The “Nutjob” Part
One of the stocking stuffers that my father gave my mother for the holidays this year was some Mint Chocolate M&M’s. During lunch, they came up in discussion, so I took out my iPhone and pulled up my review of Mint Crip M&M’s from May. Since my parents really don’t know how to use the iPhone, I had to zoom in on it so they could read it.
This zooming hid the fact that it was my review that I showed them.
During the discussion, the question of “who reviews M&M’s?” was asked, and was quickly answered by my father as, “some nutjob with too much time on his hands.” After pointing out that the “nutjob’ in question was me, my father quickly backtracked as best he could, but the damage was done.
My shrink loves my parents, by the way.
The Milk Chocolate M&M’s Review Part
Mint Chocolate M&M’s are quite delicious. They are chocolaty and minty, and that’s what you want in a mint chocolate candy. As you can see by the photo, there is a large white chocolate center that is infused with mint flavor surrounded by a decent amount of dark chocolate, which gives the candy a more minty flavoring whereas I prefer a nice balance of the two. On the taste factor alone, I would be apt to give it a 7.5/10, but I’m reviewing an M&M here, not your standard run-of-the-mill after dinner mint.
Mint Chocolate M&M’s are part of their Premiums line. The outer coating of a Mint Chocolate M&M is a mottled, dark green coating and, unlike normal M&M’s, is made out of wax. There’s no hard candy shell that has made sure that M&M’s “melt in your mouth, not in your hand’ for decades. These will melt anywhere, especially your hand, and probably at the most inopportune time.
The hard candy shell is what sets M&M’s apart from other bite size chocolate candies. It’s the hard candy shell that has made M&M’s one of the most widely recognized candies in the world. Just because you create a bite sized chocolate candy and stamp an “M” on it (in some cases a “W”, a “3″, or an “E”) does not mean that you’ve made an M&M. These are nothing more than every other mint chocolate candies in a slightly fancy package.
Rating: 4/10
Ever since posting about Wrebbit’s “Puzz-3D NYC”, I’ve been asked where people can find them since they’re no longer available at retail. I’ve found the best place to be eBay or Amazon.com, where used ones sometimes appear. Unfortunately, a lot of the used ones don’t include the manual.
While the manual is not absolutely necessary to complete the puzzle, it definitely helps, and when the puzzle has over 3,000 pieces, every little bit helps. I’ve scoured Hasbro’s web site (Wrebbit is now owned by Hasbro) and have been unable to find the Puzz-3D NYC manual, including their Toy & Game Instructions list where other Puzz-3D manuals appear.
For the betterment of mankind, I’ve scanned my manual and make it available in PDF format. It’s quite large, at 75MB, because it was scanned in at 200 dpi so it could be zoomed in to or printed out if necessary.
Due to the rotation of the Earth, a “leap second” has to be added to 2008 to keep clocks accurate.
They had to add an extra second to 2008? It wasn’t bad enough, so they made it longer?
Great pictures. And they’re BIG. Also see Part 2, and Part 3.
The famous photo of the Earth as seen from lunar orbit was taken 40 years ago today.
Not surprisingly, Bacon is #1. Overall it’s fairly accurate, but a few mistakes stand out. Boobs at #13? Really? Cheese beats it by 5? And sniper is way too high at #5. Jedi and sniper should swap. Ribs and beef jerky need to swap also. And mullets shouldn’t be on it at all!
Researchers find that headbanging may cause mild head injury (duh). They suggest banging your head to every other beat or listening to different music.
Heaviest snowfall in 30 years for the area.
National Geographic lists ten cures for the common hangover. None of them are especially appetizing (except maybe the Netherlands), and a few are just downright nasty.
Josh’s hangover cure…two McDonald’s hamburgers. The hard part is finding someone to go get them for you.
It may have something to do with maintaining our brain’s temperature.
I’m going to suggest more testing, especially right after drinking a Slurpee really quickly.
Outliers: The Story of Success
An outlier, according to the dictionary, is “a statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample”, in other words, a statistical anomaly. In his newest book, Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell attempts to examine why a few people succeed beyond the norm, and what made them outliers.
Along the way, he examines youth hockey players in Canada and how when they were born is more important than any inherit skill they may have; Bill Gates and The Beatles and how practice allows you to be ready for that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity; Jewish lawyers and how cultural prejudices may prepare you for an opportunity later in life; and several others. The book attempts to debunk the myth that a successful person can be “self-made”, and shows that luck, cultural heritage, and the opportunities of your predecessors may have more to do with being present at the right moment in time, with the right set of skills, to take advantage of an opportunity.
I have always enjoyed Gladwell’s writings, in both The New Yorker and his other books. I enjoyed this one as well. However, compared to his first two books, this one doesn’t hit the same chord. It is interesting to look a little deeper at some outliers and how they may have gotten where they did, but it isn’t fascinating; and that’s the difference between The Tipping Point
/Blink
, and Outliers.
Rating: 7.5/10
Oscar Meyer is taking applications to drive the giant hot dog on wheels. I think it’d be fun, but I’d probably get tired of eating hot dogs about three days in.
I think my theory that “everything’s better with bacon” was proven wrong.
I may have had a minor coronary just looking at the pictures.
McDonald’s erected four billboards attacking Starbucks coffee right down the road from Starbucks’ headquarters. Excellent, but they really should be targeting Starbucks drinkers all over the place.
I don’t know about you, but the cashiers in the McDonald’s near me can’t do anything unless there’s a little button for it on their register. And I highly doubt any of them would know what a “half caf latte with soy milk” is. And I wouldn’t exactly want to hang out in McDonald’s any longer than I have to…I detract from the homeless decor they have. Other than those things, I think McDonald’s will give Starbucks a run for their money.
Guy gets an e-mail from Classmates.com that others are looking for him. He signs up for the paid service and finds out that no one was looking for him. Sues.
This is a true story, not something The Onion made up.
