Lisa.cheong

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A teeny rescue cat inside a mushroom costume is giving Lil Bub a run for her #1 Internet Winner money. It's JUST like All About Eve, you guys.

When little Wasabi-Chan was rescued from a crow attack, she had already suffered a fractured upper jaw and a split tongue, according to Redditor histak. She had to be fed by catheter, and after she continuously struggled to extricate herself from the feeding tube, the various crocheted costumes happened as a last resort (albeit an adorable one — especially the mushroom).

The good news is, Wasabi has recovered and is now doing great, up from from 210 grams to 400 grams — she also has her own Instagram page.

[via Mashable, lede img via Instagram]

[Click for larger size.] At Shorpy Historical Photos, which is a wonderful thing on the internet:

1914. "Kittens in costume as bride and groom, being married by third kitten in ecclesiastical garb." Holy catrimony! Photo by Harry W. Frees.

More about Harry Whittier Frees: Wikipedia, here's Shorpy's archives of his work, and Amazon has books of his work.

Art collector Charles Saatchi — who was caught on camera choking his wife, Nigella Lawson — now says that he is divorcing her for not defending his reputation.

Read more...

Dale Irby, a retired physical education teacher from Dallas, Texas wore the same outfit in every yearbook photo for forty years. Check out the full slideshow over on news.com.au.

Stories like this one make me happy. So happy.

They made a pact to keep their hymen intact, their loophole is the poophole.

The internet ready duo of Kate Micucci and Riki Lindhome, better known as Garfunkel and Oates, really nailed the church in this one. Don't ask us where they nailed them — it's too easy!

This is a five-year-old boy with a style blog. And yes, he's more stylish than you'll ever be. And no, his name isn't Quinoa, and he's not imaginary.

We've already explored the idea of children living out their parents fantasies in over-priced, mainly inappropiate (admittedly sometimes very adorable) clothing, but tiny fashion tot Alonso Mateo takes the cake.

The Laguna Beach resident was sired by a mother who has contributed to Harper’s Bazaar Mexico and Latin America and a father who is the owner and CEO of a private equity firm. Which, I suppose, is the perfect storm when creating the world's most fashionable child.

Each morning before school, mom and son head to his personal walk-in closet, where one wall is dedicated to shoes. He’ll tell her which pants and shoes he wants, and then he might choose a T-shirt. “I’ll say that’s a summer tee and we’re in winter,” she explains. “I’ll help him coordinate outfits so that they make sense, but mostly it's him.” When they leave the house, fans might ask to take his picture. But like most young kids, even those dressed less ostentatiously, she says her boy can be a bit shy: “Sometimes he’ll turn down a fan and say he’s too tired.”

Turn them down now if you want, Mateo, but soon you'll be just like Sally Fields in Soap Dish, all going to the mall and making Whoopi Goldberg beg for your autograph. Fame is fleeting.

If you want to get lil' Mateo's look, you're gonna have to head to some of his personal fave stores (and also: Be very, very wealthy):

Kitson Kids, Dior, Gucci (“for leather jackets”), Stella McCartney, Bon Point (“French couture for kids”), Nordstrom, H&M (“for amazing basics”), Little Marc Jacobs (“amazing”), Dolce & Gabbana (“great”), and even Target. “As long as it’s nice quality, I’ll take it,” she says.

Words to live by.

[NY Mag]

Look at the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, just having a joyful time atop the Empire State Building! It's their music video for "Despair" and also the first music video to be filmed atop the skyscraper. The view is the view!

Read more...

The rich are getting richer – and that means jobs on superyachts for those who can meet their employer's every whim. But first trainees must learn how to fold a towel

Terry Gilmore, senior yacht staff trainer, tosses some striped cushions from the white canvas sofa and drops several blue monogrammed towels on the scrubbed wooden foredeck of the Latitude superyacht. He watches as his trainees hasten to restore order.

"What do we always ensure?" he snaps, looking with irritation at the new arrangement. "That the zip is down." He rotates several cushions to conceal barely visible zips. In any case, it turns out that the towels should be picked up first, so that they do not soak dampness into the sofas, and the lesson proceeds with detailed instructions on the correct method for rolling a towel, so that the monogram is prominently displayed (not easy). "Not like that; totally wrong," he tells a trainee, pointing out in passing that his belt is too long, and the creases on his polo shirt are insufficiently sharp.

