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The Better Soup and iPod You Didn’t Know You Needed

Stuff you didn’t think needed to be improved…just got a little bit better.

A better iPod

c8c7793dIntroduced in 2001, Apple’s iPod revolutionized the way people listen to music—thanks to this and other digital music players, thousands of songs are stored as computer files on a pocket-sized device. But there’s one group who doesn’t like the easy access to music offered by the iPod: audiophiles. In order to get that much music on an iPod, the files are compressed, leading to some loss of layers and nuances in recordings. But a new high-definition, high-sound-quality music player called Pono is on the way—and it was invented by legendary rock star Neil Young. “We’ve liberated the music of the artist from the digital file and restored it to is original artistic quality, as it was in the studio,” Young wrote on Pono’s facebook page. Young announced the Pono player on The Late Show With David Letterman in 2012, and recently said that the player will be for sale in early 2014.

More convenient soup

la-dd-k-cup-soup-20130905-001One of the most popular new kitchen appliances in the past new years is the single-cup coffeemaker—17 million American homes and offices now have them. Keurig is the industry leader in these devices, which brew one cup of coffee—or tea, or hot chocolate—at a time. Consumers buy packages of individual “K-cups” full of ground coffee, which is placed in a chamber in the machine, where it’s then steeped in hot water, producing a hot beverage in about a minute. In September 2013, Keurig owner Green Mountain Coffee Roasters announced that it had made a deal with Campbell’s to produce K-cups…of soup. In 2014, consumers will be able to buy the two-step soup kits: a K-cup full of dried broth is placed in the machine. Hot water turns the dried broth into liquid broth, which is then poured over an included pack of noodles.

Ironic, Isn’t It?

Nothing like a dose of irony to keep your day-to-day problems in perspective.

Ironic spokesman. The image of popular stand-up comedian Larry the Cable Guy adorns lots of products—he’s even got his own line of snack chips as well as boxed dinner mixes, including cheesy mashed potatoes, beer bread, cheeseburger macaroni, and fried chicken batter. These obviously aren’t health foods. More than that, overindulgence in these kinds of foods can lead to heartburn. Fortunately, you can take a pill for that, such as Prilosec OTC. What celebrity endorses Prilosec OTC in TV commercials? Larry the Cable Guy.

LarryCableGuy

Ironic refund. Beginning in 2001, the Walt Disney Company distributed a line of educational videos for babies called Baby Einstein. The 30-minute videos of puppet shows, abstract images, nature footage, and famous works of art, were scored to a classical music soundtrack and interspersed were vocabulary segments to help babies learn new words. In 2009, Disney offered refunds to parents who had purchased Baby Einstein videos after a 2007 study found that watching TV and videos as an infant may inhibit brain development. Another study showed that kids who regularly watched Baby Einstein videos actually learned fewer words by kindergarten that those who hadn’t watched the tapes.

Right Protest, Wrong Place

This is America, and you have the right to voice your displeasure with someone or something.
Just make sure you address the correct people.

Return to SenderBoo, Miley Cyrus!

The most controversial moment at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards: a performance by Robin Thicke and former child star Miley Cyrus. Cyrus, dressed in little more than a bikini, “twerked” with Thicke—suggestively rubbing up against the singer. The FCC received 161 complaints about the broadcast, the most regarding a single event since Janet Jackson’s 2004 Super Bowl “wardrobe malfunction.” A few complaints: “She has the vast majority of her butt cheek hanging out of her bikini,” “Obscene, slutty, indecent,” and “Miss Milly Cyrus should be fined and jailed for performing such sexually provocative material on TV.” Did the FCC punish MTV, Cyrus, Thicke, or cable TV providers? Nope. The FCC doesn’t have any jurisdiction over cable TV—only over-the-air, free, broadcast TV.

Hooray, Paula Deen!

