pileofcrapola

What’s that, you say? You never spend more than a dollar on a toothbrush? You might be saving money, but you also are missing out on some fascinating advances in toothbrush technology. For example, brushes based on the basic Weeble principle that stand up on your bathroom counter.

Okay, that sounds adorable, but there’s a basic hygiene reason why you might want a toothbrush that stands up or is hook-shaped so it can hang and dry out thoroughly. Our soft-bristled colleagues down the hall at ShopSmart checked out some new brushes and got recommendations from the American Dental Association. Allowing a brush to hang or sit up and dry thoroughly instead of lying on a shelf helps it stay clean and (relatively) bacteria-free.

Almost everyone wants soft bristles. Soft. Anything else may damage your gums.

Forget plastic: toothbrushes made with biodegradeable handles exist. One brand makes handles from recycled yogurt cups.

Last week, we told you about the New Jersey homeowner whose house had been dusted with a flour and cornmeal mixture ever since a pipe burst at a neighboring bakery back in January — and how the bakery refused to make good on its initial promise to take care of the mess. After her problem caught on with the media, the bakery is suddenly waking up and swearing it will tidy up after itself.

The octogenarian’s roof, windows, walls, lawn, and air-conditioners all became covered in the floury stuff on January 6. This was the second time in less than a year that her property had been polluted by the bakery’s raw ingredients. The first time, the company had taken care of the problem, but was unresponsive when she reached out to it about this larger-scale incident.

Eventually, after involving both the police and the city’s health department, a rep for the company promised she would contact the homeowner about getting the flour cleaned up, but that never happened. The homeowner got estimates for doing a proper cleanup job, but then got passed to a plant manager who refused to answer her calls and was never around when she went to the bakery.

Even when the Newark Star Ledger’s Bamboozled column — penned by Consumerist’s own Karin Price Mueller — got involved, no one at the company was willing to take responsibility and the company’s owner would not respond to multiple requests for comment.

But after the Bamboozled piece ran, and was picked up by Consumerist and other online and TV outlets, the company’s attitude changed.

In this update from Bamboozled, the homeowner says that the bakery finally sent over a crew to look at the mess it had made.

And the owner has finally come out of hiding, claiming his company “was always helping” the homeowner, even though her house had been covered in a floury, corny soot for almost all of 2014.

“We sent cleaning guys over in January but unfortunately they didn’t do a good job and we need to clean up her property,” he now says. “We want to get it power washed.”

He also says his people will see if the air-conditioning units can be saved; if not, he claims the bakery will replace them.

The understandably wary homeowner isn’t taking the bakery owner’s word on this one and is demanding that all promises be put in writing.

The bakery owner never explained to Bamboozled why no one would respond to calls from the homeowner or reporters, but claims, “this whole thing was a misunderstanding and I was never given the opportunity to make things right.”

The homeowner is more realistic, saying she knows it’s only because of media attention that the bakery got around to treating her like a human being.

“If it wasn’t for people like you they wouldn’t have done anything,” she says. “They would have completely ignored me, hoping this problem will go away.”

Bamboozled: Headstone finally at grave; Bun company promises dough to clean up flour mess [NJ.com]

What did you accomplish this weekend? Maybe you opened your pool, planted a garden, or took care of some pesky errands. Not Andrew. Andrew set what is, as far as we can determine, a world record for the most expensive drink possible at Starbucks. Tamping down the previous known record at $47.30 is the Sexagintuple Vanilla Bean Mocha Frappuccino at $54.75.

Andrew didn’t actually hand over that much money for his 128-ounce espresso milkshake. He’s a Gold member of Starbucks’ loyalty program, which entitles him to one free drink after every twelve that he buys. The free drink coupon entitles him to any drink available. Any drink? The only limits, it seems, were his imagination and what the baristas would let him get away with. They were game to let him get away with a lot.

For Andrew, taste was key. He had recently watched last year’s famous quadringoctuple frap video where another customer used a similar birthday coupon to assemble a 48-shot beverage with a bunch of other pricey substances in order to reach the mind-boggling $47 goal. Andrew’s goal was to break that record, and to produce something that’s drinkable. “The $47.30 guy put in two bananas, strawberry, matcha powder, pumpkin spice, and lots of other things that probably don’t go well together and definitely don’t go well with 40 shots of espresso,” Andrew told Consumerist in an e-mail. “They help raise the price, so I can’t fault him for the strategy, but I didn’t want to go that route.”

