Noone ever claimed that the U.S. brewed the best beer. In fact, it seems we usually get crapped on for our generally lower standards of the craft compared to other countries. Belgium, to name one, is a country that bends us over its national knee and gives us a European spanking with their hearty and delicious offerings.
BUT STOP COMPLAINING:
According to an analysis performed by "The Economist," the US has THE CHEAPEST BEER IN THE WORLD. If that doesn't make you want to wet your whistle with beer water, I don't know what will.
Due to our relatively higher pay, and fewer bucks per beer, it takes the average American only five (5) minutes to raise the skrill to afford a 16oz. beer at a store. Compare that to our pals in India where a bottle of your average courage serum takes 50 damn minutes to afford, and you may be a little less concerned with what your friends are starting to call a 'problem'.
Here is the breakdown of the beer purchasing power of work efforts across the world. Cheers, ladies and gentleman.
There's a chance that when you were a kid, your parents washed your mouth out with soap for cursing. There is NO chance that happened to you once you became an adult. But it actually happened to this woman.
On Tuesday, 20-year-old Stephanie Madewell, her boyfriend, 26-year-old John Vincent Caruso, and their two children were at their home in Land O'Lakes, Florida. And Stephanie was swearing.
John was upset, and told her if she kept cursing so loud he'd wash her mouth out with soap. But she ignored him and kept going.
So he grabbed a bottle of Dawn liquid dishwashing detergent, went up behind her, jammed the bottle in her mouth, and squirted it.
She called the cops, and they found a cut on her lip and dried up dish soap on her cheek, chin, and running down her neck into her shirt. John was arrested for domestic battery.
The cops say John told them his parents used to wash his mouth out with soap as a kid, so even though he's 26, quote, "he will still put soap in his mouth out of respect for his parents."
(Dude kinda looks like Billie Joe Armstrong from Green Day)
This is mean, unethical, and will probably cause a lifetime of awkward family gatherings. But for you, it's the opportunity of a LIFETIME to get rich AND show off your legendary Casanova skills.
A billionaire in Hong Kong is offering any man in the world $65 MILLION . . . if you can seduce his lesbian daughter away from her wife and turn her hetero.
Cecil Chao Sez-tsung is a property developer in Hong Kong. His 33-year-old daughter Gigi Chao (on right in photo) married her girlfriend, Sean Eav, in April in France.
Cecil says that wedding was, quote, "false" and he wants to pay a man a fortune to seduce Gigi back to heterosexuality. Quote, "I don't mind whether he's rich or poor. The important thing is that he's generous and kind-hearted."
So if you're generous, kind-hearted, willing to seduce a stranger for a paycheck, AND you believe that sexual preference is just a choice that can be manipulated with huge sums of cash . . . I guess you should head to France.
And if you can't seduce Gigi, maybe you can convince her to pretend to date you and split the money. Even if you offer her a 90-10 split, you're set for life.
Most of us don't want to offend other people or get in unnecessary confrontations. But sometimes when someone's talking in a movie theater or letting their baby scream on a bus, you NEED to say something. A new survey figured out the appropriate amount of time you should wait to handle awkward situations. Here are the results:
"Shhh" someone in a movie theater. The average person says you should wait just under two minutes before you start making "shhh" sounds.
Ask someone on a cell phone to keep it down. The average wait is just under two-and-a-half minutes.
Give a parent a dirty look for not dealing with a loud baby. The average time is just after two minutes and 40 seconds.
Realize you've been stood up on a blind date. Give the person 26 minutes before you bail.
Honk at a car in front of you at a green light. This is the only one where I think the average is WAY, WAY OFF. The survey found the average person claims to wait 50 SECONDS before honking. In real life, the average person waits, like, two.
#1.) When You're Shopping at a Small Business. If you're at Wal-Mart, go ahead and pay however you want to. But banks actually charge the STORE when you use a card . . . sometimes as much as 3% of your total purchase.
--So it's better to pay with cash at a mom-and-pop store, because they get don't get charged for it.
#2.) When You're Leaving a Tip. It depends on the restaurant, but sometimes the credit card tips don't get paid out to the servers until the end of the week.
