Category: Other

“There’s an interesting chart in a report to clients issued early Thursday morning by Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune.

“What caught my eye, however, was what her proprietary research shows about the impact of the iPad and other tablets on the broader gadget market, starting with netbooks. As her chart shows, sales growth of these low-cost, low-powered computing devices peaked last summer at an astonishing 641% year-over-year growth rate,” Elmer-DeWitt reports. “It fell off a cliff in January and shrank again in April — collateral damage, according to Huberty, from the January

[From MacDailyNews – Netbook Killer: Apple’s revolutionary iPad destroying the netbook business]

Click to turn the city lights on and off.

Beginning in Sydney, Australia three years ago, Earth Hour has grown into a global observance. States, large organizations and individual people observed Earth Hour 2010 on Saturday March 27th, as homes, office towers and landmarks turned off their lights for an hour starting at 8.30 pm local time to raise awareness about climate change and the threat from rising greenhouse gas emissions. Collected here are a series of before-and-after photographs from this year – which (starting with the second one below) will fade between “on” and “off” when clicked. [See also: last year] This effect requires javascript to be enabled. (26 photos total)

[From Earth Hour 2010 – The Big Picture – Boston.com]

Last August, we wrote about the “Double Down,” a mysteriously tempting (and potentialy lethal) new food item being tested by KFC. For those coming late to the story, it’s bacon and cheese sandwiched between two pieces of fried chicken. And now, many months later, I’ll finally be able to get my hands on one.

KFC announced the decision to go live with the Double Down yesterday, but we weren’t sure they weren’t playing a April Fools gag. But no, they truly are going nationwide with the delicacy on April 12.

The sandwich will be available in two forms. The Original Recipe sandwich will set you back about 540 calories, 32g of fat and 1380mg of sodium. The not-as-bad-for-you Grilled Double Down totals 460 calories, 23g of fat and 1430mg of sodium.

UPDATE: Some Vegan bloggers have already reverse-engineered the Double Down!

[From KFC’s Bacon Sandwich On Fried Chicken “Bread” Starts Killing People Nationwide April 12 – The Consumerist]

(Newser) – If you’re looking for a decisive, confident partner, try dating someone with type O blood. Type As are dependable worrywarts, ABs are balanced but high-maintenance, and if you’ve been burned by a selfish ex, blame their type B blood. That’s the conventional wisdom in Japan, where people believe blood group determines personality—a belief that plays out in dating, the workplace and even politics.

[From In Japan, Dating and Hiring Follows Belief in Blood Type Personality Groups]

One of the most offbeat attractions in the United States, the Seattle Gum Wall is also one of the most germ infected tourist spot in the world.

Located in Post Alley, under Park Place Market, the Gum Wall has its beginning in the early 1990s, when people, irritated that they had to wait in line to get tickets to the theater, stuck chewing gum on the wall. At first, they would use the gum to stick small coins to the wall, but in time, the tradition of the coins disappeared, and the gum remained.

Theater attendants scraped the Gum Wall twice, but gave up in 1999, when it became a certified tourist attraction of Seattle. Now it is filled with thousands of pieces of chewing gum, of any color imaginable. And, as the wall grows, the chewing gum art becomes more sophisticated. You’ll find names written with pieces of gum, and symbols like hearts or the peace sign.

But, the Seattle Gum Wall is also one of the germiest tourist destinations on Earth. In a ranking made by Trip Advisor, it came in second place, after Ireland’s Blarney Stone.

[From The Seattle Gum Wall – A Sticky Attraction | Oddity Central – Collecting Oddities]

PHOENIX — Gov. Jan Brewer ignored criticism from President Barack Obama on Friday and signed into law a bill supporters said would take handcuffs off police in dealing with illegal immigration in Arizona, the nation’s busiest gateway for human and drug smuggling from Mexico.

