The most striking thing I saw in this past Sunday's New York Times T Style Magazine supplement, all 240 super-thin, difficult-to-turn pages of it, was on page 120:

Alexander McQueen's hand-painted football shoulder pads (above and below), made to order at his store (417 West 14th Street in New York).

He showed them on the runway in Paris last October 8 in his Spring 2005 Ready-to-Wear show

(where the photos illustrating this post were taken), but this was my first look at them.

Once upon a time it was "Hate that grey? Wash it away."

That was the familiar tag line for Grecian Formula 16.

Funny, you don't here it much anymore.

How 'bout not at all.

So.

From the super-secret "Black-Ops" skunkworks of Jerome Russell comes this laudable product.

"Spray-on hair helps cover and color light-to-medium bald spots for men and women."

Easy to use: just wash your hair, spray on, let dry.

You're good to go.

"Blend in and brush hair over treated area to give an illusion of thicker, fuller hair."

Say what you will, that sentence just above is far deeper and more in tune with the evolving quantum world-view of the early 21st century than most advertising.

Hats off to the writer — but only if you've sprayed beforehand.

Comes in Black, Dark Brown, Medium Brown, Brown/Blonde, and Silver/Grey.

$9.98 a can here (item # 12455).

No, I'm not reading from the latest issue of the Enquirer.

Rather, it's a story I just glanced at while I was looking for something else.

In Chongju, South Korea, a fish with a face resembling that of a human has recently been noted.

At first, I thought that the South Koreans, whose expertise in cloning makes their scientists among the groups most likely to create the first human clone - that is, if they haven't already done so in secret - had somehow released one of their experiments.

But reading more closely, I see where the fish (above), a female carp, is 19 years old.

So that rules out cloning.

The fish is, however, the result of genetic manipulation: it's the product of artificial insemination between a carp and an ayu sweetfish.

Still.

If you want to see what it might be like to live in a world where experiments like a fish-human hybrid actually happened,

read Margaret Atwood's magnificent novel, "Oryx and Crake."

If we are to believe The Sun, Ukrainian inventor Dr Grigoriy Chausovskiy has come up with a musical condom that gets louder as the sex gets more vigorous.

Different lovemaking positions determine what tune is played by the condom, which also works like a normal contraceptive. The rubber has sensors connected to a mini electronic device that produces the sounds.

They will cost about 20 per cent more than normal condoms. “But people will pay for the extra stimulation,” believes Chausovskiy.

Via The Apartment.

"Achieve a toned and fitter body in just three 10-minute sessions a week!"

The Power Plate ($4,840) violently vibrates your body at certain key frequencies uncovered by Russian researchers.

This fools (good word, that) muscles into producing a stretch reflex and contracting like crazy, 30-50 times a second, which radically speeds up the whole exercise process and allows it to be compressed into a 10-minute session.

So says the company's PR, anyhow.

In other words, it's like going to the gym and having the machines do 90% of the work for you, while you get 100% of the normal exercise benefit.

Talk about "rise of the machines...." But I digress.

Hey, don't listen to me: visit the company's website, then see why I'm seriously considering bagging that treadmill idea I had earlier in the week in favor of this tricked-out shake 'n bake.

The list of organizations using it is pretty impressive, I gotta say.

There's even a page with links to all manner of videos showing the machine in action.

After watching a couple, I actually felt like I was in much better shape.

In fact, I think I'm gonna skip today's run and take the day off.

Same as it ever was.

this is old news but it seems like it's making the media rounds again. (they must pay their marketing people quite well). "The device, implanted into the buttocks, is said to produce an orgasm at the push of a remote-controlled button. Patients can pay £9,000 to have two electrodes implanted which are connected by wires to the appropriate nerves in the spinal cord. With a remote-control they can send tiny pulses of electricity through their spinal nerves, which can lead to orgasm."

If this jacket had a collar like a frilled lizard, I'd wear it in a flash!

(via)

I have always been allergic to cats. I know this because after touching a cat I’d start sniffling and sneezing and my eyes would get red and itchy; and if a cat scratched me, I’d get a big welt on my skin. This happened enough times that the pattern was pretty apparent. In my mid-20s, for reasons I’ve never quite understood, I decided to get a cat anyway. Sure enough, I experienced the usual cat-allergy symptoms, and my cat liked to make sure I achieved maximum dander exposure by sleeping on my pillow. But for the most part, the problem was not severe, and if I was careful to wash my hands after touching the cat, I was usually fine. Several months ago, I decided to become a cat owner once again, and Morgen and I adopted an adorable kitten named Zora. This cat’s favorite pastime is licking my face, and of course there are cat hairs all over the place. And yet, despite having much more contact with this cat, I’ve never had any hints of an allergic reaction.

continued at...

Designers: Mathmos Design Studio

The newest addition to the ever popular Mathmos London line of lights, the Airswitch 1 will be unveiled for the first time in North America at next week's Gift Fair in NY. It won't be available for sale in the US until March, and gnr8 will be among the first to stock it. Let us know if you want us to inform you when it arrives.

From the website:

Slowly pass your hand horizontally through the air above the Airswitch to turn it on or off. Slowly raise and lower your hand above Airswitch to brighten or dim.

It's like....magic....

Well, sort of. It’s a commonly-held belief that the docile oarfish is responsible for most of the old legends about sea serpents. Oarfish are the longest known ‘bony’ fish in our oceans, and like most large fish, they eat plankton. It’s extremely rare for live specimens to be seen, since they only tend to surface when dead or dying.

