(NEWSER) – A new theory offers a simple explanation on why zebras have stripes: Horseflies hate them. Researchers discovered that the flies will go after an all-black animal or an all-white animal more than a striped one, reports LiveScience. What's more, the zebra's narrow, vertical stripes seem tailor-made to ward off the pests. (The researchers have some important-sounding rationale involving "horizontally polarized light" to back up their theory.)
"We believe that escaping biting flies, which are annoying to their hosts and transmit lethal diseases, would be a very important selection factor, which may have a much stronger effect than the benefits of striped coat patterns suggested previously," says one of the researchers.
Mike's Thoughts: From an evolutionary standpoint this is fascinating stuff but it raises the question of whether or not, from a natural selection point of view, wouldn't it have just been easier to teach animals to use fly-swatters??
What better way to say I love you this Valentine's Day -- than with some cured meat?
Olympic Provisions, a delicatessen in Portland, Oregon, is offering romantic bouquets of salami for the meat-lover in your life, but they don't come cheap. Three long-stemmed salamis will run you 75 bucks, while a six-stem bunch is an even 100 dollars. As a bonus, the delivery dude will serenade the recipient with a chorus or two of "Love Is Where the Meat Is."
Mike's Thoughts: As an added bonus, if you place 4 orders before Valentine's Day you get a free colonoscopy. And nothing says I love you like a free colonoscopy!
(NEWSER) – A teacher in a Newfoundland fishing village put a student out in the hallway for a period and sprayed him with air freshener—for smelling fishy. The mother of 10-year-old Christian Robertson said he was teased by other students after having fried fish for lunch, and then bullied by his teacher. "I think my son was treated not like a human being—I think he was treated like a dog, or a cat," she tells CBC. "I'm very hurt and very angry over this." The school board has apologized, and placed the teacher on paid leave while it investigates.
Mike's Thoughts: I can totally understand why the parents of Christian Robertson were upset about this but I do have one question:
If they live in a "Newfoundland fishing village" wouldn't you imagine ALOT of people there probably smell like fish??
(NEWSER) – Online dating could help you find your perfect match—but your chances aren't any better than they'd be at a bar, a study suggests. You can't tell much about the people listed on sites like Match.com. Browsing such lists "overloads people and they end up shutting down," the psychology professor behind the study tells Reuters. It amounts to shopping at "supermarkets of love": When you have too many choices, you make bad decisions.
Algorithms that sites like eHarmony use to match people probably don't help much, the researchers say. "Eighty years of relationship science has reliably shown you can't predict whether a relationship succeeds based on information about people who are unaware of each other," says the professor. In short, "there is no reason to believe that online dating improves romantic outcomes," a co-author tells Time. "It may yet, and someday some service might provide good data to show it can, but there is certainly no evidence to that right now.”
Mike's Thoughts: And the other reason online dating doesn't really work?
(NEWSER) – When it comes to the battle for the most indulgent, artery-clogging American fast food treat, the list of contenders is a long one. And now, a new entrant: Jack in the Box has begun offering a limited-edition Bacon Shake. And, in true fast-food-isn't-just-like-real-food fashion, there's actually not any bacon in it. So what is in a 24-ounce serving, besides 1,081 calories? Vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, a maraschino cherry and "bacon-flavored syrup," reports Yahoo, which points to the experience of a poor SFist blogger who tried it.
Brock Keeling's verdict? "Wow. That was horrific." Dubbing it a "tummy error," he calls it "aggressively bad," and describes the taste as "a heavy, lingering bland with a touch of smoke that doesn't go away." The upside? It's "technically vegetarian." (Can't get enough fast food news? Check out this amusing/depressing photo comparison of how the items in fast food ads compare to the real thing.)
Mike's Thoughts:
1. This can't POSSIBLY taste good.
2. It's things like this that make the rest of the world hate America. Given the gift of more freedom and liberty than any civilization in history, what do we do with it? We make a bacon shake. Impressive.
LAW & DISORDER: Judge Throws Out Beer Pong Lawsuit (Posted 3:00 AM, 2/8/2012)
In New York City, a judge has thrown out a man's lawsuit against a bar over injuries he suffered following a beer pong game.
The judge said Alan Berger voluntarily signed up for the beer-drinking game ---- and wouldn't be able to sue Wicked Willy's.
Court papers say Berger played the game for over three hours and was later struck by a car while trying to cross a highway.
Obviously, the judge noted, Berger "consumed alcohol to the point of diminished capacity."
