Bermuda Triangle: Official Myth

Now it's official: The Bermuda Triangle is a bunch of bunk.

For decades, rumors persisted that hundreds of ships and planes mysteriously vanished in the area between Miami, Puerto Rico and Bermuda because it was cursed or patrolled by extraterrestrials.

Most of us already suspected that was a myth. Yet, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration just posted a story declaring the Devil's Triangle, as it's also known, is no different than any other open ocean region — and that foul weather and poor navigation are likely to blame for any mishaps.

Pair Beer & Girl Scout Cookies

Girl Scouts of the USA will mark the start of Girl Scout Cookie season with an event in New York City on February 7, 2014. To celebrate, we’ve gathered a collection of cookie-and-beer pairings from around the web.

Suggestions from The Beer Chicksinclude these pairings:

• Caramel DeLites (aka Samoas) withMaui Brewing Co.’s CoCoNut PorTeR
• Tagalongs with Wells & Young’s Brewing Company’s Banana Bread Beer
• Thin Mints with Kiuchi Brewery’s Hitachino Nest Beer Espresso Stout
• Trefoils with North Coast Brewing Co.’s Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout

Central Track’s Melissa Mackaly suggests these pairings:

• Samoas with Founders Brewing Co.’s Dirty Bastard
• Thin Mints with Great Divide Brewing Co.’s Yeti Imperial Stout
• Do-Si-Dos with Founders Brewing Co.’s Imperial Stout

Suggestions from the Brooklyn Brewshopinclude these pairings:

• Thin Mints with Bootlegger’s Brewery’s Mint Chocolate Porter
• Tagalongs with Brooklyn Brew Shop’s own Peanut Butter Porter
• Dulce de Leches with Revolution Brewing’s Mad Cow Milk Stout
• Lemonades with Brooklyn Brewery’s Sorachi Ace

And finally, Flying Dog Brewery includes the following pairings with its own beers:

• Trefoils with Pearl Necklace Oyster Stout
• Do-Si-Dos with Lucky SOB Irish Red Ale
• Samoas with Raging Bitch Belgian-Style IPA
• Tagalongs with Gonzo Imperial Porter
• Thin Mints with Kujo Imperial Coffee Stout

Find a Girl Scout, order some cookies, and let us know which beer you pair with your favorites.

Patterson Mansion may become Apartments.

 $26 million dollar mansion 

The Patterson Mansion at 15 Dupont Circle (map) made headlines last year when it hit the market for $26 million. Now it appears that the buyer of the 36,470 square-foot, 112-year-old manse will turn it into 90 luxury apartments.

Th website District Source is reporting that developer SB-Urban will convert the historic mansion into residences and add a six-story addition. The apartments will be fully-furnished and available for both short and long-term leases.

This is the second plan for the the historic mansion; originally the word was that it would be converted into a boutique hotel, but that plan was essentially nixed by the Historic Preservation Review Board (HPRB) back in October.

When we asked UrbanTurf readers to predict the future owner of such a unique property, 45 percent of you predicted a foreign government or entity and 19 percent predicted a foreign family or individual. In addition to 36,740 square feet, the four-story residence has 16 bedrooms, a ballroom, library, auditorium, as well as an elevator and parking for 10 cars. The mansion was designed by architect Stanford White and served as home to The Washington Club for 60 years.

The proposed project still has to go before the neighborhood ANC as well as back before the HPRB.

 More Via http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/26_million_dupont_mansion_to_become_fully-furnished_apartments/8095

Too poor for pop culture: Baltimore

Where I live in East Baltimore, everything looks like "The Wire" and nobody cares what a "selfie" is

Miss Sheryl, Dontay, Bucket-Head and I compiled our loose change for a fifth of vodka. I’m the only driver, so I went to get it. On the way back I laughed at the local radio stations going on and on and on, still buzzing about Obama taking a selfie at Nelson Mandela’s funeral. Who cares?

No really, who? Especially since the funeral was weeks ago.

* * *

I arrived, fifth of Black Watch clenched close to me like a newborn with three red cold-cups covering the top. We play spades over at Miss Sheryl’s place in Douglass Housing Projects every few weeks. (Actually, Miss Sheryl’s name isn’t really Miss Sheryl. But I changed some names here, because I’m not into embarrassing my friends.) Her court is semi-boarded up, third world and looks like an ad for “The Wire.” Even though her complex is disgustingly unfit, it’s still overpopulated with tilting dope fiends, barefoot children, pregnant smokers, grandmas with diabetes, tattoo-faced tenants and a diverse collection of Zimmermans made up of street dudes and housing police, looking itchy to shoot anyone young and black and in Nike.

