Wednesday coffee break

• Horse fat, rubbing alcohol, antibiotics: just some of the stuff that's in your fabric softener (wired.com)


• How Science Supersized Your Thanksgiving Dinner (wired.com)

Tuesday coffee break: Time Warner Cable = Men Rewrite Cabal

I just got an email from Time Warner Cable, which informed me that "you can't spell Happy Holidays without HD." I had to admit that they were right. Which got me wondering (with a little help from the Internet Anagram Servant) what other things you couldn't spell Happy Holidays without:

a shy lady hippo
oh pay, sly aphid
I plop shady hay
ladyship
haploid
payload
dippy
aloha
plaid
oldish
and so on...

Marshall + Moon + New Deal + Vietnam + ....

The bailout cost more than Marshall Plan, Louisiana Purchase, moonshot, S&L bailout, Korean War, New Deal, Iraq war, Vietnam war, and NASA's lifetime budget--combined.

Barry Ritholtz (via BoingBoing) says:

In doing the research for the "Bailout Nation" book, I needed a way to put the dollar amounts into proper historical perspective. If we add in the Citi bailout, the total cost now exceeds $4.6165 trillion dollars.

People have a hard time conceptualizing very large numbers, so let’s give this some context. The current Credit Crisis bailout is now the largest outlay In American history.

Crunching the inflation adjusted numbers, we find the bailout has cost more than all of these big budget government expenditures – combined:

• Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion
• Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion
• Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion
• S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion
• Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion
• The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)
• Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion
• Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion
• NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion

TOTAL: $3.92 trillion

Weigh in on URMA 2009

URMA 09 takes place from May 26 to May 29, 2009, in College Station, Texas. College Station's Easterwood Airport is served by Continental (connections through George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston) and American Eagle (connection through DFW Internationall). Nearest big-plane airports are Austin Bergstrom Airport (90 mins by car to College Station) and George Bush Intercontinental in Houston (90 mins by car).

Related poll: As of now, how likely is it that you will be able to attend the URMA meeting in 2009? (Poll closed.)

Friday poll results

On a scale of 0 to 10, how happy are you in your job?

• 10 (Wouldn't change a thing): 3 votes (10%)


• 9: 4 votes (14%)


• 8: 13 votes (46%)


• 7: 3 votes (10%)


• 6: 1 vote (3%)


• 5 (Neither happy nor unhappy): 1 vote (3%)


• 4: --


• 3: --


• 2: 2 votes (7%)


• 1: --


• 0 (Please get me out of here): 1 vote (3%)

A better brew

The Rise of Extreme Beer: "Beer has lagged well behind wine and organic produce in the ongoing reinvention of American cuisine. Yet the change over the past twenty years has been startling. In 1965, the United States had a single craft brewery: Anchor Brewing, in San Francisco. Today, there are nearly fifteen hundred. In liquor stores and upscale supermarkets, pumpkin ales and chocolate stouts compete for cooler space with wit beers, weiss beers, and imperial Pilsners. The King of Beers, once served in splendid isolation at many bars, is now surrounded by motley bottles with ridiculous names, like jesters at a Renaissance fair: SkullSplitter, Old Leghumper, Slam Dunkel, Troll Porter, Moose Drool, Power Tool, He’brew, and Ale Mary Full of Taste." (New Yorker)

What matters, what separates you from home, is time

"Two astronauts trapped on the International Space Station as a result of the shuttle Columbia disaster literally had only one chance to make it back to Earth safely. 'Home' is a dramatic and revealing story about one of the longest stays in space, the mourning for lost colleagues, and the tortured and nearly deadly journey back."

Winner, feature writing, American Society of Magazine Editors' Best American Magazine Writing, 2005 (Chris Jones, Esquire magazine)

160 stitches...

"Here's the thing about getting bitten by a shark: No one believes it actually happened. Not your boss. Not your swim coach. Not even your mom." (lohud.com)

Review of Her Toddler's Pretend Restaurant

"My two-and-a-half year old, Lily, has opened what she calls "The Cafe Restaurant," and although the service is terrible, the food inedible, and you have to sit on the living room floor, it has become one of my favorite eating destinations of all time....

