hippoblog

The point of study (part 2)

Again, some pointless and insidious "research":

"Chopsticks may cause arthritis."

There's no mention of any non-chopstick-using control group. That is, it could just be that right-handed people develop arthritis in their right hands before their left. But noooo, it had to be the backwards Chinee.

* Ray, 10/25/2003 07:13:09 PM

But what happens when it gets cold?

The Treasure Island in Las Vegas is changing its outdoor pirate show. Now pirates battle semi-nude sirens nightly.

* Ray, 10/25/2003 06:48:32 PM

$2,000,000 SPAM

California wins anti-spam case:

California has won a landmark judgement with its first anti-spam ruling after a court fined a marketing firm $2m for sending out millions of unsolicited e-mails telling people how to spam.
...
The judgement, which Mr Lockyer said will be the model for future spam injunctions, forbids PW Marketing from sending unsolicited commercial e-mails, accessing computers that belong to other people without their permission and disguising its identity by sending messages that appear to originate from a different address.

The injunction also forbids Willis and Griffin from owning or managing any business that advertises over the internet for 10 years.

* Ray, 10/25/2003 03:40:30 PM

Virginia

Bomb alert over 'break-wind' dog

Dave Rogerson's life-size mechanical terrier set off a security detector at Norfolk Airport in Virginia.

Armed security staff were alerted when the toy's wind-breaking mechanism registered as a high explosive on sensitive monitoring equipment.

Mr Rogerson, 31, from Thorner, Leeds, was questioned by FBI agents and looked on in amazement as they took a series of swabs from the mechanical toy's rear end.

The toy animal was eventually returned to him, but he was not allowed to take his planned flight and had to take an alternative route to North Carolina.

Mr Rogerson said: "There's no humour at American check-ins and for about 20 minutes I was quite scared.

"They told me it is the highest reading they had for explosives and they took it very seriously."

I'm convinced Virginia's worse than Texas. I mean, really, name one good thing about Virginia besides the weather. I read the other day that in the sniper trial (1) they've loaded the jury with military and ex-military people, and (2) they're allowing the death penalty if he's found guilty of helping the shooter, not pulling the trigger himself. Scary place, Virginia.

* Ray, 10/25/2003 03:36:47 PM

Googlebooks?

Wired News: The Great Library of Amazonia: "Over the past spring and summer, the company created an unrivaled digital archive of more than 120,000 books. The goal is to quickly add most of Amazon's multimillion-title catalog. The entire collection, which went live Oct. 23, is searchable, and every page is viewable."

* Ray, 10/24/2003 01:56:19 PM

Nothing good on TV anymore

'This is How You Screw' show is off TV:

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - Dutch teens will have to learn about sex the old fashioned way.

The popular sex ed TV show 'This Is How You Screw' is off the air. Explicit programming is disappearing from Dutch TV.

The sexually oriented shows scared away advertisers and the broadcasters couldn't compete with the anything-goes Internet.

But 'This Is How You Screw' went out with a bang. The last show featured a segment on how to do it in a nightclub.

The feature was narrated by a so-called sex worker, who demonstrated the moves with life-size mannequins, that had all the right body parts.

* Ray, 10/24/2003 01:52:42 PM

Slum Curtain

"That's no slum, it's a palace":

A giant banner emblazoned with the image of Bangkok's stunning Grand Palace temple compound has been strung up in front of a sprawling riverside slum to hide the 'eyesore' during this week's Apec summit.

At 360m in length and 10m high, the banner, which was installed on Thursday as the group's foreign affairs and trade ministers jetted into town, is reportedly the largest in the world.

* Ray, 10/24/2003 01:50:40 PM

Art of the Saber

Star Wars Kid Deluxe

* Ray, 10/24/2003 01:43:53 PM

Secondhand, Thirdhand

IOL : 'Salvation Army' becomes a designer label:

"The Dutch branch of the Salvation Army has started its own fashion line made from second-hand clothes to help spread its message that people should take care of each other.

The brightly coloured trousers, coats, skirts, gloves and even a wedding dress were manufactured by a professional stylist by combining at least two garments that were handed in at the charity's clothing dumps."

* Ray, 10/24/2003 01:42:38 PM

Orgasmatron Now Available

Stimulation Systems' Slightest Touch:

...a $200 battery-powered device that electrically stimulates sexual nerve pathways in a woman's pelvis... Applied 10 to 20 minutes before sex, the company says the device's gentle, pulsating current brings its wearer to a state of sexual readiness, where the "slightest touch" can trigger an orgasm.
...
"But skeptics abound. Stephen Barrett, a retired psychiatrist from Allentown, Pennsylvania, who runs Quackwatch, said it was highly unlikely that electrical current to the ankles would stimulate the pelvis.
'I can't imagine how that would have anything to do with stimulating the pudendal nerve,' he said. 'That's nuts. That's bullshit. You're not going to stimulate anything in the pelvis by stimulating the ankle.'"

* Ray, 10/24/2003 01:39:23 PM

Peaches & Chestnut

Josh and I saw Cyrus Chestnut last night at Scullers. He's great. A little schizophrenic, though. (Cyrus, not Josh. Well, actually...) It's fun to hear classical music transforming into blues, but after a while it becomes a 7-minute pun. His straight-ahead jazz is spectacular, though.

