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Insurance companies get ready for World Cup "sick" days

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Will the American Vegetarian Party return with sex appeal?

The new issue of mental_floss (May/June) has an article about the bizarre history of 3rd-party politics. And one of the parties we highlight in there is the short-lived American Vegetarian Party. As we pointed out in theÂ article, the party was formed in 1947 by 84-year-old restaurant owner John Maxwell. In addition to promoting vegetarianism, they also campaigned againstÂ liquor, tobacco and medicine?!?!Â It's not any surprise that they didn't exactly win the hearts of Americans. But even if they... READ ON

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Total Recall

Well, it's official: Little Brown books has announced that it will recall Viswanathan's now infamous novel, "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life." As an author, it is, of course, troubling to think that a writer could be paid half-a-million clams, and no one, not the agent at William Morris, not the editors at Little Brown, not even the fact checkers, spotted the similarities between the works in question. Not that scrutiny shouldn't be paid to manuscripts of authors with advances that pale... READ ON

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The Original Coneheads?

I saw this skull for sale, via Neatorama... Admittedly, I'm pretty naive about body modifications in different cultures. My knowledge of foot binding and lip plates, for instance, is completely limited to what I've seen flipping through National Geographics as a kid (or flipping through cultural anthropology textbooks as a major). Still, I'd never heard ANYTHING about skull binding.Â According to the website, skull binding dates back about 9,000 years (this particular skull is from Peru) and was... READ ON

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Subliminal advertising might actually work?

We've spent countless pages in mental_floss talking about how those old subliminal advertising studies from the 1950's were totally bunk (they were... the research was fabricated, and after all the hype the hack scientist, James Vicary, could never duplicate his results). But today, I saw this article in New Scientist, that claims researchers from the Netherlands are actually able to steer people towards preffing one brand of beverage over another through subliminal advertising. I was pretty excited about... READ ON

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Beauty, truth, et cetera

Remember those "campaign for real beauty" ads that Dove was pushing a few months ago? They didn't impress me much. The women were (a) uniformly clean-faced and preppy-looking, (b) uniformly laughing and smiling at some joke that probably started with "knock knock," and (c) uniformly dressed in bland white undies. They couldn't say anything about their personalities through their clothes or makeup. We were left to infer personality from their hairstyles: Ooh,... READ ON

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Since Will is Gas Obsessed...

I actually have very little interest in cars, but I saw this new vehicle on the New Scientist site, and figured I had to share. The car, which is cleverly called CLEVER (despite the fact that the acronym stands for Compact Low Emission Vehicle for Urban Transport Vehicle and should be called CLEVUTV), is the result of 9 Eurpean countries teaming up with BMW to produce a smaller, greener vehicle. And it looks amazing! It seems like it's part motorcycle, part go-kart, and part indestructible (unlike... READ ON

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With Franz like these...

Franz Ferdinand (the band) came through Boston a couple of weeks ago, and even though the band was apparently named after Archduke Franz Ferdinand (the racehorse), the concert got me thinking about Franz Ferdinand (the actual archduke). He is, of course, most famous for being shot "“ his assassination in 1914 sparked World War I "“ but I find his personal life more intriguing than his role in international affairs. As a young man, he went to a dance and fell instantly in love with one of the... READ ON

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So how much gas do we really use?

We did our weekly CNN Headline News segment this morning on rising gas prices, because there's almost nothing else in the news. And I know I posted a gas fact yesterday but here's an interesting fact to put the US gas consumption in perspective: If California were a country it would consume more barrels of gasoline than any other foreign country. California by itself! The state consumes about 373 million barrels annually and the US as a whole consumes about 3 billion barrels. But since today's... READ ON

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Baby, You can Charge my Car

While I can play the piano like Schroeder, and have a way with the ladies that's only rivalled by Peppermint Patty, as Will likes to point out, I'm most certainly the Charlie Brown of travel. My planes are ALWAYS delayed without fail (though I'm always at the airport on time). I'd be willing to bet that I've spent more hours in the Birmingham airport than most of the people who work there. But that's just scraping the surface... I once bought a ticket to Italy from Al Italia, and they gave me a 45 minute... READ ON