The Princeton Record Exchange, with its varied clientele, stacks of vinyl, and employees full of music trivia, gets a write-up in the N.Y. Times. They sell turntables now too.

The BBC’s Top Gear is one of most pirated television shows in the world. I watch segments of it on YouTube very often, most recently their arduous trip to the North Pole racing a Toyota Hilux (Tacoma) against sled dogs. It has been long rumored that NBC was attempting a U.S. version which fans lambasted as that special Top Gear mystique would never translate to the American mass media. The S.F. Chronicle’s Tim Goodman wraps his own negative reaction to a possible remake around a review of the BBC version. The BBC version gets the man leaping out of the chair clapping. An American remake, that doesn’t even exist yet, is called “a tragedy” (I guess that would be the empty chair).

Food writer Amanda Hesser straightened out New York Magazine‘s Grub Street bloggers who had earlier assumed she was forced to take a buyout from The New York Times. Instead, she writes, she approached the Times herself for the buyout. The company that she is launching with two partners, Seawinkle, will help people “deal with the overwhelming amount of digital information they create.” Hesser will continue to write the Recipe Redux column for the Times Magazine and has two more cookbooks on the way.

The Olympic torch relay in London was unceremoniously greeted with demonstrations and protestors who tried to snuff it out with a fire extinguisher, grab it away from a runner, and threw themselves in front of its path. At one point, the torch had to be put on a bus to get away from a surrounding crowd of demonstrators. French police officers are mobilizing for the next leg of the journey, and San Francisco has canceled any police days off on Wednesday for the torch run there.

A diver who retrieves golf balls for a living made his job a little easier by stocking golf course ponds with Asian grass carp who ate away ball-obscuring vegetation. Unfortunately, it’s illegal to bring the fish into Texas where he released them, although he acquired them legally in Arkansas. He plans to plead guilty today and face a fine and probation.

Curved plywood plus FLOR carpet tiles equals a $285 cat scratcher. “all cat’s [sic] are different and some may prefer looped pile versus cut pile carpet. If you don’t know what your cat may enjoy the most, play it safe and stick with a looped pile.” I think we’ll stick to our cheap “double-wide” for now. (via the hungry tiger)

For $2,400 master chocolatier Bill McCarrick will create you your very own customized chocolates. After learning your preferences and fine-tuning through tastings, you will be presented with a rosewood-and-maple inlaid box of 60 chocolates, made just for you. A back-up box of another 60 is also included. Your bespoke “chocolate profile” will be kept on file and one-of-a-kind.

Spring fever may have a basis in scientific fact. A drop-off in melatonin from the longer days of light and a rise in the happy hormone seratonin create the giddy, restless symptoms of spring fever. But historically, spring fever may actually have been reference to scurvy, which occured after a winter without fresh fruits and veggies.

A new possible reason for the flu’s higher transmission rate in winter months is that the influenza virus has a lipid coat that gets harder when it is colder. Like a protective shell, the more solid coat allows the virus to survive longer when the temperatures dip. Once it has successfully reached a new host, body temperature warms up the coat and the virus does its thing. (via Robot Wisdom aux)

Pinchas Zuckerman played the “world’s most expensive violin” on March 21st in Moscow. Maxim Viktorov paid $3.9 million for the Guarneri del Gesu last month and he lent it to Zuckerman for a private concert at the Great Kremlin Palace and a performance at the Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory. Zuckerman, when asked to compare the violin to his own Guarneri, said that would be like comparing two Rolls Royces, “your Rolls might be a Silver Shadow or a Corniche, but they’re both wonderful cars.”