He had a secret weapon: a 128-ounce glass. Well, okay, more like a vase that you would fill with marbles or river rocks and use to decorate your house, but Starbucks considers it a glass for their purposes, unlike the other record-seekers who brought in a giant fishbowl. (We disqualify them from the single-drink record because a bunch of lattes in one fishbowl is not a single drink.)

The key step for Andrew’s world-record run was getting the baristas on his side. He walked up to the counter and laid out his goals. “So, this might sound a little weird, but I saw a video on youtube where a guy orders the most expensive Starbucks drink. I want to beat the record.” The cashier had seen the video, and through math and teamwork they figured out how to make a record-busting drink that would fit in his cup and break the record.

“It took a few minutes to figure out all the math, but in the end, it took about 55 shots to get us over the $50 line, and we just rounded it up to 60 to make it easy,” he explained to Consumerist. Everyone behind the counter seemed to be on board with the plan, and they produced the massive confection in about ten minutes.

“I gotta say, it was delicious,” Andrew declared. He reports that he drank maybe a third of it, then put the drink away for later enjoyment.

The key question you’re probably asking about this beverage: will it kill me? Well… maybe. Starbucks doesn’t publish information about how much caffeine is in a single espresso shot online, but estimates put it at about 75 milligrams per shot. If that’s the case, Andrew’s beverage would contain 4,500 milligrams (4.5 grams) of caffeine if made correctly. One expert told Popular Science that, not accounting for pre-existing medical conditions, a lethal overdose of caffeine for most adults would be about 10 grams. Large doses of the drug will still make you feel nervous and jumpy, affecting your blood pressure and heart, and you should not drink sixty shots of espresso in one sitting, ever.

Though the makers of e-cigarettes say their devices aren’t marketed to children, some companies that make liquid nicotine are not only using candy and fruit flavors that are forbidden from regular tobacco, but they’re using trademarked names of well-known snacks, sweets, and cereals. This isn’t sitting well with the companies that hold those trademarks.

For example, there’s apparently a liquid nicotine flavor called “Cinnamon Toast Crunch,” which just happens to be the name of a popular General Mills brand of cereal. And it’s not exactly an adult-target cereal (though I know way too many adults who eat it on a regular basis).

That’s why General Mills is issuing cease-and-desist orders to nicotine makers that use Cinnamon Toast Crunch or any of its other brands.

“Any use is unauthorized and would constitute an illegal misuse of our marks,” the company said in a statement to the Star Tribune. “General Mills has already sent a cease and desist letter to remove our branding and trademarks from these products – and we will take further action if necessary.”

And the cereal biggie isn’t the only one trying to keep its trademarks off of liquid nicotine. The Girl Scouts are none-too-thrilled about seeing “Thin Mint” being tossed around as a nicotine flavor, especially because of the youngster-friendly image of the Scouts.

“Using the Thin Mint name — which is synonymous with Girl Scouts and everything we do to enrich the lives of girls — to market e-cigarettes to youth is deceitful and shameless,” a rep for the organization told the Tribune.

Tootsie Roll Industries, the makers of cold-rolled steel Tootsie Rolls are also asking nicotine companies to please stop trying to cash in on its candy brand that has been getting stuck in kids’ teeth for over a century.

“We’re family oriented. A lot of kids eat our products, we have many adults also, but our big concern is we have to protect the trademark,” said Ellen Gordon, president and chief operating officer of Tootsie, who is not Dustin Hoffman in a wig. “When you have well-known trademarks, one of your responsibilities is to protect (them) because it’s been such a big investment over the years.”

Lawyers for these companies could be busy for quite some time, with around 1,500 businesses putting out liquid nicotine in the U.S.

“It’s the age-old problem with an emerging market,” explains a board member of the American E-liquid Manufacturing Standards Association (which is an actual thing and not something from a 1957 sci-fi novella). “As companies goes through their maturity process of going from being a wild entrepreneur to starting to establish real corporate ethics and product stewardship, it’s something that we’re going to continue to see.”