As the economy internationally struggles with the fall-out from recession, the lives of the super-rich continue largely unruffled by the constraints of the global downturn. There are few starker examples of pure extravagance than the superyacht. Because a luxury yacht (unlike a Knightsbridge house, say) is less an investment, more a bottomless pit to throw money at, owners of superyachts are not people who worry much about penny pinching. These are people who are used to getting what they want and, as employers, they tend to be extremely exacting.

The expanding ranks of billionaires worldwide are creating a new market for servants for the super-rich, often providing esoteric services. At the more arcane end of the spectrum are the people who staff superyachts, who need to be equipped with discretion, servility and good ironing skills, and are relatively well-paid for their work (starting salaries of between €1,700 and €2,500 (£1,450 to £2,130) a month, which includes a berth on the yacht and all meals, rising to €4,000 (£3,400) a month for more senior staff).

Sara Vestin Rahmani, founder of London-based Bespoke Bureau, a high-end domestic staff recruitment agency, has this year launched this yacht staff training course in Antibes with local firm Abacus & March, because she identified a demand from her clients for well-trained staff capable of working on board superyachts (the term for a large yacht, more than 50m, or 164ft, long, usually on sale for anything between £30m and £60m). Her placement agency has thrived and expanded throughout the economic downturn, and she is also running butlering courses in Norfolk, for the European market, and Chengdu in south-west China, for her clients there. "We're lucky in the sense that the rich get richer in a recession," she says.

On board Latitude, a vessel occasionally chartered by musicians such as Rihanna, trainees are being instructed in the art of humility and occasional invisibility that should make them attractive to superyacht owners.

Gilmore has spent a career serving members of the Saudi royal family and rich Russians on board their yachts and is well-qualified to pass on his expertise; his fellow trainers have worked on vessels owned by Roman Abramovich and the Emir of Qatar. Students have paid €900 (£770) for the week's course, hopeful that it will help them secure a job on board one of the world's superyachts. In the abstract, the work appears steeped in glamour, but Gilmore is at pains to disabuse his trainees of any starry-eyed notions about the role. A couple of days on Gilmore's training programme stamps out any lingering sense that this might be a desirable job. Staff need to understand they will simply be "glorified cleaners", he tells them.

Trainees must memorise correct forms of address from a training manual, which informs them that it is unacceptable to ask "Why?" (it should be substituted with "May I know the reason?"). The inquiry "Are you done?" should be replaced with "May I ask if you have finished?".

Trainees are told that some guests may request that they stand silently on board deck, motionless in the sunshine, waiting for instructions. "It's stupid, because they could use a buzzer," Gilmore says, but much of the staffing on yacht businesses is about ostentation and if a motionless steward, standing by on deck is what the owner requests, then staff are not to argue.

He tells trainees they must never wear sunglasses while addressing guests on board a yacht, because guests want to see be able to see their eyes.

"Never stand there and tell them your life story. Never interrupt the guest. Never ask them personal questions," he says. "Just say, 'Good morning, sir.' Don't ignore them, but don't engage."

A daily list of housekeeping tasks includes polishing the television remote control and checking the towels for stray threads, which need to be chopped off with nail scissors. Students learn that they must monitor the bathrooms and lavatories, and are given guidance on the correct amount of time they should pause before they can scurry in and tidy up after a guest, refolding the end of the loo paper into a pointed V. "Be aware when people have used the rest rooms. You must be their shadow, but not too close," Gilmore explains.

The trainees take notes diligently in their notebooks as Gilmore tells them to check the contents of the yacht's sun-cream bottles daily. "If they are less than half full, you can't have that because it looks cheap." The bottles that have dropped beneath the 50% mark are discarded. He claims the last yacht he worked on had an annual budget of around £5,000 for sun cream alone.

To own a superyacht such as this one, you need to have a serious chunk of disposable income. If you had a net worth of around £100m, you would probably be too poor to contemplate taking on the considerable outgoings that staffing and maintaining this kind of extravagance entails. Although some of these vessels exist to be chartered out as a business (at around £200,000 a week), they rarely make money for their owners this way, once the annual docking, licences and engineering costs are factored in. Merely transporting your yacht from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean on a container vessel for the winter season (to avoid damaging it en route) costs around £250,000.

