Free Republic

More and more companies are going “gay” while at the same time denigrating anybody who has an issue with same-sex, alternate sex, slice and dice sex (transgenderism), and take-your-pick sex. When it was found out that Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich opposed same-sex marriage, so much pressure was put on him because of his anti-same sex marriage views (he donated to Proposition 8) that he believed that he couldn’t do anything but resign. The Gaystapo would have made it unbearable for him and the company for Eich if he had remain as CEO. There is a long trail of persecution from...

OKEMOS, Mich. - A Michigan woman who wanted home-brewed Starbucks coffee will accept $250 to end a lawsuit over the company's decision to stop making discs for a specific single-serve coffee machine -- the one that she happened to own. Pam Montgomery of Okemos said she bought a Tassimo brewer by Kraft Foods because Starbucks supplied coffee discs for it. But Starbucks ended its deal with Kraft and came up with its own machine. It also makes discs/pods for Keurig machines.

It was the salute seen around the world. President Obama was caught on video saluting Marines with a coffee cup in his hand. Just call him Cappuccino-in-Chief. The White House posted video to its Instagram account and soon unleashed a torrent of outrage. The Washington Times dubbed the moment “Semper Latte.” I’m surprised he didn’t order the Marines to fetch him cream and sugar. Before lunchtime – liberals had unearthed a photograph purportedly showing former President Bush saluting with a dog in his arms.

So, you couldn’t sleep last night. You’d like nothing more than to go back to bed, but you’ve got a long day of work staring you in the face. How do you power through? Science of Us talked to sleep researchers to figure out how to get through a day after you’ve had a sleepless night. Each of them wanted to be incredibly clear, up front, about this: You really, really need seven to eight hours of sleep to function like a proper human being (unless you’re one of those short sleepers — but look, you aren’t). Still, they acknowledged,...

There may be something extra lurking in your morning cup of joe, and it’s not fairy dust. A new report reveals that due to recent coffee shortages, producers may be turning to finely ground fillers such as wood, husks, whole coffee berries, and even clumps of earth to compensate for the lost beans. Once roasted and ground, these fillers resemble coffee, which makes it difficult to visually confirm a coffee blend’s contents. Even more troubling, ”normal people can’t taste [the difference],” research team leader Suzana Lucy Nixdorf told us via email. Other common filler ingredients (detailed in the graphic below)...

The company, which is known for flooding markets with its stores, also pointed out that it closed all of its stores in Israel in 2003 because of "operational challenges."

I have seen the future of iced coffee. There I was, wandering the grocery-store aisles—when suddenly, next to the kombucha, opposite the rotisserie chickens, I spotted something I never thought I’d live to see. A blue and white carton—like the half-pints of milk that come on elementary school lunch trays—emblazoned with the words Blue Bottle New Orleans Iced Coffee. This coffee is legendary in the Bay Area, and now that Blue Bottle has expanded to New York, I’m sure its name echoes on the streets of Manhattan and Williamsburg, too. Brewed with chicory, cut with whole milk, sweetened with cane...

Sameera planned carefully for her attempt at breaking a world record. She obtained permission from the store where her attempt would take place, and even made sure to alert media outlets ahead of time. She even brought the proper equipment and a support team. What record was she out to break? She sought to make the most expensive single free Starbucks drink of all time. The initial cash register total was more than $60, but scanning her loyalty card brought the total down to $57.75. You know, only $57.75. The previous record, as you may have learned from Consumerist or...

It was the greatest coffee run in American history. The Ohio boys had been fighting since morning, trapped in the raging battle of Antietam, in September 1862. Suddenly, a 19-year-old William McKinley appeared, under heavy fire, hauling vats of hot coffee. The men held out tin cups, gulped the brew and started firing again. “It was like putting a new regiment in the fight,” their officer recalled. Three decades later, McKinley ran for president in part on this singular act of caffeinated heroism. At the time, no one found McKinley’s act all that strange. For Union soldiers, and the lucky...

If you're going to drink wine in a can, you should probably make it coffee-flavored, and fantastically enough, this stuff comes in two low-cal, slim-can "flavors," if you will: Cabernet Coffee Espresso and Chardonnay Coffee Cappuccino. Being the first to market with a coffee wine is a not-inconsiderable bump in mirth from the people at Friends Fun Wine, "creators of the 'fun wine' category," albeit one that was previously limited to hum-drum canned sangria and even less fun 6 percent ABV strawberry moscato. Still, it all feels a bit uninspired, so long as Aussies keep throwing back Nerds-Nutella coffee bombs,...

