Random Thoughts

Greg Gutfeld from Fox news web site says that teachers who have sex with students should be awarded not punished. It’s interesting that many people in America tend to look at the looks of the people involved in order to pass judgment. Instead of looking at the emotional issues and such. Although I doubt much research has been done into the emotional maturity of the average 16 year old today compared tot he average 40 year old today. Debates will ensue over this for years to come I am sure.

Then in an article found via Reuters, apparently it’s not illegal to be nude in most parts of this town in Vermont. When is the next big bonfire party? That’s what I really want to know!

 Vermont town bans public nudity after brash displays from Reuters
By Zach Howard

BRATTLEBORO, Vermont (Reuters) – A Vermont town that is gaining national attention for brash displays of nudity — from teens in the buff to naked elderly people — awoke on Wednesday to an emergency ban on nakedness in most public places.

Officials in Brattleboro voted 3 to 2 on Tuesday night for a temporary 30-day ordinance prohibiting people from going about in the nude.

Public nudity made headlines last summer when the weather grew hot and a couple of dozen teens took to holding hula hoop contests, riding bikes and parading past stores wearing only their birthday suits. The disrobing has resumed this summer.

But many locals say it has gone too far. Some cite a case in which a senior citizen from Arizona strolled through the center of town wearing only a waist pack and sandals.

“We’ve received quite a number of complaints on this,” Assistant Town Manager Barbara Sondag said. “This was brought up last summer … and kind of died down. Then a couple of incidents again this summer have got the issue to resurface.”

Vermont has a live-and-let-live tradition, allowing skinny-dipping and nude sunbathing. Brattleboro, the first permanent English settlement in the state in 1724, is home to a community of writers, artists and musicians as well as transplanted entrepreneurs from Boston and New York.

Although skinny-dipping and nude sunbathing will stay legal in the state, doing the “full monty” in the middle of this town has now become taboo. A violation can cost $100.

The topic is hotly debated at Harold & Son’s Barbershop, where Heather Birmingham, 30, cuts and colors hair.

“(Nudity) does rub some people the wrong way,” she said.

“Some people say ‘to each his own’. But some of the older people say ‘be respectful’.”

She disagrees with the ban. “This whole town is about peace and about being your own person. So if it is, then why isn’t nudity accepted?”

Caleb Morris, 15, said he wasn’t surprised by the town’s tough response because outsiders could find the nudity offensive, but he added that Vermont has always been unique.

“It’s a lot more free-spirited than some other states. We don’t have a lot of laws banning things here.”

The ban covers nudity in the main part of town and near schools and churches and is part of a broader anti-nudity proposal that is likely to be decided next month. Breast feeding in public will still be allowed.

So let’s put together a fund and build our own island somewhere.. It’s like 10 million or so..

from fast company

 The biggest story right now in Dubai is real estate. The most mind-boggling project is, of course, the The Palm, the luxury home development made by dredging sand from the ocean floor and turning it into palm-shaped tracts of luxury housing. It will soon to be followed by The World, a similar land-fill project in which zillionaires can each buy the ‘island’ of their choice — Australia, Japan, the Philippines, Africa, etc. — for about $10M each. Some 40% of the world’s dredgers are now in Dubai. That means there’s a lot of property to move, so the city has become one big real estate showcase. PalmRSZ.jpg

Everywhere you look, there are signs advertising condos. The airport. Billboards on the highways. On the Emirates airline entertainment channel. In endless free-standing kiosks at the Mall of the Emirates. There’s The Lagoons — a tract that advertises “a lush waterfront landscape” on Dubai Creek. There’s the Fairmont Palm Residence, which touts a luxury 4 bedroom villa for 18,000,000 AED. (about $5M). And there’s Palazzo Versace Dubai, a 130,000 square meter hotel and condo complex, which will include 215 suites, restaurants, and a day spa, all of which will be furnished with an exclusive line of products from the Versace Home Collection. That ‘lifestyle’ sideline has been the engine behind the recent turnaround in Versace’s fortunes.

Palazzo%20Versace.jpg

There will also be 169 exclusive condominiums, of which 50% have been sold prior to release.Who’s going to buy all these? Who knows? Maybe they should talk to Michael Shvo. But prices are escalating, just like they did in Miami before the recent crash of the overheated market there.

