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If you’re lucky, you’ve probably got a nice walk in closet to store your stuff. Well, Barbra Streisand got one better:
"Instead of just storing my things in the basement, I can make a street of shops and display them," Streisand says.
See the photo gallery over at Harper’s Bazaar: Link (Photo: "My Passion for Design"/Viking) – via News of the Weird
Did you forget where you parked your car? Well, a new camera-based surveillance system in parking lots can help:
Santa Monica Place recently unveiled the nation’s first camera-based "Find Your Car" system. Shoppers who have lost track of their vehicle amid a maze of concrete ramps and angled stripes can simply punch their license plate number into a kiosk touch screen, which then displays a photo of the car and its location.
But what’s the price of that convenience? Can this system be used by Big Brother to snoop on where you are and what you’re doing?
But what if that magic involved an array of 24/7 surveillance cameras and was also available to police and auto repossessers? What if it could be tapped by jilted lovers, or that angry guy you accidentally cut off in traffic? Would the convenience be worth the loss of privacy?
Those are some of the questions civil libertarians and others are asking as technology capable of spying on motorists and pedestrians is converted to widespread commercial use.
Martha Groves of The Los Angeles Times has the story: Link (Photo: Mariah Tauger/LA Times)
Want to talk to strangers at the mall? Well, you better be talking about the mall itself or get a permit … at least that’s what the owners of the Westfield Galleria at Roseville, California, want:
They even had rules to enforce that behavior, but a state appellate court has starkly declared that the mall’s attempt to regulate conversation is unconstitutional. [...]
The specific rule at issue prohibits a person in the center’s common areas from "approaching patrons with whom he or she was not previously acquainted for the purpose of communicating with them on a topic unrelated to the business interests" of the mall or its tenants.
The court struck down the shopping mall rule:
The appellate court’s opinion dealt one way or another with possible conversations that the rules would prohibit:
Weather is a no-no, unless one is intuitive enough to observe how it may be affecting the size of the crowd at the mall. Teenagers who use the common areas for social gatherings, not necessarily limited to contemporaries they already know, are out of luck. Should someone stop you and ask directions to Sutter-Roseville Medical Center, you would be well advised to blow them off, lest your humanitarian instincts lead you astray.
Denny Walsh of the Sacramento Bee has more: Link – via Obscure Store
When a Toronto shopping mall was closed during the G20 Summit (AKA New World Order meeting, for all you conspiracy theorists), a citizen became furious because he couldn’t shop.
Of course, the Internet was there to document the whole shopping rage thing. Folks, I think we’ve found just discovered what would happen if you cross the Epic Beard Man with Nancy Kerrigan: Link [Break video]
The largest shopping mall in the world is no longer the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. The South China Mall near Guangzhou, China is twice as big! This is not a success story; there are only about a dozen stores open in the giant facility. However, because the mall is considered “too big to fail”, it is kept open with a staff working every day. The series POV tells the story in a 13 minute video. Link -via Dark Roasted Blend
