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A video glimpse into a street gun kiosk in Mogadishu hawking M-16s, AKs, and RPGs any of which you can purchase for less than $200. As the two breathless journas in the report note the proliferation of small arms, not WMDs is what's responsible for the instability and killing in many countries around the world.
B-Boy battles between a Japanese and a Korean crew. At times it resembles rhythmic gymnastics or tumbling set to a beat rather than an actual dance, but they are still dope. Here's another one between a Korean group versus a Russian one (wow, talk about the global appropriation of localized culture...) at a big competition: Part 1 [youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=EyJMUxJcYnw]
Part 2 [youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=aIZBdrMc2T4]
I was clued into this world by Angry Asian Man who alerted his readers to an interesting Salon article written by Jeff Chang (author of Can't Stop, Won't Stop) who pretty much knows his shit when it comes to this topic. Chang explores why the Koreans are pretty much dominating the hip-hop dance and b-boy battle scene around the world.
B-boy Robin, Russia's assassin in a brown Yankees hat, oversize polo shirt and cargo slacks, circles the floor and then taunts the Koreans by pulling back his eyes. Some in the crowd gasp at Robin's slanted-eye dis. But his subsequent solo, featuring a Tony Hawk-style hand plant and surging rolls broken up with one-armed freezes, is flawless. In what b-boys call a "commando" attack -- a routine in which a run is begun by one or more b-boys but finished by another, named for the post-gang-era Bronx dancers who invented it as a tactic to prevent the other crew from immediately responding -- C4 dives through two Rivers members and leaps straight at Robin, pulling his own eyes back, then miming a castration of Robin. The crowd roars.
Read more here.
Here's a segment on Koreans from the recent documentary Planet B-Boys which looks at this dance and lifestyle as its impacted youths around the world on nearly every continent. I haven't seen this movie yet but I've heard great things about it.
[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=gNh6qpsuo58]
And this video titled "Run DMZ" featuring a dance off between North and South Korean guards at the DMZ zone is pretty much the best b-boy "music video" I've seen from concept to creation. It's spot on:
[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=zKoXG0RjC7E]
I can do exactly .1 percent of the moves shown in any of the aforementioned videos.
I thought this was the most hilarious thing I've seen all day, but that was before I was reminded of this article:
Approaching the Rachel Marie on its starboard side was a small motorboat, affixed to which was a replica of one of the saffron-colored gates created by Christo and Jeanne-Claude that dotted Central Park last winter. Captain Henry remembered "The Gates" and, putting two and two together, he worried that maybe the man in the motorboat was planning on boarding his little version of Central Park and planting a gate somewhere among the trees.
Ah, so funny. Read more and see picture here.
[Thanks Mun]
Roberta Smith reviews Olafur Eliasson's waterfall installation, officially titled "The New York City Waterfalls," (previously blogged here) for the New York Times Arts Review and gives it some TLC or tender, loving, care.
Smith states that despite its arguable status as "also one of the largest works of art, public or otherwise, of our modern era," "they are also actually relatively unobtrusive and brilliantly insidious." Indeed, on the first "official" opening, if you will, which was yesterday, I noticed that only a few people on my train noticed these artificial waterfalls. I had to point it out to my fellow strap hanger.
Sometimes Mr. Eliasson’s falls are almost miragelike, especially after dark, when unobtrusive lighting makes them shimmer white against the muffled cityscape. It is at night that you have the greatest chance of hearing them from a distance, otherwise the rush of water is drowned out by the city. But their quiet heightens their strangeness, day or night. It is as if they were in their own movie, a silent one. And in a way they are.
Even from the train's elevated point of view and distance, Eliasson's public art installation is amazing. I have yet to see it at night and am looking forward to doing so.
Perhaps the artist was inspired by this brilliant passage written by Bertrand Russell:
But in London or New York, where people are many and rabbits are few, some other means must be found to gratify primitive impulse. I think every big town should contain artificial water falls that people could descend in very fragile canoes, and they should contain bathing-pools full of mechanical sharks. Any person advocating a preventive war should be condemned to two hours a day with these ingenious monsters. More seriously, pains should be taken to provide constructive outlets for the love of excitement.
