Promotion Fail

You make it all the way through Friday the 13th and then this crap happens.

"Mailorama va distribuer des dizaines de milliers d'Euros en cash dans les rues de Paris," claims the Mailorama.fr website - at least for the moment. For the monolithically English speaking, that roughly translates to "Mailorama will distribute tens of thousands of euros in cash in the streets of Paris." Didn't work out that way.

Mailorama, an email marketing website in France, set out to promote their service by having a drive-by-giveaway, tossing envelopes of cash to people from a van as it passed the Eiffel Tower. However when an unexpectedly large crowd estimated at 5000 showed up, blocking traffic and causing safety concerns, police and  Mailorama agreed to call off the publicity stunt.

The disappointed crowd overturned a car. At least 10 people were arrested.

The Mailorama fiasco is right up there with other great promotional disasters. My favorites are the (real) Disco Demolition night and the (fake) WKRP Thanksgiving Giveaway.

Disco Demolition night took place in Chicago in 1979. Disco music, the signature music of the 70's, had divided the nation into those who could do The Hustle and those who couldn't. A growing rejection of what had become the Disco norm was spawning the New Wave and Punk movements, and in Chicago a disc jockey expressed his disdain for Disco by destroying Disco records by any means possible. His claim to fame came when he was scheduled to blow up boxes of LPs between games of a Chicago White Sox double-header.

The White Sox were owned by Bill Veeck, a shameless promoter who had once sent midget Eddie Gaedel up to bat in a major league baseball game. For him the Disco Demolition night was a no-brainer.

The demolition took place, but then, as with the Mailorama crowd, the scene turned ugly with hundreds of people coming onto the field and starting a bonfire in center field. The second game of the double header was cancelled (the White Sox ultimately forfeited the game - the last time an American League game was forfeited).

Still, IMHO, the best promotion failure was from the fictional WKRP radio station from the TV series of the same name. If you know the story it needs no explanation, and if you haven't, well, I won't spoil it for you, just watch the clip (sorry, can't find an embeddable version).

Sources:
CBS News
Mailorama

American Gods

I now have autographed copies of the latest books by Hulk Hogan and John Irving, both of whom were at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park last night in a bizarre juxtaposition of crowds and personalities. Both of them draw a crowd of minions even on a suburban Tuesday night.

I arrived at Third Place Books around 4:15, and was fortunate to be there at all. I only found out about the events Monday evening. In a change of routine I haven't been taking the paper lately, but Monday night I picked up a copy of the Seattle Times on a whim. I noticed John Irving's familiar face in Mary Ann Gwinn's column - and when I read that Hulk Hogan was going to be there on the same day I was completely sold, even though it meant that I would not get to attend Steve Martin's banjo concert at Benaroya Hall (no, I am not kidding).

Hogan wasn't due to start signing until 5 o'clock, so I had some time. Third Place Books is on the upper level of this small, suburban mall on the northern tip of Lake Washington. Lake Forest Park has always been a town I drive through to get somewhere else: a bridge-less route into Seattle or a right turn on the way to a track meet in Shoreline. The mall is built on a grade. There are two levels that are largely independent; depending on the street you enter from you see what appear to be two different malls. There is a space an escalator ride up from Rite Aid that joins the two sections like the pin joining the two hands of a clock; that space is split roughly in half with the food court on one side and Third Place Books on the other. I slipped over to the food court and picked up a slice of pepperoni pizza and a cran-grape juice to steel myself for the evening.

I want to say that I am a huge John Irving fan. I read The World According to Garp when it first came out and immediately went back and read his first three books as well; The Water Method Man remains my favorite, though even I couldn't defend it as his best work. I've read each of the novels he's published since then, as well. He is one of two authors that I will buy simply because I see their book on the shelf (the other being Tom Robbins). As famous as Hogan is, I don't think I would have come for his book signing alone, but for Irving I would have.

I finished up my pizza and joined the Hogan line at about 4:30. It had grown by about half again, so there were maybe 30 or 40 people ahead of me. Hogan would be signing in the section where they buy back used books, a rectangular area largely cordoned off from the rest of the store by low stacks, but which allowed three or four hundred square feet of space for the signing and easy access in and out.

I warmed myself up for the evening by finishing up Neil Gaiman's American Gods. His story of ancient deities lost in America and struggling against up-and-coming deities like Technology and Media seemed like appropriate preparation.

I stood in line reading my copy of My Life Outside the Ring. I haven't read the whole thing yet and this isn't a book review, but his recent struggles with divorce, car crashes, and alienated family members struck a chord with me.

The queue continued to grow behind me, through the gardening section, past the bargain books, and all the way back into the children's section. Some people excused themselves through gaps in the line to get to the rest of the store surprised to see such a crowd at dinner time on a Tuesday night, but most were there for the signing and the length of the line seemed to justify their excitement at getting to meet such a celebrity.

