Under the heaading of "Also in the news today" comes this tidbit: the term "Taco Tuesday" is now free to be used with trademark infringement ( Read more... )

Today (Sunday 20 September) is/was National Pepperoni Pizza Day. I know about this because Apple News on my iPhone has decided that I need to be shown the "Pizza" news aggregation topic. An article about it popped up in my news feed a few days ago. I clicked it thinking, "Really? There's a day for that?" so now I've just reinforced Apple's belief ( Read more... )

Today is Groundhog Day. February 2 in the US (and Canada, apparently) marks a strange tradition in which people living in the countryside forecast the next several weeks of weather by observing the behavior of the local groundhog population. If the groundhog emerges from its burrow and sees its shadow, the folklore goes, it mean 6 more weeks of ( Read more... )

Today is Super Bowl XLIX, which is apparently Latin for "Super Bowl 49". It'll be the most watched TV program of the year, according to the International Business Times (article), which estimates 115 million will watch. I will not be one of them. I'm surprised I'm actually in the majority. (The U.S. population is approximately 319 million.) Oh, but ( Read more... )

So, apparently the sports team from my area won an important game last week and is headed to the championship, where they will prove that they are superior to the sports team from your area.


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Last night I saw my wife watching a news clip on YouTube. A reporter was interviewing former U.S. Representative Jane Harman-- an expert on intelligence and security issues-- about developments in the NSA spying scandal when she suddenly interrupted the congresswoman to jump to breaking news that.... Justin Bieber was arrested in Miami for driving ( Read more... )

I saw this news (sic) story on the electronic front page of CNN.com this morning: Velveeta Shortage Looms. That's right, sports fans. For reasons they won't disclose, Kraft warns they may not be able to fill your supermarket's shelves with your favorite processed cheese food product[1] in time for your Superbowl watching snacking pleasure ( Read more... )

I'd noticed over the past several months that pretty much every day there was a new article in the "top news" category about the Jodi Arias murder trial. For months I ignored it because it looked like frenzied pap from a media cohort obsessed with some sensational aspect of the case ( Read more... )