If I only had the time...

Steampunk Stilt Walker at Labyrinth of Jareth
Guestblogger Liz Ohanesian is a Los Angeles-based journalist who covers music, manga, art and more for LA Weekly.
Photo: Josh "CuriousJosh" Reiss/LA Weekly, Labyrinth of Jareth 2010
Labyrinth of Jareth is an annual two-day masquerade ball in Los Angeles. The theme revolves around faeries and goblins. Costumes, or formalwear and a mask, are required. I wrote about Shawn Strider, who organizes LOJ, for LA Weekly's LA People issue, and have blogged about the event on Style Council a few times (most recently, today).
LOJ has a massive cast and crew. All throughout the night, there is a DJ spinning on the dance floor, stage shows and interactive performances throughout the venue. There's a storyline that links everything together, but if you're going as an attendee you won't know exactly what's happening. If, however, you're following LOJ on Twitter throughout the event, you might get some clues.
This year I went to LOJ on the first night of the masquerade, called Goblin Clockworks, with photographer CuriousJosh.There were a lot of people who stood out at the party, but the stilt walker in the above photo—dressed in what looks like a steampunk giant robot costume—

If you have ever been to Buffalo. You would understand.

Weird
Gary Korkuc Found Marinating Live Cat In Oil, Peppers: Cops
Email Comments 64 BUFFALO, N.Y. — Police say a traffic stop led to animal cruelty charges after they found a live cat "marinating" in oil and peppers in the trunk of a car.

Buffalo police say officers heard the cat meowing when they stopped 51-year-old Gary Korkuc of Cheektowaga to ticket him for running a stop sign Sunday night.

They say they checked the trunk and found 4-year-old Navarro in a cage, his fur covered with oil, crushed red peppers and chili peppers.

Police say Korkuc told them he did it because Navarro was ill-tempered. Korkuc was charged with cruelty and released; his phone number isn't listed.

ha ha hahahahaha

GQ: Woman claims to have been kidnapped by Rand Paul, forced to take bong hits


GQ quotes an anonymous woman who claims to have been kidnapped and forced to take bong hits during her college years by Tea Party spokesdouche and segregation apologist Rand Paul (famously humiliated a few months back by Rachel Maddow):

He and Randy came to my house, they knocked on my door, and then they blindfolded me, tied me up, and put me in their car. They took me to their apartment and tried to force me to take bong hits. They'd been smoking pot." After the woman refused to smoke with them, Paul and his friend put her back in their car and drove to the countryside outside of Waco, where they stopped near a creek. "They told me their god was 'Aqua Buddha' and that I needed to bow down and worship him," the woman recalls. "They blindfolded me and made me bow down to 'Aqua Buddha' in the creek. I had to say, 'I worship you Aqua Buddha, I worship you.' At Baylor, there were people actively going around trying to save you and we had to go to chapel, so worshiping idols was a big no-no

A different time.

yikes.....

The Apocalypse is Near: Justin Bieber's 3D Biopic Announced

I as a rule don't speak through the blog. I don't traffic in clever musings or inspired insight.
But, there is going to be a biopic published that will sell easily five hundred thousand copies about a young man whose claim to fame is a swept forward hairdo.
 When Herman Melville who wrote longhand arguably the first great American novel died. They had him listed in his obiturary as "Henry".He suffered a mental breakdown, caught pneumonia, and died broke in 1832.
I'm just saying.

i don't like this.

Telenoid R1 minimalist humanoid robot

Researchers from Osaka University have teamed up with the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute (ATR) to develop a minimalist humanoid robot that recreates the physical presence of a remote user.
Named “Telenoid R1,” the teleoperated communication robot measures 80 centimeters (31 in) tall and weighs 5 kilograms (11 lbs). The portable machine features a soft silicone body that is pleasant to the touch, and it uses 9 actuators to move its eyes, mouth, head and rudimentary limbs.
Data is transmitted between the user and robot via Internet connection
The Telenoid R1 robot is designed to add an element of realism to long-distance communication by recreating the physical presence of the remote user. The robot’s actions mirror those of the remote user, whose movements are monitored by real-time face tracking software on the user’s computer. Users can also transmit their voice through the robot’s embedded speakers.

Telenoid R1 with Dr. Hiroshi Ishiguro (Osaka University)
The Telenoid R1 is endowed with only the most basic human features — just enough to recreate the physical presence of the remote user, according to robot’s creators. The robot’s androgynous and ageless look makes it suitable for a wide range of users, whether they are male, female, young or old.

I find this strangley attractive.

Food company Morinaga has a new product on the market: a canned milkshake drink that tastes like their famous pancakes! Yum.

Just because I want to post it...