 Two taps on the door, it opened and the gang was all there — four disenfranchised African-Americans posted up in a 9 x 11 prison-size tenement, one of those spots where you enter the front door, take a half-step and land in the yard. I call us disenfranchised, because Obama’s selfie with some random lady or the whole selfie movement in general is more important than us and the conditions where we dwell.

Surprisingly, as tight as Miss Sheryl’s unit may be, it’s still more than enough space for us to receive affordable joy from a box of 50-cent cards and a rail bottle.

“A yo, Michelle was gonna beat on Barack for taking dat selfie with dat chick at the Mandela wake! Whateva da fuk a selfie is! What’s a selfie, some type of bailout?” yelled Dontay from the kitchen, dumping Utz chips into a cracked flowery bowl. I was placing cubes into all of our cups and equally distributing the vodka like, “Some for you and some for you …”

“What the fuck is a selfie?” said Miss Sheryl.

“When a stupid person with a smartphone flicks themselves and looks at it,” I said to the room. She replied with a raised eyebrow, “Oh?”

It’s amazing how the news seems so instant to most from my generation with our iPhones, Wi-Fi, tablets and iPads, but actually it isn’t. The idea of information being class-based as well became evident to me when I watched my friends talk about a weeks-old story as if it happened yesterday.

More HERE Via Salon

Lay’s ‘Do Us a Flavor’ Crowdsourcing Hilariously Backfires

Back in 2012, Lay's ran a "Do Us A Flavor" contest to crowdsource a new flavor of potato chips. The exceedingly boring "Cheesy Garlic Bread" won out over "Chicken and Waffles" and "Sriracha" because we can't have nice things. Perhaps others were as jaded after the first contest as I was, because Lay's is running another "Do Us A Flavor" contest, and people are taking it far less seriously.

Lay's relaunched the contest on January 13th, 2014, inviting the internet to create, submit, and vote on our own customized potato chip bags using this web app. What Lay's received in return includes creative flavor suggestions like "Government Cheese", "Existential Crisis", and "Hickory-Smoked Horse Buttholes". Stay classy, internet.

Read more: http://www.uproxx.com/gammasquad/2014/02/best-of-lays-do-us-a-flavor-parodies/#ixzz2sX2kgmb1
 

The Cast of Downton Abbey Gives You The Top 10 Reasons To Visit Them

Enter HERE

Most Women Unsatisfied With Size, Diamond Size & Your Proposal Could Use Some Work

'It's a measly diamond, you didn't get down on one knee and WHERE'S my flashmob?' Fifth of women left disappointed by their man's proposal

• One in 10 would turn down proposal if they didn't like ring
• Half would consider making a financial contribution to get a better ring
• Flop proposals gone include diamonds that are too small - or no ring at all

Nothing says 'I love you' like a fairy-tale proposal complete with the perfect diamond ring.

But listen up, men. You need to up your game because one in five women are left disappointed by your efforts.

A new survey has revealed that 21 per cent of engaged, married or divorced women were left disappointed by their marriage proposal, but they didn't say anything to their other half and now wished they had.

And 13 per cent of those said they were so disappointed by the proposal that they wanted to cry after it had failed to live up to their expectations.

According to the survey, the top factors cited for marriage proposals gone wrong were: engagement rings that were too small or even no ring at all.

Women were also offended by their men not proposing on bended knee, as tradition dictates, as well as failing to organise a 'special' proposal or not asking parents' permission for their daughter's hand in marriage. 

Several couples even had an argument following a less than perfect proposal - whilst other respondents confided in friends about their imperfect proposal rather than turning to their partners.

And it seems that modern would-be brides are so desperate to bag their dream engagement ring they are chipping in to the cost themselves.

More HERE Via Daily Mail

Our Best Weapon Against Revenge Porn: Copyright Law?

When federal agents arrested Hunter Moore last month, the Internet breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Dubbed the “Most Hated Man on the Internet,” Moore ran the notorious revenge porn website IsAnyoneUp. His site racked up millions of pageviews and thousands of dollars in advertising revenue by posting sexually explicit photographs and detailed personal information about the people he featured on the site.

