Interesting Interestings, 2008-07-28

Interesting Interestings, 2008-07-24

Interesting Interestings, 2008-07-23

  • Barack Obama is trouncing John McCain in the race for the White House — at least in sales of T-shirts, badges, baseball caps and other campaign merchandise.

  • China warned its already tightly controlled media on Wednesday that the government would not tolerate “obscene, sexual, superstitious or base” advertisements over the Olympic period which may embarrass the country. “Advertising companies have…

  • DataQuick reports today that foreclosures in California soared 33% from the first quarter to the second quarter of 2008, and are running 261% ahead of year-ago levels.

  • Explaining the current economic downturn to a closed-door fundraiser last week, President Bush said, “Wall Street got drunk.”"There’s no question about it,” Bush said. “Wall Street got drunk, that’s one of the reasons I asked you to turn off…

  • With sky-high gas prices, 42 cents won’t get you very far nowadays.However, it will get you a trip to jail.

    A 43-year-old Bonita Springs man was arrested Monday morning after Naples police say he stole 42 cents from a mall fountain.

  • “Hancock” director Peter Berg, who created “Friday Night Lights” (which features an obnoxious Texas guy in a wheelchair named “Herc”), now plans to direct Universal’s “Hercules: The Thracian Wars” from a screenplay by somebody named Ryan C

  • Anime News Network points out that IF Magazine has learned that producer Erwin Stoff is developing an adaptation of one of America’s favorite anime series…. Cowboy Bebop.“I’m developing COWBOY BEBOP for Fox, but doing it as a live-action film,…

  • Blood vessel changes linked to poor health later in life can be spotted within a few years in boys born small, say scientists.

  • The European Commission has suspended EU aid to Bulgaria worth hundreds of millions of euros because of concerns about corruption and organised crime.

  • The first official image of a Russian-European manned spacecraft has been unveiled.

  • China says it will allow demonstrations in three designated city parks during the Olympic Games in Beijing.

  • Belkin International, Inc., announces new BreakFree Connectors, which detach under extreme tension, protecting your amplifier or guitar from unexpected damage. BreakFree will provide noise-free dynamic sound without any degradation in audio quality.

  • Fitted with powerful searchlights and high-resolution video cameras, the robot - codenamed Hero - carries out detailed searches of the undersides of lorries and coaches.

  • It’s WALL•E! See the robot star of the hit Disney/Pixar film ”WALL•E” come to life with our Ultimate WALL•E remote control toy. WALL•E’s charming personality shines through with this interactive toy robot. Imported.

  • Sure, Apple alleges to have flipped over a million iPhone 3Gs at this point, but what does that mean? The devil’s in the details, as always; yes, true, the first one took 74 days to reach that same milestone, but it was available in less than…

Interesting Interestings, 2008-07-22

  • If you have to see a movie with music in it this year,
    I’d suggest choosing this over “Mama Mia!” but if you have to see only
    one comedy, I’d go with “Tropic Thunder”.

  • STEP BROTHERS is the work of diseased minds.
    Really. Dale and Brennan are sociopaths. They are as shit-your-pants crazy as Heath Ledger’s The Joker. And STEP BROTHERS seems to be celebrating this particular brand of manchild retardation as not only a…

  • Sen. John McCain returned to New Hampshire last night, flashing an “OK” sign at an aide as he stepped out onto an airport tarmac in Manchester.

  • Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), resigned to what an adviser memorably called “table scraps” of news coverage this week, has blasted a fundraising e-mail to supporters arguing that the press has “a bizarre fascination with Barack Obama.”

  • Barack Obama sets out Tuesday on the most politically perilous part of his foreign trip - to Jordan, Israel and the West Bank, where his every word will be scrutinized by Jewish and Arab voters back home.

  • Ford Motor, which devoted itself for nearly 20 years to putting millions of Americans into big pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles, is about to drastically alter its focus to building more small cars.

  • The man believed to be al-Qaeda’s commander of operations in Afghanistan, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, has given a rare television interview.

  • At a breakfast meeting with MINI USA VP Jim McDowell this morning he was asked to elaborate on recently announced plans for a battery powered MINI. McDowell acknowledged that the US branch was caught somewhat by surprise with the announcement.

Interesting Interestings, 2008-07-21

  • Industry concerns about Steve Jobs’ health have not gone away more than a month after the Apple CEO appeared dramatically thinner at the firm’s annual developers’ conference, fighting what insiders at the time were calling a “bug.”

  • The Olympic host is straining every sinew to dislodge the US from the top of the medals table, a badge of global superpower status.

  • On the third floor of the Museum of Modern Art in Midtown Manhattan rests a tribute to Esquire’s glory years — a collection of 92 covers from the 1960s and early 1970s that have become, in the museum’s words, “essential to the iconography of Ameri

  • Everyone can do an American accent… at least everyone thinks they can. But how many would pass muster with a Hollywood studio? The BBC’s Stephen Robb took a lesson from one of the movie industry’s top accent coaches.

  • Scientists have developed a mouthwash that allows plaque-causing bacteria to be destroyed using nothing more than a bright light.

  • A BBC investigation has found that there are serious question marks over a key drug test just two weeks before the start of the Beijing Olympics.

  • When Coke-bottle glasses just won’t cut it for safe driving, a futuristic windshield might do the trick.

Interesting Interestings, 2008-07-18

  • Most of the buildings in Tiananmen Square, beneath the famous portrait of Mao Zedong, are monumental structures, with rigid lines and large columns. They look dynastic, part of post-revolutionary Communist China.

  • China denied on Friday that pharmacies had banned the sale of everyday products such as cold medication and rash cream to prevent accidental doping during the Olympics, and sought to assure that drugs would meet standards.

  • Having deployed surface-to-air missiles, readied a 100,000-strong anti-terrorism force and instituted a series of security checkpoints, Beijing is adding Chinese residents as another layer in its shield to protect Olympics venues against possible attack.

  • Texas officials gave the go-ahead Thursday to the nation’s largest wind-power project, a plan to build billions of dollars worth of new transmission lines to bring pollution-free energy from gusty West Texas to urban areas.

  • Sustainability got sexier last week as Coldcut and Jade Jagger hosted the opening of Surya in King’s Cross. The Club4Climate project is London’s first taste of eco-friendly clubbing, making clubbers happy in the knowledge that …

  • Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. The good folks at Entertainment Weekly asked if we wanted to premiere their brand spankin’ new cover for their upcoming Comic-Con issue hitting stands this weekend. When they said it featured new looks at the Watchmen…

  • At first glance, Cesare Bonizzi looks like the archetypal Capuchin monk - round-faced, stout, with twinkling eyes and a long flowing white beard. But beneath his robes beats a heart of metal.

Interesting Interestings, 2008-07-17