Kate Middleton Gives Her First Public Address As A Royal

She's come a long way. The Duchess of Cambridge made her first public speech Monday marking the opening of The Treehouse, a hospice run by East Anglia's Children's Hospices in Ipswich, England.

She wasn't Churchill, but in her brief three-minute speech she remained calm. "I am only sorry that William can't be here today; he would love it here," she said. The prince is on a six-week Royal Air Force deployment in the Falkland Islands, so Kate is on her own for a while.

[BBC/Video via YouTube]

Panda Poo Makes World's 'Expensive Tea'

Sorry if this story happens to ruin your appetite. An entrepreneurial Chinese man is using panda bear dung taken from breeding centres near his property to grow green tea, which he then hopes to sell for $200 a cup.

An Yanshi unveiled the first batch of the dung-grown tea over the weekend, getting visitors to help him pick the organically grown tea leaves. An expects to sell 50-gram bags of the tea for about $3,500 each, which he claims would make it the most expensive tea on the planet. It would also surpass the famed Kopi Luwak, a type of coffee grown from beans passed through the digestive tracts of Indonesian civets that fetches $300 a pound.

An says that some of the profits from the panda dung tea will be donated to help preserve panda habitats, which ought to be a given considering he wants to sell this stuff for basically the same price as gold.

[The Star]

Peyton Manning To Replace Tim Tebow In Denver

The new Tebowing is… Manning?

ESPN is reporting that Peyton Manning — newly released from the Indianapolis Colts — is engaged in “intensified contract negotiations” with the Denver Broncos to replace Tim Tebow as the team’s quarterback.

According to ESPN’s sources, the Broncos will attempt to trade Tebow once the deal with Manning is finalized, which only an “unforeseen significant obstacle” would prevent at this point.

**UPDATE**

ESPN is reporting that star Colts quarterback Peyton Manning has decided to play for the Broncos. The two sides still need to hammer out the details of a contract, but Manning and John Elway, vice president of football operations for the Broncos, have already discussed a five-year $95 million contract.

[ESPN]

Video: Woman Proposes To Her Girlfriend At A Hockey Game

Watch Alicia propose to her girlfriend during a break at the Ottawa Senators and Toronto Maple Leafs game. The Bruno Mars is clutch.



[Jezebel]

Smithsonian Decides Video Games Are Art After All

Remember Roger Ebert's infamous assertion that video games can never be art? Well, nyah, nyah, Roger — the Smithsonian American Art Museum has unveiled its latest exhibit "The Art of Video Games."

"You could say video games are a great grassroots expression of culture and in some cases art in our democracy," said museum director Betsy Broun. "I guess what surprised me was just the sort of joyful excitement in the games."

The Smithsonian's video games exhibit is the first of its kind, even though video games have been seriously popular for kind of a while. Broun notes that one game sold six million copies in a day, trumping the number of people who go to the Met in a year. Which is actually kind of a shaky justification for a museum exhibit, but it's hard to care when the end result is so shiny.

The exhibit takes museum visitors on a journey, from the humble beginnings of Space Invaders and Combat to games like 2010's Heavy Rain, "which explores the boundaries of parental love." (I've had serious enough emotional breakdowns playing Pac-Man, thanks.) Patrons can interact with the games on giant screens, making the Smithsonian's exhibit an arcade with more cultural credibility. And fewer quarters.

[CBS/Image via Shutterstock]

No Danger In Orange Juice Price Increasing

Remember when we couldn't stop talking about the spike in orange juice prices? OK, well pretend that you do. Turns out we don't have to worry, because those fears have been greatly exaggerated.

This all started back in January when some orange juice in Brazil got tainted with fungicide. That combined with cold weather meant "orange juice futures hit an all-time high." (Orange juice futures. Who knew?) And while we worried this increase would be reflected in the price of OJ at the supermarket, it looks like things are going to be all right in the end.

Just a few weeks later, those concerns have abated after the government said the juice is safe to drink and the weather has improved. There should be plenty of oranges, and juice, to go around.

If you're interested, the USA Today article has the boring facts and figures. Suffice it to say, the price of orange juice is rising at an expected rate, and there's no need to panic. Not about juice, at least.

Now we can move on to more important issues, like whether people who prefer their OJ with pulp realize they're wrong.

[USA Today/Image via Shutterstock]

Poor Reading Skills Proves To Be Hazardous to Your Health

A new study by University College London shows a correlation between literacy problems and health problems. Adults with trouble reading are twice as likely to die within five years as adults with no trouble reading. To be fair, what the study actually focused on was the ability of senior citizens to read and comprehend aspirin instructions.

They found that 67.5% had high health literacy (achieved the maximum score), 20% were classed as medium (made one error) and 12.5% had low health literacy (got two, one or no questions correct).

In the study, almost half of the adults aged over 80 could not correctly answer all four questions, compared to one-quarter of the adults aged 60 or less.

So maybe it's not quite as simple as saying read now, stay healthy when you're older — but it can't hurt. (You're already reading a blog, which is definitely a step in the right direction.) While there's a common sense aspect to saying people who can read and understand the instructions on their medication live longer, the study also showed a link between poor health literacy and depression, heart disease, and diabetes.

Of course, many of us don't bother reading pill bottles. The "no" symbol through the booze symbol usually tells the whole story.

[BBC]

Four Dead at French Jewish School

A gunman on a motorcycle reportedly opened fire Monday morning outside a Jewish school in the French city of Toulouse, killing at least four people, among them a teacher and his two children.

The shooting comes days after soldiers in the same region were gunned down by a man on a motorbike in two attacks. Police said a similar gun was used in all three shootings, while Interior Minister Claude Guéant said there are “similarities.”

Children were arriving for morning classes at the Ozar Hatorah school when the gunman attacked, then sped off. French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he was traveling to the school immediately.

[Telegraph]

Video: Two Year Old Girl Sings Adele's 'Someone Like You'

Heatherfedorick adorable two year old daughter shows us how much of an Adele fan she is by singing Someone Like You the best she can.



[DPAF]

Video: Optical Illusion Sculpture In New York City

While walking on world famous Park Avenue in Manhattan, hethandjed‘s “mind was blown” when they saw a huge optical illusion sculpture. They recorded the creation by Venezuelan-American artist Rafael Barrios.

[Gothamist]

Video: NASA – Evolution Of The Moon

The Moon didn’t always have its now familiar grey and cratered surface. NASAexplorer brings us this epic computer graphics simulation of the history of our Moon.



[YouTube]