Monthly Archives: May 2012

Straight From The Udder

Posted by on May 31, 2012 1 comment


 

If you think this is disgusting, but the processed stuff you buy at the store is just fine, well…  kudos on some very creative logic.

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From It Makes No Sense, via Tosh.0

Bloomberg Is Banning Giant Sodas In NYC

Posted by on May 31, 2012 Comments Off

Somehow, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg got it into his head that the people of New York elected him to be their nanny — and maybe they have, since he’s been re-elected twice, and once since he banned smoking in some public places like parks, as well as banning trans fats in restaurants. Riding that wave, after a failed attempt to institute a state-wide soda tax, his latest idea is to ban the sale of sugary drinks larger than 16oz in restaurants in the city. This largely applies to sodas, but also to sweetened juices and coffee drinks. It does not apply to diet drinks, even though those don’t seem to be good for us either. And while it’s quickly becoming clear that sugar, in the quantities we consume it, is toxic, it’s not clear at all if taking away freedom by instituting sales bans is an effective way of limiting consumption — even if it were the right thing to do.

 

Mayor Bloomberg with sodas and the equivalent amount of sugar cubes in them. Photo by The New York Times.

 

A few months ago, a group of scientists proposed treating sugar like alcohol, and this measure would certainly be a nod in that direction, but limiting the sale of alcohol has certainly not slowed down its consumption, and the same goes for cigarettes and illegal drugs. The only thing that has ever worked is education: most people like doing what’s good for them, but many don’t like being forced to make choices, good or bad. And as members of a free society, we should be able to make all the bad choices we want, as long as they don’t harm others.

Update, 1 June 2012: Jon Stewart had a funny reaction to the news that the ban would “combine the draconian government overreach people love with the probable lack of results they expect”:

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From The New York Times, via NPR

Motion Picture Made From Stock Photos

Posted by on May 31, 2012 Comments Off

The stock photo warehouse Getty Images made this excellent video ad depicting life from adulthood to old age. It’s called From Love to Bingo and was done entirely by stringing together stock photos. Quite possibly the most interesting minute of your day.

From YouTube, via Neatorama

 

Sarasota Is The Best Artsy Small City For 2012

Posted by on May 31, 2012 Comments Off

American Style magazine puts out a list each year of the best destinations for art. The list is split by city size  – large, medium and small — and Sarasota went from #5 on the small city list in 2011 to #1 this year. Which of course means that it now holds two titles, along with the #1 beach in the country. The magazine also points out how eight cities in all three categories were located in Florida — five of them in its southwest. The other Floridian small cities were Bradenton in second place, Key West in fourth and Naples in ninth. For mid-sized cities, St. Petersburg came in first as it did last year, Tampa came in third, and Miami seventh. For big cities, Jacksonville was 15th.

LEGO Terra Cotta army at the 2011 Sarasota Chalk Festival

 

It must be mentioned again, as it was last year, that the classification system they use for cities is ludicrous: it would be laughable if anyone in the real world labeled Miami a mid-sized city with a straight face, while calling Albuquerque, Nashville and Portland big cities. The magazine is probably using city limits to define boundaries, which leads to exactly this kind of problem. In practice, city limits mean very little, which is why the US government uses Metropolitan Statistical Areas instead. It wouldn’t hurt at all if American Style followed suit. Another problem with the lists is that they’re based on reader polls, so it’s at least somewhat of a popularity contest, especially among the smaller cities.

With those caveats, the top five cities in each category:

Big Cities:

  1. New York
  2. Washington D.C.
  3. Chicago
  4. San Francisco
  5. Boston

Mid-sized Cities:

  1. St. Petersburg, FL
  2. Dayton, OH
  3. Tampa
  4. Alexandria, VA
  5. New Orleans

Small Cities:

  1. Sarasota, FL
  2. Bradenton, FL
  3. Asheville, NC
  4. Key West
  5. Santa Fe, NM

Speaking of titles, it should be mentioned that in 2006, Sarasota was also named the meanest city in America toward the homeless, due to its no-camping law.

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From American Style

I Have Timeline

Posted by on May 30, 2012 Comments Off

Funny parody of a Valtrex commercial, treating Facebook’s Timeline as if it were herpes:

From YouTube, via Laughing Squid

Airport Security Has Not Been Thought All The Way Through

Posted by on May 30, 2012 Comments Off

When it comes to security theatrics, our willful suspension of disbelief is eroding:

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From Wulffmorgenthaler, via Laughing Squid

The People Who Live Long Are The Happy Ones

Posted by on May 30, 2012 Comments Off

According to a study from Yeshiva University of hundreds of very old Ashkenazi Jews (who make up 80% of Jews worldwide), the ones that are almost 100 years old have a positive outlook towards life and are emotionally expressive. Specifically, they are optimistic, easy-going, outgoing, they laugh a lot, express their emotions openly and avoid bottling them up, and are less neurotic and more conscientious than the general population.

Students in the library at Yeshiva University

 

Details of the Study

The scientists wanted to find genes which help people live longer, so they looked at Ashkenazi Jews from the university’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine’s Longevity Genes Project. That group was an easy choice for a few reasons: they already had the people’s info, Yeshiva is a Jewish university and most importantly, due to centuries of Jewish mothers asking “is she Jewish?”, the Ashkenazi are among the most genetically similar of any group worldwide. As a result, it’s easy to spot traits in the population that arise from genetic differences and therefore lots of genetic studies have been done on them. The researchers were curious if any of the personality traits that very old people possessed were inherited, so they gave them personality quizzes and ranked them on a scale of positivity which ran along the lines of two accepted personality models: the Big Five and the Life Orientation Test. What they found was that the centerians were positive and emotionally expressive people.

As we’ve seen before, scientific studies should be taken with a grain of salt, and while the study is relatively large and the effects significant, the subjects were not diverse at all, the individual trait scores were self-reported via questionnaires, the researchers used their own scale, and confirmed their feel-good hypothesis that happy people live longer. Nevertheless, this is one more notch in the belt of a large body of research showing that positive people lead healthier lives.

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From The Impact Journal On Aging, via Medical Daily and Slashdot

Salt Made From Different Kinds Of Tears

Posted by on May 29, 2012 Comments Off

A company in London called Hoxton Street Monster Supplies sells a line of a salt supposedly made from a variety of human tears: ones of joy, sorrow, anger, as well as the ones from sneezing and chopping onions.

 

From Hoxton Street Monster Supplies, via Laughing Squid

How To Deal With Extreme Yelp Reviews

Posted by on May 23, 2012 Comments Off

It’s always a good idea to take poor Yelp reviews with a grain of salt.

 

The guy’s full review for a place called Joe Dough in the East Village of Manhattan:

Probably the worst meatball sandwich (special of the day) I have had in the tri-state area in my 32 years of living here, especially for $12. In all fairness I have not had the other sandwiches but with prices like that coupled with underwhelming food and slow service this will be a skip in the future. Joe Hell No!

From EV Grieve, via Neatorama

American Multi-Cinema (AMC) Is Now Chinese

Posted by on May 23, 2012 Comments Off

A privately-held Chinese conglomerate has bought AMC Theaters for 2.6b$, making it the biggest takeover yet of an American company by a Chinese one. AMC is the second biggest movie theater chain in the US, behind Regal Entertainment Group, and they are two of the three national theater chains, along with Cinemark Theaters.

Via NPR