a real hoverbike

Colin Furze is an amazing man. A high school dropout, he has created all sorts of amazing inventions, including a homemade hoverbike seen below.

Furze is quite popular in Britain and elsewhere around the world, thanks in part to his regular appearances on the Sky 1 program Gadget Geeks. In less than two days on YouTube, this video has garnered more than 3.3 million hits.

This contraption looks very cool and at the same time lethally dangerous. The falling part doesn't scare me as much as the getting chopped up by the huge blades part.

Colin narrates his own video. As you can hear, the guy definitely needs much more coffee.

trans bathroom hysteria

I have been reading various news items about the culture war now brewing in the United States involving several states that have or will impose laws requiring trans persons to use bathrooms based on their sex at birth.

This is the biggest issue facing Americans today? Really? This is more important than shoring up the economy or fighting terrorism or dealing with immigration problems?

Do sponsors of such laws worry about hordes of women dressed as guys swarming into men's rooms so they can stand at urinals to sneak a look at some dude's junk?

Or is the fear that men will dress as women so they can sneak in ladies' rooms and ogle the tampon machines? Don't men realize that women's rooms almost universally have closed stalls for all occupants?

The above considerations aside, how would such a law be enforced? A genital monitor would be at the door to make sure only people with the correct naughty bits were attempting to use the designated john? "Excuse me sir, you look a bit effete -- mind showing me your schlong before you enter?"

What about transsexuals who have undergone complete gender reassignment surgery? How would you check them at the door? "Excuse me, miss, you'll have to wait here for about six weeks while we run a DNA test to see if you were born a woman."

As the great bard once wrote: much ado about nothing.

ted cruz lookalike does porn

A 21-year-old Mississippi woman who recently appeared on Maury Povich's television show has agreed to do a sex scene on film with her boyfriend for a popular porn website, all because she bears a striking resemblance to a crossdressing Ted Cruz.

The porn website will pay the couple $10,000 for a six-minute sex scene. "She’s more famous than Madonna!" her boyfriend declared to the media.

Before she became an internet meme sensation, the woman had no idea who Ted Cruz was or that she strongly resembled his long-lost little sister.

She may have been better off in the dark.

So let's be honest here: how many people really want to see a woman who looks like Ted Cruz in drag polishing her boyfriend's knob? Will anyone be turned on by this?

I imagine the website expects the couple's porn tryst will be a so-called loss leader. People will go to their website because they're curious and then stick around to watch some real porn.

Considering the website has already landed lots of free media coverage all over the world, thanks to their offer to the hapless Mississippi woman. It may turn out to be the best $10,000 they ever spent.

But, still, you know -- Ted Cruz in drag. Ew.

the great graham greene

Because a new baby has kept me from diving into any new books, I've been casually re-reading some old favorites that are shorter and can easily be picked up and put down as need be.

I've read all of the great Graham Greene's novels at one point or another, and many of them several times. I hadn't re-read Brighton Rock in a while, so I picked that up the other day and started in once again.

IMHO, this is one of his very best books, eclipsed only by a few others like The End of the Affair and The Quiet American. In some ways, however, I think Brighton Rock is his most accessible book because of its timeless criminality.

The book's central character is Pinky, an absolutely ruthless seventeen-year-old sociopath who murders people without a second thought. While the book is set in 1930s Britain, Pinky could be any underage criminal thug living today in any city around the world. He reminds me of some of the legendary gangbangers on The Wire.

If you've never enjoyed Graham Greene and/or Brighton Rock, I highly recommend his work. He is a great master and his beautiful, lyrical writing never fails to captivate me.

I know I'm not alone, because some of his books have made various "top one hundred" lists of the last century.

australian rhinos

Here's an idea that makes a lot of sense to me: small groups of endangered African rhinoceri will be relocated to Australia in order to provide a safe haven to increase their population.

Similar projects are planned in the United States for Florida and Texas. With more rhinos now being poached in Africa than are born each year, extinction in the wild within a decade is a real possibility.

I'm surprised no one attempted this already with rhinos and also elephants, another species targeted by poachers with dwindling numbers. Parts of both Australia and the United States have a climate quite hospitable to African species.

