firehose

In a daring inside job, 222 bottles of legendary Pappy Van Winkle bourbon were stolen from a distillery in Kentucky. With the crime remaining unsolved, the finger of blame is now pointing at obsessive billionaires, local residents and celebrity chefs.

Who'd have thought it was vegetarian-friendly?

Over the past decade, cosplay restaurants have expanded into a wider variety of themes like chubby cafes and butler cafes. But when New York City’s very first cosplay cafe, Maid Cafe NY, opened this past summer, it was met with a rash of uncomfortable impressions from the media.

Here for spreading far and wide is a graphical reminder of the important distinction between correlation and causation.

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This column really captures the essential differences between the Marvel and DC movies.

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It's no secret around these parts that we want Katee Sackhoff to be in All The Things. Turns out she does too. In an interview with TotalFilm the actress reiterated her long-held desire to play Harley Quinn. Or Jinx. Or Wonder Woman. Or be in Star Wars. She'll even play a rock. SOMEBODY CAST HER IN SOMETHING BIG, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.

Alaska: 33
Chicago: -15 (-30 with windchill)

The new year is a time when many of us vow to head back to the gym. Moderate exercise not only helps us slim down and look better, it's also associated with all sorts of good health outcomes, from higher energy and productivity, better sleep and sex, and even greater longevity. In many cases, exercise may treat diseases as effectively as drugs, as one BMJ study recently showed.

Everyone knows it, but not everybody does it. Just a month after making those New Year's resolutions, 36 percent will already have given up, according to University of Scranton psychologist John Norcross.

And overall, American adults aren't nearly as fit as they should be, according to a report on aerobic and muscle-strengthening exercise released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [see p. 326 of the PDF]. Drawing on data from the 2011 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey, a nationwide telephone survey with more than 450,000 responses, the report looked at who met the 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines: two weekly sessions of muscle strengthening, and 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise (or 75 minutes of vigorous intensity).

Just 51.6 percent of U.S. adults met the aerobic activity standard and less than a third (29.3 percent) met the muscle-strengthening standard. Only roughly one in five Americans (20.6 percent) met both standards. (And, since the data is self-reported, there's a good chance these numbers might be inflated).

The overall numbers are concerning. And, they vary considerably by state.

To visualize this, my colleague Zara Matheson of the Martin Prosperity Institute mapped the variations for the percent of adults who reported meeting the guidelines for aerobic exercise, muscle-strengthening exercise, and both together. The first map, below, shows the overall pattern for aerobic exercise.

As you can see, participation in aerobic exercise is most prevalent along the West Coast, in the Rocky Mountain states and the northeast, and far less so in the middle and southern portions of the country.

Colorado tops the list among states, with 61.8 percent of adults meeting the standard for aerobic exercise; Oregon is second (61.1 percent), followed by Vermont (59.2 percent), Hawaii (58.5 percent) and California (58.2 percent). On the flip side, the lowest levels of participation in aerobic exercise are found in southern states – Tennessee (39 percent), Mississippi (40 percent), Louisiana (42 percent), Alabama (42.4 percent) and West Virginia (43 percent).

The second map shows the results for muscle-strengthening exercises.

The map shows a similar pattern, with higher participation in muscle-strengthening in the West, the Rocky Mountains, and northeast and lower levels in the interior and the South. D.C. now tops the list (36.1 percent – though as always, D.C.'s presence on state lists is complicated by being a 100 percent urban area).

Ranking the states, Colorado is in second (35.6 percent), followed by Alaska (33.8 percent), Virginia (33.4 percent) and Arizona (32.5 percent). Conversely, West Virginia (20.2 percent), Tennessee (20.6 percent), Oklahoma (23.8 percent), Mississippi (23.9 percent) and Louisiana (23.9 percent) have the lowest levels of participation.

And finally the third map, below, charts the states whose residents score highest on both types of exercise.

Again, the highest levels are in the West and Rocky Mountain states and the northeast, with the lowest levels concentrated in the interior and South. Colorado is again first, followed by D.C. (26.3 percent), Alaska (25 percent), Arizona (24.2 percent), Hawaii (23.7 percent) and California (23.7 percent). On the flip side, West Virginia (12.7 percent), Tennessee (12.7 percent), Mississippi (14.2 percent), Alabama (15 percent) and Louisiana (15.5 percent) have the lowest levels of participation.

•       •       •       •       •

What factors lie behind these geographical patterns?

To get at this, my MPI colleague Charlotta Mellander ran a basic correlation analysis on participation in exercise and a number of key socioeconomic, demographic and health factors. I report the correlations for combined aerobic and muscle-strengthening, but the pattern for the two types of exercise individually is similar. As always, I note that correlation does not equal causation.

You might think people would exercise more in warmer, sunnier states. But that's not the case.

As the maps suggest, both forms of exercise are highly correlated with one another. States where people participate more in aerobic exercise also have higher levels of muscle strengthening (the correlation between the two is .81).

