Links

Stuff I find around the web that interests or amuses me.

So Long, Space Needle

by

Thank goodness we have the journalistic integrity of the Weekly World News to fill us in on what’s really going on in our city…

The Space Needle will once again become this city’s tallest building in April 2009, when NASA launches the tower into Earth orbit.

The unmanned mission will test the landmark’s suitability for carrying astronauts to the moon, Mars, and beyond.

“We hope this flight will point us in the direction of cheaper modes of space travel,” said Project Director Mike Dale.

Early next year, NASA engineers will remove the 72 bolts anchoring the Needle to her 6,000-ton concrete foundation. Construction cranes will lower the building onto its side, and a convoy of trucks will transport the structure to Cape Canaveral, using the straightest roads possible.

“There, the building will be thoroughly caulked against the vaccuum of space,” Mr. Dale said.

The Needle’s elevator shaft will be filled with rocket fuel, her antennas will be oriented toward Houston, and her manned explorations of the solar system will begin no later than 2014, according to Dale.

Despite the reduced costs to NASA, the Space Needle project represents a giant leap in astronaut amenities.

“The rotating restaurant will provide simulated Earth gravity, not to mention fresh salmon and Dungeness crab from Washington and Alaska waters,” Dale said.

“It was NASA spacecraft that originally inspired the tower’s architecture,” Dale reflected from his seat in the Needle’s whirling restaurant. “But now the tables are turning.”

(via seattle)

Teen Repellent

by

I’d heard some time ago about the teen repellent noise — an ultrasonic tone that teens can hear, but adults can’t due to natural hearing loss as people age, that gets annoying enough to drive teens away.

It was named the ‘Mosquito’ because the sound resembles that of a buzzing insect. And it works by emitting a harmless ultra sonic tone that generally can only be heard by people aged 25 and under. In trials, it has proven that the longer someone is exposed to the sound, the more annoying it becomes.

Crime Reduction Officer Bob Walton elaborated further: “Effectively, it’s a transmitter which sends out a specialised frequency noise which according to the manufacture is particularly audible to young people under the age of 25.

He said: “I’m in my fifties and when it’s turned on all I can hear is a very faint buzz. But I understand from young people who have been exposed to the noise, it is very annoying.”

Amusingly, not long after this started being used, the concept was appropriated and adapted by teenagers for use as a cellphone ring tone that they could hear but that their parents or teachers could not. Clever kids!

Here’s a site that has a selection of a few different ring tones at various frequencies, from 8 kHz up to 22.4 kHz, so you can test your own hearing abilities and see if you’d be able to hear (or be annoyed by) the tones.

My results:

You are a dog
Or maybe you are a mosquito, you certainly can’t be human.
The highest pitched ultrasonic mosquito ringtone that I can hear is 21.1kHz
Find out which ringtones you can hear!

Need a Hand?

by

Apparently there’s enough to spare these days…

In South Plainfield, New Jersey: Severed hand found in nude dancer’s home.

A severed hand was found at the home of an exotic dancer who decorated her home with skulls, and she was charged with improper disposition of human remains, authorities said.

Friends said the hand had been given to the woman by a medical student.

[…]

Kay’s mother, Patricia Ann Kay, told the newspaper that her daughter bought the skulls from a mail order catalog. She said her daughter has always been fascinated with the macabre, and when she was a girl she collected animal skulls and snake skeletons.

“She has a flair for the dramatic,” Patricia Ann Kay said. “I have never tried to stop my children from doing whatever they want. As long as they are happy, aren’t hurting anyone, and it’s keeping them out of the poor house.”

In Springfield, Virginia: Customer at Market in Springfield Cuts Off His Hand

Igbal Asghar reached across the counter at Super Halal Meat market and passed two butchered chickens to the man with the familiar face. Then he ducked into the walk-in freezer to fetch the customer’s second order, goat meat.

When the butcher stepped out seconds later, the customer’s severed left hand lay on the floor by the meat saw, Asghar said. The customer ran down the Springfield store’s center aisle and into the front parking lot, leaving a trail of blood and yelling repeatedly that he was “not a terrorist.” Outside, another witness said, the man announced that he had used the meat saw to cut off his hand “for Allah.”

[…]

Asghar said the man’s son told him that evening that his father was on medication for mental problems. Dan Schmidt, a spokesman for the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department, said authorities believe the man had mental health problems. Schmidt said he did not know whether doctors planned to try to re-attach the man’s hand.

