Mar 12th 2010 By Jeremy Taylor

Scientists peg fat as the sixth taste

Our happy hour fact to amaze your pub-going pals with.

The tongue recognises fat, just as it does the five other basic tastes.

The five "official" basic tastes that our tongues have receptors for are sweet, sour, salty, bitter and savoury ( anew one right there). Australian researchers have now discovered that taste buds also process the flavour of fat as they do the previously recognised tastes. In fact, the more sensitive your tongue is to fat's flavor, the more likely you are to pig out on French fries and bacon.

"We are now interested in understanding why some people are sensitive and others are not," said Russell Keast, who worked on the study. "We believe (this) will lead to ways of helping people lower their fat intakes and aid development of new low-fat foods and diets."

Now that fat is a taste, we look forward to science acknowledging other previously unrecognised tastes that we've clearly experienced: fear and rejection, for example.

Mar 12th 2010 By Oliver Jones

Slow afternoon club -- A portrait of the artist using nothing but condiments

Working at Asylum sure is swell. But as a men's lifestyle site we have encountered some surprisingly vociferous prejudice when we try to address topics that are slightly more high-brow than our usual manly fodder.

This upsets us, because we like art and stuff, and we like Melvyn Bragg, we were big fans of The South Bank Show, and we've always loved his hair. We decided we needed to prove ourselves to the arts world and we thought what better way to do that than getting the Asylum staff to paint self-portraits.

Only, we were a bit shy of supplies. The only thing we could find were condiments; ketchup, BBQ sauce, mayo, mustard and some piri piri from the Aol kitchen. Reasoning that paints were going to cost at least £5 we saw no other option than to use the condiments as paint. Times are hard.

To make things interesting each Asylum staffer also adopted a style of painting corresponding with a movement and artist. Tom Cullen went with Van Gogh, Ali Plumb went with Pablo Picasso and Oli Jones went with Peit Mondrian. Keep reading to watch the video and see their sterling efforts. This really will win awards...

Mar 12th 2010 By Tom Cullen

Prince Phil gaffes again -- Asks sea cadet if she works in a strip joint

We have heard rumours of a rare occasion in 2002, when the Duke of Edinburgh managed to open his mouth and say something which didn't insult anyone. This wasn't it.

Over the years Prince Philip has become legendary for his foot-in-mouth moments, and the latest of his gaffes to come to light is no exception. The 88-year-old goon asked a young sea cadet if she worked in a strip club.

The 24-year-old, who works as a barmaid in a nightclub, was asked what she did for a living.

"I just said that I worked in a club and then he asked, 'oh, what, a strip club?'", she told The Daily Telegraph newspaper. "Obviously I said 'No' and then he said 'Oh, it's a bit too cold today anyway'.

"I was quite surprised but I think he was just trying to lighten the mood. It was a joke and we were all laughing which drew everyone else's attention to us.

"I don't think he put his foot in it, it was a joke and I didn't take any offence. I think he was just putting people at their ease."

In December, upon meeting an Army cadet who had been blinded in an IRA attack, the Queen sensitively asked 15-year-old Stephen Menary - who also lost an arm - how much he could see.

But before Stephen could answer, Prince Philip jumped in with, "Not a lot, judging by that tie."

The red, blue and yellow tie was part of the Middlesex Cadet Force uniform.

The bungling royal has been making regular gaffes, always insulting but often funny, since 1966 when he announced that British women can't cook.

Keep reading for our top 10...

Mar 12th 2010 By G. Xavier Robillard

Is bracketology the science of sports gambling?

First of all, we're going to come clean and say we're not quite sure if Bracketology is a science. Or even a word. But indulge us.

HowStuffWorks has studied the science of March Madness Bracketology, and it has some helpful tips on how to win your office pool. Their pointers are backed by statistics, such as the probability of 16 seeds beating 1 seeds. (Hint: It's zero).

Here's a surefire strategy for bracket betting: Use the March Madness brackets as a test. Don't bet money. Don't join any pools. Just fill out the brackets using the HowStuffWorks system, then see if the system worked.

The next and infinitely more important bracket coming up is the FIFA World Cup. That's the ultimate tournament. If your March Madness bracket worked out, bet the farm on the World Cup. Just remember: Only seven countries have ever won it. Name them...

Mar 12th 2010 By Alastair Plumb

Asylum's ultimate stop motion video collection

Last week we stumbled upon this, a piece of internet genius so profoundly amazing, you stop whatever you're doing and email it to everyone you know.

Basically, it's a stop motion video of a man getting a tattoo done - not any old tattoo, mind, but a tattoo of a whole bunch of cameras, all the way up his forearm. It's ludicrously geeky, and it's ludicrously clever, and we loved it, loved it, loved it.

But this made us think back to all the other stop motion classics that have helped us wile away the hours over the past few years, all the toy characters brought to life by just photographing them, moving them a bit, photographing them again, and so on.

And so began a right royal rummage around the back of the internet for all the best stop motion gems, painstakingly made, and quickly watched. And now you can share in our jolty, YouTubey joy. Yep, we're just nice like that

Mar 12th 2010 By Oliver Jones

UK gets 98% Google Street View coverage -- massive new scope for funnies

It's hard not to be a bit paranoid these days what with weird information laws, censorship, ID cards, CCTV, GPS, cloud computing. It all adds up to something 1984-ish. Well today we can add another whopping little something to the list that eventually might cause you to have a colossal nervous breakdown, cover your house in tin foil and barricade yourself in your room pleading for help. An update to Google Street View has gone live -- meaning 98% of the UK's road are now mapped.

