Men who spent more than 23 hours a week watching TV and sitting in their cars (as passengers or as drivers) had a 64 percent greater chance of dying from heart disease than those who sat for 11 hours a week or less. What was unexpected was that many of the men who sat long hours and developed heart problems also exercised.

What a counter-intuitive result...you can't sit for hours at a time even if you exercise regularly. Looks like I need more trips to the coffeemaker!

-janelane

Phys Ed: The Men Who Stare at Screens - Well Blog - NYTimes.com

It's no surprise the new company has removed all traces of "Ticketmaster" from the new name. Over 30 years, the brand has come under fire from big names in the music business, from Pearl Jam in 1995 to Bruce Springsteen in 2009. Fans have also endured their price-gouging methods and instant sellouts. Under Ticketmaster's reign, ticket prices rose 160 percent since 1999 (well over the pace of inflation)--not to mention the cost of the shirts, beers and hot dogs Live Nation sells at a premium to smitten fans.

Ah, that explains a lot. The not-so-hard-won market prowess of a monopoly.

-janelane

Ticketmaster-Live Nation Merger: The New Monster That Controls Concerts

The truth is that we care mightily when BP wreaks havoc in the Gulf of Mexico, but we pay scant attention when Shell harms Nigeria, when Chevron pollutes Ecuador, when PDVSA stains Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela, when Suncor extracts oil from tar sands in Canada. It’s understandable that as we watch the live webfeed of the gusher, we want to know what BP officials knew and when they knew it, and we want to know why the Obama administration didn’t react sooner. But if we don’t broaden the horizons of our questions, we run the risk of reinforcing a fairy tale that says we can have our oil and our environment, too. The worst outcome of the mess in the Gulf would be the perpetuation of the conceit that error and greed can be regulated out of the worldwide oil industry.

In other words, we need to change the oil-centric paradigm of our times. It is broken. We must deal with BP, but we must also channel the power of our anger toward reducing consumption of fossil fuels. Smaller cars, less driving, more carpools, public transportation, better home insulation, smaller homes, less meat, more renewable energy—these are the sorts of useful things we can do. It little matters whether we fill our tanks at BP or Exxon stations. What matters is that we visit gas stations less often.

Nuff said.

-janelane

To BP or Not To BP | The Big Money

The last episode of “Law & Order,” written and directed by the show’s longtime executive producer Rene Balcer, was finished before the series’s cancellation was announced this month. Yet it managed to be an entirely appropriate send-off, and its low-key last moments were more moving and honestly emotional than the endings of “Lost” and “24,” shows whose finales received much more attention.

I hadn't heard the series was canceled. I'm going to really miss it.

-janelane

A ‘Law & Order’ Farewell: These Were Their Stories - ArtsBeat Blog - NYTimes.com

After eight long years, all five seasons of Daria are now available on DVD.

As evidenced by my handle, I LOVED Daria. Long live skirts and combat boots!

-janelane

Daria: It got the misfits right, but it got the popular kids right, too. - By Reihan Salam - Slate Magazine

Welcome to Doodle 4 Google, a competition where we invite K-12 students to work their artistic will upon our homepage logo.

These are fantastic. Check out the finalist below from GA:

Doodle 4 Google

Op-Ed Contributor
Why I’m Leaving the Senate

By EVAN BAYH
Published: February 20, 2010

BASEBALL may be our national pastime, but the age-old tradition of taking a swing at Congress is a sport with even deeper historical roots in the American experience. Since the founding of our country, citizens from Ben Franklin to David Letterman have made fun of their elected officials. Milton Berle famously joked: “You can lead a man to Congress, but you can’t make him think.” These days, though, the institutional inertia gripping Congress is no laughing matter.

We're not the only ones dismayed by the dysfunction of Congress.

-janelane

P.S. I'm also dismayed by the Executive Branch and the Judicial Branch, but that's for another day.

Op-Ed Contributor - Why I’m Leaving the Senate - NYTimes.com

Since I am a city boy and a bit soft, I also looked for qualities that would satisfy my friend and former colleague at Adventure, the hardy Paul Rouse. Rouse joined me for two afternoons of testing/troublemaking and provided sage commentary of the sort one would expect from a man who has thought more about survival than most and whose neighbor owns a semi so he can, in Rouse's words, "head West when it all goes down."

Great timing! I'm halfway through The Road and wondering what would go in my cart.

-janelane

The best survival guides. - By Ryan Bradley - Slate Magazine

But here’s my question: When will David Jaffe be receiving his royalty checks?

And that is because Dante’s Inferno is nothing less than a studied, rigorously shameless high-definition knockoff of God of War, the 2005 action masterpiece created by Mr. Jaffe for Sony, and God of War II, the more-than-worthy sequel published in 2007. (God of War II was essentially the swan song for big-budget production on the PlayStation 2, the best-selling game console yet.)

Imitating God of War is no travesty. The God of War series, which depicts the adventures of a swashbuckling antihero through a dark rendition of Greek mythology, is rightfully one of the most influential game franchises of the last decade. And Inferno, which depicts Dante as a swashbuckling antihero blasting his way through the nine circles of hell to rescue Beatrice, is the best God of War pretender yet.

Bring on the knock offs. GOW was awesome (...when I watched Billy play it).

-janelane

Video Game Review - Dante’s Inferno - A Virtual World Inspired by Dante - NYTimes.com

This is another reason why I love living in South Carolina. There is no shortage of ingenuity, adaptibility, and perseverance. Bring on climate change. As long as there is some muddy water left and a little carbon to burn, we are fine.

This spurred me into making a motivation poster.

Actually, that's a good reason to love living in the South. There's no shortage of rednecks being nominated for a Darwin award. :-)

-janelane

watercrunch