The crowd itself ran more to tattoos than tweed, but it was not a rough crowd even by suburban Seattle standards. There were a few hardcores replete with bandanas and WWE t-shirts, and a couple of people looked like this was the first time they had actually bought a book, but there were also the Microsoft employees behind me talking about work. It was a cross-section of America, and could have taken place in Cedar Rapids as easily as Lake Forest Park.

Hogan was late. A voice came over the loudspeaker saying that he would be signing books only, no memorabilia or clothing, but that there would be people there to take pictures if you gave them your camera. Someone came through the line to see if anyone wanted to buy additional copies of the book for Hogan to sign. I continued to read.

He finally arrived about 5:30. I was expecting a big entrance through the front of the store, but it was very low key. I didn't even see him come in; he must have come through the used book buyback room. There were a couple of hoots when he came in, but the only reason I was sure he had arrived was because the line started to move forward.

The line moved apace, but not too quickly. Though I couldn't see him, it was clear he was taking the time to talk to each person. I got to the front after about 25 minutes.

If you want your celebrities larger than life then Hulk Hogan fits the bill. He claims to be 6' 7" (though other sources have him at 6' 4"), but it's not the height that catches your attention when he's sitting on the other side of the table, it's the width. The man is huge, and even at 56 years old your eyes are drawn to his leathery, don't-fuck-with-me arms. His voice is low and resonant, calm and relaxed.

Last night he seemed tired, but whether from the fatigue of touring or just worn out by life I couldn't tell you. Ahead of me in line was a high school girl and her mother. The mom was too intimidated to go up to the table. She stood three paces back while her daughter talked to Hogan. The mom said she was just there for her daughter, but she was nervous, almost dancing from one foot to the other. She was extremely self-conscious and couldn't figure out what to do with her hands. Completely star struck. Her daughter was much more relaxed. She talked about bowling with Hogan - I read enough of his book to know that he had bowled competitively when he was a kid - and they made a nice connection. He's good with people.

When it was my turn I walked up and shook hands with him. I think the oddest thing was that his hand didn't feel large, though I'm sure it swallowed mine completely. He isn't one of those insecure guys who have to prove their masculinity by pulverizing yours. His was a confident, practiced handshake.

I didn't really have anything to ask him, so I just winged it and asked him "Ginger or Mary Ann?" It was offbeat enough to get giggles from his entourage. He thought for a moment and said, "Well, knowing what I know now, Ginger," which immediately caused discussion among his handlers and after a couple of minutes he realized that the perky, low-maintenance one was Mary Ann, not Ginger. He apologized for the confusion. "I really didn't have my mind on Gilligan's Island at the time."

A few more pics and my time with Hulk Hogan was at an end. I made my way out of the signing area and over to the food court stage where John Irving would be interviewed. The line for Hulk Hogan still stretched back into the children's section.

"Food court stage" and "John Irving" are not phrases I ever thought about using together before last night. By the time I had gotten over there about 6 o'clock there were two or three hundred chairs lined up facing the stage. I was early enough that I got a seat in the second row and, more importantly, got a sturdy wooden chair instead of a flimsy plastic one.

The seats filled up slowly. At first groups were spreading themselves out at polite distances apart, going farther back than I would have. It was more important to them to have separation than it was to be close to the stage, but they needn't have bothered isolating themselves because by 7:15 it was SRO, all the spaces had filled in and people were standing around the sides and all the way at the back by the Kitto Japanese restaurant.

This was definitely a different crowd from Hulk Hogan's. Older, more staid, definitely on the tweed side of the tattoo-tweed spectrum. The chairs were more important to this crowd. Some people were writing in journals, but most were reading, reading and waiting.

Most people seemed to come in groups. There was a small book club in the row in front of me, a half-dozen women who were reading The Cider House Rules. One woman I talked to complained that she was having trouble getting going in the book. She was on chapter four and it still wasn't grabbing her. She had also read A Widow for One Year and a couple of old Tom Robbins books (Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, and Another Roadside Attraction), but wasn't a huge fan of Robbins, either.

Irving would be talking about his newest novel, Last Night In Twisted River. In contrast to Hogan, this would be in an interview format. There were two low-backed swiveling barstools, each with a matching high table suitable for a glass of water. Microphones would amplify the discussion. He would be interviewed by Mary Ann Gwinn of the Seattle Times (no relation to Mary Ann from Gilligan's Island).

I had brought my worn out, water-marked hard-back copy of The Water Method Man with me hoping to get it signed as well, but it was announced that Irving would not be signing and would not be available after the interview. We were also asked to limit photography to the first five minutes of the interview so that it wouldn't be overly distracting. We were given index cards to write questions on which he would answer at the end of the interview, time permitting. I had lots of questions, but they would involve follow up questions and wouldn't really work in the format, so I settled for the "Ginger or Mary Ann?" question for him as well.

The format was in stark contrast to Hogan's populist presentation. Granted, Irving drew a larger crowd than Hogan, but it wasn't that much larger. The presentation, though, was very different: more controlled, more broadcast, less spontaneous, less personal. As a novelist he was presenting himself as he would a novel. He looked at all the stories he had, selected the ones that were coherent and (to him) significant and presented them as a story. In contrast, Hogan was more like a video game, where the general gameplay is guided, but the specific events are less controlled.

