I was reading G4’s The Feed blog today (which I highly recommend, by the way), when I saw that G4 was strutting about and patting itself on the back for obtaining the exclusive rights to re-broadcast the brilliant-but-cancelled TV show Arrested Development. (Their less than modest press release reads: “Who Has Arrested Development? WE HAVE ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT.”)

Now for those of you who don’t know G4, it’s a cable channel that slants towards gamers and tech junkies, and it deserves more attention, so I thought, “good for G4!” After all, Arrested Development is a terrific show, G4’s a terrific channel, so it’s a match made in nerdy heaven. That is, until I saw that noted dream-killer Microsoft has burst the little station’s bubble. According to BusinessWeek, the media giant is airing the show online FOR FREE through its MSN Video Service. Sorry G4! Oh well, at least the move edges Microsoft a little more toward cool.

Back in my old New York apartment, whenever my roommate would jump on the bed, begin shrieking, and start dropping books on the floor, I knew exactly what the sound meant: a spider had infiltrated the house. Today, however, arachnophobes and dreaded bug-fearers the world over can breathe a deep sigh of relief: Eurocosm is featuring the greatest bug-catching device on the market, the Spider Catcher! The device works by simply squeezing a handle to open and close the bristles delicately around a spider’s body (so you can release Charlotte back to the garden after). The site claims The Catcher is even gentle enough to capture butterflies and moths without harming their wings. Of course, that plus the fact that you’ll never have to deal with spider stains on walls again, is worth the price. And if that doesn’t sway you, get this: “the Prince of Wales was so impressed with Spider Catcher, that he sent a letter congratulating its inventor, Tony Allen, on his idea.” Sounds pretty convincing to me.

Oh, and don’t forget to check out Eurocosm’s other amazing bug-catching devices (an Electric Venus Fly Trap, and an Electric Tennis Racket-looking thing that electrocutes flies with a forehand). Link via ThisNextBlog

We, like Lifehacker, are super-excited about the August issue of Wired, which is one giant how-to:

So here’s your instruction manual, your go-to How To guide for making the most of your digital life. Have a hunch your digicam is good for more than mere snapshots? Follow our rule of thirds (and a few other hints) and you’ll be a Flickr superstar. Wanna break up with your cell phone carrier? With our surefire tactics, they’ll beg you to leave.

But think beyond software and gadgets. Hacking is a frame of mind – a sensibility, not a skill set. If you gotta have tickets to the big concert, we’ll show you how to outsmart Ticketmaster. And if your boss hates you, we’ll teach you how to suck up so he’ll be your best friend forever.

We would also like to humbly point out that we’ve been there, done that.

Pennylicious, the new money blog from Alex of Neatorama fame, has a great bit on “hell money,” which (name notwithstanding) doesn’t seem to have anything to do with taxes:

The Chinese believe that after someone dies, his (or her) spirit goes to the afterlife, where it lives on pretty much like in real life. And so just like in real life, you’ll need money in the afterlife – lots of it. So how does one get money in the afterlife? Through surviving relatives and friends, of course, who burn these “hell” banknotes or money to send it through (probably because Western Union has yet to open a branch in the afterlife).

The afterlife probably has one hell of an inflation problem – the denomination on these banknotes are huge! This one above is a $8 billion note (the number 8 is considered quite lucky in Chinese culture).

The Chinese don’t mean to neglect their more virtuous ancestors; the “hell” in “hell money” is probably just an English mistranslation, so heavenly types get theirs too. You can read more about the Chinese afterlife at yogichen.org and (no relation to Neatorama) Sinorama magazine.

We promise, we’ll quit with the ice-cream fixation once the weather cools down, but:

In its quest to create ice cream as voluptuous as butter and as virtuous as broccoli, the ice cream industry has probed the depths of the Arctic Ocean, studied the intimate structures of algae and foisted numerous failures on the American public. … For Americans who spend each summer wrestling with temptation, there is fresh hope in the freezer case. New industrial processes, including one that involves a protein cloned from the blood of an Arctic Ocean fish, have allowed manufacturers to produce very creamy, dense, reduced-fat ice creams with fewer additives. …

Instead of extracting the protein from the fish, which Unilever describes as “not sustainable or economically feasible” in its application, the company developed a process for making it, by altering the genetic structure of a strain of baker’s yeast so that it produces the protein during fermentation. This ingredient, called an ice-structuring protein, has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration and is used by Unilever to make some products in the United States, like some Popsicles and a new line of Breyers Light Double Churned ice cream bars. “Ice-structuring proteins protect the fish, which would otherwise die in freezing temperatures,” said H. Douglas Goff, professor of dairy sciences at the University of Guelph in Ontario. “They also make ice cream creamier, by preventing ice crystals from growing.”

Scientists are also working on an ice cream that’s rich in omega-3s. As long as I don’t have to eat one that’s flavored with sea slugs, I’m cool with it.