--And when you're working for tips, having cash-in-hand at the end of the night can make a difference.
--Plus . . . and this probably isn't that common . . . but according to CreditCards.com, some restaurants actually make the SERVERS pay the bank charges.
#3.) Anytime You Plan to Haggle. Like at a flea market, because it's easier to bargain with someone when you're holding a bunch of bills in their face.
--Plus, the vendors get charged if they run a card, just a like a small business does. And since they KNOW they'll be charged, that could ALSO affect how low they go.
#4.) When You're on a Budget. Study after study shows that you spend less . . . because you BUY less . . . when you're paying with cash.
--One reason is because you don't actually feel like you're parting with REAL money when you use a card. Another is because paying with cash forces you to keep track of what you spend, because eventually you run out.
#5.) When You're Buying Something You Might Have to Return. Especially if it's a present for someone else, because if they return it and you used a card, they'll only be able to get store credit.
--But even if it's something for YOU, you should still use cash, because sometimes it takes days before a refund ends up back in your bank account. But if you pay with cash, you'll get it back immediately.
Just days after Concord got the OK to ban the sale of single-serving plastic bottles, Brookline is going after plastic foam containers.
“I just felt it was the right thing to do,” said retired Brookline attorney and grandmother Nancy Heller, who authored the ban, to be considered at Brookline’s November town meeting. “It always bothered me when I went to certain coffee shops and the cups were made of Styrofoam. I don’t want to name them, but Styrofoam is an environmental hazard in the world.”
To be clear, Styrofoam is a brand name for plastic foam, like Kleenex for tissues. But Heller’s point is that plastic foam cannot be recycled here, and many towns and cities either burn it or leave it in landfills, where it will not decompose. For many years a favorite container for fast food, plastic foam also winds up polluting the ocean. Then last year, the federal Department of Health and Human Services added styrene, the chemical found in plastic foam hot beverage and food containers, to its list of possible carcinogens.
Think about what could be leaching into your medium regular every morning. Or your red hot take-out ribs.
Heller soon discovered that more than 100 cities and towns have already banned plastic foam, including Portland, Ore., Seattle, San Francisco and Carmel, Calif., in 1988, the second year of Clint Eastwood’s term as mayor. Great Barrington, a crunchy granola Berkshire town, made it illegal 22 years ago. Boston’s City Council tried to ban it in 2009. Guess who else has voluntarily moved from plastic foam to paper wrappings? McDonald’s, our recession-proof business superstar. And Big Macs taste just the same.
Brookline also has a warrant item banning plastic bags, something citizens groups have tried to ban in numerous cities and towns, including Boston. Clearly, the banning brigades are picking up steam.
Once upon a time, I made fun of these leafy suburban and holier-than-thou urban crusaders. I saw Al Gore’s movie. I figured he exaggerated wildly. Surely I’d be dead before Cape Cod, where I just spent vacation, is under water. Now? Well, Greenland practically melted this summer. Seals and sharks swarmed the Cape while swarms of mosquitoes, because of our warm winter, ruined barbecues. My vet said to check the temperature before stopping tick medicine because ticks ran wild last February. February! I see what few climate change deniers remain. They sound nuttier and angrier every day.
So I’m with you, Nancy. I am. What’s good enough for Big Macs is good enough for Brookline, Boston and all of America.
This is pretty chilling. A man named Randy Scott was trapped inside the World Trade Center on 9/11, and before he died, he wrote a note to get help and threw it out an open window. It said, quote, "84th floor. West office. 12 people trapped." Someone on the ground found it THAT day, right before the building collapsed. Then it was passed around for 10 years until DNA was used to match a spot of blood on the note to Randy. Last year, the note was finally given to his wife, Denise.
She's agreed to put the note in a museum at the 9/11 memorial.
A Pittsburgh professor invented the forerunners. He hates the little yellow icons they have become
To some, an email isn't complete without the inclusion of :-) or :-(. To others, the very idea of using "emoticons" – communicative graphics – makes the blood boil and represents all that has gone wrong with the English language.