And he should know, as his company was slapped on the wrist for selling a “Junior Mint” branded nicotine.

So you’re a musician who regularly flies with your violin as carry-on luggage, and then one day you go to board a US Airways flight only to be told you have to either stow your instrument in the cargo hold where it could be lost, stolen, damaged or you can forfeit your tickets. What’s left to do but play a tune right then and there on the tarmac.

That’s what happened to 2/3 of Indianapolis-area band Time for Three, who tell IndyStar.com that they were given that no-win choice when trying to fly from Charlotte, NC, to Fayetteville, AR, for a show.

“We were making our connection on U.S. Airways… when we were stopped as we entered the plane by the captain and his stewards,” recalls band-member Nicholas Kendall, who caught the awkward post-incident scene in the above video.

While trying to get someone to discuss their plight, Kendall’s bandmate Zach De Pue decided to pull out his violin and start playing right there at the foot of the steps up to the plane.

Kendall attempts to get a crew member’s attention during the scene, but the crew member gives him the cold shoulder.

He says they were standing out on the tarmac for around 10 minutes before a complaint resolutions officer finally came to speak to them.

“There was no getting around it. We could either put the violins under the plane, or forfeit the flight,” Kendall told IndyStar. “We decided to forfeit the flight.”

As the Star points out, the FAA Modernization and Reform Act states that
“An air carrier providing air transportation shall permit a passenger to carry a violin, guitar, or other musical instrument in the aircraft cabin, without charging the passenger a fee in addition to any standard fee that carrier may require for comparable carry- on baggage, if — (A) the instrument can be stowed safely in a suitable baggage compartment in the aircraft cabin or under a passenger seat, in accordance with the requirements for carriage of carry-on baggage or cargo established by the Administrator; and (B) there is space for such stowage at the time the passenger boards the aircraft.”

The largest criminal antitrust investigation in the history of the Justice Department just got larger. It has nothing to do with telecommunications or giant mergers or any exotic items, though; it’s all about auto parts. A worldwide price-fixing and bid-rigging conspiracy related to those auto parts has resulted in 27 guilty pleas and over $2.3 billion in fines — and the investigation is still underway.

The AP reported this weekend on where the probe stands right now. It first became public back in 2010, when the FBI raided three auto parts suppliers in Detroit. Since then, the scope has only continued to grow.

So far over the past four years, 34 individuals have been charged and 27 companies have pled guilty, the AP reports, including nine Japanese suppliers late last year. Collectively, the individuals and companies have to date agreed to pay more than $2.3 billion in fines.

The inflated parts prices affected the end prices of at least 25 million Chrysler, GM, Ford, and Toyota cars, to a total of over $5 billion in parts. An attorney in the DoJ’s antitrust division told the AP, “It’s a very, very safe assumption that U.S. consumers paid more, and sometimes significantly more, for their automobiles as a result of this conspiracy.”

Sometimes apparent price-fixing can be explained away as different companies simply reacting to the same market forces. That is not the case here. “Though the techniques and strategies sometimes differed,” says the AP, “the executives generally carried out the collusion by trading coded emails, meeting at remote locations and destroying documents to avoid paper trails.”

That is indeed a “knowingly formed” conspiracy in the U.S., and it’s very illegal.

The Justice Department has been working with officials in Japan, Australia, and other countries in order to catch and prosecute the responsible parties. Despite all of the charges filed and fines paid since 2010, the DoJ hasn’t finished with the investigations, reports the AP.

Auto Parts Price-Fixing Probe Rattles Industry [Associated Press]

There’s a widely held belief among fitness and health experts that people who truly want to lose weight and keep it off should replace diet sodas and other artificially sweetened beverages with nature’s no-calorie drink: water. You know who stands to lose a lot of money from people believing that? The same industry that funded a new study that concluded that diet drinks are better for weight loss than water.

The study [PDF], from researchers at the University of Colorado and Temple University, was fully funded by the American Beverage Association, whose membership list contains nearly 40 different Coca-Cola bottling operations and just short of 30 Pepsi bottling businesses. It was published in the June 2014 of the journal Obesity.

