Christmas is over, but if you’re already planning ways to embarrass your grandmother next holiday season, Kama Sutra gingerbread cookie cutters ($55) are the right idea. More »
Imagine you’re out sight-seeing in Thailand. Whoa! Elephants! Better catch some video with your iPhone. Really hold it out there for a good shot when, haha, he’s touching it with his trunk! Aaaand it’s gone. Sure, it’d be equal parts hilarious and a bummer if it actually happened, and while that’s what this video shows, it’s probably (unfortunately) bogus. More »
This is Muhammad Shahid Nazir aka One Pound Fish Man, as many people call him. You probably don’t know about him, but he’s huge in the United Kingdom already—a YouTube sensation that is quickly racking up views and becoming a freaky internet sensation, much like Trololo Man. More »
OK, so here’s a reason to rethink buying refurbished. Five-year-old Braydon Giles popped open a 3DS he just got for Christmas to find about nine photos of people, presumably the previous owners (or the previous owner’s parents?), having sex. Hoo-boy. More »
Oh come on, people. An 8-year-old foster child in Harlem opened a donated Christmas present to find a baby bear. And also a real pistol, which she thought was awesome, and started waving it around and showing everyone. It was inoperable, thankfully, but good lord who is putting guns in little kids’ presents?? More »
One of the stranger things I came across while in Tokyo last month was a digital artist who built a human camera that requires touch from another person to snap photos.
It is artist Eric Siu’s bit of rebellion against an increasingly technology-dependent world that distances people from real-life interactions. This effect is especially pronounced where Siu lives in Japan, as the Internet has allowed “Hikikomori” and “Otaku” sub-cultures to thrive. In “Hikikomori” culture, teens actually shut themselves in from interaction with the outside world.
As social networking, e-mail and other forms of digital communication replace or squeeze out time for face-to-face meetings, Siu wanted to create a piece of technology that required the opposite — real human touch.
The Touchy Camera, which he built using off-the-shelf parts for a few hundred dollars, is a wearable camera that requires another person to touch the wearer in order for it to work. Otherwise, the wearer is blind because the camera’s shutter doesn’t open without contact from someone else (see the GIF I made below).
If you touch him for 10 seconds or longer, that camera snaps a photo that’s viewable from an LCD screen on the back of the his head.
We walked around with it one morning in the Roppongi Hills area in Tokyo. And to make an understatement, the effect on bystanders was a bit magical. Some people would run away if they saw us come close, while others started asking questions. When some of them touched him and the shutters in front of his eyes opened, they gasped and smiled.
The camera works when human touch completes a simple circuit. Siu hands you something that looks like a lightbulb to hold in one hand, and when you touch him with the other, it completes a basic low-voltage circuit.
Siu only has one version of the Touchy camera, although people have asked him before about buying one as a toy. Since releasing it earlier this year, he’s performed all around mainland China and Asia and actually has gotten a bit of interest in it as a product. He says he would be open to making others if there was demand.
He and his partner, another character named Margaret Toucha, just made a holiday video (above) filled with boxers, pole dancers and some meandering around downtown Tokyo.
Remember that fake image of a Dubai shopping mall flooded by a broken shark tank? Well, it has happened for real inside a shopping center in Shanghai, China, where 33 tons of water and three sharks invaded the mall after the glass shattered into multiple deadly shards. There are 15 people injured. More »
Remember that fake image of a Dubai shopping mall flooded by a broken shark tank? Well, it has happened for real inside a shopping center in Shanghai, China, where 33 tons of water and three sharks invaded the mall after the glass shattered into multiple deadly shards. There are 15 people injured. More »
The first ever musical recording in space (that we know of anyway) was performed just a few days ago on the International Space Station by Col. Chris Hadfield, commander of the International Space Station. The song, which is already climbing up Reddit’s r/Music page, is an original Christmas Carol called Jewel in the Night.
Based on the commander’s Facebook and Twitter pages, he and his crew are celebrating Christmas in every way possible while they’re away from their families. They even have a Christmas tree on the ceiling, thanks to what the commander calls “the beauty of a weightless Christmas.”
Col. Hadfield is married, with three adult children, one of whom sent us his Christmas Carol.
The song is interesting, as it depicts Christmas from a birds’ eye perspective, from space. The International Space Station crew is spending Christmas as far away from Earth as possible, and while I try to stick with the classics, no situation is more suited to an original melody.
Here’s the SoundCloud file:
It’s crazy to think that someday, probably soon, when space travel has become a consumer industry, that this could be the Christmas Carol of outer space.
I mean, we made it through the Mayan Apocalypse (and the Black Friday Apocalypse), so in my book we’re good to go for at least a few more centuries.
In other words, get used to Jewel in the Night. One day, it too will be a classic with Oh Holy Night and Jingle Bells.
Lyrics
So bright, Jewel in the night.
There in my window below.
So bright, dark as the night.
With all of our cities aglow.
It’s long been our way
To honor this day
And offer good will to man.
And know, where eever we go,
It’s come round to Christmas again.
So far, shines every star.
They’re without limit to see.
So grand, far away land
Beckoning, calling to thee
And let it be shown
Where ever we go
In all of the wonders above,
With all that we bring
There’s no finer thing
Than this message, this province of love.
A love for the families
That gather below.
Love for the stranger
That you’ll never know.
For those who aren’t with you
Who wander above.
So bright, jewel in the night.
There lies the cradle we knew.
Home of all that we love
And all of our memories, too.
It shall be our way
To wander away
And take with us all that we know.
And never cease this message of peace
From Bethlehem so long ago.
It shall be our way, to wander away,
And take with us all that we know.
And never cease, this message of peace,
From Bethlehem so long ago.
The worst part of camping—having to leave your sleeping bag’s warm embrace for late night latrine trips. But with the Poler Napsack, you’ll never have to take it off again, even after you return to civilization. More »
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
