Located at the heart of a ferocious, River of Wind and the Roaring Forties, the capital of New Zealand is famous throughout the world, as The Windy City. Local experts predict Wellington’s wind mean speed is a brisk, 22 km/h (12 knots), with at least 22 days of the year visited by gale-force (up to 74km/h; 40 knots) winds, and a further 173 days featuring gusts greater than 60 km/h (32 knots). It’s not just the frequency of the wind in Wellington that sees locals and tourists clawing at the lampposts, it’s the sheer ferocity. The regular gusts that pound Wellington, usually peak at over 140 km/h (76 knots), which is comparable to a major hurricane, or to really make things clear — the absolute highest available category for wind speed. It’s little surprise that one of Wellington’s most cherished landmarks is an ode to the famous winds: Brooklyn wind-turbine has been a local icon since its construction in 1993. It continues to produce electricity for 80 local homes from its location on Pol Hill, where it can be seen for miles around. http://www.wheninwellington.com/worlds-windiest-city/

The city of Chicago has been known by many nicknames, but it is most widely recognized as the "Windy City". There are three main possibilities to explain the city's nickname: the weather, as Chicago is near Lake Michigan; the World's Fair; and the rivalry with Cincinnati. The earliest known reference to Chicago as the "Windy City" is from an 1858 Chicago Tribune article. The first known repeated effort to label Chicago with this nickname is from 1876 and involves Chicago's rivalry with Cincinnati.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_name_%22Windy_City%22

Dried beans/shellouts
Equivalents: For most beans: 1 pound dried beans = 2 cups dried = 4 - 5 cups cooked beans
Beans are low in fat and loaded with nutrients, and we'd probably eat more of them if they weren't also loaded with flatulence-producing enzymes. There are ways to enjoy beans without having to forego social appointments, however. One is to change the water from time to time while you're soaking or cooking the beans. Pouring off the water helps gets rid of the indigestible complex sugars that create gas in your intestine. It also helps to cook the beans thoroughly, until they can be easily mashed with a fork. Most bean aficionados prefer dried beans, but canned beans are also available. These don't need to be cooked, but they tend to be saltier and less flavorful than reconstituted dried beans. See dozens of images and descriptions at: http://www.foodsubs.com/Beans.html

In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions; where a small change at one place in a nonlinear system can result in large differences to a later state. The name of the effect, coined by Edward Lorenz, is derived from the theoretical example of a hurricane's formation being contingent on whether or not a distant butterfly had flapped its wings several weeks before. Although the butterfly effect may appear to be an esoteric and unusual behavior, it is exhibited by very simple systems: for example, a ball placed at the crest of a hill might roll into any of several valleys depending on slight differences in initial position. The butterfly effect is a common trope in fiction when presenting scenarios involving time travel and with "what if" cases where one storyline diverges at the moment of a seemingly minor event resulting in two significantly different outcomes. See images and read more at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect

Many phrases that have been adopted into everyday use originate from seafaring--in particular from the days of sail. Virtually all of these are metaphorical and the original nautical meanings are now forgotten. That association of travel and metaphor is significant in that the word metaphor derives from ancient Greek for 'to carry' or 'to travel'. The influence of other languages and other cultures is evident in many of the long list of English phrases that have nautical origins. See over three dozen phrases including Broad in the beam, By and large,
Chock-a-block, Close quarters, Copper-bottomed, and Cut and run at: http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/nautical-phrases.html

Quote
Mysteries are wonderful things. It would be boring to have all the answers.
White Shark by Peter Benchley

In the Croatian part of the Adriatic Sea, there are 718 islands, 389 islets and 78 reefs, making the Croatian archipelago the largest in the Adriatic Sea and the second largest in the Mediterranean Sea, the Greek archipelago being the largest. Of the 718 islands, only 48 are inhabited in the sense that at least one person resides on that island. Some sources indicate that Croatia has 67 inhabited islands, which is the number of islands that have a settlement on them, but 19 of these islands have lost all of their permanent population as a result of the population decline occurring throughout the Croatian islands due to insufficient economic activity. The islands of Croatia have been populated at least since the time of Ancient Greece. The main industries on the islands are agriculture, fishing and tourism. The islands' agriculture is primarily devoted to viticulture and olive growing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_inhabited_islands_of_Croatia

The Joy of Books (There's nothing quite like a real book). Stop motion animation with music. See a 1:51 video where books come to life when the owner locks up for the night at: http://thecuriousbrain.com/?p=27929