Bowser from the Super Mario Bros Movie Has a Surprising Inspiration

If you have recently watched or rewatched the new Super Mario Bros animated movie by Illumination Studios, you might have some conflicting feelings.

The Absolute Truth About Ducks and Pants

If you ever visit a park, pond, stream, river, farm, or zoo there’s a good chance for you to come across a duck. The different wild and domesticated ducks span the entire world and every continent – even Antarctica!

And while you observe them walking, swimming, diving, or flying, one thing you will notice is a nearly universal lack of clothing. Yes, some ducks will be fitted with tracking tags around their leg and many ducks have coloring that resemble clothing, such as a collar. But those aren’t clothes.

The most common clothing for a duck to be found in is a sweater. This is more typical for chickens, but ducks wear them for the same reason. Domestic ducks that can’t migrate during winter are kept in coops or barns, but still can use some help keeping the cold away, so some people make or buy knit sweaters to put on their ducks.

Who Cares about Millionaires?

The word millionaire is a marker for status. That some person has attained so much more than those around them.

But does it really mean anything – anymore?

Locksley “Let It Ride” Lyrics

In an urge to hear a song by my favorite contemporary band that also happens to use my son’s name often, I loaded up Locksley’s “Let it Ride” on YouTube, but I also wanted to sing along only to find the lyrics aren’t on the Internet?!? This must be fixed. You’re welcome.

Lyrics to “Let it Ride” by Locksley

Johnny don’t say goodbye

Johnny do as he like

Johnny hey man, alright

When Will “The Avengers” be on Netflix Streaming?

The Marvel Studios movie The Avengers is the biggest movie of the year. It brought in over $1.5 billion in worldwide box office sales and is ranked #3 all-time (without adjusting for inflation, which you should) in that respect.  Many people are anticipating watching it in their homes – either as a rental, purchase, or through a streaming service, such as Netflix.

Chick-fil-A Economics

Economics is tied heavily to chain restaurants. We have the Big Mac index (which is an incredibly accurate estimate of exchange rates) and the Waffle House index (which is used by FEMA to assess how bad a disaster is). So, to turn to the chain restaurants as allegory is almost natural for economists.

Recent headlines about Chick-fil-A and their opposition to gay marriage have brought about calls for boycotts, and defense of the company, but I have not seen a very important word yet, “externalities.” In fact, when I used a search engine to find the string of “Chick-fil-A” and “externalities” together, there was only one result, a blog from CanadianBusiness.com and it has nothing to do with the current cultural topic.

Why are Zombies so Popular?

Image via kevin dooley

There are a million zombie games, movies, and TV shows out right now it seems. The term “zombie” dates back to African and Haitian cultures with Voodoo/Vodou myths of reanimation of the dead into brainless beings. The film The Night of the Living Dead popularized the current version of the zombie, where an infection is involved and they crave eating flesh.

The Next iPhone Killer

Estwing is getting to unveil their latest product to the market and already the tech world is abuzz over whether this will be an “iPhone killer” and begin putting nails in the coffin to end Apple’s dominance of the market.

The new model, still going by a technical name E3-20C, has gotten great reviews from early test demos at the usual trade shows. Some lauded the product’s design and usability:

“I found it had a really easy-to-use design and it was really intuitive. It worked exactly how I expected and there was almost no learning phase with this device,” stated Todd Peterson, who ran a booth nearby the Estwing demo area.

Which is cheaper – using facial tissue or toilet paper to blow your nose?

Image from Mcfarlandmo

This is a hot topic for debate, as it was in my office today.  Apparently, the folks over at AOL’s DailyFinance think this is worth mentioning as a way for people to save money on their household spending.  Let’s see if their tip is worth following:

Buying New Items vs. Used

Image via timparkinson

I came across an article this week about the benefits of buying certain things used, which went as far as telling me to “not buy them new.” There are a lot of problems with this article; almost each of the bits of “advice” should have given more information – so much so that buying new items in many cases was the best way to go.  Let’s look at each of the pieces of advice: