• New Scientist looks at the controversial research paper by Larry Wein of Stanford University that suggests botulinum poisoning, introduced into the food supply through milk processing, is the nation's third most pressing terrorist threat:

  In an editorial accompanying the study, he wrote: “All the critical information in this article that could be useful to a terrorist” - such as the size of tanks at dairies - “is immediately accessible on the world wide web through a simple Google search.” Publishing the analysis, he says, will lead to more scientific studies, and to a defence.
  
  The study considered a typical US dairy, at which numerous trucks make two deliveries a day, each from a number of farms. The deliveries are pooled in huge holding tanks, then pasteurised and bottled.
  
  These tanks are constantly being drained and refilled, and are only emptied and cleaned every three days. So toxin concentrations in the bottled milk depend on when the toxin is added, how much is added, and how much is de-activated by pasteurisation. Limited data on that, and on what doses of botulinum are toxic in people, says Wein, meant the calculations could not be precise.
  
  But the model showed that 1 gram of toxin or less in a milk delivery would poison 100,000 people - mainly children, who are more sensitive and drink more milk. Ten grams would poison most of the dairy’s 568,000 consumers, regardless of age. Such quantities are not considered beyond the capabilities of terrorists. [keep reading]

• 
  
  Connais le monde que tu habites! "Know the World in Which You Live!" is a sobering look at what ails the world, told in a most unusual way: the colors on flags are used as statistical graph elements. For example, the US flag (only one of many, but this one illustrates the concept succinctly) caption reads, "{red} In favor of war in Iraq, {white} Against war in Iraq, {blue} Does not know where Iraq is." [Portuguese with French translation; try Alta Vista's Babelfish for translating text]
• This is a real treat, although I'm sure a roomful will set you back more than a few Euros: a German company is manufacturing reproduction 1970's design wallpaper. These aren't your usual flocked velvet Bicentennial Americana designs, however, they're full-blown op-art trips for your paredes! My favorite is the warm-toned 'Apollo', but the distracting, wavy 'Beyla' design makes me seasick just from looking at it on the computer screen. Putting someone in a room covered in that wallpaper should be in violation of the Geneva Convention. [via BoingBoing]

---

  Much has been written about the "allure of the mixtape," a concept that encompasses everything from that oxide-shedding C-90 collection of crush songs you taped off the radio in middle school, to mp3 blogs (and memes like the Friday Random Ten) to podcasts and "battling iPod" amateur DJ club contests.

Pulling a 20-year old audiocassette from a forgotten, dusty box in the hall closet can be a bittersweet time capsule of remembrance; next to scents, songs are the surest primal pathways to total recall. While digital mixes may be too recent a phenomenon to be effective in conjuring past lives, a single press of a cassette "play" button has unparalleled power to pull ancient scenes from the longest-neglected of neural pathways.

Many mixers use this artform in the interest of compiling the biggest, baddest, most obscure "bet you never heard this one" playlists, but mixtapes aren't solely the realm of amateur audio collagework. It can be argued that most non-orchestral film soundtracks are "mixtapes" after a fashion.

Perhaps therein lies the key to the mixtape's popularity, in the fact one can now easily create a multitude of personalized "soundtracks" for all sorts of people, places, and situations. We create mixtapes/playlists for the morning commute, for a dinner party, for trainrides and for trips down memory lane. The creative streak in most of us drives the mix-urge, but then again, we're not necessarily averse to having someone or something stir the soup once the basic ingredients have been collected: voilà! Shuffle! However, I'm not convinced that the advent of digital audio gadgetry sounded the death knell of the bonafide mixtape. The art of the mix, I believe, lies in the careful selection and sequencing of tracks - not in the laborious trial-and-error process of dubbing from radio or album to tape, although some might say the toil sweetens the results.

After all, if all of life's a stage, who wouldn't want their show to be accompanied a selection of perfect songs?

