Mauritius, an island off the coast of Africa, aims to become the first nation with coast-to-coast wireless access.
From his office window in Mauritius' new Cybertower--a sleek blue glass and gray stone tower that is the heart of the country's first high-tech park--Rahim can point out one of five new radio transmission antennas his company has installed in the last month perched beside a Hindu temple on a nearby green mountainside.
If you're in the neighborhood (or even if you're not), come on by and see John Dicker read from his hot-off-the-presses new book, The United States of Wal-Mart, at Skylight Books this Sunday at 5:00 PM. If you don't trust me - and I've known this guy since he was just a piece of sand in Wal-Mart's eye - you can see what Penguin, Publishers Weekly, Creative Loafing, and altweeklies.com have to say. You can also read John's Salon piece, "Wal-Mart Needs a Date." Hope to see you there...
I've been saving all of these links (for a rainy day? for posterity?), so I figured I'd just post them all at once.
Ever wanted to be buried alive? Win an illegal space race? Attend a magnetism party? Monochrom, "an art-technology-philosophy group of basket weaving enthusiasts and theory do-it-yourselfers having its seat in Vienna and Zeta Draconis," is offering Angelenos the opportunity to do all of the above. If you live in San Francisco, you can grow money or catapult wireless devices.
You know your friends have their fingers on the pulse (of something) when they start posting Huffington-style:
While culture warriors will continue to fight for the right not to party, the PTC has too much whipped cream on its hands to let this slide...If you’re going to prance about on your moral high horse, know that it’s bad form to grind yourself off in the saddle.
More from the Freakonomics folks (with video clips and everything):
Keith Chen is a 29-year-old Yale economist who is teaching capuchin monkeys to use money. Why? Well, to see what they spend it on, and how their spending might relate to human spending... A capuchin monkey must decide how to spend his budget of twelve coins...Two human research assistants are present (one wearing blue and one wearing red), and both hold a piece of food in an orange dish for the monkey to see. The red research assistant "sells" grapes and the blue research assistant "sells" Jell-o cubes, with each piece of food costing a coin from the monkey's budget. The capuchin must make a decision analogous to a grocery store shopper's: how much of their budget to spend on grapes and how much to spend on Jell-o.
Anyone who knows me knows that if I were a capuchin monkey, it would be all grapes all the time.
After I kick it in the belly, I'm going to try guerilla marketing for my dissertation.
Late comedian and former pentecostal preacher Sam Kinison used to say, "Don't drive drunk. But if you do, take Fountain." In that spirit, blogging.la provides a list of favorite traffic shortcuts and secret passageways to get you from one side of town to another.
Sunday, June 12: The crew has been found. Due to a "mis-communication," the helicopter pilot did not arrive until Sunday, she said. When the pilot did show up, he "found a note in a bag saying (the campers) were headed west toward the coast," presumably on foot, Spillane said. The pilot described the region as "the hottest area they could possibly go to," she said. Later: See also AllAfrica.com (where a Namibian police representative claims to have not heard of the case) and Interfax, but for the most part, there is still very little web coverage of this case a week later.
Last night on the news, I saw this story of a team of filmmakers who have disappeared in Namibia. They were working on a documentary about witchcraft, when they were cursed by a witch, began to experience various mechanical problems, and eventually were abandoned in the desert due to a miscommunication. When I tried to look into the story further, I couldn't find any more information, and Google kept posting link after link to the Blair Witch Project.
Los Angeles publicist Sherri Spillane identified the missing as Los Angeles pilot Christopher Banninger; British-born businessman Mike Edson; Russian actor Oleg Taktarov; South African athlete K.J. Lodge; and a sex therapist and radio host who goes by the name of Natasha Terry. The five were brought by helicopter to a camping area on Friday and were supposed to be picked up the following day, said Spillane, ex-wife of crime writer Mickey Spillane.
Lionel Shriver won the Orange Prize yesterday for her novel We Need to Talk About Kevin, discussed earlier here and here. Buy.this.book. From an interview with the author:
Q: What sparked 'We Need To Talk About Kevin'?
A: An intersection of the public and the private. I was in my early forties, and contending with the fact that my tentative decision to forgo children was soon to be writ in stone. What was I so afraid of? Meanwhile, stories kept pouring in from the U.S. about kids shooting up their high schools. I thought: that (among a host of other things) is what I’m afraid of.
I do leave the house, I swear. This is actually a couple weeks' worth of Netflix. (Warning: spoilers ahead...)
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou: I'm a fan of Wes Anderson and, I think like most of his fans, I was disappointed by this film. It seemed to go in too many directions at once without going in any one direction far enough. Is it a comedy? Is it surrealism? Is it a family tragedy? What is it? When Owen Wilson's character met his end, I didn't know if I was supposed to laugh, cry, smoke a cigarette, slap Willem Dafoe...
Finding Neverland: A few of my female friends had called and said, "OMG, you have to see this movie," so I figured Johnny Depp was looking scrubbed and yummy. Johnny, unlike Wes, did not disappoint. The film itself was perfectly charming, but that perfection made it slightly dull. I also found it a bit hard to believe JM Barrie and Sylvia Davies never kissed once. Not once. Not even on her deathbed. Not once.
Kinsey: I had been looking forward to this film since its release. Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, and Peter Sarsgaard all gave powerful performances, and the story itself is titillating and historically significant. I did wish we had learned more about the actual surveys, their results, and their impact on society, but I guess that's what the book is for. Or maybe I'll just read TC Boyle...The very next day after seeing this film, I caught about five minutes of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and the contestant's question was what species Kinsey was studying before humans (wasps, if you haven't seen it). The contestant called his phone-a-friend, and the phone-a-friend said he was pretty sure it was rats. Isn't your phone-a-friend supposed to be sitting there with his finger on the Internet trigger? Rats.
Tarnation: The hype around this documentary was pretty outrageous, and for once, I'd say the hype was completely deserved. This film comes as close to a cinematic representation of madness as anything I've ever seen. It's painful, not pretty, and very moving.
Reconstruction: This movie was silly. It didn't come close to reaching the impressive metaphysical heights to which it aspired, but it did present a thoroughly enjoyable tour of beautiful downtown Copenhagen. I think I know where I want to go on my next oversøisk rejse.