Waste coffee grinds could be turned into a sustainable fuel to power vehicles, scientists have found. Oil can be extracted from coffee grounds by soaking them in an organic solvent, before being chemically transformed into biodiesel via a process called 'transesterification', according to researchers from the Centre for Sustainable Chemical Technologies at University of Bath. As part of the study, the researchers made biofuel from ground coffee produced in 20 different geographic regions, including caffeinated and decaffeinated forms, as well as Robusta and Arabica varieties. "Around 8 million tonnes of coffee are produced globally each year and ground waste coffee...

DANIELLE WIENER-BRONNER, The WireJun. 20, 2014 ï‚‚Months after we all started fretting over the prospect of a global coffee shortage, it seems we might actually start to feel the caffeine-related effects of Brazil's massive drought and Central America's coffee fungus, in the form industry-wide retail price increases. The Washington Post reported back in February that coffee costs were expected to rise later in the year: For now, retail prices for coffee are stable. Roasters typically have enough supplies to cover themselves for a few months. But if the price of the Arabica (pronounced uh-RAB-ick-uh) beans continues to rise, consumers could...

People have taken to putting butter in their coffee. The practice is polarizing—it sounds awesome to some, disgusting to others—but really, it’s not about how the mixture tastes. “Clarified butter is a great source of energy, satiates you: I get the draw,” coffee writer Oliver Strand told us on Twitter. “But it’s more about diet than flavor.” Let’s discuss. Where It Comes From: Putting butter in morning tea has long been a “thing” in Tibet. “The heart and soul of Tibet” is butter tea, chef Vikas Khanna told us. (Khanna’s cookbook, Return to the Rivers: Recipes and Memories of the...

A UC Berkeley graduate who was severely burned after spilling hot coffee on her lap filed a lawsuit Thursday against In-N-Out Burger claiming employees in Oakland refused to call an ambulance. Hedy Chen claims employees at the drive-through restaurant ignored her screams and repeated requests to call 911. Instead, she was given a pack of ice, which can exacerbate scarring, according to the suit filed in Alameda County Superior Court. "What they were supposed to do was call 911 because the operators know that" ice is bad, said Kirk Boyd, her lawyer. "They said there is a policy of not...

In North America, Keurig is king. The rest of the world is Nescafé territory. Keurig Green Mountain, the company behind the popular single-cup coffee machines and pods, is having a pretty excellent year... In the rest of the world, Nestle’s Nescafé instant coffee leads the market, even though many of those regions drink more fresh coffee than instant. Nescafé is just so dominant in the instant category that its sales are higher than other individual brands...

The European Union is poised to scrap compulsory “best before” labels on coffee, rice, dry pasta, hard cheeses, jams and pickles to help reduce the estimated 100 million tons of food wasted across Europe each year. Officials of the European Commission will table proposals next month allowing national governments to extend the list of foods that do not require best-before dates, in a move which they believe will mean 15 million tons less food a year is discarded by households wrongly worried that it is no longer fit for consumption. […] EU legislation on labeling currently requires all food to...

A fungus called coffee rusts is currently causing damages of more than $1 billion across Latin American region coffee farms, and it is affecting the prices of coffee in the United States. ...But Raj Shah, head of the USAID, said their main concern is not only on the rising price of coffee but more on the economic security of small farms abroad. He said that if farmers lose their jobs, it escalates poverty and hunger and poverty region and this will add to the problem of violence and drug trafficking.

A coffee a day could help keep eye diseases at bay. That’s according to a joint study out of South Korea and the United States, which concluded that powerful antioxidants found in coffee can play a role in preventing age-related eye diseases and the degeneration of eyesight. For their research, scientists looked at the impact of chlorogenic acid or CLA, a strong antioxidant that has been shown to prevent retinal degeneration in mice. To conduct their experiment, mice were treated with nitric oxide, which creates oxidative stress and free radicals and leads to retinal degeneration. Those that were pretreated with...

Your coffee maker can now brew your entire breakfast before you head out the door in the morning. Golden Valley-based General Mills has launched Nature Valley-brand oatmeal that’s made in a Keurig brewer – a machine that makes single servings of coffee, tea and other beverages using a single-serve capsule or pod (also known as a K-Cup), the Washington Post says. Here’s how it works: Hot water from the Keurig runs through flavor pods (K-Cups) and into a mug filled with Nature Valley Bistro Cups oatmeal, to be mixed with an additional packet of nuts and fruit. This is General...

"It isn't the coffee that's too hot, but the nearly bare baristas of Bottom's Up, a Clovis drive-through coffee shop that has trouble brewing with some neighbors who oppose the business."