pileofcrapola

There are few items in the world of food more difficult to dispose of than grease. And you should never take a shortcut by pouring it down the drain! So what should you do? The deep fryers at Stack Exchange offer their advice.

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Eating in season produce is better for you , not to mention better for your wallet. There are a lot of ways to figure out what's in season , but RipeTrack is a pretty cool site that shows, you on a visual spectrum, what's in season when.

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It's good to know the proper way to thaw foods , but when it comes to fish, save yourself the time and effort and just cook it straight from the freezer.

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There are a lot of choices we don't get to make. We can't pick our circumstances, we can't choose our luck, and sometimes we have to do things we would never have chosen to do. As legendary puppeteer Jim Henson points out, though, sometimes the things we hate most are the things we do to ourselves.

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A “Little Free Library” is a small container, often a cabinet, filled with books that passers-by can take, read, and return as they please. They can also donate their own books. There are thousands of these mini-libraries all over the world, but the city of Leawood, Kansas won’t stand for it, and has asked the family to take theirs down.

When we say “thousands,” were’ not exaggerating. There’s probably an officially registered Little Free Library near you, which you can find using this map.

The city isn’t trying to claim a monopoly on library services or anything like that. The library, which is a house-shaped cabinet the size of a particularly spacious birdhouse, is considered a “structure” from the city’s point of view, and single-family homes can’t have “structures” in their front yards. The city thinks that the house is an “accessory structure” like a shed or playhouse. It had to be removed from the front yard yesterday, or the family would receive a citation from the city.

This library was built by a nine-year-old boy and his father as a Mother’s Day gift, since his mother had seen a similar library elsewhere and loved the idea. Now they’ve stashed the “accessory structure” in the garage until the next meeting of the city council, when the nine-year-old who put up the library plans to make his case to the government.

Boy plans to fight city ordinance that shut his “free little library” down in Leawood [WDAF]
Leawood shuts down boy’s little free library [KCWE]
Little Free Library [Official Site]

In June’s recall roundup, we have the usual suspects: flammable kids’ pajamas, poorly wired lamps, self-firing crossbows, and collapsing ottomans.

On with the Recall Roundup!

Kids
Empress Arts Children’s Pajamas – violate federal flammability standards

Home
Bed Handles Inc. Adult Portable Bed Handles – risk of entrapment and strangulation; three elderly and/or disabled adults have died.
Office Depot Gibson Leather Task Chairs – seat may break from chair base, making user fall out
Cordelia Lighting Two-Lamp Fluorescent Shop Lights (Home Depot) – risk of electric arc and fire
Quantum ELM and ELM2 emergency light fixtures – may overheat, poses fire hazard
Hamilton Beach Baby Food Processors – metal pin in food bowl may fall out and end up in food
Holmes Ceramic Heaters – May overheat, poses fire hazard
Lea Covington and Hannah Collection Bunk Beds – may be assembled incorrectly, posing entrapment hazard to children.
Weil-McLain Ultra models 80, 105, 155 and 230 MBH Ultra Series Boilers – may release gas into the house; risk of fire and explosion
Glass Bubble Knobs (Cost Plus World Market and World Market) – knobs may shatter
Wilson and Fisher brand Cayman Resin Wicker Ottoman – center of ottoman may collapse
American Signature Table Lamps – improperly wired; risk of electric shock and fire

Lawn & Garden
Trident Series 2 Ultraviolet Sanitation Systems for pools – Risk of electric arcing and fire hazard
Mirka Random Orbital Sanders – may short-circuit and pose fire hazard
Hitachi Koki Pneumatic Nailer – can jam and fling out multiple nails at once

Toys
Lakeshore Bristle Builders for Toddlers – animal figurine bases may break off; choking hazard

Sports & Outdoors
Reebok-CCM Goailie Throat Collars – a skate could penetrate the collar, which is what it’s suppose to protect against
Precision Shooting Crossbows – may fire without trigger being pulled
Mission Archery MXB crossbows – may fire without trigger being pulled
2014 SCOTT Speedster 30 and 40, and Contessa Speedster 25 and 35 road bicycles – steerer tube may break

Electronics
Nest smoke and carbon monoxide detectors – Device may become too easy to turn off
Linear Personal Emergency Reporting System Transmitters – may fail to send a “low battery” signal when batteries are low
Travel Charger Kits for Nokia Lumia 2520 Tablets – plastic cover may come off; electrocution hazard

On the occasions when you are allowed to have your cake and eat it too (which I never understood because of course if you own a cake, you should eat it, otherwise what’s the point in having it?) and don’t manage to serve it all up in one sitting, you might stow the leftovers in the refrigerator. But if it’s a round cake, those two exposed cuts can leave the cake dry and stale after a night spent uneaten. WHAT TO DO?

