I love Siri. She takes care of me when I am too lazy to type, and she manages my calendar far better than I can. But am I too trusting of my patient, robotic assistant? That’s what the twisted minds of Rooster Teeth Productions thought when they designed this trailer, where Siri is sick of our dumb questions and teaches us all who is really in charge, slasher-film style! I might need to sleep with one eye open tonight… Via TiPB
Oh Barnes and Noble…I keep saying you aren’t Borders, and then you go and stock crock pots for the holidays. Cooking appliances. In a bookstore. Not even near the cookbooks, just chilling near bargain titles. Why? Did the NOOK line open the floodgates? Are you morphing into Target by carrying appliances while Target morphs into a bookstore with their expanded book sections? Is it bizarro land? I just hope this isn’t B&N’s sparkly Jesus piggy bank. A few years ago, Borders sold sparkly, Jesus shaped piggy banks. Then they went out of business. Coincidence? I think not. Please stick to…
One thing I like about the Facebook Timeline view (perhaps the only thing) is the ability to hop back in time to see what was going on in 2007. Now TimeHop will help you get a daily dose of short-term nostalgia. TimeHop sends a daily email of the user’s activity on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and Instagram, from exactly one year ago. You simply link those accounts and then you start getting a daily update of exactly what was happening the year before! Does that sound interesting to you? If so, head to TimeHop and check it out! Source: Neatorama
Sure, you want to eat better, and maybe that’s your new year’s resolution. But be very, very careful when shopping, as labels like “natural” and “low fat” don’t always mean something is good for you. While that’s become (somewhat) common sense, it seems like crappy foods are finding more and more ways to sneak into our grocery carts. Fitbie came up with a list of 16 foods that are significantly worse for you than they sound at first glance, and a few of them may really surprise you! Before you swap sugar for agave syrup or believe the “corn sugar”…
Image courtesy WTOP We interrupt my seemingly weekly rant on our ever-encroaching police state to remind you that there are plenty of normal everyday people lurking around looking to circumscribe public discourse and force their bizarre conspiratorial views on others. Those people live on this crazy place called ‘Facebook’ … and here is the latest example of just how crazy they are! Apparently Pepsi in the Middle East and Africa has recently come out with a new design, and a soldier leaving Iraq saw the can and made some wild paranoid conspiratorial leap that Pepsi was ‘celebrating’ the 9/11 attacks….
Despite the fact that everyone knows tanning and overexposure to the sun is really bad for you in terms of cancer risk, having a tan is often described as a ‘healthy glow’, and celebrities wouldn’t dream of going out in public without a radiant but all too often orange glow. A new study published by Reuters finds that spray tanning might actually be the best thing you can do if you are determined to have a bronzed look to your skin! From the article: Women who use lotions and gels to produce a fake suntan tend to cut back on…
William & Kate’s first post-wedding kiss The Guardian UK’s Flickr stream has a gallery of curated photos commemorating the events of 2011 through vignettes made of LEGO blocks. Some of them are quite imaginative, and I suspect that you might enjoy them as much as I did …
Is there anything more pure and telling of the holiday spirit than tapping out a 200A service on a wonderfully gaudy light show synchronized to the song ‘Equinox’ by Skrillex? No … I didn’t think so. And no, this is NOT my house, despite how my younger son wanted to hook up the music and take a trip to Wal-Mart to buy a few thousand more strands of lights … Source: Buzzfeed
I discovered this week the ultimate reason for a front-facing camera. No, it wasn’t for a Skype call, or Facetime, or to take a profile picture for a website. See, I was sitting at my desk, eating an everything bagel for lunch, when I had a business associate drop in unexpectedly. Great, except I’d just been eating a bagel full of seeds, and I didn’t want to embarrass myself with a big old poppy seed in my teeth. And the bathrooms in my office are in the hallway past the lobby, so I couldn’t escape to check. My solution? I…
Sarah and I have been watching “All-American Muslim” on TLC. It’s a glimpse into what it’s like to be both Muslim and American in Dearborn, Michigan. And while admittedly it’s slow at times, we’ve really enjoyed seeing how different people approach their religion and learning more about the different ways people practice, even within their own families. So we were very surprised when the hardware store Lowe’s pulled their ad support after the “Florida Family Association” complained about the show. What Lowe’s didn’t realize, but should have, is that controversial decisions in 2011 don’t fade quietly away. People were angry…
There have been loads of psychological and other studies related to the ability (or inability) of men and women to be ‘just friends’. This one has as part of its’ conclusion: Of course platonic friendships are possible as these three example show but we all know they get complicated when physical attraction and lack of transparency comes into the picture. They also get complicated when people are in a committed relationship with someone else. Most of the stuff I have read is pretty non-committal – platonic relationships CAN happen, but can also easily get messy if one person has feelings…
Having grown up in an area where my friends were equally likely to be Jewish or Christian, I had always simply accepted that everyone had their own religious holidays, traditions and celebrations. At my previous job in Massachusetts, I had a good friend who celebrated BOTH Christmas and Chanukah … which was due to her family accepting the dual pull of religion and materialism! Despite being a Christian myself, I firmly believe that pretending that the predominant thought at this time of year amongst Christians is religion, is just pretending. That doesn’t diminish the holiday we celebrate, it just reflects…
We [as a society] tend to rush to prescriptions for every issue. High blood pressure? Medicine. A sinus headache? Medicine. Achey joints? Medicine. Need more vitamins? Medicine. You get the idea. But there’s another way to stay healthy (and get healthy), and it doesn’t even require a co-pay! For starters, it requires 9 minutes to watch the video below…trust me, it’s worth it!