Also not surprisingly, states where people exercise more also have significantly lower levels of obesity and smoking, two known causes of preventable deaths. Mellander found substantial negative associations between exercise levels and obesity (-.80) and smoking (-.63). 

You might think people would exercise more in warmer, sunnier states. But that’s not the case. She found a negative correlation (-.38) between yearly average temperature and exercise across the 50 states.

Exercise levels also correspond to wealth and affluence, with substantial positive correlations to both income (.65) and wages (.64). States where people exercise more are also more highly educated, with a significant correlation (.68) to the share of adults who are college graduates. And exercise levels are higher in states with more post-industrial economies, as participation was highly positively correlated with the share of knowledge, professional and creative workers (.51) and negatively correlated with the share of blue-collar workers (-.65).

Fitness participation also tracks the nation's red/blue divide, being positively associated with the share of Obama voters (.51) and negatively associated with Romney voters (-.53). Exercise also hews closely to America’s religious divide. People in more religious states exercise less (the correlation between religiosity and exercise is -.69).

•       •       •       •       •

Writing in The Atlantic a couple of years ago, I noted that the physical fitness of our cities and metro areas is geographically spiky, and that "healthy or unhealthy lifestyles... are inextricably tied up with the nature and structure of our culture and society."

The fault lines of our economic geography shape our destiny: income, education, and social class influence everything from partisan preference to health. Exercise, it seems, is no exception.

"America's increasingly uneven geography of fitness," I concluded, "is perhaps the most visible symbol of its fundamental economic and class divide." This more recent report provides further evidence for this unhappy state of affairs.

All maps by MPI's Zara Matheson based upon CDC report data. Top image courtesy Shutterstock.com/Skydive Erick.

The intelligence may be artificial, but the rivalry is very real.

New York Times

TV on the Web: 'Downton's' Lady Mary fights crime politely USA TODAY Today's Pick: Tough Justice on Funny or Die. The Topic: You can take the girl out of Downton Abbey but you can't take the aristocratic Edwardian era mannerisms out of the girl. Michelle Dockery, aka Lady Mary, leaves Downton Abbey for the life of a very ... Downton Abbey Watch: Death and TaxesTIME Downton Abbey Season Four—Premiere Recap: Lady Mary Hosts a Horrid Pity ...Vanity Fair 'Downton Abbey': Season 4 BeginsNew York Times (blog) Washington Post -Telegraph.co.uk -Daily Beast all 228 news articles »

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Facebook has a mission: Connect the world, specifically the five billion people it has not yet signed up for its gargantuan social network. The billions of dollars these connections generate in advertising revenues? Just an indirect means of keeping employees from jumping ship before the job is complete.

It drives Mark Zuckerberg “crazy” when Facebook critics claim the company is “doing something because the goal is to make a lot of money,” he told the Wall Street Journal in a lengthy profile published yesterday. But in the dark days after the company’s IPO, Zuckerberg changed his mind on allowing more intrusive newsfeed ads—not for the cash it would generate, but because it would allow the company to hang on to talented engineers. “I care about this because I want to retain my people,” he said in a meeting, according to the Journal.

Before Facebook went public, “if you brought up revenue in an argument with Zuck, you would lose automatically,” one former staffer told the Journal. But then came the disastrous IPO and a big decline in the company’s stock price. Facebook’s engineers were “worried that top management couldn’t relate to their financial stress because those executives owned so many Facebook shares that they were rich despite the stock’s slide.” So Zuckerberg made a suggestion:

“Why don’t we just explore ads in news feed?” he said, according to people at the meeting. Mr. Zuckerberg indicated that he would be open to the possibility of more types of ads there, including ones not tied to “likes.”

“Oh, my gosh, he’s actually open to it,” one executive present at the meeting remembers thinking. No one in the room asked Mr. Zuckerberg why. They were too worried he would change his mind.

Mission creep is nothing new for technology firms after they’ve gone public: Google started off with the motto “don’t be evil” and has since branched off into autonomous military robots. So the next time you’re confronted with an annoying auto-play video ad on your Facebook newsfeed, take heart: You’re interacting with an ad that will infinitesimally increase Facebook’s quarterly revenue, perhaps boosting Facebook’s share price just enough to convince a Facebook software engineer to stick around and help connect the world.

The reason Im returning Glass is less to do with the technology and more to do with the social implications.

Our SB Nation writers sound off about the Chargers' blowout win over the Bengals in the wild card round.

The San Diego Chargers scored a dominating upset win over the CIncinnati Bengals in the wild card round of the playoffs on Sunday. San Diego took the game, 27-10, on Cincinnati turf, taking advantage of three Andy Dalton turnovers. The Chargers went into this game as the six seed with a 9-7 record, making it into the playoffs with an awful lot of help from some other teams choking in Week 17. It's San Diego's first playoff win since 2008, and the third consecutive wild card loss for the Bengals.

It's also yet another playoff game lost by Cincinnati with Marvin Lewis at the helm. He's been in charge of the team for 11 seasons, though the recent losses are more significant given the weapons on the team.

