Watercooler Sensation

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Americans Love Their Big Brother

• A camera on every street corner. Government agents watching our every move. Sounds good to us. [ABC]
• Americans are totally into this Big Brother thing. 71% of Americans favor the “increased use of surveillance cameras” in order to cut down on crime and let the government see when you’re having a bad hair day.
• And it’s a good thing they’re into it, extensive surveillance systems are coming to a city near you. New York, Chicago and Baltimore are all planning expanded surveillance systems, with 100 new cameras expected in downtown Manhattan by the end of the year and 3,000 more by 2010.
• These systems have shown some success at catching terrorists and criminals: London’s extensive surveillance system, known, slightly creepily, as “The Ring of Steel,” “is said to have aided in the capture of suspects, including those accused of a pair of attempted car bombings in June.”
• But not everyone’s getting excited. The ACLU claims that these systems, “invade privacy, and could be used to track innocent people.” [ACLU]

“Ring of Steel” is not a Johnny Cash song.

Coffee + Treadmill = No Skin Cancer

• Scientists: they come up with the darnedest things. From the wonderful world of People Who Do Studies: The combination of exercise and caffeine increased destruction of precancerous cells that had been damaged by the sun’s ultraviolet-B radiation, according to a team of researchers at Rutgers University. [AP]
• Yes, that’s right: that grande skim latte, combined with a jog, is helping to offset the damage you did at the beach last weekend.
• The researchers report in Tuesday’s issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they studied hairless mice in four groups. Some were fed water containing caffeine, some had wheels on which they could run, some had both and a control group had neither. The most dramatic and obvious difference between the groups came from the caffeine-drinking runners, a difference that can likely be attributed to some kind of synergy.
• Compared with the control animals, those drinking caffeine had a 95 percent increase in apoptosis in damaged cells. The exercisers showed a 120 percent increase, and the mice that were both drinking and running showed a nearly 400 percent increase.
• The bad news: You’ve got to drink the caffeinated stuff. Scientists found that decaffeinated blends of coffee and teas didn’t have the same effects.

Our question: What about running outside?

Corporate Giants Can Save Green and Go Green with “Green Paper”

• Xerox is helping corporate America assuage its collective guilt (right) over its massive paper consumption with the introduction of new “green paper.” [WSJ]
• The new paper is more environmentally friendly and costs less to manufacture than traditional copy paper, but unfortunately for those obsessive-compulsives out there, it’s not as white or smooth, and like newsprint, it tends to yellow with age.
• While it may not be snow white and perfectly crisp, the paper requires half the number of trees, fewer chemicals, and much less energy to produce. Plus, the sheets weigh 10% less, so companies save on postage and trucking costs.
• Since we do most of our writing on napkins and the backs of our hands, and rarely use the printer for anything other than airline tickets or incriminating photos of Lindsay Lohan, we’d be totally stoked to make the switch.
• Unfortunately we’re not Xerox’s target demographic. They’re marketing the paper to commercial printers and large businesses; “people who have their own zip code.” In other words, not us.

Anyone company unwilling to sacrifice perfect smoothness for saving the Earth is a total environmental Scrooge.

New Rich People Trend: Rent-A-Dog

• You’ve got your timeshare on Grand Cayman. Your part of the Leer jet. The ski chateau in the Alps for two weeks a year. Now, you can add one more perk to your rent-a-life: A Boston Terrier on the weekends. [AP]
• Meet FlexPetz, a five-month-old business based in San Diego that contracts out dogs by the day to urbanites without the time or space to care for a pet full-time. Marlena Cervantes, who started the venture, refers to the process as “shared pet ownership.”
• FlexPetz is currently available in Los Angeles and San Diego, where Cervantes lives. She plans to open new locations in San Francisco next month, New York in September and London by the end of the year.
• For an annual fee of $99.95, a monthly payment of $49.95 and a per-visit charge of $39.95 a day, (discounted to $24.95 Sunday through Thursday), animal lovers who enroll in FlexPetz get to spend time with a four-legged companion from Cervantes’ 10-dog crew of Afghan hounds, Labrador retrievers and Boston terriers.
• But not everyone’s wagging their tails. Some veterinarians are concerned that flopping back and forth between “owners” will be confusing for the dogs. “It depends on the people and it depends on the animal,” said Melissa Bain, a veterinarian with the Companion Animal Behavior Program at the University of California at Davis. “Some dogs may be fine and some may become stressed because they are moving from home to home.”

Problem: That cute girl from the dog park invites you out on a pooch date, and Fido’s already reserved for that weekend.

