I can now die a happy geek.
Last week, I sent a New York Times article about a Starbucks knockoff in Ethopia to the most popular blog on the Web, BoingBoing. Technology journalist/Internet starlet Xeni Jardin posted it, as well as a link back to newley.com.
The idea of world-wide Starbucks rip-offs has since gained momentum, spurring numerous follow-up posts. Thus, I gleefully take credit for staring my very first meme (though I hate that term).
A few years back, when I was living in Ecuador, Jill and I went to the sleepy coastal town of Puerto Lopez for a beach vacation. We stayed at the excellent Hosteria Mandala. As we were checking out, I noticed that the owners of the place, an Italian-German couple in their 40’s, had a big coffee table-sized book on the reception counter.
I took a closer look; It was called The Codex Seraphinianus. I’d never seen anything like it — the thing was enormously thick; it contained page after page of surreal, sci-fi-inspired illustrations, and it was written in an unidentifiable text. I never forgot the book’s title because I scribbled it in my journal; every so often, over the next year or so, I’d come across my hastily-written note and wonder about that strange book. I even searched amazon.com and google for it but never found anything.
Then, just the other day, quite by accident, I came across this site: THE UNOFFICIAL CODEX SERAPHINIANVS WEB SITE
The site provides this acronym for Seraphiniaus, and provides an introduction:
Strange and Extraordinary Representations of Animals and Plants and Hellish Incarnations of Normal Items from the Annals of Naturalist/Unnaturalist Luigi Serafini
This web site is dedicated to giving information (what little there is) on the weirdest book in the world, the CODEX SERAPHINIANUS. The Codex is a collection of original artwork by Italian artist Luigi Serafini, presented as a travalogue or scientific study of an alien world. Unlike such alien worlds as Darwin IV in Barlowe’s Expedition, which one might find in a science fiction novel, the world in the Codex is obviously some kind of perverse reflection of our own. All of the Codex is presented entirely in an obscure alien writing. This writing, in combination with the bizarre pictures, is what finally puts the Codex in its own league for weirdness. For instance, on one page is a “Rosetta Stone” – only it just translates Codex script into another alien language. A lecturer presenting the “Stone” is nonchalantly stabbing a red blob inside of it while he points out aspects of the script. The whole effect is unimaginable, even after several “readings”, and I intend to stop failing to describe it now.
Here’re a couple of the tamer illustrations; these only just scratch the surface:
And:
This is one is typical of the many darker illustrations:
Apparently the book was published in the late 70’s and can be ordered online from an Italian bookseller. For more info and typical illustrations, check out this guy’s account of obtaining a copy in an Italian bookstore. There’s a Wikipedia page for the book, too, which contains more details.
AP: “N.J. May Ban Drivers’ Smoking”:
Ashtrays have been disappearing in cars like fins on Cadillacs, and so could smoking while driving in New Jersey, under a measure introduced in the Legislature.
Although the measure faces long odds, it still has smokers incensed and arguing it’s a Big Brother intrusion that threatens to take away one of the few places they can enjoy their habit.
Andi G. sends along this exceptional product. I give you The Nap Cap.
The News-Times of Danbury, CT has this interesting report about undocumented workers from Ecuador.
Some stuff I didn’t know:
If all the people who boarded boats in Ecuador last year and sailed toward the United States gathered in one spot, they could fill the University of Connecticut’s 40,000-seat Rentschler Field — and then some.
And that doesn’t count the tens of thousands who tried coming to America by land and by air.
Danbury officials have noticed for years the unusual influx of people from the South American nation that has 13 million people in a land area slightly smaller than Nevada.
Now national officials are taking notice as well.
Last week, U.S. Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., attached an amendment dealing specifically with Ecuador to the $22 billion Foreign Relations Act, which was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives by a wide margin.
Burton’s amendment asks the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security to study ways to thwart illegal immigration and human trafficking in Ecuador. Burton wants the federal agencies to report back in six months.
And:
The small country is now South America’s largest exporter of illegal immigrants to the United States, according to the report.
Between 1990 and 2000, the number of illegal immigrants from Ecuador to the United States nearly tripled, from 37,000 people a year to about 108,000 people.
As well as:
Ecuador is the second-most corrupt country in South America, according to the research report prepared for Congress. Its corruption is on the same level as Iraq and Sierra Leone.
When Lance Armstrong rides down the Champs-Elysées and into history on Sunday, he will join the pantheon of athletes who transcend their sport.