If you've ever been to Hearst Castle in Northern California, you probably know they've had wild zebra herds for nearly a century.

I imagine the three biggest impediments for this kind of project are (1) land where the immigrant animals can roam, (2) money to pay for operations, and (3) funding to ship the animals. After all, it's not like a rhino could fly by coach class to Sydney.

If you want more information about this worthwhile endeavor, check out the Australian Rhino Project's webpage.

in poor taste?

I'd recently seen this photo (enlargement) posted various places on the Internet. It was taken earlier this month in London. The various posters had no idea what it was about and incorrectly identified it as "cosplay."

It turned out the car and occupants driving on busy London streets were a promotion for the British airing of the new miniseries 11.22.63, based on the bestselling novel by Stephen King. If you know your dates, you know that was when John Kennedy was assassinated, the historical backdrop for the King book.

The limo and faux occupants are so instantly recognizeable that almost everyone probably knows that's what the President and First Lady looked like on the fateful day. As their car passed through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Kennedy was shot to death.

So is the London car promotion for the TV show in poor taste? Some people apparently thought so. On first blush it might seem to be the case. But it's not mocking anything nor anybody.

After all, King's novel featured an actual historical photo of President and Mrs. Kennedy on the book's cover. If the London promo was in poor taste, wouldn't that also mean an escapist thriller novel steeped in the same historical event was in poor taste as well?

Conversely, I think you could make the argument that pop culture borrowings of real events awakens people's interest in learning more about history. The movie Titanic is probably the best example of that -- public interest in the true story behind the doomed ship soared after the film was a hit.

Taste is subjective and some people will always be offended by something that others find acceptable. It's like the old saying holds: you can't please everybody all the time.

deep down low

If I saw this video when I was six years old or so, I wouldn't have been able to sleep for a month after that. I was frightened by weird eyes when I was young, and this would've set me over the edge.

online creepy crawlers

I happened to read two articles online in the last few days about two men who used the internet exhaustively to harass women.

The first was about an indicted financer who went after a female reporter and others with particularly vicious trolling attacks designed to ruin them professionally. The second was about a weird sexual stalker who may have had help from at least one female.

Common to both stories was the sense of helplessness the targeted women faced when trying to stop the harassment. Social media platforms like Facebook and Google were used as weapons, but those companies did nothing to stop the torment once alerted and hid behind their "hands off" approach.

Part of the problem is that the law protects companies like Google and Facebook to a certain degree. They have no incentive to be more proactive in protecting women legitimately using the internet. So by doing almost nothing, they're arguably more harmful.

If you're harassed by someone online, you can hire a company to scrub various mentions of you online, but those services are spotty at best. An online problem is like mold -- you can only remove most of it, and it's only a matter of time before you have a problem again.

There are no easy answers to this. Even if a company like Facebook or Google did a total IP block on offenders, that could be easily circumvented.

The only choice left to many victims is expensive and time-consuming litagation. There, you might win a moral victory but no actual compensation.

This pitfall is seen in the Bloomsburg Businessweek article linked above. One of the victims sued, was awarded an $18 million judgment, and then collected exactly zero from the perpetrator.

prince is dead

The musician Prince died suddenly yesterday in the United States at age 57. As of this writing, details are still sketchy about exactly how and why he died.

Most of the time I lived in New York, I danced at a club where one of the sound men was obsessed with Prince and played him a lot. Whenever I hear Prince now, I always think of that job.

Whenever copyrighted music is played in a commercial venue, the tracks are supposed to be logged so that royalties can be paid though ASCAP. The club owner was notoriously cheap, so he often simply logged music as "live performer" when it was decidedly not.

Prince was notoriously litigious and at some point sued hundreds of venues that used his music without proper clearance and payment. I always wondered if he sued my former employer in that batch after I left. I would be happy if he did, because the club owner was a gigantic scumbag and one of the main reasons I moved to California.