Oarfish grow anything up to nine metres long – I have no idea how long the one pictured above was, but it was found three days ago floating six metres off the beach in Perth, Australia.

The Sydney Morning Herald have more info, but you’ll need to register (or get a shared ID from BugMeNot.com to read it.

Producers of reality TV show Guantanamo Guidebook claim to have recreated torture techniques used at US detention camp Guantanamo Bay.

Seven volunteers were locked in a warehouse with cages, interrogation rooms and surveillance equipment for 48 hours. They were also submitted to religious and sexual humiliation, forced nudity, sleep deprivation and extreme temperatures.

Dorothy Byrne from British broadcaster Channel 4 said: "This season of programmes challenges viewers to watch torture techniques we know are used in Guantanamo."

The show will be broadcast later this month.

Via Notes from somewhere bizarre < BBC News.

Image is "El Perro" by Democracy 2005 which reproduces the Abu Grahib tortures. Via Elastico.

China has published the world's first gold newspaper, Xinhua news agency reported.

The most expensive edition uses 500 grams of gold while another uses 200 grams. They both cost thousands of dollars.

The paper has been published by the China Economic Daily to celebrate the achievements of the last 10 sessions of China's top legislative body.

The paper, a one-off, is called 'China's Flourishing Period'.

It was issued in the city of Shenzhen, a booming economic centre in the southern province of Guangdong.

reBlogged from the BBC.

Scientists are to "barcode" every species on Earth, starting with birds and fish and recording details in their genetic make-up that can be used to tell one life form from another.

At the cost of about £1 ($1.80) per genetic test, species will be analysed to obtain their barcode information. The data will then be transfered into a giant database which the Consortium for the Barcode of Life hopes can be used to link off to all the knowledge acquired by science on particular organisms.

Just as we Google a species name to find pictures or a description of an individual insect, the time may come when we have mobile computers that can read off barcodes and access species information in the field, making it easier to recognise species in the field.

However, not all of the science community shares the enthusiasm of the barcoders.

Some researchers doubt that the approach will prove as reliable in distinguishing species as is claimed.

Via BBC News.

Feeling adventurous? If you find yourself in the small village of Jukkasjärvi in Northern Sweden between the months of December and April treat yourself to an unusual night or two at the Ice Hotel. The rest of the year the hotel is slowly melting and waiting to be rebuilt come next icy season, pulling blocks of ice from the Torneålven River. The hotel has an impressive pillar hall, a film auditorium, 30 individual suites, and the Absolut Icebar-- which is quite fitting. Bunker down in fur blankets on top of blocks of ice, a bit weird but truly exotic.

via MoCoLoCo

In the meantime, Chicagoans can go, en masse, to this sculpture, and shoot lots of pictures of it. The link below goes to a Flickr gallery of existing photos of the sculpture. Go add your own! Link (Thanks, Hugh!)

A 25-year-old recently called the Moscow rescue service to say that his girlfriend had pushed an electric toothbrush up his anus " to experience an absolutely different kind of pleasure".

The toothbrush was turned on during the process, but it slipped out of the girl's hands because of abundant lubricant that she had applied on the "extreme vibrator": The toothbrush made its way down the rectum alone and it became impossible to take the toothbrush out.

The Erotic Museum is conducting an ongoing research project intent on recording the full breadth of natural and altered human physiology. By creating a massive image database of everyday people of every race.

Stimulating a nerve in the pelvis can trigger urine to flow from the bladder, refuting the theory that bladder emptying requires brain signals and showing that it's possible to create a bladder-emptying pacemaker for people who have lost control.

Feat provides researchers with insight into the development and prevention of sunlight-induced skin cancer

Non-exercise activity a key to staying lean, and some people appear biologically predisposed against it

Feng Qian is a beauty queen. But admittedly, she had some help. A student of plastic surgery, the 22-year-old is the first winner of the Miss Artificial Beauty competition held recently in Beijing. Four operations—to Westernize her eyelids, suck out fat and sculpt her heart-shaped face—put her ahead of 18 other contestants, including a transsexual and a 62-year-old pensioner. "I hope my win will make those who want to have surgery, but don't dare to, do it," says Feng, who wanted surgery both to increase her attractiveness and better understand her planned career. "Natural beauty and cosmetic surgery beauty are the same and they should be recognized as that."

interesting article. continued at BetterHumans -BT

Scientists have begun producing chimeras— hybrid creatures that are part human, part animal.

In 2003, Chinese scientists fused human cells with rabbit eggs. The embryos were allowed to develop for several days before the researchers destroyed them to harvest their stem cells.

At the Mayo Clinic last year pigs were created that had human blood flowing through their bodies.

Irving Weissman, from Stanford University in California, has already created mice with brains that are about one percent human.

Later this year he may try to inject human neurons into the brains of embryonic mice, giving the animals 100 percent human brains.

Before being born, the mice would be killed and dissected to see if the architecture of a human brain had formed. If it did, he'd look for traces of human cognitive behavior.

Weissman hopes the experiment leads to a better understanding of how the brain works, which would be useful in treating diseases like Alzheimer or Parkinson. For scientists indeed, more humanlike animals make better research model for testing drugs or growing "spare parts," such as livers, to transplant into humans.

Not all chimeras are considered troubling: faulty human heart valves can now be replaced with ones taken from cows and pigs; and for years scientists have added human genes to bacteria and farm animals.

What's problematic here is the mixing of human stem cells with embryonic animals to create new species.

While conceding that these studies would lead to some medical breakthroughs, many believe animals have the right to exist without being tampered with or crossed with another species.

Via Slashdot < National Geographic.