States Expected to Have the Coldest and Rainiest Halloween

Halloween weekend is fast approaching, but will it be the sort of Halloween that requires you to wear a giant bulky coat over your costume, or one that lets you show off your best efforts at embodying Superman or Cinderella for the night? That, it turns out, depends on where you live. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center has shared its latest outlook, which predicts likely temperatures in the weeks surrounding Halloween. It turns out that a lot of the country could experience an unseasonably warm Halloween, though the East Coast and parts of the Midwest could see temperatures a bit closer to the nippy Halloweens that most adults remember. Check out the maps below to see how your state might fare this Halloween.

 

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The Waffle House Index Helps Southerners Gauge Storm’s Severity

Golden hash browns, gravy-smothered biscuits and crispy waffles with a hearty helping of syrup are among the classic Southern comfort foods, but when hurricanes tear through Southeastern towns, the hot meals and bold yellow signs of the local Waffle House provide another kind of comfort. If a Waffle House stays open in town, even in a limited capacity, neighbors are reassured that the coming storm is unlikely to cause devastation. A closed location of the dependable diner chain has come to indicate impending disaster. The metric is known as the Waffle House Index.  For decades, people across the South have noticed that the local Waffle House seemed to be the only business still open during a storm or the first to reopen after it passed. A map of the chain’s over 1,900 locations, concentrated in the Southeast and mid-Atlantic, helps residents of storm-prone states assess whether they’re likely to lose power, experience severe flooding or endure other extreme conditions that might cause a resilient restaurant to close its doors. For some, it’s a telltale sign of whether they need to evacuate. Waffle House’s social media shares color-coded maps of its restaurant locations in certain regions that will soon be hit or are recovering from storm damage. 

• • Green means the location is serving a full menu, indicating minimal damage in the surrounding area. The lights are on and the syrup is flowing.
• • Yellow means the restaurant is serving a limited menu, a signal that it’s pulling power from a generator and might have a low food supply. The area might not have running water or electricity, but there’s enough gas to fry up bacon for hungry customers.
• • Red means the location is closed, a sign of unsafe operating conditions and severe destruction to the restaurant or nearby communities.

The restaurant chain’s disaster readiness is no coincidence. The chain said it has invested in portable generators, bought a mobile command center and trained employees on what they can still serve if they lose electricity.

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Lessons from “The Biggest Loser”

For people who are extremely overweight, a program of diet and exercise may seem like the healthy way to effect drastic weight loss, but a study of contestants on the popular reality TV show The Biggest Loser suggests that’s not true. It turns out that drastic weight loss is associated with a slow metabolism and with low levels of hormones that affect hunger. The Biggest Loser seemed to offer tremendous hope. People who struggled with extreme obesity — a BMI of 40 or greater — competed to lose weight in a short amount of time. They worked with teams of doctors, nutritionists, and personal trainers. The contestant who experienced the most drastic weight loss by the end of the season (just 30 weeks) won the competition. However, a study conducted after the end of the season showed that the contestants’ metabolism had slowed and leptin — a protein that regulates the appetite — had plummeted, leaving them constantly hungry. Over the next six years, hormonal changes conspired to make the contestants regain much, if not all, of the weight they had lost. A few gained even more than they started with. However, the truly shocking part was that their leptin and metabolism levels never rebounded to what they had been before the show. In fact, the more weight the contestants lost, the worse their metabolism became. The lesson learned from The Biggest Loser is that drastic weight loss in a short amount of time comes with a price. Whether you're trying to lose 10 pounds or 50, slow and steady is far more effective.

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The Actress Who Made $450,000 From the Film "Tootsie" But Never Appeared In It

Most actors would say that their job consists largely of learning to walk around in another person's shoes. In the 1982 film Tootsie, however, Dustin Hoffman did that quite literally, learning to walk in heels and gaining a new appreciation for what it meant to be a woman. He scored one of his biggest hits playing an unemployable actor who achieves stardom when he becomes a leading lady on a daytime soap. The film was an almost instant classic and remains one of the top-grossing comedies of all time. What many people don’t know is that actress Elaine May didn’t appear in the film, but helped make it a success. She was paid $450,000 for three weeks work revising the screenplay, adding a woman’s perspective to the story. She could have earned a screenwriting credit, but she declined it. Her philosophy was “come in, do the work, take the money, and leave no tracks.”

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