Here’s funny man Russell Brand in a brand new commercial for Touchpad brand tablet computers.
Via PreCentral
Monthly Archives: June 2011
Baby Doesn’t Know What He’s Saying
Posted by apt46
on June 30, 2011
Comments Off
There’s precious little time to take advantage of your infant’s lack of numerous skills, such as reading. Now you can have him or her can tell truth to power about Santa Claus’ ontological state via a baby tee. To be fair, if he can’t read, he probably doesn’t know what a “Santa Claus” is anyway. Just make sure to hand it down to another baby before he figures it out.
From Zazzle
The 2011 Corporate Popularity Contest
Posted by apt46
on June 30, 2011
Comments Off
The American Costumer Satisfaction Index scores pretty much every big consumer-oriented corporation (about 200 of them) on a scale of 1-100, based on how satisfied their customers are with them. They update a couple of different sectors of industry every month such that the whole picture is completely re-drawn once a year. The entire list is available on their website, both by industry and by company. And here are the highlights:
The top 5 industries:
- Consumer Electronics (TVs and stuff)
- Express Delivery – Consumer Shipping (UPS, FedEx)
- Soft Drinks
- Apparel
- Personal Care & Cleaning Products (soaps, lotions, etc)
The bottom 5 industries (starting with the very bottom):
- Newspapers
- Airlines
- Subscription TV Service (i.e., cable)
- Gasoline Stations
- Internet Social Media (i.e., Facebook)
Interesting to note is that in the past year cigarettes, hospitals, restaurants and cable news improved the most. Credit unions, internet portals & search engines and gas stations degraded the most.
The top 10 companies:
- Lincoln Mercury (a Ford brand)
- H.J. Heinz (the ketchup company)
- Buick (a GM brand)
- Unilever (they own Dove, Ben & Jerry’s, Slim Fast, Q-tips, Noxzema and about a hundred other brands)
- Amazon
- Netflix
- Hershey
- Quaker (owned by Pepsi; besides the Quaker Oats brands Quaker owns Gatorade, Life cereal, Aunt Jemima syrups, Rice-a-roni and Pasta-roni and a bunch of others)
- Mercedes-Benz
- Clorox (they own Brita, Burt’s Bees, Liquid Plumr, Pine-Sol, Tilex, a bunch of salad dressings, and other stuff)
Honorable mentions: BMW, Apple, Cadillac, UPS, FedEx, Lexus, Toyota, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, GM, Publix, Olive Garden and Red Lobster.
The bottom 10 companies (starting with the very bottom):
- Pepco Holdings (owns a bunch of utilities in the mid-Atlantic: Pepco, ACE, Delmarva Power, Connectiv)
- Delta Airlines
- Charter Communications (4th largest cable company)
- Time Warner Cable (2nd largest cable company)
- Comcast (largest cable company)
- United Airlines
- US Airways
- MySpace
- American Airlines
Dishonorable mentions: Cox Cable, United Health, Continental Airlines, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, DirecTV, Aetna, CitiGroup, and AT&T Mobility.
So if you want a good social network, you’re out of luck. But if you want a good airline, Southwest is heads and shoulders above the other major airlines; it’s ranking is the same neighborhood as the well-liked Outback Steakhouse, Nike and FedEx. As far as cable, Verizon FIOS is ranked first in that industry by a pretty good measure, but still in questionable company: McDonald’s, Sprint, T-Mobile. And finally, here’s the averaged national score over all industries since 1994:
Theodicy
Posted by apt46
on June 30, 2011
Comments Off
Blueberries, Vitamins and Walking Improve Memory In The Elderly
Posted by apt46
on June 29, 2011
2 comments
Everyone knows that as people age, their memory fades. This is due in part to the mind just ignoring more and more events as we get older, because they’re similar to ones that happened before: at some point, all your birthday parties end up blurring together. In part, it’s also due to the neurons in the brain degrading as they age, making it harder for it to store new memories. And it’s also due to the brain shrinking as it ages — less brain mass means less room to store memories.
