May 16, 2016

R.I.P. Billy Mays – 2nd most annoying pitchman in television history

Most Annoying: Vince Shlomi, best known as television’s ShamWow! guy. Was arrested in Miami for beating up a prostitute.

THIS DAY IN HISTORY: MAY 16TH- ABDUCTED NEWBORN

This Day In History: May 16, 1975

On May 16, 1975, a nurse entered the Los Angeles hospital where she worked cradling a newborn baby. She claimed that she had just given birth to the infant at home. Her fellow employees were rather shocked, considering that their 44-year-old co-worker was past the age most women became pregnant. They were even more surprised when a physical examination showed no signs that the “new mother” had recently given birth.

Norma Jean Armistead was worried that her relationship with her common-law husband Charles was in jeopardy. Like so many women before and since, she was convinced that having a child was the answer to all their problems. The problem was that Norma had undergone a hysterectomy in 1961. …

John Oliver ridicules Trump over ‘John Miller’ alter-ego — then invites ‘Miller’ to come on the show

HBO’s John Oliver was back in his groove Sunday night after Donald Trump provided him with a wealth of material following a bizarre week that saw Trump denying impersonating his own fake publicist — after previously admitting that it was him.

The Last Week Tonight host began by calling out the Republican Party — focusing on House Speaker Paul Ryan — for their awkward at-a-distance relationship with the new face of the party.

Oliver compared the GOP leaders and Trump to a “teenage Christian couple who have made an abstinence pledge. They’re going to have sex, and it’s just a matter of time — but they still need to make a big show of resisting in case anyone might be paying attention.” …

RNC chair says third-party bid would be ‘suicide mission’ for U.S.

The head of the Republican National Committee denounced efforts to draft an independent candidate to run against Donald Trump as a “suicide mission” that could “wreck” the United States for generations.

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus did not mince words as he urged party figures laying the groundwork for a third-party bid to suspend their operation.

“They can try to hijack another party and get on the ballot, but, look, it’s a suicide mission for our country because what it means is that you’re throwing down not just eight years of the White House but potentially 100 years on the Supreme Court and wrecking this country for many generations,” Priebus said on “Fox News Sunday.” …

10 Failed Attempts To Create Utopian Cities

Humans have long dreamed of creating the perfect society. To people disappointed with the system they live in, the route to such a utopia always seems obvious: “Let’s just do X, then Y will happen, and everyone will be happy!”

Of course, life isn’t so simple. Whether they’re built on a noble dream, a grand vision, or pure craziness, utopias have a way off going off the rails. The cities below might not all have turned into utter disasters, but they all failed at their self-stated goals spectacularly.

10. China’s Deserted Desert Oasis

Dubai is an incredible city. Not so long ago, it was just an arid patch of desert, inhabited by only a few traders. Now it’s gigantic, and plenty in it is equally huge and equally crazy. Its success has inspired plenty of other countries to try to emulate it. Few have failed so spectacularly as China.

In the early 2000s, the Chinese state decided to bring Dubai’s glitz and glamor to inner Mongolia. In a bare patch of the Gobi Desert, they would build a cultural, economic, and political powerhouse. It would feature grand buildings from renowned architects. There would be world-class libraries, stadiums, museums. The name of this city was Ordos, and it would become a magnificent failure.

The trouble was, building a brand new Dubai from scratch in the middle of a desert is expensive. So to offset the billions of dollars they spent, the state ratcheted up the prices of houses in Ordos. They ratcheted them up so high, only Shanghai was more expensive to move to. Ordinary Chinese people took one look at the empty city they could spend their life’s earnings moving to and decided, “Nah.” …

The Most Expensive Gun Sold at Auction

^{The rifle sold for $1.2 million, and was owned by the man credited with capturing Geronimo, the Apache leader.}

A gun owned by the man who captured Geronimo, the Apache leader, set a record over the weekend as the most expensive single gun ever bought at auction.

The Rock Island Auction in Illinois said it sold the Model 1886 Winchester rifle, owned by U.S. Army Captain Henry Ware Lawton, for $1.2 million on Saturday. Its buyer is anonymous.

On its website, the auction house made a video that features the gun, and tells a little of its role U.S. history:

…

Stung By 83 Different Insects, Biologist Rates His Pain On A Scale Of 1 To — OW!

If you think your job is painful, try spending a workday with Justin Schmidt.

