August 2012
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Riding my bike on a cool, drizzly summer night like tonight is one of my favorite things ever.
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Hey Ladies!
If you were thinking about buying some birth control pills or even getting an IUD inserted today, it might be the wise choice to wait until tomorrow, when the contraception mandate under the Affordable Care Act starts its big rollout. Starting tomorrow, any new insurance policies sold to individuals or employers must cover contraception without a co-pay as part of a larger package of mandatory...
July 2012
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all or nothing or something else
A friend posting a comment about her dismay with the lifting of the ban on the use of horses for slaughter had me scouring the internet for this quote from Jonathan Safran Foer’s book Eating Animals:
The French, who love their dogs, sometimes eat their horses. The Spanish, who love their horses, sometimes eat their cows. The Indians, who love their cows, sometimes eat their dogs.
While...
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a land without guns
Japan is the 10th largest country in the world in terms of population (about 40% the size of the US) but had only eleven gun-related homicides last year. How is that even possible?
With almost one privately owned firearm per person, America’s ownership rate is the highest in the world; tribal-conflict-torn Yemen is ranked second, with a rate about half of America’s. But what about...
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you will never get rid of these albums
One of the employees at Laurie’s Planet of Sound, a record store in Chicago, posted this photo on Instagram. If you were buying music in the 90s there’s a good chance you have at least a few of these. Good luck unloading them on some poor sucker.
oh man, Geggy Tah… remember them?
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Jekyll and Hyde
State Farm, for the purposes of teaching their adjusters to how to tell the difference between a proper car restoration and a crappy bondo-mobile, painstakingly built this car. It looks like a photoshop job, but I assure you it’s very real.
If you’ve ever tried to buy car insurance for a classic ride, you know it’s a complicated process, and one fraught with potholes. The...
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a map of sloth
A NEW paper published in the Lancet on July 18th, timed to coincide with the Olympics, compares countries’ rates of physical activity. The study it describes, led by Pedro Hallal of the Federal University of Pelotas, is the most complete portrait yet of the world’s busy bees and couch potatoes.
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your soundtrack for the london olympics
The hosts of the Hollywood Prospectus podcast have each put together a britpop playlist on Spotify for the London Olympics… especially for those of you who remember anxiously awaiting the new NME or Mojo rather than the latest music-blog song leak… otherwise known as “grandpa hour”.
Andy Greenwald’s “Lorries, Torches, & Flats”
Chris Ryan’s...
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“When I make my first entrance, I’d like to come out of the door carrying a...”
– Gene Wilder explaining his one condition when offered the role of Willy Wonka by director Mel Stuart in 1970. When asked why Wilder explained: “Because from that time on, no one will know if I’m lying or telling the truth.” He had more suggestions, too.
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Am I the only person who thought it was funny that a version of the “Death or Bunga Bunga” joke made it into the new #Batman movie?
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let the kids pay our bills
“We’re not going to kill Big Bird, but Big Bird is going to have advertisements, alright?” —Mitt Romney on the campaign trail in Iowa
1. In the late 1970s, the Federal Trade Commission determined that advertising to children under the age of 6 was unfair and deceptive.
2. Research has also shown that children under the age of 8 have no defenses against advertising and often take...
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did you have salad today?
forget your 20s… mondays are the real salad days.
Weekday salad sales are highest on Mondays and lowest on Fridays, New York salad bar chainsFresh & Co.andCafé Metroand Florida-based Salad Creationstell Bloomberg Businessweek.
“We think it’s because people are a little repentant about their weekend,” says Colin McCabe, founder of Chop’t, a salad company in New York and Washington,...
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operation: it's a small world
A USMC Sargeant responds to the Quora question “What are the optimal siege tactics for taking Magic Kingdom’s Cinderella Castle?” with a five-phase plan.
This is great. Here’s a snippet:
Phase 2: The next phase would be the first two infantry companies sneaking in through the wooded area in the Southeast between Tomorrowland and Mainstreet, USA. Their primary targets are...
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WatchFaneuil Hall bucket drummer charged with sucker punching man into unconsciousness at Forest Hills
Joshua Rodriguez, familiar to visitors at Faneuil Hall for playing what he calls “junkyard jazz” on old buckets, will face charges for allegedly punching a man out at the Orange Line station on June 16.
Rodriguez, 21, was arrested by State Police on an unrelated charge elsewhere. If...