More: Tiny Mix Tapes
The Art of the Mix
WIRED: Sonic Youth's Thursaton Moore on the Power of the Mix Tape
Salon.com: PC's Killed the Mixtape Star [subscr. or daypass req.]
Slate.com: "The Madonna Code"

---

 

You too can be part of MIT researcher Cameron Marlow's weblog survey, which takes a detailed look at blogger's virtual and meatspace lives. You'll remain anonymous, but will need to click "yes" to an online consent form. If I may be so bold, the on-the-fly results may be just as enlightening to the surveyed as to the surveyors. [via Lauren at Feministe]

---

  ...as the universe seems to be roiling with chaotic energies lately: car crashes, fire alarms, quasiprophetic dreams, sudden shifts and rumbling earthquakes. It's been an uncharacteristically blog-less week for me as other matters have taken priority, and hopefully some calm will eventually flow into the breach to balance it out.

The big news is my vehicle was totalled a little over a week ago. I was rear-ended at fairly high speed while waiting at a stop light on Lake Shore drive downtown; fortunately as always I was wearing my seatbelt, and I wasn't seriously injured. But my trusty green car is just a crushed mess. *sigh* [Note: for legal reasons I have deleted some of the details of the accident I had previously posted here. Hopefully at a later date I can share them again.]

I am stunned, stunned - but somehow not surprised - by the Supreme Court's decision in Kelo v. New London. If you haven't followed this case, realize this SCOTUS decision has ominous implications for any American property owner, to the extent that from now on, you cannot feel truly secure in "owning" your property - your home or your business, etc. - because if another entity (a private business, a corporation or a government branch) comes along that can generate greater government tax revenue from your property than you do, your property may be taken from you in this perverse reinterpretation of the "Takings Clause." Jason at Positive Liberty takes a closer look at the ruling:

Such a power was never contemplated at the adoption of the Constitution, except to regard it with horror: The power itself implies strongly that if private landowners hold their land only by virtue of a "public" use, then the property does not truly belong to them. In the final analysis, all property belongs to the government.

As Jason pointedly states, after Kelo "we're really one giant revenue farm for the government."

---

 

• The Japanese newspaper Mainichi has published U.S. journalist George Weller's long-censored first-hand account of the Nagasaki bombing's aftermath
• This Gizmodo gadget looks like a great conversation piece - the Spark Fun portable rotary cell phone. Yes, it's a standard old-school rotary desk phone with cell phone innards.

• "Future is waiting for us. With hollow skeletons or downsized ugly creatures with bulgy eyes - it's not important. Important thing is that there will be a footprint left.
  Footprint of civilization.
  Cement, metal and dust not claimed by anyone.
  They are eternity."

  [via Boing Boing]
• Fear of fallen fruit suits prompts UK farmers to axe trees [via Overlawyered]
• Kuro5hin's bobej on Why the Recording Industry is Doomed, P2P or not
• Kodak has announced it will stop manufacturing black and white photo paper [Slashdot}
• Remember the recent massive CardSystems credit card information breach, that has exposed up to 40 million credit card users to identity theft? Well, according to The New York Times, CardSystems apparently wasn't even supposed to have that information in the first place. Not a comforting tought. [TechDirt]

---

  I'm not sure whether I should hold my nose, or lock up my wallet:

...[S]cientists have discovered that a whiff of a certain hormone makes people more willing to trust others with their money.

The hormone is oxytocin, which in nonhuman mammals is associated with social attachment, as well as a number of physiological functions related to reproduction.
...
Michael Kosfeld of the University of Zurich and his colleagues devised a double-blind study to compare trusting tendencies in subjects given an oxytocin nasal spray and those given a placebo. After receiving either a single dose of the hormone or the placebo, participants played a trust game in which an investor chooses how much money to fork over to a trustee, who then decides how much to return after the amount is quadrupled. Subjects played the game using monetary units, which were exchanged for real money at the end of the experiment.

According to the researchers, oxytocin increased investor trust markedly, with 45 percent of the oxytocin group exhibiting the highest trust level, compared to just 21 percent of the placebo group. The team rejected the possibility that oxytocin might be promoting risk-taking in general, rather than social risk-taking specifically, because when investors were paired with a computer trustee instead of a human one they did not take such risks.

Describing the work today in the journal Nature, Kosfeld and his collaborators acknowledge that their findings could be misused. They add, however, that the work could ultimately help patients with mental disorders associated with social dysfunction, such as those afflicted with autism or social phobia. [read full article in Scientific American]

Hhmmm. Where could marketers best find a use for oxytocin sprays and scents? Casinos? Retail establishments? Those smelly magazine inserts? Good heavens, this could revolutionize the economy!

Or, it could make make random shoppers fall in love with one another.