Regardless of your view, as emoticons celebrate their 30th anniversary this month, it is accepted that they are here stay. Their birth can be traced to the precise minute: 11:44am on 19 September 1982. At that moment, Professor Scott Fahlman, of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, sent an email on an online electronic bulletin board that included the first use of the sideways smiley face: "I propose the following character sequence for joke markers: :-) Read it sideways." More than anyone, he must take the credit – or the blame.
The aim was simple: to allow those who posted on the university's bulletin board to distinguish between those attempting to write humorous emails and those who weren't. Professor Fahlman had seen how simple jokes were often misunderstood and attempted to find a way around the problem.
This weekend, the professor, a computer science researcher who still works at the university, says he is amazed his smiley face took off: "This was a little bit of silliness that I tossed into a discussion about physics," he says. "It was ten minutes of my life. I expected my note might amuse a few of my friends, and that would be the end of it."
But once his initial email had been sent, it wasn't long before it spread to other universities and research labs via the primitive computer networks of the day. Within months, it had gone global.
Nowadays dozens of variations are available, mainly as little yellow, computer graphics. There are emoticons that wear sunglasses; some cry, while others don Santa hats. But Professor Fahlman isn't a fan.
"I think they are ugly, and they ruin the challenge of trying to come up with a clever way to express emotions using standard keyboard characters. But perhaps that's just because I invented the other kind."
The academic did not kept a copy of his original email and attempts to retrieve it from the university IT system proved unsuccessful.
Then, as the use of emoticons grew, more attempts were made. In 2002, in what the professor describes as a piece of "computer-archaeology", an engineer from Microsoft went through the back-up tapes and, 20 years after it was first sent, the email was retrieved.
Despite his claim to the sideways smiley face, some critics have suggested that the idea had been around before 1982. Professor Fahlman says various people have written to him over the years, claiming they had the idea before him. But he insists he has yet to see any evidence.
However, some people have pointed out that 150 years ago, in an edition of The New York Times in 1862, a transcript of a speech by Abraham Lincoln apparently contained a modern-day ;-). Nerds and conspiracy theorists are still debating whether or not it was a typo.
Naked ice hockey, an orgy in the penalty box and drinking in the showers: What REALLY went on at Boston University hockey team¿s notorious Agganis Arena party
Naked ice hockey, an orgy in the penalty box and drinking in the showers: What REALLY went on at Boston University hockey team’s notorious Agganis Arena party
The debauched details emerged following a Boston University report on the 'culture of sexual entitlement' by its hockey players
Confidential part of the report paints a worrying picture of the attitude of some of the university's hockey players towards sex
One player told investigators: 'You don’t ask [permission for sex] when you are drunk'
Some hockey players at the university boast about their sexual exploits on Facebook
PUBLISHED: 08:15 EST, 7 September 2012 | UPDATED: 13:58 EST, 7 September 2012
Lurid details have emerged of the sexual antics of university hockey players at a controversial championship party - which includes students having sex in the penalty box.
The debauched details emerged after Boston University released a report on the 'culture of sexual entitlement' by its hockey players.
Many of the details of the investigation - which includes tales of sexual debauchery - were only revealed in confidential subcommittee reports.
Troubling: Lurid details have emerged of the sexual antics of Boston University hockey players at a controversial championship party - which includes students having sex in the penalty box
However, these documents - which have been reported by the Boston Globe - paint a worrying picture of the attitude of some of the university's hockey players towards sex.
The report contained details of a late-night championship party in 2009 at the Agganis Arena which revealed that:
Students were having sex in the penalty box on the ice
Dozens of guests drank from beer kegs in the locker room showers
Party-goers took to the ice naked to shoot ice pucks
Details of the party have now only emerged after a task force was launched in February when two Boston University hockey players were charged with sexual assault.
The investigation by the task force found that some hockey players - when surrounded by fans - had 'the perception that they need not seek consent for sexual contact.'
One player told investigators: 'You don’t ask [permission for sex] when you are drunk.'
