august 2001
:: You know, I haven't been teased about my name since I was in elementary school, but in the last week and a half, two Gen-Xers have given me grief about my new surname.
[ 08/08/01 ]

The wedding itself was as beautiful as I had hoped it would be, and the honeymoon was imminently relaxing. If you're planning a wedding and have friends and family with the time and willingness to help, do your wedding yourself. My brother did this first, then my sister, and I wouldn't have had a 'bought' wedding for anything after experiencing the love and beauty of theirs. Hotel food is reliably mediocre, hotel banquet rooms worse, and everything is notoriously overpriced. When you do it yourself (and you must have a dedicated family member to carry this off) everything not only perfectly suits your taste, it's an expression of love.

While email has reduced the amount of handwritten correspondence being exchanged, I did discover that, cut off from a computer during the honeymoon, I had the strong urge to write people letters, so I guess it also has engendered in me, at least, a love of written communication. I understand that my letters, when they arrived, were indecipherable by anyone, due to my 'unique' handwriting. Is that a funny story? I haven't decided.
[ 08/08/01 ]

When you are Turkish, weddings aren't always as predictable. Aynur Tayoglu took her vows with eight air rifle pellets lodged in her stomach after she was accidentally shot by a relative at a pre-wedding celebration.

She was taken to a hospital, but doctors agreed to postpone surgery to remove the pellets after her fianc้'s father refused to set another date for the wedding, saying people had traveled a long way for the festivities....

[ 08/08/01 ]

African American Sarah Boone patented an improvement to the ironing board on April 26, 1892.
[ 08/08/01 ]

About.com: inventing 101
[ 08/08/01 ]

From the Spring 1996 issue of Cigar aficianado, an interesting article on the resurgence of fine bookbinding.

One legendary trader in the futures market, now retired to Aspen, Colorado, employed Weitz to help him fulfill a fantasy. "He wanted to be 'The Man Who Conquered Europe,'" says Weitz. "I had to find titles, in English first editions usually, that would have been in the libraries of the great European satraps and plenipotentiaries like the Sforzas or the Borgias." Brass stamps of the crests of the noble families were specially cast. The books were bound as if from the shelves of the libraries of the nobility, then shipped as 'tribute' to this 'conqueror of Europe,' complete with handwritten letters acknowledging his supremacy.

[ 08/08/01 ]

I added numerous book making and bookbinding links to diversions.
[ 08/08/01 ]

:: Utilikilt! The catalogue is here. I would so like the workman in black.... (via theBrad, of course.)
[ 08/09/01 ]

san francisco center for the book
[ 08/09/01 ]

:: This is perhaps the finest spam ever sent or received:

From: Tan Long
Subject: Flying Shoes
Date: 2001-8-10

DEAR SIR / MADAM :

HOW DO YOU DO !

WE CAN SUPPLY HIGH QUALITY FLYING SHOES, SUCH FLYING SHOES LET YOU BOTH CAN WALK NORMALLY, AND CAN SLIDE AS FLYING. IT IS A SORT OF FASHIONABLE PRODUCT.

THE FOB PRICE IS USD 7.70 PER PAIR, WELCOME ORDER !

PLEASE LOOK THE DETAILS WITH PHOTOS FROM : http://www.chunpai.com/flyingshoe.htm

ALSO WE HAVE WOOD SHOES, BAMOO MATS, WOOD FLOORING, ALUMINU PLASTIC DECORATE PANELS, ETC, LOOK THEM FROM : http://www.chunpai.com/first-english.htm

BEST REGARDS !

MR.TAN LONG ( SATRAP )
GUILIN LINGUI SHENGPING XIAOXUE BAMBOO & WOOD MANUFACTORY
ADDRESS: No.229 RONGSHAN ROAD,LINGUI,GUILIN,GUANG,CHINA
TEL / FAX: +86-773-5592687
E-MAIL: chunpai@public.glptt.gx.cn
WEB SITE: http://www.chunpai.com/first-english.htm

[ 08/10/01 ]

Judges furious that their online activity is monitored

Judge Alex Kozinski of San Francisco...has claimed in a memorandum that such oversight violates the federal wiretap statute. But...broad surveillance by system administrators is explicitly permitted under the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act and has been upheld by several courts, and Congress has rejected attempts to craft a new policy.

'This sounds like the judge had no clue how intrusive modern monitoring security is,' said Stewart Baker of the Washington law firm Steptoe & Johnson, an expert on wiretap law.

'We may need to have people in a position of power affected by electronic monitoring before there is going to be an honest legislative evaluation of the current situation in the American workplace,' said Jeremy Gruber, legal director at the National Workrights Institute in Princeton, N.J.

