Belt + Sword =

This is one of those things that speaks for itself. Go to www.beltswords.com for more videos and to order your own.

[Load RazorSword into BeltSword System]


[Deploy your BeltSword carefully]


[or deploy the BeltSword like a ninja]

Highlights from the NIT (seriously)

Usually, I am bored with the whole Dunk-as-Highlight-Footage thing, but this on the other hand:

No. People NEED sunlight.

A lot of crazy stories come out of Japan. Cramming people into trains. Vending machines with used panties. Hordes of Crows. Hordes of bee to attack the hordes of crows. Suicide Clubs.
And now this. Is Tokyo really so expensive that people will do this to themselves? Or are the crows really that bad? From Boing Boing:

The BBC reports on a cyber cafe outside Tokyo that has a dark room divided into tiny cubicles where 60 people "who rarely emerge" live. These folks are called cyber drifters and "they have just enough money to stay off the streets." It costs $500 a month to live in one of these "coffin-size booths," which have no natural light or fresh air. "In Tokyo it doesn't get any cheaper than that, or more claustrophobic." The owner of the cyber cafe is making a tidy sum off the rent: 60 X $500 = $30,000

“The whole world lives together in New York. And we use a lot of poly bags.”

[photo by Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times]

There is apparently a century-plus-old dispute between Japan and South Korea regarding the Dokdo Islands. Chang-Duck Jeon, president of the Korean Dry Cleaners Association, has been trying to raise awareness of it by having dry-cleaning bags printed with this image and slogan, selling them mostly to dry cleaning businesses in New York City.

“It was a way to speak out,” Mr. Jeon reasoned. “What’s ours is ours.”

The islands, known as Takeshima in Japan, are not as big of an issue for the Japanese-American community in the city. From the New York Times:

“The conflict doesn’t really come up,” he said. A spokeswoman for the Japanese Embassy in Washington said she was having a hard time finding someone to comment on the dispute, and she referred a reporter to the Web site of the Japanese Foreign Ministry. There, “Japan’s Inalterable Position on the Status of Takeshima” is spelled out in 10 languages.

Stupefacient Interdiction

An interesting newsletter is out there, called Microgram Bulletin,

a monthly newsletter published by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's Office of Forensic Sciences, and is primarily intended to assist and serve forensic scientists concerned with the detection and analyses of suspected controlled substances for forensic/law enforcement purposes.

It basically gives an overview of how and what kinds of drugs are being smuggled. The image above is of cocaine smuggled in rum bottles, intercepted in Seville, Spain and analyzed by the 'Stupefacient Control Laboratory' there:

The Stupefacient Control Laboratory of the Health Department (Seville, southwestern Spain) recently received 12 bottles of Venezuelan Rum, each containing a yellow liquid suspected to contain dissolved cocaine (see Photo 1). The exhibits were seized by the Police/Anti-Narcotics Enforcement Department from a passenger arriving at the Seville airport on a flight from Venezuela. The bottles were labelled as containing 0.7 liter of liquid, but the actual volumes ranged between 623 and 687 milliliters. Analysis by color testing, GC/FID, and GC/MS confirmed cocaine base (range 17.6 to 27.7 percent, average 22.8 percent). The total amount of cocaine base in the 12 bottles was 1986.9 grams. This was the largest such submission to the laboratory.

[Thanks, Boing Boing]

On Glenn Beck: "I've got cookies..."

I've been meaning to put up something on how I think Glenn Beck is completely mad, but Jon Stewart basically beat me to it. I used to simply find him distasteful, but then recently (since moving over to Fox News) I have found his ramblings to be amusing, and his ability to almost instantly get out of his depth while having a discussion fairly impressive. His discussion here about pot legalization is pretty funny, partly because he acts so weird, but mostly because he eventually makes the case for legalization without really realizing it. And then he even manages to make Bill O'Reilly a little uncomfortable with his random assertions that 'political correctness' causes mass-killings:


All very amusing, but then I read this, which is more disturbing than amusing:

"I don’t believe Al Gore is trying to gas or round up Jews, I don’t believe the result is going to be the same thing. Just understand that the tactic used was a device used by the Nazis. For instance, we have him on tape during the convention or during the inauguration where he was talking to 12-, 13-, 14- and 15- year olds, and he said “Look there’s a lot of things you understand instinctively but your parents don’t understand those things because they’re just too trapped in old thinking.” Well, gosh, I mean, I know he’s not going to be rounding up Jews any time soon but that’s called the Hitler Youth where you turn the children against the parents."

