I went through their "catalog", which is pretty extensive. The level of detail (exposed spines on the decapitated, brain matter on Jane Mansfield, melted fat & charred flesh on Joan of Arc) is impressive, but pretty repulsive. There must be some twisted "black trenchcoaters" out there collecting this stuff.
It's a MURAL when it's painted on a building you own or with permission of the owner.
It's GRAFITTI or VANDALISM when someone paints something they don't own or have permission to paint.
It's got nothing to do with skill or artistic ability. The vellow-talliwacker-painting vandal is just less artistically skilled than the vandal who painted the Goya knockoff. Catch both vandals and have them spend a few weekend cleaing it all off. That little "disincentive" really put the brakes on the formerly grafitti-laden NYC subway trains.
If you want to paint big murals, get somebody to pay you to do it on their property like Banksy has somehow managed. If you do it on public property, you should be suitably punished. Anybody remember how Singapore handled Michael Fay? heh heh
I think the Lysol is (pretty much at least) the same... I would imagine that the "suggested concentration" for this use would be pretty weak -- the old label probably tell to add only a little to a lot of water.
Actually, if you go to the link, you'll see that the uniform in the picture is the *daily* attire at that school and has been for a LONG time. Some of the other schools reserve their most archaic attire for special occasions, but this school is big on tradition. I'll bet they don't take a lot of whining and bad behaviour from the kids either. Sure it's a bit goofy, but only because it's foreign to us. I think it looks a whole lot better than the falling-down-pants & sidewise hat thugwear permitted in government schools in the US.
It's not like some exec in Minnesota approves every little gizmo sold for varied regional markets! Rather, there is undoubtedly a product development group in Japan or Red China that makes such decisions for products sold to the Oriental markets. Cultural norms are different everywhere; that's why such decisions are generally made a little closer to the market. When they aren't, there are always some occasional gaffs.
It was odd that in my above posting, the word K-N-O-B was censored into "****". I intended no off-color meaning, but apparently it's a 4 letter word, and thus suspect.
I'm probably gonna take a lot of heat for this, but I can see why they want to ban him.
As prosthetics engineering keeps improving, there is no doubt that engineers can come up with a better "running leg" than humans are born with. Such a prosthetic can be *highly* specialized for the event the athlete competes in. So maybe a "running leg" wouldn't be great for daily living, but it might be GREAT for sprinting. Pistorius is a sprinter in fact, and his lower legs are made of carbon fibre -- probably MUCH lighter than human legs and helped even more by the fact that the running shoe can be designed right into the prothetics. Low mass = low inertia and that lets a sprinter sprint *really* well. Additionally, the dimensions of the legs themselves can be redesigned away from the proportions of the normal human body to optimize them for sprinting -- maybe a short "foot" and a long lower leg is best or maybe the reverse. No "able bodied" (!) runner has this knob to turn. The fact that Pistorius *never competed* in track events before 3 years ago and is now (nearly) Olympic caliber should tell you something.
And even if high tech prosthetics engineering isn't yet quite up to biological legs, they will be sooner or later (ala Steve Austin - he could run 60 mph!). How do you draw the line in what is acceptable and what is not? It is best that they set the policy sooner rather than later. The worst thing would be to outlaw them after people start winning medals - there wind up being a whole slew of questionable "champions" that way.
The Cologne Cathedral (Kölner Dom) is definitely worthy of being on the list. It was the world's tallest building at its completion in the late 19th C. (it was started in the 13th century!) and remains one of the world's greatest examples of gothic architecture. If you are ever in Cologne, be sure to visit it, climb the tower, and see the treasury which contains a lot of remarkable art, scupture, and reliquaries. Check out the cathedral at:
I was pleasantly surprised that nothing from Frank Lloyd Wright make the Top 10. Even the iconic engineering-challenged Falling(down)water only came in at #29. That was a lot higher than I would have ranked it, but I tended to derate architecture that crumbles in the decades immediately following completion.
I was also glad to see bridges were included! But putting the Brooklyn Bridge below the World Trade Center? Ugh! But I guess the WTC earns a certain measure of pity points that are hard to counter.
I love collecting the original books of this sort from the Victorian and Edwardian eras and am *thrilled* that the genre seems to have been revived. I don't have a copy of this yet, but will shortly -- probably both the US and UK editions, since they seem a good bit different.
A tip for the curious: You can find a TON of free old downloadable PDF books (scans of originals, not plain text!) for boys (and lots more) on Google Books. Just go to www.books.google.com, enter "Boys" in the search window and (important!) make sure the radio button "Full View books" is checked (otherwise, you get a lot of promotional excerpts from modern books offered for sale as well). Select what you want and take a lookie. On the right of the page, there is a "download" button to save the file as a *.pdf.