---

 

• Happy 1st anniversary, CTA Tattler!
• That creamy head, that roasty, toasty richness! An exhaustive Guinness lover's website, Chad Bennett's St. James' Gate
• I accidentally found this UK index, filled with incredibly funny bizarre images (a tad reminiscent of Monty Python "collage" animations) like "James and the Giant Arse," and an animated gif of a pair of socks doing the nasty.
• Schematics and plans for building your own 3-channel color organ
• Regnyouth Archives, one of the best-known secret sources of free music on the Web has gone dark for now; the loooong list of farewell comments keeps growing, and makes for interesting perusal. The Regnyouth Texts remain up, however, containing a wealth of media-related tips and tricks to enhance your downloading experiences.
• Reading: Voices From Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich, translated by Keith Gessen (a book that could easily be subtitled "The Radiation Monologues") is an intensely personal record of the world's greatest unnatural disaster to date, told through first-person stories of those who lived through it. Not an easy or comfortable "light summer read," but the season's warmth and light help counteract the chilling effect of reading these survivors' accounts.
• On the Beeb: Who stole the Dalek?
• Dortmund, Germany plans to deal with an influx of over 40,000 prostitutes (arriving for next year's soccer World Cup) by building temporary (?) "sex huts" through the city, to provide discretion and privacy for...ahem...transactions. How about calling the structures "Port-a-bonkies"?
• iSarcasm and MacHyperbole over at Apple Colored Glasses
• Chicagoist [whose new "Shiny Bean" logo tees are really neat] highlights one of my 'hood's most-filmed "watering holes," legendary Uptown jazzery The Green Mill - tootin' since 1907.
• The Friday Random Ten:
  
  
  1. Jimmy "Bo" Horne - "Spank"
  2. Frank Sinatra - "I've Got You Under My Skin"
  3. Sonny Rollins - "Airegin"
  4. Vertical Cat - "Sway"
  5. Ken Nordine - "Flesh"
  6. Orbital - "Way Out (Tone Matrix Mix)"
  7. Angelo Badalamenti - "Theme from Twin Peaks"
  8. The Clash - "Spanish Bombs"
  9. White Town - "Your Woman":

     "The audacity, not to mention ludicrous improbability, of “Your Woman” is astounding in retrospect; a self-confessed “fat Asian guy” with a dubious past playing keyboards in no-hope indie bands and supporting the pre-dance Primal Scream, role-playing the part of a wronged girlfriend in a Karl Marx-name-checking electro-pop vignette inspired by a teenage crush on a lesbian friend and based around samples of a 1932 jazz hit by Lou Stone and the static that opens Buggles’ “Video Killed The Radio Star”, that somehow found its way to number one across the globe during 1997, officially The Year That Rock Died..."[keep reading, or visit Jyoti Mishra's White Town website]

  10. Pixies - "Debaser"
  
  

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"Democracies die behind closed doors.

The First Amendment, through a free press, protects the people's right to know that their government acts fairly, lawfully, and accurately in deportation proceedings.

When government begins closing doors, it selectively controls information rightfully belonging to the people.

Selective information is misinformation.

The Framers of the First Amendment 'did not trust any government to separate the true from the false for us.'"

Kleindienst v. Mandel, 408 U.S. 753, 773 (1972) (quoting Thomas v. Collins, 323 U.S. 516, 545 (Jackson, J., concurring)).

[Detroit Free Press et al., v. John Ashcroft et al. >> Skimble's "Glimmers of hope in the war against Ashcroftism," >> Chicagoist]

---

  The University of Chicago's Regenstein Library is poised to think big - really big. When its $42 million expansion is completed four years from now, it will become the largest research library under one roof in North Anerica.

...Regenstein's collection will total about 8 million volumes in one space. The total university collection will exceed 11 million.
...
U. of C. planners say the addition to Regenstein will allow the university to keep its options open. "First and foremost it gives us the ability to rethink the library in ways in which if we had to go offsite [to store books] we could not rethink," said Judith Nadler, director of the library. Faculty members involved with planning the new facility have stressed the need for a library that draws scholars away from computer terminals and back to the stacks. In fact, a faculty survey revealed that professors, while continuing to draw heavily on the holdings of Regenstein, were spending less time in the library.