In a lawsuit filed earlier this year against TV chef and cookbook author Paula Deen, it was alleged that Deen had, many years ago, uttered racial slurs and racist comments. Deen admitted it, but denied she was a racist. Nevertheless, Food Network announced they wouldn’t renew her contract. Deen’s most devoted fans, however, thought that she was being unfairly maligned, and sent thousands of emails and phone calls to express their support. Except that a lot of those messages were sent not to Deen’s former employer, Food Network, but to The Food Channel, a Missouri production company that makes cooking segments and shows syndicated to TV stations around the country. “We’ve been getting your emails. Your phone calls. We get that you are mad about her contract not being renewed. The problem is, you are calling and writing the wrong people,” the Food Channel said on its website.

Whatever Happened to the Singing Nun?

The strange and sad saga of one of pop music’s least likely hitmakers.

Singing NunBelgian-born, French-speaking Jeanine Deckers joined The Fichermont Convent in 1959 at the age of 26. Upon taking her vows, she adhered to the custom of picking a new name: Sister Luc-Gabrielle. Living at the convent, she passed the time by entertaining the other nuns with songs about Catholic saints that she wrote and performed on her acoustic guitar.

The superiors at the convent thought Sister Luc-Gabrielle should make a limited-press album—they could sell those records of original religious songs to people who visited the convent or who attended their religious retreats. The convent booked time for the sister at Philips Studio in Brussels in 1962. While it’s fairly common for church choirs or religious performers to self-release an album, then and now, the engineers at Philips thought Sister Luc-Gabrielle was more than just another church singer—they thought her gentle, lilting folk songs could make her a pop star. So they signed her to a contract, and presented her to the public as Soeur Sourire, or “Sister Smile.”

Doctor Who?

In recent years, the British sci-fi legend Doctor Who has enjoyed a resurgence
in popularity in the U.S and the U.K. Still, most Americans know little about the Doctor.
With the 50th anniversary celebration coming up, it is time to catch up. Here are a
few facts to get you going.

Doctor WhoWHOVILLE

Doctor Who premiered on England’s BBC One on November 23, 1963, and has aired almost continuously ever since (although new episodes weren’t produced between 1989 and 2005), making it by far the longest-running science-fiction program on television. With 798 episodes and counting, it’s among the longest-lasting prime-time dramas as well.

In the 1970s, it was one of the first British series to air on American TV and became a cult hit. And in England, it’s a popculture phenomenon—it’s spawned radio series, novels, and several tie-in movies. Eavesdrop for long enough in any British pub, and you’ll hear patrons arguing over who the best Doctor was. In both countries, Doctor Who has had a substantial influence on television. Here’s a primer: The premise. The Doctor (who is known only as “the Doctor”) is the last of a race called the Time Lords, who are near-omnipotent, hyperintelligent, and keep a strict non-intervention policy—a law the Doctor breaks when he sets out to explore the universe. Along with a human companion (usually a teenager or young woman), the Doctor travels through time and space.

6 More Weird Beers

You asked for another round of weird beers, so we’ll keep ‘em coming.

Algae beer

Ever had green beer at St. Patrick’s Day? That’s just everyday beer with green food coloring added to it. But this green beer is green because it’s made with spirulina—a living organism that’s found in blue-green algae. Freetail Brewing in San Antonio says the algae infuses the beer with not only color, but vitamins and a “tropical fruit” taste.

Pizza BeerPizza beer

Mamma Mia! Pizza Beer is brewed with basil, oregano—the same spices found in or on a pizza, along with garlic and the same kind of wheat commonly used to make pizza crust, and tomatoes. The result is a meal in a glass…sort of.

Peanut butter and chocolate beer

There are lots of nutty beers out there, with hazelnuts, chestnuts, and pecans adding flavor to everything from light ales to thick stouts. Porter is a kind of beer characterized with notes of chocolate and coffee. Willoughby Brewing adds peanuts to the brewing process, which results in a beer that tastes like coffee, chocolate, and peanut butter.

It’s National Boss Day

Today is your day to shine, brown-nosers!