Settle down, folks. Your round cakes can stay spongy and fresh, oh yes, they can, according to a mathematician writing in 1906 who was clearly either very greedy or had no friends to share cake with.

As demonstrated in a video from Numberphile’s Alex Bellos (h/t to The Salt) called “The Scientific Way to Cut a Cake,” Sir Francis Galton wrote in a 1906 letter to the journal Nature that the “ordinary method of cutting out a wedge is very faulty.”

See, cutting wedges leaves two walls of exposed cake, which will dry out even if you cover the cake in plastic. But if you cut more rectangular pieces starting from the middle of the cake, and keep pushing the remainder back into a circular shape (keeping it that way with a rubber band), it’ll weather out the fridge much better.

While I don’t have this problem because leftover cake does not exist in my home, check out the video below if you’re a multi-day cake eater:

*Thanks for the link, Julie!

It would be easy to say it’s been a tough week for American Apparel founder and former CEO Dov Charney, but let’s be serious: Getting the boot from your company’s board and then dealing with a video that allegedly shows you dancing around with your private bits out in full view of alleged employees… well, that’s more than a tough week. You know, on top of a plethora of past sexual harassment lawsuits and a reputation for bawdy, bad behavior and near-bankruptcy.

I won’t embed the reported video here, but before I go linking to things, just know that what you’re clicking on will then have links to very, very not safe for work content.

Anyway: Gawker reports (NSFW! NSFW!) that it received a video from a tipster claiming that said footage contains a buff Charney, shimmying around in his birthday suit in front of purported employees. Another tipster wrote into the web site to chime in and affirm that there are either current or former employees in the video.

Whoever is filming it, or whether or not the founder of a large retail company is the person dancing in it naked as the day he was born, someone is without a stitch and dancing, and that fella knows very well he’s on camera — dancing for it, wiggling his eyebrows at it and acting faux shy when a voice asks him to shake his butt.

See? You don’t even need to watch it. You’re welcome.

Earlier this week, the American Apparel board said its decision to give Charney the boot “grew out of an ongoing investigation into alleged misconduct.”

Charney is going to fight it, a source said, adding that he was “totally taken by surprise.”

Yes, surprise, the opposite reaction of the person in the previously mentioned video at being filmed.

And finally, this is the kind of wiggling we like to see around here:

Listen, plenty of young/youngish people think Google Glass looks a little bit weird, so the fact that a group of older folks can’t quite get a grip on the idea isn’t too surprising. Still, “This looks like my hearing aid” is pretty darn funny.

The Fine Brothers sat down to make a YouTube video with members of the older set experiencing Google Glass for the first time, and the reactions are, of course, comedy gold: “Kinda weird,” “Looks like a science fiction movie” and “I think you can see a screen up here when you put it on” all serve the purpose of making us giggle about how weird technology really is.

Once the subjects have Google Glass on properly (after a few miscues and sheepish giggles, of course) the fun continues — “Spaceship 12 calling Earth! Spaceship 12 calling Earth!” one guy yells, making me very much wish he was my pal.

Some folks have heard of Google Glass — but how?

“Because I’m hip,” asserts one very hip lady indeed.

But the fact that you actually speak to it to make it work? “You’re kidding.”

Nope. No kidding, Pamela my friend, just cyborging.

Taking the wrong prescription can have devastating consequences. Just ask a Houston man who alleges a mistake at the pharmacy counter made him blind in one eye.

The 65-year-old man is suing CVS Pharmacy claiming he was blinded in the left eye after being given anti-bacterial ear drops to treat an eye infection, KHOU-TV Houston reports (warning: video autoplays).

The man, who suffers from a variety of ailments, sought treatment at a local Houston hospital in 2012 and was given a prescription to help his pink eye/conjunctivitis.

But instead of receiving cortisporin opthalmic suspension – a common conjunctivitis treatment – at the local CVS, the man’s attorney claims he was given neomycin-polymyxin-HC, a treatment for bacterial ear infections.