Glenn Beck was in my dream last night, which is disturbing (well, I think I was watching him on TV and remarking to somebody- my father?- how popular and yet how crazy Glenn Beck is).

Presidential Madness

The tournament is here, and I wonder how many people are going to be copying President Obama's bracket:
A prudent bracket. Few upsets, and all major teams in the Final Four (UConn is clearly weak). He is obviously conflicted about his final choices however, and I think he should have followed his instincts on this one.

Chris Good provides too much analysis here.

When we mess with God's Holy Land, we pay The Price

I was just trying to add more sites to the list of sites off to the right, when I happened upon Chick Comics (thanks, Judd):
Naturally, I figured that God's opinion ("Somebody Angry?")would be pretty crucial to understanding the situation in the Middle East. Little did I realize that it would also be crucial to my understanding of Hurricane Katrina (as well as Hurricane Andrew, widespread flooding, 9/11, 88 "out-of-season tornadoes", and also other tornadoes, hurricanes, flood, and drought).
I always viewed Chick Comics as fervent-but-harmless, because they mostly just keep things personal, but blaming 9/11 on a middle east peace plan and Katrina on the U.S. "pressuring" Israel to evacuate Gaza, is going too far for a comic book.

Ahhh, this is more like it (and in Mongolian Cyrillic, no less):

Detroit: City of the Future, cont'd again and again

Another word on Detroit. I've been working on a film that involves lots and lots of archival film footage, and I came across this in my wanderings. It was made in the early 60's as a pitch to host the Summer Olympics in Detroit. One could argue about what a disaster it would have been to have the Olympics a year after the riots, but remember that Mexico City was no picnic, either.



I am curious as to whether the city officials and filmmakers were being hopeful or naive when making this film. Regardless, Jamison Handy's filmmaking skills in general are undeniable; its a bit lamentable that his efforet went almost entirely into producing industrial films. Handy on Handy:




And speaking of archives, where would we be without archive.org and Prelinger?

Detroit: City of the Future, cont'd again

Looks like the trend has been set. And Detroit is even cheaper than previously imagined, it turns out:

Ah, the mythical $100 home. We hear about these low-priced “opportunities” in down-on-their-luck cities like Detroit, Baltimore and Cleveland, but we never meet anyone who has taken the plunge. Understandable really, for if they were actually worth anything then they would cost real money, right? Who would do such a preposterous thing?.....
.... But the city offers a much greater attraction for artists than $100 houses. Detroit right now is just this vast, enormous canvas where anything imaginable can be accomplished. From Tyree Guyton’s Heidelberg Project (think of a neighborhood covered in shoes and stuffed animals and you’re close) to Matthew Barney’s “Ancient Evenings” project (think Egyptian gods reincarnated as Ford Mustangs and you’re kind of close), local and international artists are already leveraging Detroit’s complex textures and landscapes to their own surreal ends. In a way, a strange, new American dream can be found here, amid the crumbling, semi-majestic ruins of a half-century’s industrial decline. The good news is that, almost magically, dreamers are already showing up. Mitch and Gina have already been approached by some Germans who want to build a giant two-story-tall beehive. Mitch thinks he knows just the spot for it.

These are your pictures. You should be able to see them.

[Masks worn during experiments with Plague. Philippines, probably around 1912]

Mike Rhode, the head archivist at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C. is beginning to make a huge archive of military medical imagery available online (through flickr). The archive consists of over 500,000 images (that have thus far been scanned) of medical images from the Civil War to Vietnam. They are slowly but surely getting them online for the rest of us, on their own time [from Wired]:

The organization that runs the NMHM — the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, funded by the Department of Defense — hasn't signed off on Rhode's plan to bring medical history photos to the people.

"The Army does not appreciate people using Army resources for sites that they don't consider to be related to your job," Rhode said. Flickr, like many social media sites, is blocked by the Army.

Still, Rhode is continuing to push to get the photos, a precious resource, into the light of the internet.

"We have pictures from all types of military conflicts and all different types of medicine and issues in medicine," Rhode said. "We love the stuff that we're able to play with and want to bring it to everyone else in the world."