"I think there is something deeply important about human face-to-face interaction," said Andrew Abbott, the Swift distinguished service professor in sociology. Scholars say preserving Regenstein's massive open stacks is another priority.

"The chance of seeing what the next volume is, or running your eyes idly over the spines, opening the pages and falling upon something is memorable, pleasurable, instructive and frequently decisive in the way you work," said Neil Harris, a U. of C. historian and member of the faculty committee involved in planning the new addition. The planned addition of 40,000 square feet to the library--opened in 1970 and designed by architect Walter Netsch--will not only allow the collection to grow, but it also will provide the library with updated preservation facilities, improved book-tracking technology and additional classroom space.

The cornerstone of the library's expansion will be a high-density, automated shelving facility that mainly will house print journals. The high-density storage system requires one-seventh the floor space of a conventional system and employs bar codes and bins to track and store volumes. Already in use at several libraries, the system allows books to be selected and delivered within five minutes.

The expansion also will enable the university to enlarge its digital collection. With the extra space gained from storing print periodicals, a portion of the current Regenstein building will be reconfigured into an "information commons" and include digital learning libraries as well as an Internet-savvy library staff. Scholars and library officials say the expansion of Regenstein can blend the best of the digital and print worlds. Harris, whose scholarly career predates the photocopier, says that a renovated Regenstein will remain the spiritual center of the university.

"This library is the heart of the campus. It's been the most important building put up in the last 50 years, so you approach it with some degree of reverence," said Harris. "You don't want to lose its significance." [read full article]

More: The Regenstein's current floorplans

---

 

• This is just awful. [Note: safe for work, not safe in terms of the mental image you'll have after reading this news story]
• Must be something in the water: federal officials close down an alleged heroin trafficking ring at Chicago's city water department [CBS2 Chicago]; Chicagoist has a skeptic's take on the story
• Amazing images: what you're looking at here is a pulse of light, slowed down a thousandfold, traveling through a specially prepared piece of semiconductor material.

  Scientists have been able to capture and slow light for several years. Slow light, once better understood, could be used to improve devices like sensors and optical communications equipment. Researchers from the University of Twente in the Netherlands, the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, Ghent University in Belgium, and the FOM-Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics in the Netherlands have moved the field forward with a way to directly observe the phenomenon.
  
  The researchers used a photonic crystal waveguide to slow light by several orders of magnitude. The waveguide is constructed of semiconductor material punched with a pattern of holes. The pattern causes lightwaves to interfere with each other enough to slow the pulse to just under one micron per three trillionths of a second, or picoseconds. The pulse traveled about one thousand times slower than the speed of light in a vacuum, which is 299,792,458 meters per second. [read full article at Technology Research News]

  However, no need to break out into that Madonna song just yet.
• Cold and allergy medications that contain pseudoephedrine may soon be leaving drugstore shelves for a spot behind the pharmacist's counter:

  [CNN] The Senate Bill is modeled on an Oklahoma law that took effect in April. The proposal would require the sale of medicines with pseudoephedrine only by a pharmacist or pharmacy personnel. Customers would have to show a photo ID, sign a log and be limited to 9 grams (or about 300 30-milligram pills) in a 30-day period. The government can make exceptions in areas where pharmacies are not easily accessible.

  [via Brutal Women]
• "Vienna [Beef] slips its wieners into Target" [Chicagoist's words, not mine]

---

 

• It's going to be a hot one in Chicago today, with an expected high around 90° F (and even hotter tomorrow) - a great time to mix up some chilled twist shandy, eh?
• Chill-out goes to the dogs mainstream: it's got no beat, plus, you can fold your laundry to it.
• Neil Gaiman tells us how to make a great pot of tea
• In Slate, David Plotz embarks upon on a short, scary career as an undercover sperm donor and infiltrates the seamy world of modern eugenics
• There will be about ten thousand unhappy campers at Cook County Jail in Chicago - one of the country's largest - when the facility goes smoke-free at the end of the summer. Just thinking of the nic fits is frightening.
• "Everyone is entertained to death": The Guardian UK talks with Brian Eno; and BigO Magazine has Eno's Music from Glitterbug available for download
• A nice, big, foamy mug of WTF: Quotes from American Taliban [via Wither in the Light, who very appropriately adds, "look elsewhere for sanity."]
• Feministing links to a sharp Washington Post article in which former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright takes President George W. Bush's anti-choice and anti-family planning policies to task; there's a great quote we'd all do well to remember there, too:

  "Health is viewed as a soft issue, what has to be done is it has to be viewed as a tough, hard security issue," Albright said. [keep reading]

• Bob Herbert offers a sobering op-ed piece in The New York Times on "The Mobility Myth":

  The gap between the rich and everybody else in this country is fast becoming an unbridgeable chasm. David Cay Johnston, in the latest installment of the New York Times series "Class Matters," wrote, "It's no secret that the gap between the rich and the poor has been growing, but the extent to which the richest are leaving everybody else behind is not widely known."
  
  Consider, for example, two separate eras in the lifetime of the baby-boom generation. For every additional dollar earned by the bottom 90 percent of the population between 1950 and 1970, those in the top 0.01 percent earned an additional $162. That gap has since skyrocketed. For every additional dollar earned by the bottom 90 percent between 1990 and 2002, Mr. Johnston wrote, each taxpayer in that top bracket brought in an extra $18,000.
  
  It's like chasing a speedboat with a rowboat. [keep reading; via Rebecca's Pocket]

---

  Today, all that remains of the 60-ton Komatsu bulldozer Marvin Heemeyer used to wreak havoc on Granby, Colorado is a dismantled engine, awaiting recycling in a scrap metal furnace [photo left © Dennis Schroeder, from the Rocky Mountain News]. In the distance, the Rockies' timeless purple-gray peaks still frame Granby's majestic view, but for many residents the economic nightmare persists. The emotional and financial scars of that June day remain, and this quiet mountain town still struggles to restore the buildings and livelihoods it lost. From the Rocky Mountain News:

[Sky-Hi News publisher and editor Patrick] Brower also rebuilt on the newspaper's old site. He and a staff of 10 moved into the new building, still without a sign, three weeks ago. He said insurance largely covered both the cost of the new building and the bulk of his material losses, such as damaged computers and furniture. Sky-Hi also received $20,000 from the Granby Fund, which Brower hopes to put toward the $80,000 loss his business suffered. "It was a full sprint for a year," Brower said about the challenge of publishing the paper out of Granby's old asbestos-laden middle school for the last year. "We had people working overtime and people going beyond the call of duty," he said. The weekly paper never missed an issue.

Some property owners haven't been so lucky. Gambles, the longtime department store in Granby and the last place Heemeyer demolished, is still an empty lot. "I was underinsured, so I didn't have the money to rebuild," said Casey Farrell, Gambles' owner. Farrell moved his business, which now sells a streamlined selection of appliances, electronics and vacuum cleaners, into a vacant space in a strip mall on the west side of town.

He got help from the town's emergency fund, but said cash flow at his new store, which is less than half the size of his old store, is only 60 percent of what it used to be. "The Lord has to keep smiling on me, and I have to keep growing," Farrell said. "If I don't grow, I'm dead." The town itself still bears the scars of Heemeyer's rampage. The town hall is now a hole in the ground. Officials meet at a suite in a business park on the edge of town.

But Mayor Wang sees a silver lining in the destruction. "He tried to destroy us, but the effect is that he made things better and stronger," Wang said. "We had a lot on our plate before the bulldozer clanked down the street. The irony is that it might have accelerated some things." [read full article]

According to the Denver Post, Cody Pacheff [owner of the cement plant that Heemeyer blamed for his muffler shop's decline] still deals with the aftermath every day:

Along with the town's physical resurgence in the past 12 months, Mayor Ted Wang said, Granby is also experiencing civic renewal, with its 1,500 citizens taking a more active interest in community affairs. "People are paying attention to what's going on in their town. They're listening to what their neighbors are saying," Wang said. But some businesses and residents are still hurting, he said. Heemeyer's first target, the cement batch plant, has been partly rebuilt and was operating a week after the attack, said owner Cody Pacheff. But he said he's still more than $1 million in the hole. "It's going to take a few years to recoup all that," he said, expressing gratitude for community support.

