Watercooler Sensation

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5 Really Dumb Things To Do To Your Body

• Thinking about surgery to make yourself more beautiful? Here are 5 really, really bad ways to try. [ABC]
• #5 Mesotherapy and Lipodissolve: These procedures claim to dissolve away fat with an injection...trouble is, “it can cause pain, swelling, hard lumps, ulceration of the skin, and contour irregularities” and is banned in tons of countries across the world.
• #4 Cosmetic Foot Surgery: Think you’ve got hobbit toes? You may just want to put some socks on. Doctors say attempts to alter the shape of your foot through surgery can lead to “infection, nerve injury, prolonged swelling of a toe, and even chronic pain with walking.” And that’s before the high heels.
• #3 Leg Lengthening: For goodness sakes, short man, just wear lifts. Experts warn that any attempt to make yourself taller by breaking your leg bones and stretching the healing process can cost up to “$120,000″ and “is a poor choice if vanity is the main motivation.” Ouch.
• #2 Make-up Tattoo: Want to roll out of bed looking all made up? Four words: “No. No. No. No.” You’ll regret it. Says Dr. Malcolm Roth, director of plastic surgery at Maimondes Medical Center in Brooklyn, NY, “If you don’t like the results, you may still be stuck with them...I have had more than my share of patients who ask me to remove the permanent makeup tattoo that someone else gave them, and I will tell you that they’re difficult to take away.”
• #1 Plastic Surgery On The Cheap: If you think you’re getting a deal on your plastic surgery, you’re wrong. There’s been an “explosion in the number of people who are willing to perform these operations” but “many of the proprietors for whom cosmetic procedures represent a lucrative part of their business do not even hold a medical degree.” When your butt implants explode, they’re racing across the border with a suitcase full of your cash.

Real beauty is on the inside.

It’s The End Of The Internet As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

• We still mourn things we loved which are now obsolete. 8-track tapes. Short basketball shorts. Rotary phones. Mix tapes. And now ... the Internet? [Fox News]
• The scientists who invented the Internet are now hard at work at a replacement known simply as “The Grid.”
• We’ll try not to get too technical (primarily because then we wouldn’t understand it either), but here’s what we know.
• The new system, “The Grid,” would be 10,000-times faster than normal broadband is now. That means you could download an entire feature-length movie in seconds.
• In the time you took to read that last line, we could have downloaded “There Will Be Blood” AND “Sweeney Todd” to our computers. If we had “The Grid,” that is.
• “...the grid could also provide the kind of power needed to transmit holographic images; allow instant online gaming with hundreds of thousands of players; and offer high-definition video telephony for the price of a local call.”
• Scientists have loftier plans for The Grid than just a really massive game of Bully. Researchers at the Swiss particle physics center Cern (they thought up the Internet) created the grid to work with their new Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the machine that will explore the origin of the universe.
• (The LHC could also create a black hole to destroy the whole Earth, but that’s a different story for another time, darling. For today, just focus on fast movies.) [IT Wire]
• The difference: The Internet runs over a series of cables and routing centers that were actually built for phone lines. It’s very hodge-podge and soooo last century.
• The Grid, however, is built over a network of fiber optic cables and totally updated routing centers. There are already 55,000 servers involved; they expect that number to go to 200,000 in two years.

Our kids will one day ask us about the Old Days, when you had to wait for an entire hour to download a movie and you couldn’t send your girlfriend a hologram just to say I love you.

Waiving (And Struggling) To Get By In The Army

• It’s a hard knock life for the Army right now: manpower shortages, sagging recruitment and retention rates, dire overextension.
• In an effort to meet its recruitment goals of about 100,000 soldiers per year, the Army has been forced to lower its educational, aptitude, and conduct standards.
• According to the Army Recruiting Command, the “percentage of active and reserve Army recruits granted ‘conduct’ waivers for misdemeanor or felony charges increased to 11% last fiscal year from 4.6 in fiscal 2004.” [USA TODAY]
• Check out the stats on the new recruits last year:
• Only 79% of the recruits had high school diplomas, compared with 91% in 2001.
• 2,000 of the new recruits were in their 40s (the Army had to raise the age for enlistees from 35 to 42).
• Twice as many scored below average on the armed services qualification test as the year before.
• Lawrence Korb, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, on why recruitment levels are down: “Since the American people have turned against the war in Iraq in very large numbers, the influencers (parents, religious leaders, teachers and coaches) have discouraged young men and women, who normally would join the army, from doing so since it is the service that bears the brunt of the fighting in Iraq.” [CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS]
• Bottom line: Not only are we decreasing “our ability to deploy to other crises” and putting incredible strain on our all-volunteer Army and their families, but we’re also lowering our standards to barely maintain the number of soldiers already in Iraq – all while Bush is calling for an addition 30,000 combat and support troops at a time when 62% of the nation say the U.S. made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq. [USA TODAY]

Stretched thin.