[From Gov. Jan Brewer Signs Controversial Arizona Immigration Bill: Decision Not ‘Made Lightly’]

Alex Tabarrok posts the above picture of “Chauncy Morlan (1869-1906) who, because of his ‘freakish’ weight, people once paid good money to see as he toured Europe and America with the Barnum & Bailey circus” and asks:

What would the circus goers of 1890 have thought if they were told that in the America of 2010 Chauncy Morlan would be unremarkable?

[From America The Overweight, Ctd – The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan ]

Commentary & Analysis
Gary JohnsonGary E. Johnson
Board member, Students for a Sensible Drug Policy
Author, “Seven Principles of Good Government”
Former Governor of New Mexico (R)

It’s time we tax and regulate marijuana. The War on Drugs is a proven failure. We have spent several decades and close to a trillion dollars trying to eliminate drugs.

Consider these facts:

* The last three Presidents and half of American adults have said they have smoked marijuana.
* More children have tried marijuana, which is illegal, than cigarettes, which are regulated.
* Last year we arrested 850,000 people for marijuana, mostly for possession.
* So far, fourteen states have passed medical marijuana laws enabling sick people to benefit.
* Massachusetts, Denver, and Seattle have either successfully decriminalized, or instituted lowest priority law enforcement policies for marijuana possession.

We learned a valuable lesson with alcohol prohibition in this country. Prohibition created black markets and violence as gangs fought to control the market. The same thing is true today. Mexican cartels make the majority of their profits distributing marijuana in 230 American cities, and the resulting violence is tragic. That’s why the presidents of many Latin American countries signed a declaration that the war on drugs needs to be ended.

[From The War On Drugs Has Failed, So Tax And Regulate Marijuana – CNBC]

[From YouTube – US Senator Graham asked to Admit His Homosexuality at Tea Party Event]

[From Lindsey Graham Gay? Conservative Group ALIPAC Demands Senator ‘Admit Homosexuality’]

The radical Islamic Web site Revolutionmuslim.com is going after the creators of the TV cartoon series “South Park” after an episode last week included an image of the Prophet Mohammed in disguise.

[From Security Brief: Radical Islamic Web site takes on ‘South Park’ – This Just In – CNN.com Blogs]

OpenCola is a brand of cola unique in that the instructions for making it are freely available and modifiable. Anybody can make the drink, and anyone can modify and improve on the recipe as long as they, too, license their recipe under the GNU General Public License. Since recipes are, by themselves, not copyrightable, the legal basis for this is untested.[1]

Although originally intended as a promotional tool to explain free and open source software, the drink took on a life of its own and 150,000 cans were sold. The Toronto-based company Opencola founded by Grad Conn, Cory Doctorow, and John Henson became better known for the drink than the software it was supposed to promote. Laird Brown, the company’s senior strategist, attributes its success to a widespread mistrust of big corporations and the “proprietary nature of almost everything.”

[From OpenCola (drink) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]

Thinking about file-sharing? Don’t. You’ll get fined, and crime doesn’t pay (unless you rob banks and/or armored cars, then it pays very well). Take it from Jammie Thomas, who was fined $2 million for downloading 24 songs, or anyone else who tried to fight the RIAA.

Instead, try another crime, because plenty of them draw far lighter penalties than downloading Jason Mraz’s latest. Thanks to the Mechanics blog at Gapers Block, here are seven crimes that will get you smaller fines than file-sharing:

1. Child abduction: the fine is only like $25000.

2. Stealing the actual CD: the fine is $2,500

3. Rob your neighbor: the fine is $375,000

4. Burn a house down: The fine is just over $375,000

5. Stalk someone: The fine is $175,000

6. Start a dogfighting ring: the fine is $50,000

7. Murder someone: The maximum penalty is only $25,000 and 15 years in jail, and depending on your yearly salary, would probably be far slighter a penalty that $2 million.