Pacheff said he thinks about the attack on a daily basis. "It's like a nightmare. Every day you come to work and it reminds you of it," he said, adding that he still experiences flashbacks to when he tried, but failed, to stop Heemeyer with a front-end loader. [read full article]

---

  I like this variation on the Friday Random Ten (seen on Trish Wilson's Blog [via Pinko Feminist Hellcat]) where one posts song lyrics from the Random Ten Songs instead of the artists and titles. Before we begin, let me share two very good posts I read today:

• Suzette rhapsodizes on a life-changing American Classic
• Trish Wilson points out the glaring "duh" factor in Kansas Senator Kay O'Connor's (who, incidentally, is seeking the GOP nomination for secretary of state next year) belief that American women should not have the right to vote. Since the Senator is herself female (as far as we know) one wonders how she justifies her career?

In the "weird news," a Chicago nursing home resident died after he caught fire in his wheelchair. The cause of the fire is "unknown." As they say, hmmm. Anyhow, here goes:

1. Will you meet your mind where the night collides
   Will you greet yourself when the sun arrives
   I'll just stay behind, I've met mine
2. From station to station
   back to Dusseldorf City
   Meet Iggy Pop and David Bowie
   [clue: these grandfathers of techno play The Riviera in Chicago tomorrow night]
3. I will loose you
   Existing were no soul apart
   You stand on a platform
   Your effigy dissolves in my hands
4. It brings back the sound of music so tender,
   It brings back a night of tropical splendor,
   It brings back a memory ever green.
5. You can take all the tea in china
   Put it in a big brown bag for me
   Sail right around the seven oceans
   Drop it straight into the deep blue sea
6. Driving down those city streets waiting to get down
   Want to get your big machine somewhere in this town
   Now in the parking lot garage, I found a proper place
   Just follow all the written rules, you'll fit into the space
7. Where thorns are a teaser
   I've played a double jeu
   Yherushalaim at easter
   I cry I pray mon Dieu
8. Grey men who speak of victory
   Shed light upon their stolen life
   They drive by night and act as if they're moved by unheard music
   To step in time and play the part
   With velvet voices smooth and cold
   Their power games a game no more
   And long the chance to use it
9. Frankenstein and Dracula have nothing on you
   Jekyll and Hyde join the back of the queue
10. Got my best suit and my tie
    Shiny silver dollar on either eye
    I hear the chauffeur comin' to the door
    Says there's room for maybe just one more

---

  What everyday object is an endless source of humor, revulsion, giggles, curiosity, embarrassment and relief? No, not the telephone - the toilet! If you're looking for fascinating potty research and development, look outside the continental U.S. - Asia seems to be the toilet tech hotspot.

New Delhi, India's new Sulabh International Museum of Toilets, founded by Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak, is a museum dedicated to the past, present and future of this ubiquitous hygienic appliance. A fascinating read: Dr. Pathak's History of Toilets manuscript, presented at the annual International Symposium on Public Toilets held in Hong Kong on May 25-27, 1995 (the 2006 World Toilet Expo will be held in Bangkok, and previous colloquia have traditionally been held in Asian nations). Here is the introduction:

Unlike body functions like dance, drama and songs, defecation is considered very lowly. As a result very few scholars documented precisely the toilet habits of our predecessors. The Nobel Prize winner for Medicine (1913) Charles Richet attributes this silence to the disgust that arises from noxiousness and lack of usefulness of human waste. Others point out that as sex organs are the same or nearer to the organs of defecation, those who dared to write on toilet habits were dubbed either as erotic or as vulgar and, thus, despised in academic and social circles.

It was true for example of Urdu poets in India, English poets in Britain and French poets in France. However, as the need to defecate is irrepressible, so were some writers who despite social as well as academic stigma wrote on the subject and gave us at least an idea in regard to toilet habits of human beings. Based on this rudimentary information, one can say that development in civilisation and sanitation have been co-terminus. The more developed was the society, the more sanitised it became and vice versa.

Toilet is part of history of human hygiene which is a critical chapter in the history of human civilisation and which cannot be isolated to be accorded unimportant position in history. Toilet is a critical link between order and disorder and between good and bad environment. [read full article]

More:

• Articles from the World Toilet Organization site:
  • "Toilet as a Social Space" and "A Study of Japanese Toilets" by Lim Tai Wei. Excerpt from "Japanese Toilets":

    The Japanese toilet that draws the most attention is perhaps the electronic sitdown toilets. The seat rest has an installed heater, a welcomed feature during wintertime. There are also hydraulic jets that can spray water to clean...[t]he disadvantage though is that when a person does not know how to use it properly, she/he can end up very wet. The jet of water can be strong or weak. The strong mode can be upsetting for some first time users. The other ergonomic controversy is the fact that sometimes users, particularly foreigners who do not know how to use the electronic toilets is unable to stop the jet of water and may end up washing their face if they turn around to face the toilet bowl in an attempt to stop the water jet.
    