Wild: The report contained details of a late-night championship party in 2009 at the Agganis Arena, pictured here for basketball, which revealed that party-goers took to the ice naked to shoot ice pucks
The task force was told by one female student that a hockey player had put his hands down her pants at a party and, despite the fact that she was punching him, refused to stop.
When asked why she had not reported the incident to authorities, she replied: 'that’s just what [BU hockey players] do.'
The reports also found that some hockey players at the university boast about their sexual exploits on Facebook, often referring to conquests as 'kills'.
Many of the hockey players, the investigation found, regularly engage in group sex.
The university campus police and administrators did not find out about the controversial 2009 party until this year once the task force investigation started.
Party goers were having sex in the penalty box, drank from beer kegs in the locker room showers and took to the ice naked to shoot ice pucks. Players also put on Facebook their female conquests
It has emerged that during interviews with investigators hockey coach Jack Parker said at first that he did not know about the party. However, he later acknowledged that he knew some of the men had been drinking in the locker room.
Despite this, two players and a member of staff said that within a few days of the party, the coach had reprimanded the team for its behaviour.
The subcommittee report also found that some of the hockey players are less academically gifted than the vast majority of their classmates.
One professor described how six hockey players intimidated their classmates and answered their mobile phones during lectures. Eventually all six of the players dropped out of the class. However, another professor said hockey players were respectful and prepared.
Following a recommendation by the task force, Parker has been stripped of the title of executive athletic director. He still keeps another title.
However, he will still continue as coach and will earn the same salary.
The public report has made 14 recommendations, which the university intends to implement.
If there's one thing that's kept men going throughout history, it's this. No matter how unattractive you are, you KNOW that if you can just figure out a way to get RICH, you can have sex with an attractive woman or many attractive women.
--Well, apparently, those dreams are now OVER.
--Dr. Marcel Zentner is a psychologist at the University of York in England. And he just finished a study of more than 12,000 people worldwide that found women now actually value a man's LOOKS over a man's MONEY.
--This effect only happens in first-world countries where, quote, "we found that as women become more equal, their preference [for wealthy men] declines and men's looks become much more important."
--In other words, when women don't feel like they NEED a man to provide for them and their children, they become shallow. Just like, ya know, men.
--The study also found that in developed countries, men are starting to put more value on a woman's INTELLIGENCE than domestic skills like cooking.
--Zentner believes the reason is that men figure their wives are now going to work, not just stay home. So since their wives are going to be working anyway, might as well make big money doing it . . . so they value a woman's intelligence.
Apparently, there's such a thing as PERFECTLY-SPACED NIPPLES. So get ready to roll your eyes at how superficial and arbitrary it seems . . . while secretly planning to toss a ruler between your nipples later tonight.
--A company in China is holding a beauty pageant, and one of their requirements is that all contestants have perfectly-spaced nipples. And through a massive amount of research, they say they've determined what that spacing is.
--They've concluded that nipples should be exactly 20 centimeters apart . . . or 7.87 inches. That's from the center of one nipple to the center of the other nipple, NOT from areola to areola.
--The grand prize for winning the pageant is about $1,600. But I guess, more importantly, you get to be known as the most perfectly-spaced nipple owner in China. Or something.
According to a new study out of the University of Buffalo, watching RERUNS is actually really good for you. Seriously. The study found that watching a show you like makes you feel COMFORTED because you see the characters you love, but you know what they're going to say. That's the best way to enjoy yourself without using ANY mental energy. And by doing that, you refresh your brain and set yourself up to do better work afterward.
Ben & Jerry's isn't the most conservative company. They sold a flavor of ice cream called "Schweddy Balls", named after the famous Alec Baldwin"Saturday Night Live" sketch.
--But NOW we know where they draw the line. Ben & Jerry's has filed a lawsuit against a PORNO COMPANY, for using their logo to sell pornos with titles that parody Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavors.
--The company they're suing is called Caballero Video, and they created a series of 10 pornos called "Ben & Cherry's." Each one is named after a Ben & Jerry's flavor, and their packaging looks exactly like the ice cream packaging.
--For example, one porno is called "Hairy Garcia", and apparently features HAIRY LATINAS. That's a takeoff of the Ben & Jerry's flavor Cherry Garcia. Another is "New York Super Fat & Chunky", named after New York Super Fudge Chunk.