Irving came on the stage at 7:30, as planned. It wasn't really an interview at all, it was John Irving presenting John Irving. Gwinn asked, I think, two questions in the hour and a half they were onstage. The rest was all Irving. It was very interesting, but his talk was as practiced as Hulk Hogan's handshake. Each man had his own way of presenting himself, a way he was comfortable with, a way he was good at.

Physically, Irving cannot compete with Hulk Hogan. He looks quite ordinary. His hair now far more salt than pepper, the vestiges of his wrestling days are past. He was dressed casually in jeans and a plaid button down shirt and looked like someone on his way to the hardware store or the local farmers market. If I had run into him on the street I probably wouldn't have recognized him.

The thing that struck me as odd, the thing I didn't expect, was how much his speech and cadence reminded me of Christopher Walken. If anyone ever films John Irving's biography, Walken must play the lead.

He started out by establishing his literary cred with a light-hearted story about annually exchanging stacks of fan mail with John Updike, fan mail which had been mistakenly sent to the wrong author. Updike would send the Irving fan-mail to Irving, and Irving would send the Updike fan-mail to Updike. Humorous to a certain crowd, and, fortunately, that was the crowd I was sitting in.

Irving then jumped into his new book and his writing process, a process which is integral to the book because Twisted River he imbues the main character, a writer, with aspects of his own process. The signature point of his process which he noticed only incidentally over the first few novels, was that he wrote the last sentence first. In each case the last sentence was written in its entirety and never changed. Once written, he could play the story backward and lay out a roadmap of the story back to where he felt the story began.

Twisted River is a story he's had in mind for twenty years. The reason it took so long for him to get into written was simply that he couldn't find the last sentence. Once he found the sentence, the actual writing of the book was (for him), blindingly fast. He had known the story for twenty years, after all.

The book that made him want to write? Great Expectations.

Best first chapter in the English language? The beginning of The Mayor of Casterbridge.

They were canned answers, but they are clearly the questions he's been asked time and time again. Like a classic rock band that knows the five songs they have to play every set, Irving knows the questions he has to answer. Gwinn didn't seem too interested in interviewing him, she just sat back and listened like the rest of us. He didn't seem too interested in being interviewed. On the other hand, he was only scheduled for an hour and went on for a full hour and a half.

Even the index card audience questions at the end he answered with things he had said before and refined over time. Not surprisingly, in retrospect, he skipped over my Ginger v Mary Ann question, whether it was because he found it too frivolous or because he just didn't have a canned answer for it I will never know. Clearly Irving has a sense of humor, but he is not a back-row wit trading barbs with the teacher.

It was an evening of contrasting styles and personalities. Very interesting for me to see them both in the same place. Bigger than life in the abstract, professional, and good at what they do. These are both men with minions. Although they represent different sects, both of these men are American gods.


Update: 
Wendy Manning from Third Place Books sent me these photos of Irving and Hogan together last night (that's Wendy in the middle on the right).


Sources:
Third Place Books
Seattle Times
Benaroya Hall
Wikipedia (and again and again and again)

Rock Me Mendeleev

Nothing original here, at least not from me. This table can be found on the Wake Forest University campus. It was created by art students Nazila Alimohammadi and Anna Clark for a class project in 2003. Check out the Neatorama article for more details.

I like it.

Sources:
Digg
Neatorama

The McFarthest Spot

How far away can you get from a McDonald's in the lower 48? Go ahead, make your guess.

Stephen von Worley, a photographer out of Santa Cruz, California has produced an awesomely depressing display of the pervasiveness of McDonald's in the United States.

I tell you I've got to spend some more time on this guy's blog. He does a great job of helping you visualize concepts (like how far away you are from McDonald's).

His two most recent posts are "Of Mason and Dixon", where he compares online word usage between New England and the deep south, and "Storing Your Value", where he discusses the pros and cons of different ways to store US$1,000,000 in things like wheat (190,000 bushels), jerky (27 tons), and plutonium (1.3 inch sphere).

I gotta say, this is stuff that strikes my fancy and I'm going to have to do a little more exploring on his blog.

Oh, and if you're still curious, the farthest away you can get from one of the 13,000+ McDonald's in the continental United States is a little spot - what von Worley calls the McFarthest Spot - somewhere between Meadow and Glad Valley, South Dakota, a full 107 miles away from the nearest McDonald's (as the crow flies, but 145 miles away by car).

Sources:
Weather Sealed (via Yahoo News Canada)

20th Anniversary of The Big One

Today is the 20th anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake in and around the San Francisco Bay Area. It is a significant quake for two reasons: first, it was the day my daughter was born (Happy Birthday, Lainie!), and second it was during the World Series so there was gobs of national sports media coverage.