Researchers looked at 303 men and women of varying shapes and sizes, broke them into two groups — those drinking beverages with non-nutrient sweeteners (NNS) and those drinking water. And even though the study plans to look at the results of these two groups after an entire year, the researchers went ahead and published the results of solely the 12-week period.

Why would they do that? Possibly because the results are favorable to the people funding the study.

According to the researchers, the no-cal sweetener group lost “significantly more weight compared to the water group” and “reported significantly greater reductions in subjective feelings of hunger than those in the water group.”

“These results show that water is not superior to NNS beverages for weight loss during a comprehensive behavioral weight loss program,” reads the conclusion right there at the top of the study, with absolutely no caveats or qualifiers.

But if you read deeper into the the study, there are some things left out of the talking points at the top.

Like the fact that in order to be eligible for the study, participants had to consume “at least 3 NNS [diet] beverages per week.” So the participants were not water drinkers, or sugary drink drinkers beforehand. They were people who were already regular drinkers of diet drinks.

After the Results, in the Discussion portion of the published study, the researchers admit that maybe this had an effect on the results.

“It should be noted that because eligible subjects were already NNS drinkers assignment to the NNS treatment did not require as great a behavior change as the Water group who had to abstain from NNS beverages for the trial,” reads the study.

Another glaring issue with the study lies not in the methodology, but in the researchers’ decision to publish before the end of the full 1-year period of the study.

“This brief, 12-week study adds to the evidence that artificially sweetened beverages do not increase appetite and weight gain, though the researchers should not have published a paper until the whole year-long study was completed,” says Michael Jacobson, Executive Director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, in a statement to Consumerist. “Whether artificially sweetened drinks lead to a little greater weight loss than water is something that will have to be confirmed in the final report on this study and then by future studies, ideally not sponsored by the beverage industry.

Likewise, Susan Swithers, a professor of Behavioral Neuroscience at Purdue University, tells CNN that “these short-term studies that look at weight can’t really tell us anything about whether or not these products are contributing to these increased risks… And it’s really hard to look at the (long-term) data and come up with any argument that they’re helping.”

Jacobson also points out that this study does not take into account other concerns about artificial sweeteners.

“It’s important to keep in mind that other research has linked long-term consumption of certain artificial sweeteners, including aspartame, acesulfame-potassium, and saccharin, to cancer in animals or humans,” he says.

This story has the appearance of a wacky news story, but is just sad all around. Back in 2009, a grocery co-op in Calgary banned a woman from the premises for shoplifting. Authorities say that the following year, she began a campaign of malicious food adulteration, planting needles, pins, and nails in the store’s products. Now she’s suing the store for defamation.

We cannot emphasize enough: the woman was convicted in 2012 of four counts each of mischief and trespassing. She had adulterated food products and produce at the store, including deli cheese, breads, juices, other bakery items, and produce. She brought her children along with her while committing her crimes, even though she had received a verbal ban first from that particular store, then from all affiliated stores in the province.

In March, she was released from prison when she was two-thirds of the way through her sentence. Now she has filed a lawsuit for $8 million, or about $7.37 U.S. dollars. Why? She claims that she “endured emotional distress and material loss” after being charged with adulterating store items. Her husband committed suicide in 2011, and the suit claims that this was because of the shame that the store’s “defamation” brought to the family.

When the Calgary Herald contacted the store for comment, they said that the case was long closed and they haven’t been served with this new lawsuit.

Woman convicted of putting needles in food is now suing Co-op for $8 million [Calgary Herald]
Pins in food brings 3-year term for Calgarian [CBC]

What do you get when you combine the second-largest chicken producer in the United States and one of the top packaged meat and frozen food companies in the world? The country’s largest producer of meat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Or to be more accurate, the possible take over of Hillshire Brands Co., by Pilgram’s Pride.

Colorado-based Pilgram’s Pride, a top producer of chicken products, announced Tuesday that it made a bid to buy Hillshire Brands, the company known for its sunny Jimmy Dean breakfast commercials and plethora of flavored hot-dogs, for $6.4 billion, the New York Times DealBook reports.

