Category: Lifestyle

South Park Censored

This is what viewers saw last night, when World-wide Muslim riots over cartoons in a Danish newspaper scared Comedy Central to censor last nights South Park TV show, even though they did show Mohammed prominently, as a flame-wielding superhero in the "Super Best Friends" episode in 2003 (see picture below). and in this show Jesus defecated on George W. Bush and the American flag. It's the second run-in over religion in a few months for the satirists. Comedy Central pulled a March rerun of a "South Park" episode that mocked Scientologists. Isaac Hayes, a Scientologist who voiced the Chef character on the show, resigned in protest over the episode. Only last week, "South Park" won broadcasting's prestigious Peabody. Awards director Horace Newcomb said at the time that by its offensiveness, the show "reminds us of the need for being tolerant." View the video of the climactic ending.

And a link back to an earlier entry on this blog by the Danish Editor about why he published the now infamous cartoons.

And if you want to see the offending cartoons that were commisioned in response to the creeping undermining of Free Speech by Political Correctness & fear of intolerance.

Fish Jumping into Boat – Video

Fish Jumping into Boat – Google Video

This video of fish literally jumping into the boat has made the rounds on the Internet. The great debunker of Urban legends has found the source:

The video is a shortened version of a longer clip that originated on the Brazilian Pesca Rondônia web site. (“Pesca” is the Portuguese word for “fishing,” and Rondônia is a northern Brazilian state in the Amazonian region known for its great fishing rivers.) The footage was taken in the Guaporé region, on a portion of the Mequens River inside the Porto Rolins Park (a protected conservation area) where fishing is forbidden. The jumping fish shown in the video are matrinxã (Brycon cephalus), a Brazilian fresh water species.

Dunkin’ Donuts Tribe vs. Starbucks Tribe

from Wall Street Journal –
Dunkin’ Donuts last year paid dozens of faithful customers in Phoenix, Chicago and Charlotte, N.C., $100 a week to buy coffee at Starbucks instead. At the same time, the no-frills coffee chain paid Starbucks customers to make the opposite switch.
When it later debriefed the two groups, Dunkin’ says it found them so polarized that company researchers dubbed them “tribes” — each of whom loathed the very things that made the other tribe loyal to their coffee shop. Dunkin’ fans viewed Starbucks as pretentious and trendy, while Starbucks loyalists saw Dunkin’ as austere and unoriginal.

Early research showed consumers wanted nicer stores, but revealed a potential problem: the loyal Dunkin’ tribe was bewildered and turned off by the atmosphere at Starbucks. They groused that crowds of laptop users made it difficult to find a seat, Dunkin’ says. They didn’t like Starbucks’ “tall,” “grande” and “venti” lingo for small, medium and large coffees. And, Dunkin’ says, they couldn’t understand why anyone would pay as much as $4 for a cup of coffee.

“It was almost as though they were a group of Martians talking about a group of Earthlings,” says Justin Holloway, an executive vice president at Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos Inc., the advertising agency that helped Dunkin’ with its research. One customer told researchers that lingering in a Starbucks felt like “celebrating Christmas with people you don’t know.” Continue reading “Dunkin’ Donuts Tribe vs. Starbucks Tribe”

How to Recognize a Stroke

Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify. A stroke victim may suffer permanent brain damage when people fail to recognize what's happening. Now, doctors say any bystander can recognize a stroke, simply by asking three questions:

  • ask the individual to smile.
  • ask him or her to raise both arms.
  • ask the person to speak a simple sentence.

If he or she has trouble with any of these tasks, time lost is brain lost, so waste none of it dithering on a phone in hopes of getting a dispatcher to say "Gee, your friend has had a stroke; you'd best get her to a hospital." Because a new drug ( Tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) has been shown to limit disability from strokes caused by clots (ischemic) provided victims receive it within three hours of the onset of stroke symptoms.

Web Hit: Music

WSJ.com – Web Hit: Music

The oddly named hip-hop duo Gnarls Barkley made history in the U.K. with the song "Crazy," which debuted at No. 1 despite being available only as a digital download. It was the first time a song had reached the top spot without being available on CD, tape or record.

"Crazy" can be heard at www.gnarlsbarkley.com.

A Jazz Diaspora Redraws the Musical Map

WSJ.com – A Jazz Diaspora Redraws the Musical Map
New Orleans is busy rebuilding from Hurricane Katrina. But when it comes to jazz, the city's most important cultural touchstone, it's becoming evident the damage could be permanent. Displaced New Orleans musicians say they didn't fully appreciate how much better the financial opportunities were in other cities until the hurricane forced them to relocate.

"New Orleans never treated its musicians well," says Wynton Marsalis, the trumpet player and artistic director of New York's Jazz at Lincoln Center.

New Insight on Social Punishment, Human Cooperation

AAAS – Research Results

In an experiment with volunteers at the University of Erfurt in Erfurt, Germany, two thirds of the study participants initially chose the group in which members could not punish others, many abandoned this non-punishing group after seeing the greater financial rewards that come with cooperation that is maintained when individuals choose to punish freeloaders.

This new evidence for a competitive advantage for groups in which individuals can punish freeloaders may bring scientists closer to a general theory of human cooperation, the authors say.