The Thermapen is an instant read thermometer that will make sure you never under or overcook your food. It takes readings in less than three seconds, is accurate to less than a degree, and is designed to last for ages. It really is the best cooking thermometer we've ever used, and it deserves a place in your kitchen.
    
|
Whether you're hitting the road or taking to the skies this travel season, you could do with a digital companion to help you plan your itinerary, make sure your tickets and connections are all lined up, and that you have plenty of time to do everything you want (or need) to do while you're traveling. This week, we're looking at five of the best travel planning apps or services, based on your nominations.
|
|
Dishes sparkle bright and clean the day you buy them, but over time they develop an unattractive white haze that makes them look older. Consumer Reports tested numerous additives and found three that worked to restore your dishes to newness once more.
|
|
We all know that texting while driving is a terrible, dangerous thing to do. Some states have taken action with laws that ban texting while driving, while others have gone beyond that to also prohibit using your handheld cell phone (texting or not) while driving. Do you know your state's position?
|
|
Sodas and some coffees have pretty obvious negative health effects compared to tea, but if you're looking for one more reason to switch, how about this: drinking tea may ease the effects of stressful psychological conditions like depression.
|
|
We've featured a ton of survival and MacGyver tips over the years that could help you out of a fix, but what if you're next to someone else who's having an emergency? Don't just stand there as the person chokes or faints! Know what to do in these life-or-death situations.
|
|
If you're looking for something original to give someone as a gift, consider giving them a subscription to something, preferably something they're interested in, would like to experiment with, or may not even ordinarily buy for themselves. You give the person a way to explore something they like without the risk of spending money on something they don't. Let's put together a list of gift ideas you can turn to when it's time to go shopping.
|
|
While pancakes may not be the most healthy breakfast option, you can improve their contents with a small alteration. On top of that, it only takes two (and a half) ingredients to make them.
|
|
Most of us know that junk food is unhealthy. We know that poor nutrition is related to heart problems, high blood pressure, and a host of other health ailments. You might even know that studies show that eating junk food has been linked to increases in depression. But if it's so bad for us, why do we keep doing it?
|
|
A new fossil of a giant predatory dinosaur has shed light on the North American ecosystem during the Cretaceous period. The new species, Siats meekerorum, is a member of the allosaurs, a group of large predators that predate the tyrannosaurs that dominated later in the Cretaceous. By filling in a gap in the fossil record, Siats has helped paleontologists understand the changes that took pace during the transition between these groups of apex predators.
The fossil of Siats isn't going to be the centerpiece of a museum display; the bones that are available are largely from the spinal column, accompanied by a few of the limb bones and variety of other fragments. Fortunately, the allosaurs are well known from examples on other continents, and the skeletal fragments show a clear relationship to a specific group of allosaurs called the carcharodontosaurs. This allows the paleontologists who discovered it to infer things about the physical appearance of the body parts that haven't yet been found.
Although only a juvenile, the beast was probably already 30 feet long and was likely to weigh four tons. Depending on how much it grew later, it could have ended up being truly enormous. This makes some sense, given that another of the carcharodontosaurs found in Argentina has been named Giganotosaurus due to its enormous size. However large it grew, it was clearly an apex predator during its time in North America.
Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments
|
|
As we’ve looked into in the past, while there are many employers who might hold servers accountable for an unpaid bill (this side-eye glance is for you, dine-and-dashers) those that do are are often in violation of the Department of Labor’s rules regarding wage deductions. But that didn’t stop one Brooklyn waitress from getting the boot, she says, after she refused to fork over her the cash to cover customers who dined and dashed on a $96 meal.
The waitress tells Gothamist that was given the boot from her job at a midtown restaurant after the customers skipped out without paying. She says it was a busy night and she was helping a coworker out when the three men left.
“As soon as I realized, I went into full blown shock and then a state of panic knowing that I’d be held responsible for their $96 tab,” she said. When she told her manager, he later that she and her fellow coworkers would have to cover the tab.
“I believe he said this because it was relayed to him that I was not intending to pay the tab, and he wanted to guilt me into it or he’d make my coworkers pay for it,” she told Gothamist. “I really hope he didn’t do that to them. We all work very hard in very stressful poorly managed conditions for not a lot of money right now. $96 is more than we each made in that shift…”
She says the restaurant instilled a “culture of fear” with its servers, and that while it was “repeatedly drilled” into their minds that they’d be held responsible for any unpaid tabs, she’d never seen the practice actually put to use.