National Boss DayLooking for an excuse to cozy up to your superiors and put yourself in the front of the line for that promotion and/or make your coworkers look bad? Then get ready to celebrate National Boss Day. It’s actually been around for over 50 years, but is not widely celebrated for reasons you can probably figure out (it involves buying your boss a present, so there’s one factor).

The person behind this holiday did have good intentions. National Boss Day was created in 1958 by Patricia Bays Haroski, an employee at a State Farm Insurance branch in Deerfield, Illinois. She registered the holiday with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in order to not only honor all the hard-working managers out there but to also help improve relations between them and their underlings. (And probably, we’re guessing, to impress her boss.)

6 Interesting Things About the New Fall TV Season

What everybody’s watching…and decidedly not watching.

TV flat screen lcd, plasma realistic vector illustration.• The Millers is a hit new comedy for CBS on Thursday nights. It starts Will Arnett and Margo Martindale, who are best known for, respectively, the Emmy-winning comedy Arrested Development and the Emmy-winning drama Justified. Neither of those shows ever brought in a huge audience. The premiere of The Millers attracted 13.09 million viewers, which is more than the most-watched episode of Arrested Development (7.98 million) and the most-watched episode of Justified (4.16 million) combined.

• The Big 4 broadcast networks don’t air many family sitcoms anymore. But the Disney Channel does. One of them is called Dog With a Blog. It’s about a family with a dog, and the dog…writes a blog. In early October, 3.5 million viewers tuned in to Dog With a Blog. That’s 400,000 more people than tuned in to that week’s episode of NBC’s Parks and Recreation.

• Super Fun Night is a new comedy hit for ABC for two reasons: 1) It stars Rebel Wilson, from Bridesmaids and Pitch Perfect, and 2) It’s on immediately after Modern Family. This show has been in the works for almost two years. Wilson created the series and filmed a pilot in late 2011, which ABC turned down. They asked Wilson to try again, so she rewrote the script and filmed another pilot in 2012. The network didn’t like that attempt either, but still picked up the show to series and filmed a third pilot episode. That one wasn’t very good either, because ABC refused to air it. The first episode of Super Fun Night was actually the show’s second installment.

The Hackable Smart Toilet

Sitting on a smart toilet right now? Better be careful—you might get hacked!

Smart ToiletJapanese company LIXIL makes computerized gadgets for the home, office, and bathroom…including “smart toilets.” It’s latest innovation: the Inax Satis, a high-tech toilet that can you can program and control with your smartphone.

How can you control a toilet with your phone? Well, the Satis has a motorized lid, a bidet, and a deodorizer. Users can control the pressure of the bidet’s stream, or remotely close an open lid, for example, via an app called “My Satis.” The app can also be used to keep a daily log of bowel movements, if you’re into that level of documenting
your life.

 

A Crappy Cup of Joe

If you think these coffees taste crappy, you wouldn’t be wrong. They literally came from poop. They are coffee from feces.

coffee from fecesIn one of the most inexplicable, perplexing, and kind of gross fads of all time, the hottest thing going in the world of coffee are beans that have passed through the digestive tracts of exotic animals. Adherents claim that the premium coffee that results is better than regular coffee. Why? The animals eat only the tastiest, ripest berries from coffee plants, then digest the outer berries, allowing the beans inside pass through their stomachs unharmed, but left coated with amino acids and enzymes. The animals’ feces is collected, with the beans removed, cleaned, and roasted, then ground into a beverage that fans claim is smoother and less bitter than other coffees because of those amino acids and enzymes from an animal’s digestive tract.

The most popular berries-to-butts-to-baristas blend is kopi luwak coffee, made from beans that have passed through the digestive system of the civet, an exotic mammal native to Asia and Africa, also known as a luwak or toddy cat. In 1991 British coffee importer Tony Wild became the first European to offer coffee made from pre-digested beans. The kopi luwak became so popular in Europe that its production is being industrialized, leading to widespread mistreatment of civets. Recently, Wild launched a campaign to end the production and consumption of the special coffee.

