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David McRaney, host of Boing Boing's most popular podcast, You Are Not So Smart, just posted this fun video about "The Post Hoc Fallacy" ("just because B follows A doesn't mean that A causes B") to promote his new book, You Are Now Less Dumb.

I don't know how Sesame Street managed to make it this far without doing a Lords of the Rings spoof before — presumably they know a little something about delayed gratification — but man, was it worth the wait. I don't know what's better, Cookie Monster screaming "ME PRECIOUS!" over and over again or the fact that thousands of kids now think all you need to make cookies are eggs and chocolate chips.

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Pump. Pump. Pump. Sam Houser's heart is pounding. The most reclusive man in video games and the mastermind behind the 150-million-selling Grand Theft Auto series is biking to work in the pouring rain. His custom pink Independent Fabrication racer weaves through New York City traffic, the type of chaotic gridlock Grand Theft Auto players love to career through in a stolen car. Houser has a heavy nest of a black beard he rarely cuts, one that provides him the anonymity he covets as he speeds through the streets from Brooklyn to the SoHo office of Rockstar Games. "I do this 365 days a year," he says. "Sometimes the snow's so deep I have to carry my bike over the bridge. But every day, every day."

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Thanks to KickassFacts.com, you’ll have a legitimate excuse for sleeping on the job, and will probably want to buy a scratch card lottery ticket…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Via KickassFacts.com and Imgur

The post 30 Amazing Random Facts! appeared first on POPHANGOVER.

Hopes for a successful HIV cure were at an all-time high this summer when it was announced that two men were pronounced HIV-free after receiving bone marrow transplants. The doctors involved refused to call it a cure at the time, warning that the HIV virus could reappear at any time, concerns that seem prescient based on the news of the virus’s re-emergence in those patients.

CNN reports that the virus became detectable in one patient in August, whereas HIV became detectable this month in the other man, 32 weeks after therapy ceased.

“It’s disappointing,’ said Dr. Daniel Kuritzkes of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, via NBC News. “But it’s still taught us a great deal.”

Kuritzkes worked with Dr. Timothy Henrich to treat and study the two men originally reported to be cured of HIV. The patients had discontinued their use of HIV medicines following the apparently successful cure.

“Through this research we have discovered the HIV reservoir is deeper and more persistent than previously known and that our current standards of probing for HIV may not be sufficient to inform us if long-term HIV remission is possible if antiretroviral therapy is stopped,” Henrich said.

The doctors report that both patients have resumed their therapy and are currently doing well.

“We felt it would be scientifically unfair to not let people know how things are going, especially for potential patients,” Henrich said via The Boston Globe.

The procedure for the two individuals in question would not be viable for most HIV patients, as the men were also being treated for lymphoma at the time. They underwent aggressive chemotherapy treatments followed by bone marrow transplants. The hope was that they would be able to replicate the results of the so-called “Berlin Patient,” Timothy Brown, a man similarly afflicted by both cancer and HIV and believed to be the only man to have been functionally-cured of HIV.

The doctors, though disappointed, insist they will continue to work hard on a cure.

“We are continuing to recruit patients into the study,” Kuritzkes said. “It’s not a reason to give up research on a cure.”

HIV Cure Hopes Dashed As Virus Returns in Two Patients is a post from: The Inquisitr News

Bob Barker is back!

The longtime host of The Price Is Right returned to the set of the show this week to celebrate his 90th birthday, and a clip share by E! News shows the unsuspecting crowd going nuts.

Barker spent 35 years as host of the iconic CBS game show before turning over the reins to comedian Drew Carey.

Bob’s return also coincides with Pet Adoption Week at The Price Is Right, paying tribute to Barker’s longtime advocacy for animal rights. Barker was famous for ending every broadcast with the sign-off phrase: “Help control the pet population. Have your pets spayed or neutered.”

