Unstoppable Force, Immovable Object
Mack Truck vs. Concrete Barrier.
From the video’s comments (I’m not sure why):
Why does everyone here hate Chuck Norris all of the sudden?
I think Mary will like this video.
Baby
February 24, 2010. Dutton Drive. Dallas, Texas.
Sometimes you find things exactly when and where you expect to find them. When I entered my late mother’s house, I expected to find this old baby doll of hers in a drawer in a closet in what used to be my bedroom. And there it lay.
In the Boom Boom Room
In order to pierce the crust of Dallas, Texas subcultures, it helps to know someone who grew up here.
there is a crack in everything
The Less Lamp by Jordi Canudas.
Lego Remington .45 Revolver
Click through for more.
All Things Must Pass
It’s an I Ching thing.
Edith Heath on Martha Stewart, 1989 — the materials should tell the story
I love Heath’s beautiful work. I’ll be linking to Florence Knoll and Eva Zeisel over the next few days.
MID CENTURY MODERN PIRATE LAMP EAMES ERA
What we are showing you is a mid century modern pirate lamp. Made of ceramic.
the Google trike
The pictures were taken late last summer using the ‘Google trike’ – a three wheeled bike with a Street View camera mounted on it, suited to collecting images in places not easily accessible by car.
the first legal male prostitute
I think for a male, if you want to be successful in this type of venture, you’re not a prostitute. You’re a surrogate lover. You encompass everything that’s required of you—not only emotionally, physically—but psychologically. Because women are wired differently. They’re much more sensitive creatures. You actually have to enjoy what you do. You can’t necessarily say, “Oh, it’s just a job.” You actually have to say it’s a passion. I think it’s the same situation as with anything that happens when you break apart a social institution. There has to be some kind of change in terminology to describe persons like myself. And it’s more of a civil rights thing now. Basically this is the first time in the economy of the United States that a male has actually stood up and said, “I want to do this for a living.” And be protected under law to do it. It’s just the same as when Rosa Parks decided to sit at the front instead of the back. She was proclaiming her rights as a disadvantaged, African-American older woman. And I’m doing the same. I’m actually standing up now, and hopefully I can be supported by the male community and be understood as a person. This actually isn’t about selling my body. This is about changing social norms.
Congratulations.
(via marginal revolution)
Hoarders
Have you seen this show? Holy crap!
from the comments
I think, though, that it’s the saving of trash that really marks the boundary between cluttered and creepy. Rooms become minds, and when the person is gone and the place must be cleaned–a muttered posthumous telepathy remains.
Twelve Meditations on a Dollhouse | IV. Meditation on the Great Hall
The Great Hall. Colleen Moore’s Fairy Castle. (Museum of Science and Industry. Chicago.)
(We have skipped past Cinderella’s Drawing Room, where “the vases at each side of the door going into the Great Hall are made of carved amber over 500 years old. They came from the collection of the Dowager Empress of China.”)
“As you go around the corner, stop and look through the clear glass in the center of the chapel window. You will see the altar, and on this altar is a little tabernacle. On top of the tabernacle you will see a beautiful golden sunburst. In the center is a glass container holding a sliver of the true cross. This was given to me by my friend, Clare Booth Luce, when she was the Ambassador to Italy and had her first audience with the Pope. He gave this to her, and she gave it to me to put in the chapel of the Fairy Castle.”
compulsive hoarding
While the term “compulsive hoarding” is relatively new, the condition is not. In the 1800s, doctors often diagnosed something called “collector’s mania.” Hoarding is frequently seen as a problem of the elderly or a holdover from Depression-era frugality, yet the mean age of hoarders is 50, and the tendency often manifests as early as age 3, notes Randy Frost, a professor of psychology at Smith College and expert on the disorder. Compulsive hoarding affects both sexes and all economic classes.
Twelve Meditations on a Dollhouse | II. Meditation on the Dining Room
The Dining Room. Colleen Moore’s Fairy Castle. (Museum of Science and Industry. Chicago.)
“The tapestries on the wall, which are needlepoint made in Vienna, are the smallest stitches that have ever been stitched.”
Among the items
visitors are forbidden to bring into the Jo Daviess County (Illinois) Courthouse:
Bludgeons.
Twelve Meditations on a Dollhouse | I. Meditation on the Kitchen
The Kitchen. Colleen Moore’s Fairy Castle. (Museum of Science and Industry. Chicago.)
“The copper stove in the back of the room is the stove in which the wicked witch locked Hansel and Gretel.”
Twelve Meditations on a Dollhouse | Prologue
At the height of her popularity in the 1920s, film star Colleen Moore earned, it is said, a million dollars a year. In 1928 she commissioned the creation of a massive dollhouse to house her collection of miniatures.
Architect and film set designer Horace Jackson created the floor plan and layout of the dollhouse. “The architecture must have no sense of reality,” Jackson said. “We must invent a structure that is everybody’s conception of an enchanted castle.”
Completed in 1935, the dollhouse was exhibited throughout the United States and Canada to raise money for children’s charities. Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry acquired it in 1949, and there Colleen Moore’s Fairy Castle, as it is now called, remains.
Synergetic Hybrid Bicycle
The Sanyo eneloop bike was just named “Best of Innovations” at CES.
Momentum had a full review:
I love the fully integrated “feel” of this bike. Many eBikes seem hacked together, with a motor, battery and other components tacked onto a basic bike design. Sanyo’s 15 years of experience selling eBikes in Japan results in a well designed whole bike laden with features but without the clutter. Cables and wires are routed internally through the frame for a clean look. Regenerative technology gives a claimed 18 percent increase in battery life for a range of up to 40 miles. Even slight pedal pressure is enough to engage the electric assist, quickly boosting the rider to the 250 watt motor’s 15 mph top speed.
Big Shot
Packaged as a kit of parts, Bigshot teaches scientific and engineering principles along the way to assembly. Not only do kids have the fun of building a useful object from scratch, but as they manipulate the lenses, gears and dynamo (the camera is powered with a hand crank), they learn about optics, mechanics and energy. A companion website designed by Nayar and several of his Columbia graduate students offers lucid tutorials in each concept.
Welcome to the Bush White House, now in storage in Lewisville TX
Included here are 68 million pages of documents, a surfboard, 175 million e-mails, countless cowboy hats, 3,845,912 photographs, Stan “The Man” Musial’s autograph, gold and silver swords, handmade quilts, diamond jewelry, cowboy boots, classified files, a gift from the pope and the 9mm Glock pistol that Saddam Hussein was armed with when he was rooted out of his spider hole in Iraq.
Dickens’ Toothpick
An ivory and gold toothpick once owned by Charles Dickens has sold at a New York City auction for $9,150.
Back in Black
The skin arrived today and the camera is back in business.
octopus caps
Sometime after Christmas I’ll be ordering my own custom cycling cap from Octopus Caps.
German Hairless
The original vulcanite had begun to peel and crack, so I made a preemptive decision. Its new skin is on its way from Japan.