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03 Jan 2012 10:41

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Culture: Researchers: Eating too much fat can injure parts of your brain

  • C is for Uh-Oh: Medical researchers have found that within 24 hours of a high-fat diet, there is measurable damage in the brains of rodents and humans. “Obese individuals are biologically defending their elevated body weight,” said Dr. Michael Schwartz, a professor at the University of Washington. The study indicates that eating fat leads to changes in the brain, and in the body, because it affects the hypothalamus, which regulates weight. source
Posted by samimain • 0 Comments • Permalink

30 Dec 2011 00:36

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Culture: Ben Breedlove’s death touches many — including his favorite rapper.

  • A tough teen with a gripping story: Ben Breedlove, a high schooler with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (and a YouTube personality known for offering dating advice to others), passed away from a heart attack on Christmas Day. It was only afterward that his parents discovered these two videos from Ben in which he told stories of coping with his disease, including three near-death experiences. In his third one, above, he describes an experience, while being revived by EMS paramedics, where he was with his favorite rapper, Kid Cudi. After watching Ben’s videos and hearing about his death, the artist wrote a message about Ben on his blog. Ben’s mother said that the videos were a “gift to us, and for him to be so confident and unafraid of death and to share it with other people was so touching.” source
Posted by samimain • 0 Comments • Permalink

23 Dec 2011 09:04

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Culture: Alec Baldwin’s not “horny” enough to be New York City’s mayor

  • They’re like a guy on a date that you can tell he just can’t wait to get his hand up your blouse before even the lights go out in the theater. They’re all just so horny for it.
  • Alec Baldwin • Describing the people running for New York City mayor in 2013. The unabashedly liberal Baldwin was thinking about leaving his role at “30 Rock” to do the same. But recently, for whatever reason, he decided to stay on as ultra-conservative Jack Donaghy. “I’ve got a good job,” the actor rambled. “Am I doing ‘To Kill a Mockingbird?’ No. I’m doing a sitcom. But we have fun, and it’s a family.” source
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20 Dec 2011 21:37

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Culture: Happy would’ve-been 50th birthday, Bill Hicks. Here’s your finest moment.

  • Alright, this makes up for the last post. Bill Hicks, an fearlessly acerbic comedian famous for his brave commentary, would have turned 50 last Friday — had he not died of liver cancer in 1994, at the peak of his popularity. Slate did us a favor and posted his greatest moment, this 1993 “Late Show With David Letterman” routine, which stayed in the vault for 16 years after (according to Hicks himself) CBS balked at his jokes about Christianity. (Which, mind you, are nowhere near as bad as the action made them out to be.) We couldn’t even imagine what sort of brutal jokes he’d make about the current state of reality television, based on his super-dark Billy Ray Cyrus bit at the beginning. Letterman, regretting what happened, aired the performance in 2009, with Hicks’ mother at his side. source
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20 Dec 2011 21:05

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Culture: More thoughts on Wesley Durden, TLC and ethics in reality television

  • I understand that a lot goes into putting these shows together, but there has to be a better way to deal with actual reality when it creeps into our reality programs.
  • Tucson Weekly’s Dan Gibson • Offering up a good point on last night’s news that a reality show contestant, Wesley Durden, committed suicide, but the TLC show, “Next Great Baker,” hid it from the audience until he had been eliminated from the program. “They did throw a card up at the end,” Gibson points out, “but this still seems like a series of bad decisions to me and wildly insensitive to the guy’s family and friends, but maybe we’re still all supposed to be upset that the same network runs a show about Muslims or something.” And that, friends, is a great point. Here’s a network that’s getting criticized for the wrong thing: Instead of getting wrongly criticized for airing reality shows about Muslims, they should be getting rightly criticized for their intense focus on ratings in the face of the ethical treatment of the people it puts on its shows. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

20 Dec 2011 00:45

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Culture: Recession-era must have, apparently: Nail polish. Nail polish?

