Watercooler Sensation

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America’s Smartest Cities

• So you think you’re smart? We’ll let your city be the judge. [CNN]
• According to education rankings in the latest Census report, the smartest city in the U.S. is…Seattle!
• 52.7% of people in Seattle have at least a bachelor’s degree, if not higher.
• Rounding out the rest of the top 5 smartest cities: San Francisco; Raleigh; WashingtonDC; and Austin.
• To fill out your list of the top 10 smartest cities, just add: Minneapolis, Atlanta, Boston, San Diego and Lexintgon/Fayette.
• (Sorry, New York – you squeaked in at Number 20.)

How’s it feel to be so brainy?

Drink Juice! Don’t Get Alzheimers!

• See! You really shoulda had a V8!
• A new study in the American Journal of Medicine says drinking a glass of juice more than three times a week cuts the risk of Alzheimer’s by 76%. [BBC]
• The study was conducted by Dr. Qi Dai of VanderbiltUniversity and followed nearly 2,000 people for a decade.
• The bottom line: Alzheimer’s has been linked to the build-up of protein clumps in the brain. This process can be disrupted by chemicals known as polyphenols…which are found in juice!
• The antioxidents in juice also may soak up the “free radicals” which can change brain cells and also lead to Alzheimer’s.
• The study is particularly significant, as it’s one of the first long-term studies to prove the juice/Alzheimer’s connection.

So we’re giving up gin & tonics for Bloody Marys now. I mean, it’s for our health.

Google Knows Reading Is Fundamental

• Is Google the best thing to happen to books since Gutenberg invented the printing press? [Boston Globe]
• The on-line powerhouse has announced it will now allow us to download and print out the full text of out-of-copyright books. That’s so cool. [Google Book Search]
• You can search for the book you want by keyword, title or author. Oh, and it’s free.
• The classics are all there. A Tale of Two Cities? Check. Hamlet? Check. Dante’s Inferno? Got it!
• The Authors Guild and the Associaton of American Publishers aren’t thrilled and tried to stop Google from giving the masses free access to literature. Meanies.
• One thing to keep in mind — for many of the books, it might actually be cheaper to go to the bookstore and buy a copy than to download it and print it out on your home computer. Now all we need is free toner.

Free books! Free books!

By the Numbers

Ah, Labor Day: a chance to sit back, relax, and celebrate your hard-earned dollars. That is, until you have to wake up on Tuesday and do the same old commute all over again. And just exactly how are Americans getting to work these days? Let’s take a look behind the numbers. [U.S. Census Bureau]

77%

The percentage of Americans who drive to work alone.

10%

The percentage of Americans who carpool to work.

5%

The percentage of workers who commute using public transportation.

2%

The percentage of Americans who walk to work.

31

The number of states who have increased obesity rates from last year. We’re just saying.

24.4 minutes

The average time it takes to commute to work.

Celebrities: Unfiltered

“We asked Paris to be on the program because I could take the mick out of her and not feel at all bad about it — she’s such a complete airhead. But she demanded a ridiculous amount of money — like the price of a big house just to say a few stupid things. She’s hardly going to announce anything world-changing, is she? It’s absolutely pathetic, isn’t it?”

— Singing sensation Charlotte Church on Paris Hilton’s $650,000 demand to appear as a guest on Church’s new chat show. (Surprise — Paris isn’t going to Church any time soon.) [MSNBC]

Speed Round

AUDIO: AL GORE BRINGS SEXY BACK TO MTV VIDEO MUSIC AWARDS

Former Vice President Al Gore makes surprise appearance at MTV Video Music Awards: “I actually was not planning on being here tonight. But then MTV explained to me that Justin Timberlake is bringing sexy back, so here I am.”

AUDIO: GM DROPS SURVIVOR

NYC Council Member John Liu, on General Motors decision to pull ad dollars from Survivor, The Race War: “Major corporations that are mainstays of America realize that they are sponsoring a show that puts a battle of the races together. Those advertisers and companies will not want to support this kind of show either.”

BREAKING UP OVER EMAIL

Radio Shack breaks up with 400 employees…over email. Text of the email: “"The work force reduction notification is currently in progress. Unfortunately your position is one that has been eliminated.” Ouch. [Atlanta Journal Constitution]

HORSEY KIDS

What do Bruce Springsteen, Paula Zahn and Lou Dobbs have in common? Their daughters competed against one another in the Hampton Classic Horse Show. Cheerio. [NY Daily News]

SIGNS

New outbreak of crop circles in the Midwest. Remember, the truth is out there. [ABC]

WINE

Zin ain’t in. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger refuses to name zinfindel California’s official “historic wine.” [ABC]

BARTENDERS

That must have been one heck of a MangoRazzatini: Applebee’s bartender gets $1,000 tip on $26 check. [CBS News]

TATTOOS

Too bad you can’t SpellCheck® your back: man spends $380 on giant back tattoo commemorating his mom, only to find two spelling errors. [The Sun]

BAD MAN

If your pastor says he wants to exorcise your demons, make sure he’s wearing pants first. [Star-Telegram]

FOO FIGHTERS

Why we >HEART< the Foo Fighters: Foo Fighter frontman David Grohl is taking two Austrailian miners out for drinks, after hearing the miners listened to the Foo Fighters while trapped underground for two solid weeks. [CBC]

MCFLURRIES

McDonald’s reduces size of hole in lid of McFlurry cups b/c hedgehogs kept getting their heads stuck through them and starving to death. No. Really. [Yahoo]

GET A PRENUP

Billionaire/philanthropist Warren Buffet weds. [CNN]

U.S. OPEN

What a trooper: despite a shoulder injury, Lindsay Davenport advances at the U.S. Open. [AP]

ONLY IN FRANCE

Just another day in Paris: New French book exposes sexual escapades of French politicians. [Reuters]

RIDICULOUS

Univ. of Montana campus police now patrol on Segways. In other news, drunken frat boys find one more thing to throw empty beer cans at. [AP]