamine, though studies go back and forth on which drink has the most. Some say it’s red wine, but others don’t find much difference among the various drinks.
Embrace the Use of Catchphrases: When you look at successful groups, a lot of their internal language features catchphrases that often sound obvious, rah-rah, or corny. Many of us instinctively dismiss them as cultish jargon. But this is a mistake. Their occasionally cheesy obviousness is not a bug—it’s a feature. Their clarity, grating to the outsider’s ear, is precisely what helps them function. The trick to building effective catchphrases is to keep them simple, action-oriented, and forthright: “Create fun and a little weirdness” (Zappos), “Talk less, do more” (IDEO), “Work hard, be nice” (KIPP), “Pound the rock” (San Antonio Spurs), “Leave the jersey in a better place” (New Zealand All-Blacks), “Create raves for guests” (Danny Meyer’s restaurants). They’re hardly poetry, but they share an action-based clarity. They aren’t gentle suggestions so much as clear reminders, crisp nudges in the direction the group wants to go.