One of my favorite blogs at the moment is Effect Measure, which is theoretically all about pressing public health issues but also includes such nuggets as “Paul Revere was a member of the first local Board of Health in the United States” (and that’s just in the “about us” profile). Right now on EM, you can read about Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice,” the Indian blogspot ban, Iraqi cats that have come down with bird flu, and “popcorn workers’ lung,” which is apparently the modern-day equivalent of black lung:

The bronchioles are the smaller airway tubes that transport oxygen and carbon dioxide to and from the portions of your lungs where the gases are exchanged in the blood. If you obliterate those small tubes, well, you figure it out. … The chemical culprit here is not completely certain. It seems to be either a substance called diacetyl, the chief constituent of artificial butter flavor, or something closely connected to diacetyl, either a by-product or something that is present along with it. The first cases appeared in a Missouri microwave popcorn plant in 1999. …

There is suspicion the problem is wider than just “popcorn workers’ lung,” as the condition is coming to be called. Many other food industry workers may also be at risk because diacetyl is used to make artificial flavors in candy, pastries, frozen foods and pet foods.

Candy too? There goes my Plan B. More seriously, popcorn lung does appear to be real; one of the victims died in May, and Congress recently started an investigation.

If you think having to ferry around three screaming kids in a minivan is bad, try carpooling with a swarm of backseat-driving bees, like these British researchers:

Bumblebees are being dropped off at famous landmarks in North East England by Newcastle University researchers, who then observe if they can find their way back to a nest on campus. The record flight was from a garden centre in Heddon on the Wall in the Tyne Valley in the county of Northumberland — some eight miles or 13km from their nest.

The researchers have found it is only the worker bees which make their way back — they suspect the queen bees find shelter elsewhere. The results are surprising because scientific literature says the bumblebee they are studying — a common species called Bombus terrestris — travels only 5km for its food.

There’s lots more about bee-havior, and everything else you ever wanted to know about rotund striped stinging insects and other various and sundry invertebrates, here.

Bart Kosko, USC professor and pioneer of the fuzzy logic theory, has a new book coming out soon called Noise.

As a writer always in search of solitude and tranquility, I’m intrigued by Kosko’s claims that noise can make us smarter. In a recent interview in Wired magazine, he states, “The more you can concentrate with background noise, the more it strengthens the brain. Isaac Asimov used to set his typewriter up in stores and other loud places to work.”

As I write this now, there’s a leaf blower blowing next door, a garbage disposal unit grinding downstairs and a helicopter circling above (presumably the LAPD looking for a criminal in my neighborhood).

I just had to retype that paragraph several times, so I guess I’m no Asimov. Or, Kosko’s theory doesn’t apply for me. After all, this is the same guy whose new book is completely comma free.

“Commas are a kind of channel noise,” he says in the interview. “You’re not getting to the verb fast enough.”

Eh.
Buying it, I’m not, so far. (There, I led with the verb.) But I’m still going to read the book and give you a full report.

Grow-a-brain today is featuring the Hemp Hotel, an outpost in Amsterdam dedicated to using hemp “as much as possible, from mattresses, curtains, shampoo, [and] soap to a hemp roll for breakfast.” There’s also mention of a hotel bar, which serves hemp lollipops, hemp ice cream, hemp seeds, and 11 kinds of hemp beer (if you prefer your mind-altering substances in liquid form). I thought I’d see what other accommodations were available on Unusual Hotels of the World, aside from the usual underwater lairs and ice hotels:

• The Dog Bark Park Inn of Cottonwood, Idaho, has all the standard features — queen bed, continental breakfast — with one twist: the building is a two-story-high beagle. Also, in the hotel gift shop, you can buy “whimsical chainsaw artwork,” which I think means wooden sculptures, not movie massacre paraphernalia.
• At the deceptively normal-sounding Woodlyn Park in Otorohanga, New Zealand, you have your choice of accommodations, from a 1950s Bristol Freighter Plane to a train car from the same era. Not into transportation? May we interest you in the “World’s First Hobbit Underground Motels” instead?
• Decked out with “a well-appointed kitchen including microwave and washer/dryer, cascading waterfall-style shower, and a flagstone hot tub,” your room at Kokopelli’s Cave in Farmington, New Mexico is sure to please, as long as you like spelunking or at least a brisk downhill walk. The one-bedroom hotel is 70 feet below ground, carved into a 65-million-year-old chunk of sandstone. Sorry, no elevators.

Of course, for the musically inclined, there’s always the Hotel California in Santa Monica or Heartbreak Hotel in (of course) Memphis.

If you’re bored out of your gourd scrubbing your mouth out with the same old Crest and Colgate flavors (mild mint, strong mint, x-treme mint, peppermint, vanilla mint… what sort of mint will they dream up with next?), Japanese company Breath Palette has got your solution. Dead set on spicing up your morning hygiene ritual, the company has created a 31-flavor toothpaste sample set (which will set you back about $160 at Neiman Marcus—no one said this was going to be cheap). So, what’s included in the mix? Flavors range from Pineapple and Monkey Banana to Fresh Yogurt to Pumpkin Pudding to Indian Curry. Of course, none of these seem as exciting/confusing as the discarded kimchi, crab and beer flavors. And while various “palettes” definitely remind me of Bertie Bott’s flavored jellybeans from the Harry Potter books, the notion is pretty innovative. As spokesperson Ikuko Kuroki told ReadyMade magazine, “Flavors were selected under the concept of changing your breath every day, like you change your accessories.” As much as I love curry, though, I think I’m going to choose not to accessorize with it. For a complete list of flavors (and ordering info) click here.