Paxil Or True Love, You Decide

• Obsession. Excitement. The heady madness. Falling in love can make you go kinda crazy. But scientists now say those adults who take anti-depressants can keep their brains too sane for love. [LA Times]
• Everyone knows anti-depressants can have disastrous effects on your sex drive. (Analysis shows anywhere from 30% to a whopping 71% of people on anti-depressants suffer from seriously low sex drive.)
• Anti-depressants alter the brain’s levels of dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin…all the natural chemicals which play a part in the sensation of falling in love.
• They also shut down obsessive feeling, which is pretty common in the first throes of love.
• While there aren’t any hard stats about how many of us out there are unable to find love because of all the Paxil and Lexipro we’re on, a few studies highlight the problems.
• One study studied female prairie voles, an animal which mates for life. When researchers suppressed dopamine levels, simulating taking an anti-depressant, the prairie voles lost interest in their mates. Sad.
• Another study showed women photos of men. Women on anti-depressants sped through the photos much more quickly than other women and were also more likely to rate the photos more negatively.
• Scientists say people need to re-evaluate why they’re on the meds. If it keeps you from suffering from severe depression, fine. But if you’re trying to deal with a break-up or problems at work, the cost of Lost Love might not be worth it.
• 10% of women and 4% of men in the U.S. take anti-depressants.

Forget “He’s just not that into you.” The next time the hottie from the bar doesn’t call us back, we’re officially chalking it up to “oh, they must be on Zoloft and thus unable to find love.”

By the Numbers

A review of White House staff pay shows that even at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the rich are getting richer while everyone else is left behind. Somehow, we’re not surprised.

[National Journal] via [USA Today]

$2,800

“Cost-of-living” wage increase awarded last year to senior-most Presidential aides like Karl Rove last.

$0.00

“Cost-of-living” wage increase awarded last year, and the two years before, to White House staffers making $30,000 a year or less. Kind of similar to the way the minimum wage reflects cost-of-living increases (read: not at all).

24

Number of people earning between $151,000 and $171,000 in the White House.

200

Number of staff members who made less than $51,000.

$35,000

Salary raise granted to Anita McBride, the first lady’s chief of staff, since 2005. This brings her annual salary up to $168,000, the maximum allowed by law.

$30,000

Annual salary for President Bush’s “gift analyst,” as well as his staff assistants and correspondence analysts.

$215,000

Vice President Cheney’s annual salary.

$400,000

President Bush’s annual salary. That’s almost 10 times what the average American makes in a year. [Consumer Affairs]

Celebrities: Unfiltered

“You don’t go grabbing somebody else’s husband’s balls, you understand me?”

— Faith Hill, at a concert. On the microphone. In public.

Speed Round

AUDIO: K-I-S-S-I-N-G

Candle-lit dinners alone while the rest of the staff goes bowling...UK PM Gordon Brown and President Bush have a very special relationship.

AUDIO: FOOTBALL

Disgraced Atlanta Falcon Michael Vick, accused of running a dog fighting ring and helping murder dogs which didn’t perform, tells local Atlanta radio host Porsche Foxx that, one day, he’d like to return to NFL football.

AUDIO: FOOTBALL

Dr. R.L. White Jr., head of the Atlanta NAACP charges we shouldn’t be too quick to judge Michael Vick, saying “many of us who have had hours of excitement because of his incredible talent have quickly turned on him.” We’re not sure the dogs would agree.

WINNIE COOPER

Remember Winnie Cooper, Kevin Arnold’s longtime crush from “The Wonder Years”? Actress Danica McKellar is all grown up, has a degree in math (complete with a new math theorem named after her) and is combatting the BritneyLindsayParis world with her new book for middle school girls, “Math Doesn’t Suck.” Buy it. [Amazon.com]

WHOOPS

The FCC assigned new radio station call letters last week, including KUNT and KWTF. [Honolulu Star Bulletin]

CAST MEMBERS

Leader Nancy Pelosi signs Stephen Colbert’s cast, but not before calling him a “bone-coddling crybaby.” [Roll Call]

GOODBYE

Talk show legend Tom Snyder loses his battle with leukemia. He was 71. [NY Times]

LATE NIGHT LINEUP

How do you get hipper than Conan? Hire Jimmy Fallon to take his slot in 2009. [Broadcasting & Cable]

• We couldn’t resist: Here’s Jimmy belting out his latest single, “Car Wash for Peace.”
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PEOPLE BETTER THAN YOU

An Italian author decides to use his commute time wisely, writes an entire 384-page science fiction novel on his cell phone while in transit. (Kinda makes you feel guilty about all that phone Tetris you’ve been playing on the subway, huh?) [PC Magazine]

GO BIG GREEN!

You’ve heard of the hybrid car. Now meet the hybrid…train. (Only in Japan, natch.) [AP]

A MILLION LITTLE GRUDGES

The editor of embattled author James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces handles her grudges against The Oprah the polite way: By leaking them to the press. [AP]

THIS MAY NOT BE THE BEST ADVICE

“Nothing says “I love you” like a photo frame made from panda poop.” [AP]

CELEBRIDIRT

In addition to her dignity, Paris Hilton has also lost her inheritance. [Daily Telegraph]

BROKEN HEARTS

Stem cells, is there anything they can’t do? New research shows they may be useful in helping regrow damaged tissue after a heart attack. Maybe this will make Cheney change the Administration’s policy about stem cell research? [New Scientist]

R U PRAYIN’? ITZ THE POPE

To get Austrians psyched up for Pope Benedict’s upcoming visit, the Vatican is sending free text messages of excerpts from his sermons. [FOX]