I'll let you know...

DIY Kitty Crack: ultra-potent catnip extract

Mark Frauenfelder at 4:20 PM Thu

In this Instructable, talbotron22 shows how to make "Kitty Crack," an ultra-potent catnip extract containing nepetalactone, catnip's active ingredient. One pound of catnip yielded 143mg of nepetalactone.
A note about safety. Yes, it is safe to use this extract on cats. I have looked into it, and there are a number of studies (very interesting in their own right) using pure nepetalactone on cats in experiments trying to figure out why it causes them to go bonkers. The upshot is that it's pretty safe. In the last of the references below, the LD50 of nepetalactone was determined to be 1550 mg/kg (about the same as aspirin), meaning you would have to force feed your average 5 kg cat ~8 grams in order to cause it any harm. So as long as you are reasonable

Rule Britannia

Transvestite had sex with dog in English castle moat
From Britain's Daily Telegraph:

The cross-dressing man was caught with the animal in the dry moat of King Henry VIII's Pendennis Castle overlooking Falmouth Bay in Cornwall. ... As the two ladies spotted the cross dresser he ran away. Later one of [their] dogs chased after the man; by the time the women had caught up, the man was having sex with the pet. Castle staff then restrained the man while police were called.

Some s**t you should know about the "Reagan miracle"

In fact, much the opposite. In 1982, Reagan agreed to restore a third of the previous year’s massive cut. It was the largest tax increase in U.S. history. In 1983, he raised the gasoline tax by five cents a gallon and instituted a payroll-tax hike that helped fund Medicare and Social Security. In 1984, he eliminated loopholes worth $50 billion over three years. And in 1986, he supported the progressive Tax Reform Act, which hit businesses with a record-breaking $420 billion in new fees. When it came to taxation, there were two Reagans: the pre-1982 version, who did more than any other president to lighten America’s tax burden, and his post-1982 doppelgänger, who was willing (if not always happy) to compensate for gaps in the government’s revenue stream by raising rates. Today, a truly Reaganesque leader would recognize (like Reagan) that the heavy lifting was finished long ago; last year, for instance, taxes fell to their lowest level as a percentage of personal income since 1950. And he would dial back the antitax dogma as a result.

 In doing so, a 21st-century Reagan would free himself up to finish a bit of business that his predecessor never got around to: reducing the federal deficit. In the 1980 campaign, Reagan pledged to do three things if elected: lower taxes, win the Cold War, and curb government spending. But in his haste to achieve the first two goals, he abandoned the third. On his watch, federal employment grew by more than 60,000 (in contrast, government payrolls shrank by 373,000 during Clinton’s presidency). The gap between the amount of money the federal government took in and the amount it spent nearly tripled. The national debt soared from $700 billion to $3 trillion. And the United States was transformed from the world’s largest international creditor to its largest debtor.

Hiyaaaaa!!!

Muggers chase victim into crowd of ass-kicking ninjas




Cory Doctorow at 7:18 AM Sat

Three street-muggers in Sydney, Aus chased a visiting med student down an alley and took his iPod and phone. Unfortunately for them, the alley they chased him down was next to the local ninja martial arts school, and a student ninja was lurking in the shadows. He got his teacher, and five ninjas stole out into the night and kicked ninjed the muggers' asses.
Kaylan Soto, a sensei with 30 years' Ninjutsu training, and three of his students raced out of the dojo towards the startled attackers. All five crusaders were clad in the ninja's traditional, all black uniform.
''We would have been just a silhouette,'' one of the ninjas, Steve Ashley, said. ''It was probably the worst place in Sydney where they could have taken him.''
Mr Soto said it took the three assailants a few moments to realise what was going on. When they did, they shot off. ''You should have seen their faces when they saw us in ninja gear coming towards them,'' he said.

Perfect for Congress

Robot eats sewage for energy... and craps too

David Pescovitz at 11:19 AM Fri
Researchers are developing a synthetic stomach for a robot so that it can eat food for power. Developed by the Bristol Robotics Lab, the Ecobot III is not the first robot that employs a microbial fuel cell that uses bacteria to "digest" food as a fuel source. But it is the first that has a system to crap out the waste. Apparently, its current diet is processed sewage containing "minerals, salts, yeast extracts and other nutrients." Eventually, they hope to feed it flies. From New Scientist:
"Diarrhoea-bot would be more appropriate," Melhuish admits. "It's not exactly knocking out rabbit pellets." Even so, he says, it marks the first demonstration of a biomass-powered robot that can operate unaided for some time.
The key to getting this gut to work, says Ieropoulos, is a recycling system that relies on a gravity-fed peristaltic pump which, like the human colon, applies waves of pressure to squeeze unwanted matter out of a tube.

can you dig it?