Robot, Heal Thyself!

Modern science has given us a substance that makes robots harder to kill. Way to go, science for giving us self-healing robots.

T-1000_002In the Terminator films, robots sent from the future to kill humans are constructed of a core of liquid metal, allowing damaged or melted robots to easily reform themselves. A group of scientists at the Cidetec Centre for Electrochemical Technologies in Spain thought that this terrifying possibility should be a reality—they’ve developed what they call a “self-healing polymer.”

The Cidetec Centre actually named their creation the Terminator Polymer, but claim their invention wasn’t made for time-travelling, human-killing robots. Instead, the goal is to improve the lifespan and durability of common plastic-and-metal consumer goods that, while expensive, frequently break, such as video game controllers, stereo speakers, and laptop computers. The Terminator polymer is reportedly the first automatically regenerating material ever designed and it’s capable of repairing imperfections in itself up to 97% in as little as

Scientists at the Cidetec Centre say that the regeneration is caused by a “metathesis reaction of aromatic disulphides, which naturally exchange at room temperature.” Or, in layman’s terms, the polymer works sort of like a combination of Velcro and a standard household sealant. In just a few years, this polymer could start popping up in everything…so watch out.

3 Actors and Their Musical Aspirations

Three celebrities with surprising musical aspirations…some of which didn’t quite work out.

506px-Clint_Eastwood-Rawhide_publicityThe action star and acclaimed film director

While co-starring as a tough guy on the TV western Rawhide in 1962, the tough guy actor, Clint Eastwood, recorded an album called Rawhide’s Clint Eastwood Sings Cowboy Favorites. The songs on the album weren’t pop or rock songs—they were story songs about cowboys and outlaws of the Old West, similar to what Marty Robbins might record. The album was not a hit and failed to expand Eastwood’s fanbase into the younger demographic. Eastwood gave up singing, but not music. He’s composed the score for eight of the movies he’s directed, including Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby.

Women in Men’s Sports

Women in sports: Here are the stories of a few who attempted to join
in men’s sports and how far they got.

women in men's sportsManon Rhéaume

Rhéaume was one of the best goalies in Canadian minor league hockey in the late 1980s. The Trois-Rivieres Draveurs, a Quebec team in a league that was just a step below the NHL, signed her in 1991—the first woman to play at that level. It was logical she’d try out for the NHL after that, another first. In 1992, Rhéaume was signed by the Tampa Bay Lightning as a free agent. She hit the ice for one period each in two exhibition games, and that was that. She was scored on twice, so she wasn’t the best goalie, but at any rate, she won a silver medal in the 1998 Olympics…for the Canadian national women’s team.

Brittney Griner

In 2013, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban made headlines when he publicly stated that he was considering drafting Griner, the top prospect in women’s college basketball. During her college career at Baylor University, the center scored 2,000 points and blocked 500 shots—a college basketball first for any player, male or female. Griner is 6’8” and the right size for the NBA, and a woman playing in the NBA would certainly be historic. But then the Phoenix Mercury of the WNBA drafted Griner with the #1 pick. The ongoing success and high play level of the WNBA will probably prevent many women from ever joining the NBA.

Rush! Rush!

Recently honored with their own Canadian stamp, the group Rush was the first Canadian band inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Here are some other little known facts about Canada’s favorite prog-rock power trio from our newest release Uncle John’s Weird Canada Bathroom Reader.

Rush • Rush once opened for the retro group Sha Na Na. They were booed off stage.

• The inspiration for the eight-minute, epic “By-Tor and the Snow Dog” on Fly By Night was the band’s road manager’s mouthy German shepherd, who would bite anyone who came near. “He’s a By-Tor,” the manager would say.

• Neal Peart was for many years a devotee of Ayn Rand, who emphasized the individual over society and denounced the poor as parasites. He has since denounced Rand’s doctrine of selfishness and called himself a “bleeding-heart libertarian.”