Rashad Bukhas, the head of all Dubai museums, says that two years ago, condos were selling for about $250 AED per sq ft. Now? $1200 AED per sq. ft. for the same type building. The area around the Emirates Tower, he says, will soon be the most expensive square mile in the world.

Dubai is handy for Iranians, who can’t get into the US from Iran, but could get in if they had a Dubai address. And it’s great if you’re working for Halliburton or SOM. No taxes! Golf! Tennis! Horseback riding!

The downside of all this growth? Horrendous traffic. As Greg Brandeau, CTO of Pixar, said, “This is like Sim City in real time.”

Build massive malls and office towers, and you’ve got problems with pollution and congestion, etc. In 2007, Dubai will spend $30M AED on public transit. “We run, and we look back and remedy,” says Bukhas. By next year, all government buildings will be green. All water comes from the sea via desalination plants. Energy is either solar – or, soon, nuclear.

By Dubai standards, Miami is Florence. At least, Miami – apart from its legitimate claim, now, of being one of the world’s great art and design cities – has some history. OK, so Art Deco hotels aren’t exactly St Peter’s Basilica, but they’re authentic, and they’ve been loving and precisely restored.

When Dubai went to reach into its own history for an architectural vernacular to express its style, it came up a little short. There were these odd little wind towers – a sort of pre-AC attempt to survive the brutal heat – so they have made them into a signature element, much like iron filigree from the French Quarter says New Orleans. Then there are a few little patterns they revived to use as decorative elements in hotels and condos to signify “historic Dubai.” But the pickings are pretty slim. In their haste to build, the Emiratis did what many cities — most recently Shanghai – did, and wantonly tore down their historic areas, only to wish they had preserved them instead. Less than 1% of metropolitan Dubai is ‘historic.’

Alarmed by the lack of an authentic ‘old town’ to show that the city didn’t spring full blown from the head of some Western mall architect in early 2002, Sheik Mohammed bin Rasid al Maktoum (Sheik Mo, as he’s known to his foreign fans) and his preservationist sidekicks are now trying desperately to rehabilitate whatever original buildings are left. There’s not much to work with.

The Bastikya area is the main historic area, and this is where Bukhas has clustered a slew of tiny museums (including the totally hilarious and fascinating Camel Museum.) And he’s come up with a little book of all the elements that future Dubaian architects need to manage, somehow, to work into their designs. Think of it as the Little Book o’ Dubai Branding… sort of a Style Guide to All Things Dubai.

So, for example, our hotel, Madinat Jumeirah, was modeled after an ancient Arabian fort or palace. Somehow, the place had evidently mated with a tart from Venice, because the complex is threaded with a system of canals, plied by abras – free water taxis – that take you from the faux souk to the spa to the Trader Vic’s. The buildings are lavishly adorned with the iconic wind towers (which, one Iranian sniffed, were actually Persian). Inside, the Dubai Motifs are displayed in abundance – every surface and wall, massively decorated.

Given the sheik’s love for horses, they’re also a motif, and the palm-flanked driveway to our hotel featured at least a dozen, life-sized, golden horses frolicking in the grassy median strip.

It was an unintentionally hilarious introduction to the place, later reinforced by a life-sized camel painted a la the Chicago cows. The approach to Caesars’ Palace instantly came to mind. This is Vegas, just without the irony and the craps tables.

That said, the hotel actually functions beautifully. It was grand, but warm; over-the-top, but oddly homey. Every night, the turn-down guy would fold my new bath towel into a little animal, like some giant Martha Stewart napkin folding exercise. And, he stuck little paper eyes on the beasts, so they sat greeting me on my bed when I returned to my room. I couldn’t bear to unfold them, so by the end of the week, I had a whole menagerie – a swan, a dog, an elephant.

There was a continuously replenished bowl of fruit, with kiwis and tangerines. There was a lovely box of exotic dates. The toiletries were gorgeous. The famous Emirati hospitality made the whole place a delight

Just add water – students invent alcohol powder

So where can I get some? What does it taste like? Is this stuff going to have no flavor? Will people be adding it to drinks to get people drunk without knowing it like GHB or roofies? Will we be able to add it to smoothies and make unusual cocktails now? What’s the coop on how much alcohol / proof per tablespoon? Inquiring alcoholics want to know.

from: Reuters

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Dutch students have developed powdered alcohol which they say can be sold legally to minors.

