“I feel like I’m slowly drowning in a bubble bath when I hear Enya.”
- Dave
January 11, 2009
This really digusts me.
The number of obese American adults outweighs the number of those who are merely overweight, according to the latest statistics from the federal government.
Numbers posted by the National Center for Health Statistics show that more than 34 percent of Americans are obese, compared to 32.7 percent who are overweight. It said just under 6 percent are “extremely” obese.
“More than one-third of adults, or over 72 million people, were obese in 2005-2006, the NCHS said in its report.
I know this is coming from a person that lives in the “healthiest state” in the country, but I really do think we should work on our physical health as a culture.
January 11, 2009
I think this is pretty funny. Further proof that times are ‘achanging!
In today’s episode of “All the President-Elect’s Technology,” we learn that the Obama girls got a Wii video game system for Christmas and, even better, that the whole family has been playing.
Barack Obama reportedly said he’s better at the Wii version of bowling than he was at the real thing while on the campaign trail in Pennsylvania last year.
This knowledge is courtesy of a passing reference Thursday by a New York Times blogger, who buried it in his last paragraph, unaware that the Wii news, rather than Obama’s (accurate) prediction that Florida would win college football’s championship game, would light up the Internets the next day.
“It gives me an amazing amount of warm fuzzies knowing there’s going to be a game console in the White House,” wrote Mike Fahey, a blogger for Kotaku.com, which tracks gaming. And the GameCulture.com blog crowed, “Remember that… your chief executive, and the leader of the Free World, now wears a wrist strap.”
But there are many unanswered questions:
• What does Obama’s Mii—Wii’s name for the on-screen alter egos that players create for themselves—look like? The guess here is that he went with the hipster goatee and sunglasses. (see above left)
• When Obama plays the duck-shooting game, does he think about Dick Cheney?
• And, as one online user asked, in reference to regular pop-up messages on the system, “Do you think Obama will follow the Wii instructions that say, ‘Why not take a break and go play outside?’”
[Kudos to Steve Johnson at the Chicago Tribune]
January 11, 2009
This is cute, in that overbearing PETA kind of way.
A giant lobster named George escaped a dinner-table fate and was released Saturday into the Atlantic Ocean after a New York seafood restaurant granted him his freedom, according to a statement from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
George the lobster was a “sort of mascot” for City Crab and Seafood in New York.
The lobster, which PETA said was 140 years old and weighed 20 pounds, had been confined to a tank at City Crab and Seafood restaurant in Manhattan when two customers alerted the animal group.
The PETA statement did not say how the extraordinary age estimate was determined, but restaurant manager Keith Valenti told CNN that lobsters can grow a pound every seven to 10 years, and he put George’s weight at 18 to 20 pounds.
“I’ve been here for 12 years, and that’s the biggest lobster I’ve ever seen,” Valenti said.
He said the lobster had been “sitting in the restaurant’s tank and acting as a sort of mascot,” but when PETA got involved and requested the release, it “seemed like the right thing to do.”
PETA President Ingrid Newkirk said in a statement, “We applaud the folks at City Crab and Seafood for their compassionate decision to allow this noble old-timer to live out his days in freedom and peace.
“We hope that their kind gesture serves as an example that these intriguing animals don’t deserve to be confined to tiny tanks or boiled alive.”
Shedding the tight confines of his old restaurant display tank, George was driven to Maine by PETA members and was returned to his natural habitat on the ocean floor Saturday, the organization said.
I hope George stays at the bottom of the ocean and doesn’t end up captured again and flown back into some swanky restaurant as their catch of the day. That would be ironic.
[Courtesy of CNN]
January 11, 2009
