Here is a collection of drunken English people who were barred from pubs because of their loutish, drunken behavior. The twist? It happened over a century ago! Spooky!

To the world of branding: “The European Union trademarks authority has permitted a German firm to register the brand name ‘Fucking Hell’ for a new beer, much to the irritation of the Austrian village of Fucking. In English, the term ‘Fucking Hell’ is just an expletive used to express irritation or surprise. In German, it could refer to a light ale from Fucking in Upper Austria, because “Hell” is a term for light ale in southern Germany and Austria.” Other towns with amusing German names include “Kissing,” “Petting,” “Wank,” and “WoWirAlleJudenGetötet.”

“I thought time was flying by. Then time stopped. I lost track of everything. No hunger. No itching. No pain. I couldn’t feel my hands.” (via)

A new study shows that fast food consumption triggers the same kind of addictive behavior seen in cocaine and heroin users. Science fed a bunch of rats an unlimited amount of foods high in fat and calories, and the rats could not get enough. But why? Scripps Research Associate Professor Paul J. Kenny explains:

The new study, unlike our preliminary abstract, explains what happens in the brain of these animals when they have easy access to high-calorie, high-fat food. It presents the most thorough and compelling evidence that drug addiction and obesity are based on the same underlying neurobiological mechanisms. In the study, the animals completely lost control over their eating behavior, the primary hallmark of addiction. They continued to overeat even when they anticipated receiving electric shocks, highlighting just how motivated they were to consume the palatable food.

In fact, they would not quit. “When we removed the junk food and tried to put them on a nutritious diet — what we called the ‘salad bar option’ — they simply refused to eat,” says Kenny. “The change in their diet preference was so great that they basically starved themselves for two weeks after they were cut off from junk food.”

It’s all got something to do with dopamine receptors, apparently. But let’s be honest, if you’re going to give me unfettered access to blow, smack, or anything off the dollar menu I am not ever going to be like, “Okay, I’ll have some mixed greens now.” I suddenly want to be a rat.

You are going to need to get a load of this: an explanation of the infamous Friskies ‘Adventureland’ commercial. “Feeding wet,” as [Susan] Schlueter calls it, can for some owners be a highly ritualized and intimate pet interaction. The pop of the can primes kitty for excitement. The scents that escape set feline nostrils aflutter. This is a time for cats and owners to bond over a heap of moist, processed meat. And, according to Schlueter, many owners like to imagine what their cats are feeling and thinking during these moments of culinary ecstasy…. Schlueter says the target is ‘owners who are very involved with their cats, and have a deep relationship with their cats. These are owners who love to get inside and experience the magical world their cats experience.’” That’s weird, because I am that sad freak who wants to experience the magical cat world with my cat, and that is why I feed him a decent cat food!

I’m thankful to have never been locked up in prison. I visited someone in prison once, and being there for even three hours sucked. Albert “Prodigy” Johnson, one half of the Queens-based rap duo Mobb Deep, currently resides at Mid-State Correctional Facility in Marcy, New York, way up near Utica, serving the third year of a three-and-a-half-year sentence for gun possession. He recently got on the phone and recorded a long, grim, threatening rap over a beat made by producer Sid Roams. It sounds much like what I imagine being locked up in prison is like. It’s chilling. And not in the way that means “relaxing” at all.

Insert your own “expanding the big tent” joke here: “The Republican National Committee spent tens of thousands of dollars last month on luxury jets, posh hotels and other high-flying expenses, according to new Federal Election Commission filings, including nearly $2,000 for ‘meals’ at Voyeur West Hollywood, a lesbian-themed nightclub that features topless dancers in bondage outfits.”

by Christopher Conklin

After Henry Blodget fired editor John Carney from his role as the editor of Clusterstock last week, some clearly felt that Blodget, the Business Insider cofounder and CEO, owed an explanation. Blodget and Reuters finance blogger Feliz Salmon got into a Tweet-spat, which culminated in Blodget serving up something like a master class on New Media Economics Friday evening. Blodget was direct, laying out the numbers behind running a web site. His arithmetic checks out-but that doesn’t mean his math makes sense.

First of all, here’s Blodget’s numbers, laid out on Twitter and then slide-showed, with annotations.

• He starts with a $60,000 yearly salary for an editorial staffer, which he then prorates to $5,000 a month. (Check.)

• He introduces an ad rate of $10 CPM for the website at which that staffer works. (CPM is, yes, the rate advertisers pay for the delivery of one thousand ad views-called impressions.)

