I'm sure that chess is not what pops into most people's minds when you say "hip hop music," but that's what RZA of Wu Tang Clan wanted to change.
He just launched a new website called WuChess, "the world's first online chess and Hip-Hop community," where you can get schooled in chess by both live and bot players: Link - via Super Punch
Before you get that trendy tattoo, read this article by Johnny Wright over at our pal YesButNoButYes blog:
With other fads, you can participate and not make it a lifetime commitment. You can take the double hoop earrings out pretend it never happened. (If you still have those, you need to take them out.) You can shave off your side-spike. You can take off your parachute pants. It's a little more of a chore to remove your Dane Cook "Su-Fi" tattoo.
For example:
4. The Neck Tattoo - This one seems to be growing in popularity. Hardly a day goes by when I don't see a child's name in fancy cursive tatted on a straphanger's neck while riding the 1 train. It's not a good idea unless you are a musician or professional athlete. You are essentially cashing in your respect in society with the neck tat. If you're going in for a job interview and you have a skull and crossbones tattoo peeking out from your shirt collar, I'm willing to wager you're not getting the gig.
Here's the top 10 Most Stupid Tattoos: Link - via Miss Cellania
The recently opened Sardar Bhagat Singh College of Technology and Management in India decided that they wanted someone really famous and powerful to be their leader.
So the school officials named Hanuman, the Hindu monkey god as chairman:
Hanuman, the popular god known for his strength and valor, has been named official chairman of the recently opened Sardar Bhagat Singh College of Technology and Management in northern India, a school official said Saturday.
The position comes with an incense-filled office, a desk and a laptop computer. Four chairs will be placed facing the empty seat reserved for the chairman and all visitors must enter the office barefoot, said Vivek Kangdi, the school's vice chairman.
"It is our belief that any job that has the blessings of Lord Hanuman is bound to be a success," said Kangdi.
http://robots.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/06/07/India.god.ap/index.html
The photo above is of a Hindu priest (in a wifebeater !?) performing prayers in front of a statue of Hanuman (Photo: AFP/Getty Images)
The giant cheese grater room divider above is an art piece called "Paravent," created by London-based Lebanese artist Mona Hatoum: Link
File this under Whaat?: Someone is holding Kelly Myers' lost dog Tinkerbell for ransom ... and when she called the police, they refused to help her:
The alleged kidnapper called the dog's owner Friday morning. But when Myers thanked the male caller and offered him a $50 reward, he demanded $200.
"I just couldn't believe it. I was honestly shocked that someone could do that. We love our pets like we love our children," Myers said.
Worried for her dog's safety, she called the Sheriff's Department, but they told her it was a civil matter.
We've posted about the Internet phenomenon of Garfield Minus Garfield, where the fat orange cat is removed from Jim Davis' comic strip (resulting in a bizarre yet strangely coherent depiction of Jon Arbuckle as a schizophrenic ).
Now meet Garkov by Josh Millard:
It’s a probability driven strip generator that builds Markov tables from transcripts of existing strips and then synthesizes and renders novel text as a new strip. The results are sometimes pretty apt and sometimes deeply weird, and I’m pretty happy with it so far.
(Markov chain is a probabilistic model)
Link - via Metafilter
If you've ever wondered, the rabinnical authorities in Israel have just ruled that giraffe is actually kosher to eat:
The giraffe belongs to the family of grazing animals that have cloven hooves and chew the cud, thereby making them consistent with kosher rules, but the milk test was the final confirmation.
"Indeed, the giraffe is kosher for eating," Rabbi Shlomo Mahfoud, who accompanied the researchers in their work, said.
"The giraffe has all the signs of a ritually pure animal, and the milk that forms curds strengthened that."
It's not fair that one girl gets to play Snow White, Japanese parents pressured teachers, so the school decided to modify the play slightly: 25 Snow Whites, no dwarfs and no wicked witch!
Actually, the "25 Snow Whites" play is part of a new trend of hyper-aggressive parentings in Japan and may signal a transformation in the basic character of a Japanese society:
Across Japan teachers are reporting an astonishing change in the character of parents, who, after decades of respectful silence, have become a super-aggressive army of complainers. The problem is that nobody can decide whether this is a good thing or not. Japan's mass media has opted to demonise them: a lavish television drama starting next month will present the monster parents as a vile symptom of a society that has lost all respect for its traditions and decorum. [...]
Within the category of monster parent Professor Morotomi identifies the most potent strain: the “teacher hunters”, who conspire in small groups to ensure that a particular teacher is dismissed. Occasionally, he said, this involves physically mobbing their victim at the school gates and screaming abuse until a letter of resignation is signed on the spot.
“The monsters are created in family restaurants and coffee shops — places where the mothers meet each other to talk and relax,” said Professor Morotomi. “Simple chats spiral into ‘emergency meetings'... the conversation becomes more emotional and radical and suddenly what began as a simple complaint becomes a monsterised army of parents.” The sudden switch marks what many believe is the symptom of deeper social troubles at the heart of Japan, a transformation that took root during Japan's long economic downturn of the 1990s and whose effects have only now erupted.
After finding out that there's actually no law against carrying gun openly, Kevin Jensen decided to make it part of his every day fashion - and to his surprise, no one bats an eye!