Officials with Pilgram’s Pride, which is owned by the world’s largest meat producer JBS, anticipate the deal will close by the third quarter of this year and that the two companies would have a combined revenue of $12.4 billion.

Wait — Isn’t Hillshire in the process of acquiring Pinnacle Foods, the company behind brands like Vlasic and Duncan Hines, for $4.2 billion? Not if Pilgram’s Pride has anything to say about it.

The folks at Pilgram’s, and some Hillshire investors, don’t think that pending deal provides enough value to Hillshire. Pilgram’s says it is willing to pay the $163 million termination fee to Pinnacle in order to have that deal called off.

“With our complementary products, we believe that together Pilgrim’s and Hillshire will better serve our combined customer bases for the benefit of all our stakeholders,” Bill Lovette, the chief executive of Pilgrim’s Pride, says in a news release. “We look forward to working constructively with Hillshire to sign a definitive merger agreement and quickly realize the benefits of this combination.”

Hillshire has recently been on a acquisition-spree. The company made two acquisitions in the last 12 months before its announcement to purchase Pinnacle. In April, the company purchased Van’s Natural Foods for $165 million. In September 2013, it purchased gourmet jerky maker Golden Island for $35 million.

Pilgrim’s Pride Offers $6.4 Billion to Buy Hillshire [DealBook]

The culture war (more of a slap-fight) over where and when it’s okay to sport Google Glass continues. A Manhattan restaurant is the latest to get caught up in the fracas after it asked a customer to remove her Glass device while dining, resulting in a burst of negative reviews from those who think the eatery crossed a line… and a backlash from those who aren’t impressed with the headgear and don’t see why anyone would wear one to dinner.

According to the Glass wearer, someone at the restaurant asked her remove the device “because customers have complained of privacy concerns in the past.”

“Never has happened to me before in the one year I’ve had Glass,” wrote the diner. “I left.”

She later writes in the comments below her post that she asked if the restaurant restricts the use of cellphones, and was told no.

As you can see from her post, many people supported her, writing things like, “It’s going to take a lot of education before the general public understands the benefits of Glass and stops being weirded out by the forward facing camera” and “We need a site that lists all Glass Friendly businesses and all anti-Glass businesses out there.”

It also led to about a dozen 1-star reviews on the restaurant’s Google page, with reviewers openly stating they were giving it the low rating solely because of the Glass incident.

“Give one star because to get here u can’t wear Google glass,” reads one. “[I]t’s like u can get in here with your phone which is almost the same, change the policy of your restaurant and you’ll get better review.”

“Technophobes through and through,” is the sole content of another single-star review written since the April incident.

While it’s not Yelp, bad reviews on Google sting because a restaurant’s Google star rating is presented right there at the top of the search results page.

These negative write-ups briefly knocked this restaurant’s score down to as low as a 2.4 out of 5. It’s since recovered because of the backlash against Glass users, though it’s now difficult to gauge a useful crowdsourced rating for the restaurant because the score may be artificially inflated.

As for the restaurant’s reasons for asking the customer to remove her Glass, it tells EV Grieve [via Eater] that some customers had previously raised concerns about privacy when another customer came in sporting Glass. That customer had no problem taking off the device, so it assumed this one would follow suit and stow her Glass during the meal.

“The fact is that the policy of asking Google Glass wearers to remove them is based off experience,” the restaurant explains. “It’s not a policy set in stone so it could very well change.”

Let’s just take a quick look at the arguments for and against asking restaurant customers to remove Glass…

PRO-GLASS: NO ONE IS RECORDING YOU
As we’ve pointed out before, the fact that the camera on Glass is fixed and forward-facing — intended to capture something akin to what the eye sees while looking directly ahead — a Glass user would need to be staring directly at someone in order to accurately capture them on video. The staring would be noticeable even if the person weren’t wearing something that looks like a quickly put-together prop from a fan-made sci-fi movie.

ANTI-GLASS: IF YOU’RE NOT USING IT, THEN WHY MUST YOU HAVE IT ON?
While people are beginning to integrate Glass into prescription lenses, most users do not require Glass to see their food or read a menu. If they aren’t going to be using the device while eating, why can’t they just put it away?

