Links

There’s an incredible article at the New York Times Magazine giving a great history of the World Trade Center, from its politically-charged beginnings to the architectural choices that both kept the towers standing as long as they did after the impact of the planes and contributed to their eventual collapse. Just be sure to set aside some time — I just spent the past hour reading this.

When the north tower, the first to go up, was finally topped out on Dec. 23, 1970, it was foggy, and no one could see the view. But James Endler, the West Point grad and construction contractor who oversaw the entire job for the Port Authority, made a point of showing up at a celebration for the workers held on one of the skeletal upper floors — the first open-air party ever to take place 1,300 feet above the street. There was a band, soda and sandwiches. But when the band played the Mexican hat dance, the construction workers started stomping in unison, and Endler — standing next to Jack Kyle, the Port Authority’s chief engineer — began to feel odd vibrations in the structure. The floor did not seem steady. After all the wind-tunnel tests, the computer calculations, the structural innovations, had something been missed? Had the thousands upon thousands of steel parts been fitted together incorrectly?

”Jack, how do we stop that vibration?” Endler asked.

Kyle turned to him, expressionless. ”Don’t play that song anymore,” he advised.

(via MeFi)

I just found this image (along with a ton of other [often barcode-based] very cool desktop images) at some site that I can’t read because it’s all in Cryllic (oh, well, would’ja look at that — there’s an English version too…who’da thunk?) — but it’s very cool stuff.

If I was a better artist, I’d want to do similar tricks with the ISSN barcode for this weblog (which I don’t have posted anywhere at the moment, thanks to the verschluggin crash that I’m working on recovering from). Maybe I’ll go ahead and give it a shot eventually…who knows?

(via MeFi via andersja).

So it seems there’s a Harry Potter toy that’s becoming fairly popular with girls — the Nimbus 2000 vibrating broomstick.

The reviews make this even funnier…

When my 12 year old daughter asked for this for her birthday, I kind of wondered if she was too old for it, but she seems to LOVE it. Her friends love it too! They play for hours in her bedroom with this great toy. They really seem to like the special effects it offers (the sound effects and vibrating). My oldest daughter (17) really likes it too! I reccomend this for all children.

Heck, while we’re at it, why not just give them a Hello Kitty Vibrator, too? At least that’s a bit more honest about its intentions!

(via So Very Posh)

So how’s this for a joyride?

As the city bus drove down the street, two men in the back got into a fight. Concerned for the safety of himself and his other passengers, the driver pulled over to the side of the road and had everyone — including the two men in the altercation — evacuate the bus. Everyone did, save one person, who proceeded to take the bus on a six-minute long joyride through Seattle, reaching speeds estimated at close to 80 miles per hour, destroying eight cars and hospitalizing six people, before eventually plowing through a lamppost and several trees and stopping only when it slammed into a retaining wall.

Yikes.

It’s still unclear just what prompted this little rampage, though apparently his hearing is set for today. Crazy, crazy stuff.

This is one of the posts I lost in the crash — but I remembered that I’d had it up, and went looking for the original links.

MetaFilter had a link up to a story about a man who refused to stop having sex with a woman in a public pool until she reached orgasm.

This led to an entertaining little discussion, starting with beth‘s assertion that “…just for the record not every woman in the world wants an orgasm every time“. Things bounced merrily along for a while, until Miguel Cardoso posted the following entertaining and fascinating rundown of Porgugese sexual customs.

(Liberal use of ‘the F word’ follows, though [IMHO] not in an offensive manner.)

Read more

Ever driven past a car crash site? You don’t really want to look, but you just can’t help it? Some sort if innate human curiosity about the bizarre and the horrible kicks in.

Reading a log of stories from a video store clerk about her customers who rent porn is kind of like that. Fascinating, scary, and funny all in one…and it completely sucked me in. I just lost about an hour of my morning to this.

We have a new vistor to the porn section. He’s been in twice now. Actually, he’s been in at least three times, as he is a registered member, but he’s only stood out twice.

He comes in, goes down to the straight porn section, and whips out a hand mirror. Then he applies makeup for about an hour.

Seriously.

No browsing, no chatting people up, no whacking. In, mirror, makeup and out. And again, he’s in the straight section.

No one’s sure what to do yet.

Whatever works, I guess.

There was an absolutely wonderful article in the Seattle PI yesterday about how at times, letting loose with a good string of profanities can be wonderfully therapeutic — but it’s so much better when you can swear with style!

Be creative with your curse words. Dropping a simple F-bomb is a cliche and, frankly, it is beneath you. If you’re going to swear, do it with style. Try thinking of yourself as a “vulgarity artist” — a poet of the profane, as it were. Cuss in rhyme or, perhaps, haiku. This way, when you unleash a string of ear-searing expletives, the people around you may not like what you had to say but they’ll appreciate the panache with which you said it.

At the end of the article, they request submissions of examples of creative swearing — I’m going to send them one I got from dad: Blast dab fraggin’ pakaloomer!