"number" news and stories

The USDA announced this week that it will reduce the number of cattle tested for mad cow disease by 90 percent, the Associated Press reported. Agricultural Secretary Mike Johanns said Thursday that testing one percent of the 35 million cows slaughtered annually in the U.S. is more than what's necessary. The number of cattle tested on a daily basis will now fall from 1,000 to around 110. Current testing costs are approximately $1 million per week, according to the AP. "There is no significant BSE problem in the United States," Johanns said, "and after all of this surveillance, I am able to say there never was."

According to speculation in a recent Reuters article, the number of Starbucks locations worldwide may soon top that of McDonald's. Back in 2004, Starbucks set a goal of having 30,000 stores worldwide, but according to Reuters, Starbucks' chairman has recently said that the figure is too low. At present, McDonald's has roughly 31,000 locations worldwide, making it the largest fast food chain in the world. Starbucks is already the largest coffee chain. According to Reuters, there's a Starbucks for every 11,754 people in Seattle. This makes me think of some articles The Onion ran a few years back.

The folks at MathWorld have an entry for the McNugget Number, which are the integers that can be expressed as multiples (or linear combinations) of the denominations of McNugget orders. I personally find this kind of recreational mathematics to be quite amusing, especially when it deals with food. Originally, the McNugget's could only be ordered in boxes of 6, 9, and 20. This yielded many numbers of McNuggets to be impossible to obtain. But, now the selections have been expanded to 4, 6, 9, and 20, which makes it possible to get more integer numbers of McNuggets. You know, for those moments when you must need 22 McNuggets, no more, no less.

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