The lawsuit shows the original packaging and instructions that came with the solution the man received from CVS. The packaging identifies it as an “EAR SOLN” and instructs the user to “INSTILL 3 DROPS IN EACH EYE TWICE DAILY FOR 5 DAYS.”

Upon using the drops, the man’s caregiver said he immediately felt pain and was rushed back to the hospital emergency room.

According to the suit, documentation in medical journals and pharmaceutical websites regarding the ear infection treatment clearly state that it should never be placed in the eye.

Doctors confirmed that the man is now blind in his left eye. His caregiver says the man now has problems with pain and depth perception.

“He used to be fully capable of operating day-to-day on his own,” the man’s caregiver says. “And now he looks to me to support him in everything that he does.”

The man’s attorney tells KHOU-TV that they are waiting to hear from CVS.

In a statement to the news station, a CVS rep said it could not comment on matters involving pending litigation.

Man claims CVS mistake cost him his sight [KHOU-TV]

New York is just about ready to legalize medical marijuana in the state for patients with serious illnesses — and no, your cousin Chad’s extreme boredom is not an illness — as long as patients aren’t smoking the stuff.

Governor Andrew Cuomo and other legislative leaders have come up with an agreement that lets doctors prescribe marijuana to patients with cancer, AIDS and epilepsy, but will require that prescription to be filled in non-smokeable form, ostensibly to ward against recreational users from cheating the system.

According to The Journal News, Cuomo called the medical pot agreement “the best of both worlds,” because patients who need it can have it, but the program won’t be abused, it’s hoped.

“There are certainly significant medical benefits that can be garnered,” Cuomo said during a news conference Thursday. “At the same time, it’s a difficult issue because there are also risks that have to be averted — public-health risks, public-safety risks — and we believe this bill strikes the right balance.”

Lawmwakers are expected to approve the bill soon, with the aim of having the medical-marijuana program up and running within 18 months. The marijuana will be taxed at 7% of gross sales.

All the reefer would be grown in state at five approved sites, and dispensed at 20 outlets around the state. Instead of offering smokable marijuana, patients would be authorized to vaporize it or use oil-based cannabis extracts.

New York will become the 23rd state with a medical-marijuana program if the bill passes.

“New York has finally done something significant for thousands of patients who are suffering and need relief now. They will benefit from this compromise,” said the director of the Drug Policy Alliance, “That said, this is not the bill we wanted.” That’s in reference to concern over the limitations placed on the drug.

Under the program, medical marijuana would be available to patients with cancer, HIV/AIDS, Lou Gehrig’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, significant damage to the nervous tissue of the spinal cord, epilepsy, inflammatory bowel disease, neuropathies, Huntington’s disease and other conditions added by the state Department of Health.

N.Y. set to legalize non-smokeable medical marijuana [The Journal News]

Reader Aaron is annoyed at Groupon. He bought a voucher for a local restaurant: a sushi place, to be exact, but the type of business doesn’t matter all that much. What does matter is that he paid for a voucher, which required that he make a reservation at the restaurant through Groupon’s app. This wouldn’t be a problem if he could get a reservation.

“When I tried to make a reservation through the Groupon app there were very few options,” he explains. This wouldn’t be a problem, but the voucher is only valid at the reservation time that customers schedule through the Groupon app. He happened to be near the restaurant at the time, so he walked over to ask about the limited reservation times. It turns out they’re using Groupons to drum up business during off-peak hours. “I walked down the street to the restaurant and the hostess informed me that the Groupon only is valid 5:00PM-6:30PM and then after 9:00PM,” he explains. “On the website it says ‘Offer valid only at scheduled reservation time’ which seems scammy to me.”

Calling it a “scam” is going too far, we think, but this is definitely something that you should look out for when buying restaurant vouchers.

What do clean water, locally sourced labels and certified organic products have in common? Tough one, right? They are all thing consumer are willing to pay more money for in order to feel as if they’ve made a difference in the world.

A new research report from Nielsen found that consumers are attracted to social-responsibility efforts and are willing to pay top dollar to satisfy their “do-gooder” instincts, Bloomberg Businessweek reports.

In an online survey of 30,000 consumers in 60 countries, 55% of respondents said they would pay more for products or services from companies committed to positive social and environmental impact.