Here's the story of Open Carry, a movement whose mission is to promote carrying gun in public:
The Jensens are part of a fledgling movement to make a firearm as common an accessory as an iPod. Called "open carry" by its supporters, the movement has attracted grandparents, graduate students and lifelong gun enthusiasts like the Jensens.
"What we're trying to say is, 'Hey, we're normal people who carry guns,' " said Travis Deveraux, 36, of West Valley, a Salt Lake City suburb. Deveraux works for a credit card company and sometimes walks around town wearing a cowboy hat and packing a pistol in plain sight. "We want the public to understand it's not just cops who can carry guns."
Nicholas Riccardi of the Los Angeles Times has the story: Link
(Photo: George Frey / LA Times)
Remember the Neatorama post about a woman who married the Berlin Wall? Well, it turns out that she's not the only one. Here's a story about a woman who married the Eiffel Tower:
Erika La Tour Eiffel, 37, a former soldier who lives in San Francisco, has been in love with objects before. Her first infatuation was with Lance, a bow that helped her to become a world-class archer, she is fond of the Berlin Wall and she claims to have a physical relationship with a piece of fence she keeps in her bedroom.
But it is the Eiffel Tower she has pledged to love, honour and obey in an intimate ceremony attended by a handful of friends.
She has changed her name legally to reflect the bond.
Penn State scientists, led by Jennifer Loveland-Curtze and Jean Brenchley, discovered a 120,000-year-old ultra-small species of bacteria that lives two miles under the ice of a Greenland glacier!
The microorganism's ability to persist in this low-temperature, high-pressure, reduced-oxygen and nutrient-poor habitat makes it particularly useful for studying how life, in general, can survive in a variety of extreme environments on Earth and possibly elsewhere in the solar system. [...]
This new species is among the ubiquitous, yet mysterious, ultra-small bacteria, which are so tiny that the cells are able to pass through microbiological filters. In fact, some species have been found living in the ultra-purified water used for dialysis. "Ultra-small cells could be unknown contaminants in media and medical solutions that are thought to have been sterilized using filters," said Loveland-Curtze.
The ultra-small size of the new species could be one explanation for why it was able to survive for so long in the Greenland glacier. Called Chryseobacterium greenlandensis, the species is related genetically to certain bacteria found in fish, marine mud and the roots of some plants. The organism is one of only about 10 scientifically described new species originating from polar ice and glaciers.
(Photo: Todd Sowers of Penn State cutting an ice core sample using a bandsaw, credit: Todd Sowers)
Cuttlefish turns out to be a smart predator - in fact, so smart that they actually learn which animal to prey on before they are born!
Before they have even hatched, cuttlefish embryos can peer out of their eggs and spot potential prey. It is the first time any animal has been shown to learn visual images before they are born.
Ludovic Dickel and his colleagues at the University of Caen Basse-Normandy, France, made the discovery by placing crabs alongside cuttlefish eggs in a series of laboratory tanks. Those embryos exposed to crabs preferred them as prey later in life, the scientists report in the journal Animal Behaviour.
The young embryos must be able to see through their translucent egg case, the scientists believe, and learn which animals are worth hunting even before they have hatched. "This is the first time there is evidence of visual learning by embryos," said Dr Dickel.
As part of a group art project "20 Eventi," Jan Vormann came to the village of Bocchignano, Italy, and "fixed" old, crumbling walls there ... with LEGO!
http://www.janvormann.com/dispatchwork.php - via Boing Boing
Stacey Fearnall, whose father died of cancer, decided to shave her head for a cancer fundraising event. But when she returned to work at Nathaniels restaurant, where she worked as a waiter, she was laid off:
The mother of two, who was told by her boss to go home after she refused to wear a wig, was in tears when she returned home Tuesday just a half hour into her shift.
"When she went in she felt like there was something wrong with her,'' her husband said. "Nobody would really look at her, make eye contact. They didn't really say anything and it made her feel kind of less than human.''
It was a slow night so she came home early, but when she called to say she'd be in the next day, she was told not to bother, he added.
Nathaniels owner and chef Dan Hilliard defended his decision, saying the restaurant has certain standards. He prohibits male staff from wearing earrings and requires employees keep their hair at a reasonable length.
Ah, Iceland ... What's up with all these Scandinavian countries? (Wait, is Iceland Scandinavian, Nordic, or both? Anyways ...)
Here's a sad story of a polar bear, the first to swim to Iceland in 15 years, only to be shot dead by police:
The bear was spotted nonchalantly strolling along a road near the town of Skagafjördur yesterday morning around 9.30am by a farmer.
Experts say it had arrived on an ice floe and local laws stipulate they can be killed – despite the fact they are on the endangered species list – if one threatens humans or livestock.
Stefán Vagn Stefánsson, the chief police officer of a neighbouring town, took the decision to shoot it dead. He claimed no narcotics were available and a gun necessary to fire such drugs was in another part of Iceland 'so therefore it was necessary to kill it'. The animal was moving and we could not risk losing sight of it. Weather conditions were foggy and the bear was moving quickly.
But his version of events was hotly disputed by the chief veterinarian in the town of Blönduó. Egill Steingrímsson said he had the knockout drugs neccesary to immobilise the bear.
Previously on Neatorama: Rare White Moose? Let's Shoot It, Said Norwegians