Despite the expense, the superyacht market is expanding. There are 400 new superyachts under construction (and unlike cars, old yachts are repaired rather than scrapped, so this represents an increase in the absolute numbers), which will create work for an estimated 3,500 new crew. At the extreme end of the market, the superyacht is no longer a particularly ostentatious purchase. Three years ago, Abramovich took delivery of the Eclipse, a 163m (536ft)gigayacht (considerably larger than a super- or a megayacht), and even this massive liner has subsequently been shunted into the second position, by the Azzam, at 180m (590ft), currently ranked as the world's largest private yacht.

Working for billionaires comes with unique complications. "The security implications are horrendous. Most of the people who own these boats are people who are security targets – royal family, politicians," Gilmore explains, warning his students that pictures taken on the ship should never be uploaded on to Facebook or Twitter, to avoid exposing the yacht's owners to security breaches or embarrassment.

Crew members' mobile phones must always be left downstairs, in the minute cabins assigned to staff. Gilmore relates an alarming story of a junior steward who was serving dinner to guests when her phone rang in her pocket. She was lucky not to lose her job, he says. He tells another cautionary tale of a junior crew member who put a guest's £750 cashmere jumper into the drier, shrank it to the size of a doll's jumper, pressed it, wrapped it in tissue paper (standard presentation for newly laundered clothes), and returned it to the guest's cabin. She, too, was lucky not to lose her job, although this revelation is greeted with aghast horror by a fellow trainer, observing the session, who declares that she would have sacked her.

Very little attention is paid to employment law by yacht owners, partly because of the international nature of the operation; crew members can be fired on a whim. "You might have an Egyptian owner, a boat registered in the Cayman Islands, based in Monaco, a company registered in Germany, a crew made up of Australians and South Africans. Where are the social security payments made?" says a representative of an international yacht association, which offers support to yacht staff, who asks not to be named). "This is probably the most politically incorrect industry in the world. You can get fired because you are not blonde or pretty. It is all about the look and the image."

Because of concerns over workers' rights, the International Maritime Organisation has recently drawn up the Maritime Labour Convention, which should be introduced from August, and will ensure that crew get three meals a day and proper breaks. Attempts to introduce regulations aimed at improving the size of crew quarters had to be abandoned, though, because larger crew cabins would have cut into the yacht owners' living space. "Eight guest cabins would have gone down to four cabins. People wouldn't have wanted to own yachts. It would have made the industry obsolete," says the woman from the yacht association.

A lot of time is spent on discussing the trainees' personal appearance; they are told to make sure they smell fresh, that they should clean their teeth after drinking coffee and they should be clean-shaven. "That's for girls as well as boys. It's not nice if you are having breakfast to see a girl's hairy legs," says Gilmore. No nail polish is allowed, in case it chips off in the food. He also warns new recruits that they should be on their guard when the weather turns bad. "If the sun shines, everyone is happy. If not, they start nitpicking. They will start looking for fault. That's when you get aggro."

Many of the skills the students learn here could be transferred to work in a domestic setting, Vestin Rahmani says, and over the weekend visit, she is also scouting for butler talent for her London business. She is seeing a rising demand for butlers, she says, and her experience chimes with recent research indicating that there are more servants in Mayfair now than there were 200 years ago, with entourages stretching to maids, part-time chefs, part-time drivers and personal assistants.

The job specifications on recruitment sites like Vestin Rahmani's, and similar businesses such as Greycoat Lumleys, give an insight into the lives of prospective employers, who hope their staff will have everything from "a high level of technological knowledge and ability to deal with complex electronic control systems for household security systems", to experience in maintaining media rooms and orangeries.

A good butler can expect to earn well over £50,000, but many are paid more; she acknowledges that it is sometimes hard for her richer clients to keep a handle on what average UK salaries are. The expansion in demand for high-end staff has not come from British households, she adds; the reverse has been seen, with many of these households retrenching, cutting back the number of staff they employ. "I have a lot of Middle Eastern and Russian clients who are hiring butlers. Sometimes it's a statement. It says: 'I have a lot of money, and now I have a butler.' And then there are some people who genuinely need a butler."

