Posts with tag NPR

You knew it had to be a man who said that we don't need shoes.

This week in a story on NPR, Adam Sternbergh of New York magazine calls footwear "a conspiracy of idiocy." He compares wearing shoes to putting a cast on your arm and never taking it off.

He thinks we should stop wearing shoes.

Excuse us while we sit with heads between our legs, and breathe into a paper bag until we regain our composure.

You probably thought gastric bypass operations were just for the well-heeled and the occasional Today Show weatherman.

It turns out, however, that the gastric bypass crowd is growing by the day, and it has even started to reach the athletic community. As Alison Aubrey reported on NPR last Thursday, College Football Hall-of -Famer Anthony Davis is the newest, widely-publicized gastric bypass (a.k.a. bariatic surgery) recipient.

In the 1970s, Davis was a famed running back for the University of Southern California Trojans. Over time, however, he neglected his health and ultimately reached a bodyweight that fluctuated between 265 and 300 pounds (his weight in his glory days was 190). Accompanying this weight gain were problems usually associated with obesity: sleep apnea, diabetes, gout.

So with his doctor's blessing, Davis underwent bariatic surgery, and over time his waist went from 48 inches to 34. Can Al Roker compete with that?

For many of us, the word "Tibet" conjures up images of Beastie Boys benefit concerts, bumper stickers on old Volvos urging everyone to "Free Tibet" and that annoying movie starring Brad Pitt.

Invaded by China in 1950, Tibet has become both a cause celebre and a legitimate rallying point for those consumed by the struggle for human rights. Part of Tibet's mystique and its frustration stemmed from the fact that, post-1950, Tibet has been almost totally closed to outsiders

Yet as Xeni Jardin explains on NPR, these days Tibet is suddenly far more open to tourists, Western and otherwise. Tibet's capital, Lhasa, has transformed into something she calls "Lhasa Vegas" with absurd sights, retail stores and Internet cafes.

So is Tibet the new Thailand? Only time will tell.

As Jeff Lunden reported on NPR yesterday, Matilda -- the stately Algonquin cat of the even statelier Algonquin Hotel in New York -- has her own chaise lounge in the hotel's famous lobby.

Perhaps the Algonquin's most famous guest, the hotel's lobby cat has been a mainstay since the 1930s, when a stray cat wandered in off the street. The hotel manager felt sorry for it and let it stay. A tradition was born, and the Algonquin's resident cat has been a resident ever since. Upon the suggestion of actor John Barrymore, when the cat is a male, he's always named Hamlet; when female, she's always named Matilda.

The first Algonquin cat had a champagne glass to drink milk from. The current incarnation has its own email account. Its email signature? "Have a PURR-fect day." I kid you not.

As an NPR story noted on Saturday, the latest trend in things-that-were-once-free-but-now-cost-money is the designer ice cube.

Embarassed by your generic ice cubes? Well, you can now breathe a sigh of relief because for a mere 10 cents a cube, you can chill your drinks with ice made from filtered water.

Drinking water was branded and commodified long ago. Now the same has happened to ice cubes. Will the next fad be designer lint? Designer gravel? Designer splinters?

It's hard to be broke, yes, but harder still to have money.