American Madness

Eric Blair lived an interesting life. It should come as a surprise to no one that this life was noted, recorded and dissected into the daily pages of a journal. Now into the blogosphere come daily notations made by the man who would take the nom de plume George Orwell published 70 years to the day after they were first penned. From the Orwell Diaries:

From 9th August 2008, you will be able to gather your own impression of Orwell’s face from reading his most strongly individual piece of writing: his diaries.

This entry got me all hot and bothered about the daily life and philosophy of Blair. This was the man who believed the destruction of language is an essential part of oppression, laid bear in the creation of Newspeak for 1984. And I had reason to be excited; when the Orwell Project first posted, they teased us with one of Orwell’s most famous quotes from 1984: “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.” Oh man, this is going to be good. (more…)

Following up on both Joel’s post about oil and Eric’s post about Flocke I’ve got two things for you. Admittedly these items are only tangentially related to Joel & Eric’s posts, but as far as I am concerned they are close enough.

First up we’ve got images of Darvaza (The Burning Gates), Darvaza is a village in Turkmenistan where, in 1971 a drilling rig found an underground cavern and then promptly fell inside creating a crater about 75 meters across.

As the underground cavern was filled with natural gas (relatively close to oil, right?) it would have killed virtually everything around had someone not had the idea to ignite the gas and let it burn off instead of polluting the surrounding area.

37 years later and the Gates of Hell (another name for the site) are still ablaze. John H. Bradley has posted some incredible pictures of the Gates.

Next we’ve got the animals: The BBC has made a three-part series called “Tiger- Spy in the Jungle.”

Using a whole bunch fo different types of cameras (and some elephants in place of traditional cameramen) they caught some incredible (and adorable) images of life in the jungle, well, at least life in the jungle when the animals are posing for pictures. You can check out some of the pictures that the Daily Mail posted here, or some others that the BBC posted here (plus some videos).

Part one apparently aired yesterday (int he UK) so keep an eye on the Discovery Channel in the next few months to re-air the program.

Yes, we’re referencing songs from the Simpsons here, but it is really quite fitting.

A couple in Newcastle, England made BBC news the other night due to their unique way of keeping their deceased pets as part of the family. Some folks bury their pets in the yard, others keep their ashes after a cremation, there are even those who hit the taxidermist so that little fluffy will forever have a place in the home, curled up by the fire.

The Willis decided to turn their deceased dogs into outwear. Apparently inspired by a dog fur stole that Princess Diana once wore, they have collected hairs from their deceased loved one had them spun into usable fabric and Mrs. Willis has made sweaters for her and her husband out of at least two of their dogs. Kind of sweet. Kind of creepy, I don’t think this is going to be a huge fashion trend anytime soon (though, in fairness, human hair was used in a dress for Project Runway this past season… Which brings us to the big question: Would you rather be clothed in human hair or dog fur?).

Let the outing begin. We know who Client 9 is, and thanks to the Daily News we can now put a (hideous) face on Client 6 (editor’s note, original post had him labeled as Client 5, this was found to be incorrect). Ladies and gentlemen, I present for your viewing pleasure, The Duke of Westminster:

From the New York Daily News, we learn the world’s 46th richest person was not just a member of Emperors Club, he was also a client, having paid for the services of four hookers in 2006 and early 2007.

Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor apparently was tight fisted, as he had to haggle with the girls, this according to Lithuanian prostitute Zana Brazdek.

And it would appear Sir Beefcake liked to request “dangerous” services (i.e. - forgoing the glove).

Which leads me to mention this story I found in the San Jose Mercury News:

Study: 26 percent of female teens have a sexually transmitted disease

The Belfast Telegraph has a list online of 101 Gadgets that, they claim, changed the world. When you have long lists it is always debatable how to organize them, Belfast Telegraph chose to go alphabetically as opposed to, say, date order.

It is an interesting overview and has a really broad, all encompassing feel to it. Of course, how they define “changed the world” is one thing and as a list, it will of course have people going “I can’t believe they thought ________ (fill in included gadget) had a great influence on the world then _______ (fill in gadget that is missing from the list).” Also, their definition of a gadget is questionable. I tend to go with “A small mechanical device or tool” and I guess if pushed I wouldn’t need to include mechanical into the definition. But is ‘Fire’ really a gadget? And did the digital watch really have the same type of world changing impact as the cardiac pacemaker?