Schmidt is an entomologist who focuses on a group of insects called Hymenoptera — we know them as stinging ants, wasps and bees.

Schmidt has traveled all over the world looking for bugs … and getting stung by them. The result of his work is an alarmingly comprehensive pain index, ranking 83 insect stings on a spectrum of 1 to 4.

For example, the red fire ant, native to South America is a 1: “Sharp, sudden, mildly alarming,” Schmidt writes. “Like walking across a shag carpet and reaching for the light switch.” …

10 Spooky Recording Locations

Like movies and books, the music industry has a folklore all its own. Famous urban legends range from the belief that the song “Love Rollercoaster” contains the final screams of a murdered woman to the once-pervasive rumor that Paul McCartney died before the Beatles recorded Abbey Road.

While outside institutions, such as the FBI, have played their part in adding to the mystique of rock and roll, the musicians themselves have been the predominant movers and shakers. Some bands have added to music’s rebellious image by trashing hotel rooms or dying before age 30. Others have kept their origins intentionally vague so as to create a general air of mystery, while a majority just let their music do the talking.

A select few acts have generated speculation and supposition by either intentionally or unintentionally recording albums or live concerts in bizarre locations. From haunted castles to pine boxes, the following 10 recordings were produced in decidedly spooky locales.

10. Blood Sugar Sex Magik

Widely regarded as one of the best albums of the 1990s, Blood Sugar Sex Magik contains such classic tracks as “Under the Bridge” and “Give It Away.” While readers of Alternative Nation ranked Stadium Arcadium as the best album ever made by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, 1991’s Blood Sugar Sex Magik still has many supporters.

Thematically, Blood Sugar Sex Magik primarily focuses on drugs and sex, with the former issue being a major source of conflict within the band. However, a twinge of darkness is implicit in the album. The band noticeably spelled magic as “magik,” which seemingly references Aleister Crowley and his Thelema religion, which spells magic as “magick.” (It should also be noted that “sex magick” is one of the staples of Crowley’s occultism.)

In addition to the band’s flirtation with Crowley, Blood Sugar Sex Magik was also recorded at The Mansion, a palatial residence located in the Laurel Canyon section of Los Angeles. Owned by famous producer Rick Rubin, The Mansion was built in 1918 and was allegedly once owned by the famous magician and escape artist Harry Houdini. …

GSA says cyber ‘mistake’ was ‘no breach’; others investigate

A Government Services Administration office known as 18F functions as a computer consultancy for federal agencies and says it was “built in the spirit of America’s top tech startups.”

But this government tech start-up had a technical slip-up of its own.

“Over 100 GSA Google Drives were reportedly accessible by users both inside and outside of GSA during a five month period, potentially exposing sensitive content such as personally identifiable information and contractor proprietary information,” according to a “management alert” issued by GSA’s inspector general’s office.

GSA officials, however, say no sensitive information was exposed — at least as far as they know. …

Queen of Cartels: most famous female leader of Mexico’s underworld speaks out

^{Released from prison, Sandra Ávila Beltrán gives her first interview in almost a decade and recalls life inside the upper echelons of the Mexican drug world}

Inside the front door of Sandra Ávila Beltrán’s home is an altar and lit candles that form a crowded shrine to her first husband (riddled by gunfire), her second husband (stabbed through the heart) and her brother (tortured to death). All were murdered during Mexico’s ongoing cocaine wars.

Ávila is the stuff legends are made of – one of the few women with access to the highest levels of cartel life. She has lived, worked and loved inside the upper echelons of the Mexican drug world since the late 1970s. At the height of her career, she showed a propensity to carry suitcases with millions of dollars in crisp $100 bills.

Her status led her to become known as “The Queen of the Pacific”, in honor of her alleged prowess organizing a fleet of tuna boats laden with 10 tons of cocaine each as they navigated north from Mexico’s Pacific coast towards the world’s number one cocaine market: the United States. …

THE FASCINATING WAYS IN WHICH BREAKFAST CEREALS ARE MADE

Americans eat nearly three billion boxes of cereal every year. And yet few of us know how Rice Krispies, Corn Pops, or any other cereal is made. Here’s a look at the science behind some of our favorite breakfast foods.