According to the indictment, Moore relied on a co-defendant, Charles “Gary Jones” Evens, to hack into victims’ email accounts and obtain nude photographs to feature on IsAnyoneUp. The pair is charged with one count of conspiracy, seven counts of aggravated identity theft, and seven counts of “unauthorized access of a protected computer to obtain information.”

Moore allegedly obtained some of the photos through hacking, but bitter exes submitted many more.

The photos hosted by websites like IsAnyoneUp are often referred to as “revenge porn.” The phenomenon is surprisingly common: One in 10 former partners threaten to post sexually explicit images of their exes online, and an estimated 60 percent follow through. (It’s also worth mentioning that upwards of 80 percent of revenge porn victims are women.)

The harms caused by revenge porn websites are very real—people featured on these sites receive solicitations over social media, lose their jobs, or live in fear that their family and future employers will discover the photos. 

The Origins of Revenge Porn

Moore may have been the “King of Revenge Porn,” but he wasn’t the first contender for the throne.

In 1980, someone at Hustler Magazine had the idea to start Beaver Hunt, a contest that published reader-submitted images of naked women. Beaver Hunt photos were often accompanied by details about the woman: her hobbies, her sexual fantasies, and sometimes her name. Some of the photos were stolen. Exes submitted many more.

Throughout the '80s, women sued Hustler for publishing their photos in Beaver Hunt without their permission. Several courts determined that publishing intimate photos without verifying whether the pictured women actually gave the go-ahead gave the false impression that all of the featured women felt comfortable with their pictures appearing in a “coarse and sex-centered magazine.”

Revenge porn websites have adopted many of the features that made Beaver Hunt notable: showing off user-generated content, submitted without the pictured person’s consent or knowledge, flanked by personal information.

There is one important difference between a nude photo appearing on a website or in the pages of a print magazine. The impact of the photo, even one featured in a popular magazine like Hustler, was still constrained by the fact that it was bound in print. Pages of the magazine could be torn out or photocopied, but the likelihood of a prospective employer coming across a Beaver Hunt photo through happenstance was slim to none.

The likelihood of an employer Googling an applicant and following up on a hit from a porn website? Significantly more likely. Throw links, cross-postings, and email into the mix, and it becomes all the more certain that revenge porn will be discovered.

More HERE Via The Atlantic

Cruella Deville of Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS — A Las Vegas pet-store owner was videotaped letting an arsonist into her store, and she collected office files before leaving as the man set fire to the business with more than two dozen puppies inside, according to an arrest report made public Monday.

Gloria Eun Hye Lee, 35, is due before a Las Vegas judge on Wednesday to face felony conspiracy and arson charges in the fire early Jan. 27 at the Prince & Princess pet shop.

It wasn’t immediately clear if Lee had a lawyer. An attorney who represented her in the past said Monday she’s not handling Lee’s current case.

Sprinklers doused flames, and firefighters arriving to the business in southwest Las Vegas rescued the puppies, fire officials said. The dogs were taken to an area animal shelter.

The arrest report doesn’t name the man seen carrying a pair of red gasoline cans into Lee’s store a little before 1 a.m. The video also shows him talking with Lee, splashing liquid from the cans around the store and igniting the liquid with a flaming newspaper before leaving, according to the arrest report. The video hasn’t been made public.

The man hasn’t charged with a crime, and it wasn’t clear if he had been found or questioned by Clark County fire investigators. County spokesman Dan Kulin called the case an ongoing investigation.

Firefighters credited sprinklers with preventing extensive damage to the pet shop, but they estimated the fire loss at $100,000.

Authorities haven’t said what they think the motive was for the fire.

The same pet store was burglarized just over a year ago when police said two white French bulldogs, a gray Schnauzer and a black Yorkshire terrier puppy were stolen from the Prince & Princess pet shop.

About 90 minutes later, thieves tossed a large boulder through the front door of another pet store that had been featured on the Animal Planet cable TV series “Tanked” and stole four exotic birds and four bearded dragon lizards.

Las Vegas Metropolitan police Officer Bill Cassell said Monday he didn’t know the status of those investigations, or whether any arrests were made.

VIA azcentral

Calculate Your Life's Psychological Footprint

From your closest relationships to your more distant connections, you are constantly affecting the people in your world. Your life footprint reflects the impact you have on the world. Although you may think of yourself as only a small player on the world stage, you may be surprised to learn that your impact can potentially spread to the farthest reaches of the planet.