(via swallowing tacks)
[ 08/10/01 ]

BBC staff are told not to call the killing of Palestinians by Israelis 'assassination'.

The Palestinian killing of Israelis, however, is regularly referred to – accurately – as 'murder' or 'assassination'.

via the excellent kill your tv dot com
[ 08/10/01 ]

On Saturday the Queen Mum turns 101.
[ 08/10/01 ]

Bad Royal Marriages

Henry [II] was notoriously unfaithful, even seducing a French princess who was promised to one of his own sons. When their sons rebelled, Eleanor [of Aquitaine] supported them. Henry responded by bundling her off to a castle, where she was kept under house arrest for 16 years.... When Henry died, she ... became a major power broker, and saw two of her sons become king. She led the defense of a besieged castle when she was 80, and once signed a letter to the pope 'Eleanor, by the Wrath of God, Queen of England.'

[ 08/10/01 ]

Non-British Royal Scandals

But [Monaco's Princess Stephanie's] next exploit topped all her previous antics. She ran away with the circus. More specifically, a circus ringmaster and elephant trainer. The romance became public when the object of her affection, a Swiss named Franco Knie, announced plans to divorce his wife. Meanwhile, Stephanie and her children moved into a mobile home and started traveling with the circus.

I sincerely hope that this story ends with her being fabulously happy and staying with the circus trainer until death they do part.
[ 08/10/01 ]

Group behind Chandra Levy tip began at grass-roots, now a national crusade against crime.

We are like Hamburger Helper for the police. One good tip from us saves a detective about 100 hours of work.

[ 08/10/01 ]

:: Always happy to lend a world-renowned science fiction writer some credibility in his latest venture.
[ 08/13/01 ]

The Clothes of Tomorrow, Today! News: the first wave of nanogarments are on their way.

At Nano-Tex’s laboratories outside San Francisco, researchers play basketball every day in the same socks, engineered with molecular-scaled sponges that absorb the rancid hydrocarbons responsible for body odor. The sponges are designed to release the smelly stuff only when they meet up with detergent in the washing machine.

[ 08/13/01 ]

'An elderly couple who chartered a small plane on the pretext of having sex in the sky died when the plane plunged into the sea off the Florida Keys after they tried to hijack it to Cuba, U.S. authorities said today.'
[ 08/13/01 ]

Smackdown! The World Wildlife Fund won a judgement over the World Wrestling Federation over the use of the initials 'WWF'. Of course, the wrestlers will appeal.
[ 08/13/01 ]

The president of the San Francisco air traffic controllers' union admitted that he had robbed at least nine California banks.

The controller...who earned about $120,000 a year, said in an affidavit that he robbed banks to pay child support and to fly his children to and from Hawaii to visit him.

Remember, happy is the man who can live within his means.
[ 08/13/01 ]

How to make a Pinhole Camera.
[ 08/13/01 ]

:: Happy Birthday, Molly.
[ 08/14/01 ]

The 1905-1907 Breasted Expeditions To Egypt And The Sudan. It looks mighty interesting, but I just keep imagining what the playground must be like for someone named 'Breasted'.
[ 08/14/01 ]

Ostensibly about viral marketing, this fascinating article manages to cover also the creation of a new game, finding alpha males in schools, school-age gender differences, and more. Absolutely do not miss this one. [NY Times: rebeccas_pocket, password: pocket]

'We chose you because you are the coolest, funniest guys in your school. Raise your hand if you're cool.' Every hand shot up, and Nino passed out the Pox units, each a little bigger than a cell phone. He demonstrated how to push the buttons beside the tiny screen to assemble a warrior. Then he revealed the great leap forward in this game: a radio transmitter enabling a player to battle any other player within 30 feet.... Each alpha pup left the training session with a day pack containing 10 Pox units to be handed out to friends.

Found on net.narrative environments, a new weblog focusing on convergences in the modern world, web development, and web techniques. Heavy on the 'techniques' lately, scroll down the page for some very interesting articles on psychology, communications, and more.
[ 08/14/01 ]

Paper Sources; Tree-Free Paper
[ 08/14/01 ]

:: 'Amid architecture's increasing irrelevance, one man decided that poor people can have great houses.'

For the past eight years, Mockbee has brought a group of his students to rural Hale County to design and build homes for the poor.... Often dubbed 'Redneck Taliesin South'...the Rural Studio not only fulfills an overwhelming need for decent housing but gives architecture students the kind of hands-on experience virtually all other educational institutions in the field lack.

The houses are built for about $30,000 each using a variety of recycled and discarded materials (tires, bottles) and funded mostly with grants from a local power company. Designed through a collaborative process involving students and local residents, the homes boast an unconventional modern flair that incorporates the cultural vernacular of the region. They may be cheap, but these are nice houses.