As tragic an event as it was, in the list of deadly United States earthquakes its death toll ranks only 6th for the 20th century. and worldwide there have been 8 deadlier quakes just since 1990. At 6.9 it was a serious earthquake, but not a whole lot stronger than the 6.8 Nisqually quake here in Seattle in 2001, though the Loma Prieta quake caused significantly more damage.

For San Franciscans this is a reason to party. The mayor's office has organized a weeks worth of events under the tagline The Big Rumble, events including:

• Disaster Preparedness Information and Resources
• Children's Activities
• Giveaways
• Entertainment

There is even a 30 page Block Party Host Toolkit for those who want to host their own shindig.

There is lots of great footage of quake coverage available on You Tube. This is nifty playlist compiling a lot of the coverage; my favorites are the ones closest to the time the quake occurred because they show the uncertainty of the whole situation at the time (and the occasional aftershock). Al Michaels saying "I'll tell you what, we're having an earth..." and then losing power is pretty dramatic.

Michaels had worked in the Bay Area before as a broadcaster for the San Francisco Giants (he and Lon Simmons were the best broadcast team ever), and this was not his first quake, but several of the sportscasters were from out of the area and it was their first time. I maintain to this day that Tim McCarver was a fine broadcaster before the quake, but since then...well, I leave you to make your own judgement. Here is video from one of the earthquake virgins.

But my favorite coverage was by Entertainment Tonight the next night, possibly because John Tesh did not utter the phrase "Belarusian Swan", not even once.

Sources:
New York Times
The Big Rumble
Bay Area Earthquake Alliance
USGS (photo)

American Wins Golden Spurtle!

As shocking as it is to you (and probably more shocking to the Scots), American Matthew Cox has taken the 2009 Golden Spurtle, indicative of the finest porridge in the world.

A spurtle is a wooden spatchula-ish utensil used in the making of porridge. Porridge is, uh, oatmeal.

Cox, a member of Team Bob's Red Mill out of Milwaukie, Oregon, was a decided underdog before beating out such pre-competition favorites as Addy Deggert, Barry Gauld, Lee Barclay, and, of course, defending champion Ian Bishop to win the 16th annual edition of the event in  Carrbridge, Inverness-shire, Scotland.

Cox won in the traditional oats category, for which he was awarded a £350 hotel voucher and £250 cash (somewhat less than the take from the Miss Plastic Competition held simultaneously in Budapest). He is pictured (right) with Anna Louise Batchelor, an environmental researcher and marathon runner out of Reading, Birkshire, who won the specialty category with her recipe for Steamed Porridge Spotted Dick with Custard.

This year the event was held in conjunction with World Porridge Day, a fund raising day for Mary's Meals a charity which provides daily meals for 375,000 children around the globe.

Golden Spurtle souveniers (including specially inscribed spurtles) are available at their Golden Spurtle EBay store.

Sources:
Metro
Thaindian News
Telegraph
Los Angeles Times
Bob's Red Mill (photo)
The Golden Spurtle (photo)
Rocket News
The Press and Journal
World Porridge Day
Mary's Meals

Bikini Baristas: The Gray Line of Black Coffee

I am shocked, shocked that acts of titillation are going on at the bikini barista stands in Everett, Washington.

Lingerie espresso stands. Bikini baristas. Sexpresso.

Having pushed the gray line of acceptable public behavior a bit too far, five female baristas have been charged with prostitution by the Everett police. Accusations of nudity and acts which are at least titillating if not downright sexual come after a three month investigation. The Everett Herald article does not mention how many detectives volunteered to work this investigation.

I don't know how it is in your area, but around here the bikini barista stands are ubiquitous. Sex sells, especially the marginal sex, the sex that is just barely acceptable. It's why you're reading this article. Right now the 2nd and 3rd most popular articles on my blog are the Swedish Military Bra Crisis, and Attack of the Artfully Displayed 50 foot Women.

The issues started coming to a head last year in Bonney Lake, not far from Everett, where a protest was organized objecting to an espresso stand that changed over to a bikini format (news article with embedded video of cute baristas). According to the owner, the bikini format seemed to be more profitable.

Although there are some of you who are strongly against this, most of you aren't. It's too close to the social norm. After all, as the girls say, for the most part the bikinis are nothing you wouldn't see at the beach or at the Wild Waves water park (the picture on the left is from the Wild Waves site, by the way).

While the lewd behavior may be punishable under the same laws that apply to lewd homeless men in overcoats, I think it's going to be hard to make the prostitution charges stick. It's just too close to the gray line.

Maybe most enlightening is not the Herald article itself, but the comments it generated:

This article talks about the women being paid to flash or strip. Is that prostitution? If it is, if there was a charity event where men auctioned themselves to the highest bidder and the money goes to charity, and then men went on a date with the women who won the bid and they kissed, would that be illegal?

They didn't even sell sexual intercourse, just sexual behavior! Now they're being punished, being called prostitutes? This is why even though I don't support prostitution, I think it should be decriminalized.

