The study reported: Scientists have proved for the first time that a cheap form of sugar used in thousands of food products and soft drinks can damage human metabolism and is fuelling the obesity crisis. The report debunked: Yikes. When you see the phrase “scientists have proved,” it’s nearly always an indication that the writer has no idea what he or she is talking about. And superlatives such as “for the first time” should nearly always be avoided. One of the authors...

The latest from Sam Reich, “I had always dreamed of doing a music video in the style of a news show, and Jeff’s parody about the alarmist nature of news was the perfect opportunity. Special thanks to iJustine for her cameo.”

From Mike Shatzkin‘s sobering reality check about the business model of book publishing: Until the digital age, content was scarce. It wasn’t scarce because people didn’t create it; it was scarce because it required an investment to distribute it. That’s no longer true. Anybody with an Internet connection can make anything they write (or snap or video or sing) available to anybody else with an Internet connection. For just about free. That’s just one reason — among...

Lots of Techmeme discussion around news that Uruguayan producer Fede Alvarez’s $300 short film uploaded to YouTube in November 2009 (above) got him a $30m contract to make a Hollywood film: “I uploaded (Panic Attack!) on a Thursday and on Monday my inbox was totally full of e-mails from Hollywood studios,” he told the BBC’s Latin American service BBC Mundo. “It was amazing, we were all shocked.” The movie Mr Alvarez has been asked to produce is a sci-fi film to...

The WSJ says yes. And everyone else has picked it up and run with it. But what, precisely, does hack mean? John Biggs does some intelligent guessing: The story says, essentially, that insurgents in Iraq are “taking control” of our pilotless drones with a $25 piece of software called SkyGrabber. By “take control” the WSJ means “download video feeds from” and by “software” I mean essentially a satellite network snooper. Now I’m not a rocket scientist,...

Mashable’s Christina Warren marks the release of the first official trailer for Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland: Even before the first teaser trailer was leaked online, the Internet has been buzzing about Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland project. The film hits theaters on March 5, 2010, and the studio has carefully revealed information relating to the film — like posters — using social media sites like Facebook and Flickr…. With Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, the...

Through the weekend I’ve been watching the Google Phone chatter — nine Google Phone Techmeme Toppers in just 48 hours. Sadly, In the end I come down on the side of Slate’s Farhad Manjoo: I’m guessing there’s something we’re missing about this story. As Engadget’s Joshua Topolsky points out, this is not the first time Google has given its employees preview versions of upcoming phones—devices that later turned out to be regular Android phones offered through...

What kind of paranoid world are we living in? A University of California, Davis, police declaration supporting the arrest of James Marchbanks [a graduate student drama instructor in the theater and dance department] describes the fear three students reportedly felt when he presented an envelope holding end-of-course evaluations by saying, “I have a bomb.” “There was no expression of a smile or indicating he was joking,” a student told campus police, according to the declaration....

Not a bad idea. Michael Massing proposed it in the New York Review of Books. He says Google has both the resources and the moral responsibility to do it: The fund would seek not to subsidize existing news operations but to support creative ideas and new programs aimed at reinventing the news as Schmidt suggests. It would support start-ups and fledgling enterprises engaged in investigation, international reporting, policy analysis, blogging, and other forms of probing and provocative reporting and...

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) celebrates, Finally, some great news from Congress: U.S. House and Senate negotiators agreed on Tuesday on the final details of the FY 2010 Consolidated Appropriations Act, which contains at least three BIG victories for reformers: * Washington, DC will finally be allowed to implement the medical marijuana initiative that voters overwhelmingly approved in 1998 but has been blocked by Congress each year since then. * Funding for the White House “drug...

In Oregon, an anonymous donor helps pay for prisoners to go to college behind bars: In the past two years, The Investor has donated $294,000 so that kidnappers, bank robbers and other felons at three state prisons can go to college behind bars. His latest gift, just in time for Christmas this year, is $15,000 for women inmates at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville to buy books for themselves. Oregon’s educational offerings for prisoners have been limited largely to GED classes...

The NYT’s annual Holiday Gift Guide includes a page called “Of Color/Stylish Gifts” aimed at the paper’s non-white readers. The nytpicker suggests racism: Found in the “Style & Travel” section of the Gift Guide, it stands alongside sections called “Frugal Travel,” “Chic and Cheerful,” and “Cosmetic Enhancements.” But this page is the only one aimed squarely at readers whose skin isn’t white in color — and it’s...

UPDATE: The morning after and the site is live. But slow and buggy…. Mashable says so, “YouTube and Universal have just flipped the switch and VEVO is now live.” But all I’m getting is the blog with a promise of “Launching Tonight! In the meantime, enjoy reading our blog.” So which is it? Or what is it? NewTeeVee: Taking a page out of Hulu CEO Jason Kilar’s playbook, Vevo CEO Rio Caraeff told the crowd at the company’s launch event in Manhattan that the new...