  • correlation This year, nail polish sales jumped 59% from 2010. Despite economic troubles, it appears that painted nails are one expense that’s worth the plunge. “Beauty is one thing women never forget about,” said Demitrius Simpkins, a manager at a New York salon.
  • causation Such a growth in sales is probably because more buyers are interested in painting their own nails instead of paying for salon visits.  “Some women who used to come every Monday now come maybe every other Monday,” Simpkins claimed. source
Posted by samimain • 0 Comments • Permalink

14 Dec 2011 10:23

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Culture: Louis C.K. sells DRM-free comedy special, profits handsomely

  • I really hope people keep buying it a lot, so I can have #(&!loads of money, but at this point I think we can safely say that the experiment really worked. If anybody stole it, it wasn’t many of you. Pretty much everybody bought it. And so now we all get to know that about people and stuff. I’m really glad I put this out here this way and I’ll certainly do it again.
  • Comedian Louis C.K. • Expressing pleasure at the success of his self-produced comedy special, “Live at the Beacon Theater.” The comic, currently on an upswing as a result of his hit FX comedy “Louie,” did something fairly novel with the release model for the special — he threw it online himself, charged $5 for streaming or a digital download, passed on the DRM, and made a point of asking nicely for people not to throw the video on torrent sites. (Some did, but they were roundly criticized by their Pirate Bay peers.) The result of Louis C.K.’s move? In just its first couple of days on sale, it sold 110,000 copies, leading to $500,000 in sales and $200,000 in pure profit. He puts it like such: “This is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged you about $20 for the video.” Which means, guys, that Louis C.K. is a genius apparently. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

13 Dec 2011 11:30

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Culture: Did the roots of walking come from “hopping” fish?

  • Birds gotta fly, fish gotta … walk? Scientists have long known that the early ancestors of almost every four-limbed creature — from mammals to reptiles to birds, and so on —  are fish that learned to breathe on land. But now scientists say that the African lungfish, using its “eel-like body and a pair of flimsy hind fins,” can walk/propel itself underwater, suggesting that walking isn’t merely an above-ground phenomenon. “This shows us — pardon the pun — the steps that are involved in the origin of walking,” said the University of Chicago’s pun-friendly researcher, Neil Shubin. Not that their walking abilities would be obvious to researchers based on appearances alone. “Their fins seem like the furthest thing from walking appendages possible,” Shubin noted. source
Posted by samimain • 0 Comments • Permalink

13 Dec 2011 09:16

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Culture: Yes, www.disney.xxx has already been reserved, so don’t even ask.

  • It’s an unfortunate part of what one does today in order to do business and maintain the integrity of the institutional name, the brand name, the organization, the students, whatever it is that one has built the equity in that what we have to do in this digital age.
  • Barbara Brooks, from The Strategy Group • Commenting on why universities and other not-pornographic groups are buying their .xxx URLs before someone else does. With the recent addition of the .xxx web address to the market, universities (among others) have began buying them for themselves so that the address don’t fall into the wrong hands. ICM Registry CEO Stuart Lawley says that this will “clearly signpost adult entertainment on the Net. For those people who want to find adult content, they can easily find it.” source
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12 Dec 2011 20:52

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Culture: Russell Simmons buys Lowe’s vacated “All-American Muslim” ads

  • Just purchased remaining spots for #allamericanmuslim for next week. The show is now sold out! keep your money @lowes and we will keep ours.
  • Hip hop mogul Russell Simmons • Revealing (via Twitter) that he had purchased the spaces that Lowe’s had vacated when they backed down to pressure over their advertising on the TLC reality program “All-American Muslim.” According to his rep, he bought two spots, but hasn’t decided what to put in them yet. Russell, you’re a badass. Meanwhile, Lowe’s is defending its decision, claiming it was one of “dozens” of companies that had pulled advertising support from the show — a claim difficult to back up, especially considering that TLC is claiming that the show is doing well advertiser-wise. The home improvement chain bent to pressure from an obscure group called the Florida Family Association in removing their ads from the program. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
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