So, despite the fact he suffered a broken hip, leg and foot, Berger won't be able to collect a dime from the bar that got him liquored up.
Mike's Thoughts: It might sound cold hearted, but I'm strongly in favor of this ruling.
Here's why:
There is a legal minimum drinking age all across the United States of 21 years.
Part of the impetus behind this legislation is that when you reach that legal drinking age, at least by definition if not by action, you are an "adult", legally responsible for your own decisions when it comes to alcohol.
I've always found it completely ridiculous that some random bartender can be held responsible for "overserving" a patron and then legally responsible for whatever that individual does upon leaving their establishment.
If the bartender (or waiter, or whoever) is legally responsible for how much you have to drink in a given night, then why bother to have a drinking age in the first place?
With apologies to beer pong boy, his injuries are the result of his own mistakes and he is the only one who should be held responsible for them.
SQUATTER WAS LIVING IN A HOME FOR JUST $16 A Texas man was kicked out of a $340,000 home which he had lived in since June-- for just $16.
The 51-year-old man didn't own or rent the place. But he claimed he had a right to live in it.
After the owner abandoned the property because of foreclosure, the mortgage company went out of business. So the squatter sent in a $16 filing fee at the local courthouse claiming the law of "adverse possession". That gave him the right to live in the home.
A judge has ruled that the current lienholder, Bank of America, can force the man OUT.
In the meantime, the squatter became a local celebrity, wrote an eBook and created a website called 16dollarhouse.com.
He has moved out and is looking for his next home.
(NEWSER) – Gisele Bundchen made headlines last week when she asked friends and family to pray for her husband's team to win the Super Bowl, but as we all know, those prayers went unheard. Bundchen was decidedly less sappy in her post-game comments last night, caught on tape as she left the VIP suites on her way to comfort Tom Brady. "My husband can not f****ing throw the ball and catch the ball at the same time," she said as she was heckled by Giants fans. "I can't believe they dropped the ball so many times."
Mike's Thoughts: In fairness, I don't think Gisele realized she was being filmed at the time and I suspect if any of us were in the situation where our spouse or another loved one was being heckled, we might respond emotionally as well.
Also in fairness, she's right.
The Patriots wide receivers had opportunities to make catches in the game's closing minutes and they choked.
Clint Eastwood did the voice over for a 2 minute Chrysler Commercial during the Superbowl.
Ironically, the spot itself, and Eastwood's involvement in it, have now become a political football of sorts.
Was it partisan? Was it political by nature? Was it designed to support President Obama's auto-industry "bailout" or was it simply a rallying cry for American manufacturing?
(NEWSER) – What would a Super Bowl halftime show be without a pop star to provoke America's sensibilities? But halftime queen Madonnawasn't this year's provoker; it was her guest star—angry, political dance maven MIA, who ended her performance by flipping the audience her middle finger, and apparently saying "I don't give a shit," reports AP.
It may not have been at the level of a "wardrobe malfunction," like Janet Jackson's infamous bared nipple of 2004, but the production team apparently did try to prevent the worst of it, briefly blurring the screen when MIA's middle finger went up. The S word shouldn't have been a surprise to censors as the song and football-themed music video released last week clearly uses it, too.
Mike's Thoughts: It's not like I was gravely offended by this and honestly, as far as my kids are concerned, they're young enough that either they didn't notice it or they don't even know what the gesture means.
But here's my issue:
When you perform the Superbowl Halftime show you've essentially agreed to get on stage at the LARGEST, most corporate, most mainstream, most sell-out, least street legit event in the history of mankind.
The Superbowl Halftime show is a half-step removed from performing at Disney's Magic Kingdom.
So, what kind of moron do you have to be to take that stage and flip the bird to the world? As if you're hard, and tough, and street?
Puh-lease. MIA- you're an idiot.
And Madonna: given your long and successful history as a performer, you were a fool to share the stage with someone like that in first place.
Despite not having obtained permission to do so, Newt Gingrich has been using Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger" at his campaign rallies.
In this clip from the Colbert Report, Survivor lead singer David Bickler repays the favor by singing copyrighted lines from Newt's book without permission.
And, as you'd guess, he sings them to the tune of "Eye of the Tiger".
