The Swiss bank UBS has issued a new dress code for its employees. The document is 43 pages long and goes into exhaustive detail about how bank workers should present themselves to the public, including underwear colors and makeup application:

The regulations designate a 1.5 millimeter maximum fingernail length for men, suggests that female bankers wear makeup and put on perfume directly after showering and not after lunch, advocates that shoes be changed daily to bring greater levels of “peace and serenity,” and mandates employee underwear that is skin-toned and “always made of superior quality textiles.”[...]

Men should don footgear with a shoehorn; women should not wear new shoes. Suits must not only be charcoal grey, black, or dark blue, but dress coats must always be buttoned when employees stand, and open when sitting. Skirts must reach the middle of the knee with a tolerance for extending 5 centimeters below the joint.

Stockings that are "opaque" are out. Socks? Always black. Women may wear no more than seven jewels, men three. Scarves are compulsory, and to be tied with “authorized knots.”

Link via Lowering the Bar | Photo via Flickr user twicepix used under Creative Commons license

HGTV forum user Kraw27 built a replica of the set from the TV show M*A*S*H in his backyard. As you can see from the other pictures, even the interiors are duplicated in stunning detail.

Link and More Pictures via Boing Boing

Chenoa, a hairdresser in Vancouver, made a dress that looks like the opening crawl from Episode IV of Star Wars. Her headband reads "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...."

http://theg33k.tumblr.com/post/1462379558/my-friend-dressed-up-as-the-scroll-from-star-wars via Great White Snark | Photo: Chris Eng

For more than thirty years, Dragon magazine published a regular Q&A column for Dungeons & Dragons players who need clarification about rules and backgrounds. Chris Sims of Comics Alliance combed through the archives to find the strangest and/or most disturbing questions that ever made it into the magazine.

Link

This toilet by INAX USA has everything going for it. The lid lifts as you approach it. There's a built-in air deodorizer, seat warmer, light, and stereo. It flushes automatically. Two self-cleaning nozzles spray water with varying intensity to wash and/or massage the user. The only downside obvious in the photograph is a complete lack of privacy.

http://www.inax-usa.com/innovation/integrated-toilet/index.html via DVICE | Photo: INAX USA

Jeff Weber, an industrial designer, broke one of his heels in 2005. He found the crutches that he used while recuperating inadequate, so designed new ones:

His new crutch would employ an articulated mesh saddle that remained parallel to the armpit even as the angle of the column changed with the gait of the user. The column itself would curve away from the hip, so walkers could avoid angling the crutches outward into a chest-pincering pyramid. The grips would be shaped individually for each hand. (“For some reason we have ‘handed’ shoes, but not crutches,” Weber notes.) The feet would be rounded, so they could roll forward with each step. And the entire structure would use only 58 percent as much aluminum as regular crutches, making them far lighter.

http://www.popsci.com/bown/2010/innovator/leg | Photo: Popular Science

Artist Paul Destieu created an art installation inspired by a common error in Microsoft Windows. "My Favorite Landscape" shows the Windows XP wallpaper called "Green Hill" duplicated multiple times.

Link via Geekosystem

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This promotional video for Google Docs shows how the utility's presentation options can be used to create a fairly sophisticated animated short. It took 3 animators 3 days to complete the 413 slides. You can view the file at the link.

Link via Urlesque

A company called Kind Fairy in the Ukrainian town of Dniprodzerzhynsk will provide you with a drinking buddy for an evening. It costs about $18. Manager Yulia Peyeva explained:

"Virtually all of our people are talented. They can play guitar, sing or recite poetry. Today you may want to talk about art and tomorrow to read Faust," said Peyeva, adding that the firm does not encourage binge drinking.

She said the service is enjoying strong demand, and that the firm employs a number of psychologists among its staff of boozing partners.

Link via Marginal Revolution | Photo (unrelated) by Flickr user katesheets used under Creative Commons license

deviantART member Matt McManis created a mosaic of Link from The Legend of Zelda using Skittles. Click on the link to see similar depictions of Mario and characters from Final Fantasy.

Link via Comics Alliance

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This video allegedly shows three men on sleds being towed by a Swedish Air Force fighter jet. As it prudently warns at the end, don't try this at home with your own jet.

via Everyday, No Days Off

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Teddy, a six-year old Cocker Spaniel, can cross his eyes on command. How do you train a dog to do that?

via Boing Boing

The Earth's magnetic field fluctuates in intensity. But until recently, most scientists thought that it wouldn't change more than 16% in a century. Slag recovered from a 3,000-year old Egyptian copper mine indicates that the magnetic field could double in just 20 years. Ron Shaar of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem explained:

Their measurements, plus theoretical models, showed that the magnetic field’s strength peaked around 3,000 years ago in the middle Egypt’s Iron Age.

“We don’t have volcanic glass in Israel, but we do have slag,” Shaar said. When the ancient Egyptians (in what is now Israel) melted ore to produce copper, they created a lot of leftover molten rock that they threw immediately on a waste heap. The rock cooled quickly, preserving a signature of the magnetic field.[...]

Back in the lab, the team melted and re-froze some of the slag in the presence of a known magnetic field, to make sure they could trust the rock to faithfully trap the field strength. Then they measured the field strength in the raw slag.

They found that the magnetic field abruptly spiked twice during the 180 years they studied, once around 2,990 years ago and once around 2,900 years ago. Both times, the field jumped up in strength and then fell by at least 40 percent in the space of about 20 years.

“These geomagnetic spikes are very different from what we see now or have seen before,” Shaar said

Link via reddit | Photo: unrelated piece of copper slag by the University of California at Irvine

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19 girls in Karachi, Pakistan, crammed into a Smart Car in order to break a Guinness World Record. The previous record, 18, was set last January in Australia.

Link via Geekologie

The programmers at a web development company in Brooklyn, New York, altered the front door to their office so that it opens whenever someone checks into that location using Foursquare. Nick Hall, one of the owners of Apartm.net, explained how it works:

The key to the Foursquare door is a little Web relay device, which actually hosts its own little webpage (aw!) that the brothers use to run some Javascript. "The relay is supposed to be for industrial use," says Hall. "I think it's meant to be used to control pumps."[...]

A Mac Mini chills out near the door and makes requests to Foursquare's API every three seconds, looking for new check-ins at Apartm.net. When the computer finds one, it contacts the Web relay, which sents a simple binary bbzzzz! through a little copper cable that has been soldered to the intercom button in the hallway. The intercom is fooled into thinking the button has been pressed, and it unlocks the door via the building's existing buzzer system.

Link | Image: Foursquare