Eric Weitner's Amplog

Homeless man with gifted radio voice looks for a second chance

Eric Weitner — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 17:37:28 +0000

See more at tv.gawker.com

Aging gracefully through exercise

Eric Weitner — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 03:34:05 +0000

Working out can help you shed pounds — but that’s just the beginning. New research from Tel Aviv University has found that “endurance exercises,” like a Central Park jog or a spinning class, can make us look younger. The key, exercise, unlocks the stem cells of our muscles.

Prof. Dafna Benayahu and her team at Tel Aviv University’s Sackler School of Medicine say their findings explain for the first time why older people who have exercised throughout their lives age more gracefully. They have discovered how endurance exercise increases the number of muscle stem cells and enhances their ability to rejuvenate old muscles. The researchers hope their finding can lead to a new drug to help the elderly and immobilized heal their muscles faster.

Endurance exercise also improved the levels of “spontaneous locomotion” — the feeling that tells our bodies to just get up and dance — of old rats. Aging is typically associated with a reduced level of spontaneous locomotion.

The combination of aging and a sedentary lifestyle significantly contributes to the development of diseases such as osteoporosis, obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, as well as a decline in cognitive abilities. If researchers can discover a method to “boost” satellite cells in our muscles, that could simulate the performance of young and healthy muscles — and hold our aging bones in place.
Read more at www.physorg.com

200 Years In 4 Minutes

Eric Weitner — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 03:23:40 +0000

h/t to @amp-arif for first Amplifying it.

Clipped from www.talkingpointsmemo.com

Via the BBC, Hans Rosling examines the correlation between income growth and life expectancy in 200 countries over the last 200 hundred years in an amazing animation. Take a look:

See more at www.talkingpointsmemo.com

Google Blacklist - Words that Google Instant doesn’t like

Eric Weitner — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 15:40:53 +0000

We’ve come a long way from 7 dirty words (somewhere George Carlin is turning in his grave). View the clip source for the full list.

Clipped from www.2600.com

Like everything these days, great care must be taken to ensure that as few people as possible are offended by anything. Google Instant is no exception. Somewhere within Google there exists a master list of “bad words” and evil concepts that Google Instant is programmed to not act upon, lest someone see something offensive in the instant results… even if that’s exactly what they typed into the search bar. We call it Google Blacklist.

We thought it would be great fun to compile as many of these objectionable terms as possible - and also see what objectionable terms were NOT included.

This page is NOT suitable for children, ministers, senators, or the mass media.

Read more at www.2600.com

The iPhone of Night Clubs

Eric Weitner — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 18:50:16 +0000

The Red Devil Lounge in San Francisco… Ha!

Clipped from www.huffingtonpost.com

See more at www.huffingtonpost.com

Do NOT give this politician an energy drink

Eric Weitner — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 17:28:52 +0000

Wow, if you close your eyes he sounds exactly like legendary motivational speaker Matt Foley, played by Chris Farley, who “lives in a van, down by the river!” This is Phil Davison’s now famous stump speech, and he was running for Stark County, Ohio’s GOP Treasurer. Too bad he lost.

Compare for yourself: http://www.hulu.com/watch/4183/saturday-night-live-down-by-the-river

Clipped from gawker.com

See more at gawker.com

Triceratops never existed

Eric Weitner — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 02:15:36 +0000

New study suggests that a dinosaur’s bone structure could change shape over its lifetime and that Triceratops was actually a juvenile form of the big-skulled, three-horned Torosaurus… I want my money back.

Clipped from www.newscientist.com

DINOSAURS were shape-shifters. Their skulls underwent extreme changes throughout their lives, growing larger, sprouting horns then reabsorbing them, and changing shape so radically that different stages look to us like different species.

Triceratops had three facial horns and a short, thick neck-frill with a saw-toothed edge. Torosaurus also had three horns, though at different angles, and a much longer, thinner, smooth-edged frill with two large holes in it. So it’s not surprising that Othniel Marsh, who discovered both in the late 1800s, considered them to be separate species.

Now Scannella and Horner say that triceratops is merely the juvenile form of torosaurus. As the animal aged, its horns changed shape and orientation and its frill became longer, thinner and less jagged. Finally it became fenestrated, producing the classic torosaurus form (see diagram, right).
Read more at www.newscientist.com

Another benefit of drinking green tea: Stronger teeth

Eric Weitner — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 16:41:38 +0000

Add that to the list… http://www.health.harvard.edu/press_releases/benefit_of_drinking_green_tea #coffeefail

Clipped from news.discovery.com

A cup of green tea a day may keep the dentist away.

That’s the finding of new research published in Preventive Medicine. The findings show that drinking at least one cup of green tea a day increases the odds of keeping your teeth as you age.

The researchers suspect that antimicrobial molecules called catechins present in green tea and in lesser amounts in oolong tea provide the benefit. But be careful if you like your tea with sugar: sweetener may negate the effect, the team found.

“They also reported that drinking sweet coffee was actually deleterious,” he added. “Coffee alone had no problem, but sweet coffee would actually make you lose your teeth.”
Read more at news.discovery.com

Apple brand loyalty: 77% of iPhone 4 sales were upgrades

Eric Weitner — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 15:40:04 +0000

Not surprising, but I think this might have as much to do with the product as much as it does the brand. Once you go iphone, it’s just hard to use anything else.

Clipped from tech.fortune.cnn.com

“Mission accomplished,” writes Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster in a report to clients issued early Friday, the day after Apple’s (AAPL) biggest product launch ever. “Apple has in three years built brand loyalty in the phone market that compels users to upgrade to the latest version and wait in line for one to six hours to pick up their iPhone.”
Read more at tech.fortune.cnn.com

Obama on iPod, iPad: “information becomes distraction”

Eric Weitner — Mon, 10 May 2010 03:15:42 +0000

Thought this was a fairly important quote by Obama. Of course it is an oversimplification, but there’s something very candid about this quote. The emergence of this double-edged sword view of information in one way defines our times.

Clipped from www.huffingtonpost.com

“And with iPods and iPads, and Xboxes and PlayStations — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation. So all of this is not only putting pressure on you; it’s putting new pressure on our country and on our democracy.”
Read more at www.huffingtonpost.com