The iPhone is a turning point in the industry, not so much for its popularity or features. But rather because, as the first popular handheld computer, it has spawned an app ecosystem: Gone are the days when mobile developers had to negotiate with major telecommunications companies if they had any hopes of publishing their applications on a mobile phone. “It took six to nine months to build a relationship with a carrier, maybe a quarter-million to get the infrastructure built, and the company took...

Apple’s buying the streaming music service, Lala. CNet’s Greg Sandoval broke the story. Brad Stone at The NYTimes nailed it down and filled in some details. Techmeme pumped up the discussion. Of all that, Technologizer’s Harry McCracken sums up the service nicely: The company has an oddball history that includes a period as a CD-swapping service and a foray into radio, but for over a year, it’s focused on pretty much being what iTunes might be if it were an entirely Web-based...

Time Inc. imagines how their magazines will look on the upcoming “Tablet of Newspaper Salvation,” the Apple Tablet: Time Inc. [has] released a video demonstration of a tabletized Sports Illustrated. The demo is actually quite impressive, including a decent amount of interactivity, some video elements, several different ways of browsing through the content, and a somewhat creepy Monty Pythonesque hand that’s flipping the pages. It’s all fine and dandy, but I believe the end version...

Boing Boing’s Rob Beschizza says it makes casual use easier and serious use harder: Visually, Magic Mouse is an archetypally beautiful Apple product. There are just two curving surfaces, which meet to trace the geometrical form otherwise represented in nature by shoe horns. On top is the expansive white button/trackpad. Underneath is the metal base, broken up by two long teflon pads, a hole for tracking optics, a power switch and a battery light. Two AA batteries are required and are included....

You might remember that I fell hook, line, and sinker for the story of the car crash victim who told the tale of the horror he had endured over 23 years because he was “misdiagnosed as being in a coma when he was conscious the whole time.” Over at Science Blogs, Orac — the nom de blog of a (not so) humble pseudonymous surgeon/scientist with an ego just big enough to delude himself that… etc. etc. — Orac is skeptical: First of all, I’m not sure what to make of the...

UPDATE 3 PM ET — Gothamist: …the New York State Senate voted 38-24 against a bill to legalize same-sex marriage. The bill was finally brought to the floor for an up or down vote today after overcoming legislative roadblocks from opponents. During the emotional debate, one of the bill’s sponsors, State Senator Thomas K. Duane of Manhattan, who is gay, said, “This legislation would merely provide me and tens of thousands of other New Yorkers with equal rights in New York State....

The full statement from his website, Tiger comments on current events: I have let my family down and I regret those transgressions with all of my heart. I have not been true to my values and the behavior my family deserves. I am not without faults and I am far short of perfect. I am dealing with my behavior and personal failings behind closed doors with my family. Those feelings should be shared by us alone. Although I am a well-known person and have made my career as a professional athlete, I have...

A small diversion while we await the speech, from Agence France Presse: Television reporter Muntazer al-Zaidi was in Paris to promote his campaign for the “victims of the US occupation in Iraq” when a fellow Iraqi critic turned the tables on him, shouting: “Here’s another shoe for you.” The thickset man with an Iraqi accent made a brief speech in Arabic during the question and answer session, defending US policy and accusing Zaidi of “working for dictatorship...

UPDATE: Police shot and killed Maurice Clemmons early this morning in Seattle. They still don’t know what prompted him to shoot four police officers as they did paperwork on their laptops Sunday morning. ————— It’s hard for those of us with a liberal bent (like me) — who argue for a more forgiving and restorative criminal justice system — to resist calling out any conservative who commutes the sentence of a criminal who goes on to commit a heinous...

It’s higher than you think. Smart of the NYTimes to run this major piece on Food Stamps on the weekend following Thanksgiving. The number of food stamp recipients has risen by nearly 10 million over the past two years; the program that now feeds 1 in 8 Americans and nearly 1 in 4 children. Click for an interactive graphic that gives a county by county numbers. You will remember it was just two weeks ago that Kathy pointed to the The USDA’s 2008 report finding that hunger in U.S. at a...

I do hope Eddie knows that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, because my title above was, in part, lifted from her Obama Foodorama post. Says Eddie, “It’s hard to imagine the details of the State Dinner Crashers getting weirder”: Rep. Edolphus “Ed” Towns (D-NY), the chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, announced his demand for a briefing yesterday on Twitter, in what might be the first use of its kind for the microplatform. Tareq...

You might remember that when ABC’s Good Morning America canceled Adam Lambert’s planned performance appearance for his racy American Music Awards routine last Sunday, the CBS “Early Show” hastily arranged an interview. The taped intro to that appearance then caused its own brouhaha because CBS blurred the AMA footage of Lambert kissing his male keyboardist, but then went on moments later to show footage of the Madonna-Britney kiss.* If you think that would be the end of it, think again… ABC...