By the Numbers

Growing up, we always wanted a television in our bedrooms, but our mean moms always said no, bedrooms were for sleeping and homework. We pouted, but now it turns out our moms may have been on to something. Today, when most toddlers have full entertainment centers in their rooms, a new study in the Journal of Pediatrics shows adolescents with televisions in their bedrooms “are less likely to engage in healthy activities such as exercising, eating fresh vegetables and enjoying family meals.”
[AAP] [Science Daily]

20.7/22.2 hours

The amount of time girls/boys with TVs in their bedrooms spend watching the idiot box a week

15.2/18.2 hours

The amount of time girls/boys without TVs in their bedrooms spend watching television in a week.

1.8 hours

Amount of time the average teenage girl with a TV in her bedroom spends in “vigorous activity” a week.

2.5 hours

Amount of time the average teenage girl without a TV in her bedroom spends in “vigorous activity” a week

2.9

Average number of meals the teenage girl with a TV in her bedroom eats with her family

3.7

Average number of meals the teenage girl without a TV in her bedroom eats with her family

2.6

GPA of the teenage boy with a TV in his room

2.9

GPA of the teenage boy without a TV in his room

Celebrities: Unfiltered

“A haircut? Lady, I went to Stanford, I’ve won Emmy awards, I’m working seven days a week, and you’re telling me it’s a haircut?”

— Former CNN anchor Daryn Kagen about the advice she was given about how to get from her anchor gig in Phoenix to the CNN big leagues. Kagen straightened her naturally curly hair, got a pricey cut, and as she relates, “two weeks later, CNN hired me as a sports anchor.” [TV Newser]

Speed Round

HALL OF FAME

Legendary basketball coach Pat Riley was inducted to the NBA Hall of Fame yesterday. He’s having a tough year this year as coach of the Miami Heat, be sure, but that doesn’t tarnish his 1,208 career wins, which places him as third in all-time coaching victories. [NY Times]

WINNER OF THE WORST BAD NAME CONTEST

Finally, a winner in the “Worst Bad Name Contest”! Beating out Charman Toilette, Chastity Beltz and Justin Credible is Iona Knipl, who says she can’t count the times she’s introduced herself, only to have someone reply, “Heh heh, really? I own two.” [NY Times]

VODKA SAYS SORRY

The Absolut Vodka company apologized yesterday for an ad depicting the Southwest US as part of Mexico, with the tagline, “In An Absolut World” after right-wing blogger Michelle Malkin throws a tantrum. Way to move the immigration discussion forward, Michelle. [LA Times]

TWILIGHT ZONE

It sound like an episode of the Twilight Zone, but it’s all too true: Twelve years ago, Sonny Graham receives a heart transplant from a man who’d died from shooting himself. Two years later, Sonny Graham falls in love with and marries his donor’s widow. Last week, Sonny Graham shot himself. [Fox News]

RIGHT-WING PRIORITIES

Having obviously solved all of the world’s religious problems, right-wing evangelicals attack a Wisconsin elementary school for “Wacky Week,” in which students had “dress-up day,” dressing up either like senior citizens or like a member of the opposite sex. Said the evangelical groups, “It concerns us when a school district strikes at the heart and core of the Biblical values.” Funny, when we were little, we just called it “Powder Puff.” [CBS News]

THE FEUDING ROKER

Weatherman Al Roker will be the new host of the game show “Celebrity Family Feud.” That’s right, it’s Family Feud, only with cooler families than yours. [MSNBC]

THE END OF AN ERA

The spot vacated by the late, great, legendary punk spot CBGBs has been filled by an upscale boutique selling $130 t-shirts. We’re listening to the Ramones and weeping. [MSNBC]

BEST OPENING LINE OF THE DAY

“A man in New Zealand has been charged with using a hedgehog as a weapon, the New Zealand Herald has reported.” [BBC]

OLYMPICS

Here are some folks who hope the Olympic games in Beijing go well: the Iraqi athletes “dodging sniper bullets” to train. [Think Progress]

MEANIE

Rush’s ditto heads like him mean: Rush Limbaugh’s ratings “did worst during minutes in which he was expressing approval, with a 5.43 percent average share of listeners. He had 5.71 percent of listeners when expressing negative opinions.” [Think Progress]

DIANA: THE VERDICT

At fault in the death of Princess Diana, according to “the latest multimillion-dollar government investigation” into her death: “the gross negligence of her speeding driver and pursuing paparazzi.” [Washington Post]

GAS

It’s like the ‘49ers...but with natural gas instead of gold...and in Pennsylvania instead of California. [NY Times]

THE END OF NEWS AS WE KNOW IT

CBS, former home of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, is in talks to “outsource some of its news-gathering operations to CNN.” [NY Times]

BANNERS

Hanging off the golden gate bridge right now: banners that read “One World One Dream. Free Tibet” and “Free Tibet 08.” [Raw Story]