Wall Street Journal has an interesting article on luxury watch brand IWC's efforts to market and sell their time pieces which can cost between $3,000 to $300,000, during this current recession period.
[Via]
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This is some sad news: Due to the economy and an endowment cut by nearly a third, despite high attendance numbers, RISD's museum is closing for the month of August. Located just a few blocks from my alma mater Brown University, Rhode Island School of Design or RISD is considered among the best if not the highest ranked fine arts and design college in the country.
The clocks will align twice tomorrow for just once this century where the time and date will line up in sequential numeric order to show 12:34:56 (seconds), 07/08/09 aka 123456789.
News of Michael Jackson's death practically crashed the Internet. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone stated that MJ's death resulted in "the biggest jump in tweets per second since the U.S. presidential election." The number of Facebook status updates tripled. And AIM crashed for 40 minutes!
Andrew Sullivan skips past the hagiograpy and gives his nuanced thoughts on the pop legend's passing:
I loved his music. His young voice was almost a miracle, his poise in retrospect eery, his joy, tempered by pain, often unbearably uplifting. He made the greatest music video of all time; and he made some of the greatest records of all time. He was everything our culture worships; and yet he was obviously desperately unhappy, tortured, afraid and alone.I grieve for him; but I also grieve for the culture that created and destroyed him. That culture is ours' and it is a lethal and brutal one: with fame and celebrity as its core values, with money as its sole motive, it chewed this child up and spat him out.
Read rest here.
As I tweeted:
"It's okay everyone. MJ will be back...as a ZOMBIE doing the THRILLER DANCE!"
Update: Well that didn't take long.
Along with the unnecessary boat, note the completely geared up guys of Dallas Fire-Rescue with their really unnecessary life vests and helmets. As one commenter pointed out, this is similar to this other infamous incident of unnecessary water boating.
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A "quiet good-looking woman from the city of Tambov," Valeria K, 32, is on trial for sedating and raping ten local men. One of the men refused to press charges against her. He stated:
"It was great," the unnamed man said."I like hot women. I only wish she hadn't use the clonidine on me."
True.
[Via]
A Kindle, the popular e-reader, signed recently by David Sedaris at a reading. The New York Times explains:
A recent reading in Manhattan at the Strand bookstore by David Sedaris, whose most recent book is “When You Are Engulfed in Flames,” may have offered a glimpse of the future. A man named Marty who had waited in the book-signing line presented his Kindle, on the back of which Mr. Sedaris, in mock horror, wrote, “This bespells doom.”
Although if you read the article you'll learn that the Kindle might be the most normal thing David Sedaris has signed.
A simplified visualization explaining the structure of Iran's political system. Here's also a "Who's Who" FAQ from the BBC.
"The Bush Boom: How a Misunderestimated President Fixed a Broken Economy" is currently available on Amazon and has attracted over 100 customer reviews, such as this one from "Alice."
Finally! A book that proves the existence of an alternate universe. Obviously, a rip in the space/time continuum between this universe and the other universe where Bush is presiding over a 'boom economy opened up and this book fell through.
[Thanks Evan!]
This headline ran on the front page of the New York Times on June 12, 1939. More on this and the role of the hot dog in diplomacy here.
In "Correspondence: From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe," artist Suzanne Treister reproduced in pencil drawings of 324 letterheads "primarily fromGovernment and Presidential Offices, Ministries of Defence, NGOs and arms manufacturers across the world, both past and current." While browsing through the artist's series I was struck by the common denominator that unifies all the letterheads: their sheer banality. On a side note, I'm curious as to how the artist obtained copies of all these letters to reference for this project.
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Britain Supreme Court's recent decision to categorize Pringles as potato chips instead of "savory snacks" as argued by Pringles has cost its parent company Procter & Gamble U.K. $160 million in taxes.
In Britain, most foods are exempt from the value-added tax, but potato chips — known as crisps — and “similar products made from the potato, or from potato flour,” are taxable. Procter & Gamble, in what could be considered a plea for strict construction, argued that Pringles — which are about 40 percent potato flour, but also contain corn, rice and wheat — should not be considered potato chips or “similar products.”
To quote Lionel Richie, "Hello." Here are some AWESOME (said an *cough*anonymous critic) entries I've posted for the Sundance Channel at SUNfiltered. If you enjoyed any of them, please spam your friends and share the link with them! KTHNXBI.
- This week is the anniversary of a dude who scaled the World Trade Tower.
- The scariest Goofy movie ever.
- The longest handshake ever.
- Movie posters recreated with LEGO.
- If you like puns you'll love these posters.
- Round up of music videos that I thought were coolio. No actual Coolio videos were involved however.
- Neat street art in Barcelona.
- Desks of famous men.
- New York City MTA's new slogan?
- Photographs by blind photographers.
- T-shirts I like.
You can view a complete listing of all my SUNfiltered entries here.
While the gravity of North Korea's flexing of its nuclear muscle with its second nuclear test this past weekend shouldn't be minimized or ignored for obvious reasons, this comparison of nuclear tests among nations is still an interesting statistic and some food for thought.
UNITED STATES - 1,032 RUSSIA (SOVIET UNION) - 715 FRANCE - 210 CHINA - 45 BRITAIN - 45 INDIA - 3 PAKISTAN - 2 NORTH KOREA - 2
War! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.
Big news in comic book land: After bouncing between rivals Veronica and Betty for over half a century, Archie finally makes up his mind and proposes to Veronica, the rich bitch. In other news, other women don't wait around to be career wives and some even go on to do other stuff like become nominated to become a Supreme Court judge.
It is always unacceptable, but the big eyed blond thinks racism is high-lar-ious.
I like how if you didn't get that the targeted woman is Asian in this PSA, they reinforced it with the always reliable chop sticks and bowl of rice that us Asians always eat. Too bad if I could, I would eat rice every day. Damn you rice for being so delicious.
[Thanks Moye]
On just her second time ever playing, (which also happens to be my favorite casino game) Patricia Demauro broke the world record for the longest craps roll on Saturday night by rolling the dice for four hours and 18 minutes at the Borgata Hotel Casino!!! [Via]