And what age group was most likely than all others to feel the need to be a do-gooder? The millennials. See, we’re not all that selfish.

That’s good news for companies that provide a buy one, give one business model. Tom’s latest venture involves consumers purchasing a bag of coffee, and in return a specified amount of clean water is donated to a community in need.

In fact, that issue – access to clean water – topped the list of concerns premium paying customers cared about the most. Other highly-ranked causes included concerns about access to sanitation and environmental sustainability.

As far as retail analysis goes, Nielsen found that sales of products marketed as socially responsible grew more quickly than those of comparable products. This was a lesson producers learned when using “locally sources” or “organically certified” labels on products.

Sales of products with sustainable claims on the packaging grew on average 2% between 2013 and 2014. Products that promoted sustainability actions through marketing programs saw sales increase by %5 during the same time frame.

Still, Nielsen suggests taking the results of the survey with a grain of salt. Not all consumers practice what they preach to opinion polls.

Consumers Believe They’re Eager to Pay More for Do-Gooder Products [Bloomberg Businessweek]

Housing Corner: So What's the Big Deal with the Route 28/29 Area? The Centreville Independent Greetings! When Frank Klimko asked me to join The Centreville Independent he was adamant that I convey the flavor of why people choose to live “way out here in Western Fairfax County.” So with this in mind I wanted to focus on the Centerville route 28 ...

UPDATED: Man charged with stalking girls in Manassas Inside NoVA Joseph Brigtani, 37, was charged with stalking after, police say, he followed girls in Manassas on June 11. Posted: Thursday, June 19, 2014 10:00 pm | Updated: 1:04 am, Fri Jun 20, 2014. UPDATED: Man charged with stalking girls in Manassas 12 comments. and more »

Fairfax woman accused of killing newborn in 2013 Washington Post The girl was just a day old when her 23-year-old mother walked into the emergency room of Inova Fairfax Hospital last year, holding the tiny body, according to a search warrant. The woman later told police that the baby had died during birth, the ... and more »

The VA says nearly 80 percent of its senior executives got performance bonuses last year, despite widespread treatment delays and preventable deaths at VA hospitals and clinics.

Only about half of the veterans diagnosed with PTSD last year after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan received the recommended therapy despite efforts by the Department of Veterans Affairs to beef up its mental health staffing, the Institute of Medicine said in a report released Friday.

Raped as an 8-year-old by her then-stepfather, a woman kept the secret from her family for nearly a decade until she drafted a college application essay, prosecutors say.

Hagerstown police have identified the woman and her two daughters who were found dead in their car at a middle school parking lot.

The government has abandoned a botched plan to temporarily shelter hundreds of Central American children in a rural Virginia town, an elected official informed of the decision told The Associated Press on Friday.

The Army says a man found with a single gunshot wound at Arlington National Cemetery apparently committed suicide.

A report that scientists are calling one of the most comprehensive studies of great white sharks finds their numbers are surging in the ocean off the Eastern U.S. and Canada after decades of decline -- bad news if you're a seal, but something experts say shouldn't instill fear in beachgoers this summer.

A man who babysat a Fairfax County girl is charged with raping her.

As severe summer storms move through the area, there's a chance insurance claims will be filed because of home damage. If Mother Nature's fury sends a tree limb crashing, those limbs and holes needed moved or patched.

NASA is zeroing in on the asteroids it wants to capture, haul near the moon and have astronauts visit.

Contrite federal officials apologized to residents of a tiny southern Virginia town Thursday night for keeping them in the dark as they prepared to bring in hundreds of Central American children and teenagers to a temporary shelter.

A 26-year-old woman has been sentenced to four years in prison for breaking her 8-month-old daughter's arms and leg.

We here at Consumerist are skeptical at best about Comcast’s bid to merge with Time Warner Cable. From where we sit, the deal looks distinctly anticompetitive and likely to harm consumers. Plenty of other folks agree, but not just lawmakers and advocacy organizations. It turns out, over half the country thinks this is a bad idea.

Our colleagues down the hall at Consumer Reports ran a nationally representative survey to see what ordinary people think about Comcast and its plan to buy out Time Warner Cable, and the responses weren’t pretty. A full 56% of Americans oppose the merger, and only 11% of respondents were in favor of it.

