Habit of a Lifetime

Supermodel bounty hunter found dead

Hollywood adored her – Domino Harvey was the beautiful lesbian daughter of a famous English actor who became a Ford supermodel in New York and then a socialite in Beverly Hills. Somehow, along the way, she also became a bounty hunter - a mercenary who hunted outlaws for the price on their heads - and even inspired a Hollywood movie (starring Keira Knightly, due out in August).

For British-born Domino, however, beauty, wealth and stardom went horribly wrong.  When she was pulled out of a bath in West Hollywood on Monday night, presumed drowned, she was facing life in jail on charges of drug dealing, crossing state lines for unlawful activity and having property that was used in or obtained through criminal activity.

New York Daily News
Guardian Unlimited

"Clean Hands": An $18,000 bar of soap

A bar of soap sold for $18,000 this week at a frenzied Art Basel, the massive international art fair in Switzerland. Gianni Motti's soap artwork was purportedly fabricated from fat formerly belonging to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

The artist said: "Berlusconi had face lifting and liposuction operations in a clinic in Lugano, where I have good connections that provided me with some of the fat. It was jelly-like and it stunk horribly, like butter gone off or old chip pan oil."

According to Motti, the artwork called Mani Pulite (which means "clean hands" in Italian) expresses opposition to corruption and mafia structures in Italy, as well as his personal opinion of Berlusconi's policies.

Bar of soap sells for $18,000 (Reuters)

ONE: THE CAMPAIGN TO MAKE POVERTY HISTORY

ONE is a new effort to rally people – ONE by ONE – to fight the emergency of global AIDS and extreme poverty.

ONE believes that allocating an additional ONE percent of the U.S. budget toward providing basic needs like health, education, clean water and food, would transform the futures and hopes of an entire generation of the poorest countries.

The ONE Campaign was founded by Bread for the World, CARE, DATA, International Medical Corps, International Rescue Committee, Mercy Corps, Oxfam America, Plan USA, Save the Children US, World Concern, and World Vision, and works closely with the National Basketball Association, Rock the Vote, and the Millennium Campaign.

ONE (official website) supported by Asia.blogs

'Haute Cuisine' on Mars

Last year, two Russian cosmonauts on the International Space Station (ISS) experimented the Mediet (Mediterranean Diet) which uses only top quality Mediterranean products (like dried tomatoes, mature cheese, piadina bread (special Italian white bread), peaches and chocolate) and demonstrated that the 'fast food' of the 21st century can be delicious and nutritious at the same time.

This time around, if you're lucky enough to be a crew member of one of the next ESA long-term missions, you will have the choice between eleven new delicious recipes, such as 'martian bread and green tomato jam' or 'potato and tomato mille-feuilles' when it's time for dinner. In 'Ready for dinner on Mars?,' The European Space Agency (ESA) says that these recipes will use fresh ingredients grown in greenhouses built on Mars colonies or other planets. The future astronauts will grow potatoes, onions, rice, soya or lettuce. And it's interesting to note that the new menus were elaborated with the help of Alain Ducasse, the French chef who has almost as many stars in the 'Guide Michelin' as there are planets in our Solar system.

Let’s grab a cab to the United States

Coast Guard intercepts Cubans in floating taxi in Miami. A vintage blue taxicab converted into a seagoing vessel and carrying several Cuban immigrants was intercepted Tuesday off Key West by the Coast Guard, a television station reported.

Footage from NBC-6 in Miami showed Coast Guard officers boarding the blue vehicle, which had been modified with a boat prow in front and appeared to have at least four immigrants aboard.

Disco inferno: the gender-bending, fabulous music movement of the '70s

Disco inferno: Forget tacky polyester and the cheesy Village People. It's time to recognize the gender-bending, fabulous music movement of the '70s for the revolution that it was.

Stephanie Zacharek, a senior writer for Salon Arts & Entertainment says that whenever any of her allegedly liberal music-nerd friends tell her how much they hate disco, she always likes to ask, mischievously, "So are you a racist, a homophobe, or both?" Because to wholly dismiss disco as a genre -- and whether or not it brings one pleasure to listen to it is another question entirely -- is to denigrate what's possibly the most democratic form of popular music ever conceived.

Continue reading Disco Inferno (Salon.com)

Corporations making decisions with Rock Paper Scissors

I’m reading this drivel thinking that it must be a belated April Fool’s column, but apparently not. It’s a Fortune Magazine piece about how businesses are using the kids game, Rock, Paper Scissors, to actually make decisions. Arrrrrgghhhh!

What bloody bollocks!  Personally I’d rather take the magic 8-ball!  :P

Hand Jive (Fortune)

Apple-Intel: Wall Street Journal Pats Self on Back

The last paragraph of today's otherwise solid Wall Street Journal story about the Apple-Intel deal reads:

Despite Apple's desire for secrecy, word of Apple's alliance with Intel first leaked out two weeks ago, when The Wall Street Journal reported the two companies were in discussions about a deal. "Most of you are hearing about this for the first time," Mr. Jobs told Mac developers in his speech yesterday, "unless you read The Wall Street Journal."

The Journal did indeed get wind of the current negotiations earlier than most other people. But CNet reported on Friday that the deal was done, and the news raced around the Net all weekend.  So unless the Mac developers -- as plugged in a group as you'll find on the planet -- were asleep all weekend, they surely were not hearing about it for the first time even if they weren't readers of the newspaper.

The Journal deserves credit for its reporting. But when it pats itself on the back this way, using a Jobs quote that is just plain ridiculous, the newspaper looks silly.

Soul Assassins

Employees are probably the worst thing that's ever happened to a company, say the misanthropes at Despair.com, who have built a business on some very nasty ideas. 

In the incisive new book "The Art of Demotivation", Despair.com founder Dr. E.L. Kersten offers a devastating critique of the motivation industry and its complicity in the crisis. But more importantly, he offers to managers and executives everywhere a shockingly radical solution to the problem of employee motivation - one tested and perfected within the confines of Despair, Inc. itself.

Despair, Inc
The Art of Demotivation

The 'fortune' cookie crumbled right

Powerball lottery officials suspected fraud.  How could there be 110 second-prize winners when according to the laws of statistics, there should have been only a maximum of four or five?

It took some time before officials had their answer: The players got their numbers inside fortune cookies, and all the cookies came from the same factory. Investigators finally tracked down the originator of the cookies - Wonton Food Factory in Queens - which churns out 4 million cookies a day.  The workers put numbers in a bowl and pick them, after which the same number combination is printed and goes out in thousands of cookies a day.

Because each second-place winner is due $100,000 to $500,000, he said, paying the 110 players would mean almost $19 million in unexpected payouts.

Fortune cookies lucky (Reuters)