February 2011
19 posts
The Bizarre Origins of 8 Wedding Traditions →
mental_floss:
Why do couples eat freezer-burned wedding cake on their one-year anniversary? To answer this, we must look to the lyrics of a schoolyard classic: First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a baby in a baby carriage! It used to be assumed that when there was a wedding, a christening would follow shortly. So, rather than bake two cakes for the occasions, they’d just bake one...
Zinc Is Probably the Most Effective Cold Treatment... →
lifehacker:
The moment you’re semi-sure you’re getting a cold, get some zinc lozenges. That’s the result of a meta-analysis of 15 different scientific studies of the mineral, and cut the length of coughing and sneezing days by 40 percent.
“Mr. Stevens agreed to meet in mid-January for a dinner paid for by The Times....”
– Search Optimization and Its Dirty Little Secrets - NYTimes.com
Scientists use The Office to discover why old... →
avclub:
Scientists in New Zealand claim to have finally discovered what it is that makes the elderly so likely to humiliate their ungrateful young charges (besides the fact that they’ve earned the right), and they accomplished this by getting old people to watch the original, British version of The Office and gauging their reactions. As it turns out, participants over 60 were less able to...
More speeding means safer highways →
jalopnik:
New research from Australia, the land of hoons and hoonage, says encouraging people to speed and removing speed limits could mean safer highways. Speeders, rife with adrenaline, apparently have significantly reduced reaction times and increased hazard perception.
Futurelab:
“How can Tablet users replicate these types of “statements”? One idea that a colleague mentioned to me involved the notion of “dynamic weathering” of applications — the more that you use an app, the more that it would appear “weathered” and used. People would know how often you were reading by how “worn” your iPad’s screen looked, for example. … Who knows? One day, there might even be...
This is either the best idea of 2011 . . . →
volokh.com:
Sega has began deploying the “Toylet” video game — which uses “a pressure sensor located on the back of a urinal to measure the strength and location of your urine stream. A small LCD screen above the urinal allows you to play several simple video games including a simulator for erasing graffiti and a variation on a sumo wrestling match.”