Bizarre.

iTunes “Star Trek: The Next Generation – Main Theme From” by Erich Kunzel; Cincinnati Pops Orchestra from the album Symphonic Star Trek (1996, 1:43).

Stranger vs. Weekly in the Online World

by

Seattle’s two alt-weeklys, The Stranger and the Seattle Weekly have been battling it out in this town for far longer than I’ve been around to witness it. In the time I’ve been here, though, I’ve pretty much settled on grabbing a copy of each when I’ve got time to read both; if I only have time to read or skim one, I’ll generally grab the Stranger (if for no other reason that it tends to be more entertainingly snarky).

Each paper has been re-vamping their respective websites over the past year or so. Last year sometime, the Stranger waded into the weblog world with Slog, which after a somewhat clumsy start has been running strong (and was doing the best reporting in town on the Capitol Hill shooting at the time). Not long afterwards came Line Out, focusing more on the local music scene.

The Seattle Weekly just stepped up to the plate today, going live with not just one but three blogs: The Daily Weekly (“News, Politics, Media”), Post Alley (“Seattle Arts & Culture”), and Mossblog (an online companion to Knute Berger’s ‘Mossback‘ column.

While things just went live, so it’s going to be a bit before they really settle in and get in the groove (they’re in the process of figuring out how to turn comments on), it’s a promising start.

One nice thing I noticed immediately, though, is going to end up making me more of a regular reader of the Weekly rather than the Stranger: easy to find, obvious RSS feeds for everything. Where the Stranger is only providing RSS feeds for their two blogs, the Weekly has RSS feeds embedded into every page (for easy auto-discovery by web browsers or feed readers), easy links on every page to specific RSS feeds for that section of the paper, and links on every page to their main RSS page, which lists all their available feeds — including one catchall feed for the entire current issue.

Admittedly, it’s not perfect — while the Daily Weekly gets a full-text feed (yay!), the main issue feed has only one-line summaries (boo!). While I can understand why they might not want to go for a full-text feed for their entire issue (after all, it is advertising dollars that fund the paper), I do wish they’d at least provide a better summary — a paragraph, whether hand-crafted or just one single opening paragraph lifted from the article. Single-sentence descriptions might catch my eye, but all too often, they just don’t give enough context or information to really grab my interest.

At the same time…even that single line description is a lot more information than the Stranger gives me when they get a new issue up. So kudos to the Weekly…and hey! Stranger! Step it up, will ya?

iTunes “Supernaut” by 1000 Homo DJs from the album Supernaut (1992, 6:42).

MOG: Last.fm with poorer English

by

I’ve been using last.fm for some time now to track what I’m listening to. I have no idea if anyone actually pays much attention to it, but it’s all handled for me in the background without my having to worry about it (as iTunes plays music, the last.fm client sends info on what I’m listening to to their servers), so I just let it go.

Now there’s a new upstart service looking to do much the same thing, in much the same way. Sign up for MOG, download a small application (on Mac OS X, it’s a system preference pane), and MOG will track what you listen to and link it to other people with similar tastes. Here’s my MOG page.

Right off the bat, I really can’t see what MOG offers that last.fm doesn’t already have…there really doesn’t seem to be much differentiation between the two services.

Save for one little thing.

Under a link called ‘Share my MOG’, you can spam notify all your friends of your new MOGspace. You can either write your own little note, or you can use the provided boilerplate text. All pretty standard — except that MOG’s boilerplate message made me cringe. Out loud.

what’s up?

thought i’d share my spankin’ new MOG page with you.

you can find it at: http://mog.com/djwudi

MOG automatically creates a page for me that lets you see what’s in my music collection and what i’m playing (and does a whole lot more). There are serious music freaks hanging at MOG. see you in the MOG-O-SPHERE. later.

Out of seven sentences (well, six plus a farewell), not a single one is actually well written. Grammarians more versed than I would be more able to point out all the problems (and probably see some that I don’t identify right off), but…yeesh. Capitalization is nearly nonexistent, dropped subjects left and right, missing punctuation, and a general disrespect for the English language.

It’s bad enough that a disturbingly high percentage of ‘net users have little to no critical writing skills (or even casual writing skills, for that matter) — do we really need to encourage this wholesale slaughter of the language?

Ick.

