Those little tablets that help with indigestion are actually awesome for other tasks too. You can clean your toilet with Alka Seltzer tablets or relieve bug bites. Turns out, they're also useful to clean the parts of jars and vases where a scrub brush can't reach.
    
|
After exercising, chocolate milk is best. Ginger tea helps with nausea, sore throat and motion sickness. Different drinks work well for different situations and Greatist has a fantastic post rounding up what you should drink in any event. Here are a few samples:
|
|
I love caramelized onions, especially the burnt bits at the bottom. But those also tend to stick to the pan and are difficult to scrape off. The Kitchn recommends adding a little bit of water at the end of cooking, while the pan's still on heat, to loosen that delicious crusty part.
|
|
Spreading salt (or gravel) on snow or ice helps it melt faster and provides some much-needed traction. Redditor TheGuyThatAteYourDog shows us an easy way to spread salt evenly.
|
|
There are certain dishes most amateur chefs refuse to try. One of the biggies: homemade pasta. But good DIY tagliatelle, fettucini, and tortellini is doable—you don't even need a pasta machine. The cooks at Stack Exchange provide tips on cooking up pasta from scratch.
|
|
Commercial dusting sprays are typically expensive, smelly, and have chemicals you may or may not want to use. They also seem to leave a slight residue behind no matter how hard you polish after you spray. This DIY dusting spray may be just the replacement you're looking for.
|
|
PSA: Valentine's Day is next week. Whether or not you celebrate the occasion, this infographic from happiness training app Happify could help you improve your romantic relationship. It sums up several important findings from studies on what makes couples happy.
|
|
Want to look slim and sharp in your dress shirt, and not like you're wearing a poofy blouse? This video from Birchbox Man demonstrates how to use the military tuck to do just that (-whether you're a guy or a gal).
|
|
Simply offering consumers the ability to use a cart increases the chance a consumer will purchase more, at least that was the thought behind the cart’s creation in 1938. The first carts were composed of two stacked wire baskets. The carts we use today have nearly tripled in size from their humble beginnings, Slate reports.
Now we have wide, open-space carts at nearly every supermarket and grocery store, not to mention the flatbed-like carts employed for easy transport of bulk items at stores like Costco or Sam’s Club.
So, are carts truly the reason we’re spending more at the grocery store? Marketing consultants say the ever-increasing size of carts certainly doesn’t help control purchases.
An experiment found that when the shopping cart was doubled in size consumers went on to buy 40% more, says Martin Lindstrom, a marketing consultant and author of Brandwashed, told TODAY.
It’s not just traditional supermarkets that are increasing sales with bigger cart sizes. Lindstrom notes that Whole Foods’ shopping carts nearly doubled in size from 2009 to 2011.
Even shopping cart manufacturers tout the power of cart size in increasing sales. Americana Companies, a Shenandoah, Iowa-based company, highlights the double basket cart as a “new way to increase your bottom line with more sales”.
When the “hand basket is full customers will check out,” and if there is a double basket cart you can “double your sales.”
If a big shopping cart means you’ll buy more, then a shopping basket means you’ll purchase less, right? That’s not always the case.
Sure, you can fit a lot less in your basket, but the types of foods consumers purchase are markedly different and not in a good way.
The Journal of Marketing Research found that consumers using a shopping basket were more likely to purchase unhealthy, wasteful items.
But those purchases have less to do with the size of the basket and more to do with the sensation of holding the basket. The sensation of flexing arm muscles to hold the basket creates a feeling of instant gratification, making consumers more likely to buy items that offer the same sensation, like a candy bar, researchers found.
Of course we can’t blame our high shopping bill on just the cart, there are other things we’re doing that don’t help our wallets. To avoid over-purchasing at the store make sure you bring a list, never shop hungry and follow these tips.
Take Our Poll
(7News)
There must be some great cosmic force that serves entirely to reunite people with their stolen belongings by way of an unwitting accomplice — the thief or thieves that did the stealing in the first place. One woman had the good fortune to run into her recently purloined belongings while waiting for the police to show up.
By “ran into,” I mean, two suspects walked up to her and tried to sell her back her own things.
ABC 7News in Denver reports that the woman came home recently with the feeling that something was wrong. Literally — she felt a breeze where there shouldn’t be one.
“I walked into the house and felt a cold breeze, and I looked into the kitchen and the kitchen window was broken,” the 24-year-old mother said.