PRO-GLASS: IF YOU’RE NOT BANNING CELLPHONE USE, WHY BAN GLASS?
Smartphones are a much bigger annoyance to restaurant customers, with other diners taking calls, texting, snapping photos of their food (sometimes while standing on chairs), Tweeting, and just checking the time and weather. These phones can also more easily be used to surreptitiously record other diners or to post negative feedback online. Heck, Yelp is launching video reviews just for that purpose. If people are allowed to have their buzzing, ringing, bleeping phones out on the table through dinner, then what’s the harm in someone wearing a very obvious Google Glass?

ANTI-GLASS: GOOGLE GLASS IS JUST AS BAD AS SMARTPHONES AND THEY SHOULD BOTH BE BANNED
Yes, smartphones are a true nuisance at restaurants for all the reasons just mentioned — and any restaurant that appreciates its customers would also tell smartphone users to holster their devices. Texts can wait. Baseball scores can wait. Your food photo posted to Instagram? Not only will it look bad, but your friends are sick of seeing every muffin, french fry, scallop, and parfait that is put before you. It’s food and it’s meant to be eaten; not poorly photographed.

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Manassas Park Farmers market opens Inside NoVA The Manassas Park Farmers Market has opened for the season in a new location, Costello Park, near the Manassas Park Community Center, 99 Adams St. The market is open from 3 to 7 p.m. Tuesdays through November. At the market, vendors will have ... and more »

Manassas Petco to host Community Day, adoptions Inside NoVA The Manassas Petco is hosting a Community Day on May 31 where several animals in need of homes from more than eight local rescue organizations will be up for adoption. Every year, 7.6 million pets enter animal shelters nationwide, according to the ...

Prince William County news in brief Washington Post Fire and Rescue provides water safety tips. With Memorial Day weekend signifying the unofficial beginning of summer, the Prince William County Department of Fire and Rescue has provided the following tips to prevent water-related injuries and drownings.

Town Hall

GMU Military Clinic Director: 'Nobody's Asking' Our Vets if They're Okay Town Hall Laurie Neff is the director of George Mason University School of Law's Clinic for Legal Assistance to Servicemembers. CLASV allows students to represent active-duty members of the armed forces, their families and veterans in civil and administrative, ...

A New Jersey man who tossed his 2-year-old daughter into a creek while she was strapped into her car seat apologized Wednesday -- but not for murdering the child.

Divorce, it seems, has turned into a party -- special cakes and all.

Mascara, shampoo and nail polish are just a few of the cosmetics that have to meet pretty stiff safety standards in the U.S.

The Baltimore Department of Transportation estimates it will cost $18.5 million to repair a street collapse.

Fake appointments, unofficial logs kept on the sly and appointments made without telling the patient are among tricks used to disguise delays in seeing and treating veterans at Veterans Affairs hospitals and clinics.

An American soldier blinded in Afghanistan and the widow of another soldier killed there have filed a $44.7 million wrongful death and injury lawsuit against a Canadian man who was held at Guantanamo Bay and pleaded guilty to committing war crimes when he was 15.

Astros prospect Conrad Gregor was riding high when he hit his first homerun of the season Saturday night. Little did he know his dad was there to catch it.

A cross-breed of coyotes and wolves has made a home in D.C.'s Rock Creek Park, according to outdoors publication, Indefinitely Wild.

Oakley is a very handsome hound mix who is in search of a loving home.

Land along the York River that archaeologists believe was the center of a vast Indian empire before the first Europeans settled in Virginia is gaining White House attention as a possible addition to the National Park System.

The perfect man may be hard to find. But renting him is easy.

A new invasive and venomous fish species has been moving north from Caribbean waters in recent years, and is starting to gain in numbers locally.

Bruce Allen is now officially upgraded to president and general manager of the Washington Redskins.

When Warren Buffett announced in 2006 that he would give away his billions, he was flooded with individual requests for help that still flow in today.

Everyone knows about bug spray, but if you're serious about keeping that bite count down, there are more ways to prepare for those mosquitoes descending upon the D.C. area.

As we enjoy cookouts and the beautiful weather on Memorial Day weekend, those who've suffered the loss of their military hero are having a tough time.