Bad Beef: Remembering Burger King’s Infamous “Where’s Herb?” Campaign
In 1986, Burger King customers could win $5000 for spotting ad pitchman Herb in restaurants. It still wasn't enough to make them like him.

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Bad Beef: Remembering Burger King’s Infamous “Where’s Herb?” Campaign
In 1986, Burger King customers could win $5000 for spotting ad pitchman Herb in restaurants. It still wasn't enough to make them like him.
How bona to vada your eek!
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The Most Googled Ailments, By Region
San Jose apparently has a dandruff problem.
Puns—much like physical beauty—are often transient, but in the internet’s new “Gyllenhall,” both last forever. The virtual gallery features an endless, scrolling display of dreamy head shots of actor Jake Gyllenhaal.
Spotted by The Verge, the whimsical website really has no point, other than to make your work breaks more fun, your pun-hating friends wince, and your eyes happy. (For a few minutes, at least. They might start hurting after that.) Turn up your computer’s volume, and you’ll even hear Jake’s classic Brokeback Mountain (2005) line—the impassioned “I wish I knew how to quit you”—echo on a continuous loop. Pro tip: To quit Jake, just exit the browser.
The site was co-created by Paul Feldmann, a digital artist, and writer Zack Johnson. Their personal websites feature an assortment of silly projects, but none seem as ripe for a sequel as the Gyllenhall. Will the pun-loving duo make an Arsenio Hall next? What about a tribute to the 1977 Woody Allen film Annie Hall, or Daryl Hall from Hall & Oates? Only time will tell. Until then, feel free to glut yourself on decent pun and a pretty actor by checking out the Gyllenhall yourself.
[h/t The Verge]
December 2, 2016 – 1:30pm
For just $2, you can get unlimited Frostys at Wendy’s for an entire year, as Money reports. If you purchase a promotional key tag for a couple bucks any time in the next year, you can flash it at the checkout of any Wendy’s nationwide to get a free junior-sized frozen treat with your purchase.
If you are a Wendy’s aficionado, you may have already participated in previous versions of this program, which only cost $1. But at least the price increase is going to a good cause: Ninety percent of the money will go to the adoption-focused nonprofit Dave Thomas Foundation, named for the Wendy’s founder (who was adopted as a child).
The key tags are sold out online, but are still available in Wendy’s stores, so hustle to your nearest location for an endless supply of those sweet, sweet chocolate ice drinks.
[h/t Money]
December 2, 2016 – 1:15pm
Some insects’ mouth-to-mouth exchanges transmit tiny molecules of hormones and other important chemical information, according to scientists writing in the journal eLife.
The spit-swapping behavior is called trophallaxis. Many entomologists who witnessed the behavior in ants and other social insects believed the bugs were using it to efficiently share food. But some researchers noticed that carpenter ants were trophallax-ing in non-dining contexts, like when one ant would return to its family after being away. The scientists wondered if the ants’ kissing juice contained more than just calories.
They brought lots of ants into the lab to sample what the ants were sharing. At first, the researchers tried just waiting around until one ant initiated trophallaxis, but that mostly resulted in a lot of waiting and very little fluid. Eventually, they figured out that they could gently squeeze the ants’ bellies until the liquid came dribbling out of their mouths.
The researchers ran chemical and genetic tests on the fluid to determine its contents, and they found all kinds of interesting things. The liquid did indeed include particles of food and digestive enzymes, but it also contained several growth-related proteins and a juvenile hormone that can influence an insect’s development.
To find out how these compounds might affect a trophallaxis recipient, the researchers added the juvenile hormone to the meals they were feeding adult ants. The adults passed the hormone-charged liquid onto their larvae. The larvae loved it. Individuals who had taken in the hormone were twice as likely as others to survive to adulthood.
First author Adria LeBoeuf works at the Center for Integrative Genomics in Switzerland. She says the ants could very well be using trophallaxis to decide which larvae succeed. “When the ants feed their larvae, they aren’t just feeding them food, they are casting quantitative ballots for their colony, administering different amounts of growth-promoting components to influence the next generation,” she said in a statement.
Larvae chosen to receive the liquid are being nourished in more ways than one. In some ways, LeBoeuf says, it’s a lot like mammals’ milk. It also suggests that “…the oral exchange of fluids, such as saliva, in other animals might also serve previously unexpected roles.” Yum.
December 2, 2016 – 1:00pm
Step into, say, Little Odessa in New York City, where the sidewalks are flecked with caviar stands and the signs are in Russian, and you might feel like you’ve left the country. But there truly is a way to leave the United States while in midtown Manhattan (although with fewer blintzes): Clear security and enter United Nations headquarters.
Many people don’t realize that the U.N. is actually an international territory. It’s defined as an “extraterritoriality,” meaning that it’s exempt from any local law. As the U.N. explains [PDF], “No federal, state or local officer or official of the United States, whether administrative, judicial, military or police, may enter UN Headquarters, except with the consent of and under conditions agreed to by the Secretary-General of the Organization.”
The history of how this surprise international territory came to be is fascinating. Sovereignty was a political hot topic at the time the U.N. was established, just after World War II in 1945. To provide neutral ground, the Canadian government offered to donate its Navy Island in the Niagara River, a body of water that marks part of the U.S.-Canadian border.
But two months after the U.N. was formed, Congress voted to invite the organization to base itself in the U.S. That’s when more than 200 sites around the country started jockeying to hold the new headquarters, as Rutgers history professor Charlene Mires recounts in her book Capital of the World: The Race to Host the United Nations.
Out-of-the-way spots like the Black Hills of South Dakota pushed to be considered. Mires summarizes the competition this way: “At times it seemed the world’s diplomats could agree on only one thing: under no circumstances did they want the United Nations to be based in New York.”
In the end, only an unexpected $8.5 million donation from the Rockefeller family placed the headquarters in expensive, logistically complex New York City. The gift was especially toward purchase of nearly 18 acres of Manhattan land overlooking the East River, then a rundown industrial area of slaughterhouses and a railroad barge landing. The Rockefellers owned an apartment building across the street.
If you’re thinking, “Great! If I ever need to flee the U.S. authorities I’ll try there for safe haven,” be warned. U.N. officials seem to have sewn up every potential corner in a patchwork of laws. They established their own firefighting department, security force, and post office branch (although New York City services are also occasionally used). And they put out explicit rules about avoiding jail: “The United Nations is bound by an agreement with the United States, its host country, to prevent its Headquarters from being used as a refuge for persons attempting to avoid arrest under the Federal, State or local laws of the United States,” they say. “People being extradited by the United States Government are also denied use of United Nations Headquarters in attempts to avoid arrest.”
There’s no record of anyone trying to give birth in U.N. headquarters with hopes of a birth certificate reading “international territory” (the way occasionally expectant mothers are said to try on planes). The closest anyone seems to have come is a baby delivered a couple blocks away, by a cop during morning rush hour on FDR Drive earlier in 2016. And there’s been seemingly no major crimes committed in an attempt to thwart American justice—the most violent events the headquarters appear to have seen occurred in 1964, when a bazooka was fired across the East River during a speech by Che Guevara and a woman tried to charge into the building to stab him.
For New Yorkers who hate the traffic snarls and diplomatic license plates that major U.N. gatherings entail, know that some of the diplomats hate the location, too. Montreal and Dubai have been offered up as potential new headquarters sites—but since the U.N. just remodeled its headquarters in the past few years, don’t look for New York City to lose its 18 acres of international territory anytime soon.
December 2, 2016 – 12:30pm