Pimpin' just got easier

You have to admire the American entrepreneurial spirit, they can make money out of anything, the latest in a long line of "is that really necessary" inventions are platform shoes for prostitutes made by The Aphrodite Project but they're no ordinary platform shoes of course

The shoes have an audible alarm system, which emits a piercing noise to scare off attackers. The shoes are also outfitted with a built in GPS receiver and an emergency button that relays both the prostitute's location and a silent alarm signal to public emergency services. Where there are problematic relations with law enforcement.... the shoes will relay the signal to sex workers' rights groups.

Of course no modern day ho's ensemble is complete without an LCD screen in the heel and these bad boys deliver in style. You have to admire the manufacturer's attempt to legitimize his product though, trying to make out that the shoes primary purpose is safety, you just know that within a few months some pimp with a laptop will figure out how to get his "girls" put onto Sat-Nav, Bizarre.

Credit to Geekologie for the link

Maxwell Smart was unavailable for comment

Time travelling advertisers are interesting

Worth1000.com are currently running a photoshop competition asking readers to "portray modern products in a vintage light" as with all these sorts of things you have to wade through an awful lot of shite to find the good ones, but there's gold in dem darr hills. Myy favourites are below, the Wii one is the best of them I reckon.

The hurl beneath the bed is redundant

James McAdam has designed the Safe Bedside Table and in one fell swoop has reduced Lifestyle Sport's turnover by hundreds of thousands of Euro from all the people who now won't buy their shittily made hurls to "protect" themselves from intruders. It's a bedside table that quickly becomes a club and shield, I presume the idea is for the burglar to be paralysed by laughter.

Below: a shit Lifestyle hurley yesterday, pondering its future


Credit to OhGizmo for the link

The future is now

"Frozen smoke" will change your life apparently. An article in The Times the other day explains that it is one of the world's lightest solid materials but also one of its strongest.

"Aerogel is nicknamed “frozen smoke” and is made by extracting water from a silica gel, then replacing it with gas such as carbon dioxide. The result is a substance that is capable of insulating against extreme temperatures and of absorbing pollutants such as crude oil."

They've found more applicable everyday uses for it too, Dunlop are using it to make tennis rackets and a guy in England used it for house insulation.

I can't help but think it's some sort of late April fools joke though, the pictures look chopped/faked. Check out the guy's watch in the last one, there's no way a scientist on the cutting edge would have a calculator watch, I think that's Data from The Goonies

SpySpace

The Financial Times has a story today about a planned social-networking site for the American intelligence community. Inspired by sites like MySpace and Facebook it is hoped "A-Space" as this new site will be called will help the various governmental departments and agencies communicate better.

FT Article

Lolz courtesy of www.badmouth.net

Arirang Festival, North Korea - The Human Jumbotron

Reading about the book Spectacle reminded me of an article I read ages ago about the Arirang Festival in North Korea. It's basically a huge propaganda exercise to try and convince themselves (and in recent years the rest of the world) that they're a force to be reckoned with.

Their method of persuasion? Gymnastics of course!

It's held in a huge stadium (150,000 capacity) every year on April 15th the birthday of their late God/leader Kim Il-Sung and features "mass gymnastics" which involves tens of thousands of kids/robots doing ridiculous elaborate gymnastic routines to the soundtrack of twee-tastic pop music and what can only be described as a "Human Jumbotron" a giant mosaic made up of 15,000 school kids holding up cards to form mosaics which change at break-neck speed, it really is incredibly impressive.

You can read more about it here, the original article I read about it.

a few sample images:




There's also a documentary which I just found about called "A State Of Mind" made by BBC in 2004 which follows two girls as they prepare to take part in the festival, it looks pretty good:

Trailer:

You had to be there

David Rockwell has just released a new book called Spectacle which the blurb describes as:

"a dynamic visual essay that celebrates the phenomenon and history of communal, awe-inspiring public performance worldwide — from the stadium to the streets, from religious festivals to political marches, and from the ever-changing skyline of Las Vegas to ephemeral fireworks displays."

some of the events covered are pretty awesome in their grandiosity, it's hard to believe stuff like this is happening while I'm on the bus to work.

A few sample pics and articles:






You can read more here: www.spectaclethebook.com

or buy it here: Amazon