"Here's an example of a typical ordering experience:

Lily: Order something, please.
Mom: OK, do you have coffee?
Lily: No. No coffee at the Cafe Restaurant. Only water and tea.
Mom: OK, tea please.
Lily: No tea. Only water.
Mom: OK, water.
Lily: Do you want coffee?
Mom: Well ... actually, yes.
Lily (Handing me a toy tomato) Here."

Genome Tome

Twenty-three ways of looking at our ancestors.

Winner, feature writing, American Society of Magazine Editors' Best American Magazine Writing, 2006 (Priscilla Long, American Scholar)

At this moment in time

Oxford Researchers List Top 10 Most Annoying Phrases, including:

10 - It's not rocket science
9 - 24/7
8 - Shouldn't of

Read the rest... (wired.com)

A Matter Of Life and Death

"It was cancer -- a brutally sudden death sentence: the doctors told the author she had probably less than six months. For a woman with two young children and a full life, that prognosis was devastating, but also, in some ways, oddly liberating. And so began more than three years of horror, hope, and grace, as she learned to live, and even laugh, on borrowed time."

Winner, Essays, American Society of Magazine Editors' Best American Magazine Writing, 2006 (Marjorie Williams, Vanity Fair)

Upon This Rock

"Rock music used to be a safe haven for degenerates and rebels. Until it found Jesus..."

Finalist, feature writing, American Society of Magazine Editors' Best American Magazine Writing 2006 (John Jeremiah Sullivan, GQ)

Many reasons to be freaked out by parasites.

Zombie Animals and the Parasites that Control Them

"It might sound like sci-fi, but plenty of parasites can control the minds of caterpillars, roaches, crabs, and maybe even us. In many cases, scientists don't know exactly how these creatures achieve mind control." (From Discover Magazine)

Research that matters

Researchers at Plymouth University in England, with a small Arts Council grant, could not quite test whether an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters could produce the works of Shakespeare. But they did see what six Sulawesi crested macaque monkeys would write with a computer over a four-week period. According to a report in The Guardian, the apes produced about five pages of text between them, mostly consisting of the letter S. According to professor Geoff Cox, the monkeys spent a lot of time sitting on the keyboard. (The Guardian, 5-9-2003)

Some of us fly, all of us fall

The Last Outlaw: "Waylon's gone, Cash has been laid to rest. But Merle Haggard stands as country's remaining black-hat rebel, the last man singing for the underdog."

Finalist, profile writing, American Society of Magazine Editors' Best American Magazine Writing, 2006. (Chris Heath, GQ)

Friday poll results

Have you ever been so infuriated, irked, offended, or exasperated by a magazine that you canceled your subscription?

• Yes: 9 votes (40%)


• Not yet: 11 votes (50%)


• I'd never do that: 2 votes (10%)

Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away

Death of a Mountain: "Instead of excavating the contour of a ridge side, as strip miners did throughout the 1960s and '70s, now entire mountaintops are blasted off, and almost everything that isn't coal is pushed down into the valleys below.... I have come to Lost Mountain because in February Leslie Resources Inc. was granted a state permit to mine this ridgeline. I came here to see what an eastern mountain looks like before, during, and after its transformation into a western desert."

Finalist, reporting, American Society of Magazine Editors' Best American Magazine Writing, 2006. (Erik Reece, Harper's Magazine)

Unintentionally(?) funny headline of the week

Experts: Paranoia may be more common than thought (yahoo.com)

Tuesday coffee break: cold down there

Very cool pictures of Antarctica (and no, those aren't color gels)

Friday poll results

How much would you be willing to pay to read your favorite magazine if it began publishing only online?

• I'd pay just as much as I do for the print version: 2 votes (18%)
  
• I'd pay 75% of the cost of the print version: 2 votes (18%)
  
• I'd pay 50% of the cost of the print version: 1 vote (9%)
  
• I'd pay 25% of the cost of the print version: 4 votes (36%)
  
• Nothing: 2 votes (18%)
  

Inside Scientology

Inside Scientology: Unlocking the complex code of America's most mysterious religion. Finalist, reporting, American Society of Magazine Editors' Best American Magazine Writing, 2007. (Janet Reitman, Rolling Stone)

Tuesday coffee break

• Amazing video of a mimic octopus


• Brain slows at 40, starts body decline


• Everyday stuff with forgotten names