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Would you like some coffee with your sugar?

I hate coffee.

Okay, maybe “hate” is a little strong. It’s not like my grandmother choked to death one night, then during the autopsy, they found a bunch of whole coffee beans lodged in her throat, leading me to fly to South America so I could wreak havoc across the Colombian coffee bean fields in a massive and violent rage of despair. I just really dislike the flavor.

I’ve tried various kinds and they all tasted yucky. I once showed up late to a picnic and almost everyone had finished eating. One person pointed to about two-thirds of a chocolate cake that hadn’t been eaten and said, “It’s all yours!” My eyes lit up and I began gorging myself… for three bites. Half the people who’d tried it couldn’t taste the coffee inside, but it was enough to spoil my appetite for a chocolate cake, so… yeah. I really dislike the flavor.

Consequently, my caffeine source of preference is Mountain Dew. Go ahead, judge all you want, Judgey McJudgerson. It helps me stay focused when I’m studying and stay awake when I’m in class (the tired head bob is really awkward and really noticeable when you’re in a class of 12 people). And the sugary taste doesn’t hurt, either.

In class last week, the person sitting next to me saw my Mountain Dew and mentioned a show that revealed in each can, there are [blank] packets of sugar. (I don’t remember the number, but I did my own research later that night…) I was surprised, then took a big gulp from the can. Yummy.

So here’s what I found upon further research via Google and the can of Dew I was drinking—if these numbers are wrong, feel free to correct me in the comments section:

There are 4 grams of sugar in a packet of sugar.
There are 46 grams of sugar in a can of Mountain Dew.
Therefore, the sugar content in one can of Mountain Dew is 11.5 packets of sugar.

Since I was looking at sugar content, I decided to look at some caffeine content as well:

There are 54 mg of caffeine in a 12 oz can of Mountain Dew.
There are 260 mg of caffeine in a tall coffee (12 oz) at Starbucks. (Sorry, forgot to write down the web address where I found that number…)
Therefore, the caffeine content in a tall coffee at Starbucks is 4.8 cans of Mountain Dew.

According to these numbers, if I ever find a way to stand the taste of coffee, going to Starbucks and getting a proportional amount of sugar to caffeine as Mountain Dew means I’d have to order: “Tall coffee, no cream and 55 packets of sugar, please.”

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Insecure about the size of your man boobs?

Recently, someone put up a new ad on a billboard that asks drivers a simple question:

“Got man boobs?”

For those who do, they can visit the website manboobsMN.com (the creativity that must have required is awe-inspiring). That site sends you immediately to a page for what?

A plastic surgeon.

That in itself isn’t all that surprising. I imagine a lot of you figured out the answer on your own. What you might not have figured out is the specialty of “Dr. Joe” (and yes, the Welcome page shows his name in quotation marks):

Breast augmentation.

“By performing several hundred breast augmentations each year, ‘Dr. Joe’ has perfected his surgical technique to give his patients beautiful results and a much easier recovery. He speaks internationally on breast augmentation and has published in peer review journals on breast implants and breast augmentation.”

There’s also a list of other available services like facial fat grafting and eyelash growth. (Don’t ask me if he’s injecting saline or silicone into people’s eyelashes because I really don’t want to know.) Gynecomastia—male breasts reduction—is ninth on that list, so at least the billboard isn’t blatant false advertising, but seriously, if I’m a man whose boobs are too big, would I really want to consult a plastic surgeon who specializes in making them bigger?

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In the name of SCIENCE!

In the midst of people complaining about NBC’s wretched coverage of the Olympics and my emotional investment in The Glass House while Steph was on the show, I neglected to write about something important that happened yesterday: the Curiosity rover landed on Mars. SCIENCE!

Twitter did me a great service that evening because I had completely forgotten about the landing, but because of all the tweets people were sending out, I logged onto the NASA website in time to watch the “seven minutes of terror”, the time between Curiosity entering Mars’ atmosphere and its landing on the surface. There was increasing applause for every step of the process (“This is happening as expected”) and a lot of cheering and hugging when it touched down. It was pretty intense and definitely an emotional moment.

So as a personal favor to me, take a breath and remember that the Olympic Games are just that: games. The participants are extraordinary athletes who have invested years of their lives working towards this one event. However, if you keep things in perspective, what they’re doing doesn’t seem nearly as impressive. As far as I know, Michael Phelps has yet to swim in outer space.

A lot of people probably don’t know and/or appreciate what just happened: extraordinary scientists, programmers and engineers invested years of their lives working towards sending the Curiosity rover to Mars. What they also might not know and/or appreciate is that people can use NASA’s website to follow what it’s doing, where it’s going and whether martians get pissed that we’re invading their neighborhood and blow it up. SCIENCE!

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Define “second place” in The Glass House

In the Olympics, it means you get a silver medal because you weren’t quite fast enough or your score wasn’t quite high enough to win the gold medal in your event. In the Glass House, well, “second place” depends on your interpretation.

At the end of the final episode, there will be a single person who wins $250,000. The ultimate victory. The person who could buy him or herself a lot of gold medals because $250K is a lot of money. The runner-up on the final episode… I don’t know whether it’ll depend on audience participation, but the runner-up won’t get as many votes or won’t have as much support or something and the result will be the same as it is for all of the non-winners: they get jack squat.

Except for Steph. She’d been voted team captain two weeks in a row, so when the show offered “bribe money” for someone to give up their place in the house, she knew she’d be likely to take it—no one else knew exactly how popular they were (or were not, in most cases). Thus, when the numbers started climbing higher, the temptation became greater. When the number reached $37,600, Steph decided it was time to go. The likelihood of her winning the $250,000 was microscopic, so it was her best option. As she pointed out as they lowered her down the tube, “That’s more than five of you will be getting.”

So that’s it. Steph has left the Glass House, but she took home $37,600 and will eventually be taking a trip to Vegas as well. Maybe she didn’t last until the final episode, but if you’re talking money, what she got from the show could buy her a lot of silver medals.

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One won in The Glass House

Well, technically, Andrea hasn’t won yet, but the fact that she came out of Limbo instead of Joy pretty much seals it. Fortunately, I don’t feel too bad about that fact anymore. Without giving away any details (I don’t have that many to begin with), Steph left the house voluntarily yesterday. The producers were offering everyone bribe money to leave, so she took it and was replaced by someone who’d been previously eliminated to fill her spot.

She wasn’t very popular with the viewers and thus not very likely to win the $250K. However, she left the house on her own terms, she got the bribe money plus she’d already won a trip to Las Vegas with tickets to see Celine Dion. All things considered, when Steph gets home, I think the only disappointment will be when she sees the show’s Nielsen ratings.

Oh, and here’s an “It’s Over!” blog post from Team Steph, too.