Categories
Misc.

Nalgene Bottles Inscribed with Foreign Language Cheat Sheets

SNP:

Bottles in Translation is a company that takes Nalgene Bottles and prints foreign language translations of popular words and phrases.

If you’re travelling in a foreign country and you’re embarrased of having to pull out a little translation book, you can pull out your drink bottle instead and look up foreign language translations while maintaining your cool.

The company offers translations in Spanish, French, and Italian, and offers bottles in six stylish colors.

$15.99 per bottle.

Interesting idea, but I have to say their tag line seems rather ridiculous: “Don’t stand out like a tourist; fit right in with…BOTTLES IN TRANSLATION!”

Because, you know, when you’re hiking Machu Picchu or bumming around Vilnius or eating banana pancakes on Khao San Road, no one will know you’re just a tourist when, confronted with a sticky situation, you turn to your custom-inscribed Nalgene instead of a phrase book.

“A Blogger is Just a Writer with a Cooler Name”

Great column from Simon Dumenco in AdAge:

…it occurred to me that there is no such thing as blogging. There is no such thing as a blogger. Blogging is just writing — writing using a particularly efficient type of publishing technology. Even though I tend to first use Microsoft Word on the way to being published, I am not, say, a Worder or Wordder.

It’s just software, people! The underlying creative/media function remains exactly the same.

Dumenco says there’s a false dichotomy between traditional journalism and blogging — that the two aren’t necessarily different:

A lot of the tendency to draw lines internally, I think, has to do with the fact that most old-school publishing organizations with online components invested heavily in the ’90s in then-state-of-the-art, but now-cumbersome online publishing systems, which are functionally very different from more nimble blogging software solutions. But over the next few years those legacy systems will be phased out and everyone publishing online will be using some form of what’s now commonly thought of as blogging software.

Ultimately, it comes down to this: In the very near future, there are only going to be two types of media people: those who can reliably work and publish (or broadcast) incredibly fast, and those … who can’t.

Not to Be All-Japan-All-the-Time, But…

“Shutting Themselves In,” about Japanese boys who hole up in their rooms for years at a time;

“10 things to do for free in Tokyo”;

Weird Japanese TV clips compilation.

Robots and Japan

The December 20th issue of the Economist contains a fascinating, must-read story about robots and Japan. Why is that Westerners tend to be afraid of artificial intelligence, and yet many Japanese actually prefer the company of robots to real humans? The answer, the Economist says, has to do with religion and popular culture:

Few Japanese have the fear of robots that seems to haunt westerners in seminars and Hollywood films. In western popular culture, robots are often a threat, either because they are manipulated by sinister forces or because something goes horribly wrong with them. By contrast, most Japanese view robots as friendly and benign. Robots like people, and can do good.

The Japanese are well aware of this cultural divide, and commentators devote lots of attention to explaining it. The two most favoured theories, which are assumed to reinforce each other, involve religion and popular culture.

Glowing Pigs

BBC:

Scientists in Taiwan say they have bred three pigs that “glow in the dark”.

They claim that while other researchers have bred partly fluorescent pigs, theirs are the only pigs in the world which are green through and through.

The pigs are transgenic, created by adding genetic material from jellyfish into a normal pig embryo.

I totally want one.

Roadside Place Mats

Pretty cool. (Via BB).

Categories
Misc.

The Prejudice Map

“According to Google, people in the world are known for…”

The map doesn’t include data for two particular nations I’m interested in, given my history. So here’s what Ecuadorians and Taiwanese are known for, at least according to google.

Wonderful, wonderful stuff. (Via Kottke.)

More Links to the BFB2K5 Round-Up

More links to my Bloggers’ Favorite Books of 2005 survey:

del.icio.us/popular/books

Largehearted Boy

— Fimoculous.com’s massive 2005 compendium of year-end lists

Simplicity

The Olive Reader (Harper Perennial’s blog)

— Troy Worman’s Orbit Now! Personal Development blog

Chip’s Spynotebook

Hard, Cutting

Nervous Breakdown

— And don’t miss the ever-expanding comments to the post, which have proven to be quite amusing and informative, with “Joe Public” even making an appearance…

Categories
Misc.

On Chorks and Dreams Deferred

Chork and Choon

My buddy Tim M. send me this picture, and with it my dream has died an ugly and premature death. My dream of chorks. Of transforming the world of culinary implements.

You’ve heard me talk about the chorks time and time again — my idea to create chopsticks with tiny forks on their ends.

Well, it appears that some crafty sonofabitch in Thailand has beaten me to the punch. A friend of Tim’s wife Lia brought these bad boys back from Siam. My spirit is utterly crushed. Goodbye chorks. Would that I had created you first. (Although, there’s this: what’re the chances that the Thai entrepreneur who manufactured these things has prior art?)

James Frey: In Hot Water?

The Smoking Gun:

The Man Who Conned Oprah: “Book Club” author’s best-selling nonfiction memoir filled with fabrications, falsehoods, other fakery, TSG probe finds.