--Ben & Jerry's are seeking unspecified damages in the lawsuit. They also want the movies taken off the market.
A website called LoveFilm.com has determined that "Airplane!" is the Funniest Film Ever . . . because it has the MOST LAUGHS PER MINUTE. Seriously . . . these guys actually calculated the laughs per minute of a bunch of comedies. Obviously, that's subjective in itself. Here is a clip:
Not everyone's going to be amused by LESLIE NIELSEN saying, "I am serious . . . and don't call me Shirley", after all. But according to LoveFilm, "Airplane!" contains THREE laughs per minute.
--"The Hangover" finished a close second with 2.4 laughs per minute.
--Another Leslie Nielsen classic, "The Naked Gun", came in THIRD with 2.3.
Check out the Top 10 . . .
--Here are the 10 Funniest Films Ever, along with their laugh-per-minute ratios . . .
#1.) "Airplane!", 3 laughs per minute.
#2.) "The Hangover", 2.4 laughs per minute.
#3.) "The Naked Gun", 2.3 laughs per minute.
#4.) "Superbad", 1.9 laughs per minute.
#5.) "Borat", 1.7 laughs per minute.
#6.) "Anchorman", 1.6 laughs per minute.
#7.) "American Pie", 1.5 laughs per minute.
#8.) "Bridesmaids", 1.4 laughs per minute.
#9.) "Shaun of the Dead", 1.3 laughs per minute.
#10.) "Monty Python's Life of Brian", 1.2 laughs per minute.
Entercom's WAAF-FM has added Danielle Murr to the full-time lineup of The Hill-Man Morning Show. Previously, Murr served as a part-time news anchor/co-host for the show, splitting her time between WAAF and Total Traffic Network (formerly Metro Traffic) since late 2005. As part of a new multi-year deal, Murr will join Hill’s show in-studio five days a week. With her new full-time status, she will assume a more active role in producing show material, contributing to the creation of digital content for WAAF’s website, and appearing regularly at station events.
Here's a little car trick you probably didn't know about. You can actually roll down your windows just using the remote on your keychain.
--On a lot of modern cars from all the major brands, if you press the unlock button, release it, then press it again and hold it down, it should roll down your windows.
--That's not the most useful trick, but you could use it to roll the windows down and let some of the unbearable heat out BEFORE you have to sit down inside.
In the pantheon of insane food mashups, this makes a burger with a Krispy Kreme donut as a bun seem downright TAME. Maple Lodge Farms in Brampton, Ontario, Canada is now selling a HOT DOG that uses a CHOCOLATE ÉCLAIR as a bun. The éclair is split open, the hot dog rests inside, and then there's the sweet éclair cream on top. Maple Lodge Farms debuted the "Éclair Dog" at an event called the Canada National Exhibition. If you don't want to make the trip to Canada, you could probably recreate it at home pretty easily. BUT DO YOU WANT TO?
MICHAEL CLARKE DUNCAN . . . the 6-foot-5, 300-pound actor who was nominated for an Oscar for "The Green Mile" . . . died yesterday morning at a Los Angeles hospital. He was 54 years old. Duncan suffered a heart attack almost two months ago, on July 13th, and had been in the hospital ever since.
Duncan was in bed asleep at the time of the attack. His girlfriend, "Apprentice" star OMAROSA MANIGAULT, was able to revive him with CPR. But he never really recovered. A rep said, quote, "Omarosa is grateful for all of your prayers and asks for privacy at this time. Celebrations of his life, both private and public, will be announced at a later date." Omarosa herself told RadarOnline.com, quote, "I am devastated. He was the love of my life."
Duncan started out as a bodyguard for stars like WILL SMITH and JAMIE FOXX, among others. He was actually supposed to be guarding the NOTORIOUS B.I.G. on the night that Biggie was murdered. That's when he decided to pursue acting full time. "The Green Mile" was his big break. His other credits included "Armageddon", "The Whole Nine Yards", "Daredevil", "Sin City" and "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby"
