I’m heavily into trivia about the 50 states, and this question seems to stump a lot of people. It would probably stump me if I weren’t the one asking it:

Click here for the answer.

Although a pack mentality is natural for a dog, their bravery, loyalty, and selflessness can boggle the mind and warm the heart. Here are a few stories that illustrate what dogs are all about.

Sinbad, the Coast Guard Dog

Sinbad was a mixed breed puppy who was adopted by the crew of the Coast Guard cutter Campbell in 1938. He eventually enlisted, meaning he had the proper paperwork to qualify as a Coast Guard sailor, and even had his own uniform. He served for eleven years on the same ship. After a battle with the Nazi submarine U-606, the Campbell was badly damaged and most of the crew debarked. Of course, a good dog never debarks, so Sinbad stayed on with the most essential crew members as the ship was towed to port. Sinbad lived to enjoy retirement and quite a bit of publicity about his service.

Zoey, the Snake Handler

Size is no barrier to a dog determined to protect her family. Zoey the chihuahua weighs only five pounds, but she rose to the occasion when needed last summer. One-year-old Booker West was playing in his grandparent’s backyard in Colorado when a rattlesnake struck at him! Zoey sprang into action, putting herself between the snake and the toddler. She sustained bites and was rushed to a veterinary hospital. Her head swelled and she almost lost an eye, but with anti-venom treatment, Zoey made a full recovery.

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Some of you might recall my post on Incredibly Specific Dating Sites. In the same vein, it seems there’s a magazine for just about everyone, too. Check out these five I recently discovered, and be sure to share some of your own finds in the comments below. Don’t be ashamed if you subscribe to one either! Apparently 17,000 lifting industry professionals around the world fork over £158 per year for the first magazine on the list below.

1. Cranes Today Magazine
If you’re in the crane business, operate one, or just plain have a love of all contraptions large and lift-y, subscribe to Cranes Today. In it, you’ll find stories about international surveys, new products, corporate mergers/acquisitions, new regulations and standards, crane attachments, components and cool ancillary crane equipment. If you’re in the mood for one of the most exciting, action-packed YouTube videos you’ll ever see, follow this link and scroll to the last one at the bottom.

2. The Chimney Sweep News
Calling all chimney sweep wannabes and the people who love them, here’s a publication worth every penny of the $99/annual subscription rate. A bi-monthly, The Chimney Sweep News features articles with the following headlines: “Sweeping Hawaii with an Island Boy,” “Forensic Corner: Wrong Size/Type Flue Liner,” and my personal favorite: “Spread a Consistent Image,” By Sooty Bob Daniels (not joking!). Yes, if you’ve just got a casual curiosity about flues or you’re really determined to find out how next year’s code changes might affect you, this is the rag for you. (more…)

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100 Ways to Scale Down Your Life. Because living large is a real hassle.
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Could someone else be using your social security number? The US government collects $500 billion in uncredited Social Security wages, so it’s not in their best interest to do anything about it.
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History’s 9 Most Terrifying Beauty Tips. Some of these might make you sick, just as they did the ancients who actually used them.
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Eight Things We Are Running Out Of And Why. Most of them can be attributed to what we know as “modern living”.
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An English teacher takes a red pencil to a blog post, with hilarious results. I hope she doesn’t stumble upon any of my articles!
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The Two Stupidest Burglars in the World. Security cameras can be more entertaining than Hollywood sometimes.
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Recycling Classic Cars. How Cuba deals with no new cars and no replacement parts.
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A Postal Post: 6 Crazy Stories of Mail Bonding. Oh, the lengths they’ll go to just to get those letters delivered!

Ever since creating the MacGyver quiz a few weeks ago, I’ve had the urge to write an article about all of the clever ways MacGyver was able to get himself and others out of potentially life-threatening situations. There’s no way I could ever cover all of them, though, so I’ll just go with 10 I thought were particularly… interesting.

10 Problems Solved by MacGyver

1. You know those MIT students who used their genius to make lots of money in Vegas? They’ve got nothing on MacGyver. He makes a pair of trick dice by rounding some of the edges, but my favorite part is how he gets them on to the craps table. He ties some string to a paper clip, attaches the clip to the dress of a woman walking by and then steps on the string, pulling the woman’s dress down. When everyone is staring at her, he swaps the dice out.

2. Mac attaches a piece of wire to a blood pressure machine and runs it to an alarm clock. He says that when the man sweats, the alarm goes off. Questionable.

3. I like this one because I envision a bunch of hammered guys sitting around a bar trying to duplicate this. To repair a soda gun (the kind that bartenders use to put tonic in your vodka tonic or Coke in your Jack and Coke), MacGyver sticks one of those little plastic pirate swords that usually impale cherries or olives in it. Using the sword, he opens the CO2 valve, fills a pipe with acetylene and sticks another chunk of pipe in to use as a missle, thus allowing him to escape from some bad guys.