Yes, it’s high-falutin’, snobbish, and elitist. But damn if that isn’t enough to knock MOG several steps down in my estimation.

iTunes “00 No One Takes Your Freedom” by Beatles/Franklin, Aretha/Michael, George/Scissor Sisters from the album www.djearworm.com (2004, 5:15).

Me and My Shadow: The story of Jason Mewes

by

I’ve been watching the pieces of this show up bit by bit (kindly assisted by watching Mike’s del.icio.us feed), and since the last section went live today, here’s a list of links to all the pieces so I can read straight through, beginning to end.

Since the gossip sites have seen fit to print only the portion of the Jason Mewes story I told at UPenn (that portion being what said sites seem to feel is the only interesting aspect of Mewes’ life), I figured why not put the whole tale of Jason’s battle with drug addiction into print here, where folks can get a better idea of who Jason truly is and maybe why he fell victim to heroin abuse in the first place.

[..] At the least, it’s a more comprehensive profile at a guy who’s accomplished a lot more than celebrity bathroom sex; at the most, it’s an ode to a very unlikely hero of mine and a man I love (in a decidedly hetero way).

  1. Me and My Shadow, Pt. 1
  2. Me and My Shadow, Pt. 2
  3. Me and My Shadow, Pt. 3
  4. Me and My Shadow, Pt. 4
  5. Me and My Shadow, Pt. 5
  6. Me and My Shadow, Pt. 6
  7. Me and My Shadow, Pt. 7
  8. Me and My Shadow, Pt. 8
  9. Me and My Shadow, Pt. 9

iTunes “Rise Up (Future)” by Commodores, The from the album In to the Mix Vol. IV: The Classics Remixed (2000, 3:50).

Penguin Floozies

by

The shocking truth about penguin’s sex lives, photo by downtempo, found on Flickr today.

For years penguins have been regarded as the conservatives of the avian world. Always attired in formal evening wear, they have become symbols of literature and family values.

Recent studies, by Otago University lecturer Lloyd Davis and colleague Finoa Hunter of Cambridge University have shown this veneer of respectability to be a sham. During a summer camped on the ice watching Adelie penguins mate around the clock, Dr. Davis and Dr. Hunter observed prostitution and wife-swapping.

The most bizarre aspect of penguin sexuality is the female’s penchant for prostituting herself to acquire pebbles to line her nest. In the ice and snow of Antarctica pebbles are useful insulation, crucial for survival of broods, but they are at a premium.

Often the only way to get pebbles is to take them from other nests at the risk of severe pecking. Females have figured out that a good way to get pebbles is to swap sex for them, says Dr. Davis, who has been studying the penguins since 1977.

“Occasionally females who have pair-bonded with a male will go off for a quickie.”

Dr. Davis says penguin prostitutes usually manage to get a stone without having sex. In many instances females will go through a courtship ritual, then abscond with a stone after the male gets out of his nest, expecting them to lie down on it.

Natural history documentaries have always described penguins as mating for life. Dr. Davis says that is clearly not so.

“My work shows they swap partners regularly, often in the same season.”

Saturday Mourning

by

At about 3:30 Saturday morning, as the rave at Capitol Hill Arts Center (CHAC) was winding down, the young people who lived at 2112 East Republican Street scanned the dance floor for people they could invite to their afterparty. They made a habit of welcoming strangers—it’s how they had all met one another in the first place. They had almost finished with the invitations when Jeremy Martin, 26, spotted a hulking, solitary figure.

“Go ask him,” Jeremy said to his best friend, Anthony Moulton.

Another person who lived at the home, 24-year-old Jesiah Martin (no relation to Jeremy), remembers having seen the man that night—conspicuous not just for his 6’5″ 280-pound frame but for the fact that he wasn’t dressed up or dancing. “He was by himself mostly, fly on the wall style,” said Jesiah.

Anthony, who is disarmingly goofy in the way of most in their group, approached the man and said, “Do you know the difference between Scotch and beer?” Most at the party were drinking beer, but Anthony handed the man a flask full of Macallan. The man took a swig and grimaced. But he liked it. He even smiled, leading Anthony to say, “Hey, what are you doing after this? We have half a keg at our place…”

And that is how Kyle Huff came to visit the house on East Republican Street.

I’ve mentioned before that The Stranger has been consistently doing the best reporting on the Capitol Hill shooting. They continue with this feature story on the events of the night.

Capitol Hill Tragedy

by

So sad and terrifying.