Click on the image and prepare to read the best caption in the history of journalism.
(From Functional Ambivalent via kentuckyshade.)
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Author: Newley
Hi. I'm Newley Purnell. I cover technology and business for The Wall Street Journal, based in Hong Kong. I use this site to share my stories and often blog about the books I'm reading, tech trends, sports, travel, and our dog Ginger. For updates, get my weekly email newsletter.
If you think I’m a paranoid tight-ass when it comes to traffic cameras (and don’t miss Ben P. issuing me a cerebral beat-down in the comments) , you can only imagine how I feel about the privacy implications involved in Korea’s plan to build a high-tech utopia.
NYT:
Imagine public recycling bins that use radio-frequency identification technology to credit recyclers every time they toss in a bottle; pressure-sensitive floors in the homes of older people that can detect the impact of a fall and immediately contact help; cellphones that store health records and can be used to pay for prescriptions.
These are among the services dreamed up by industrial-design students at California State University, Long Beach, for possible use in New Songdo City, a large “ubiquitous city” being built in South Korea.
A ubiquitous city is where all major information systems (residential, medical, business, governmental and the like) share data, and computers are built into the houses, streets and office buildings. New Songdo, located on a man-made island of nearly 1,500 acres off the Incheon coast about 40 miles from Seoul, is rising from the ground up as a U-city.
But seriously, to clarify my stance: I’m all for gadgets in instances like this, when they promise to make our lives easier. But when techno-wizzardry increases the chance of me getting a traffic citation, I’m all like “down with the autoritarian surveillance state, yo!”
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Vegan Lunch Box Fare: A Screenplay
FADE IN
The scene: an elementary school lunchroom.
TYLER (opening lunch box):
Oh man my mom is the best — ham and cheese and a bag of Lays! And a pudding! Awesome!
MANDY (extracting food from a brown paper bag):
Alright — peanut butter and jelly, nacho cheese Doritos, and some Oreos! I love it when my dad packs my lunch!
TYLER (turning to ZAK, who sits staring at his opened lunch box, looking dejected):
What weird-ass stuff did your mom pack for you today, Zak?
ZAK (shaking head, sighing):
Oh, you know. The same old vegan crap. Yesterday it was quinoa amaranth timbale. On Monday it was ‘ham’ roll-ups with a pumpkin carob chip muffin. Today it looks like a Tennessee corn pone muffin. Pure torture. Every day.
MANDY (laughing):
Vegans are funny.
FADE OUT
ROLL CREDITS
WILLIAMSBURG, VA—In an unprecedented effort to fight injustice, reggae music legend Bob Marley, dead since 1981, rose from his grave in Jamaica early Sunday to free his most devoted followers, American college fraternity members, “from the bonds of oppression.”
Marley’s recordings, which originally raised awareness of the Rastafarian faith and the plight of underprivileged Jamaicans and Africans, have taken on an even deeper meaning as the Greek fraternal system, a maligned, misunderstood minority group itself, has fervently embraced the driving, soulful music.
(Via Ben P.)
Not only did he marry Alice Kim (nephew of Francis Ford Coppola) when she was 20 and he was 40, but he and his wife have named their newborn Kal-el Coppola Cage.
Kal-el? Yes, Kal-el — Superman’s birth name*.
*Yes, I am aware that Newley is (ahem) unconventional. I am not, however, named after a comic book hero. A blacksmith on a cheesy TV Western series, maybe. But a comic book hero, no way.
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Lighted Slippers
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Lee LeFever’s TwinF
Social design consultant Lee LeFever, whose site, Commoncraft, I enjoy (and who, I recently discovered, in a small world moment, has a good friend from my adopted hometown of Beaufort, SC), has just announced that he’ll be spending all of 2006 traveling around the world with his wife, Sachi. They leave their Seattle home in December.
To compile travel tips from friends and the public at large — as well as to document their travels from the road — they’ve launched a site called The World is Not Flat (no relation to the similarly-named Tom Friedman book). Lee gave me a sneak peek at the site and I submitted a pean to traveling in Vietnam.
Check out TwinF and, if you’re so inclined, post a recommendation or two. I think this’ll be an intersting experiment in grassroots travel advice and Web-based communications during their sojourn.
You know those ubiquitous red-light cameras in DC? Well, they’re good at two things: 1) they turn a hell of a profit, and 2) they erode our civil liberties (Hello? Fourth Amendment?). But despite what the DC gubment says, they absoultely do not prevent accidents.
WaPo:
The District’s red-light cameras have generated more than 500,000 violations and $32 million in fines over the past six years. City officials credit them with making busy roads safer.
But a Washington Post analysis of crash statistics shows that the number of accidents has gone up at intersections with the cameras. The increase is the same or worse than at traffic signals without the devices.
Three outside traffic specialists independently reviewed the data and said they were surprised by the results. Their conclusion: The cameras do not appear to be making any difference in preventing injuries or collisions.“The data are very clear,” said Dick Raub, a traffic consultant and a former senior researcher at Northwestern University’s Center for Public Safety. “They are not performing any better than intersections without cameras.”
(Indignant emphasis mine.)
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The Killing Fields Cafe
PHNOM PENH – A new Cambodian cafe is offering diners a slice of life under the Khmer Rouge, with a menu featuring rice-water and leaves, and waitresses dressed in the black fatigues worn by Pol Pot’s ultra-Maoist guerrillas.
Newly opened across the road from Phnom Penh’s notorious Tuol Sleng “S-21” Khmer Rouge interrogation and torture center, the cafe is meant to remind Cambodians of the 1975-1979 genocide in which an estimated 1.7 million people died.
But the set “theme menu” of salted rice-water, followed by corn mixed with water and leaves, and dove eggs and tea at $6 a time is proving too much to swallow for many visitors.
(Via BoingBoing.)
UPDATE: Apparently the joint has been closed down by the government for operating without a license.
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If I Were Free Later This Month…
…I would totally go to the Arirang games in North Korea.
American tourists will have a rare opportunity this month to visit North Korea’s capital and see a mass sports festival. North Korea will allow United States passport holders to enter on visas from either Oct. 8 to 12 or Oct. 15 to 18 to go to the Arirang 2005 festival. Travelers will have to fly from Beijing to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, on the country’s airline, Air Koryo, and then will be able to attend the games and see other parts of the country.
(Via Gridskipper.)