Cory Doctorow: The Swallowtail is a new Tokyo cafe in which subservient men dressed like butlers wait on the clientele of women in their 20s and 30s. This is an inversion of the Tokyo "maid cafes" where young geeky men go to be waited on by lavishly attentive women in maid costumes. Men in butler costumes is a theme in women's "Boys' Love" manga, which features attractive young men's homoerotic relationships: The Swallowtail coffee house in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro district is decked out like an English manor house, with customers subserviently greeted with a “Welcome home, Madam.” A concept that may seem a little odd, but it’s one that appears to have a ready-made audience, Emiko Sakamaki, the woman behind the eatery, explaining, “When I visited a ‘maid cafe’ last year, I thought there should be a cafe with a similar concept for women. And I saw people post some messages on the Internet that they wanted such a butler cafe. I thought the cafe could be accepted.” And accepted it has been, with tables being fully booked until May 12, the management asking customers to make reservations online to guarantee themselves a table.
Link (via Fark)

Cory Doctorow: Max sez, "We've created a site dedicated to doing every single one of the dozen some-odd monster make-up designs created by horror make-up legend Dick Smith in his 1965 'Famous Monsters of Filmland'-published 'Dick Smith's Do-It-Yourself Monster Make-Up. The book was meant for children, and so many of the designs suggest using everyday household items, such as bread crumbs and Karo syrup, but the results are eye-popping, thanks to Dick Smith's genius for horror make-up. Max and Courtney document every step of the process with photographs, and then offer a short movie to demonstrate what the make-up looks like in action. So far we have created a Boris Karloff-style mummy, weird skin textures made with liquid latex and bread crumbs (!), Collodion scars, and a Ed 'Big Daddy' Roth-style bug eyed dragstrip monster called a 'Weird-Oh.'" STEP ONE: Paint liquid latex on your face and stick bread crumbs to it
It's a good idea to have a plate or a pie tin below you to catch spare crumbs that will fall of your face.

STEP TWO: Add more latex and breadcrumbs
At this point, you can really build up the facial features with the latex and bread crumbs. Be careful around the eyebrows and hairline, as liquid latex can tug quite a bit when it comes off. Let each layer dry before you add a new one. If you don't want a texture that is quite so thick, Dick Smith suggests using cracker meal.
Link (Thanks, Max!)

Mark Frauenfelder: Recently, I started making my own sauerkraut, which is much better tasting than store bought. There have been stories suggesting that fermented foods like kimchi and sauerkraut are good for your immune system. (Here's a BBC story about claims that kimchi may cure bird flu.) So this article about Kimchi in the LA Times caught my eye. The Chinese World Journal of Gastroenterology recently ran a report titled "Kimchi and Soybean Pastes Are Risk Factors of Gastric Cancer." The researchers, all South Korean, report that kimchi and other spicy and fermented foods could be linked to the most common cancer among Koreans. Rates of gastric cancer among Koreans and Japanese are 10 times higher than in the United States.

"We found that if you were a very, very heavy eater of kimchi, you had a 50% higher risk of getting stomach cancer," said Kim Heon of the department of preventive medicine at Chungbuk National University and one of the authors. "It is not that kimchi is not a healthy food — it is a healthy food, but in excessive quantities there are risk factors."

It could be that the danger of kimchi might be from the large amount of salt in it, "which could combine with red pepper to form a carcinogen."

In any case, I'm not going to stop making sauerkraut. I don't use much salt when I make it anyway. Link

Cory Doctorow: Dubaidave visited Alexandria in Egypt and discovered a run-down kiddee park called Fantazyland: the United Ride of Fantasy. He lavishly documented it in photos and prose at the link below. It seems like a remarkably awful place -- derelict themeparks are possibly the greatest things in the world; you just can't beat 'em for scoobydooid spooky atmosphere, kitsch and phantasmagoric wickedness.
I had heard that there was a kiddie credit at a place called Fantazy Land but could not find anyone who had been there. Anyway We finally found the park and it was the worst run park I have ever been to.

On the net I had found that the entry fee was 7 Egyptian Pounds, around $1.50. However when I got there they said it was 13 Pounds. I went back to the car as or whole group was going to go in, but when we got back to the pay window it was now 30 Pounds each, Anyway, I decided to go in on my own to get some photos.

One thing to note was that when I paid my 30 Pounds I was actually given 3 tickets with 10 Pounds written on them, something tells me I was ripped off. Link (Thanks, Shalaby!)

