#1, United States of America
Calories per Day: 1st out of 24 (Gold)
Television Viewing: 1st out of 24 (Gold)
Sports Aversion: 3rd out of 24 (Bronze)
Internet Usage: 3rd out of 24 (Bronze)
Word from the Couch: U-S-A! U-S-A! U.S. sports four medals in The Daily Beast’s Couch Potato Olympics, easily nabbing the top spot on our podium. Just like in the real Olympics, where America is jockeying to hold on to the medal lead, America always goes big, or doesn’t go at all. From the Wing Bowl in Philadelphia, to New York City’s historic Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest to countless county fairs across the nation featuring fried everything, gluttony is as American as an entire apple pie, and apparently all that downtime in front of televisions and computers translates into lots of sports viewing, not much sports playing.
#2, Canada
Calories per Day: 8
Television Viewing: 5
Sports Aversion: 12
Internet Usage: 1 (Gold)
Word from the Couch: Must be the snow. And the cold. Canada may not have the world’s best Internet infrastructure, and there’s plenty of hockey and skiing, but even the most die-hard winter sports enthusiast has to go inside sometime—and look up the score of the Canucks game on ESPN.com. And when it snows so much that Olympic skiing events are canceled, there’s nothing better for Canadians than snuggling up with a cup of hot chocolate and a warm computer. Canadians on average spent nearly 43 hours online in December, according to ComScore.
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Never thought we’d ever, ever say this, but McDonalds serves wine…good wine. Don’t rush out to the drive-thru just yet, however; the bottle is only available as part of a value meal in the Argentine wine capital of Mendoza.
Billed as the “Sabores Mendocinos” menu, the meal includes a double-patty burger of Angus beef, two meat empanadas, and a 187mL (glass!) bottle of local Malbec produced by Bodega Santa Julia. Want to sample it? “Sabores Mendocinos” will cost you 47.00 Argentinean pesos, or $10.80 USD.
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Gimme shelter. That’s what fish need, in part, when it comes to coping with climate change. These pics, from scientists in Australia, show what type of habitat that large reef fish prefer … and depend on to survive. They come from an underwater camera installed by researchers with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University.
The research, on the preferences of sweetlips, coral trout, and snappers, found that the big fish prefer to take shelter under large, flat table corals, as opposed to branching or massive corals. The study looked at 17 locations around Lizard Island on the northern Great Barrier Reef, Queensland.
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luapo |
February 29, 2012
Kelly Sloan’s dog Spark could be eligible for up to $30,000 in credit, even though the sheltie-spaniel mix died 10 years ago. The Sarnia man was leafing through his mail last week when he found a letter from Capital One, urging its addressee to apply for a special credit card offer.
“We’re not offering our low long-term rate to just anyone,” said the letter, addressed to Spark Sloan, who died nearly at age 13.
“They’ve got the right name, the right address, and it’s a heck of a deal. She can apply online today, and I guess, get her card,” Kelly said.
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luapo |
February 29, 2012
On this date in 1959, Fidel Castro became the Prime Minister of Cuba. Since then, according to the man who was charged with protecting him for most of his regime, he’s survived over 600 assassination attempts. Fabian Escalante, the former head of the Cuban Secret Service, claims that the assassination endeavors break down like this: the Eisenhower administration tried to kill Castro 38 times; Kennedy, 42; Johnson, 72; Nixon, 184; Carter, 64; Reagan, 197; Bush Sr., 16; Clinton, 21. (The accuracy of Escalante’s statistics, especially attempts since the Nixon administration, is in dispute.) There are only so many different ways you can ambush someone with a sharpshooter, so some of the ways the CIA plotted to kill Castro were pretty wild.
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