I’ve had enough of these drivers parking their luxury cars on bike lanes and pedestrian crossings. This tank is a good tool to solve the problem of parking in the wrong place.
– Arturas Zuokas, mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania.
I’m off to Citi Field in my pathetically regular-sized car.
PopSci has a good, lengthy feature on a guy trying to cure aging. This sort of sounds like it’s how a dystopian future novel starts. In fact…
From the beginning, the tale seemed to skirt the edges of the possible — a mountain lion reported to be stalking the wilds of Greenwich, Conn., seen near fancy private schools and busy roadways. But the sightings were confirmed in early June by paw prints, photographs and animal droppings, and then, more dramatically, by the lean body of a 140-pound male creature killed by a sport utility vehicle on the Wilbur Cross Parkway in Milford on June 11.
The aftermath was even more surprising. On Tuesday, in what state officials termed “amazing news,” they said that the Connecticut Cougar had made its way east from the Black Hills of South Dakota and that genetic testing matched samples of an animal confirmed as having been in Wisconsin and Minnesota.
That means that the animal traveled more than 1,500 miles to Connecticut, more than twice as far as the longest dispersal pattern ever recorded for a mountain lion.
– Peter Applebome, N.Y. Times.
For some reason, reading this article made me disproportionately sad. Such an amazing story: a mountain lion travels 1,500 miles from South Dakota to Connecticut (in search of a mate, the article says). Then it gets hit by some guy’s SUV. Brutal.
People are going to fancy butchers to buy grass-fed dog food. This is a trend; I have noticed plenty of gourmet and high-end products available for pampering dogs. And dogs are awesome, so I don’t want to stop people from treating their dogs like royalty. But I would like to remind you:
1) Dogs eat or attempt to eat practically everything that falls on the ground.
2) Dogs roll around in dirt.
3) Dogs lick their own asses.
4) Dogs seem inordinately concerned with other dogs’ asses.
Dogs are totally gross. You can feed them Peter Luger steak sauteed in white-truffle butter with caviar, but that’s not going to keep them away from other dogs’ asses. Nothing will. The good parts of having a dog outweigh the bad, but the bad part is accepting that you’re welcoming a disgusting animal into your home.
“A bear destroyed my car looking for Chicken McNuggets,” he said. “I’m shocked.”
As he parked his car in front of The Palace Hotel on Broadway – after returning from a four-day excursion in the wilderness – he didn’t expect the same reaction from passersby.
“What happened,” said one onlooker.
– Carlos Silva Jr., Las Cruces Sun-News.
If you ever click-through to any link from this site ever, please make it this one. And note that the headline — “Bear ransacks car in hunt for fast-food treat” — is misleading. This is decidedly not a story about a bear destroying a car for Chicken McNuggets. Very few details are given about the bear’s actual attack on the car and McNuggets.
Nay, this is decidedly a newspaper story about a man whose car had been attacked by a bear parking that car in Silver City, New Mexico, to the wonderment of townsfolk. What the bear did to the car is secondary to how the people of Silver City reacted when they saw what the bear did to the car.
And we learn precious little about the Chicken McNuggets. The story makes it seem — however vaguely — like the bear attack happened on Leroy Griego’s four-day excursion to the Gila Wilderness, but that sure doesn’t sound like the type of place you could readily find Chicken McNuggets. In fact, according to Google Maps, the nearest McDonald’s to the Gila Wilderness is in Silver City proper, so… well, I have questions about this story.
Did Griego and his friends bring McNuggets from Silver City into the Gila Wilderness, not eat them, and leave them in the car for several days before some bear finally became overwhelmed with temptation and mauled their car? Or did the bear attack their car and eat their McNuggets early in their stay but not discourage them from enjoying the remainder of their vacation? Also, did the bear try one of the new sauces? Are they really just the same as the Chicken Selects sauces?
In related news, I ate Chicken McNuggets for the first time in several years on Saturday. Turns out they’re still pretty tasty. My local McDonald’s has a big parking lot in back, and one row of parking spots right next to where the drive-thru lane lets out. People pull in to those spots and sit in their cars and eat the food they’ve just gotten from the window. I suspect this might be the saddest place in the world, especially when you specifically asked for the new Sweet Chili sauce and got plain-old barbecue sauce instead.