(NEWSER) – A new trend in company meetings? Have your employees stand. The practice is increasingly popular, especially at tech companies, thanks to the growing popularity of an approach to software development known as "Agile." Standing meetings are typically brief, participants are expected not to ramble on or pontificate, and tardiness is punished—sometimes by $1 fines, sometimes by forcing latecomers to sing "I'm a Little Teapot." In one extreme example, standing meetings were held in an unheated stairwell in order to ensure their brevity, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The intended result? Meetings that are more about productivity, and less about participants playing Angry Birds under the table. Studies have shown that stand-up meetings are shorter than sit-down meetings but still of the same quality, the Journal notes. Employees participate—often by giving brief updates on what they've accomplished since the last meeting and what they will work on before the next one—but practices are in place to keep them from droning on too long, like passing around a 10-pound medicine ball or holding up a rubber rat to show that time is up.
Mike's Thoughts: I like this idea but I'm going to go it one better.
Mandate attendance at EVERY SINGLE MEETING for a week for the highest ranking person in your office. When he/she realizes what a colossal waste of time most of these meetings are, your meeting load will be reduced by about 75%. Stand for the remaining 25% of meetings and I bet you'll get more done in a 20 hour work week than you do now in a 40 plus hour work week.
(Newser) – Sure, it's full of keyboard cats and double rainbows, but these days, YouTube is also a serious moneymaking machine. YouTube star Ray William Johnson is showcasing the medium's potential: With more than a billion total views, he's making about $1 million a year through his clips, insiders tell the Wall Street Journal. Thanks to a twice-weekly show that gets 5 million regular viewers, the comedian—who mocks other popular YouTube clips—currently boasts the site's biggest audience. He goes by RayWJ.
So where does all the money come from? YouTube offers partnerships that can bring popular users between $3,000 and $9,000 per 2 million views. "Several hundred" such partners made more than $100,000 last year, an 80% jump from 2010, says a Google rep. "This is a microcosm of what's going on in the overall media landscape. We're moving from a scaled mass media to more hyper-local, niche media," says an industry expert. Indeed, scoring a few million views means a user "rivals second- and third-tier cable networks"—and YouTube's 780 million monthly unique visitors represents a far bigger audience than that of traditional TV networks.
Mike's Thoughts: Welcome to Andy Warhol's vision of the future- where everyone is famous for 15 minutes.
NJ CAMEL PICKS THE GIANTS Look out, Patriots -- a camel has picked the Giants to win the Super Bowl.
Princess, who resides at New Jersey's Popcorn Park Zoo, has correctly picked the winner of five of the last six Super Bowls.
Need more proof of her picking prowess? She went 14-6 predicting regular season and playoff games this year, and has a lifetime record of 88-51. Apparently her best season was 2008, when she got 17 out of 22 games right, including correctly picking the Pittsburgh Steelers to win the Super Bowl.
How does she pick the winner, you ask? The zoo's general manager writes the name of the competing teams on his hands, then holds out a graham cracker in each hand. Whichever hand Princess nibbles from is her pick. Apparently, Princess showed no hesitation when she picked the hand with the Giants written on it.
Mike's Thoughts: The New Jersey gaming comission has spent 11 million dollars of taxpayer money trying to establish a connection between Princess the Camel and the New Jersey mob but has been unsuccessful thus far.
BUFFALO, N.Y. — Eastman Kodak Co. wants to end its contract for naming rights to the glamorous Los Angeles theater that hosts the Academy Awards as it tries to improve its financial position enough to move out of bankruptcy.
The photography pioneer's financial advisers say the benefits of having the company's name on the 3,300-seat Kodak Theatre aren't worth the contract's cost, according to a motion filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court this week.
Under the contract with CIM Group of Los Angeles, details of which were not disclosed in the court filing, Kodak "pays a significant annual amount for, among other things, the naming rights related to the Kodak Theatre," which opened in 2001.
The theater's website describes a "20-year marketing partnership" that "was one of the most significant non-sports corporate sponsorships in history."
"Kodak is proud of its important role in the entertainment industry, and our long-standing relationship with film makers," said a statement from Rochester-based Kodak, on whose film more than seven decades of the Oscars' "Best Pictures" were printed. "Our motion today reflects our commitment to ensure that we are maximizing value for our entertainment customers, creditors and other stakeholders."
The 132-year-old company filed for bankruptcy protection on Jan. 19 after years of cost-cutting and turnaround efforts.
Mike's Thoughts: Kodak has suggested renaming the venue the "We Had Our Ass Kicked By the I-Phone" Theater.
VOLKSWAGEN RELEASES SEQUEL TO LAST YEAR'S 'STAR WARS' SUPER BOWL COMMERCIAL
Featuring an overweight dog that takes it upon itself to exercise (with the help of an instructional workout video).