  • "Implications of Poor Restroom Design [PDF]" by the International Paruresis Association [www.shybladder.org]
  • "Tourism and Toilets: An Australian Perspective" by William Chapman
• the Global Dry Toilet Club of Finland, an example of Scandinavian nations' typical frankness regarding bodily functions.
• Gizmodo has some exciting news in toilets, including the new Japanese nanotech toilet ceramics, which resist stains and soiling using technology similar to nanopants.
• The Sulabh International Museum of Toilets in New Delhi, India: the Aryan Code of Toilets (1500 BC) Ancient India Manusmriti Vishnupuran
• Toilets of the World

---

 

You scored as Idealist. Idealism centers around the belief that we are moving towards something greater. An odd mix of evolutionist and spiritualist, you see the divine within ourselves, waiting to emerge over time. Many religious traditions express how the divine spirit lost its identity, thus creating our world of turmoil, but in time it will find itself and all things will again become one. Idealist 63% Existentialist 63% Cultural Creative 63% Modernist 56% Materialist 56% Postmodernist 56% Romanticist 38% Fundamentalist 13% What is Your World View? (updated) created with QuizFarm.com

But interestingly, changing my answer on one question that I "sat on the fence" upon shifts me to being an Existentialist (note that I'm tied at 63% correlation in Idealism, Existentialism and Cultural Creativism!). Well, John Fowles The Aristos was one of my favorite formative books in high school, even if it didn't make the list of the World's 10 Most Dangerous Books. [via Pinko Feminist Hellcat]

---

 

• Looking for fun at a scenic New York summer getaway? Check out the Plattsburgh Press-Republican's 2005 "Adirondacks: The Guidebook," put together by Cynthia Potts at EclecticEveryday.
• The bunnies and the Bean: a la the great Australian plague, the AP reports that Chicago's Millennium Park is being overrun with rabbits.

  These rabbits have good taste. Cottontail rabbits are munching through hundreds of plants in the $13.2 million Lurie Garden in Chicago's Millennium Park, causing authorities to bring out the wire box traps and vegetable bait.
  ...
  About 100 [cottontail] rabbits have been trapped and moved since February, said the park's project supervisor Ed Uhlir. "We're keeping on top of it," he said. But considering that rabbits can give birth to five to seven litters each year, with four to five babies in each litter, that may be an ongoing challenge.
  
  Professional rabbit wranglers from ABC Humane Wildlife Rescue and Relocation in Arlington Heights capture the animals and move them to private land in the western suburbs. Neighboring Grant Park has battled bunnies for years. Uhlir said he suspects that the rabbits may have migrated from Grant Park by hopping across the BP Bridge, a crossing designed by well-known architect Frank Gehry.

• Unfields1 on )))unfoundsound + foundsound))) is an experimental open-source audio work by Philadelphia dj fidget:

  unfields are audio snapshots of the world that surrounds us, taken from the subjective point of view of the artist who recorded them. they are provided as is, without any processing, along with the inevitable imperfections which are inherent during this kind of recording procedure.

  ...on this particular day, which was a friday, late afternoon, during rush-hour, the sounds were swarming--which was just what i was looking for because i was collecting sounds for a project that centered around urban noise. so i figured to go to ground zero, which in philadelphia means city hall. ...as you go from the outside to the underground, you have to walk through tile-lined, tunnel-like places which are ideal spots for street musicians to perform because the reverberation is so great. on this outing, i caught a white kid with dreads playing a bongo alongside a middle-aged black man strumming the electric guitar while sounding just like (if not better) than al green. i fell in love!!

  unfields1 is brought to you by fidget (erin anderson), an experimental electronic musician, a philadelphia dj, one-half of flowchart alongside sean o'neal, and most importantly a found sounds/field recordings junkie. her gathering of field recordings took place in foundsound's hometown of philadelphia.

  [via Radio Free Polygon @ mp3blogs]

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