She called the cops to report the burglary and told them she’d meet them in a McDonald’s parking lot nearby because staying at home felt unsafe. When she arrived, luck came to greet her almost immediately.
“I pulled into the McDonald’s parking lot and two guys approached my car and asked me if I wanted to buy a PS3, and I’m like, ‘Oh no, you know, I’m fine,’” she said.
Then, she realized another guy walking over to her car had a unique Washington Redskins jacket that was decidedly hers. Because oh, this was definitely her stuff they were trying to sell to her.
She played it cool and found two off-duty police officers at a gas station and explained the situation.
The officers arrested the suspects for investigation of burglary as well as recovering her PS3 and jacket. Her iPad, flat-screen TV and some cash are still at large, but she says she feels lucky no one was hurt. And lucky that the suspects decided to pick that particular parking lot to sell ill-gotten gains in. Allegedly.
*Also, because we don’t stick asterisks in headlines, that should be “alleged thieves.”
Woman tells how accused burglars unknowingly tried to sell her stolen belongings back to her [7News]
NPR reports that a new coalition of nearly 30 organizations representing farmers, grocers, seed companies, and other food producers has banded together to advocate for action. The Coalition for Safe Affordable Foods, as the organization is known, released a statement saying that the current patchwork of non-regulations is confusing to consumers, and asked Congress to act.
The caveat? That call for consistency is actually a call for Congress to avoid requiring labeling at all. The Coalition’s goals, from their own website, are (emphasis added):
- Eliminate Confusion: Remove the confusion and uncertainty of a 50 state patchwork of GMO safety and labeling laws and affirm the FDA as the nation’s authority for the use and labeling of genetically modified food ingredients.
- Advance Food Safety: Require the FDA to conduct a safety review of all new GMO traits before they are introduced into commerce. FDA will be empowered to mandate the labeling of GMO food ingredients if the agency determines there is a health, safety or nutrition issue with an ingredient derived from a GMO.
- Inform Consumers: The FDA will establish federal standards for companies that want to voluntarily label their product for the absence-of or presence-of GMO food ingredients so that consumers clearly understand their choices in the marketplace.
- Provide Consistency: The FDA will define the term “natural” for its use on food and beverage products so that food and beverage companies and consumers have a consistent legal framework that will guide food labels and inform consumer choice.
That’s a fun piece of very careful wording: the industries want the FDA to create guidelines for labeling that they can opt out of using whenever they want to.
The question at hand isn’t even one of whether or not genetically modified foods should be on store shelves. Rather, it’s simply one of information: since food manufacturers are not currently required to indicate the presence or absence of genetically modified ingredients on their package labels, consumers have no means to make their own informed decisions about what they buy and eat.
Plenty of industries use voluntary self-regulation in order to avoid becoming subject to federal rules. MPAA film ratings, for example, are a voluntary, not legally binding system that Hollywood chooses to use. But voluntary rating is only effective–if it’s ever effective–when it’s consistently applied across an industry with as much diligence as a legally mandated rule would be.
Of course, the Coalition has a point that a patchwork of laws varying from state to state can be confusing for the consumer. A federal labeling requirement could fix that problem right away, creating the same standards nationwide.
So where do the feds stand on GMO labeling? Back in December, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) urged the Obama administration to require labeling of GMO ingredients, but there’s been no major action since then.
The Coalition doesn’t just want Congress not to mandate a national labeling law, though. As NPR points out, they want Congress specifically to block states from passing labeling laws of their own, as a leaked draft bill (PDF) from January revealed.
States have been meeting with mixed results in advancing their own labeling requirements. GMO labeling bills failed to pass in California and Washington state in recent years. Maine and Connecticut do have laws requiring GMO foods and ingredients to be labeled, but those pieces of legislation only go into effect if other states also pass similar laws.
So the Coalition is definitely at least half-right: the set of state laws regulating labeling is a confusing mess that doesn’t really help any consumers, and that could indeed cost businesses far more money than it needs to. They are also right that it’s a good idea to “affirm the FDA as the nation’s authority for the use and labeling” of GMO foods.
But affirming the FDA’s authority by having them not exert it? Businesses looking to save a few bucks might favor that move, but it doesn’t get consumers trying to make informed decisions anywhere.
Food Industry Groups Say They’ll Label GMOs, On Their Terms [NPR]
These puppies are unrelated to the story and were never in danger. I REPEAT. Never in danger. (ChrisGoldNY)
If my heart had eyes it would be sobbing loudly over what could have been a fiery fate for 27 puppies in Las Vegas. A pet store owner accused of torching her shop while the puppies were inside has been jailed for arson — and yes, firefighters were able to rescue the puppies. Sigh, there go my heart eyes again.