Theories of development formerly contrasted nature vs. nurture, but researchers are showing, increasingly, the many combined effects of the two on how we grow and change through life. In addition, we now talk about the reciprocal influences that people have on their environments (Whitbourne & Whitbourne, 2014). In other words, the environment affects you, but you affect your environment. The life footprint reflects the part of the equation in which you affect your environment.

You’ve almost certainly heard of the notion of a carbon footprint, which is generally a negatively-framed phenomenon. When you use energy, no matter in what form, you’re leaving behind a trace that contributes overall to global pollution. Some people’s carbon footprints are heavier than others, particularly if they use large amounts of fossil fuel products. 

The life footprint, similarly, leaves behind a trace reflecting, in large part, how you relate to other people. You change the people around you by your actions, ways of relating to them, and decisions you make that affect their lives. The life footprint typically leaves more of a trace on people closest to you, but in some circumstances it might be just as large on a relative stranger as on your long-term partner. 

Perhaps you have what seems like a random conversation with a person you meet in a public place, like waiting in line for your daily morning coffee and bagel. You might casually exchange observations about which choices are healthier. Your fellow breakfast patron expresses surprise when you note how much sodium is contained in that breakfast sandwich she's about to order. She then decides to switch to a lower-sodium alternative and this decision, over the course of time, may prove beneficial to her overall well-being. Even though you never see her again, you’ve just increased your life footprint by having a measurable impact on her health.

The life footprint can, unfortunately, also be negative. You’re driving through town and take your eyes off the road for one second (not by texting, I hope). You fail to see the bicyclist coming behind you and accidentally swerve into him. The unfortunate mishap causes him to dislocate his shoulder, and now he’s in for months of painful surgery and rehabilitation. He may never have the same use of his shoulder again.

Obviously, we’d all like to maximize our positive life footprint so that, over time, we leave the world a better place than it was when we entered it. You can’t predict every single incident that might hurt or benefit someone, and if you think about it too much, you might very well become immobilized. However, by keeping your mind focused on your overall life goals, you can increase the chances of leaving traces behind that will improve the lives of others.

With this background, here’s a 10-item quiz that can give you a start in measuring your life footprint. Answer each question on a 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) scale:

1. Other people thank me for the way I’ve helped them through difficult times.
2. The work I do (at home or on the job) makes it possible for someone else to live a better life.
3. A friend of a friend mentions that something I did made a difference in his or her life.
4. I feel that I have something valuable that I can contribute to others, and I try to live my life to help make that happen.
5. It’s important to me that the people in my family feel that I’m helping them.
6. I later heard that a random conversation I had with someone led to that person’s achieving an important life goal.
7. Without bragging, I think I can honestly say that my work or role in the family has a positive impact on others.
8. When I think about my life goals, what matters more is the effect I have on others rather than getting material rewards.
9. I’m conscious of the fact that what I do can and does leave a lasting impression on others.
10. I can think of several instances in which my advice helped someone make a good decision.

I’ve created the items on this quiz to serve as a guide not only to the “heaviness” of your footprint, but also to stimulate you to think about the ways in which you’re contributing to the world through your relationships with others, your work, and the smaller and less obvious interactions you have. If you’ve scored close to 50, you are definitely on your way to leaving a heavy footprint. If not, by answering these questions, you can start to reframe the way you view your life’s efforts.

More here Via psychologytoday

NFL Mascots meet Star Wars

More HERE Via twentytwowords.com

10 Ways Sochi Is Not Ready

The 2014 Winter Olympics start in two days. So soon, right?! Well, from the looks of it, the people responsible for getting the media accommodations ready feel the same way. As journalists from around the world descended on Russia this past week, they found hotels that were still very much under construction. And, as one might expect in this modern age of media, they took to Twitter to point out the resulting "quirks."

More HERE Via Mental Floss

Sucking the Marrow out of Life – with Ritual

“As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.”

― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast p. 6

Perhaps no one embodied lust for living like Ernest Hemingway. Whether dodging bulls and bullets in Spain, deep-sea fishing off Panama, or big-game hunting in Kenya, “Papa” was all-in. And, as the quote above conveys, he understood that integral to the good life was an appreciation of good food. But when is that appreciation most intense? Context is critical. Oysters are better with white wine and both are better in a sea-side café amongst old friends. A recent study shows how another contextual factor—ritual—plays a key role in our enjoyment of good food. The more we ritualized our consumption, the more we’ll relish the experience.