Photo by Kate McCarthy
But three new studies showcased in a Healthier Talk article found some ways to fight the decline of memory:
- Blueberries have been shown to improve memory, as well as mood and to reduce blood sugar levels
- Shots of folate, B6 and B12 slowed the rate of brain shrinkage in people over 70 by 30%
- Walking 3x a week actually increased brain mass in the hippocampus (where memories are stored), whereas doing nothing decreased it.
In other words, nothing beats exercise. Not even blueberries and B12.
From Healthier Talk, via Lifehacker
Miss South Carolina Can’t Think
Posted by apt46
on June 29, 2011
Comments Off
Because absolutely nothing interesting or funny has been happening on the Internet for the past 36 hours, here’s a funny classic video:
Drug Cartels Are No Longer Just About Drugs
Posted by apt46
on June 27, 2011
Comments Off
Foreign Policy has an article pointing out that the Mexican drug cartels have grown very large and powerful (as evidenced by the brazen standoffs with the government in recent years) and as a result, they are now less like drug cartels and more like mafia groups. Mostly starting with efforts to launder money and continuing as a means to reap increasing profits with the increased power they command, the cartels have expanded into all kinds of money-making schemes, including: protection rackets, kidnapping, theft and corruption. The cartel members are now almost at half a million members, which is more than the Mexican state oil company of 360,000 and even more than the police force of 400,000.
Colombian police posing with Pablo Escobar's dead body
The article tries to make a misguided point by saying that despite the failure of the war on drugs, legalizing them won’t affect the cartels too much since they have diversified their sources of revenue; what it fails to mention is that the cartels may not even be around if they hadn’t gotten started selling illegal drugs. Not to mention that it’s a logical fallacy to begin with: assuming the drug cartels are here to stay with or without the end of drug prohibition, then legalization is irrelevant when talking about the cartels. If the devil exists with or without charitable donations, then charity is irrelevant when talking about killing the devil. However, charity is good for a whole host of other reasons. In the same way, there are a lot of reasons to end prohibition (e.g., to stop wasting taxpayer money on the drug war, to restore personal freedom, to treat addiction as a healthcare issue instead of a criminal one) and only one of those is to reduce illegal trafficking and the associated violence.
From Foreign Policy, via NPR
Driverless Cars Coming To Nevada
Posted by apt46
on June 27, 2011
1 comment
Good news for fans of cars that drive themselves: Nevada is now the first state that allows them on highways. The legislature directed their department of transportation to write up rules which would regulate the robotic drivers, which in turn should prevent most accidents, since they are generally caused by human error. Hopefully it won’t be long before you’ll be flagging down driverless taxis on the Las Vegas strip, as prophesied by Total Recall, more than 20 years ago.
Via The LA Times
Drug Commercials Explained
Posted by apt46
on June 27, 2011
Comments Off
A smart parody of the formulaic (and deceitful) TV commercials for prescription drugs, that most people have no business knowing about anyway.
Via Laughing Squid
Make Your Kids Play Outside
Posted by apt46
on June 27, 2011
1 comment
For the past few decades, the rate of nearsightedness has been increasing to the point that it’s now double what it was 40 yeas ago and it turns out that’s due to kids spending more time indoors. The problem is the dimmer light level in the house, as opposed to what the sun provides; and the reason it’s a problem is because genetically, our eyes are programmed to stop growing when they should via a signal based on the amount of ambient light. Kids that spend a lot of time indoors playing video games and reading books don’t get that signal and their eyes keep growing, causing the eye to grow too much, which makes the distance from the lens to the retina bigger than it should be, which makes the image weaker than it should be, and the kid nearsighted.
Photo by Ernst Vikne
Since this is a developmental problem, it only affects children — nearsightedness generally does not develop in adults who have good eyes. The solution: if and when you have kids, make them spend a couple of hours outside each day. (Or possibly installing stadium lights in your house.) Besides making their eyes develop as they should, the outside exercise will also probably help prevent obesity, as well as boosting their immune system.
This is yet another thing humanity has done right for thousands of years, only to be thwarted by electricity.
From NPR