(via Nedblog, which has been extra good recently.)
[ 08/15/01 ]

Textism Teaches: How to Block Web Ads. (via zeldman)
[ 08/15/01 ]

:: Back in the day, teens demanded to wore denim over their parents' objections - and won. Now their children want to dress like their favorite MTV stars, but when your child is 4 years old and demands to show off her midriff where do you draw the line?

A back-to-school ad for JC Penney featured a curly-haired little girl admiring her outfit - low-rise jeans and crop top - in a mirror. Her mother comes in, exclaiming that she can't go to school looking like that. She rushes over to her daughter - and yanks the girl's jeans down another inch or so. 'There, that's better,' she proclaims. Penney has since pulled the ad.

[ 08/15/01 ]

Tales for the L33t is a brilliant retelling of Romeo and Juliet in the vernacular of today. A rosetta stone for L33t and mundane alike, it may be a little long and a little strong for work. The downloadable version is here for those with a slow connection. (thanks, lizard!)
[ 08/15/01 ]

Overworked Italian Women Have No Time For Sex. Well, if their husbands would help out once in a while....
[ 08/15/01 ]

Via Brad: The rise of the post-straight man.

...gay men are rewriting the rules of what it takes to be the ideal man. Glossy magazines have noticed that straight men are looking more gay, but the influence is more than a matter of working out, waxing, and wearing Prada. It involves a profound change in consciousness, reflected in everything from greeting gay buddies with a kiss to treating women the way other women - and most gay men - do.

[ 08/15/01 ]

An international team of astrophysicists has discovered that the basic laws of nature as understood today may be changing slightly as the universe ages.... If confirmed, the finding could mean that other constants regarded as immutable, like the speed of light, might also have changed over the history of the cosmos.

[ 08/16/01 ]

A group of Turkish women, fed up with lugging water for miles from the town fountain, are withholding sex until their men fix the village water system.
[ 08/16/01 ]

High Fidelity author Nick Hornsby listens to Billboard's current top ten and seeks to make sense of the world he finds.

The eponymous first track...could, it seems to me, be summarized as follows: some rich, powerful, violent people have been away for a while... and if, in their absence, you have been trying to muscle in on their turf, then they will not be happy about it. 'Y'all niggaz still talkin? Oh you got a little name little fame little fortune? What you have is a portion / Bout the size of the hats in the back of my Porsche and / So you better use caution.' These rich, powerful, violent people seem to be on speaking terms with people who own firearms; beyond that it is perhaps best not to speculate.

(thanks, jjg!)
[ 08/16/01 ]

:: Perhaps Charles will marry the love of his life, after all.
[ 08/17/01 ]

Archaeologists speculate that newly found Mongolian tombs may be the burial place of Genghis Khan.
[ 08/17/01 ]

I've been seeing those jelly candies in stores and thinking it was a California thing. Both Safeway and Albertsons have pulled them off the shelf after they were linked to the deaths of two children.

FDA spokeswoman Laura Bradbard said the agency had decided to investigate the candies, which have a controversial history in Japan, where similar products were dubbed 'deadly mouthful.'

'...it became lodged in her throat so firmly that it completely shut off her airway, causing her to suffer massive hypoxic brain injury. Four properly performed Heimlich maneuvers could not dislodge it.'

[ 08/17/01 ]

As sweet as can be. These dogs help children become more confident readers. (via dollarshort)
[ 08/17/01 ]

US government sets stewing rabbit guidelines. I remember when they were going to start calling it 'coney' in an effort to distance the carcass in the store from the cute little bunny in your brain.
[ 08/17/01 ]

BoyCaught reminds me that Banned Books Week is just around the corner. There's plenty of time to choose a book from this list, buy it at a local bookstore, and read it the week of September 22–29, 2001. I was just thinking recently that I should read To Kill a Mockingbird. When I was a child, I could never get through more than the first few pages.
[ 08/17/01 ]

:: The USDA Food Guide Pyramid may be bad for you! Or so says Walter Willett, chairman of the nutrition department at the Harvard School of Public Health.

'There's an inherent problem with the USDA creating the pyramid,' Dr. Willett says. 'The economic interests are so strong — and beef and dairy are the most powerful — that I think it's impossible for the USDA to say that people should limit red meat consumption or limit dairy products to one or two servings a day. It's very difficult for them to be objective, so it's probably the worst possible agency to do the pyramid.'