I left the biz while it was still considered a fun, easy way to make a LOT of money, NOT something you need an "entertainers permit" (aka: stripper permit) to work at a mocha stand...but the whip cream licking, butt & boob grabbing for money IS basically prostitution.

I understand that they are enforcing the law, so for that reason I won't join in the feeding frenzy. I would like to see the bigger issue be addressed eventually the see the goverment step out of some of the "moral" issues and let people make some of thier own decisions.

Frankly, there are a lot more comments in support of the girls than against them. If you have a different opinion you should post and make your opinion heard. This is the internet age. Take advantage of your ability to voice your thoughts.

Me, I have no opinion. I'm just driving people to my blog with pictures of scantily clad women. Everyone else does it.

Sources:
Everett Herald
All Voices (photo)
King 5
Mahalo
Wild Waves

The Naked Gun 91.38

91 year old Robert E. Thompson of Lake Worth, Florida heard his dog attacking an intruder at his house so he grabbed his .38 and went to help the dog out. The WWII vet fired a warning shot and held the intruder at bay until the police arrived.

Noteworthy, of course, is that Thompson sleeps in the nude. Caught up in the moment, he didn't even realize he was naked until the police arrived to arrest 26 year old burglar.

For those of you hoping to catch a picture of the naked nonagenerian, I'm afraid you're out of luck, but I did find a picture of Priscilla Presley, star of the Naked Gun films, which I hope will suffice.

Thompson is even older than Sue Erzan who earlier this month ran off an armed robber with a can of Raid.

Sources:
KIRO TV
Metro UK
Florida AP
Top of the Nudes
Wikipedia (photo)

Trash Track Is Back

The MIT Trash Track team was back in Seattle over the weekend to talk about their project. I was there and got action photos of the researchers...uh...talking. It's what researchers do.

The MIT Trash Track project follows the death cycle of the trash that we toss out. We throw our trash away, but it doesn't just "go away", it goes somewhere, and this research project uses modified cell phones as a LoJack to track the journey discarded items take to their final destination. The Trash Track project is one of several initiatives under the umbrella of the Senseable City Lab at MIT which does research in to how to take advantage of our increasingly connected world to improve the quality of life (as opposed to those despicable cads who want to track our every move - the Trash Track guys are on the side of Good, not Evil - though I am somewhat concerned about the interloper in their group photo.)

Last month I wrote about dragging a dryer in the back of my Prius down to the Seattle Library to have it tagged and tracked. Saturday I wanted to find out what happened to my dryer.

The group was again at the Central library branch. There were two parts to the event, an hour long presentation by the group and then food a reception where you could get up-close and personal with the research team.

Most of the folks who had been here in August were back: Assaf Biderman (associate director of the Senseable City Lab), project leader Kristian Klöckl, Jennifer Dunnam, and E. Roon Kang all returned, this time with the notable addition of their boss, Senseable City director Carlo Ratti.

The talk itself took place in the auditorium at the library. I was a little late - took a half hour to cross the 520 bridge because of the Husky game, though I take some solace in that they beat USC. There were about a hundred people in the auditorium, of whom I recognized no one from last month except the MITers themselves. Also at tables up in front were Rita Smith of Waste Management, and Tim Croll of Seattle Public Utilities. WMI and SPU are partnering with the Trash Track research.

The first half of the presentation was an overview of the whole Senseable City lab by Carlo and Assaf. The talked about the EyeStop project, Digital Water (think Bellagio fountains combined with an ink jet printer), the Copenhagen Wheel (a step up from the mopeds of my youth), and their most visual presentation, the cell phone usage analysis of Currentcity.

After that the dynamic duo started talking about the concepts of Trash Track. First there is the observation that the technology for tracking things is becoming increasingly small and increasingly inexpensive, making it ever easier to make tracking devices ubiquitous, what they like to call "digital dust". They are looking ahead to the day when everything is connected, even your trash. A lot of trash is identifiable already; open up your computer (not now!), and you'll find all the little bits and pieces are marked with company identifiers and manufacturing batch codes so that if there is a bad batch the company can go back to try and figure out why it went bad. We track our food so we can identify the source of e. coli outbreaks. Digital dust will make the tracking smarter and more accessible.

Then they spoke about the technology behind the project. The tracking unit is basically a stripped down cellphone that has no voice capabilities. The biggest problem to overcome in the field is battery life. Your cell phone battery lasts only a couple of days without recharging. To address that, they include a motion sensor on the board so that the tracker only transmits when it is moving, and even then it transmits its location only once every five minutes. This allows the tracking device to operate for six months or more.

The tracker communicates via SMS messages over the same cell phone network you and I use. It sends back information of cell tower strength which is used to triangulate its position, the same way companies locate missing persons, fugitives, and cheating spouses. SMS messages? How long will it be before your running shoes have a Twitter feed? Oh, well, at least someday you'll be able to go on the internet to track down that missing sock.