4. Don’t let anyone tell you Mac doesn’t love the environment. To incubate some eagle eggs, he uses chair padding and some vegetable oil, claiming that the oil plus the padding fibers generates heat.

5. If you go into cardiac arrest with no medical supplies nearby, hopefully someone around you has seen the MacGyver episode where he uses a couple of candlestick holders, a power cord and a floor mat to make a defibrillator.

6. MacGyver in a strip club? Say it ain’t so! But don’t worry – he’s too busy figuring out how he can hack cosmetics into weapons to be bothered with a lap dance. He crams make-up powder into a confetti cannon and fires it at his pursuers, blinding them while he escapes.

7. Hot air balloons don’t have to be expensive. Just follow Mac’s lead and build one out of super glue, clothes, a parachute, condoms, a refrigerator and an old metal box.

8. I’d like to see them try this one on Cold Case Files: when MacGyver finds a human skull, he identifies the person by recreating the face with pencil tips, modeling clay, glass eyeballs and some wool.

9. Proof that MacGyver is daddy material: He built a swinging playpen from a net and hockey sticks and, of course, fastened a diaper with duct tape.

10. This suggestion was actually sent in to the show’s writers by an avid fan. MacGyver fixes a Jeep’s leaky radiator with some egg whites. First he pours in some water and lets it heat up and then dumps in egg whites, which quickly get cooked by the hot water. The cooked egg whites then seal up the holes in the radiator.

Do you have a favorite MacGyverism I didn’t mention? Feel free to share it in the comments.

Over the past few months, we’ve received a good number of emails requesting a non-pink version of the Hyperbole shirt. (My favorite: “I like the hyperbole shirt. I don’t do pink. Make it happen.”) So, I just wanted to remind all those people that it’s now available in our store.

And if you do do pink, this one’s for you.

Ten years ago today, Saturday Night Live alum Phil Hartman was murdered by his wife. Due to the tragic nature of his death, as well as other high-profile deaths of former SNL cast members, the media was abuzz with talk of an SNL curse. In 31 seasons, 118 cast members have appeared on the show and seven of them have died. That’s only a five-percent fatality rate. While there probably isn’t a curse, here is a chronological look at the deaths of seven former cast members.
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After years of relentless eating, I recently signed up for Weight Watchers. A Friday afternoon brainstorm put me over the edge. With minimal assistance from Mangesh and Jenny, I ingested a whole bag of Sun Chips. The big bag. It wasn’t pretty.

That was mid-April. And so far, so good. While we’ve yet to have an ab sighting, I’ve lost ten pounds and grown super sensitive to calorie counts and fat content. Today’s quiz focuses on the former. I’ve looked up the nutritional information for several of my (former) favorite foods—do you know which item has more calories?

Take the Quiz: Counting Calories. Then let us know how you did.

Fifty-eight years ago today (May 28), Zoo Parade premiered on NBC. For its first five seasons, the show was broadcast from Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo. The series’ host, Marlin Perkins, also just happened to be Lincoln Park’s director. By the time Zoo Parade went off the air, Perkins was thoroughly convinced that television was in desperate need more wildlife programming, and Wild Kingdom was born.

1. Marlin Perkins Slayed the Abominable Snowman
Back when TV was limited to the networks and a handful of local stations, before there was an Animal Planet or a Crocodile Hunter, Wild Kingdom was the only place average Americans could see polar bears or hippopotami in their natural habitat from the comfort of their living rooms. The program was typically aired right after family-friendly fare like Hee-Haw or The Lawrence Welk Show. White-haired Marlin Perkins, who looked more like an insurance salesman than the zoologist that he really was, hosted Wild Kingdom during its original syndicated run from 1963 to 1985. Prior to television stardom, Perkins had gained a small amount of fame for debunking the myth of the Abominable Snowman. On an excursion to the Himalayas with Sir Edmund Hillary, Perkins deduced that the Yeti’s “large” footprints were actually made form a series of tracks made by foxes and other small animals. The tracks melted together in the sun, turning into larger shapes.

2. The Moment Everyone Remembers that Never Actually Happened
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Ira Glass, host of PRI’s This American Life, is a master storyteller. But it’s taken him a many years to achieve that status. Today I came across a series of four videos of Glass explaining storytelling and his own past in broadcasting. He gives simple advice for storytellers of all kinds, and he even plays clips of his old (and pretty embarrassing) NPR reporting. If you’re looking to develop your sense of narrative, or just love listening to Ira Glass ramble, take a few minutes to watch these.

Originally produced for Current TV, the videos are also available on YouTube. I’ll post them here in my preferred order — most interesting (Part 3) first:

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