It appears that the leggy car-import models used to lure the male Neanderthal buyers have now moved from the convention centers to finance centers where instead of bikinis, "blonds in Theory trousers (the rule being figure-hugging is a go, Roberto Cavalli a no)" roam the marketing departments at various hedge funds.
Much like the army of attractive pharmaceutical reps who make pitches to doctors on behalf of drug companies, these perky twentysomethings have taken over the task of luring clients for their wonky portfolio manager bosses. “Guys who have a load of money [invested] in these big funds are often pigheaded, type A male personalities,” says one male marketer by way of explaining the estrogen predominance in his field. “They want a hot chick with a nice ass and nice boobs who is going to come in and sell the fund to them. I have a friend in the industry who is drop-dead gorgeous, and even she knows that’s the only reason she has her job.”
“You meet these bimbos and they say, ‘Oh, I work at a hedge fund,’ and you think, What?!?” says one head of an investment bank who pals around with high net worth investors. “And then you realize, Oh, this is, like, the PR girl. And it’s a wildly successful strategy. The influential rich people who put money into these things like to be titillated by pretty girls.”
Why is this a big surprise? You don't need an MBA or a degree in communications or PR to know the following formula:
- Hot chicks.
- Product.
- Male customers.
- "Business meeting."
- Profit!
Read more here.
[Thanks Ashleigh]
I'm pretty excited about seeing this movie. And now more so after finding out that there are subtle references and nods to Apple fanboys. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aja2JwdkfI0]
It's like the Space Needle except on steroids...and in Dubai. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzQazjw-4jI]
[Via]
The New York Times highlights the mixed allegiances among Europe's soccer fans:
All of Europe has been in the grip of what it calls football fever for the past two and a half weeks as the Continent’s best teams have squared off. The tournament has given audiences some displays of masterful soccer, but also more than a few intriguing subplots as the increasingly mobile populations around Europe and the world create an overlapping web of confused loyalties.
No matter which way I slice my cultural and ethnic roots--American, Korean, and heck, even Mexican--I have no native claim to the Euro Cup soccer tournament other than as a simple soccer fan.
Read more here.
RELATEDLY
This is a great montage of a guy using his urban environment as a soccer field with food stands and delivery trucks among others as the open net. It looks suspiciously like a viral for some company or something, but it's an entertaining video nonetheless:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdAOZg12tOE]
When it rains it pours, so the adage goes, and for Mike Myers he definitely did not evacuate the town after the hurricane warning. The hurricane known as his latest bomb the Love Guru is leaving behind a wake of destruction. And now a Canadian newspaper columnist, pointing out that he has been reduced to a one-trick pony of "that relies primarily on poop jokes, cultural stereotypes and Scottish accents," decides to disown Mr. Myers on behalf of his fellow countrymen and women.
1. Shrek (2001). Fans of this animated, Oscar-winning smash will go green with anger over its inclusion on this list, but we're firm on this. One of the first times we see the titular character, an ogre with a Scottish accent, he passes gas. Funny? My three-year-old doesn't even laugh. And that is this film's target audience, we presume.
Read more here.
An itch is an annoyance for most of us and is generally cured by some soothing lotion....or scratching, but for a small minority it can develop into an uncontrollable and unstoppable self-mutilating reflex as it did for "M."
For M...the itching was so torturous, and the area so numb, that her scratching began to go through the skin. At a later office visit, her doctor found a silver-dollar-size patch of scalp where skin had been replaced by scab. M. tried bandaging her head, wearing caps to bed. But her fingernails would always find a way to her flesh, especially while she slept.One morning, after she was awakened by her bedside alarm, she sat up and, she recalled, “this fluid came down my face, this greenish liquid.” She pressed a square of gauze to her head and went to see her doctor again. M. showed the doctor the fluid on the dressing. The doctor looked closely at the wound. She shined a light on it and in M.’s eyes. Then she walked out of the room and called an ambulance. Only in the Emergency Department at Massachusetts General Hospital, after the doctors started swarming, and one told her she needed surgery now, did M. learn what had happened. She had scratched through her skull during the night—and all the way into her brain.