The next generation of the tracker is based on Qualcomm's inGeo system which adds a GPS to the system. This will give them a redundant tracking system, which addresses the biggest problem they have back in the lab: dirty data. If you've used a cell phone you know about dropouts and poor connections. The tracking devices suffer from the same problems, which means they can go missing for minutes or days depending on their location, and because the triangulation is not accurate in the way GPS is, sometimes the tracker will seem to jump around a lot. The GPS will give another, more accurate source which can be used to clean up the system (and possibly improve the triangulation process). The tracker will continue to be viable even if only one of the tracking methods is available.

One of the neat things about using cell phone technology is that data can be transmitted back from anywhere in the world. If an old computer gets shipped off to Africa to be stripped down, the device will beam its information back from Africa to Cambridge, Mass.

Then we heard briefly from Rita (WMI), and Tim (SPU). Rita grew up in central Washington who went to work for a small recycling company that was bought out by WMI in 1988. She thinks that Trash Track provides an opportunity to get people (that would be you and me, but mostly you) to shuck off the "out-of-sight, out-of-mind" attitude most of us have about trash. By seeing where the trash actually goes, that it doesn't just disappear into the ether, people have a better understanding of the death-cycle of their Stuff, and can modify their behavior based on that increased knowledge. And, as Tim pointed out, that sort of thing has already happened with recycling. Even without any major recycling events last year, Seattle recycled 50% of its refuse (by weight), and the city has a goal of getting that up to 60%. Tim also brought up the idea of product stewardship, where manufacturers would be responsible for recycling their products when they are no longer useful - just push a button that says you're done with your TV and the manufacturer comes by to pick it up - interesting idea but probably won't be seen until after the advent of flying cars.

The presentation ended with a panel Q & A, before we headed upstairs for the food reception with the team.

I thought the most interesting points of the Q & A were made by Kristian, the Trash Track project lead.

First is to consider how long a product exists vs how long a product is actually used. You get a latte at Starbucks and drink it in five minutes and tossed the cup. The cup was used for only five minutes, but for that five minutes it had already existed for weeks or months (not counting how long it existed in raw-material form), and will continue to exist for years as a recognizable, if somewhat mashed up, cup, all for just five minutes use.

The second thing he brought up is when does something go from having value to being trash? Who gets to decide that this item is suddenly and irrevocably "waste"? What we need to do is change the idea of  "waste" for the idea of "alternate use" - what can be reclaimed and reused? How can we manufacture products so that the parts are valuable even after its primary purpose is complete?

Afterwards I went upstairs where there was a huge television showing the routes taken by some of the trash that had been tracked. I met up with the still infamous Mrs. DeGroot, but no one else from last month's tracking event. And there was food.

And my dryer? Still in the data mill. Hopefully find out soon where it is and has been. They put out five hundred tags in August, and will have another deployment later to get the total up to 3000 for the Seattle area. Next time I'll bring something with a little less heft to be tracked.

Okay, so it wasn't quite as exhilarating as tagging a dryer, but the presentation made me think, which is always fun. The last thing I got to do was watch Assaf and Carlo get interviewed by CNN. I don't see the video online yet, so it may not have aired, but if you get a chance definitely watch it if for no other reason than to see live footage of researchers in action, by which I mean, of course...uh...talking.

SC Cheerleader Bags Gator

If you're a fan looking for a Trojan cheerleader vs. Florida football player story then you are out of luck.

This is the story of 16 year-old Cammie Colin, cheerleader, softball player, and Lil Wayne fan, who just culled her first alligator in South Carolina's annual alligator harvest.

Although the alligator population in South Carolina dropped so low in 1964 that alligator hunting season was closed, today there are 100,000 alligators in South Carolina (okay, 99,999 now). Because of increases in both the alligator and human populations there were increasing conflicts between gators and humans.

The alligator harvest was first established in 1995. This year there are 1000 permits available. The state is divided into four regions with 250 permits allocated for each region. Permits are assigned by lottery with a preference for those who have been denied permits in the past. There were 3700 applications for the harvest that began at noon on September 12, and runs until noon on October 10.

In order to obtain a permit you must be at least 16 years old, making Colin one of the youngest to obtain a permit. The hunter is not allowed to shoot a free-ranging alligator. The "kill-shot" must be made by something with a line (a crossbow, for example, or a harpoon), so that the alligator doesn't get away. After the gator is brought boatside or onto land it can be shot with a gun. Other people may be in the hunting party, but the permit holder must be the one who makes the kill shot.

In Colin's case there were four other people in the boat with her when she shot the 10.5 foot alligator in the tail. The gator then dragged the boat and its occupants for more than an hour, at which time it was shot by family friend and fellow boat occupant Jay Iadonisi. Said Iadonisi:

You've got five people in the boat, and an upset alligator that doesn't want to go in the boat, and you have to get him up close enough to where you can make a clean kill, and to be as humane as possible.

The 353 pound gator yielded 40 pounds of steaks for Colin's family freezer.