The Library of Congress also has vast archives (though again, only a fraction of their materials are online) and has started placing things on flickr as well. [Though you can find even more in the archives on their own site]

[Christy Mathewson, warming up before pitching in the World Series, 1911]

Make Them Famous, Please

So just a word on this AIG-bonus business:
What I really want to know is, why does every article only refer to "AIG executives" but not to any actual individuals with names? I mean, just through cultural osmosis we all know the names Kenneth Lay, Bernie Madoff, John Thain, etc. but does anyone have any idea who any of these executives are?
Let 'em keep their money for all I care, but at least make 'em famous.

Christopher Walken, is that really you?

I am sure that this will only end in disappointment, but I still like to imagine that its really him.

The Reckoning in the War on Terror

Unfortunately, none of this really comes as a surprise, but that makes it no less sickening and depressing. From the ICRC Report on the Treatment of Fourteen "High Value Detainees" in CIA Custody by the International Committee of the Red Cross:

After the beating I was then placed in the small box. They placed a cloth or cover over the box to cut out all light and restrict my air supply. As it was not high enough even to sit upright, I had to crouch down. It was very difficult because of my wounds. The stress on my legs held in this position meant my wounds both in the leg and stomach became very painful. I think this occurred about 3 months after my last operation. It was always cold in the room, but when the cover was placed over the box it made it hot and sweaty inside. The wound on my leg began to open and started to bleed. I don't know how long I remained in the small box, I think I may have slept or maybe fainted.

I was then dragged from the small box, unable to walk properly and put on what looked like a hospital bed, and strapped down very tightly with belts. A black cloth was then placed over my face and the interrogators used a mineral water bottle to pour water on the cloth so that I could not breathe. After a few minutes the cloth was removed and the bed was rotated into an upright position. The pressure of the straps on my wounds was very painful. I vomited. The bed was then again lowered to horizontal position and the same torture carried out again with the black cloth over my face and water poured on from a bottle. On this occasion my head was in a more backward, downwards position and the water was poured on for a longer time. I struggled against the straps, trying to breathe, but it was hopeless. I thought I was going to die. I lost control of my urine. Since then I still lose control of my urine when under stress.

I was then placed again in the tall box. While I was inside the box loud music was played again and somebody kept banging repeatedly on the box from the outside. I tried to sit down on the floor, but because of the small space the bucket with urine tipped over and spilt over me.... I was then taken out and again a towel was wrapped around my neck and I was smashed into the wall with the plywood covering and repeatedly slapped in the face by the same two interrogators as before.

I was then made to sit on the floor with a black hood over my head until the next session of torture began. The room was always kept very cold.

As always, thanks to Andrew Sullivan for helping to keep this issue out there. My fear is that this will all get buried and forgotten eventually, and that nobody will face the consequences of their actions. The greater danger, ultimately, I think, is that if none of this comes to light and stays in the light, the public at large will not be forced to reckon with these things that have been going on supposedly to protect us. People must be made to realize that these things happened, are probably still happening, and will happen again and we can't pretend otherwise anymore.

I just drink it for the taste

So you are probably saying to yourself, "hey, I drink a lot of coffee, but am I really getting all of the caffeine that I need?" Well, here's some information from The Atlantic's new Food Section that may be of use to you:

In a couple of studies testing 90 different Arabica cultivars, the caffeine content varied between 0.42 and 2.9%. My morning cup would then vary between 84 and 580 milligrams, depending on which of these varieties was in my cup.

If your morning cup came from a commercial roaster who included Robusta in the blend, we have another level of complexity. Caffeine content in these coffees, in one study, varied between 1.16 and 4.0%. A straight 12 oz. cup, using 20 grams of the 4% coffee, probably wouldn't taste very good, but would definitely provide more buzz: 800 milligrams of caffeine.

As with most things, the more one learns, the more complex a topic becomes and, in a sense, the less one knows. To attempt accurate generalization:

• Arabica averages about half the caffeine as Robusta.
• The cultivar determines the caffeine content.
• Degree of roast has no meaningful effect on caffeine.
• An espresso made from 100% Arabica, on average, has about 70 milligrams of caffeine per shot; a 12 oz. cup of drip coffee made my way in a press pot, using two scoops of coffee per 12-ounce cup -- would have 200 milligrams.

Beware of taking this information very far, because individual responses to caffeine differ widely. Caffeine is metabolized faster by men and slowest by pregnant women. Body weight and eating will affect caffeine absorption.