One thing is going to become clear in the coming years, Braun says: if you want to lose weight, you don’t necessarily have to go for a long run. “Just get rid of your chair.” "...Exercise does have an important role in weight loss. That role, however, is different from what many people expect and probably wish." And quite nuanced too. Turns out it's different for men and women and it matters what kind of exercise you do. [more inside]
posted by storybored at 8:25 PM PST - 130 comments

SLYT Doody/Kaufman No matter what you expect, this won't be it.
posted by HuronBob at 8:10 PM PST - 22 comments

Lawrence Welk was a drug fiend
posted by philip-random at 7:45 PM PST - 67 comments

"Con men used to travel town to town hawking medical remedies said to be made of Chinese snakes. Snake oil was useless and dangerous. So the FDA was created to put a stop to it and other food and drug scams. But, today, quack medicine has never been bigger. In the 21st century, snake oil has been replaced by bogus therapies using stem cells. Stem cells may offer cures one day, but medical charlatans on the Internet are making outrageous claims that they can reverse the incurable, from autism to multiple sclerosis to every kind of cancer."* Video Part 1 [13:15] || Part 2 [11:49]. [more inside]
posted by ericb at 5:43 PM PST - 33 comments

"The 9:30 Club became the place in Washington where the misfits could go and nobody would judge them. The scene became bigger as MTV opened the doors to this kind of music. But the 9:30 Club was on the ground floor."

Today's Washington Post magazine features an oral history of the 9:30 Club, in celebration of its 30th anniversary. (Alternate link to just the text of the article.)
posted by Ike_Arumba at 5:03 PM PST - 59 comments

PlayGroundology: "scours the web for all things bright, beautiful and occasionally tarnished about the world of playgrounds." [via] [more inside]
posted by marxchivist at 1:06 PM PST - 14 comments

The Rise and Fall of Frank Ma, Last of New York's Asian Godfathers: How a Chinese immigrant became a crime lord, ordered a hit that left the wrong men dead, sparked a 16-year international investigation and finally landed in prison for the rest of his life.
posted by zarq at 12:50 PM PST - 43 comments

The UN Commission established to investigate Bhutto's assassination has released its report. The Report says her murder was avoidable, and holds responsible General Musharraf's government for failing to protect her and destroying evidence from the crime scene. In response, Musharraf, in self-exile in London, is threatening to sue the UN panel. The present Government has started to take action against those accused who are still in the country.
posted by Azaadistani at 12:40 PM PST - 7 comments

Sonoma County CA separates elderly gay couple and sells all of their worldly possessions. Three months after he was hospitalized, Harold died in the nursing home. Because of the county's actions, Clay missed the final months he should have had with his partner of 20 years. Compounding this tragedy, Clay has literally nothing left of the home he had shared with Harold or the life he was living up until the day that Harold fell, because he has been unable to recover any of his property. [more inside]
posted by Saxon Kane at 12:15 PM PST - 98 comments

Shocking photos of the Eyjafjallajökull volcanic eruption: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 and more volcano pictures from Marco Fulle taken on April 14th, 16th, and 17th.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:14 AM PST - 131 comments

Your dreams of rapping superstardom are stymied by your Scottish sound, so what do you do? Simple: reinvent yourself as a West Coast wild boy, with American accent and history to match. Keeping it real might be murder, but even when it all falls apart, at least you got to tour with Eminem and D12 – and you can salvage something by writing a book about it all.
posted by Len at 10:49 AM PST - 67 comments

Scareware comprises several classes of scam software with malicious payloads, or of limited or no benefit, that are marketed to consumers by scaring them. One frequently seen version is rogue security software that deceives users into paying for the fake or simulated removal of malware. The N. Y. Times site inadvertently displayed a scareware message last September. [more inside]
posted by Obscure Reference at 9:27 AM PST - 62 comments

Instead of letting corporal punishment fall out of fashion or banning it outright (like the majority of areas in the US have done) a small Texas city has brought back paddling and it sounds like it's working just fine. Is this a trend we can expect to see continuing? Or is it a punishment that might soon be federally banned?
posted by DoublePlus at 9:17 AM PST - 114 comments

A crew from Google is capturing images of the Vail and Beaver Creek mountains for its Google Maps' Street View with its own snowmobile mounted with a special camera. Shortly before the Winter Olympics in Vancouver in February, Google decided to branch out to ski resorts, using a snowmobile to capture images of Whistler ski area. Vail and Beaver Creek are the first American ski resorts to be included in Street View.
posted by netbros at 7:43 AM PST - 10 comments

Service dogs for PTSD are changing the lives of both former veterans with PTSD and their trainers (audio/picture version and article version). [more inside]
posted by Wolfster at 7:14 AM PST - 16 comments

Dan The Man... if computer games were more like real life. (SLYT)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:08 AM PST - 113 comments

MAD Magaziner Jack Davis' multi-page montage of everything on NBC in the Fall of 1965, including the Huntley-Brinkley Report, Johnny Carson, Hullaballoo, Dr. Kildare, Andy Williams, My Mother The Car, Please Don't Eat the Daisies, I Spy, Dean Martin, Camp Runamuck, The Man From UNCLE, Flipper, I Dream of Jeannie and Get Smart. (missing from the reconstructed pic are the Sunday shows, including Bonanza and Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color). via Mark Evanier
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:54 AM PST - 21 comments