She appreciates that working for this kind of employer can be challenging. Recently, she heard of two yacht stewardesses who jumped into a jellyfish-infested patch of sea to create a clear swimming channel for one of the boat's guests. "She was really in the mood to go swimming, so they swam alongside her – they wanted to make sure she didn't get stung. They got stung to bits, and were in a bit of pain the next day. That's sweet, I think. They got a big tip at the end of the week," she says.

The woman from the yachting association relates a story of a flatmate who worked for Abramovich's first wife, who liked a particular kind of home-made chocolate on board her yacht. Even if her flatmate was busy, she was often asked to make an 80km round trip to Monaco to buy the chocolates from the only supplier. "I wonder, if they knew the trouble it caused, whether they wouldn't say: 'Actually, don't bother; take the morning off.' The chocolates were divine, but they could have had other chocolates," she says.

Gilmore, 63, retired last year, after 40 years working on yachts, because he was exhausted. "It is a tiring job, keeping these people happy," he says. "It is not a family-friendly business. These people, they like you, but they don't like baggage.

"Inevitably there are going to be people you won't choose to get on with in life, but it's all about respect," he says. Part of the course is dedicated to helping staff understand how to react to bullying from their employers. "They can order you in a way you are not used to," he says. "You train people to respond to that kind of abuse. You stand there and let it go in one ear and out of the other."

Sexual harassment is uncommon (because the relatively confined space on a yacht inhibits it), but not unheard of. Gilmore discusses what to do if an owner pinches a member of staff on the bottom. "Slap him and you've lost your job," he points out, advising trainees to remain silent and report the incident to a superior.

In the afternoon, trainees are sent to a villa a few miles inland of Antibes, where they are taught how to make beds, given ironing training, drilled in laying the tables swiftly for 12 guests, and finally practise serving champagne to their trainers (who seem to enjoy the session).

Gilmore is phlegmatic about the joys of yacht ownership, remarking that the appeal still escapes him. "Personally, I would never own a yacht, even if I had all the money in the world. It is a bottomless pit; you're always putting money into it."

Gary Robson, who is a recruitment consultant for Abacus & March, is still unsettled by the amount of money he encountered during his career as a chief steward, working first for a Saudi Arabian construction magnate and later for Russian oil oligarch and then a Chinese billionaire who had made his money from casinos and property.

"I'd never met that kind of money before. We are talking the billions. What do you have to do to earn this kind of money? I don't know what is happening to society, but there is such a big divide," he says during a break from training. Occasionally, the extreme extravagance he witnessed on board overwhelmed him. "They would say to me, there will be 15-20 guests. Everything would be prepped and done – lobster and caviar – and then there are just two people for dinner and it's all wasted. I think some of them have lost their understanding of what it actually is, money. Money, to them, is not what it is to you and me.

"Some of them are not even very keen on yachts," he adds. "They get seasick. You wonder why do they buy them? Keeping up with the Joneses?"

The yachts' designs reinforce the division between owner and staff, he says. "The crew is not seen or heard. We're like rats, I suppose. Just stowed away. I have had some really nice owners, and some who are totally the opposite. It's nice when you get owners who say hello to the crew. Some are rude – grunt, or wave – no eye contact."

Occasionally, the exposure to this level of wealth rubs off on the staff who find themselves infected with the big-spender mentality, he says. He recalls nights out where he ordered Dom Perignon (which you can buy for €80, or £68, in a shop) for €300-500 (up to £425) in a bar.

Most of the trainees are excited about having a chance to work for billionaires. Andrew Drsydale, 28, a former cocktail waiter from Newcastle, has been in Antibes for several weeks, looking for yacht work. "I wouldn't think of myself as a servant," he says; instead, he hopes the work will become a long-term career. "I'd like to be working for someone who wants excellence in their service, in their drinks, and food. You want them to care. It's the appreciation of your work you want," he says.

He doesn't find the extremes of wealth demonstrated in the yacht industry disconcerting. "You can't even be jealous because it is so out of reach that you are never going to come into it. It doesn't upset me."

Pavleta Hristova, 28, a trained dentist from Bulgaria, hopes to find work on a yacht because she has not found work at home in dentistry. She would like to join her husband, Anton Hristov, 32, who has been working for a number of years on cruise ships, and has recently shifted to yacht work. The couple listen attentively to Gilmore's instructions on silver service table arrangements, and race obediently to lay an outside table for six people, for a three-course (imaginary) dinner of salad, veal and souffle.