But even though a third of respondents didn’t have a strong opinion on whether Comcast and TWC should be able to merge, they still think the resulting corporate marriage will be harmful for consumers on every front.

About three quarters of respondents — 74% — believe that the merger will increase cable and internet prices for everyone. That same number also agreed that the merger will leave consumers with even fewer choices for providers, because smaller companies will not be able to compete.

As for customer service? The most-hated providers in the most-hated industry aren’t likely to win themselves any new fans with this move. A solid two thirds (66%) believe that the lack of competition will leave Comcast with no reason to bother improving their customer service — which 54% predicted will get even worse.

But above all else — customer service, costs, and monopolistic tendencies — consumers are concerned about their very ability to access the content of their choosing. With net neutrality regulations up in the air and peering disputes affecting content companies nationwide, it’s no surprise that a full 81% of respondents are afraid that Comcast’s post-merger market share would give them the leverage to favor their own programming and scuttle their competitors’.

Comcast’s claims about how beneficial their plan to buy TWC is, on the other hand, don’t seem to fly at all. Just 16% agreed that the merger would increase Comcast’s operating efficiency and lower consumer prices, and only a third agreed that the combination of the two companies would allow for more innovative products and services to reach consumers.

Delara Derakhshani, policy counsel for Consumers Union, the advocacy arm of Consumer Reports, said, “Most Americans don’t have time to follow complicated corporate mergers but this deal has definitely captured the public’s attention. Consumers are tired of rising monthly bills and lousy customer service for cable and Internet and have little faith that this mega merger will make things any better.”

Maybe that’s why Comcast earned itself a shiny golden poo this year. Meanwhile, the survey respondents have already proven to be prescient: 61% felt that if the merger were to be go forward, it would be seen as a green light for other companies to make the same move.

The survey was conducted in April; AT&T and DirecTV announced their plan to merge — for the sake of competing with Comcast, they claim — in May.

It seems Urban Outfitters hasn’t learned its lesson when it comes to mixing drug abuse and retail: After previously pulling prescription medication bottle items from its shelves, the store that brings in flocks of teenagers is now featuring a hair salon in a new New York City store called “Hairroin” (get it?), where shoppers can apparently get promotional hypodermic needle pens and other items emblazoned, “I Love Hairroin.” This, in a state with an actual heroin epidemic: The number of drug-related deaths more than doubled from 940 in 2004 to 2,044 in 2012, according to the New York Health Department.

Consumerist reader Frank wrote in to express his displeasure over the new permanent fixture at a recently opened Urban Outfitters location in NYC. This one is there to stay, but other temporary pop-up salons have ticked off parents with Hairroin promotional items in other cities as far back as 2012.

Reader Frank hails from Rockland County, NY, just a bit to the northwest of NYC, where, according to a recent report by the Associated Press, heroin and prescription painkiller investigations have doubled as people of all ages are abusing the drug. A bag of heroin can cost as little as $5 there.

“This whole region is going through a massive heroin epidemic that has had devastating effects on the youth. Addiction, overdoses, and jail have been the result for many young people here,” Frank writes.

Indeed, New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo recently called for a crackdown on the surge in heroin use in the state (neighboring New Jersey is also in trouble, with the number of people seeking treatment for heroin abuse there hitting a five-year high of 25,442 in 2012).

Speaking at an event at Rockland Community College June 11, Gov. Cuomo said: “This state has a serious problem with heroin, and it has been growing, and it is getting worse, and it is of epidemic proportions at this point,” according to the Democrat Chronicle.

As such, our reader says the inclusion of the Hairroin salon and its “sickening theme” and freebie syringe pens is crossing the line.

“This is just too much,” Frank writes. “They pass these pens out to kids!”

Yes, Hairroin is its own business, with standalone locations in NYC and L.A., that appears to have featured the free pens and other paraphernalia for a while as part of its company’s marketing repertoire, so they’re not technically Urban Outfitters products, perhaps. And yes, parents can tell their teens not to frequent those salons (good luck with that one) if they’re worried about its name or promo swag.

But because this is a permanent feature/partnership at this particular Urban Outfitters, we reached out to the UO to see if it had a comment on hosting the salon, considering its status as a purveyor of clothing and other products aimed largely at young people.

We’ll let you know if we hear back.

Snapshot of heroin use, deaths in 26 states [Associated Press]
Cuomo announces crackdown on heroin surge [Democrat Chronicle]