fuzzypuzzle

Put Down That Bagel — Low-Calorie Diet May Extend Life

Canto, left, a 27-year-old rhesus monkey, is on a restricted diet, while Owen, 29, is not. The two monkeys are part of a study of the links between diet and aging.

A long-awaited study of aging in rhesus monkeys suggests, with some reservations, that people could in principle fend off the usual diseases of old age and considerably extend their life span by following a special diet.

Known as caloric restriction, the diet has all the normal healthy ingredients but contains 30 percent fewer calories than usual. Mice kept on such a diet from birth have long been known to live up to 40 percent longer than comparison mice fed normally.

Link to NY Times article.

The Good Fight

I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people convinced that they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference after another.
— Ellen Goodman

Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.
— Samuel Butler

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.
— Ray Bradbury

Most people give up just when they're about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game one foot from a winning touchdown.
— Ross Perot

Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence.
Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.
Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
— Calvin Coolidge

People spend so much time focusing on rescuing the princess, they forget how much fun it is to fight the dragon.
— Simon Pegg & Nick Frost

Stellar TED Talk About Creativity by Eat, Pray, Love Author, Elizabeth Gilbert

(Not the chick from Little House on the Prarie)

We Live In Public — Cautionary Tale of a Douchebag

We Live In Public TRAILER from We Live in Public on Vimeo.

Britain and France Crash 25% of Their Nuclear Submarines Into One Another

They only have four nuclear submarines each. So how the F do they manage to crash them into each other? Who's the Admiral over there, Benny Hill?

From the NY Times.

LONDON — Two nuclear submarines, one French and the other British, collided in mid-Atlantic earlier this month, reports in the British and French news media said on Monday, quoting sources in the two defense ministries.

Britain and France each have four missile-carrying nuclear submarines, constituting the core of their nuclear arsenals. According to military journals, Le Triomphant carries 16 ballistic missiles with a range of 5,000 miles, each with six warheads. H.M.S. Vanguard is a Trident-class submarine, 492 feet long and weighing 16,000 tons. It, too, carries 16 missiles, each with three nuclear warheads.

Rep. Paul Kanjorski Explains How the World Economy Almost Collapsed

Swiped over at boingboing

The Capital Markets Subcommittee Chair, Rep. Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania, explains how the world economy almost collapsed in a matter of hours.

 At 2 minutes, 20 seconds into this C-Span video clip, Kanjorski reports on a "tremendous draw-down of money market accounts in the United States, to the tune of $550 billion dollars." According to Kanjorski, this electronic transfer occured over the period of an hour or two.

"The Treasury opened its window to help. They pumped a hundred and five billion dollars into the system and quickly realized that they could not stem the tide. We were having an electronic run on the banks. They decided to close the operation, close down the money accounts, and announce a guarantee of $250,000 per account so there wouldn't be further panic and there. And that's what actually happened. If they had not done that their estimation was that by two o'clock that afternoon, five-and-a-half trillion dollars would have been drawn out of the money market system of the United States, would have collapsed the entire economy of the United States, and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed."

"It would have been the end of our political system and our economic systems as we know it."

The Keene Act & You – What You Need to Know

10 Killer Movies You May Have Missed

For the Netflix queue ... no particular order

1.) Primer (inspired Indie time machine flick, who would've thunk? )
2.) The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (most gorgeous film ... ever?)
3.) Street Kings (Keanu as a psycho cop. Trust me it's better than you think.)
4.) Harsh Times (Bale as a psycho cop wannabe)
5.) Let the Right One In (Haunting Swedish vampire kids)
6.) Snow Angels (Sam Rockwell, can't go wrong there)
7.) Vampire's Kiss (Young Nic Cage at his edgy best ... what happened?!)
8.) The Machinist (Skeletal Bale)
9.) Baghead (the Duplass brothers are cool. Great little indie killed by rotten marketing)
10.) Joshua (Sam Rockwell again)

The Sad State of American Film

Marley and Me ($106,664,046) – Week #2
Slumdog Millionaire ($28,676,598) – Week #8

Burton + Boobs = Burlington Blow Up

How's that for creative alliteration! Full article at Boston.com, excerpted here.

Burton's new line of "Love" Snowboards featuring retro images of Playboy bunnies has found itself at the center of a growing controversy in the lame, err .... pseudo liberal state of Vermont.  

The Burlington City Council discussed asking Burton to withdraw the boards, and the Girl Scout Council of Vermont is considering taking concerns to lawmakers next month.

The outcry hasn't made a dent in sales of the new lines, Burton cofounder Jake Carpenter told the Burlington newspaper Seven Days in November. The Playboy line and a second line called Primo, which depicts mutilated hands, have "completely oversold by virtue of this exposure," he said.

Mark Redmond, the head of nonprofit, Spectrum Youth & Family Services, said he pulled his enrollment from a Burton program that donates snowboards to needy children after learning about the Playboy line because objectification of women increases the chance men will become abusive, he said.

Fuzzy Logic:

Yeah, refusing free charitable donations from the states largest employer, that'll teach 'em Mark!

Seriously, everybody just take a deep breath and have another cup of herbal tea. The concept of using Playboy bunnies on snowboards qualifies as edgy and counterculture ... but the design execution, utilizing tasteful cropping, is actually pretty tame. By the time you pop the bindings on these boards, everything's pretty much covered up anyway. We've all got bums people! (and most of them aren't this nice)

When reached for comment Jake Burton had the following to say. "Fuck you bitches. I own this state."