Anton likes what he has seen of the yacht world. "These people don't think twice about how they spend their money. If you can afford to have a yacht, why not? People like to have fun and enjoy their privacy."

Max Hinton, 19, from Kent, has given up his job as assistant manager in a cocktail bar in Manchester, and is paying for the course with his savings. He has been dock-walking for more than a month – pacing the harbours in Antibes and marinas in neighbouring resorts before breakfast, with dozens of other prospective crew members, searching for work – and hopes that the course might improve his employability.

Vestin Rahmani identifies something very pleasing in his demeanour – a mix of eagerness to help and a humble reserve – and says she thinks he will go far in the industry. She takes her work very seriously, but manages to maintain a healthy sense of the peculiarities of the niche world that her company caters for. Brought up in Sweden, she has strong feelings about the proper payment of staff, and it took her a while to acclimatise to the growing ranks of the super-rich in London.

"I appreciate that it is a little bit of a weird market. I am so used to it now, but I can see from the outside it sometimes seems a bit weird, she says. "When I first came over from Sweden, I worried that people had so much money. I don't think about it any more. What matters to me is whether or not people are nice."

So, the girlfriend asked me when we were having coffee yesterday, what are the 3 lessons that we can learn from the government’s response to the haze thus far? Although this may be a tad premature, considering that there may be more hazy days ahead, here’s my take:

Lesson 1: People desire precise real time information.

There is a great amount of confusion over the different indicators that NEA has provided over the past week. There is the 3 hourly average PSI reading, 24 hour average PSI reading, and the PM2.5 reading, along with all their associated health advisories. In a bid to obtain hourly readings, many people have resorted to constructing their own excel sheets and graphs (such as this), second guessing what exactly are the hourly inputs that NEA uses.

The ministers themselves did not help their own cause when Min(MEWR) Vivian Balakrishnan (VVB) held a press conference and said something to the effect of “we should not be fixated on the numbers”, and when Grace Fu said that the 24 hour PSI reading is a better gauge of the haze’s health impact. Bloggers like TheHeartTruths also disputed VVB’s message, saying that other countries published hourly readings. This prompted a clarification by MEWR.

The problem is that all this is unnecessary and confusing. While NEA and MEWR were concerned about getting the correct readings to gauge the impact on people’s health, many people were primarily concerned about getting the best precise real time reading to decide on their course of action for themselves and for their families. Should I still honor that appointment in the next one hour? Should I bring my mask? Should I go swimming? Is it OK to go to the neighbourhood wet market to shop in the morning? The government and the people were basically not talking to each other. One yelled “I want hourly readings to know what to do!” while another just stuck with “24hour readings are best measures of health impact.”

Lesson 2: Political leaders need to be leaders.

In times of crisis, groups look up to their leaders for precise “big” priorities and swift “big” action. Min(MEWR) VVB’s first press conference on Wednesday night at 2330hrs missed that opportunity. He said that “we will have to make adjustments to our daily routines.” You don’t really have to tell us that you know. In that press conference, NEA and MEWR also provided detailed health advisories. But health advisories are very crude announcements at best. What are the consequences if an individual doesn’t follow the “advice”? What about companies? What about outdoor workers?

The next day, PM Lee Hsien Loong (LHL) held a press conference in the afternoon. Although he mentioned that “My priority is to protect the health and safety of Singaporeans, especially vulnerable groups.” which is great, he further confused his message when he went on to say that “we must carry on with our daily lives” and that any response to stop work must be flexible and “calibrated”. This is confusing because it appears that the principles of “flexibility” and “carry on with our daily lives” over-rode the paramount priority of “health and safety of Singaporeans” (and not forgetting the foreign workers too).

So if protecting “the health and safety of Singaporeans” was his priority, what action did he implement? He set up a committee. >_<||| Leaders don’t set up committees in times of crisis. Leaders give direction and orders. Setting up committees signals that you are delegating and shifting responsibility.

OK, so they also announced that a whole range of Singaporeans can see their general practitioners and pay only $10 if they have haze-related health problems. That is awesome but is reactive rather than proactive. You want to get people to get masks to prevent themselves from falling sick, rather than let people fall sick and then subsidize their medical costs. How much productivity would have been wasted by then?