Cycling fanatics will forever debate whether Armstrong, who at nearly three minutes ahead is poised to claim his seventh consecutive victory in the Tour de France and then retire, is the best their sport has ever seen. But there is no question he is its most famous rider and first pop-cultural superstar, a man worthy of taking his place with the likes of Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan.
Lance Armstrong is a true American hero.
I read his powerful memoir “It’s Not About the Bike” last year (at the urging of a pal who also won a battle against testicular cancer). The book details not only the depths of his sickness — he was truly on death’s doorstep — but his determination to beat the odds and return to cycling.
To the naysayers who claim he used steroids to regain his strength, I say this: read the part in the book where he describes the hell that was his chemotherapy regimen. His sickness gave him a renewed will to live, and he says he’d never ingest any foreign substance that would endanger his health. I, for one, believe him.
For more on Lance, check out this excellent 2002 New Yorker article about his comeback.
Occam’s Razor is a theory that states that the simplest explanation is always best. And so it was with a little newley.com bug that I finally got around to fixing just now.
Those of you reading this page on Internet Exploder Explorer will note that newley.com is finally rendering correctly. Before, the sidebar on the left was often pushed down below the main column.
I’d assumed the problem, which had been nagging at me since I redesigned the site, was due to CSS or some other WordPress-related issue. I’ve spent a lot of time tweaking the coding for the site to no avail. But, alas, I remedied it by simply adjusting the photos I post here so that they fit in the main column.
Internet Explorer doesn’t resize such images; the vastly superior Firefox (or, as Mike F. reommends, Camino), does that automatically.
So the lesson: use Firefox. (It’s becoming more and more popular, but IE is still controls close to 90% of the browser market .) And always focus on the simplest fixes first.
(P.S. newley.com loads correctly on IE version 6, but leave a comment below if it doesn’t look right in an older version of IE — or any other browser you’re using.)
Some of you might’ve noticed that I’ve slowly been outsourcing all of my photos to flickr, the excellent Web-based photo management service. I’d experimented with it before and I liked it, but I found that the free version’s alloted storage space made it impractical. But then Wendy H. kindly hooked me up with a free pro account, and that changed everything.
In the same way that iTunes liberated my music from CDs, so too has flickr made my old photos — many of which had been lost deep in the bowels of newley.com — accessible once again.
I give you, therefore, virtually all of my digital pics; I’m still adding new images in bits and pieces, so stay tuned. Just last night I uploaded the pics from my first and second Thailand trips (back in ’01 and ’02, respectively), as well as my first ‘Nam journey (in ’02).
Best Mug Shot EVER, via Smoking Gun.
A fantastic story from the NY Times’s Juan Forero:
EL ALTO, Bolivia – In her red multilayered skirt, white pumps and gold-laced shawl, the traditional dress of the Aymara people, Ana Polonia Choque might well be preparing for a night of folk dancing or, perhaps, a religious festival.
But as Carmen Rosa, master of the ring and winner of 100 bone-crunching bouts in Bolivia’s colorful wrestling circuit, she is actually dressing for a night of mayhem.
With loyal fans screaming out her name, she climbs the corner ropes high above the ring, bounces once for momentum and flies high, arms outstretched for maximum effect. To the crowd’s delight, the dive flattens her adversary, MarÃa Remedios Condori, better known as Julia la Paceña (Julia from La Paz).
This, ladies and gentlemen, is “lucha libre,” Bolivia’s version of the wacky, tacky wrestling extravaganzas better known as World Wrestling Entertainment in the United States and Triple A in Mexico, which serve as a loose model. But there are no light shows, packed arenas or million-dollar showmen.
Most unbelievable passage:
“The cradle of freestyle wrestling is Mexico because that’s where the best fighters were – Hurricane RamÃrez, the Jalisco Lightning, the Blue Demon,” explained Juan Carlos Chávez, promoter of the Titans.
But now, he says proudly, Bolivia has its own stable of wrestlers who tussle in choreographed matches. And Bolivian organizers have introduced the innovation of fighting Cholitas, the indigenous women who wear bowler hats and multilayered skirts.
“I wanted to get people’s attention and fill up the coliseum,” said Juan Mamani, 46, the president of the Titans and a wrestler himself. “At first, I thought of fighting dwarves. I even brought in one from Peru. Then I thought of Cholitas. It’s been popular ever since.”
Incredulous emphasis mine. God help us if Juan ever discovers midget cholitas.