University of Minnesota Marketing Professor Kathleen Vohs and colleagues tested people’s self-reported enjoyment of a variety of foods including chocolate bars, lemonade, and carrots. Prior to consuming the food, some of the participants engaged in a series of deliberate, strictly sequenced (in other words, ritualized) gestures. For example, before eating the chocolate bar, they had to break it in two,

unwrap one half and eat, then repeat with the other half. Or, they had to pour half a packet of lemonade mix into a cup, stir, wait 30 seconds, then add the other half, stir again, wait 30 seconds and then drink. Other participants simply consumed after pausing an amount of time equal to the other group’s pre-consumption ritual or they engaged in random gestures before consuming

Participants who ritualized their consumption reported significantly greater enjoyment of the food (even carrots!) and were found to actually consume the food more slowly (by nine seconds on average), apparently savoring the experience more deeply than the others. Two other findings were noteworthy. One, enjoyment was further amplified if a delay was imposed between the ritual and the consumption. Two, greater enjoyment was not found for participants who merely observed ritualized food intake, suggesting that it was the active involvement in ritual that heighted the positive experience.

The study indicates that ritual enhances experience by increasing one’s involvement and intrinsic interest in the experience. This in turn focuses attention and heightens sensory awareness, making wine fruiter, oysters saltier—and quite likely—voices more melodic, colors more vivid, and friends more valued. Hemingway climbed mountains and crossed continents—his clenched fist draining life of every precious drop. More ritual might allow us to do the same much closer to home. 

 VIA psychologytoday

Another MPD Officer Arrested

A Metropolitan Police Department officer was arrested yesterday for theft while on duty.

According to a release, "members of the Internal Affairs Division arrested Officer Rodney Williams following a tip from an MPD employee that led to an investigation that the officer had taken property from the Evidence Control Branch where he worked." Williams, who has been on the force since 1990, has been charged with Theft II. An investigation is ongoing.

Williams is the latest MPD officer to be arrested and charged with a crime. Police Chief Cathy Lanier has said that hiring practices are more rigorous now than they were in the 1990s and early 2000s. At a community meeting held in Ward 8 to address officer arrests, Lanier had a simple message for cops who commit crimes: "We will lock you up."

Via DCist

Mormons declare war on masturbation in creepy new video

A recently released video by Brigham Young University–Idaho compares masturbators to wounded soldiers, and encourages students to identify to religious officials friends they think are masturbating.

The awkward and creepy video, “Wounded On The Battlefield,” compares reporting a friend to religious authorities for masturbating  to rescuing a wounded soldier in a time of war.

In the video,  BYU-Idaho President Kim B. Clark reminds students  to reach out to roommates in need: “If you need to, talk to your bishop, tell someone who can do something that you have a friend in trouble.”

Masturbation is the enemy, and the good Mormon must be vigilant:

“The temptations of the great war are many, the battles are real, and the enemy is clever. The enemy is cruel, ruthless, and relentless. We must not underestimate the danger. We must be vigilant and valiant…”

Minibar by José Andrés

View The Daily Meal's video on Mini Bar HERE

Rap-Themed Valentine's Day Cards

Looking for a unique Valentine's Day card for that special someone that lets them know it's real but also captures the spirit of the novelty cards you used to rock with in 3rd grade? New York-based illustrator Instagrandmaw may have exactly what you're looking for. Her Dipset and Drake-themed cards flip the rappers' popular lyrics into "love" notes that say so much more than "I Love You." If your girl/guy can't appreciate a card with Cam'ron, Jim Jones, or Juelz Santana on it, then you need to have someone new by February 15th.

Complex

Busboys and Poets owner Andy Shallal makes unconventional bid for D.C. mayor

Andy Shallal glanced around the room full of D.C. voters, finally attentive, and then back at the two teenagers who wanted to first read poetry. The Busboys and Poets owner had been waiting for hours, past 11 p.m., to address the crowd. It was well beyond the point at which the five more-practiced politicians ahead of him in the race for mayor might have stayed to appeal to a house party.

But Shallal is not a typical candidate. He smiled and ceded the stage — and perhaps his moment — as the young poets struck up a hip-hop beat and began pounding out themes of peace, justice and the quest to send “Andy Shallal to city hall.”

More here Via washingtonpost.com

FERMATA: An expansive view of sound

January 31, 2014 12:30 PM EST — What if an art gallery offered nothing to see? How might visitors visualize the sounds they hear? "Fermata," an exhibition at Artisphere, answers those questions with new ways to experience sound. (Jessica Rosgaard & Jhaan Elker / / The Washington Post)