That means the road that your house is on is more or less definitely covered. Anyone in the world can go on Internet bang in 18 Wood Lane, Timperley, UK, and Bob's your uncle, Fanny's his transsexual life partner -- there is your gaff for anyone to see. Literally anyone. That's weird right? Well at first it is, but then, it is just a house, and unless you're doing something ungodly in one of the windows you probably shouldn't worry.

What we're more bothered about is the amazing scope for new Street View funnies. Trawling around this morning we've found a few and added them to our Best of Street View snaps which you can find if you keep reading.

Mar 12th 2010 By Simon Crisp

Cheese rolling cancelled in health and safety shocker!

Gutted! The annual Gloucestershire cheese rolling - where nutters hurl themselves down a hill after a tumbling cheese - has been cancelled over health and safety fears.

Dating back hundreds of years, the event at Cooper's Hill sees hundreds of contestants trip and fall their way down the hill while chasing a 7lb Double Gloucester cheese.

A series of races are held, and while the first person down in each wins a cheese, many others just get to take away bruises and broken bones.

But bizarrely this isn't the safety aspect which has caused trouble for the historic event, scheduled to take place on Monday 31 May -- it's the number of fans.

Last year over 15,000 spectators turned up to see the strange sight and organisers have been warned this is three times the legal capacity of the Brockworth site.

They are now working with police and the local authority to improve crowd safety and traffic access for a planned 2011 event. Until then, keep reading to see a few videos of brave stupid contestants chasing cheese. Scenes that will be sorely (or not sorely) missed this year.

Mar 12th 2010 By Alastair Plumb

B-Sides -- Handsome Men's Club and the graph of beardiness

Are you handsome? God knows we're handsome. Like, seriously handsome. So handsome that sometimes people come up to us in the street and say: "Hey, what's it like being so handsome?" And we say: "What, being handsome? Being handsome is awesome."

Because it is awesome. Really awesome. And it turns out that handsome men over the pond in the US have got together and made themselves a club. For handsome men. A Handsome Men's Club, if you will, and it's headed up by American talk host host Jimmy Kimmel (which apparently passes for handsome over there).

We managed to track down a video clip of the club in session, and it makes for surpising and very entertaining viewing, and for that reason, it's our B-Side of the week - the little something we didn't have time to put in its own post, but deserves the attention anyway.

Mar 12th 2010 By Tom Cullen

Hull brawl and Mad Men Barbies

A peek at the morning's sport and entertainment news.

Phil Brown has Barmby and Bullard brawl to mull over.(The Sun)

Man United
take stance over Glazer protests. (The Guardian)

Captain Cook
puts England in command with century. (Guardian)

Lille
savage
Benítez's cup hopes. (The Times)

Sutil upstages big names in Bahrain practice. (The Times)

Lindsay Lohan is suing E-Trade for £60 million. (The Blemish)

A clip from Corey Haim's final movie. (FilmDrunk)

Mad Men Barbie dolls. (AV Club)

Demi Moore is teaching her daughter how to pole dance. (Actress Archives)

Photos of super-hot Internet model Shay Maria. (Holy Taco)

What would happen if Quentin Tarantino took a shot at The Smurfs script. (UGO)

Mar 12th 2010 By Tom Cullen

World's oldest whisky goes on sale -- Feeling rich?

It is older than Chuck Norris and was laid down in a small Scottish distillery the year before the outbreak of the Second World War.

Behold, the world's oldest whisky ever to go on general sale. A cool £10,000 and a bottle of this malty goodness is yours.

The Mortlach 70-year-old Speyside was sampled by a select group of tasters at a ceremony in Edinburgh Castle, yesterday.

And bottles of the rare piece of Scotland's ''liquid history'' have now hit the market.

The Spanish oak hogshead cask – formerly for bodega sherry – which was on display at the castle yesterday yielded 54 full-size and 162 small decanters bottled at cask strength.

However, collectors (or wealthy boozers) will need to dig deep – a 70cl decanter will sell for £10,000, while the 20cl version costs £2,500.

It was filled into its cask on October 15 1938 on the order of John Urquhart, the grandfather of the firm's joint managing directors, David and Michael Urquhart.

Exactly 70 years later, the decision was made to empty the cask and bottle its contents.

A bottle of Mortlach was piped into Edinburgh Castle today and tasted by guests in the Queen Anne Room. David and Michael Urquhart today described it as a malt ''without comparison''.They would though, wouldn't they?

Michael Urquhart said the company had presented a bottle to the Queen but the vermouth drinker requested that it should go on display at the National Museum of Scotland.

Whisky writer and connoisseur Charles MacLean described the world's oldest single malt as "a delicate, fresh, vital, fruity whisky, with unusual attributes of waxiness and smokiness". That's everything then, surely?

Each bottle will be presented in a slick, tear-shaped Glencairn crystal decanter with a silver stopper. Keep reading to see some of the other rarest, oldest and most expensive whisky's ever.

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