After she was fired, she spoke with the folks at the Division of Labor Standards about filing a complaint of retaliation.
“Your employer cannot make any deductions or require payment out of pocket for any losses or damages. Therefore, your employer cannot require you pay the tab for customers who walk out. If they want the money, they will have to sue you in civil court…” explained the DLS. And while her employer and any other can fire workers for any reason except discrimination, they’re not allowed to give someone the boot for complaining about a violation of the Labor Law, and forcing employees to pay for an unpaid tab is just such a violation.
She says she’s doing this in an effort to keep it from happening to other mistreated restaurant workers.
“I am very tired of hard working people being exploited through emotional manipulation by restauranteurs. There are many other people who have the same anxieties over their work as I went through, who are being mistreated or taken advantage of, but can not say a word because they feel they have no recourse.”
Previously: Waiters Sue Employer For Taking Wages To Cover Walk Outs
Customers Dine-And-Dash, Waitress Gets Fired For Not Paying Bill [Gothamist]
An official from Guinness World Records confirmed today that the Canberra family once again snagged the record for Christmas lights on a residential property with 502,165 blinking, twinkling and otherwise sparkling lights, reports the Associated Press.
The family is coming off a jolly defeat last year when a family in New York lit up the night with 346,283 lights on their home. The contenders from Down Under first snagged the title in 2001 with 331,038 lights, but now you’ve got to go even bigger to win.
For those who love ogling the sight of so many lights, the home will be open to the public on weekend to raise money for charity.
David Richards — husband of Janean and father of Aidan, 13, Caitlin, 10, and Madelyn, 6 — said most of his neighbors supported the display. But some hadn’t spoken to him since the last record was set.
“I have always loved Christmas. Having the Christmas lights with the community coming in and sharing it is a time when you get to know people you probably should know better, I guess,” said the father, adding that his neighbors support the family but some of them hadn’t spoken to him since the last record was set.
And as for that electric bill, well, it won’t steal the Christmas meal from the family’s mouths: A local power company is actually going to donate around 2,500 Australian dollars to cover the cost for a month.
Aussie house sets record with 500,000 Christmas lights [Associated Press]
Reader Ben was shopping at Aeropostale when he noticed a guide to the chain’s new women’s sizing hanging on the wall. He snapped a picture of it and sent it to us. “I wouldn’t say this is exactly deception, I think Aeropostale has found a rather creative way to try to sell more clothes,” he writes. Whether adjusting sizes is or isn’t deceptive is a matter for fashion industry debate, but what Aeropostale is doing isn’t creative or new.
Vanity sizing is the theory that companies intentionally put smaller sizes on larger garments, figuring that a customer who normally wears a size 12 will gather an armful of dresses at your store if she discovers that she wears a size 8 there. There’s scientific evidence that shows this is true: being able to fit in a smaller numerical size than expected boosts our self-esteem.
“IMO, they’re trying to make women feel better about their size, hoping this will encourage them to buy,” Ben observes, causing every person with experience shopping for women’s clothing who is reading this post to fall out of their chairs laughing.
While it’s comforting to think that this is the only reason why the numbers on women’s sizes have crept up over the decades, the truth is more complicated. If Americans’ waistbands weren’t expanding in the aggregate, there would be no need to adjust sizes.
In a controversial article, The myth of vanity sizing, patternmaker Kathleen Fasanella argues that intentional vanity sizing as consumers imagine it doesn’t exist, but instead size numbers are creeping down because people as a whole are getting larger. It’s because different companies scale their products differently according to their markets, and any change in sizes between brands and over time is because of this chaos.
Not that men are immune. Writing for Equire a few years ago, Abe Sauer discovered that there’s a huge variation between pants that are supposed to be the same size. The same measurement-baed size!
I just… I can’t.
The Facebook page the dog-owner made after United asked her to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
For one passenger and pet owner, her response to that offer was to create the United Airlines Almost Killed My Greyhound Facebook page.
She tells NBC Bay Area [Warning: Obnoxious auto-play video at that link] that she used United’s PetSafe animal shipping service to help her relocate her dog and other pets when she moved from San Diego to Boston in July.
During the trip, she claims that United workers were spotted kicking her dog’s crate to move it around the tarmac, and that, in spite of the program’s promise to limit exposure to limit animals’ exposure to temperatures above 85 degrees to no more than 45 minutes, the animals sat out in the 94-degree Houston sun for longer than that during a so-called “comfort stop.”
