The Coca-Cola Freestyle

They've been in beta in ATL and CA for nearly two years now, but we just discovered one in the wild here in New England, and this is the only way to get a fountain drink!

Next time we're in NYC

We're eating here. Jus' sayin'.

A Cure for HIV?

Not sure that a bone marrow transplant is all that much better than chronic HIV infection, but maybe this will led to something viable.

Bob Dylan Turns 70

The old man is younger than that now. Happy Birthday

Fu-gaga

Fugue on Bad Romance. Awesome.

Rube Goldberg Memorialized on the Web

Tribute to the engineer-turned-cartoonist. John Henry would be proud.

Peak Coffee?

Your morning coffee may soon be victim to global warming. Also, we like how this topic gets as much in the sidebar as a typical Charlie Sheen piece.

What's so great about PBS?

Really, now: PBS takes ~$300 million from the feds and don't turn a penny in profit. What a waste. The oil companies take ~$4 billion from the feds in tax subsidies and make huge profits for their shareholders. Isn't it obvious where the middle class working man's tax dollars are better spent? via. 

Win a Trip to Mardi Gras*

We love Magic Hat beer, don't get us wrong. We're amused, though, by the hang tags all over this six pack of #9 that advertise a chance to Win a Trip to Mardi Gras!*

*Mardi Gras Celebration in Burlington, VT, March 4-6, 2011. 

How to Ruin Perfectly Good Oatmeal

McDonald's "FMO," or Fruit-and-Maple Oatmeal-like Product, viciously dissected by Mark Bittman.

March Madness of Books

From the Morning News--the dorkiest, most creative re-branding of a Sweet Sixteen bracket we know of.

Make it Count Twice

This is old news, but on two indistinguishable editions of Condoleeza Rice's memoirs were on display at the bookstore today:

Like most of us, Condi only had one childhood, but why limit yourself to selling only one childhood memoir when you can make more money selling two? The brick and mortar bookseller left it at that; Amazon clarifies that the 352-page Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family is meant for adult audiences while the "distilled" 336-page Memoir of My Extraordinary, Ordinary Family and Me, which retails for nearly $10 less, is for "young adults, 7th grade reading level and higher."

Quote of the Week

A woman saying of her recent breast surgery:

“My personality doesn’t go with small breasts,” she added. Using the words “pecho” and “personalidad” — Spanish for “breast” and “personality” — she coined a term that could serve as Dr. Yager’s motto: “Now, I’m a person with a lot of ‘pechonalidad!’ ”

We heard the guys really only date her for her personality.

We Didn't Start the Fire

Billy Joel set to Google Images by someone with too much time on his hands.

Study Finds Only 28% of Biology Teachers Teach Biology

Not only that, but 13% skip the biology all together and teach "creation."

Wonder why most of America's young doctors are imported from overseas?

Who Cares about Typography?

That's not an 1890s typewriter in front of you, buddy, so why are you using it like one? This primer will set you straight. Via. 

Sel de la Terre

The pretentious name had kept us away for a while, but enticement from OpenTable sent us straight into Sel de la Terre's Back Bay adventure and dinner was wonderful.

The waitress's suggestion to add an organic duck egg from the chef's farm to the house burger seemed odd, but everything else was spot-on. We had a variation of sole meunier accented with toasted hazel nuts and brussels sprouts that'll make you forget the classic and our date had a braised short rib that melted in your mouth with just a hint of sweetness in the sauce.

Simone Dinnerstein

This industrious Brooklynite bankrolled her own Carnegie Hall debut and her 2007 recording of the Goldberg Variations with microloans from friends and neighbors. The recording, by the way, blows the Glenn Gould 1955 out of the water. Those friends and neighbors were on to something; she now plays Europe by invitation and she landed a contract with Sony Records.

Since we don't live in Brooklyn, we only just now heard of her through her new album, Bach: A Strange Beauty. The album is a set of her favorite Bach concertos and suites for keyboard and orchestra interspersed with chorales. The chorales are especially wonderful... The conventional wisdom is that Old Bach would sit around nights with a cask of sherry and play around with common church tunes, turning them into boozy songs. Hopefully that's true--and if so, he'd wholeheartedly approve of her interpretations.

The Black Swan

Beautifully done story. We were arguing today about how believable the protagonist's descent into insanity was, but so what if there is no clinical syndrome that matches the ballerina's mental disease. The genius was in the screenplay: it was Swan Lake told as a movie about the production of Swan Lake. The doppelgangers, both real and imagined, are every where!