This fascinating New Yorker (Memo to self: Subscribe ASAP) dives into this "most peculiar and diabolical sensation" that may have "evolved in order to protect us from insects and clinging plant toxins." While previously considered to be a sub category of pain, doctors now know that a specific type of nerve was responsible for an itch where"unlike, say, the nerve fibres for pain, each of which covers a millimetre-size territory, a single itch fibre can pick up an itchy sensation more than three inches away." But can science and medicine explain why just thinking about it can make us itch, unlike say other sensations? The answer may rest with...mirrors.
Contemplating what it’s like to hold your finger in a flame won’t make your finger hurt. But simply writing about a tick crawling up the nape of one’s neck is enough to start my neck itching. Then my scalp. And then this one little spot along my flank where I’m beginning to wonder whether I should check to see if there might be something there. In one study, a German professor of psychosomatics gave a lecture that included, in the first half, a series of what might be called itchy slides, showing fleas, lice, people scratching, and the like, and, in the second half, more benign slides, with pictures of soft down, baby skin, bathers. Video cameras recorded the audience. Sure enough, the frequency of scratching among people in the audience increased markedly during the first half and decreased during the second. Thoughts made them itch.
There is so much interesting information related to this topic and the patient "M" that it's not to just basically copy and paste the whole goddamn itchy article. I'm so fucking itchy now. Damn you New Yorker.
So, read more here.
[Via]
I couldn't go but my good friend Clay who I met freshman year of high school went to our reunion back in Anchorage, Alaska. He made a trip out of it and did lots of Alaskan-y things. He posted the first recap with lots of pictures that...will confirm every stereotype you've had of this state that I used to once call home. From the first batch of photos, it looks like one heck of a trip and makes me miss Alaska for a little bit. Here are a couple samples with more on his blog.
See and read more here.
Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler crocking the Crocs!
Throwaway joke: Dude does look like a lady.
[Thanks Ashley]
Coldstone Creamery was suppose to be the Next Great Franchise. Instead its iced up and "100 of its stores closed last year."
Even as they rave about the quality of the ice cream, numerous franchisees say the numbers in Cold Stone's business model didn't add up. The cost of running one of the shops was so steep that making a profit was daunting, especially in an economy where a $4 scoop was a pricey indulgence, they argue. They also contend the company cut their margins even further by offering two-for-one coupons and making them buy costly ingredients from a single supplier. Some argue that the company's rapid expansion crowded stores too close together -- and brought in too many inexperienced franchisees.
This is news to me, as I always seemed see locations being rather popular and full with customers. However, as one former franchise owner points out, "The stores seemed busy all the time. You assume that 'busy' equates to profitability."
Read more here.
Despite his recent (and predictable) criticism of Obama's decision to opt out of public financing, due to his fund-raising success with small individual donations, McCain had previously expressed his support for the sort of fund-raising upon which Obama's campaign rests.
I think it's wonderful that Howard Dean was able to use the Internet, $50, $75, $100 contributions. That's what we want it to be all about. We want average citizens to contribute small amounts of money, and that's a commitment to a campaign. So I'm for that. I think it's a great thing. I think the Internet is going to change American politics for the better.
Read more here.
In any playground fight I would definitely put all my money on this 6-year-old boxing prodigy. Like most child prodigies and child actors, it's kind of weird, especially the parents (Check out the second clip from an ESPN segment). [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_1KfvOYVi0]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBn_RbH9Lvk]
One would think that "with oil prices nudging $140 a barrel" the Saudis, the world's biggest producer, would be be playing like Scrooge McDuck and diving into their ever growing windfall of money.
On the contrary.
Applying lessons learned from the 1970s oil boom that pushed them into the world spotlight, the Saudi leaders are attempting to avoid the political and economic "perverse incentives" associated with the current oil shock, such as a global recession that would "trigger a sharp fall in demand for Saudi oil," and reduce the value of its own overseas investments, as well as the further ascension of Iran whom they view as "their main rival for regional influence." Which is why yesterday they lead an unusual meeting "of delegates from 36 countries -- including British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the heads of nearly 10 international oil companies and top officials from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries" in Jeddah to discuss the current volatile state of oil. The Saudis pledged to increase their output to address the supply concerns. Unfortunately this did not "nudge prices down" as they had hoped. I foresee more emergency meetings.