When the greyhound arrived in Boston, the woman says the crate “was filled with blood, feces, urine” and that her dog was “in full heat stroke. All of the blankets were filled with blood. She was urinating and defecating blood. She was dying, literally, right in front of me.”
United tried to argue that the dog had a pre-existing condition but the customer insisted that her vet in California gave the dog a clean bill of health before traveling.
And she tells NBC that the vet who cared for the greyhound after the ordeal said the dog had suffered heat stroke, acquired a urinary tract infection and was having problems with her liver.
“We have no reason to believe that these medical problems were due to underlying disease,” reads the vet’s report, “and we believe that these medical problems were secondary to hyperthermia that she suffered during her United Airlines flight.”
And so United agreed to pay for the $2,700 in vet bills that resulted from this incident, but only if the passenger signed the non-disclosure agreement.
The airline confirmed to NBC that it did offer to fully reimburse the passenger for her dog’s medical expenses, but “she declined to accept the terms of the agreement,” which included the NDA.
“I still want to be reimbursed,” the passenger says. “But I’m not going to be quiet.”
(MNicoleM)
The answer to at least the former question might just be a bit of self-fulfilling popularity: Since the Tickle Me Elmo slammed into our collective consciousness back in 1996, stores keep stocking each year’s new iteration based off Elmo’s popularity the previous year. And when the stores are scrambling to sell him, the public scrambles to buy him, explains Quartz.
Basically, he’s a sure thing, whether he’s Big Hugs Elmo (this year’s offering) Rock ‘n Roll Elmo, Hokey Pokey Elmo or the most popular of all time, Tickle Me Elmo.
“Retailers only buy things that have proven to sell,” one senior analyst tells Quartz. “And Elmo sells.”
Tickle Me Elmo was the first Elmo doll to really make it big, despite the fact that there were previous Elmo dolls. The difference in 1996 with Tyco’s doll is that he made noise when you squeezed him. Kids love it when you can make a toy emit sounds, it seems.
But the stores weren’t ready for the onslaught of parents, who were in turn spurred on by demanding children. Retailers didn’t stock enough of the dolls, made by Tyco right before they sold to Mattel, making Elmo scarce. Cue mass hysteria.
“The first year caught everyone by surprise,” the analyst noted. “No one wanted to be caught by surprise after that.”
In 1997, Mattel sold seven times as many Tickle Me Elmos as the year before, and a dynasty was born.
Since then, Mattel has kept up the game with new and different Elmos to entice discerning children every year and cause that panicky feeling to erupt in the hearts of parents and relatives everywhere. There was even a Tickle Me Elmo redux with TMX Elmo in 2006, who didn’t just laugh when you tickled him but responded in a different way every time.
“We said that TMX Elmo would likely be the strongest thing since [Tickle Me Elmo] and it was,” Mattel CEO Robert Eckert said at the time.
(Although we had a different view, as did Consumer Reports definitely didn’t like him so much, noting back then: “The youngest children’s reactions ranged from disinterest to fear.” )
Elmo now belongs to Hasbro, after Sesame Workshop shifted its license from Mattel in 2009, and his reign is still strong. There was a slight downward tick in LOL Elmo sales in 2012 in the midst of a sex scandal surrounding the former voice of Elmo on Sesame Street, but it’s safe to say he’ll probably sell well this year.
Maybe it’s his red furriness, or that inimitable laugh, but really, no one knows why the kids love Elmo so much.
“If anybody says they know why, they’re probably making it up,” declared Quartz’s analyst source.
It’s his eyes. I could stare into their clear depths, unimpeded by rational thought, forever. Yeah, making that up. I’m terrified any doll comes to life when I’m sleeping, so count me out.
Why Elmo has topped Christmas shopping lists in the US since 1996 [Quartz]
This is a big problem, as around 70 million Americans used a paid tax preparer in 2012, and while your hair will grow back (and you can always wear a hat while you’re waiting), errors and fraud on your tax return can haunt you for a very long time. Making the matter worse for lower-income taxpayers, an estimated 60% of families claiming the Earned Income Tax Credit in 2012 paid someone who may have zero qualifications to do their taxes for them.
California, Maryland, and Oregon each have regulations regarding who can work as a tax preparer (New York, where 5.56 million people paid to have their taxes done in 2012, has a requirement that preparers register with the state, but no testing or licensing).
The only place in all states that you’re certain to find a (non-CPA or enrolled agent) tax preparer that has been tested on the subject are the unpaid volunteers at Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) sites.