Now that we know the puppies are safe — they were turned over to an animal shelter to await adoption after the incident on Jan. 27 — we can move on.
The owner was taken to jail today with a bail set at $310,000, which is up from the original $40,000, reports the Associated Press in a story today.
She’s been charged with 31 counts of arson, conspiracy, burglary and attempted animal cruelty for the incident, which another AP story from yesterday says the crime involved an accused accomplice as well. Police are still looking for him.
Authorities say store security videos showed the owner letting the man into the store a little before 1 a.m. back in January. He was carrying red gasoline cans, officials say, and the woman is seen collecting files from the store while he splashes liquid from the cans all over the place, including (ugh) on the puppy cages. He then allegedly lights the liquid with a flaming newspaper.
Law enforcement officials say the store’s sprinkler system helped keep the puppies from perishing until rescuers could save them from the flames.
“This case could have been much more than property damage and potential injury to puppies,” the County District Attorney said, adding that the fire could have hurt or killed people and damaged nearby businesses.
Again, the puppies are safe. All 27 pairs of trusting, big eyes, all 27 wagging tails… Okay, I’ll stop. But whew.
Owner jailed in arson case involving puppy shop [Associated Press]
(Suspect) Allegedly Wanted To Burn Down Pet Shop With 27 Puppies Inside [Associated Press]
(jleveque)
When gas prices rise, people who do a lot of driving feel it in their wallets. It hurts a lot. What if you could lessen the pain of fluctuations and put together a tiny nest egg in the process? That’s the idea behind the $4 Gas Savings Club.
The idea is simple, but might require a little bit of pain in your wallet to start. To join the club, simply pretend that gas always costs $4 per gallon. This has two advantages: it keeps the price of fuel consistent in your budget, if you always drive the same amount. It also helps you put away a little bit of money, which most Americans don’t do enough of.
Over at the AARP blog, the designer of this plan explains it using a cash method, but it’s easy to employ if you pay with a credit card, too. (Do you use a debit card at the gas pump? Don’t.) Added 13 gallons of gas? Take what you actually paid, then subtract it from $52. Make a note of that amount and move it to your savings account when you get home.
Of course, when gas consistently stays above $4 per gallon, you’ll have to recalculate the whole thing.
Start Your Own “$4 a Gallon Gas Savings Club” (via Lifehacker)
TV will save us all.
Remember how they always told you TV rots your brain? Surely they (whoever “they” are, we all have our theories) would be quite shocked to hear that a healthy TV diet helped a bunch of doctors solve a medical mystery and save a patient. All thanks to the show House M.D., starring the inimitable Hugh Laurie.
For those who haven’t seen the show, Dr. Gregory House is a peculiar kind of character, a sort of medical detective. Grumpy, socially inept and yet he always seems to solve medical cases other doctors can’t.
So when doctors at a German clinic were faced with a patient exhibiting a slew of symptoms that just kept getting worse, they found a particular episode of House to be very helpful, reports the AFP.
Over the course of a year, the patient’s heart started to fail, his sight and hearing deteriorated, he suffered from acid reflux, swollen lymph nodes and fever.
That combination of ailments was puzzling, to say the least. One thing stood out on his medical history though — a double hip implant.
Ding, ding and ding. That reminded the team of an episode on the seventh season of House, where a character suffers from similar symptoms and Dr. House figures out it’s from an eroded prosthetic implant, which was causing cobalt poisoning.
After tests confirmed that theory, doctors replaced his metal prosthesis with a ceramic one, and voila!
“Shortly after the hip replacement, the patient’s plasma (blood) cobalt and chromium concentrations decreased and the patient stabilised and recovered slightly,” the case report said.
After 14 months he was even better — his heart had improved, the fever and acid reflux were gone, but he still hadn’t recovered much of his hearing and vision. But an improvement, nonetheless.
“It was helpful for me that I was aware about the cobalt problems thanks to Dr. House,” the team leader told AFP, adding that the team also used other diagnostic tools, not just TV.
“All this demonstrates nicely that well-performed entertainment is not only able to entertain and educate, but also to save lives,” he added. He’s also known as the German Dr. House already by his colleagues and even uses the show as a teaching tool for his students, so this should only serve to bolster that comparison.
