Top Chef Shilling

First Tom Colicchio shows up in an ad for Diet Coke that takes a huge swipe at Grant Achatz...



And now Padma Lakshmi is starring in a new bit of food porn (yes, and not in the sense that the food is sexy either) with a Western Bacon ThickBurger from Hardee's...



These ads are terrible. Is there something in the water on the Top Chef set that's affecting people's judgment? Do Colicchio and Lakshmi really want to be associated with Diet Coke and Hardee's, it certainly makes me question their bona fides. I'm not going to drink Diet Coke or eat a Thickburger because of Colicchio or Lakshmi but I will think twice about buying a cookbook or frequenting a restaurant run by either of them because of these ads.

(both via Young & Hungry)

Word Problems

Figuring out when those two trains would meet may well have been the bane of your middle school existence but getting your weekly fix of new math from Craig Dramrauer will help make Monday's something to look forward to...



Probably about an 75% success rate I'd say, some are definitely better than others.

(via Freakonomics)

Form Fitting

We've been meaning to share this photo from The Big Picture for a while now...

Footprints carved in wood, which locals believe were made by a worshipper who prayed at the same spot for decades, are seen at a monastery near Tongren, Qinghai province February 5, 2009. Local Tibetan monks and pilgrims gather to celebrate Monlam, or Great Prayer Festival, one of the most important festivals in Tibetan Buddhism. (REUTERS/Reinhard Krause)

That is impressive. After a while it would become increasingly easy to return to the same spot as the wood began to wear away, but to get to that point probably took years of managing to return to the exact same spot with ridiculous precision.

Robo-Fish On The Loose

As enthralled by cool technological advantages as I am, they often remind me of the Matrix, or Terminator series and I wonder if we'll end up like the people in Player Piano.

Nevertheless these new robotic fish that are being released off of the coast of Spain to hunt out pollution and spills etc are very very cool...



(via blogfish)

How Many Moons?

Here is a great shot, if you like astronomy I guess, taken by the hubble telescope recently.

Four, count them four, of Saturn's moons are captured transiting the planet...

I love that you can see some of the shadows. Read more on the Discover Magazine blog.

Vive La Blogotheque

Through Facebook a friend just turned me on to La Blogotheque, and it's fantastic.

Apparently a Parisian collaborative with access to great musicians they put together 'concerts a emporter' or 'take away shows', you should really check this out. I first got sent to the great Fleet Foxes video but I'm gonna share Pigeon John from the in a van series...


Pigeon John - Higher - A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

Follow the links through for much more and larger HD video and sound...

Hate Shopping?

What's wrong with you? Mostly it's just looking at toys, and if it's food shopping it's looking for some good stuff to eat, yum.

If you feel lost in the grocery store though here are some helpful tips; they're quite straight forward but useful nonetheless...



Also if you find yourself wondering what to do at the fish counter or in a seafood restaurant text FISH and the type you're wondering about to 30644 and the Blue Ocean Institute will help you out.

Honey I Shrunk The Ipod

Have you seen the new shuffle? The thing is tiny.

Apparently they also make a Lego version. I don't know what's going on with Legos these days; when I was little I was totally jealous of Zack the Lego maniac kid from the ads but I grew up, and then when they started doing the marketing crossover stuff with movies I decided that Lego had pretty much jumped the shark.

Still that's a cool shot. I copped it from Gadget Lab, don't know where they got it though.

Did You Have A Piece Of Pi Yesterday?

So it turns out that yesterday March 14 (3.14) was National Pi Day.

Yeah, that's pretty cool.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

No I'm totally serious...



That's a movie you should seriously watch, yes it will make your head hurt but it is totally worth it.

This is my favorite from about 5 minutes on you tube, this looks to be another one of those deeeeep rabbit holes...

Filling the Reader

I'm totally hooked on google reader, any rss reader will probably do but google integrates with all the other things I already use so well (gmail primarily). I've been using the reader with greater regularity of late, which means that instead of trying to keep my unread posts in the 500 neighborhood I'm manging a much more impressive 250-300 level despite recently adding several new feeds.

This does mean that I'm more on top of my feed management which means that new feeds are under higher scrutiny and have only a short time to sink or swim.

I've got a food section (oh you didn't know? you need to ask somebody!) and thought that the Atlantic's new food feed looked worth a shot, especially considering that it promised to be at least slightly DC centric.

So far, not so good. The feed is currently dangling by a thread after several uninteresting posts, nothing that I wanted to star and then to cap things off a note on coffee types that not only didn't tell me anything I didn't already know but used Starbucks and Peets as the baseline for good coffee.

Good luck with that one Atlantic, I'm giving you the chop on Monday.

It's a Bird, It's a Plane...

It's Gannet Man!!!!

Ok this guy is nuts, watch as he jumps out of a helicopter and grabs a huge marlin. Of course he's Australian...



Via Blogfish

The Incredible Shrinking Pint

Is nothing in these troubled economic times sacred? Via Freakonomics comes the news that Haagen Dazs is reducing the size of their pints of ice cream from 16 to 14 ounces. The company claims increasing prices for ingredients, but the bottom line is you now get less ice cream for your buck. Also HD is lying to you about how much they're giving you; the containers will still says one pint only now they aren't a pint.

It isn't really like I needed another reason to reach for the Ben & Jerrys instead but that pretty much seals the deal for me. Especially when B&J's says that in tiought times like these I deserve a full pint of ice cream.

Reminds me of when Dannon downsized their yogurt containers from 8 to 6 ounces and I instantly switched to the next brand over on the shelf who's containers said still 8 ounces in big bright letters (I think that was the Brown Cow one).

I'll really be upset if this kind of thing creeps in to bars and beer sales. It's bad enough that they tell us a pint is 16 ounces here in the States can you imagine 12 ounce drafts and 10 ounce cans and bottles? Shudder.

Did Led Zep Play Wheaton?

Fun article in the WaPo Style section today, especially if you grew up in Montgomery County. It seems that Led Zeppelin may (or may not) have played the Wheaton Rec Center as one of there earliest US gigs.

Jeff Krulik, who made Heavy Metal Parking Lot (which I haven't seen) is sorting out the story and putting together a film on it.

These days what you should do is keep an eye out for Lez Zeppelin's next swing through town, they put on a fantastic show.

Attention Soprano and Godfather Fans

So the last issue of Vanity Fair had a big article on the ins and outs of getting The Godfather made (I've skimmed it, worth a read). But the author, Mark Seal, never managed to run down the rumor that some of the cast had hung out with the real deal to get the flavor, as they say.

Well when that issue hit the news stand the phone rang at Vanity Fair and to keep it simple, the cast of the Godfather had gone to pretty much the real live Tony Soprano's in Fort Lee New Jersey to pick up some pointers and his daughter, Gio, wanted to share the story and some pictures.

Seriously go read the story already, it has all the details...