So, to burn off the holiday calories…how much walking do you have to do.  I found this cool link which will instantly calculate how much walking you need to do to burn the fat baby!  Follow the link…and Happy New Year!  http://walking.about.com/library/cal/blholidaycalories.htm

The man who posed as a Bob Dylan roadie last month and ordered 178 pizzas from an Amherst, Massachusetts restaurant but never picked them up has agreed to pay for the pies and apologize to the restaurant’s owners. Police haven’t revealed the man’s name because the deal precludes it from becoming a criminal case. But the lawyer for the 42-year-old East Brunswick, New Jersey man tells the Amherst Bulletin, “My client regretted what he did and thought he did something out of character for himself.”

The pizza tab ran $3,900, not including the big tip the fake roadie promised if the workers stayed past their 2:00 a.m. closing time to make the pizzas. 

Okay, fess up…what is one of your all time great pranks?

Things have changed out there in Santa Land.  It is now easier than ever to get in touch with the man with all the toys.  You can text, tweet, and like Santa on Facebook.  And now, you can even have Mr. Claus send your kids and loved ones a personalized video message.  Just follow the link here…and Merry Christmas!  http://www.portablenorthpole.tv/prepare-a-message/child

(NEWSER) – If you have any juvenile chimps on your Christmas list, a new study has made your shopping a breeze. Researchers have observed wild chimps using sticks as toys, and boy and girl chimps treat the sticks very differently, CNNreports. Young female chimps appeared to treat the sticks like dolls, mimicking how their mothers care for infants. Male chimps also sometimes treated their sticks like dolls, but were more inclined to use them as weapons.

“Sex differences in juvenile stick-carrying did not result from females observing their mothers carrying sticks, since mothers never carried sticks,” the study found. “Instead, youngsters apparently learned socially from each other. Such juvenile traditions have previously been described only in humans.” The authors suggest that the behavior may have evolved to help chimps become better mothers.

Mike’s Thoughts:  So, wait.  I have one son and two daughters.  Does that mean I can just get them ALL sticks for Christmas, or am I reading too far between the lines on this one?

(NEWSER) – Scientists looking into ways to fight fat with fat say they’ve made a breakthrough that could yield effective treatments for obesity. Researchers experimenting on obese mice believe they’ve found a way to turn white fat cells into energy-burning brown fat cells, io9 reports. Converted cell cultures injected into the mice turned into mature brown fat cells, and researchers believe the results can be replicated in humans if the necessary progenitor cells can be identified.  So, in essence, it’s a “shot” of brown fat.

“Diet and exercise are still the best approaches for losing weight in the general population, but for people who are genetically predisposed to obesity, or those who already develop detrimental metabolic disorders due to excess body weight, there is an urgent need to develop new interventions for effective and safe weight reduction,” the lead researcher says. “These results appear to take a significant step toward using brown fat cells in such therapies.”

Mike’s Thoughts:  So if you’re out at a bar this holiday season and a friend wants to order a round of shots, go ahead and shout out “Make mine a brown fat shot, please!  Yum!”

(NEWSER) – First, it took on land. Then it took on the oceans. Now Google has set its sights on a new target: the human body. Its “Body Browser” lets users explore the human body, layer by layer, with any WebGL-enabled browser (Chrome 9 beta or Firefox 4 beta). You can peel back skin, nerves, and muscle to reveal bones and viscera by sheer exploration, or one can search, in true Google fashion, for a specific body part.

The WebGL format also means that it is universal for HTML5-enabled browsers—no Java or Flash plug-ins required.

Mike’s Thoughts:  Of course if you’ve ever used the more traditional google map system for driving directions, you may have noticed that it’s wrong from time to time.  Hopefully google’s body maps won’t mistakenly show the spleen as being located in the middle of the cranial lobe or something. 

(Premier Radio Services)- Ringo Starr has put his home in Aspen, Colorado on the market. His real estate agent, Joshua Saslove, tells the Aspen Times he doesn’t visit enough and couldn’t justify keeping it. The 3200-square-foot home, which he bought 20 years ago, has three bedrooms and sits on 16 acres with frontage on the Roaring Fork River. The asking price is $4.5 million. Ringo also owns homes in Los Angeles, England and Monte Carlo.

Mike’s Thoughts:  Just one thing to note- in deference to Ringo’s “unusal” sense of timing, all the alarm systems in the house are designed to respond to intruders exactly one half beat behind the first security breach.

Serious party people are reaching for an unusual source to cure their hangovers — baby drinks.

B.R.A.T. “Feel Better” wellness drinks for babies are (supposedly) a magical cure for hangovers.

According to the manufacturers, the “ultra-hydrating, organic, gluten-free product is actually the best way to kill a New Year’s Day hangover.”

So, forget greasy bacon and eggs or sugary sports drinks — and reach for some baby food to sooth your stomach.

Mike’s Thoughts:  When it comes to stories like this my question is always “Who was the person who decided to try this first?”  Talk about desperation.

We’ve seen acts get their songs on YouTube quickly by making a lyric video, which flashes all the words to the song as it goes along. But R.E.M.’s lyric video for “Discoverer” takes it one step further — the clip is designed to look like a karaoke video.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ghq8vs-yBo

“Discoverer” is from R.E.M.’s album Collapse Into Now, which is due out March 8th.

“.  (NEWSER) – Your Christmas tree might be looking a little wan this year, but the party keeps going over in Abu Dhabi in the form of an $11 million Christmas tree. But even the posh hotel that put up the monstrosity now says it might have been a bit overkill: The Emirates Palace, which features a gold bar vending machine, said today that it regretted “attempts to overload the tradition,” reports the AP. 

How does one manage to blow $11 million on a Christmas tree? The 43-foot faux fir is weighed down by gold, rubies, and diamonds, courtesy of a hotel jeweler. But the Emirates Palace even went so far as to blame the jeweler for the opulence, saying, “The hotel is just a venue for exhibiting the tree.”

Mike’s Thoughts:  In an effort to “go green” and show a bit of holiday restraint, the hotel has hired a local dog to come in twice daily and keep the tree “watered”.  The cost of the dog’s services was a bargain at 6 million.