Ah, it's so easy be a critic. Here he is, one of the best jazz pianists around, and I just pick him apart.

What I really feel entitled to criticize, however, is Scullers. Sterile, especially now that there's no indoor smoking. And everyone was applauding as if it were a classical performance, waiting for his fingers to leave the keys before putting hands together. Creepy. Wynton Marsalis' jazz renaissance has become as lively as a historic re-creation, like Colonial Williamsburg.

It made me want to go back to Wally's (if it's still anything like it was). It also made me think of the Peaches concert. How is it that I enjoy both Peaches and Cyrus Chestnut. Do you suppose they listen to each other's music? What would a Peaches & Chestnut concert be like?

* Ray, 10/24/2003 09:55:05 AM

Big Empty

Images from inside the Doubletree on Storrow Drive. I didn't expect it to be so hollow.

* Ray, 10/24/2003 09:31:40 AM

Chocolate Fountue

The KSWA dorm at Brandeis had its opening the other day, and they had this chocolate fondue fountain. It's like a pottery wheel of chocolate, regurgitating molten chocolate out the top. And it spins. I thought the Brandeis students were remarkably well behaved in the presence of such a device of mayhem.

* Ray, 10/24/2003 09:28:22 AM

The Kahn Filmfest

My Architect coming soon: the story of Louis Kahn as told by his bastard son.

* Ray, 10/23/2003 01:40:58 PM

Danny vs. David

Libeskind Storms Out in WTC Battle (melodramatic New York Post version)

Visions for Tower Clash at Trade Center Site (quietly giggling New York Times version)

* Ray, 10/23/2003 01:30:39 PM

A Rainbow of Hallucinating Flavors

'Skittling' New Drug Of Choice For Some Teens

What happened to good ol' fashioned spinning around in circles until you fell over?

* Ray, 10/23/2003 01:20:22 PM

Hooray for London

Parade for Bush on Mall canceled due to fears of antiwar protests.

* Ray, 10/22/2003 04:09:09 PM

Nanovelcro

Nano-velcro binds faster than strongest glues: Super-strong adhesive planned with hooked carbon strands. Interesting tidbit: "The energy stored as the hooks bend while separating heats them to around 1,000C when they spring back into place."

* Ray, 10/22/2003 01:29:41 PM

No News Is Good News

They're just evil.

Since the end of the Vietnam War, presidents have worried that their military actions would lose support once the public glimpsed the remains of U.S. soldiers arriving at air bases in flag-draped caskets.

To this problem, the Bush administration has found a simple solution: It has ended the public dissemination of such images by banning news coverage and photography of dead soldiers' homecomings on all military bases.

* Ray, 10/22/2003 01:25:19 PM

Bush and Goering

Considering Senator Byrd's comments.

* Ray, 10/22/2003 01:20:46 PM

Washington Post Pulls Boondocks

The Post decides that making fun of Condoleeza ain't cool: "Maybe if there was a man in the world who Condoleeza truly loved, she wouldn't be so hell-bent to destroy it." A whole week goes unprinted.

* Ray, 10/22/2003 12:54:24 PM

Urban TV

Wired has a piece on Tholos, "a giant video-conferencing system that will be deployed in public spaces in London and Vienna next year, allowing people in the two cities to meet and talk eye-to-eye." Official site here.

* Ray, 10/22/2003 12:49:56 PM

Talking Smack

Street Terms: Drugs and the Drug Trade - ONDCP

* Ray, 10/21/2003 01:21:19 PM

PR

Here's a fun little tidbit:

Expect lots of media hype soon over the first Jessica Lynch-related book by Iraqi Mohammed Odeh al-Rehaief. According to some reports he told U.S. Marines the location of the captured Private Lynch. He and his family were then granted U.S. asylum. Along with the chance for U.S. citizenship, al-Rehaief received $300,000 from Rupert Murdoch's Harper Collins for his new book about the Lynch rescue. He also was given a job at the Livingston Group, a high-powered D.C. lobby firm. His book 'Because Each Life Is Precious: Why an Iraqi Man Came to Risk Everything for Pvt. Jessica Lynch' is being promoted by his Livingston Group colleague Lauri Fitz-Pegado. She is infamous for her work at Hill & Knowlton PR in 1990 coaching the Kuwaiti girl called 'Nayirah' in her shocking but phony testimony on Congressional hill that she'd seen Iraqi soldiers murdering Kuwaiti babies. That stunt helped propel the U.S. to war against Iraq in 1991. Fitz-Pegado's client was the ruling family of Kuwait and the baby-killing claims were later shown to be false. The new book is well timed since it will precede by a few weeks Jessica Lynch's own book, half-a-million copies of which will hit bookstores on Veterans Day, November 11th.

* Ray, 10/21/2003 01:10:14 PM

NHNY

New Housing in New York ideas competition, big, BIG purse.

* Ray, 10/21/2003 09:20:51 AM

Finally, some real yuks from Metropolis

Philip Nobel volunteers his 10 minutes of design-speak for the opening of the NY AIA space.