The IRS attempted to create a system that would regulate all paid tax preparers by requiring registration, testing and mandatory continuing education, but it failed a legal challenge earlier this year when a U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., ruled [PDF] that the IRS overstepped its authority under existing law.
A new report [PDF] from the National Consumer Law Center looks at various undercover “mystery shopper” tests that private and governmental organizations have used over the years to test the quality of being done in the tax preparation market.
FRINGE PREPARERS
While there are only a few national tax-prep chains — H&R Block, Jackson Hewitt, Liberty Tax Service being the largest — there are countless smaller operations or pop-up prep services being offered, especially in businesses that normally cater to financial needs of lower-income Americans. These are deemed “fringe preparers” and are of great concern for both the lack of accountability and some rather obvious conflicts of interest.
There is a company that claims to have partnership with thousands of used car dealerships that lets the business prepare customers’ taxes and apply the refunds to the down-payments for the vehicles they’re buying. According to the company’s website, “There is no experience required, and our web-based program was designed for use by someone who knows nothing about taxes. Also, our customer packets have a checklist inside to walk you through the whole process.”
ABUSING THE SYSTEM
Tax preparers who have a vested interest in the outcome of your tax return may be tempted to falsely inflate the value of your refund, and leave you to deal with the fallout if the IRS realizes things are not okay.
A 2008 study of RALs in Durham, NC, and Philadelphia found instances of tax error or fraud in nearly 1-in-4 tests.
One preparer told a customer to “ignore” $5,000 on his return in order to get a $3,000 refund instead of owing $100 to the IRS. Another tax preparer, who admitted to never having seen a Form 1098 (mortgage interest statement), and did not include $3,500 in unemployment benefits for the undercover couple. As a result, he calculated a refund that was $600 higher than it should have been.
A 2009 study in multiple cities found errors or fraud in 6 out 19 tests. A preparer in New York City tried to convince a tester to commit tax fraud by including a $2,000 figure for church donations she didn’t make (to a church she didn’t belong to). Oh yeah, he also tried to get her to lie and say she had a dependent to increase the value of her refund. Fudging on expenses is one thing (not that it’s right), but creating entire human beings out of thin air is probably going a little too far.
A tax preparer in Arkansas was both incompetent and unethical. First, he didn’t know the difference between a 1099 (miscellaneous income) and a church tithing statement. The preparer thought the 1099 was the tithing statement and deducted the money instead of counting it as taxable income. Then, when the mistake was pointed out to the preparer, he tried to convince the customer to keep it like that because it resulted in a higher refund… not realizing that the IRS had a copy of the 1099 info and would be expecting to see it when the return was filed.
“He said he had to ask because some people don’t want them to report additional income because it lowers their refund amount,” wrote the mystery shopper. “So he has to do what the customers tell him to do.”
It’s not just the fringe preparers who are preparing error-riddled returns. A 2011 undercover study found a pretty bad example of fraud at a Liberty branch in NYC.
The tester asked the preparer if the income reported on her 1099 form would alter her refund (correct answer: yes), but according to the study, “the preparer answered that they would ‘fix it.’”
The preparer and his boss then asked her questions about her bank account, her material assets, retirement accounts, and any debts she might have.
When the tester asked how any of this would “fix” the issue, the preparer responded that they needed to make it look like she was in debt and had no assets to sell. They then filled out a worksheet — which they didn’t show to the tester. They also improperly claimed Earned Income Tax Credit for one of her daughters and falsely stated that she did not know the location of her children’s father.
CAN IT BE FIXED?
While the IRS attempt to rein in unregulated tax preparers failed because the agency might have overstepped its authority, the long-term solution is for lawmakers in D.C. to craft legislation that would make these requirements a law.
In its report, the NCLC uses the existing laws in California, Maryland, and Oregon (along with the aborted IRS regulation) to suggest three requirements for any legislation aimed at curbing tax-preparer problems.
1. Tax prepares must register with their designated state agency (with a few exceptions, like Certified Public Accountants).
2. Preparers must pass a basic competency exam to demonstrate their knowledge of tax law and practice.
3. They must also have 60 hours of initial education and 15 hours per year of continuing education courses on tax law, theory, and practice.
Obviously, the preparers who can’t currently be bothered to learn the basics are unlikely to do any of the above, but they would then be in violation of federal law. One may claim that these regulations will reduce consumer access to tax preparation, but we’d argue that this is like complaining that quack doctors can no longer operate out of the back rooms of your local saloon.
And the regulations in California have not put a crimp in the tax-prep business, with 9.3 million people paying to have their returns prepared in 2012. That’s nearly 4 million more than the state with the next highest number of people paying preparers for returns (New York, 5.5 million).
