Are You A Supertaster?
Find out if you are a supertaster with the aid of some blue dye. I don’t really know about this…I mean, this method counts the density of tastebuds on your tongue, but isn’t the pleasure of food communicated more through the bouquet, detected through the nose?
Most of us just can’t taste the nuances in high priced wines
In other supertaster news, some research suggest the nuances in expensive wines are simply lost on those of us who can’t taste all the chemicals that wine testers can. I don’t know how much stock to put in this…perhaps it’s best to say taste is very personal and if you find a plonk to your taste, then swig with pride.
Domesticated Foxes in Siberia
The sad, sad fate of the Belyaev foxes. Dmitry Belyaev attempted to do to foxes what happened to wolves over many millenia…to domesticate them. Within Belyaev’s lifetime he achieved stunning success, producing tame foxes that are as friendly as dogs. But his work is not done. His ultimate goal is to produce foxes that obey human commands just like dogs. Belyaev is dead now, but his assistant carries on his work. 3000 foxes remain, housed in metal cages that allow them little quality of life. Funding is running dry and attempts to sell the foxes to wealthy Russians and Americans as designer pets was a dud. Once in a while, the experimenters have to euthanize a bunch of foxes or sell them to fur farms. Of all the big and little cruelties of this world, the sight of three thousand foxes, bred over generations to crave human attention, trapped in metal cages, alone and neglected, seem particularly poignant even if it isn’t exactly momentous in the grand scheme of things. Watch the youtube video of a little black fox yelping ecstatically as an experimenter in a lap coat pets it for a minute. It will melt/break your heart.
Apple Factory
I mocked the masses who were taken in by the Phony Kony 2012 campaign. But I in turn was taken in by ‘Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory’ on This American Life. The circumstances are slightly different…Mike Daisey is a liar who used the halo effect from being broadcast on TAL to substantiate his lies. But underneath, it was the same phenomenon…a charlatan using human suffering as the raw material of his over-simplified, emotionally manipulative campaign whose real goal is self-promotion. “People like a very simple narrative,” Adam Minter of Bloomberg summarized shrewdly, “Foxconn bad, iPhone bad, sign a petition, now you’re good.”
The confessions of a cookbook ghostwriter
Think all those famous cheffy types are slaving over the prose in their introduction or testing their recipes for the home kitchen? Hah! I really enjoyed the description of how the ghostwriters had to insinuate themselves into the personality of the chef in order to come up with a product that contains the spirit of the chef despite being the work of another. I especially loved the description of a chef who teared up at reading the introduction because he was so touched by the ghostwriter’s articulation of his cooking philosophy. In a way, this article reveals not just the artifice of celebrity chef cookbooks but the hidden art of subsuming yourself in the persona of another that is quite interesting and paradoxical (because it is an art that is never meant to be noticed).
Milton Friedman’s famous Pencil speech. I’ll be adapting it into an
animation for the Free to Choose foundation or something. This is kind of like asking a vegetarian to ghostwrite a book on fine charcuterie. But you know, I’m a professional. And besides, this is about the economics, not the politics.
Art Nudes Going Skinny
An Italian artist with the fabulous name of Anna Utopia Giodano took classical paintings and readjusted the proportions to fit contemporary aesthetic mores. The politics of this conceit is rather obvious and a bit didactic perhaps, but the results are fascinating, thanks to the really sensitive and seamless photoshop job Giodano did with the “after” paintings.
Fifty Shades of Grey
I couldn’t wait to get my mitts on Fifty Shades of Grey, the flithy literotica publishing phenomenon…until I found out it was based on Twilight. WTF? It sounds so appealing in other ways…I like that it was fan fiction before it got a life of its own….that it’s full of BDSM but is a housewife’s delight…but Twilight?
Spanking in Schools
Do you know they still spank kids in schools in certain states like Florida? Yep. We’re not talking about a symbolic tap either. They whup the kids but good, and it’s completely legal.
Response from Goldman Sachs
The Borowitz report is brilliant: Goldman Sachs apologizes to clients for accidentally hiring someone with a soul.
Eat more red meat, die earlier
All red meat, it seems is bad. But processed meats like bacon is extra double bad. I would feel smug about cutting down my meat consumption except my trip to Taiwan has been a huge meat binge.