And really, I’ve got to ask, how do you include a CD on the list, a walkman, an iPod, but no cassettes?

Have you ever been playing a video game and thought “Gee, I bet I could be a British Spy?” Well then, most likely you were playing a James Bond game. Apparently, though the surveillance arm of British intelligence thinks there are a bunch of gamers out there who would make good spies.

USA Today reports that the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) will be placing in-game ads in to certain games to attract candidates to fill their positions. The ads will be placed online in games like Need for Speed, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and Splinter Cell (Splinter Cell being the only spying game of the bunch) on billboards within the game atmosphere.

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It’s been a good long while since we have had really ridiculous product to mock discuss here.

Today though is just a jackpot of a day where we have come across not one, but two totally different products worthy of being called out for this distinction.

First up we have Phone Fingers. “What’s a Phone Finger?” you ask (and I’m glad you did). A Phone Finger is, essentially, a condom for your finger. Made of very thin durable latex, you just roll it up your index finger and you’re protected.

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In the last two weeks Radiohead has been making a ton of news with the release of their new album In Rainbows. There has been a ton of hype surrounding it, as one of the most popular bands around decided to release their newest album directly over the internet and allowed customers to pay what they wanted for it. You may have read about it in one of my previous posts (1, 2).

Anyway, on Wednesday the album was released, folks could go online to the Radiohead website and download the album for what ever price they chose (including $0.00) or they could purchase a $80.00 box set that would ship in December with some special stuff included, making this the first album released by a super-major band without the help of a major label.

Well, apparently that was all a load of hooey. According to the Financial Times: “Radiohead’s much-debated decision to let fans choose what they pay for its new album online is a promotional tactic to boost sales of compact discs, the band’s management said yesterday.” Yes, they released a version of the album online to promote sales of the actual album. There are actually a number of things in this article that annoyed me to some extent or just plain pissed me off. Let’s look at a few of them, shall we:

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Yes I Wrote about a week ago that the Radiohead album was coming out today and that it would only be available on their website and that it was a pay what you want deal (that would be here).

Well it comes as no surprise to anyone that it came out today and their site was so flooded with people trying to download it. After 6 hours of trying I was finally able to get through (there was a bit of a disconnect between items actually getting into my “basket” so I couldn’t “pay”).

When I did get through though it was easy as pie. Put the disc in my basket, clicked on checkout, created an account and paid $0.00. The website then gave me a link to download a zip file (I am on a T1 connection, the 48.8 zip file took less then 1 minute to download) which I opened, copied into iTunes and now have the pleasure of listening too.

While it doesn’t surprise me too much that the site was excessively slow today, it does surprise me that there wasn’t more planning ahead for such network slow down. Billed time and time again as the most popular band in the word you would think Radiohead would have significantly beefed up its servers for this release. I’d have no complaints if this were the direction music releases were to go in.

Travelex took a bold step into the future the other day and announced that they have developed currency for use in space. An interesting step, since we currently don’t have any commercial space flights, but with companies like Virgin working on developing commercial space flights (and I believe already selling tickets for them) and a Spaceport being built in New Mexico, this currency could meet a demand that hasn’t yet sprung into being.

The Quasi Universal Intergalactic Denomination (QUID) was developed to answer the problems of using our current currency in space According to Professor George Fraser from the University of Leicester:

“None of the existing payment systems we use on earth – like cash, credit or debit cards – could be used in space for a variety of different reasons. Anything with sharp edges, like coins, would be a risk to astronauts while the chips and magnetic strips used in our cards on Earth would be damaged beyond repair by cosmic radiation. What’s more, because of the distances involved, it is more than 230,000 miles from the Earth to the moon, chip and pin technology is also out of the question.”

So to solve this we have an all new currency. 1 QUID will be equal to £6.25 or $12.5. Travelex predicts that by 2050 there will be tourist trips to the moon and has already requested to open the first currency exchange location there. I guess which such advanced planning they will be the number one space travel currency converter.