"The Dog Strikes Back" follows the dog's successful progression, to the point where it caught up to a new, red-colored VW Beetle.
But not so fast, if you thought that was that, the camera pulled back to show creatures in the Star Wars-verse watching the ad on a TV. And when one of the bar guys declared the dog "funnier" than the Darth Vader kid in last year's ad, the Darth Vader kid did what he did best.
"Sorry," the guy says apologetically as things went back to normal.
Mike's Thoughts: Car commercials are taking the early lead in pre-Superbowl hype this year. Wonder if that's a good sign for the economy?
I almost miss the days when nothing got "leaked" before the big game. In some ways, it's better to be surprised.
Billy Joel, who spends his winters at his home in South Florida, made a surprise appearance last weekend at the Dania Beach Vintage Motorcycle Show, taking the stage with a local band, The Whipping Post. Billy walked through the crowd, went over the lead singer and asked if he could sit in, which he did. Taking his place behind an electric piano, he did "Stormy Monday." --Sal Cirrincione
Mike's Thoughts: Honestly, I'm surprised more big-time artists don't do this. What a Thrill for "The Whipping Post". Talk about a story you can tell at dinner parties!
(WOULD YOU BELIEVE)... STEVE JOBS LISTENED TO VINYL AT HOME... BECAUSE IT SOUNDED BETTER THAN HIS IPOD Steve Jobs-- the creator of the iPod-- liked to listen to vinyl records when he was at home.
According to pal Neil Young, the Apple founder preferred the vinyl sound compared to the iPod's digitally-compressed files.
Speaking at a technology conference, Neil Young explained: 'Steve Jobs was a pioneer of digital music. His legacy is tremendous. But when he went home, he listened to vinyl.'
Young and Jobs had a new format in mind.
While modern formats, like MP3, are convenient, they do not represent the original sound of the music.
The NEW format would contain 100 per cent of the data created in a recording studio rather than the five per cent in compressed formats.
But due to the size of the files, a device might only be able to hold 30 albums and each song would take 30 minutes to download.
While Young admitted there was no practical plan in place to develop the format, he said Jobs wanted to get involved before he died in October from pancreatic cancer.
They "were working on it."
Young added, 'You've got to believe if he lived long enough he would eventually try to do what I'm trying to do.'
Jason Elia of Nashville had the perfect Super Bowl weekend planned with his girlfriend. He bought two tickets to the big game and was going to surprise her with a marriage proposal during the game. His girlfriend was super excited about their trip.
But then, real life got in the way. Jason went to the doctor for some tests and was diagnosed with bladder cancer.
Fortunately he had the love and support of his girlfriend, right?
Wrong.
She dumped him. That's right; she fed him a line about not being able to handle the stress of having a boyfriend with cancer and tossed him to the curb.
Adding insult to injury, she's demanding her Super Bowl tickets.
Jason says she calls him every day demanding the tickets, arguing that he bought them for her so she should have them.
Jason says there's no chance she's getting those tickets -- and is actually giving them away to one of his Twitter follows.
Oh, and since you care about him more than his heartless girlfriend, Jason's prognosis is pretty positive. (NBC Sports)
Mike's Thoughts: There's already some speculation floating around that this story isn't exactly 100% accurate. At this point, there's no way to know what all is true and what isn't.
But if it IS true, this young lady is officially the worst girlfriend in the world.
She actually makes Kim Kardashian look emotionally deep and grounded.
(NEWSER) – Apple's Siri can help you order take-out, give you directions, or just make you laugh—but not if she can't understand you. Scottish iPhone 4S owners are finding that the voice-controlled digital assistant has a hard time deciphering their signature brogue, the Los Angeles Times reports. In a demonstration for a journalist, one Scot asked Siri, "What's the weather like today?" What she heard: "What's available in Labor Day?" ("I don't even know what Labor Day is," the Scot sighed.)
Siri does have a language setting for "English (United Kingdom)," but even fellow Brits have been known to find Scots difficult to understand. Since Siri's Scottish problem was discovered, a few demonstration videos have been posted on YouTube (watch one at left). Even so, the new iPhone is a top seller in the country. And Apple insists that Siri is still being fine-tuned, and its performance will improve the more it is used. "Once you've been using it for a while, it should pick up your accent," says the Scot who gave the demonstration. "But if you've got a broad accent, you've got no chance." (Siri will soon learn Mandarin.)
Mike's Thoughts: I tell you who could fix this damn problem- Groundskeeper Willie!