I have gobs of old arcane out-of-copywrite books I've downloaded this way. Lots of old technical/engineering books, and many pertaining to peculiar social topics of the day like ettiquette, eugenics, the "crisis" of white slavery, the temperance & abolitionist movements, then-contemporary politics, etc. -- all stuff that will never be reproduced but offers a remarkable 1st source viewpoint on history of the day. Have fun!
The problem with pushing train speeds (at least those using semi-conventional tracks) is that they are EXTREMELY vulnerable to terrorism or even "stupid adoloscent hijinks" like stuff on the tracks. It's impossible to completely patrol the entire stretch of tracks and even a very small charge or weakened piece of track (either almost undetectable -- almost invisible if done by properly skilled criminals) would spell disaster. Since kinetic energy is a function of the square of the speed of the object, a train moving at 280 mph will have 16x (!!!) the kinetic energy of a 70 mph train (given the same mass). Combine this vulnerability with the "media prominence" of such a project and it's a very ripe terrorist target. Al-Quaeda terrorists attacked both Spain's and England's conventional railway systems already. Think how they must be licking their chops over this thing.
I thought *for sure* this had to be an urban legend, but it's being reported simultaneously on a bunch of UK and Australian news sites. I guess they could all get fooled at once, but maybe not.
Anyhow, the whole thing tells me that the Japanese are turning into decadent airheads -- exactly what they used to mock the West for being. It's just taken them a bit longer... Other Oriental countries will be next.
The entire world emulates Paris Hilton & Nicole Richie. Scary.
It's GRAFITTI or VANDALISM when someone paints something they don't own or have permission to paint.
It's got nothing to do with skill or artistic ability. The vellow-talliwacker-painting vandal is just less artistically skilled than the vandal who painted the Goya knockoff. Catch both vandals and have them spend a few weekend cleaing it all off. That little "disincentive" really put the brakes on the formerly grafitti-laden NYC subway trains.
If you want to paint big murals, get somebody to pay you to do it on their property like Banksy has somehow managed. If you do it on public property, you should be suitably punished. Anybody remember how Singapore handled Michael Fay? heh heh
I think the Lysol is (pretty much at least) the same... I would imagine that the "suggested concentration" for this use would be pretty weak -- the old label probably tell to add only a little to a lot of water.
As prosthetics engineering keeps improving, there is no doubt that engineers can come up with a better "running leg" than humans are born with. Such a prosthetic can be *highly* specialized for the event the athlete competes in. So maybe a "running leg" wouldn't be great for daily living, but it might be GREAT for sprinting. Pistorius is a sprinter in fact, and his lower legs are made of carbon fibre -- probably MUCH lighter than human legs and helped even more by the fact that the running shoe can be designed right into the prothetics. Low mass = low inertia and that lets a sprinter sprint *really* well. Additionally, the dimensions of the legs themselves can be redesigned away from the proportions of the normal human body to optimize them for sprinting -- maybe a short "foot" and a long lower leg is best or maybe the reverse. No "able bodied" (!) runner has this knob to turn. The fact that Pistorius *never competed* in track events before 3 years ago and is now (nearly) Olympic caliber should tell you something.
And even if high tech prosthetics engineering isn't yet quite up to biological legs, they will be sooner or later (ala Steve Austin - he could run 60 mph!). How do you draw the line in what is acceptable and what is not? It is best that they set the policy sooner rather than later. The worst thing would be to outlaw them after people start winning medals - there wind up being a whole slew of questionable "champions" that way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cologne_cathedral
I was also glad to see bridges were included! But putting the Brooklyn Bridge below the World Trade Center? Ugh! But I guess the WTC earns a certain measure of pity points that are hard to counter.
A tip for the curious: You can find a TON of free old downloadable PDF books (scans of originals, not plain text!) for boys (and lots more) on Google Books. Just go to www.books.google.com, enter "Boys" in the search window and (important!) make sure the radio button "Full View books" is checked (otherwise, you get a lot of promotional excerpts from modern books offered for sale as well). Select what you want and take a lookie. On the right of the page, there is a "download" button to save the file as a *.pdf.
I have gobs of old arcane out-of-copywrite books I've downloaded this way. Lots of old technical/engineering books, and many pertaining to peculiar social topics of the day like ettiquette, eugenics, the "crisis" of white slavery, the temperance & abolitionist movements, then-contemporary politics, etc. -- all stuff that will never be reproduced but offers a remarkable 1st source viewpoint on history of the day. Have fun!
Anyhow, the whole thing tells me that the Japanese are turning into decadent airheads -- exactly what they used to mock the West for being. It's just taken them a bit longer... Other Oriental countries will be next.
The entire world emulates Paris Hilton & Nicole Richie. Scary.