• He notes that a $10 CPM is more than most general news and gossip sites can hope for, but that a business/finance site should be able to do that or a little better. (True. Most sites can’t sell all of their impressions; the rest of the inventory is filled by remnant networks — all those diet supplement and work at home ad-sellers are not contracting with each web site on which they appear. A network sells these extra impressions for a very low CPM — $4, $2 or even less — then takes a cut in neighborhood of 50% for serving the ads to their network members. When figuring out a site’s revenue, one must first determine how much of their impression inventory they are selling for high rates and what is being filled for pennies. So if a site sells half their inventory for $10 CPM and half through a network for $1 CPM, overall their traffic is worth $5.50 CPM. A business site is probably selling directly for more than $10, perhaps considerably more so, and their network sales are on the higher end as well. Still with me? Almost through with the math!)

• Blodget then points out that benefits need to be paid. He estimates that this raises monthly compensation to about $6000. Given our nice, round and sort of invented $10 CPM number, this means the writer needs to generate about 600,000 page views a month in order to “earn” his salary. (Check. Thus concludes the multiplication and division!)

• But writers are not all one needs for a site! What about editors? What about designers and coders? The ad sales guys? The lawyer? Rent for an office? Also, according to Blodget, “food.” (Yeah, I don’t know either.) But coffee machines and editors, as similar as they are, do not produce content, at least not in the way that writers do. You just can’t sell ads on the labor of office furniture. So in Blodget’s econ class, the writers are responsible for them as well. Those 600,000 monthly page views a writer has to pull down are now 1.8 million. (OK, one little additional bit of math: that’s from Blodget saying that two-thirds of his costs go to things other than writers.) And but wait, there’s more! In some cases-including, apparently, Blodget’s-there are even more website costs: investors expect to earn on their investment.

Felix Salmon responded at length via his Reuters blog; no lesser authorities than Gawker Media owner Nick Denton and professional blog business person Elizabeth Spiers suggest that he doesn’t understand running a web business. Denton asks Salmon to “stop pretending expertise. It’s becoming embarrassing.” Spiers says, “Blodget sounds like someone who runs/has run a new media business before and Felix sounds like someone who’s never been anywhere near the business side.”

Salmon’s surprise at the disparity between Business Insider’s rate card and the monetization rates Blodget discussed reveals him to be unfamiliar with basic ad sales practices. (“ALL sites discount from rate card,” Denton snapped at Salmon, meaning that a $10 CPM might often look like a $7 or $8-or a $4.) To oversimplify grossly — which he will, to be fair, hate — Salmon argues that Carney is a loss leader.

Think of Carney like a Black Friday flat panel television. (This my own ugly analogy, not Salmon’s.) Business Insider loses a little on Carney in the hopes that they will make their money back on the stuff that is cheap to produce: slide shows, lists, pics of hotties kissing. Salmon says, with not a little derision, that serious people — like Salmon himself — will turn out for deeply researched original reporting, and that, furthermore, without the serious people, the ad rates will plummet. (“[T]he key is to maintain a high-value, high-reputation brand, which readers are proud to be associated with.”)

So Salmon believes that even if John Carney isn’t directly earning back his salary — his stories don’t create enough ad inventory to support what he is paid — his work buoys the prices of ads across the board by bringing in a high quality audience and protecting the reputation of the brand.

Salmon wants making money to square with good (or at least smart) editorial practices. I think many of us would like that to be the case. It justifies our tastes, and flatters us as writers and readers because it casts us as desirable for being smart and savvy. Is it really the case? It is probably a lot naive, though, to believe that the ad market will move away from Business Insider-which is, after all, going to draw the business audience that advertisers want, whether the readers are “smart” or “stupid”-any time soon as the result of any particular personnel move. And it’s a little overly simple to believe that one personnel move reveals very much about long term trends at the site. It is easy to see why Salmon would want this to be the case, though. Carney is, in Spiers’s words, a “smart and agile writer.” Good writers want their readership to “be less stupid.” Perhaps advertisers have a vested interest in the reverse?

A few years ago in the comments on Business Insider Henry Blodget made the case for star writers thusly: “Gawker, et al, will soon start adding a lot of star reporters from trad media who see the light. This will bring more traffic, breaking news, and credibility. The staff will grow (as will costs), but the growth in traffic should help offset.” So it seems that he at one time agreed that high quality writing and reporting drive revenue, but that he’s long believed in traffic as a bottom line.

