Don't Make Me Break Your Legs

(Photo ; Bridgeport, Connecticut, seen from I-95, from Flickr)

Professors as YouTube Stars

The notion that fatty foods shorten your life began as a hypothesis based on dubious assumptions and data; when scientists tried to confirm it they failed repeatedly. The evidence against Häagen-Dazs was nothing like the evidence against Marlboros.

Get Out Now While the Getting is Good;
University of Connecticut economists say the state will lose about 7,000 jobs over the next two years.

These people scare me ; the first LOL-Cat wedding proposal.

Use Your Cell Camera to Find Your Parked Car

Got the flu shot? Don't be surprised if you still get the flu this year ;
The flu shot is a good match for only about 40 percent of this year's flu viruses, officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday.

Your daily dose of doom - for hard-core economics nerds and those looking for an excuse to feel depressed, only.

Listen online on Sunday evening ;
The Big Broadcast
A musical spotlight on the classic sounds of the 1920s and '30s, Sunday nights from 8pm-Midnight. (There's no podcast and almost no archives available, due to copyright issues. So, be there, or be square!)

And, if you like that kind of music, you might like "The Old Codger", who is
"playing 78 RPM records like they're going out of style!". Similar music, but delivered with a hefty serving of 'tude, and a weird, slightly randy sense of humor. One of my favorite podcasts to fall asleep to after a 12-hour night shift.

If you like weird humor, and 'tude, well maybe you'd like "The Best Show on WMFU". Well, no (sigh), you probably wouldn't. Unless you're either from New Jersey, 
or you enjoy making fun of New Jersey. Or, you're suffering from a terminal
 case of indie-rock hipsterism. Or, maybe you just have insomnia, and your TV is broken (bonus points if you just refuse to watch TV) and all the liquor stores are closed.

I mean, I don't even know how to describe this one. It's 3 hours of "music, mirth, and mayhem"?  (Perfect for those - like me - who don't fall asleep quickly.) I  absolutely love it? 
I  even voluntarily suffer through the requisite one Abba song per show
 - and I hate Abba? I listen to this in Vermont when I feel like I miss the grittiness of Bridgeport, CT (see above) - and how sick is that?

What can you say about a show which features a guy named Philly Boy Roy, who is described as, "Quite possibly the program's most hated frequent caller, Philly Boy Roy is a Philadelphia-based listener who does nothing more than attack New Jersey and its residents. Roy feels that Philadelphia is paradise on earth, and that Jersey is a "stinking swamp".
Roy is currently writing and co-directing a motion picture called "Philly Fever", in which the Philly Phanatic is kidnapped by some goons from New Jersey, and the best and brightest from Philadelphia history - the Hooters, Ben Franklin - must team up to rescue him."

Well, I'll tell ya' what someone else said :

"Scharpling conducts interviews, plays music, and opens the phone lines to the listening public. Often on the other end of the line is Jon Wurster, best known as the drummer for the indie rock band Superchunk. But Jon Wurster never admits to being Jon Wurster. Wurster usually pretends to be a ridiculously pompous and ill-informed rock critic, or a grown-up member of an eighties pre-teen punk band, or a middle aged loser looking to fill out the roster for his imaginary supergroup, or some other deluded and pathetic human specimen. Every Tuesday night Scharpling and Wurster take this classic comedy set-up and do something intelligent, cool and unbelievably funny."

Just listen to it. Don't make me break your legs.