Going Dutch & Danish
It must be good to be a ‘legs’ man living in Holland and Denmark…all the hot girls there seem to have an effortless way of showing off their legs on bikes. They also don’t wear helmets, which ups the sexiness. It’s a different culture.
Encyclopedia Britannica: End of the Road
The end of the road for Encyclopedia Britannica as we know it. The company will continue in digital form, but the iconic set of encyclopedias will no longer be printed.
Rainbow Scarf
I too want to make this fascinating varigated rainbow scarf! I seem to be knitting nothing but socks nowdays, but maybe if there is enough interest we can make it a planworld craft-along.
Using homeless people as mobile hotspots at SXSW
Controversial, yes, exploitative, no. The sense of wrongness that the idea provokes comes from being reminded of the inequities of our society, not because we are somehow degrading the homeless by giving them a job.
Nixon’s Love Letters
Who wrote this florid love letter in the third person? “And when the wind blows and the rains fall and the sun shines through the clouds (as it is now) he still resolves, as he did then, that nothing so fine ever happened to him or anyone else as falling in love with Thee — my dearest heart.” Surprise: Richard Nixon. Discover the soft side of Tricky Dick in the letters he wrote to woo his wife Pat. I equally like her short, cheerful, utilitarian missives: “”Hi-ho, Hi-ho! How does it go? It would be good to see and hear — . Night school is over about 9 so if you are through with club meeting perhaps I’ll see you?” I think it’s very clear who had all the hand in that relationship.
Pundit Tracker
Pundits are rewarded for making bold predictions…if the predictions come true, they seem prescient. If they don’t, then people probably forget they ever made the prediction. PunditTracker tries to keep pundits accountable by cataloging and scoring the track record of individual pundits.
Reviewing the Olive Garden
85-year-old woman’s serious review of Olive Garden goes viral after being snarked at by Gawker. What doesn’t go viral nowdays? What’s more noteworthy is her dignified response and the pride she takes in her life and work.
You know what’s dangerous? Paracetamol.
It’s dangerous because it looks benign, is benign in moderate doses and people have no idea that they can totally slay their liver by taking a few too many on a daily basis to manage their pain. Should it be made prescription only? I don’t know. But stronger warning labels are a must.
ETA: paracetamol = acetaminophen = Tylenol.
Pedestrian Airbag
Leave it to Volvo to come up with the first airbag for pedestrians. If you guys know me you know I have an incredibly ambivalent relationship with cars. I need them to get around. I also hate and fear them. Having cars be less likely to kill me when I’m traveling on foot seems like a good thing.
The Little Red Hen
This is for 3-5 year olds. Players play as the Little Red Hen, who has to sow here seed, tend her crops, harvest her wheat, grind her flour and bake her bread while asking other farm animals for help, just like in the classic children’s story. But the twist is, through interacting with the different animals, the Little Red Hen might be able to convince them to help her in her quest, and the more help she gets, the more bread there is at the end of the game for all to share. Kids learn the value of cooperation, communication, etc.etc.
Life Lottery
People respond to rewards. People respond even better to the possibility of rewards. Set rewards for yourself ahead of time for accomplishing a task, then when you do it, hit the Life Lottery button and see what you receive. It’ll probably be the message “good job! Better luck next time” but it could also be some movie tickets or a trip to a steakhouse or permission to buy the new videogame system. You set the rewards and the probability for winning a reward ahead of time.
Rate on the run
Nobody wants to be That Guy who is making assiduous notes at a wine tasting or restaurant meal that is more a social event. But a lot of us care about remembering the nuances of what we experienced and that means recording our thoughts on the spot. I want Rate on the Run to allow you to record as much info as unobtrusively as possible. Create a new entry by tapping on a product category. Snap a picture by pressing a button. Rate it from 1 to 5 stars by pressing a button. Set the price by pulling on a slider. Tap on key words associated with the category to tag the product. Record a short audio note by pressing another button, or if necessary enter a few short words in the text field.
Rememories
This is a little sad. It’s kind of inspired by my grandmother, who is going through Alzheimer’s. The app is simple — families upload pictures to Rememories. Alzheimers patients can scroll through the pictures and press one of two buttons…record or play. “Record” allows them to say something they remember about the people or place in the picture. “Play” allows them to hear a previously recorded message, by themselves or their families.