Skydiver to jump from edge of space

David Pescovitz at 10:25 AM Tue

In 1960, Colonel Joseph Kittinger jumped out of a helium balloon at 102,800 feet in the name of science, setting the world record for the highest and fastest parachute jump. Later this year, an Austrian daredevil named Felix Baumgartner hopes to beat that record by more than 3 miles, also by stepping out of a balloon. From Space.com:
"Right now, the space shuttle escape system is certified to 100,000 feet," said the mission's medical director Jonathan Clark, a former NASA flight surgeon. "Why is that? Because Joe Kittinger went there. You've got a lot of companies that are vying for the role of being the commercial space transport provider for tourism, for upper atmospheric science, and so on. These systems, particularly during the test and development phase, need a potential escape system, which we may be able to help them provide with the knowledge we gain."
A team of aeronautics experts recently led Baumgartner through a week of testing meant to illuminate any possible weaknesses in his equipment and to familiarize him with the skills needed to navigate the conditions expected to assail him as soon as he opens his vessel door.

Only a few feet above ground in a capsule dangling from a crane on Sage Cheshire Aerospace test grounds in California, Baumgartner practiced exiting and stepping off his hot-air balloon. Even a slight stumble during this step could cause dangerous alterations in his in-flight position only moments later, as well as reduce his chances of actually breaking the sound barrier

I'mmm baaack....

Spent a couple days in nyc walking a manuscript around. People treat you walkin around with a manuscript like you are walkin around with a dead cat. Curious at first. Get a little closer and the won't make eye contact. It's healthy, helps keep things in perspective.

Robot lifeguard. How neat it this!!!!

EMILY the Robot Lifeguard is a motor-powered flotation device that uses sonar to locate drowning persons. Human lifeguards control the device remotely from shore, but it could be independent as soon as 2011. Lifeguards can also communicate with the victim via EMILY's on-board camera and speakers. Although EMILY currently patrols only Malibu's Zuma Beach, famous for its excellent surfing conditions and occasional rip currents, 24 more beaches will soon employ the device, according

Sometimes I feel, I mean literally, not figuratively, that my head will explode.

According to new Internal Revenue Service data announced last week, income inequality in the U.S. is at its worst since the 1920s (before the Great Depression). The top percentile of wealthy Americans earned 21.2% of all income in 2005, up from 19% in 2004, while the bottom 50% of wage earners earned 12.8% that year, down from 13.4% a year earlier.


More interesting are what the views are from within investment banking circles on why the economy acts differently than it used to as wealth is concentrated in a level seen in the States similar to only the 1920s. Below is at least part of the report; a quite fascinating read - I've also attached at the bottom of this post an entry in the Wall Street Journal Blog section from January 2007 - which does a quick summary of the report's findings/opinion. I vaguely remember reading about this at the time, but now in retrospect - after what has happened in the financial system - it is interesting from a totally different prism.
[sidenote: 1 bit of humor - Citigroup listed "financial crisis" as one of the threats to the plutonomy status quo. Oh, irony.]

Now that it has become clear that unlike the 1930s where this historic concentration of wealth was reversed for a good 4 decades post crisis, that this time around a financial crisis is actually serving to concentrate wealth even further, it might be helpful to readers to see how the entrenched money thinks on how to benefit from it. Basically the same way you'd invest in feudal Europe in the 1400s - avoid the peasants, stick with the lords. I don't see this changing anytime soon - as I said in 2007, in time you will not want to have anything to do with the bottom 80% of the country; it won't be a fun place to be. [Dec 8, 2007: Do the Bottom 80% of Americans Stand a Chance?] I think in the nearly 2 years since written, the fissures I spoke about have already begun to widen considerably.

I smell fix...

Hot dog eating ex-champ Kobayashi arrested in Coney Island


Some unexpected news from Takeru Kobayashi, the ex-Nathan's hot dog eating contest champ, this 4th of July weekend: instead of partaking in the competition, Kobayashi showed up as a spectator but stormed the stage in rage after his nemesis Joey Chestnut took the championship again. He was charged with resisting arrest, trespassing, and obstructing governmental administration. He's won the contest six times in the past, but didn't take part this year because of some snafu with the contest organizers — apparently they wanted him to sign an exclusivity clause that would prevent him from doing other competitive eating contests without their permission, which sounds kind of shitty to me.

Just cool

NASA: Robonauts on Moon By 2013




Xeni Jardin at 12:15 PM Thu









This week, NASA announced plans to "land an operational humanoid robot on the moon in 1,000 days." The contractor of choice? Armadillo Aerospace, founded by gaming godfather John D. Carmack (Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein, etc.).