The latest innovation in inebriation, called Booz2Go, is available in 20-gramme packets that cost 1-1.5 euros ($1.35-$2).

Top it up with water and you have a bubbly, lime-colored and -flavored drink with just 3 percent alcohol content.

“We are aiming for the youth market. They are really more into it because you can compare it with Bacardi-mixed drinks,” 20-year-old Harm van Elderen told Reuters.

Van Elderen and four classmates at Helicon Vocational Institute, about an hour’s drive from Amsterdam, came up with the idea as part of their final-year project.

“Because the alcohol is not in liquid form, we can sell it to people below 16,” said project member Martyn van Nierop.

The legal age for drinking alcohol and smoking is 16 in the Netherlands.

In Germany, alcopops — sweet drinks containing alcohol and in powder form — caused quite a stir when launched on to the market. Alcohol powder, classified as a flavoring, was sold in the United States three years ago.

The students said companies interested in making the product commercially could avoid taxes because the alcohol was in powder form. A number of companies are interested, they said.

I think this story is seriously underreported. Yeah a friend said that he saw it in the paper, but how many people read the paper? This would be a good opportunity to reevaluate the bankruptcy laws that were altered to further put the credit card companies in control and leave Americans with less opportunity to survive a financial crisis. Credit cards are not bad, but some of the practices really put people in a situation that just gets worse and they do not act like a companies that have their customers best interest at heart – they act more like the mob, with rates that go higher.

From Newsvine / AP:

Marcy Gordon, AP Business Writer

Lawmakers said Thursday that stronger action than rules proposed by the Federal Reserve may be needed to curb abusive practices by credit card companies.

Throughout a lengthy hearing by a House Financial Services subcommittee, credit card companies’ practices were denounced as deceptive and predatory. Executives of banks that are major issuers of credit cards were put on the defensive in questioning by lawmakers from both parties.

With Americans carrying hundreds of billions of dollars in credit card debt and the average household card balance at $13,000, panel chairwoman Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., said she fears “that we will see a perfect storm in consumer credit as these pressures converge on Americans, and that the ripple effect will be felt throughout our whole economy.”

The Fed’s proposed changes, issued last month, include requiring credit card companies to give customers 45 days’ notice before making any changes to the terms of an account, including slapping on a higher penalty rate for missing payments or paying bills late.

The central bank’s proposal is a helpful step forward, but regulators should act to ban abusive practices outright, several lawmakers insisted.

The chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Sheila Bair, said she was not convinced that full disclosure will completely resolve problems with credit card practices.

Frederic Mishkin, a Federal Reserve governor, said the Fed would consider whether other steps might have to be taken. However, he said, the central bank wants to avoid action that could have “unintended consequences” on the consumer credit market.

Bair and the other federal regulators testifying at the hearing — Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan, Office of Thrift Supervision Director John Reich and JoAnn Johnson, head of the National Credit Union Administration — endorsed the idea of legislation giving them authority to restrict practices they deem to be unfair and deceptive.

Legislation proposed by Democratic lawmakers would outlaw some credit card billing and interest-rate practices. It would, for example, prohibit interest from being charged on any portion of a credit card debt that the consumer paid on time during a grace period and would ban the practice known as “universal default” — in which card issuers raise interest rates for customers because they’re late on payments to other creditors separate from the account in question.

However, many lawmakers, including Democrats in power positions in the House and Senate, have expressed reluctance to impose mandates on how banks do business and would prefer that regulators act to address the problems.

Amid the congressional scrutiny in recent weeks, several major banks began to eliminate or temper some of their credit card practices.

Consumer borrowing posted the smallest increase in six months in April as Americans actually paid off some of their credit card debt, the Fed reported Thursday. Consumer borrowing rose at an annual rate of just 1.3 percent in April, down from a 7 percent rise in March — the weakest showing since consumer debt edged up 0.1 percent last October.

The slowdown was led by a 0.5 percent rate of decline in the category of debt that includes credit cards. That meant consumers were paying off more credit card debt than they incurred, something that has not occurred in 13 months.