The special attention on animals may have been a bit of repentance on the show’s part. After Bob Barker retired, he blasted the show for giving away prizes to Sea World and the Calgary Stampede, which he said glorified the mistreatment of animals.

Bob Barker even went so far as to say he was ashamed of the show after he wasn’t invited back for its 40th anniversary special.

“I don’t know why I wasn’t asked to take part in some way… But I do know I am ashamed of the show and surprised at their complete disregard for the welfare of animals,” he said. “Were I still there, a prize to attend the Calgary Stampede would never have been considered. We never did anything that condoned animal cruelty. Apparently, things have changed.”

But the show’s producers wanted Bob Barker back in their good graces, and said his birthday was a great chance to honor the longtime host.

“I was looking for the perfect reason to bring Bob back again, and this TV legend turning 90 is the perfect reason,” executive producer Mike Richards told TV Guide.

Those hoping to catch Bob Barker on The Price Is Right can tune in Thursday morning on CBS.

Bob Barker Come On Down! Host Returns To ‘The Price Is Right’ For 90th Birthday is a post from: The Inquisitr News

From Drinks

If you've been watching top shelf Scotch pricing lately, you would be forgiven for thinking they were selling bottles of actual liquid gold. The whisky market's explosive growth over the past decade has been a double edged sword. While the increase in demand has led to greater distribution and visibility, it's also created an arms race at the top end of whisky. Master of Malt has listings for nearly 200 bottles well over the $1,000 mark, and you have to dig past another 300ish before the price drops below $500. Ouch.

Enter the Tun 1401 from Balvenie. Offered at $250, it's a mind-blowing Scotch that can compete with whiskys at twice or even four times the price.

The Tun 1401 has had a series of releases since it was first introduced in 2010. Balvenie's Malt Master, David Stewart, selects some of his favorite rare casks from their oldest warehouses. The various casks then get married in the historic Tun 1401 for several months before bottling. Each release is unique, as they are all one-of-a-kind blends of malts ranging from approximately 20-50 years (Balvenie doesn't release the exact ages of the blends). The current round, Batch 9, is a marriage of eleven ex-bourbon casks and three sherry butts and comes in at 98.6 proof, and it's a work of art.

This is a whisky that rewards taking your time. The scent opens up over a half hour in the glass, starting with ripe stone fruit, jammy citrus, spices, and a deep, rich sherried nuttiness supporting it all. The flavor is absolutely huge, the sherry blending perfectly with leather and oak, and dark chocolate balancing out the honeyed malt nectar. I literally did not want to swallow this dram, it was such a pleasure just hanging out with a mouthful of the juice, letting the flavors develop, shift, and wash over me like a warm golden wave. The finish stays with you all night, deep and spicy.

It's hard to make the argument that a $250 bottle of Scotch is a value, but if any bottle is, it's the Tun 1401, paying you back every dollar in the glass.

About the author: Andrew Strenio is a lover of all things potable. Since sneaking his grandmother's bourbon balls, he's moved on to touring distilleries and sipping snifters. He works by day making documentary television and films as an independent producer in Brooklyn.

Tasting sample provided for review consideration.

Fans of Blast Processing, rejoice: A 300-page retrospective on the sorely-missed Sega Genesis (aka Mega Drive) console has met its Kickstarter funding goal, then blown right past it.

Officially given the lengthy title "SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis: Collected Works," the book is officially sanctioned by Sega and serves as a 25th anniversary celebration of the Genesis' release. Inside the thick tome, you'll find pre-release artwork, American and Japanese design concepts for the console itself, and new interviews with some of the key figures responsible for creating the machine that spawned Sonic The Hedgehog. There's even coverage of the Activator, a fighting game peripheral that you younger readers can best imagine as the Kinect's less intelligent, awkward, vaguely functional cousin.

As of now, the countdown clock on the SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis: Collected Works Kickstarter campaign shows three hours remaining. Despite this, the book has already raised £94,840 of its £30,000 goal. Expect news on when this book will come available to the public shortly after the clock hits zero.