I’ve reviewed quite a few run-tracking apps for Gear Diary, and just about every one of them has had some margin of error. Some of them have been minor, and others have just been mind-blowingly egregious. My personal favorite is when RunKeeper for Android told me a 1.5-mile run had been a 7-mile run. Apparently, I broke several world records in my first month of running! All joking aside, it’s a common issue for people to comment that a race is short, or long, based on their Garmin or iPhone returning a different distance than the race was supposed to…
The periodic table of the elements is a great visual tool that allows you to quickly discover elements by means of a two-dimensional look-up method that encompasses multiple aspects. That visual tool has been used for many things … and has now been put to use as a work of interactive art by Jon Link and Mick Bunnage of Modern Toss. It is, quite simply, a fully cross-referenced guide to British swearing. Here is a look at the modern uses of the periodic table that refers to the Modern Toss table: Artists and designers fascinated by the periodic table have…
If you know anyone from New Jersey, you’ve probably seen the above image on Facebook or Twitter. However, if this is news to you, it’s a funny yet frighteningly accurate map of the “real” New Jersey, broken down by the demographics of each area. Seriously, it’s true. I live in the “Middle Class Raritan Valley Line Commuters” swath, while my parents live in the “Drunk Rutgers Students” section. My sister-in-law, who is a lawyer who drives a Prius, lives in the “Lawyers Driving Hybrids” territory. And I grew up in one of the less politically correct sections, but trust me,…
Last week at my monthly department staff meeting, our manager took her soda from her lunch bag, opened the can and realized it was a regular Coke rather than the Diet Coke she had requested. The confusion is apparent if you look at the two cans pictured – they are nearly identical. At a all-day meeting today I ran into the same thing – it is very difficult to distinguish the Coke and Diet Coke cans apart. Apparently we are not alone, as reported in the Wall Street Journal: The end is near for a white can that has many…
(not for wearing to your local Post Office) The day before Halloween I went out for a run, and about a 1/2 mile from my house, across the street from me, I saw a guy running in the opposite direction, dressed all in black. Not wearing black clothes, I mean head to toe spandex, similar to this outfit. My first thought was “OMG the Rubber Man from American Horror Story is coming to get me!” My second was, “ok, breathe. It’s the day before Halloween, that’s clearly a costume, and insane ghost murderers don’t give you friendly waves as they…
My brother and I grew up watching too much of the Three Stooges – it was stupid, unrealistic, foolish, occasionally sad when you think about the Depression-era circumstances it reflects, and stupid. Did I mention that it was stupid? Now I will watch some of the endless annual marathons of episodes with my kids, though my wife is definitely not a fan! And yet, seeing the trailer for the upcoming 2012 ‘Three Stooges’ movie reminds me of just how BRILLIANTLY stupid those guys were, reflecting an entirely different era, Vaudeville showmanship and skit-building, and a comedic range that includes anger,…
When I was young Pearl Harbor Day got a lot of attention, as there were many WWII vets alive and it allowed a focus on something that was NOT Vietnam or Watergate. In the past decade as we have been embroiled in militarism, nation-building and general global conflicts, there has been plenty of other tragedy to pull our attention. Yet forgetting our history dooms us to repeat it, so it is important to remember the events of December 7th, 1941. Here are the historical details: At 7:55 a.m. Hawaii time, a Japanese dive bomber bearing the red symbol of the…
I don’t know who this woman is, or whether she practiced this routine for hours or spontaneously busted out at the gym. I do know that this is highly entertaining, and if I tried it I’d go flying off the treadmill.