Sources:
The State (photo) (via Obscure Store)
My Fox Atlanta
Big Game Hunt
Proceedings of the Eighth Eastern Wildlife Damage Management Conference (1997)

Literally an Eye Tooth

Sharon "Kay" Thornton can see again after almost a decade of blindness after having part of a tooth implanted in her eye to support a plastic lens.

Suffering from Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, a reaction to medication that caused her to lose her sight in 2000, Thornton had tried a stem cell procedure to correct her blindness; she was not a candidate for a corneal transplant.

The entire process takes months to complete and has only been performed about 600 times world wide. This is the first time it was performed in the United States.


First, a healthy tooth and part of the patient's jawbone are removed. The tooth and bone are shaved and sculpted, and a hole was drilled into them to hold the prosthetic lens. Then the whole unit is implanted into the patient's chest and left for several months, so that the tooth and lens can bond. Finally, it is implanted in the eye.

If the eye is healthy enough a piece of plastic may be used instead of a tooth.

Following the procedure Thornton can see about 20/70 out of her repaired eye without corrective lenses.

In order to qualify for the procedure Thornton had to meet strict criteria: she had to have end-stage ocular surface disease, had to be able to detect light well enough to tell what direction its coming from, and she also had to have a healthy mouth and a good tooth.

In Thornton's case, of course, they used her canine, also known as an eye tooth.


Sources:
News.au.com
Yahoo News
AOL News (photo)
Mayo Clinic

Dungeons & Dragons Themed Soda

The folks over at Jones Soda have released a set of limited edition of sodas based on Dungeons and Dragons.

The Seattle-based Jones Soda Company have been making their unique brand of soda since 2000. Jones Sodas are noted primarily for the variety of flavors and their unique labeling.

Clearly not sodas for the meek, the Dungeons and Dragons Spellcasting Soda set features D&D themed labels and flavors like Eldritch Blast and Bigby's Crushing Thirst Destroyer.

Last year they released a sports themed set with the flavors Dirt, Sweet Victory, Sports Cream, Perspiration and Natural Field Turf.

Jones also produces a less strange line of products, if you can call Strawberry Manilow less strange. The current list of ever-changing flavors can be found here on their web site.

Even more interesting than their flavors are their labels. Changing more frequently than their flavors, instead of being magically created by the Marketing Gods, the labels are mostly pictures submitted by regular people like you and me. You can see the pix up for current consideration in the Photo Gallery. (Be sure to vote mine up - I wanna be on a label!).

You can also order cases of soda with your own custom label for birthdays, weddings, band promotions and the like.

Sources:
Geek Dad
Jones Soda Co

MIT Trash Tracking Exhibit This Saturday

For those of you following the MIT Trash Tracking in Seattle that we covered last month, the researchers will be back at the main branch of the Seattle Public Library on 4th Ave this Saturday, September 19th. There will be a program with the researchers from 11-12:30 in the Microsoft Auditorium on level 1, with a reception to follow.

More information is available in this article.

Sources:
American Towns

Doggie Treat

A man in Joliet, Illinois claims he is using the marijuana in his back yard to teach his dog how to sniff out drugs.

Police were called to the man's residence by an anonymous tipster. A woman living at house the let them into the back yard where they discovered three marijuana plants - two living, one dead - behind a shed. After confirming that the plants were in fact cannabis, they called the woman's husband on his cell phone.

The husband explained to the police that he had a "controlled substance license," and that he was only using the plants to train his dog to sniff out drugs.

When contacted by the Herald News on Sunday, the man said he could not discuss the matter involving the police until he learned more about the situation.


"I can't answer anything right now, the man said. "I don't know what's going on."

The dog, meanwhile, was found in the cellar next to an empty bag of dog food repeatedly yelling "Free Bird!"

Sources:
All Voices
The Herald News
NBC Chicago

No Dogies Allowed

The cattle drive through the streets of Puyallup, Washington, took an odd turn when a couple of cows broke free of the pack and walked into a mini-mart and wandered around until a cowboy rode in and herded them out.

Puyallup (pronounced pew-all-up), built on the lahar deposits of nearby Mt. Rainier, held its first fair in October 1900. The 17 day event has grown to be one of the largest fairs in the United States.

The cattle drive, introduced in 2000, and the Rodeo Parade that follows it traditionally open the fair festivities.

Animals often wander off the parade route, according to police spokesman Dave McDonald, but this is the first time he can remember them entering a building.

Hokey local news coverage video below.



Sources:
Metro.co.uk (photo)
Wikipedia
The News Tribune
The Fair
KOMO (video)

YASS (Yet Another Sinkhole Story)

Not content to bring you stories of sinking trees or pictures of sinking firetrucks, today we bring you yet another sinkhole story.

The football game between the Alcoa Tornadoes and the Fulton Falcons in Knoxville, Tennessee was suspended on Thursday with 6:33 to play when a sinkhole appeared in the field. Alcoa, currently ranked #1 in Tennessee 3A, was leading 20-7 when the game was suspended.