The Oldways Food Pyramids have been produced in conjunction with the Harvard School of Public Health. I have them linked on cooking for your future reference.
[ 08/21/01 ]

Changes in the welfare system actually have produced a rise in the two-parent family. Experts ask themselves if these changes are all good, and more importantly try to figure out what exactly is going on? [NY Times: rebeccas_pocket, password: pocket]

Despite concern about the stability of two-parent households formed in the aftermath of welfare change, there is widespread agreement among welfare experts that something remarkable has been going on in poor urban communities....

The confluence of positive trends includes falling rates of crime and drug abuse, the greatest decline in child poverty, particularly black child poverty, since the 1960's, and sharp increases in employment among mothers who head families, especially those who have never been married. In the last decade, there has also been a steady decline in the teenage birth rate, with the steepest decline among black teenagers.

[ 08/21/01 ]

Oooh, I've wanted to do this for a very long time: surveillance camera players (via harrumph)
[ 08/21/01 ]

In Seattle's Regional Burn Center, they're using virtual reality to get patients through their exercises and dressing changes.

Since patients often report reliving their original burn experience during wound care, the UW researchers have added another virtual realm: SnowWorld, which is designed to help put out the mental fire. Patients can now lose themselves in an icy, waterfall-filled world where they can shoot snowballs at snowmen and igloos.

[ 08/21/01 ]

:: Jornaleros seek work in Georgia and anti-Latino sentiment grows.

Earlier in the year, a group of black state lawmakers also banded together to cut Latinos out of affirmative action programs. 'African Americans are still being disenfranchised,' said Democratic state Sen. Nadine Thomas. 'Why all of a sudden are we going to empower another group?'

[ 08/22/01 ]

Come meet Jerry Pinkney, the Susan Lucci of illustrators. You'll be glad to know him. [NY Times: rebeccas_pocket, password: pocket]

He devotes as much time to research as he does to fluid lines and colors....To tell the tale of 'The Little Match Girl,' he pored through photographs of boys forced to work in the coal fields of western Pennsylvania. For a book about sharecroppers, he studied Depression-era photographs and interviewed a migrant worker, studying his hands and stooped posture bent from years of fruit and vegetable picking. 'I actually become the people I'm drawing, and I do that with animals, too,' said Mr. Pinkney.

[ 08/22/01 ]

The at-work workout that works. (via the wsj weblog)

Bradley's 'Quick Fit' program, which he created three years ago, promises employees a productive workout in just a quarter of their lunch hour – and here's the good part – fully clothed and without sweating. At any time of day, you'll see rows of men in shirts, ties and dress shoes alongside women in skirts – sometimes heels – marching resolutely on the treadmills at the center. No one looks even slightly damp.

[ 08/22/01 ]

Marsball!
[ 08/22/01 ]

Some corsetry links (they'll live on gothica): Corset Home
Corsetry
Waisted
History Of Corsets
[ 08/22/01 ]

:: Against the protests of marine biologists who believe that current systems are disrupting sea mammals' communication patterns and even causing lung and cranial hemorrhaging, the Navy seeks to deploy a new, more powerful sonar system.
[ 08/23/01 ]

:: Pure Evil News: Really, it's just appalling. Science can't prove that GM food is safe; given a choice, the public often won't buy it; and no one is keen on giving corporations even more power over the food chain. So what's a biotech company to do? Force farmers to plant their product.

The new opium wars are being waged in the fields of North America, where many farmers are beginning to shy away from engineered seed. GM crops, they have found, are harder to sell. There is evidence that some varieties yield less while requiring more herbicide....

Two years ago, the Roushes planted just over a quarter of their fields with the company's herbicide-resistant soya. Though they recorded precisely what they planted where, and though an independent crop scientist has confirmed their account, Monsanto refuses to accept that the Roushes did not deploy its crops more widely. It is now demanding punitive damages for the use of seeds they swear they never sowed.

(via yet another weblog)
[ 08/23/01 ]

Your Kung Fu is weak! (thanks, lizard!)
[ 08/23/01 ]

The Pronoia Taboo (scroll down)

Beauty and truth and goodness and love are not sentimental ideas in which pronoiacs seek sanctuary from the world's stupidity and nastiness. Beauty and truth and goodness and love are hard-earned, almost impossible to conjure, and require great ingenuity and tricky strategy to create. Pronoiacs fight for them inexhaustibly.

[ 08/23/01 ]

The Visible Barbie Project (via swallowing tacks)
[ 08/23/01 ]

:: 'State health officials have determined that 13 people who contracted E. coli bacteria at a county fair early this month visited animal barns or a petting zoo, then ate without washing their hands.'
[ 08/24/01 ]

Norway's Crown Prince is going to marry a single mother with a party past.
[ 08/24/01 ]

:: It's that time of year again. I'll be back soon. You know what to do.
[ 08/25/01 ]