Lesson 3: Distribution matters more than supply.

On Thursday, after PM Lee held his press conference and when MOH first reassured the public that there were 9 million N95 masks in stock, it appeared that things were really problematic. I decided to head to Tampines Central to buy N95 masks on Friday morning. All the Guardian, Watsons, Unity outlets had no N95 masks. I ended up buying those flimsy surgical masks instead. I asked my mother, who works very near SGH if the SGH pharmacy had N95 masks, she said that they also had no stock. On Saturday morning, when I went to Khoo Teck Puat hospital pharmacy to buy N95 masks, they also had no stock. It was only until Sunday that most people who wanted N95 masks could get one, and when the low income households were distributed N95 masks by the army and grassroots volunteers. 3 days. In a crisis, (and for a supposedly decisive and effective government), not good enough.

Not only was the response slow, retailers also took the opportunity to raise prices on Thursday and Friday. A box of 20 N95 masks was retailing at around $75 at Watsons. Only on Sunday did Min(MEWR) VVB come out to “urge” retailers not to profit from selling masks. CASE also released a statement. Do you think these statements will work? Will retailers suddenly find their conscience after reading a statement? How much money was “lost” to these retailers? Leaders don’t “urge” in times of crisis. Leaders dictate swift action to fulfill priorities. None of that was forthcoming.

Conclusion

Leaders don’t stand on boxes with a loud hailer.

From Min(MEWR)’s Facebook page.

I just went down a baby name rabbit hole after reading the Gawker post about how North West really wasn't that terrible of a name. I didn't realize that Madison became a popular name specifically because of Splash but it makes total sense since it didn't really exist as a first name before 1985.

Then I found a blog post proclaiming that there were 146 baby girls named Khaleesi in the United States. One hundred and forty-six children named Khaleesi. For me, Arya or Sansa or even Cersei is one thing. They're names, not honorifics. But Khaleesi. I don't know about that.

Internet rejoice! It's Lil BUB's birthday! And to think, it was only two years ago that we lived in a BUB-less world.

Better still — for her birthday, BUB has been given her very own webseries. Could this cat be more generous? Even her birthday gift is really a gift for us.

Not only has the government’s response to this week’s haze problem been one of weak-kneed impotency, the absence of any effective solution shows how little has been done to prepare for what has, over the last two decades, become an annually recurring problem.

We knew as far back as middle last year that the El Nino weather pattern was returning for 2013. We knew it would mean a hotter, dryer year than normal, so not only would haze be a virtually certain problem, it may turn out to be prolonged and more intense. And yet, when it hit, it looked as if the authorities were caught by surprise.

Falsetto yelps came out from ministers’ mouths, telling citizens they were going to Jakarta to supplicate some action on the Indonesian government’s part. So far, all we’ve gotten are photo calls and excuses why nothing much can be done. “Only rain can help Singapore now” says a headline in the Jakarta Post, 20 June 2013. It quoted Indonesian Forestry Ministry general secretary Hadi Daryanto saying that Indonesia could not guarantee that measures taken to combat the fires would be effective “without a miracle in the form of a heavy downpour.”

One day later, around midday 21 June 2013, the three-hour moving average PSI reading set a new record: 401, in the “very hazardous” zone. The reading for  PM2.5 was well above 200. PSI stands for  Pollutant Standards Index, and is a measure of air pollution. PM2.5 measures fine particles, i.e those less than 2.5 micrometres in diameter, which are typically produced by combustion. The World Health Organisation considers prolonged exposure to PM2.5 levels exceeding 10 micrograms per cubic metre to be hazardous to human health.

As this NASA satellite pictures shows, the smoke from fires used to clear land for planting in Sumatra is blowing directly over Singapore.

This has been an annual problem for years. Yet we seem to have settled into a defeatist frame of mind, thinking that the only solution is to get the Indonesians to put out fires. In all these years, has no thought been put to designing domestic solutions?

The satellite picture above suggests one. What if we set up a curtain of water to the west of Singapore, such that the smoke-filled air flow from Sumatra gets washed before it reaches us?

It would be a mammoth undertaking, and it will take a few years to set up such a system. And perhaps, a few years more to improve it. But I can imagine a fleet of huge hydrogen-filled airships, that can float close to the sea surface to fill up its tanks with seawater, then rise to about 1,000 metres at which altitude they spray down a fine mist of water. To create an effective curtain, we will need about 300 of them strung out along a line maybe 30 kilometres long, with another 300 more sucking up water while the first 300 are doing the spraying.