NATURAL-BORN POPPER

Popcorn for breakfast? It’s not the first thing most people think of eating in the morning, and it’s not marketed as a breakfast food. But popcorn does have many of the qualities that cereal manufacturers look for in a breakfast food: It’s light and airy, it’s crispy, and it crunches when you eat it. If you put some popcorn in a bowl and poured milk over it, it would probably stay crunchy at least as long as your favorite breakfast cereal does.

But what about foods that don’t pop naturally the way that popcorn does? Quite a bit of the technology used in the manufacture of breakfast cereals is employed specifically to make those foods “poppable”—to produce desirable, popcorn-like qualities in foods that don’t normally have them- foods like whole-grain rice and wheat, for example. Or grains that have been milled into flour, then mixed with other ingredients to make dough that is then baked into individual pieces of cereal. …

April breaks global temperature record, marking seven months of new highs

^{Latest monthly figures add to string of recent temperature records and all but assure 2016 will be hottest year on record}

April 2016 was the hottest April on record globally – and the seventh month in a row to have broken global temperature records.

The latest figures smashed the previous record for April by the largest margin ever recorded.

It makes three months in a row that the monthly record has been broken by the largest margin ever, and seven months in a row that are at least 1C above the 1951-80 mean for that month. When the string of record-smashing months started in February, scientists began talking about a “climate emergency”.

Figures released by Nasa over the weekend show the global temperature of land and sea was 1.11C warmer in April than the average temperature for April during the period 1951-1980. …

Neuroscience confirms that to be truly happy, you will always need something more

What’s the sign of a life well lived? If you were to judge by LinkedIn resumes alone, you might be impressed by prestigious job titles and accolades. But in person, the importance of these formal achievements quickly fades away. Regardless of career success, there can be something very dispiriting, almost lifeless, about someone who moves without strife through the ranks of their law firm. Nobody’s deepest yearning is to be a decently-salaried professional whose only goal is to get a table at a trendy restaurant.

Whether we’re striving for a new job, more meaningful relationships, or personal enlightenment, we need to actively want something more in order to live well. In fact, neuroscience shows that the act of seeking itself, rather than the goals we realize, is key to satisfaction.

Neuroscientist Jaak Panskepp argues that of seven core instincts in the human brain (anger, fear, panic-grief, maternal care, pleasure/lust, play, and seeking), seeking is the most important. All mammals have this seeking system, says Panskepp, wherein dopamine, a neurotransmitter linked to reward and pleasure, is also involved in coordinating planning activities. This means animals are rewarded for exploring their surroundings and seeking new information for survival. It can also explain why, if rats are given access to a lever that causes them to receive an electric shock, they will repeatedly electrocute themselves.

Panskepp notes in his book, Affective Neuroscience, that the rats do not seem to find electrocution pleasurable. “Self-stimulating animals look excessively excited, even crazed, when they worked for this kind of stimulation,” he writes. Instead of being driven by any reward, he argues, the rats were motivated by the need to seek itself. …

Serial Killers And Famous Unsolved Murders

When you picture a serial killer, what do you think of? Do you think of Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant and sophisticated doctor who treats murder with the joy of a foodie at a gourmet mac & cheese bar? Or do you think of John Doe from ‘Seven’, a man who goes out of his way to create the most elaborately constructed crime scenes in order to make a thematic point to the police?

Either way, you’re probably imagining someone way more competent than an actual serial killer. Real murder is messy, and the real reason serial killers get away with what they do is because they’re brilliant at feigning human emotion. Evil, yes, but they’re not super-geniuses, laughing maniacally at a collage of pictures and string on a wall.

On this week’s episode, Jack O’Brien is joined by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark, the hosts of the podcast ‘My Favorite Murder’ to discuss the common assumptions we get wrong about serial killers, theories surrounding the JFK, RFK, and JonBenet Ramsey murders and, of course, some of their favorite murder stories. …

Stevens says Supreme Court decision on voter ID was correct, but maybe not right

In the rapid expansion of states with voter-identification laws and the backlash of litigation that always follows, there is one constant from proponents: that the Supreme Court already has declared them constitutional.

The court ruled in 2008 that Indiana’s requirement for a photo ID was legal, with none other than liberal justice John Paul Stevens writing what was described as the “lead opinion” in a fractured 6-to-3 ruling.