It was not the first sinkhole problem at Bob Black Field. Fulton coach Buck Coatney was mowing the field four or five years ago when he encountered a sinkhole. "I was here the first time it caved in," he said, "It's scary."

Gary Rankin, coach of the #1 team in Tennessee 3A, tried everything he could to finish the game. "We asked officials to try to put it on one end and play just 50 yards," Rankin said, but the officials would have nothing to do with it. "It was for the safety of the kids. That was the official's call," he said.

The game was completed on Friday with Alcoa winning by a final score of 27-7.

Sources:
The Daily Times (via Neatorama)
WBIR (photo)

Felonious Possession of Handcuff Keys

Michael Gonzales was arrested on August 16 for harassing women on the beach. He was charged with intoxication, marijuana possession, and two counts of felony handcuff key possession.

Prosecutor Barbara Teresa Govea explained to a surprised Judge John Thornton that it is an actual felony. The Florida Legislature enacted the law after two Tampa deputies and a state trooper were killed in 1998 by a murderer who was being detained for shooting a 4 year old boy, and who got out of his cuffs using a handcuff key on a necklace.

Gonzales was charged under code 843.021.c.2 for the possession of concealed handcuff keys. The charge carries a maximum term of five years. It is not clear why prosecutors felt Gonzales' actions on the beach (pictured) warranted the felony charge.

The good news is that the BDSM community need not be concerned as long as their keys are not concealed.

Sources:
Miami Herald (via Obscure Store)
Orlando Sentinel
onecle
Tampa Bay Online
Wikipedia
Continental Magazine (photo)

Toilets Lock After 5 Minutes

I just can't get enough public toilet stories. There was Seattle selling its fancy public toilets on eBay (at a 99.75% loss). There are the Paris public toilets that open after 15 minutes, whether you're finished or not. Now comes the story out of Klaipeda, Lithuania of their new toilet systems.

Vandalism is always a problem with public toilets, of course. To combat the vandalism problem, the Klaipeda Mayor's Office has set up the toilets to lock after 5 minutes.

After the toilet door locks, the only way to get out is to call a specialist who will detain the occupant while he examines the facilities for vandalism.

Brilliant.

And (talk about serendipity), when looking up other toilet-related stories I found one other reference to Klaipeda. In the July 20 archive of Neatorama there were two stories, one about Science Fiction Toilets, and another, remarkably, about the CATcerto, performed by the Klaipeda Chamber Orchestra, which is a concerto with Nora the Piano Playing Cat at the keyboard (yet another cat video below).

Toilets that lock after 5 minutes and piano playing cats: Klaipeda may want to work on improving its image.



Sources:
Seattle Times
Europe for Visitors
All Voices
Google Maps
MSO News (via FolkD)
Neatorama
CATcerto
Wikipedia

Car Stories

First we take you to the most visual story. A broken water main caused flooding in Los Angeles. The fire truck responding to the problem was swallowed up by a sinkhole created by the broken main. None of the firefighters on the truck was injured. More pictures here.

Second, we have the story of 40 year old Allen Schroeder of Topeka, Kansas, who while crossing the US24 bridge over Soldier Creek hit the guardrail (not pictured), over-compensated, crossed over the highway and through the guardrail (pictured), became airborne, but didn't quite clear the guardrail on the bridge carrying traffic the other direction (27 feet away), but did hit it hard enough to expose the rebar, then fell 39 feet into Soldier Creek which is 10 to 15 feet deep at that point. Surviving all this, Schroeder then climbed out of the sinking van and swam to shore. The sum of his injuries: some shoulder pain. Kind of reminiscent of The Stunt Man, a movie which I bet none of you have seen.

And finally we have the only death of this post, that of 90 year old Lonnie Holloway of Saluda, South Carolina, who was buried in his car along with several rifles and six handguns. I include this story mostly because I've never seen a video of an auto burial before. BTW: for safety's sake, Holloway was buckled up when he was buried.

Sources:
9 News (via Fark)
USA Today
CJOnline
IMDB
Augusta Chronicle

Pity the Fool

Sue Erzen ran off an armed robber with a can of Raid.

Wait, it gets better.

Sue Erzen (pictured) is 86 years old, and shuffles when she walks. She was at home with her daughter (also pictured), 69 year old Dorothy Williams when 26 year old admitted gang member Alex Fowler (not pictured) walked in and threatened to kill them if they didn't hand over their purses.

Erzen grabbed the can of Raid and fought back.

"Yeah, I was going to spray him right in his face if I could have got to him," she said, but at the sight of the bug spray, the attacker fled.

BTW: 26 year old Alex Fowler has "Crip for Life" tattooed on the back of his neck. I'm thinking the Crips may want their tattoo back.

Video of their interview with Fox affiliate in Houston is included below. Or to the left, depending on the size of your browser window. Worth a gander, regardless, if just to see Erzen's threatening walk.

Sources:
Jasper Newsboy
Beaumont Enterprise (via News of the Weird)
My Fox Houston