As for Prince, I was amazed that he was 57. I thought he was younger, maybe because he seemed somehow ageless. Still, 57 is far too young to die.

pointless advertising

I'm sure a thoroughly researched science exists to this, but I've never understood the value of paid product endorsements in most uses.

An athlete or a race car driver has Nike slapped on his jacket or her sports bag. A blimp floats around in the air with Goodyear on it. The periphery of a ball game has Apple in big letters painted on it.

What's the point? Would someone actually decide to buy a particular brand of shoe or computer or tire because of this?

I know there's something called "branding" to make the public more aware of a trade name, to keep it in their mind, but I have to wonder if there's a measurable return on the dollar in expensive endorsements.

Conversely, this sort of seemingly gratuitious advertising might only make the product more expensive because it's added to the overall cost. It's a sort of invisible tax all consumers must pay and have no way to protest.

not so itsy bitsy spider

Joey has reached the stage where bugs and spiders aren't just fascinating -- they need to be befriended and collected. The problem is, Australia has some of the deadliest spiders in the world.

Although no Australian has died from a spider bite in thirty-five years, that's not a statistic I want to challenge in my own home.

Joey has several model trucks he likes to play with in rather imaginative construction endeavors that sometimes defy the laws of gravity. Yesterday, I was disturbed to discover his latest project included giving rides in one of the trucks to an orb spider that was about two by three inches in size.

Orb spider bites can be painful for several hours but they're not dangerous. The creature is extremely common in this part of Australia.

Fortunately, the spider in question hadn't bitten Joey, so that became a teaching moment. Hopefully, the lesson will stick.

Just like snakes, spiders are fun to watch, but they should never, ever be touched.

all hope is lost

With each passing day, Donald Trump seems more and more likely to be the Republican nominee for President, notwithstanding his campaign spins more wildly out of control every week. His party has a sort of Stockholm syndrome about him -- he's taken them hostage and they're reluctantly going along for the ride to self-destruction.

Trump almost certainly will win the New York primary today. Polls are showing he'll probably also win most if not all of the five primaries next Tuesday, too. These primaries will boost the likelihood he'll be the nominee.

So it's looking at this point like it will be up to the Democrats to stop him. Personally, I'm not particularly wild about either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, but I'd rather either than Trump.

Clinton would make a better President than Sanders and is more prepared to hit the ground running, but she's so loathed by the opposition party that I suspect Washington would be even more frozen in polarization than it is now with her in the White House. Sanders means well but he's in way over his head and most of his lofty proposals would never see the light of day.

I have the sense that the United States is close to some kind of breaking point. I don't mean civil war or insurrection or anything like that, but I do wonder if some political reset will happen within the next decade or so.

Politics has become so strident and self-strangulating that the whole country is suffering as a result of Washington's paralysis, at least from what I see at this distanced perspective.

As for me, I'm probably paying a lot more attention to politics and current affairs in the United States than I would have had I still be living back there.

a good night's sleep

Unlike his older brother who slept through most of the night at a very early age, Tombo is a lighter sleeper. So until very recently, I was up at least once and often twice during the night. For his part, because he is not working for several months, husband was up several times a night, too.

In the past few days, however, Tombo has settled more into a quieter routine, needing attention only once or at most twice a night. Last night my husband got up once, so I had my first full night's sleep since baby was born.

Considering I didn't sleep all that well the last six or eight weeks of my pregnancy, last night was probably the first time in at least two months that I had a good full seven hours of dreamtime.

Today, I feel like an entirely new person, reborn after a sentence in the gulag of sleeplessness.

curly sue grows up

Alisan Porter has a lovely voice. She's a little wobbly in the beginning here and this isn't the best arrangement of this song, but she nonetheless hits it out of the park.

What is most amazing to me is that she's the all-grown-up actress who once was the little girl lead in the 1990s family movie Curly Sue, which I saw countless times when I was a child. Talent is a cream that always rises to the top.

married to a spy

Imagine you're married to a bona fide spy who works for the forces of good.

Your spouse must travel abroad on an important mission. Because of secrecy laws, your significant other cannot tell you where but will keep in touch several times a day by cell.

Would you be upset because your spouse didn't tell you specifically where he/she was and didn't trust you enough to break secrecy laws?