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10 great places to read outdoors in boston
the lazy librarian compiles a list of great places to read outside this summer. The reflecting pool at the Christian Science Center and Post Office Sq are are two of my favorites
… also add Titus Sparrow Park…
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National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest 2012
National Geographic Travel Photo Contest just wrapped and the winners will be announced soon. A few (40) of the photos are available at the InFocus photoblog. There are amazing images to be found… as there are every year.
These are smaller versions of just a couple of many… all of the ones on the site are wallpaper-sized.
Kuala Lumpur
Louisiana
Sri Lanka
Kansas
...
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milk doesn't (necessarily) do the body good
I’m a big fan of Mark Bittman… and he’s not a huge fan of the overconsumption of milk.
Today the Department of Agriculture’s recommendation for dairy is a mere three cups daily — still 1½ pounds by weight — for every man, woman and child over age 9. This in a country where as many as 50 million people are lactose intolerant, including 90 percent of all Asian-Americans and 75...
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the memory palace re-up
If you’ve never listened to The Memory Palace now’s a good time to start. It was just added to to the Maximum Fun group of podcasts (along with others like Judge John Hodgeman and Jordan, Jessie, Go!). It’s a wonderful, small podcast that, with each, gives you new, pointedly short, surprising story about the past. Sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes hysterical, often an...
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Maserati - Eliminator
Here’s a new jam...
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Crisis in the House of Lords
… so there’s a bit of a dust-up in the British Parliament over the reform of the House of Lords and a writer for The Awl has hilariously summarized it. If you have even a passing interest in seeing the inner workings of a government other than our own (or jsut like funny writing) you should check it out.
The government is trying to push the law through the various procedural hoops...
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nerd-tastic
I really like the band Maserati. The album cover for their 2007 album Inventions for the New Season looks like this:
It never occurred to me were they got this image. They recently got an email from an eye doctor… one Dr. Scott Schachter in Pismo Beach, CA… who asked the following:
“Can you tell me where you got the artwork for the album cover? We are having some...
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An abridged (and belated) history of premature...
The San Diego fireworks show on the 4th of July—a show that was supposed to take 20 minutes—apparently went off in 20 seconds. In honor of this, The Atlantic posted a story chronicling a few other notable fireworks displays that have gone off too soon.
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urban planning double feature
Two really neat features on the n+1 website right now for all you architecture and urban planning geeks…
1. BERMAN’S CHILDREN about the Brooklyn Heights Historic District and the first for (and against) the Atlantic Yards project.
At the northern edge of the District sits the construction site of Atlantic Yards. Infamously, the twenty-two acres of land were in part purchased by...
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WatchAlt-J (“Δ”) - Fitzpleasure
New song from a British band called Alt-J (or just “Δ“… he symbol you get when you type “alt+j” on an Apple keyboard). Once you get past the pretentious name you have a great song that will be kind of a grower, but I really like it. It’s one of those songs that’s kind of weird on the surface but scratches an itch...
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NYC people… cameras to the ready… Manhattenhenge (the East-West version, at least) is tomorrow!
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deja vu all over again. . .
Remember how, in 2007, you didn’t know what CDOs and credit default swaps were? Remember how you heard what was going on and you were amazed how there were no safeguards in place to prevent folks from so clearly gaming the system… and how it seemed as though regulators just played along?
Replace CDO with LIBOR and welcome to 2012. Here’s how the folks at Planet Money (you can...
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How CNN and Fox screwed up the Obamacare reporting
If you’re not done with the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act just quite yet, there’s a really good blow-by-blow report on the SCOTUSblog on how some folks got the reporting on the ruling so wrong initially.
The Court’s own technical staff prepares to load the opinion on to the Court’s website. In years past, the Court would...
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YMCA boston
The story of the first chapter of the YMCA which opened in Boston in 1851 was told recently at And This Is Good Old Boston… which is a great place to learn a lot about the history of Boston.
The organization went through several homes as it grew, ending up at the corner of Boylston and Berkeley streets in the Back Bay. The 1883 map below shows the location, opposite the Museum of Natural...
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fly happier
I was reading about that new Boeing airliner (the 787) and found out that, because it’s skin is carbon fiber rather that metal, it allows for higher cabin pressures (like Denver atmospheric pressure rather than that above 8,000 feet) and higher humidity because the carbon fiber is resistant to corrosion. All of this means that folks on flights shouldn’t be quite so parched and...
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WatchA little chillwave electro from Com Truise to make your day a little smoother.
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