Via Andrew.
Naveen Jain, an Internet billionaire and a founder of Moon Express, says the company will spend $70 million to $100 million to try to win the Google Lunar X Prize, but could recoup its investment on its first flight. He envisions selling exclusive broadcast rights for video from the Moon, as well as sponsorships, à la Nascar, for companies to put their logos on the lander….
“Wouldn’t it be nice if you could have a ‘Moon Idol,’ just like ‘American Idol?’ “ suggested Mr. Jain, who previously founded Infospace and Intelius. “You take the top 10 contestants and play their voices on the Moon, record it and see who sounds the best.”
(There is no air on the Moon to transmit sound waves, but “you could play it through the dust and see what it sounds like when you play it right on the surface,” Mr. Jain said.)
SMH, as they say here on the Internet.
Over at SNY Why Guys, Rob Steingall lists his five favorite steakhouses.
Look: Steak is delicious and I’ve enjoyed my few experiences at high-end steakhouses. But as far as I’m concerned, they’re overrated.
I can prepare really tasty steak at home. It’s pretty easy, actually. Plenty of supermarkets have great butcher sections, and if you pick out a good piece of meat there are about a dozen different ways to get it hot and delicious on your plate without too much hassle. You don’t even have to season it much, if at all.
I’ll amount that they treat you way better at an upscale steakhouse than I treat myself in my kitchen, and all the fixins and steak accouterments make for a luxurious dining experience. But on a humble web editor’s salary, if for whatever reason I’m going to go out and drop that type of cash on a single dinner, I want it to be spent on ingredients and culinary expertise way beyond my scope.
I suspect at least some of the appeal, price and cachet associated with steakhouses are relics of a time when it was more difficult to ship and store high-grade beef, but don’t quote me on that. And again, I don’t eat at steakhouses very often, so maybe I’m missing out. But unless someone soon convinces me it’s worth dropping $200 for the wife and I to eat something we can have for a fraction of that (plus a little elbow grease) at home, I’ll be manning the barbecue to satisfy my ample steak-eating needs.
From DanMeth.com, via Vulture:
Here are three things I have entirely missed:
1) Harry Potter: This one I’m a bit embarrassed about, because I suspect if I read the Harry Potter books or watched the movies I’d enjoy them. But to date, I have not read a word in any of the books or seen a minute of any of the movies. I have entirely missed Harry Potter. I recognize some of the names and words associated with the series — Dumbledore, Muggles, Hermione — but I have no idea what they mean.
Thing is, the first Harry Potter book blew up when I was a senior in high school. At that time, I thought I was super awesome because I read books for leisure and not many people I knew my age did. When people started blabbing on and on about how great Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was, I assumed it was a book for people who don’t normally read books — whatever that meant — so I avoided it.
I stopped thinking like that sometime in college, but by then it seemed too late to just take up the series from the beginning. Now the last movie is the hottest ticket at the box office and I’m still out in the dark. Maybe at some point in like ten years I can start reading them, when it seems nostalgic and cool or something.
2) The Casey Anthony trial: So I went on vacation for a week, then came back to find my co-workers huddled around the TV awaiting a verdict in the Casey Anthony trial like she’s O.J. Simpson or something. Who is this lady? Is she famous? Who is Nancy Grace?
I’m not aiming to make light of the trial or the verdict. I just missed the whole buildup, so the subsequent outrage seemed really bizarre.
I will add that I learned afterward that they used Anthony’s Google searches as evidence in the trial, which is rather terrifying. I had no idea that was admissible. I hope I’m never framed for anything; I Google some messed-up stuff just out of morbid curiosity and following what auto-complete suggests.
3) Bill Simmons: Amid all the hoopla surrounding the launch of Grantland.com, I realized I had never read anything Bill Simmons had written. It was not a conscious decision. It so happens that I never worked in front of a computer in the years Simmons was first making his name on the Internet, I’m not a huge NBA guy and I have very little patience for Boston sports fans. Plus I’ve always read more in print than online and more fiction than sportswriting.
But now that I’ve come this far without having read any of his work, it seems like a neat trick to keep it up. So many of my friends and colleagues seem to, for whatever reason, have such unreasonably strong opinions about Grantland.com that my innate contrarian finds it best to maintain no opinion whatsoever.
Tedquarters 