NORWAY’S BATTLE AGAINST CHAOS Norwegian public television (NRK), which introduced the now-legendary continuous, live log-burning show (12 hours long, with “color commentary” on the historical and cultural importance of fire), scheduled a new program for this week in its appeal to serenity (labeled “Slow TV”). On Nov. 1, NRK was to televise live, for five hours, an attempt to … [Read more...] about Norway Battles Chaos and Hipster Haven and Drunken Pigs
August
Haute Couture and The Joker Lives and The Art Of Toilet Peeping
HAUTE COUTURE A few still-primitive cultures inexplicably celebrate such female adornments as the stacking of metal neck rings and the inserting of saucer-size disks into pierced earlobes. For “civilized” society, there is the annual Paris Fashion Week in September, when renowned designers outfit brave, otherwise-gorgeous models in grotesque clothing. Among the ensembles … [Read more...] about Haute Couture and The Joker Lives and The Art Of Toilet Peeping
First Amendment Blues and Cultural Diversity and Squirrels Gone Wild
FIRST AMENDMENT BLUES In the public libraries of Seattle (as in most public libraries), patrons are not allowed to eat, sleep (or even appear to be sleeping), be shirtless, go barefoot, have bad body odor or talk too loudly–because other patrons might be disturbed. But in Seattle, as the Post-Intelligencer reported in September, librarians do permit patrons to watch hard-core … [Read more...] about First Amendment Blues and Cultural Diversity and Squirrels Gone Wild
Clean Toilet Happiness and Macaque Punishment and The Reality Of Sharknado
HAPPINESS IS A CLEAN TOILET Beginning in 2011, about three dozen people in Tokyo have been meeting every Sunday morning at 6am on a mission to scrub down, one by one, the city’s grungiest public restrooms. “By 7:30,” according to an Associated Press reporter who witnessed an outing in August, the team had left behind a “gleaming public toilet, looking as good as the day it was … [Read more...] about Clean Toilet Happiness and Macaque Punishment and The Reality Of Sharknado
Loco Parentis and Sticker Shock and Our Litigious Society
LOCO PARENTIS First-time mother Amy Webb proudly notates dozens of data points about her child each day and obsessively tracks their detailed progression by computer on spreadsheets, according to the provocative first-person account she wrote for Slate.com in July. In categories ranging from ordinary vital signs, to the kid’s progress in sound-making, to dietary reactions, to … [Read more...] about Loco Parentis and Sticker Shock and Our Litigious Society