Cincinnati led 10-7 heading into the second half, but allowed 20 consecutive points to a Chargers team that struggled on offense. Philip Rivers threw for just 128 yards off of 12 completions, but didn't throw an interception. He was assisted by 196 rushing yards from primarily Ronnie Brown, Danny Woodhead and Ryan Mathews.

The Bengals played a solid game on the defensive side of the ball, but they failed to create turnovers and with Cincinnati's mistakes on offense, the writing was on the wall. John Gennaro of Bolts From The Blue believes that winning the turnover battle was the key to San Diego's success:

Heading into this game, I thought the Chargers had a chance to win. Most of the Bengals home wins this year required multiple turnovers by the opponent. If the Chargers could avoid turnovers, I thought they could win. Well, not only did San Diego not have a single turnover, they forced the Bengals into four turnovers (including a crucial one at the end of the first half the probably saved the team a touchdown).

One has to wonder where the Bengals go from here. At this point, with a young, talented offense failing to execute, the blame will fall on the head coach and the quarterback. Josh Kirkendall of Cincy Jungle is pulling no punches, noting that the Bengals have been here before and that Dalton deserves as much of the blame as anybody:

Despite all of the signs suggesting that Cincinnati would finally break free from a 23-year old drought without a playoff win, the Bengals did what the Bengals do: Collapse in a big game, lose a playoff game and confirm the talking points about Marvin Lewis failing to get that elusive playoff win, reaching 0-5 for his postseason career. Reexamining his future is going to be fervent, if not with unfavorable consensus.

Andy Dalton will receive a bulk of the criticism, and in one respect, he should. Though the offensive line struggled against San Diego's pass rush, Dalton routinely held onto the football taking sacks or making panic-like throws. Often failing to recognize the blitz, or finding hot reads to get rid of the football, his scrambles usually led to quarterback sacks or untouched fumbles caused by the ground. At one point, feeling a nonexistent pass rush and bailing from the pocket, Dalton was often scrambling into pressure. Failing to recognize the blitz and his hot reads led to much of it.

More from SB Nation NFL

• SB Nation's 2014 NFL playoff coverage and brackets

• Kelly: Watch for these signature plays during Wild Card weekend

• Super Bowl odds for every possible matchup | NFL coaching tracker

• 2014 NFL mock draft: Offseason planning begins for 20 teams

• Death of a football player: Helmet-to-helmet hit killed Derek Sheely

The FBI's creeping advance into the world of counterterrorism is nothing new. But quietly and without notice, the agency has finally decided to make it official.

An anonymous reader writes "Co3 Systems announced that Bruce Schneier has officially joined the company in the role of its first CTO. Schneier joins Co3 after spending seven years as BT's Chief Security Technology Officer and the previous seven years as CTO of Counterpane Security. Schneier's formal engagement with Co3 Systems began early last year when he joined the company's Advisory Board. His intersections with the Co3 team date much farther back to when he and Co3's CEO John Bruce worked together at Counterpane."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Let's take a look at this preview art for Regime, the card game that expands on Suspense's deduction mechanics and takes them in a slightly different direction.

You are diplomats sent to a mysterious nation that has just opened its borders after a long seclusion. Being experienced diplomats, you know the public faces are just puppets and the true power brokers are somewhere behind the scenes. You and the other players try to deduce who is the true power behind the throne.



I'm carrying on the high-contrast, brushy look that I proposed in this earlier post. These are 36 different characters, each of whom might be the true power behind the throne. Their names are just for flavor, which is why they're so small. The important bits are their suit, their title, and their rank.

Each round, the dealer knows the secret victory condition: The card with (highest, lowest, most, or fewest) (suit or title) (in play or in hand) is the true power behind the throne. Whoever possesses that card wins the round and scores points equal to the stars on their winning card. Players have means of revealing or keeping secret certain pieces of information from the rest of the players.

Here's the complete deck for now. Some small changes still need to be made, like certain titles and adding a few cards. I can talk more about how the game actually plays in a future post. For now, enjoy the pretty pictures.


And here are some of the victory condition cards. They're a little plain, but that's out of necessity. These need to be easily read and referenced from all around the table.

Sounds like Wade Phillips will probably not renew his suite.

To Texan suite sales-I am sorry,but because of recent changes I will Not renew my purchase of a suite.Hope u understand. Wade Phillips

— Wade Phillips (@sonofbum) January 6, 2014

The Texans fired defensive coordinator Wade Phillips. Guess the sales team isn't on that Google Group.

We just want you to continue to read our Texans site, Battle Red Blog, Wade. Hope you understand.

(via Deadspin)

Xerograde created a compilation video of popular GIF Sound submissions from reddit. GIF Sound is a website that allows its users to match animated GIF images with sound clips from YouTube.

via reddit, Daily Picks and Flicks

It's emerged Clint Hocking, the lead designer of Far Cry 2 and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, left Valve towards the end of last year. According to Hocking's blog and his LinkedIn profile, the industry veteran's post as a designer and level designer ...