Saudis ban lewd license plates
Saudi newspaper al-Watan said the banned words included “sex” and “ass”, but the list was topped by “USA”.
Newer Saudi plates include three Arabic letters that are also shown in the Latin alphabet.
The growing fashion is for car owners to buy personalised “vanity” plates that deliberately read “nut”, “but”, “bad”, or “bar” in English.
Bar.
Aston Martin Rapide, first official image
A Brief History of Refrigerated and Frozen Rolls and Biscuits
“We didn’t gee and haw together at first,” Mrs. Barnes recalled of her early tenure with the [T. Marzetti] company, which also sells the New York brand of Texas toast and the Romanoff brand of caviar. “They talked about butter-flavored oil and a few other things I wouldn’t have,” she continued. “But they saw the light.”
Bill Callahan – Rococo Zephyr
(via Austin Kleon)
something, 26
He accused me of the voids in his limestone fireplace.
Dolphins and the Pirates
Thousands of dolphins blocked the suspected Somali pirate ships when they were trying to attack Chinese merchant ships passing the Gulf of Aden, the China Radio International reported on Monday.
Dispatch from the Bush of Ghosts
“It’s no wonder everyone at the camp was calling me Ab-Fab-rizio Zoolander all weekend. The way I figure, the animals must get bored of humans gawking at them, so I was giving them something to gawk back at. You always have to be thinking what it must be like for them.”
More from Tsavo and the Wild Hunter in the Bush of Ghosts.
Righteous Harmony Society (Boxer Uprising)
The April issue
of elimae is now posted for your delight. Well, at least, I hope so.
quote out of context
If you are planning simultaneous tea bagging all around the country, you’re going to need a Dick Armey.
Life.com
Life just launched its new photography site and it looks incredible. (via fimoculous)
the enigmatic bright blob
A jet of gas spewing from
Uranusa huge black hole has mysteriously brightened, flaring to 90 times its normal glow.
untitled sequence
How Fucking Romantic
A loose collection of mostly London-based comic-artists who grew up listening to the Magnetic Fields are writing a short story based on 69 Love Songs.
(via Tom Armitage)
is this your luggage?
(via andrew sullivan)
self-control is not natural, y’all
Humans have stores of self-control that get depleted over time.
In the latest issue of the journal Psychological Science, the researchers taunted subjects with the story of a waiter who was surrounded by gourmet food but not allowed a taste. Some of the subjects were encouraged to go beyond polite listening and actually imagine this poor waiter, to have real empathy with his situation. And then everybody was shown pictures of expensive stuff. Those who had put themselves in the shoes of the waiter, had suffered all that self-control as he had, wanted that stuff, no matter the price.
In other words, just the thought of someone, anyone, depriving himself eventually makes greedy beasts of all of us.
Also, this fascinating tidbit:
Group living, for example, takes great self-control; it takes a lot to live with people day after day and not kill them.
Lend me your ear.
Stelarc is an interesting fellow who is interested in Post-Natural History:
He only wants to transform his body into a portal on the Internet. Which is why visitors to Exit Art, a gallery in Midtown Manhattan, are being treated to a video of Stelarc’s left arm being cut up like a rare tenderloin to implant what will eventually be a Bluetooth-enabled artificial ear.
Stelarc’s video is one the more grisly highlights of “Corpus Extremus (LIFE+),” an exhibit about the wonders and horrors of “PostNatural History,” and the ways in which technology is blurring the traditional notions of life, death and identity.
Interview with Michio Kaku
A child prodigy who became one of the founders of the controversial string theory (one that, in essence, picks up where Einstein left off) and one of the world’s leading cosmologists, is interviewed on his new book, The Physics of the Impossible.
Don Moyer
Images from the series of his one-page essays from the February 2004 edition of Harvard Business Review.
what do you do guaranteed?!
This guy likes his business card:
“Life isn’t about being liked. It’s about being effective.”
(via andrew sullivan)
Update: Dylan reminds us of the American Psycho business card scene.
clusterflock confessions
I have a crush on the Progressive gal.
stop using sext as a weapon
The Vermont legislature is moving to pass a bill that would legalize sending explicit photographs between teens.
Sexting refers to the exchange of explicit photos and videos via mobile phone. Under current laws, participants can be charged with child pornography, but lawmakers are considering a bill to legalize the consensual exchange of graphic images between two people 13 to 18 years old. Passing along such images to others would remain a crime.
daffodils
One of these years, I will remember to plant early-blooming daffodil bulbs. Our garden is only just beginning to show color here and there, so for the moment, we have flowers from the grocery store.
Bulbous Bouffant
I couldn’t find you
a nice video of Lee Michaels singing “Can I Get a Witness?” (you’ll have to buy the mp3, which is well worth having). Meanwhile I’ll give you this true oddity of psychedelia, which you youngsters may have never heard. And yes, it’s that Kenny Rogers.