Returning to that fifth bullet point, where Blodget says that roughly two thirds of his costs go to things besides editorial. It strikes me that there is no longer very much that can be considered a fixed cost in publishing, and that there are other ways to push the curve around beyond driving more traffic. Even if better editorial doesn’t push CPMs up, better ad sales might. More to the point, lower costs could allow you to make different editorial decisions. Once you open the Pandora’s Box of looking at a writer as someone who does or doesn’t justify his expense, doesn’t every outlay become the same? Would cheaper offices decrease page views? Would a WordPress installation underperform a custom-built content management system, and if so by how much? Did that expensed lunch add 10,000 pageviews of value? Maybe Blodget could nearshore the whole operation to Boise and save!

I don’t know that these specific suggestions make sense for his enterprise — although Boise would probably appreciate a top-tier financial publication with the city limits; heck, they’d probably throw in tax breaks worth at least 200,000 pageviews a month — but I am certain that he should be rethinking everything about how a media business is run. If Blodget is for metrics and accountability, every expense should be held up and examined; if two-thirds of his costs are not related to editorial, as he suggests, then editorial should not bear one-hundred percent of the responsibility for the bottom line.

Christopher Conklin actually has worked in internet advertising, so don’t all yell at him at once.

Happy Passover, Jews! And the rest of you! I’m going to tell you how to make the classic Seder main course of meat that has been braised beyond good sense. Because of the sacredness of this holiday I will try be more calm this time, but don’t test me.

Get a brisket. This I should have to tell you already? We’re here for me to teach you how to make a brisket, you should have a brisket. Buy the cheapest piece of brisket you can get, because you’re going to boil the bemoses out of it.You want to be all fancy and grass-fed and environmentally conscious? You’re a schmuck! By yourself a cheap brisket and spend the money you save on a good wine. Let’s figure 2 pounds because, as your mother keeps worrying, you’re going to die alone, so God knows you don’t need enough for a big party or anything. And the leftovers are even better.

Preheat your oven to 350. Get a big pot, put it on the stovetop, and pour some olive oil on the bottom. Heat the oil. Brown the brisket on both sides. (I like to put a light coating of flour on the brisket, but with Passover people get touchy about that for some reason, so that’s your call.) Put the brisket on a separate plate. Chop up two big white onions. You’re going to tear up a bit, so it’s a good time to phone your mom and tell her how sorry you are you haven’t given her any grandchildren yet; the tears will make you sound more sincere. Put the chopped onions in the pot. You hear a lot of people going on about sautéing, but just give them a quick stir every three or so minutes. You’ve got better things to do with your time, I should hope.

Chop up a couple of cloves of garlic and add them in. Toss in half a bag of those little carrots that are already peeled for you. You want to put a bay leaf in there? Go ahead, it’s no skin off my nose, and I’ve got plenty of skin there to spare! Add a jar of strained tomatoes, a yarmulke-load of salt (toss in a handful of, yes, rocksalt, or in honor of this holiday, Kosher salt, and then when you think, Oy, that’s a lot of salt, toss in another handful. This is half a yarmulke-load, so repeat twice more.) Add 2 cups of red wine (not the GOOD RED WINE that you used the brisket-saving money on, use the crappy red wine you drink when you’re by yourself watching “Law & Order” and wishing you were a goy) and 2 cups of beef stock. Drop the brisket back in. There should be enough liquid to cover the meat. If not, decide whether you’d rather sacrifice more wine or beef stock. (You’ll want the wine, so this is not much of a choice.) If you’re feeling exotic-and why the fuck not, you’re cooking brisket for yourself on Passover when you should be at home with your family even though, God knows, you’d be more miserable there-you can add a cup of orange juice. I like to toss in a dried chipotle pepper as well, but I know the traditionalists out there think that’s a sin against God. Well, fuck you! It adds a smoky, spicy quality to what is the blandest goddamn meat in creation.

Cover the pot, put the whole thing in the oven, and go read the Torah for three and a half hours! Kidding! Do whatever you want! Of course, if your mother did a good job instilling the proper neuroses in you as a child you’ll be too afraid to leave the house with something in the oven, so maybe you could use this time to reflect on the suffering of our people and all they’ve been through. I would suggest a double bill of Caddyshack 2 starring Jackie Mason and Mel Brooks’ Life Stinks. When the clock says three and a half hours later go check. The sauce should be a bizarre orange color you do not normally associate with meat, and it should be swimming in fat. Take the brisket out of the pot, slice it up against the grain, eat it alone, making sure that you’re wearing something you don’t really care about because that sauce WILL stain. It should taste like leather and tears. L’chaim!

Lynn Rogers, founder of the North American Bear Institute, is back! He was on the “Today Show” this morning talking about, you guessed it, bears. Your video here is chock full of bear action, so please do enjoy it. Still, and I hate to say this about someone who has done so much to foster understanding between humans and bears, but I do not see Lynn Rogers dying peacefully in his sleep.