This dilemma arises in The Colder War, a Charles Cumming novel I recently read. The central character is a long-time operative for MI6, the British equivalent of the Central Intelligence Agency.

At the end of his marriage, his wife makes a big deal about him refusing to tell her where he'll travel abroad, notwithstanding he's forbidden by law from doing so.

Now I imagine this is an actual scenario that can occur for those who work in clandestine occupations. Cumming himself may have once been a spy, as his biography hints.

As for the spy's wife, I volunteer to smack the woman. Trust doesn't mean you own your spouse, that he or she must divulge everything about his life. As long as he keeps in touch by cell several times a day, what does it matter where he is?

When you marry a person who has certain occupational limitations, you know heading into the marriage that they exist. You don't have the right to rewrite the rules after the fact.

As for Charles Cumming, he's a skilled novelist, and I've enjoyed all of his books. He's often compared to John Le Carre, because both write in similar genres, but don't think he's really a "successor" to the great master.

That's not to say his books aren't as good or as enjoyable, but just that they're more unalike than they are alike. And, after all, there will only be one John Le Carre.

the ex-wife from hell

The before-and-after set seen below had been circulating around the internet in the last few days.

The explanation is easy to guess: the "before" was made when he was crazy in love with a woman he would marry.

The "after" is the inked-over version of the same tattoo once the woman in question became an ex-wife.

This looks to me like it's on the wearer's forearm from wrist to elbow. In other words, it's a big-ass tattoo.

The moral of the story here is obvious: don't get tattoos of things that might not last forever. A corollary to that moral: the bigger the tattoo, the bigger the potential mistake.

You'll be ahead of the game, of course, if you never get any tattoos at all.

Diamonds are forever, except when forever doesn't happen, but then you can hock the rock and earn back some of the mistake's costs.

Tattoos, however, really are forever and no pawn shop in the known universe wants your unwanted skin.

what about tombo?

My husband and I started calling the new baby "Tombo" before he even arrived. His real name, of course, is Thomas, but since we already have a Thomas, a Tom, and a Tommy in my husband's family, not to mention some in my mostly estranged family, we needed a unique derivative.

Ergo, Tombo came into being. We now use it almost exclusively with the baby, and Joey plus my father-in-law call him that, as do some other relatives. The nickname was not planned; we don't even remember which of us started it.

But now I've been worrying if we should stop using it. Will he hate it when he's older? Or will he be so used to it his name that it won't matter?

Some parents use a child's middle name in this type of situation, but that would cause problems, too, because of multiple family uses. And I've never been a fan of generic replacements like "Skip" or "Bud."

I grew up with a kid named Munch, short for Munchkin. Everyone called him that. His real name was Lemuel. It was sort of a pejorative name because he was short, but he didn't seem to care.

If we're going to change his nickname, we need to do it quickly. My husband things Tombo is fine, and I think I'm onboard, but not yet entirely sure.

klute

If you've ever seen the terrific thriller Klute, you probably remember the scene captured below in this outtake (enlargement). In an Oscar-winning performance, Jane Fonda plays Bree Daniel, a struggling model who pays the bills by turning tricks.

Like most great films, it has some memorable scenes that could stand on their own as short films. In the one captured with this still, Bree endures a modeling cattle call.

The scene shows the models not as people but as commodities. The casting people talk about them as if they aren't even there. Then, they're hustled out, and more interchangeable models enter, but nothing really changes. Bree goes off to turn a trick.

As a sometimes model, that scene has always spoken to me about the cold, impersonal world of fashion. Models are not people -- they're living mannequins.

The scene is beautifully shot in wide, distancing panoramas. The movie was made forty-five years ago, but that scene remains absolutely timeless and true today.

food preferences

Both my husband and I have few foods we won't eat. Other than mushrooms, James will pretty much eat anything. I don't like celery, okra, or onions, but I will eat the latter if it's finely chopped.

I don't think we've ever mentioned this in front of Joey, so his food dislikes are apparently his own. He'll eat anything except celery and green beans, although he has no problem with yellow beans.