[From Seven Crimes That Will Get You a Smaller Fine than File-Sharing]

Black Bean Burger
2 cans black beans, drained and rinsed and roughly smashed
2/3 cup cooked quinoa
1/4 cup chickpea flour (with additional 2Tbsp if needed)
1/3 cup chopped sun dried tomatoes, the soft kind marinated in oil
1 Tbsp ground flax seed mixed with 3 tbsp water, microwaved for 20 seconds
2 tsp liquid smoke
salt and pepper to taste

[From Mediterranean Black Bean Quinoa Burgers with Red Onion Basil Aioli « The Voracious Vegan]

Thousands of shoppers unknowingly signed their souls over to a computer-game store after failing to read the terms and conditions on their website.

GameStation added the “immortal soul clause” to online purchases earlier this month stating customers granted them the right to claim their soul.

While all shoppers during the test were given a simple tick box option to opt out, very few did this, which would have also rewarded them with a £5 voucher.

The store claims this shows 88 percent of people do not read the terms and conditions of a website before they make a purchase.

Bosses also say they will not be enforcing their rights and will now email customers nullifying any claim on their soul.

[From 7,500 shoppers unknowingly sold their souls – Odd News | newslite.tv]

Click here to find out more!
Every Black Hole Contains Another Universe?
And our universe may sit in another universe’s black hole, equations predict.

[From Every Black Hole Contains Another Universe?]

Better than it’s ever been.
Probably as good as it will ever get.
This is the screen depiction that New Orleans deserves, has always desired, but has been denied.

[From HBO’s ‘Treme’ finally gets New Orleans right | Treme – The HBO Series | News, Blogs and Reviews – NOLA.com ]

Returning from a trip along one of our nation’s most highly trafficked interstates, I-20, I happened across this foreboding sign. I didn’t have any bud on me at the time, but if you’re anything like me, you usually take a few bowls with you on road trips. Almost instinctively, I pulled over.

[From Narcotics Interdiction Checkpoints | 420 Tribune]

While right-wing whackos like Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin have been getting all the headlines recently, some others like Sean Hannity have been sort of flying under the radar. Now it turns out that Hannity may be the biggest con man of them all — a real con man bilking his fans out of millions of dollars in a fake charity.

[From Sean Hannity – A Real Con Man]

Humans are like goats. We’ll eat any damned thing. Just ask the people who make PowerBars.

In fact, you’ll find foods in this world that don’t even seem possible. Not just that they could exist, but that people would actually stick this stuff in their mouths without a gun to their head.

We’ve found six dishes that seemed to have sprung from Satan’s own cookbook.

[From The 6 Most Terrifying Foods in the World | Cracked.com]

This week, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT) released the latest version of his financial regulatory reform bill, which aims to correct the deficiencies in the financial system that led to 2008’s economic crisis. The House of Representatives has already passed a comprehensive regulatory reform bill, and now that Dodd has given up on negotiating with recalcitrant Republicans, he is moving on an expedited timeline, with a markup scheduled for Monday.

[From Think Progress » Boehner Tells Bankers To Fight Financial Reform: ‘Don’t Let Those Little Punk Staffers Take Advantage Of You’ ]

Many of us feel ripped off in our day to day spending, so much so that bringing up even a single rip-off story in a group of people is likely to trigger a flood of them from everyone else. Whether it’s at the movies, in restaurants or on vacation, we seldom believe we are getting as much for our money as we ought to. Of course, some rip-off stories are more debatable than others. Often times, what is called a ripoff is little more than someone’s subjective opinion of what they “really” deserve for their money, whatever that means. However, other purchases actually do appear, by all objective criteria, to be a raw deal just about all the time. Today, BillShrink analyzes some common ripoffs as mentioned recently by CNN Money, that most of our readers are likely to be well acquainted with.

[From The 12 Biggest Ripoffs in America]

Evgeni Plushenko’s long, delusional journey continues. Just days after the silver medalist for men’s figure skating denied that Evan Lysacek is the true champion of men’s figure skating, he has apparently awarded himself a platinum medal. From his official website:

[From In Plushenko’s mind (and website), he’s the platinum medal winner – Fourth-Place Medal – 2010 Olympics Blog – Yahoo! Sports]