But in the years since, Stevens — who retired from the court in 2010 — has never seemed comfortable with his role in the case. And he recently expressed doubts again about whether he had all the information he needed in reaching what he called a “fairly unfortunate decision.” …

How A Poison Pill Worded As ‘Sex’ Gave Birth To Transgender Rights

The legal case over transgender rights hinges on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion and sex. But the word “sex” wasn’t always going to be part of the bill. And “sex” which at the time, was meant to mean gender – was not on that list when the bill came to the House.

Todd Purdam, a national editor and political correspondent for Vanity Fair magazine wrote a book about the 1964 Civil Rights Act in which he recounts the dramatic political battle to pass this law that helped shape modern America. The book, published in 2014, is entitled An Idea Whose Time Has Come: Two Presidents, Two Parties, and the Battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Purdam recently spoke with NPR’s Linda Wertheimer about how the word “sex” became part of the law and commented on North Carolina’s transgender bathroom law. …

10 Bizarre And Fascinating Chinese Emperors

From the start of the Qin dynasty in 221 BC until the end of the Qing dynasty in 1912, China was ruled by hundreds of emperors. Most of these men were ethnically Chinese, although some were also Mongol or Manchu. Though some of them were self-made men who took the throne by force, others were appointed heirs groomed for the title.

A few of them radically changed the history of their country, while others ended up only as footnotes. Many were competent and intelligent. Others were cruel and lazy. Some of them were quite fascinating and a tad bit strange to boot.

10. Toghon Temur

Established in 1271 by Genghis Khan’s grandson, the Mongol-ruled Yuan dynasty controlled China for almost an entire century. Although the Mongol emperors adopted some Chinese customs and really weren’t radically different from their Han predecessors, their policies discriminated against ethnic Chinese and favored Mongols.

In the four-tier social hierarchy of the time, Mongols sat at the top of the pyramid, followed by foreign groups like West Asian Muslims, northern Chinese, and then southern Chinese. The Mongols weren’t keen on giving up their cultural identity and generally tried to keep themselves separated from the Chinese, even enforcing different rules and laws for the two groups.

This officially sanctioned discrimination upset many Chinese and made Mongol rule unpopular. The Yuan rulers were widely perceived as incompetent and decadent, and no Mongol emperor represented these unsavory qualities better than the last one, Toghon Temur. …

The Harm in Blindly ‘Going Gluten Free’

^{It is not an innocuous decision.}

May is Celiac-Disease Awareness Month. Which might seem unnecessary, if the superfluity of “gluten free” labels and advertisements were any indication of people’s awareness of the disease.

Gastroenterologist Norelle Rizkalla Reilly believes it’s quite clearly not. She directs the Celiac Disease Center’s pediatric program at Columbia University. Her understanding of public misconceptions comes not just from daily immersion in the world of gluten-related immune disorder, but from a careful analysis of the true window into our souls: our Google histories.

On Friday she published the chart below in the Journal of Pediatrics:

Google Search Term Popularity: “Celiac Disease” Versus “Gluten Free”

…

Why Restaurants Are Ditching The Switch To No Tipping

In recent years, there’s been a no-tipping movement within the restaurant industry.

The idea has been to rectify a basic pay unfairness to even out the pay between tipped and untipped employees. Dishwashers and cooks at the back of the house don’t earn as much money as waiters because they don’t get tips.

So, do away with tipping, raise menu prices a little bit, and pay everyone a higher wage.

But that experiment has failed at some restaurants. Joe’s Crab Shack, the first large U.S. chain to implement a no-tip model, announced this month that it is moving away from the experiment, which only lasted three months. …

WHY ARE PEOPLE SO MUCH TALLER TODAY THAN HISTORICALLY?

Tilla asks: Why is it that people are much taller now than even a few decades ago?

Over the last century and a half or so, humans, as a group, have grown significantly taller, with men from western, industrialized countries today being on average between 3 and 7 inches (7-18 cm) taller than their counterparts in the mid-19th century. So why have humans gotten taller?

There is very strong evidence that this simply comes down to nutrition and the body’s ability to fully benefit from said nutrition via not getting certain diseases that hinder the absorption of consumed nutrients. That the environment is drastically more important than other factors, such as microevolution, is strongly indicated via looking at human height during times of relative comfort compared with times of strife. …

Video Goodnesses
(and not-so-goodnesses)

Emergency call centers are in desperate need of funding and new technology. Until we upgrade our 911 system, we should at least create more informative PSA’s.