For whatever reason, although it looks the same, Australian celery does not taste like it does at home in the States. I guess it's a variety and soil issue. It seems more bitter and woody here, although I don't like American celery, either. Wherever it's from, it's like eating a weed.

So this leaves me wondering if food preferences are somewhat genetically based. Otherwise, why do we develop dislikes so early in life? Why does my older son hate celery, too, when he has no idea that I dislike it?

men and garter belts

I understand why men fifty or sixty years ago were turned on by women in stockings and garter belts. They would occasionally glimpse a woman's gartered thigh, so garters themselves became inherently erotic.

That might be why the posters for the 1967 film The Graduate showed a woman's leg with stockings being rolled up in preparation for clipping into the garter belt. What better way to telegraph that the film was about sex and seduction?

What I don't understand is why men today are turned on by a woman in her garter belt. Girls in porn are often seen wearing them, so the volume suggests a certain degree of demand exists.

The picture below is a good example. It's from a recent shoot featuring two women cavorting in and out of their clothes. (Complete set.)

I asked my husband what he thought. First, I had to get past the "I like you wearing anything, kitten." He'd be turned on seeing me wearing gum boots and an oaken barrel.

But then he did admit there was something inherently sexy about a nice looking woman in a garter belt, but he couldn't pin down why he thought that. So I guess this is a Mars/Venus thing.

IMHO a woman in a garter belt looks like she's been caught in a time warp. I would not wear one in place of pantyhose. It's just too much hassle.

cheating death on the metro

I found this video somehow addictive, maybe because it's like a dream. That's up until the part where he jumped on the train about 2:15 into the action. You can see that he both jumps the turnstiles and also slides down the escalator past some sort of security person.

The part on top of the metro train is just insanity. Growing up in the Chicago area, I remember hearing about various boys killed doing this on commuter trains from time to time.

men and porn

The penultimate issue of Time magazine has a very interesting cover story about men and porn addiction. After reading the piece, I'm left with the conclusion that there really is no easy solution.

Internet porn addictions are like internet gambling addictions and internet gaming addictions. Addictive and compulsive behavior has a root cause, and the remedy is to deal with that, not the symptoms.

The obstacle to this is the fact that many people have destructive behaviors but otherwise most have functional lives. You can't compel them to seek treatment. At some point, they have to say "enough is enough" and deal with the problem themselves. Or, they don't.

Personally, I see porn as sort of an online catalog. You look at it for a bit, maybe warm up your motor, and then you seek release with the real thing. It's not a substitute for sex.

Nevertheless, I'm guessing a lot of people, particularly men, have a problem with over-consumption of online porn. The fact that so much of it exists is proof of that -- you need a great deal of demand to necessitate the bountiful supply.

idiots who parent

A New Jersey Nazi who named his children Adolph Hitler and Eva Braun is in the news, thanks in part to a new documentary about him and also for being a fugitive on the run.

Quite simply, the man is an idiot. He saddles his children with horrible names and all sorts of twisted ideology. Talk about deliberately saddling your children with social handicaps.

He's playing the victim card as he snivels in a new documentary about how mean the world is to him and the terrible child services for taking away his children. And then the moron had the total lack of common sense to show up in court wearing a full-fledged but badly fitting Nazi uniform.

I have zero sympathy for this clown. He can stew alone in his self pity for as long as he likes. Yeah, the system shafted you pal -- thank God for that.

the candid constituent

The governor of Florida went into a Starbucks to order a coffee. Before he could be served, a resident gave him a frank review of his administration. He left, sans beverage.

You can see a security woman stepping close to the speaker but she takes no steps to stop the woman from speaking. I imagine she was readying herself in case it escalated into something physical, but would not violate her First Amendment rights.

Somewhere, James Madison is smiling.

stop masturbating!

I saw the "Stop Masturbation Now" website discussed on a Reddit forum and some people actually believed it was for real. I think it's pretty obvious that it's not, although some of their "articles" are pretty funny (and some not at all).

This was a favorite: "Edward Scissorhands: The Best Anti-Masturbation Documentary Ever Filmed." Also: "Masturbaters Cause Cucumber Recall in California."

