Need more MoPo? Check Out These Random Posts – Page 183

One Megabite

luapo | May 24, 2011

Man Jailed for Possessing 91 Pounds of Tortilla Dough

luapo | May 22, 2011

Antonio Hernandez Carranza took a wrong turn, and it turned out to be one of the biggest mistakes he’s ever made. The Carson, Calif., man had driven more than 2,000 miles — three days straight — to see his sister in Johnson City, Tenn.

But instead of reaching the home of his sister, whom he hadn’t seen in nearly a decade, the 45-year-old carpet cleaner found himself in the Buncombe County jail under a $300,000 bond on charges of driving while intoxicated, failing to heed police lights and sirens and possession of 91 pounds of cocaine.

He was released four days later after sheriff’s deputies realized Hernandez, who said he doesn’t drink at all, wasn’t intoxicated and that what was in the back of his truck was exactly what he had said — $400 worth of cheese, shrimp and tortilla and tamale dough meant as a gift to his sister.

All You Need Is Love… False.

luapo | May 22, 2011

Rejection Feels Like Spilling Hot Coffee on Your Arm

luapo | May 22, 2011

Rejection hurts. Before you groan and sign and say “I know, I know, let me tell you about the time you-know-who did you-know-what to me,” let us clarify. Rejection actually physically hurts. Like dropping something on your toe or getting lemon juice in a papercut hurts. This is true, according to science, and according to the New York Times, which reports on how badly rejection hurts, and how science knows this.

According to a recent study, areas of the brain that indicate physical pain area activated “at moments of intense social loss.” In terms of the actual study, 40 volunteers (who all felt “intensely rejected” due to a recent breakup), were hooked up to MRI scanners to measure their brain activity while they looked at photos of former boyfriends/girlfriends and thought about exactly how they’d been rejected. (Man, science is mean.) Then they were asked to look at a picture of a friend and think of a good experience with that person.

After all that, they “experienced noxious thermal stimulation on their left forearms,” which basically means it feels like they spilled hot coffee on themselves. Then they received “nonnoxious” stimulation, which feels, probably, like a nice warm bath, or at least not as noxious as hot coffee.

Disney – The World’s Army Of Intern Burger-Flippers

luapo | May 21, 2011

Like other employers, Disney has mastered how to rebrand ordinary jobs as exciting opportunities. “We’re not there to flip burgers or to give people food,” a fast food intern told the Associated Press. “We’re there to create magic.” Yet training and education are afterthoughts: the kids are brought in to work. Having traveled thousands of miles and barely breaking even financially, they find themselves cleaning hotel rooms, performing custodial work, and parking cars in the guise of an academic exercise.

Like many a corporate titan, Disney likes to give the impression it’s in the education business. Disney University, born in 1955 as the company’s training division, predated McDonald’s Hamburger University, Motorola University, and others, prefiguring what Andrew Ross has called “the quasi-convergence of the academy and the knowledge corporation.”

In its scale, the Disney program is unusual, if not unique. Although technically legal, the program has grown up over thirty years to become an eerie model, a microcosm of an internship culture gone haywire. The word “internship” has no set meaning, but at Disney World it signifies cheap, flexible labor for one of the world’s best-known companies—magical, educational burger-flipping in the Happiest Place on Earth.