WHAT DO I DO NOW?
If you’re going to pay for tax preparation, your best bet is to find a CPA. The American Institute of CPAs has this tool for finding a CPA near you along with information on how you can verify they are indeed certified.
For people making $51,000 or less, the IRS makes tax-prep help available for free at its VITA locations.
Starting in January, the IRS will use this search tool to make public the locations around the country where people can go for free tax-prep help from VITA-certified preparers and the AARP will also begin updating this page in January with information on tax-prep for the elderly.
This Consumerist post from 2011 has some more information on other free tax-prep programs and how to prepare properly for when you get ready to have your return prepared.
(Fujoshi)
When you look at a piece of clothing, you probably don’t think, “Hey, this shirt consists of a vast length of very fine thread, knitted into a cozy yet soft and durable fabric.” Thread? That’s what you sew clothing together with, isn’t it? The cotton knit fabric that t-shirts are made of doesn’t sprout fully formed from the ground, though. Cotton fibers first must become yarn. In the case of the Planet Money t-shirt, the cotton yarn was spun from American cotton at a factory in Indonesia.
What the farm and the yarn mill had in common: machinery. Cotton farming and cloth-spinning were once very labor-intensive tasks. Today…not so much. Planet Money reporters were stunned to watch a cotton farmer who could monitor the ongoing harvest from his iPad. A farmer with an iPad!
It was the same halfway around the world when that same cotton was spun into thread. There was a vast room full of machinery…but hardly any people.
Episode 496: Where The Planet Money T-Shirt Began [NPR]
A South Carolina man is facing a murder charge after kids found a body last week while playing in the woods.
The State Board of Elections is set to certify the results of Virginia's Nov. 5 election, including the cliff-hanging race for attorney general.
A woman suspected of trying to poison her two children has been charged with attempted murder in Virginia Beach.
After its successful entry into the Japanese eye wear market a couple of years ago, we were expecting the frenzy around J!NS PC glasses to run its course and die out as these kinds of hypes often do in Japan…But not only have JIN company stocks multiplied by six since the launch of the product, the company is planning on expanding to China and even entering the American and European markets. Considering the relatively short and domestic lifecycle of products in Japan, the lasting popularity of J!NS PC glasses is pretty surprising.
So what makes these glasses such a great hit?
All of this goes back to the company president. After JIN company employees heard him often complaining about how much working on his computer all day tired out his eyes, they started looking into what exactly was causing their president so much pain. Further research revealed several papers and articles about blue light emitting screens, energy-efficient light-bulbs and their link to eye stress. Determining the culprit of their president’s eye problem, the staff at JIN got to work…and approximately five years later came out with J!NS PC glasses.
Tested by eye wear professionals as well as by employees at a number of IT companies, the glasses garnered a good reputation from both word of mouth as well as through a carefully implemented promotional strategy. This included progressively lowered price adjustments, and collaborations with popular figures including ONE PIECE, Arashi’s Sakurai Sho, and even gaming hardware company Alienware.
The glasses are made out of a very flexible material and are available in a very wide array of color, styles, and sizes that suit both adults and children. Most importantly, users praise their wearability and the effectiveness of the blue-light filter in easing both eye strain and tiredness – benefits that also supposed to have the advantage of alleviating other work-related stressors including poor posture.
The distribution strategy of the glasses are also particularly interesting. J!NS PC glasses are very easy to get a hold of as they can be bought in either one of the country’s dedicated 500 stores, online, or more unconventionally at vending machines, and even at a drive-through in Gunma prefecture.
And if all of this hasn’t already convinced you that J!N kind of know what they’re doing here (and perhaps also that you may need to buy a pair), there is the price. Cheap glasses in Japan are not something that is hard to find – you can usually find something between 5000 to 20,000 JPY (50 to 200 USD). However, J!N PC glasses start at 3990 JPY (about 40 USD) and require no extra cost for any prescription single focus lenses, meaning that people can afford to own several pairs to suit their tastes.
This product offers not only real health benefits to a generation living in a world were computer usage is rapidly increasing and becoming the new office work norm, but also caters to those who want to use glasses as a fashionable accessory. In this context, JIN’s plans to export their innovative product don’t sound unfeasibly ambitious – especially since their brand has already gained a degree of popularity overseas thanks to online shops. How successful the product will be in European or American markets remains to be seen.
Several animals are up for adoption at the Fairfax County Animal Shelter.