Fun fact I learned in this story? From AFP, referring to the Dr. House character:
He is based on Sherlock Holmes, whose character was in turn inspired by real-life 19th century Scottish doctor Joseph Bell who, like House, used deductive reasoning as a diagnostic tool.
Did we just get incepted?
TV’s ‘Dr House’ helps solve real-life medical mystery [AFP]
(Food52)
I’m not a fan of candy sprinkles: to me, they taste like wax-covered blah. Are people like me consigned to a dull-sprinkle-free existence, though? No! Using a few simple ingredients, a pastry bag, and your choice of flavors, it’s possible to make your own sprinkles at home.
Unless your household eats a truly alarming number of ice cream sundaes, you probably won’t save much money with this DIY project. Maybe if you already have every supply on hand, including a fine-tip pastry bag. The treat is being able to choose your own flavorings and colors, and knowing that you can make sprinkles at home, even if you decide to never do it again.
How to Make Your Own Sprinkles [Food52] (Thanks, Carole!)
It is the worst when our furry friends pick up fleas and then bring them into our homes. Except, it’s really not quite the worst. What’s worse? When the flea collar you buy for Fido damages your child’s brain with neurotoxins.
The Natural Resource Defense Council has filed a lawsuit against the EPA related to two chemicals found in flea collars, propoxur and tetrachlorvinphos (TCVP), that the NRDC wants the EPA to ban. Specifically, the suit “seeks to force EPA to respond to NRDC’s petitions to cancel all pet uses and manufacturer registrations of these two chemicals.”
Flea collars work by intentionally leaving pesticides on a pet’s fur. As the NRDC’s health attorney explained in a blog post, according to federal law “a pesticide cannot be sold that may cause adverse impacts to human health or the environment.” If a pesticide hurts something other than bugs (like, say, people), its supposed to be pulled from the market.
These particular two chemicals can be very harmful when children ingest them, the NRDC says, likening the effects on kids to the effects of lead poisoning. The advocacy group has been petitioning the EPA to discontinue allowing the use of one chemical since 2007 and the other since 2009. In 2010, the EPA issued an assessment finding that the risks to children from toxin levels were “of concern” but the agency has not taken any further action regarding their use.
A determined young child truly will put anything and everything she can reach into her mouth. This does, in fact, include the family cat (at least until kitty learns to see trouble coming and run away faster). And while a little fur probably won’t hurt Junior, the chemicals on it can. The NRDC writes,
Once on a child’s skin, the pesticide is absorbed through the skin or it can be ingested when a child puts their hand in their mouth. Propoxur and TCVP are types of pesticides that are known to be toxic to brain development, nervous system communication and can cause cancer. Children are particularly vulnerable because their smaller bodies are still developing and their activities, such as putting their hands in their mouths after petting animals or playing, increase the likelihood and amount of these pesticides that can enter their bodies.
For consumers who want to know what brands of pet products contain which chemicals, the NRDC publishes a “green paws guide” to pet care products. The guide includes 26 products from many brands containing propoxur and TCVP.
Old Town Manassas stores sponsor “Win the Window” contest Inside NoVA Anyone who shops at Love, Charley, NOVA Music Center, Ashby Jewelers, Manassas Clay, Creative Brush Studio, Artbeat Studio, Opera House Gourmet, Prospero's Boks, Echoes, the Musuem Store, The Things I Love, Botanica Ile Ifa Wa or Alyssa Bryn ... |
WTAJ |
Police: Murder Suspect Held 2 People at Gunpoint Inside Manassas Home ... CBS Local LANHAM, Md. (CBSDC) — A man wanted for murder holed up in a Manassas home for several hours Thursday while holding two people at gunpoint, police say. Earl Mitchell, 20, allegedly snuck through an unlocked door into a home on Mineral Springs ... UPDATED: Pennsylvania murder suspectInside NoVA Earl Patrick Mitchell in custody after hours-long manhuntWJLA Police: men tried to calm fugitive down before captureW*USA 9 Patch.com -WTAJ all 50 news articles » |
Manassas school entry restricted for police activity W*USA 9 MANASSAS, Va. (WUSA9) -- Prince William County Public Schools officials tell us that Bennett Elementary School at 8800 Old Dominion Drive in Manassas is in precautionary secure the building status. Officials say the status is due to reported police ... |
Prince William County and Stafford County home sales Washington Post Prince William County. These were among sales data provided to The Washington Post by Lender Processing Services. To find sale and assessment records for homes elsewhere in the Washington area, visit www.washingtonpost.com/homesales. BRISTOW ... and more » |