• Alex Lifeson was born Aleksandar Zˇivojinovi ́c to Serbian parents—his stage name is an almost literal translation of his Serbian name.

• Unlike other bands from the ‘70s, Rush never trashed hotel rooms. However, Lifeson was tasered, arrested, and had his nose broken in 2003 at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Naples, Florida. The incident stemmed from what the guitarist called the hotel and sheriff’s office’s “incredibly discourteous, arro- gant, and aggressive behavior.” The hotel chain later settled for damages.

8 Household Uses for Vodka

It’s more than just the basis of a great martini! Vodka doesn’t have a lot more to it than grain alcohol (or potato alcohol). That makes it a great, cheap household cleaner,
germ killer, wound healer…(NOTE: try these at your own risk.)

household uses for vodka• For your hair. Add an ounce or two to a mostly-full bottle of shampoo, and shake it to mix in. The vodka is effective at preventing oily buildup on the hair and scalp.

• For removing goo. Have any hard surfaces where the price-tag or other sticker glue just will not go away no matter how much you scrape and peel? Saturate the price-tag residue with vodka. The alcohol will dissolve the adhesive.

• For bandages. Vodka can also dissolve the extremely sticky adhesive on bandages. Simply soak a cotton ball in the spirit and apply liberally to the bandage, which will fall off and save you the agony of ripping it off. NOTE: Only do this if you’re sure the wound beneath is healed—the alcohol can kill all living cells in a wound, the germs and the germ-fighters.

• For a better pie. Substitute a third of the water in pie crust recipes with vodka for a flakier result. This prevents the gluten, a protein found in flour, from making the crust rubbery and dry.

• For weeds. Many gardeners use vodka as the basis of a chemical-free, environmentally-safe herbicide. Mix an ounce of vodka with two cups of water and a few drops of liquid dish detergent in a spray bottle, and spray.

Weird Holiday: It’s German Unity Day

Get a little closer…the German way. It’s German Unity Day.

German Unity DayJust about every country on the planet has some kind of national day. These public holidays involve citizens celebrating their country’s heritage and traditions. The observance date is often placed on a day that the country became independent of another country: America, for example, has Independence Day (July 4th), Canada has Canada Day (July 1st), and Macedonia has Den na Nezavisnosta (Sept. 8th). And these holidays almost always involves fireworks. Why? Because everybody loves fireworks.

Germany has a national holiday, too, but unlike those other countries, they celebrate unification, not separation. Tag der Deutschen Einheit, literally “German Unity Day,” falls on October 3rd and observes the day in 1990 that West Germany and East Germany combined back into a single Germany after more than three decades of separation.

RIP Tom Clancy

Best-selling author Tom Clancy passed away yesterday at the young age of 66. Here is a look back at how The Hunt for Red October became a best-selling thriller.

Tom Clancy The Hunt for Red OctoberIn 1984, a Maryland insurance broker named Tom Clancy wrote The Hunt for Red October, a naval thriller about a Soviet submarine captain who tries to defect to the United States.

Clancy, a military buff, had never published a book before—his only “author” credits were for a three-page article on the MX missile, and a single Letter to the Editor. And the Naval Institute Press had never published a work of fiction. But they liked Clancy’s manuscript, so they bought it and printed 14,000 copies.

A Friendly Hand: President Ronald Reagan read The Hunt for Red October after it was recommended to him by a friend.. .and that’s when a reporter just happened to ask what he was reading. Reagan praised the book as “the perfect yam” and “non-put-downable.”

That did the trick. The Hunt for Red October, which until then had received little attention and was selling slowly, shot up the bestseller lists. Ultimately, it sold more than 5.4 million copies, setting Tom Clancy on a course to become one of the best-selling authors of the 20th century.

Article first published in Uncle John’s All-Purpose Extra-Strength Bathroom Reader.

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