Sega Genesis art book does what Nintendon't, triples funding goal originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 09 Dec 2013 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What happens when an intelligent, educated man takes high doses of psychedelics for fifteen straight years? Let’s start with “Two Human Species Exist: Their Hybrids Are Dyslexics, Homosexuals, Pedophiles, and Schizophrenics,” because then you’ll immediately understand why I was interested in Bruce Eldine Morton, Ph.D. This is clearly a nutcase book, and its premise, which is that left-brained and right-brained people are two separate human species, doesn’t even need to be specifically discredited. Research within the past few years has shown there is no “handedness” in brains, and that simple correlations of artistic or logical behavior with a particular side of the brain are not possible.

Dr. Bruce earned his Ph.D. in 1965, and completed his postdoctoral work at MIT and Harvard later in the 1960s. He worked professionally at several universities until his retirement in 1995. He clearly had his shit together, to some degree, to be able to do this. It wasn’t until I found his 2013 book “Psychedelic Visions From The Teacher” that I figured out how he came to the conclusion that homosexuals are from right-brained men having children with left-brained women: He tripped balls for 15 years straight. The description of the book describes how he “used psychedelic compounds to explore inner space” for fifteen years, which is also just about exactly the time period between when he retired and when he published this latest book.

It’s true that psychedelic experiences can give you a new perspective on life. But it’s also true that heavy use of serotonin receptor agonists, a class of drugs that encompasses nearly every known psychedelic compound, can permanently alter or diminish the brain’s cognitive ability. It’s not hard to imagine that fifteen years of constant use of illegal mental-powder has at least some chance of wrecking your ability to live in reality.

Or, as Dr. Bruce would put it, “Neuroreality: A Scientific Religion To Restore Meaning, Or How 7 Brain Elements Create 7 Minds And 7 Realities, Discoverer Of Triadism, Familial Polarity Galactic Big Bang Engines And The xDARP”, which also happens to be the title of his 2011 book.

Alright, so my original plan with this was to freeze cubes of both peanut butter and jelly, bread them — with actual bread — and then deep fry them. Do you know what I discovered though? Jelly doesn’t exactly freeze.

Sure, it sticks together a little more than normal jelly does, but as far as freezing enough to the point where I could wrap it in bread and then drop it in my deep fryer it just wasn’t happening. So, I went with the next best thing, I deep fried the cubes of peanut butter and then just dipped them in jelly when I was done!

As I already mentioned, I started off by freezing some cubes of peanut butter in an ice cube tray. Then, I wrapped a slice of white bread around each one and just patted them into balls like you would with a snowball. The final step? Drop them in the deep fryer for about 30 seconds.

The finished product was delicious. The crispy breading kept the peanut butter, which was now nice and gooey from the heat of the oil, perfectly intact in the center of each ball and dipping the Deep Fried Peanut Butter in grape jelly was the perfect compliment to the dish. In retrospect I probably could have achieved my original goal by just deep frying some Uncrustables, but where’s the fun in that!?

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Look, it may seem derisive to describe Dying Light as just "Dead Island + parkour" but dang if that ain't what it looks like. In this six-minute video you'll see some light traversal and some heavy-duty zombie bashing using either an axe and sledgehammer. I had never noticed these x-ray melee attacks before and they definitely underline the physicality of the melee system.

The melee combat does seem really familiar but that's unsurprising as developer Techland was the studio behind Dead Island Riptide. The free running itself looks functional and a good way to get round the seemingly large playing area. I've yet to see a character go full on Mirror's Edge and just run and keep running but that might not be the type of game Techland is going for. We'll see Dying Light sometime in 2014 and I have the feeling I'll really need to get hands-on time with it to see how the traversal feels in practice.

Here is Krampus, aka the Goon of Evil Santa of the Old Gods, stealing children while driving some old car of indeterminate origin.

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