No, this drop is too small, and the bucket is too big. Please, please, don't panic. The truth is an unsettling place. But I'd be shirking if I didn't just state plainly that the situation is dire. The stakes are high. The outcome is in doubt. It may be saying too much to say that the future of architecture hangs in the balance and the continuum of human culture flirts with the abyss. But it has been said before. And when you take in the scope of what is happening around us, when you face down that onrushing void, it is terrible. Terrible in that old sense, the one that remembers terror. So it comes to this: How will we fill that bucket? How will we fill that bucket?

* Ray, 10/21/2003 09:17:53 AM

Boykin, apparently quoting the Blues Brothers

Some words from the pulpit, by Lt. General William Boykin, deputy undersecretary of Defence for intelligence.

In June of 2002, Jerry Boykin stepped to the pulpit at the First Baptist Church of Broken Arrow, Okla., and described a set of photographs he had taken of Mogadishu, Somalia, from an Army helicopter in 1993.

The photographs were taken shortly after the disastrous "Blackhawk Down" mission had resulted in the death of 18 Americans. When Boykin came home and had them developed, he said, he noticed a strange dark mark over the city. He had an imagery interpreter trained by the military look at the mark. "This is not a blemish on your photograph," the interpreter told him, "This is real."

"Ladies and gentleman, this is your enemy," Boykin said to the congregation as he flashed his pictures on a screen. "It is the principalities of darkness It is a demonic presence in that city that God revealed to me as the enemy."

That's an unusual message for a high-ranking U.S. military official to deliver. But Boykin does it frequently.

This June, for instance, at the pulpit of the Good Shepherd Community Church in Sandy, Ore., he displayed slides of Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and North Korea's Kim Jung Il. "Why do they hate us?" Boykin asked. "The answer to that is because we're a Christian nation We are hated because we are a nation of believers."

Our "spiritual enemy," Boykin continued, "will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus."
...
He has praised the leadership of President Bush, whom he extolled as "a man who prays in the Oval Office." "George Bush was not elected by a majority of the voters in the United States," Boykin told an Oregon congregation. "He was appointed by God."
...
"There was a man in Mogadishu named Osman Atto," whom Boykin described as a top lieutenant of Mohammed Farah Aidid.

When Boykin's Delta Force commandos went after Atto, they missed him by seconds, he said. "He went on CNN and he laughed at us, and he said, 'They'll never get me because Allah will protect me. Allah will protect me.'

"Well, you know what?" Boykin continued. "I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol." Atto later was captured.
...
In Iraq, he told the Oregon congregation, special operations forces were victorious precisely because of their faith in God. "Ladies and gentlemen I want to impress upon you that the battle that we're in is a spiritual battle," he said . "Satan wants to destroy this nation, he wants to destroy us as a nation, and he wants to destroy us as a Christian army."

* Ray, 10/20/2003 01:48:00 PM

Willow Architecture

Who knew you could make buildings out of trees?

There are not many architects who would place rampantly growing monsters in the form of outsized arbours among castles, palaces or cathedrals. Marcel Kalberer and his "Sanfte Strukturen" atelier are the exception. In the last few decades, the inventive Swiss architect has perfected a method of "living architecture", using willow rods. The result is that it is not only enthusiastic hobby architects who are planting little green willow huts or labyrinths for children's games in the garden. Even large constructions - without concrete, stone or glass, of course - have now been built. In a tone of proud conviction, their builders like to give them names such as "Willow Dome", "Willow Castle" or "Willow Cathedral".

* Ray, 10/20/2003 08:57:38 AM

Holiday Greetings

On the corner of Charles and Beacon.

* Ray, 10/20/2003 08:31:38 AM

Wine Wall

The wine rack/elevator shaft at the Lydia Shire's Excelsior.

* Ray, 10/20/2003 08:30:50 AM

Skittlebrau

Inspired by the Simpsons:

Homer: "I'm feelin' low, Apu. You got any of that beer that has candy floating in it, you know, Skittlebrau?"

Apu: "Such a product does not exist, sir! You must have dreamed it."

Homer: "Oh. Well then just gimme a six-pack and a couple of bags of Skittles."

...a taste test.

* Ray, 10/19/2003 12:52:35 PM

Free Maya

Alias releases Maya Personal Learning Edition: free for non-commercial use. Now that's smart business.

* Ray, 10/19/2003 12:16:38 PM

Don't fart for me Argentina

Buenos Aires exhibition of butts, "Carne de Identidad."

* Ray, 10/19/2003 12:14:14 PM

Asmara

New book coming out on the architecture of Asmara. NY Times article reprinted here.

A book on the city's architectural wonders, "Asmara: Africa's Secret Modernist City," to be published next month by Merrell, provides a building-by-building look at a place that Mussolini dreamed would be the start of his Italian empire in East Africa. "The Miami of Africa" is what some have called Asmara because of its Art Deco treasure, but other styles are represented as well - Rationalism, Novecento, neo-Classicism, neo-Baroque and monumentalism among them.

* Ray, 10/19/2003 12:01:48 PM

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