Cory Doctorow: Iain sez, "The fundraising body for science fiction's Arthur C Clarke Award has just released a collection of essays on past winners (up to and including Quicksilver) and The Aust Gate bookstore has set up a site for it. All money (les what we need to keep the site running) will be given to the Foundation." Link (Thanks, Iain!)

Cory Doctorow: "The Architecture of Moscow from the 1930s to the early 1950s -- unrealised projects" is a site that documents grandiose Soviet-era buildings that were planned, but lost to bureaucracy and second thoughts. They range from the sublime -- The Рalace of Technology -- to the ridiculous -- The Palace of Soviets, pictured here. Link (via Digg)

Cory Doctorow: This build-log explains how to create your own game-show hand-buzzers for use with your favorite video-game system. These were created for games of You Don't Know Jack played on a gorgeous MAME cabinet. Link (via Make Blog)

Cory Doctorow: An 80-year-old Marine Corps veteran was fired from an AMC theater in Bridgewater, NJ, over the forearm tattoos he bears, which are a Marines emblem and his Corps serial number. When he started working at the theater, he kept the tattoos covered, but when the theater mandated that ushers wear short-sleeve shirts, he fell afoul of the "no visible tattoos" rule.

After a public outcry, AMC re-hired him, with back-pay. AMC spokesman Zach Baze, based in Kansas City, Mo., said the company does not comment on personnel matters.

In a letter to Trombadore, an AMC Theatres attorney, Kelly W. Schemenauer, wrote: "AMC does value the contribution made by military veterans, including Mr. Smith. As an employer, AMC also has employee wardrobe standards, and we strive to treat each employee equally with respect to such standards."...

Every year, his family postpones Thanksgiving to the following weekend so he can work that day — one of the busiest for movie theaters — and fellow employees can have the day off with their families.

"I'm from a generation that grew out of the Depression. When you have a job, you make damn sure to hold on to it. People come around every day looking for work," said Smith, who has been working since he was 14 years old and delivered beer on his bicycle, using 15 cents from his paycheck for movie tickets. "When I had a job, I did what I was supposed to do and a little extra."
Link (Thanks, Dan!) (photo excerpted from Gannett Photo/Ed Pagliarini)

Cory Doctorow: GarbageScout is a Gmaps mashup for craphounds: when you're out and about in New York, San Francisco or Philadelphia, you send phonecam pics of any nice garbage you see on the curb, along with the location. GarbageScout puts your pictures on an interactive map of choice crap, and scroungers can grab a wheelbarrow and head on out.

I once stood watch for an hour over a mid-20th-century dentist chair, curvilinear and powder blue, while I waited for Roger Wood, the mad clock-maker, to show up and take it away for conversion into clocks. It's the craphound's code: you've gotta get the junque for your buds. Link (via Make Blog)

An efficient, environmentally friendly engine being developed by an Iowa company can run on several fuels, including hydrogen, ethanol, natural gas and propane.

Cory Doctorow: A new public alpha of Firefox 2 has gone live. The browser, code-named "Bon Echo" (all Firefox versions are named after public parks) is nowhere near ready for prime-time, but it is smokin' hot fast on my Powerbook, easily twice as fast at managing tabs and tab-switches as the current Firefox. Regrettably, almost none of my Firefox "extensions" (plugins) worked with Bon Echo, but I'm willing to live without them temporarily while I play at crash-test dummy. Link

Update: Leonard sez, "Use the Nightly Tester Tools extension to get around those silly version issues. Obviously if the extensions are actually broken you'll have issues, but almost everything I have works even on the FF3 trunk builds (I run 40-50 extensions)."

Adam also suggests "You might want to try the MR Tech Local Install extension for forcing extensions to work with Bon Echo Alpha - I've haven't tried it w/the latest Bon Echo Alpha, but it worked really well for Bon Echo Alpha a month or two back."

Cory Doctorow:
François Zenella, an ex-coal miner, spent 25,000 hours building a 90-ton one-eigth scale model of Royal Caribbean International's cruise liner, the Majesty of the Seas. In his back yard. He launched it in 2005 and has sailed it ever since. Link (via Make Blog)

Cory Doctorow: Pearl Jam -- who previously released free MP3s of their concerts -- have shipped their latest video as a Creative Commons download. Weirdly, they plan to stop officially distributing the video in four days and move it behind a paywall -- though the CC license would allow others to go on distributing the video for free. Link (Thanks, Patrick!)