I could never really understand why Victorians and those from other eras were so hysterical about children masturbating. As long as they didn't do it in public, what was such a big deal?

I'd rather my teenage son jack off than impregnate one of his classmates.

menstrual misfire

Salon recently ran an article about women who protested a new abortion law in Indiana by contacting the governor and describing their menstrual status in explicit detail. Some did it in writing and others by phone calls to his office.

While the movement behind this effort garnered considerable press, I wonder if protests like this are counter-productive.

Effective communication results from opening channels of dialog. When you disgust or repulse your intended recipient with irrelevant, graphic shock tactics, you defeat your purpose.

It's like publicly throwing blood or feces or a creme pie on a politician you don't like. When you cause a hostile emotion, don't expect them to pay any attention to you thereafter.

Trolling online rarely works because it's primarily designed to annoy. When you troll in the real world, don't be frustrated when the same annoyance results in an indifference to your anger.

pincushion face

Not all women are beautiful, but all women can make themselves more attractive by not defacing their face.

Just as I am not a fan of tattoos, with a few exceptions, I am not a fan of body piercing, particularly facial piercing. The only exception I make are pierced ears.

IMHO, piercing your face is like deliberately giving yourself zits. Anything that distracts and detracts from your natural looks is a net negative.

The woman below is a good example (enlargement). I wouldn't call her conventionally beautiful but she has an interesting, exotic face.

But that face jewelry is just ugly. Instead of your eyes going to her interesting eyes or mouth, they go to that thumbtack on her cheek.

Piercings leave scars. What woman would deliberately scar her own face for life? The nose ring won't leave too large of a scar, but that cheek thing will.

Facial piercings also have a higher incidence of infections. An infection can lead to even more unsightly scarring.

It's not my face, so if she wants to junk it up like this, that's her business. But I think she's made a mistake she'll come to regret at some point in her life.

Life has too many regrets as it is. Why go out of your way to give yourself even more?

the purgatory show

The entertainment industry website Deadline Hollywood is reporting about a new sitcom set in purgatory, the mythical halfway station between heaven and hell. The program is slotted to run on cable channel TV Land.

I predict this show won't last long. The gimmick seems thin.

The best comedies have rich, complex characters and clever interactions, backed up by tight writing and razor-sharp humor. They're not built around gimmicks and, instead, are often very simple, ordinary setups.

Perhaps the greatest comedy in recent years was Seinfeld, which had no gimmicks and famously was a show about nothing. The characters and the writing are what made the program brilliant.

I still watch Seinfeld on occasion when I need a quick laugh. My Australian husband often finds the show confusing, a lost in translation thing I guess.

no, I'm not supporting trump

Yesterday's post was probably the most obvious April Fool's Day one I've done. It seemed a natural to do, but it was difficult to make it convincing.

Because, seriously, in the last week or so I've wondered if Trump is starting to go insane. He's become so utterly reckless and ridiculous.

Based on what I've read online, more than a few people suspect Trump is just trolling and trying to throw the race to the Democrats. If that's true, then he has to come clean at some time.

So it's either trolling or he's going crazy. Whatever the answer, I will not vote for him under any circumstances.

I love donald trump

Some of you may have read my previous posts against Donald Trump. I'm happy to say that I've changed my mind and believe Donald Trump will make an excellent President.

I've been reading some recent articles about Trump and have been impressed by what I've seen. Take his threat to drop atomic bombs on Europe. Now I think it's great he's talking this way. Nobody will mess with America with Donald at the controls.

I know some people are upset about how some pushy reporter was shoved or something at one of his rallies. I see no problem with that. In fact, I like the idea of a President Trump putting mouthy reporters in jail. There would be no pesky Woodward or Bernstein with The Donald in the house.

His idea to start a trade war with China is a great plan, too. Plunging the world into a massive recession because of a trade dispute is a good way to finally show people that America won't be pushed around any more. We can ride out a recession, and they can't, so we'll get the last laugh.

So I say, go Donald. Kick butt and get to work breaking some heads.