Sized to you
An iPhone app that will walk you through the process of measuring yourself and record the data in a form that can be understood by made to measure tailors and dressmakers in Asia. A tool to help folks get a made-to-measure product for off the rack prices, maybe with a social media component so people can rate their tailors and dressmakers.
Tournament of Books!
This reminds me of the tournament of cookbooks I enjoyed so much on Food 52, but obviously this is the original.
To watch later: Tim Jackson’s TED talk
“…people are being persuaded to spend money we don’t have, on things we don’t need, to create impressions that won’t last, on people we don’t care about.”
Neil DeGrasse Tyson tries to dodge the Carl Sagan mantle I know.
But see if you can’t watch this video without being reminded of Sagan saying we are made of star stuff. And blubbering because while it is surely meaningless that atoms comes from stars, Neil DeGrasse Tyson just makes it sounds so damned profound.
Solipsist
This is one of the most beautiful and weird things I’ve seen all year. It’s an experimental film where two people start sprouting exotic tentacles and feathers like exotic birds or sea anemone.
How to make lottery tickets a good bet
Look for state lotteries that frequently roll over a few times without gaining much publicity (and thus spiking ticket sales), avoid lucky numbers and slightly favor numbers near the edge of the ticket. Your chance of winning is as miniscule as ever, but if your number does come up, you’ll likely split your pot with far fewer people.
“In Defense of Sluts”
Rush Limbaugh’s comments against Sandra Fluke is obviously outrageous and indefensible. But from another angle…why is it that we need this person who is a perfect victim to be our standard bearer? Sandra Fluke happens to have a really conservative persona personally, making Limbaugh’s comments absurd, but we have to be careful we don’t defend Fluke in such a way that we accept Limbaugh’s premise that there is something intrinsically shameful in female promiscuity.
Pink Slime!
If you’re eating ground beef, you’re probably eating some pink slime. That is the not-so-technical term for protein isolated from fatty meat scraps and treated with ammonia. It’s mixed in your ground beef as a filler. I’m trying to be rational about this…after all, I don’t see any evidence that consuming pink slime is any more deleterious than your usual ground chuck…but it just sounds gross.
The bigger the fameball, the bigger the backlash
As with Lana Del Rey, so it is with the Kony 2012 campaign. You know you’ve made it when it’s thedailywh.at taking your charity to task. This is only one voice in the backlash against Invisible Children, the charity behind the Kony 2012 campaign. But to me, thedailywh.at post is the best because it is short, strikes the right dismissive tone, and ends with a brisk call-to-action to actually give to charities that are using their $$$ to do work on the ground instead of making slick films and advocating for a dose of America Fuck Yeah to make everything better.
GiveWell used the Against Malaria foundation as an example of a legit charity where your $$$ will go towards saving lives in very concrete, if unsexy ways…preventing mosquitos from biting people and giving them malaria.
And of course, there’s Doctors without Borders…secular, efficient, utterly badass. They’re the first charity I gave to and still the one I give to most seriously.
First of all, I have to mention that if you are buying something from Amazon anyhow you might as well buy from an Amazon affiliate whose cause you support. Or as Jay from Best of the Left podcast puts it, you can divert five (or so) percent of Amazon’s soulless corporate blood money towards supporting his podcast. Here’s his affiliate link. (link)
Sleepphones are da bomb if you have any kind of insomnia issues. They are like ear warmers with headphones built in. I’m naughty and use them to listen to podcasts in bed. But you can use them to listen to relaxing music to help you fall asleep faster. I also like to wear them as earphones around the house because they are so comfortable. They look kind of goofy, or else I would wear them out all the time. (link)
Not everyone is ready to drop 160 dollars on a scale. But what if it’s a wifi scale that automatically graphs your weight and body fat? Well, I think it’s worth it. (link)
At 17 bucks, this surge protector won’t make much of a dent on your $500 windfall. It’s no ordinary surge protector…it’s got two USB ports to charge your gadgets. (link)
Finally, you can experience the wonder and joy that is Father Ted, a sitcom starring three idiosyncratically defective priests and their self-martyring housekeeper on a godforsaken rock called Craggy Island. No joke. I think it might be my favorite sitcom of all time. There’s only three seasons, which is tragic, because the show had so much more life left in it (the lead actor died). But it also means every episode is pure gold. (link)