Cory Doctorow: Captain Nod, a PhD student, has produced a pair of papercraft models inspired by the original Quake: first, the cthuloid Shambler -- the coolest of all the monsters in Quake -- and then the Quake "player" character ("Ranger" -- thanks, James), a grimacing, muscle-bound marine. Link (via Wonderland)

Mark Frauenfelder:  Michael Simmons, editor of The Fretboard Journal showed me these photos of a Gibson Flying V guitar that he asked Dan Clowes, Peter Bagge, and Robert Armstrong to decorate. He gave me permission to run them here. He says: (Click on thumbnails for enlargement) The guitar was originally made in 1974 or 1975 and I've had it since maybe 1983. The finish was in terrible shape, so I stripped it in a fit of youthful exuberance, intending to refinish it in red, and promptly lost interest in the project. In 1993 Dan Clowes and Peter Bagge were at a local comic store and I had the idea of letting them doodle on the guitar. When I got to the store, there was a huge line of fanboys with comics to sign so Peter and Dan were limiting each person to just a signature and maybe a dedication, but absolutely no sketches. When I plunked down the guitar and asked them if they would draw on it, they seemed to be really excited about the idea because they spent about 30 minutes doodling on it. The drawing of Mickey Rat on the back was done by Robert Armstrong in 1998. The great thing about Armstrong's drawing style is that his musical instruments are always anatomically correct. The guitar Mickey is waving around is clearly a 1959 version of the Flying V, for example. I had a clear pickguard made for it so the drawings would show through. The pickups are custom Seymour Duncans. One of these days I'll finish putting it together.


Mark Frauenfelder: Squidoo announced the three winners for the Boing Boing lens contest. Basically, Squidoo lets readers select and annotate content from other sites, and categorize it. I like the "Boing Boing Trips" entry. I also didn’t think about Boing Boing as a travel guide until Sarah King served up this Boing Boing-inspired lens. Sarah indicates that Boing Boing can be a useful tool for backpackers, expatriates and other geeks on the go. Link

David Pescovitz: Markings on this tuna fish caught on the Kenyan coast south of Mombasa may or may not spell out the Arabic words for "You are the best provider." According to the BBC News, the phrase is close to a text in the Koran. After the tuna was reeled in, it was brought to a local fish shop "for preservation." Shortly after, the tuna was moved to the fisheries department for protection. It was promptly reported stolen from the fisheries office but has since been located back at the fish shop where it first came to the public's attention. From the BBC News:
After being asked by Muslim leaders in Kenya, Kenya's National Museum had offered to take custody of the fish and preserve it for the country's heritage.

The reported theft followed numerous attempts by locals and Muslim scholars to buy the mysterious fish.

An official at the fisheries department in Mombasa said someone had even offered to pay as much as $150. Link (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)

David Pescovitz: This week, the BBC Radio 4's Frontiers ran a very interesting special program on the human perception of time. From the program description: When a person's life is in danger, a phenomenon known as 'time-dilation' can occur. This is when, during a car crash for example, time seems to slow down or become frozen.

In these cases the body's internal clock speeds up when facing a potential catastrophe, so that it can take in more information more quickly and function more effectively in an emergency.

This is also a phenomenon actively sought by elite sportspeople, when they get 'in the zone'. Link (via Mind Hacks)

Mark Frauenfelder: Robyn Miller has images and information about Rhodesia's fantastic entry to the 1939 World's Fair. They put Victoria Falls in a huge room (or a scale creation of it) pumping 60,000 gallons of water over the edge per minute! But it came to a sad end, due to nearby "depraved" activities (at the fair).
Link

Mark Frauenfelder:
Last week I saw an advance screening called An Inconvenient Truth, an incredible documentary about Al Gore's work to raise awareness about global warming. It opens May 24.

It's part revealing profile (Gore is as smart as you'd guess, a Macintosh / Treo freak who creates his Keynote presentations himself, and a passionate, caring, positive, and funny person) and part hair-raising report on the astonishing changes our planet is undergoing as a result of massive increases in carbon dixode in recent decades. The two parts are woven together in a way that makes for a riveting, unforgettable movie.

I especially like the fact that the film offers a way out of the frightening path we're taking. There's plenty to be scared about, but with smart (and expensive) work, Gore believes we can reverse global warming.

Naturally, Big Oil is not happy about this film and has started attacking the facts presented in the film. Link |Trailer