I don’t see this as a prohibitively costly solution. Seawater costs nothing. The airships aren’t going to use much fuel bobbing up and down since they will have a natural buoyancy (though they will be huge, as water is heavy). Only extracting hydrogen from water is costly, but if we have a clever (and safe) way to store hydrogen from one year to the next, it is a re-usable asset.

People will naturally have a fear that hydrogen-filled airships are fire hazards. Indeed, there is a risk, but these super-blimps can be unmanned and will anyway operate over the sea, not over populated areas. For controlled manoeuvering, tugboats to which the airships are tethered can be used.

The result may only be partial cleaning of the air, but a reduction of, say, 200 points from what might otherwise be a 300 to 400 PSI will surely be welcome. More importantly, it will allow much economic activity to continue without interruption.

* * * * *

As it is, the government has been extremely reluctant to issue Stop Work orders, merely issuing “advice” to employers. This dithering is one more example of lack of preparedness. It shows that the government has not thought through the scenario of high PSIs. As a result, even when the PSI touched 400, construction and other workers doing strenuous jobs were still at their jobs, taking deep breaths of smog at their peril. Online, one can see people accusing the government of valuing dollars more than human lives.

Indeed, if work across a whole range of activities, from construction to shipbuilding, landscaping to trash collection, are stopped for any length of time, all sorts of financial consequences will follow. Many contracts contain penalty clauses for non-performance of stipulated work. Projects that aren’t completed on time trigger liquidated damages.

But there is a legal concept known as Force Majeure. As explained on Wikipedia, it is

a common clause in contracts that essentially frees both parties from liability or obligation when an extraordinary event or circumstance beyond the control of the parties, such as a war, strike, riot, crime, or an event described by the legal term act of God (such as hurricane, flooding, earthquake, volcanic eruption, etc.), prevents one or both parties from fulfilling their obligations under the contract. In practice, most force majeure clauses do not excuse a party’s non-performance entirely, but only suspends it for the duration of the force majeure.

In real life, there tends to be much controversy whether an event is a valid basis for force majeure, leading to much litigation. This is where the government can play an important role. It can create a legal presumption that for the duration that PSI is above a certain level (e.g. 200) it is a valid basis for declaring force majeure, unless the party objecting to it can prove that work could have continued.

Thus, for example, if in 2013 we find ourselves with 8 days where PSI is above the threshold, then all completion dates of construction work will automatically be moved back 8 days.

If I can think up this solution to the problem, why didn’t the government? Why hasn’t legislation been put in place well in advance of a haze season?

* * * * *

Yesterday, the government boasted that they had nine million N95 masks in stock.

The Ministry of Health (MOH) said Thursday that there are sufficient stocks of N95 masks to meet national needs and that there was no need to stockpile.

Large retail and pharmacy chains will have the masks available for purchase by Thursday evening, said the ministry.

The government currently has 9 million N95 masks in stock, and there are plans to purchase more.

– Channel NewsAsia, 21 June 2013, Sufficient N95 masks, no need to stockpile. Link.

At first it seemed like a lot for a city of five million. Then someone pointed out that a mask can typically be used for just 45 minutes.

The government also didn’t seem to say clearly how they would be distributed, though the news report above and a statement on the Health Ministry website suggests that they will be sold for profit:

Singapore has sufficient supplies of N95 masks nationally to meet anticipated demand. People should only buy N95 masks when required. There is no need to stockpile.

MOH has worked with manufacturers and suppliers to bring in and supply more N95 masks to our local retailers and pharmacies such as Guardian, Unity, Giant and Cold Storage.  This would ensure that masks are available to the public.

As of the afternoon of 20 June 2013, there have been 7,000 and 21,000 N95 masks that have been distributed to Unity and Guardian [pharmacies] respectively.

– FAQ, Ministry of Health. Link.

On Facebook, people are up in arms after hearing that the state stockpile has been given out to commercial pharmacies, helping them make huge profits at jacked-up prices. Why didn’t the government also set prices? Did no one among the bright sparks in our civil service expect profiteering to happen?

Update: It was announced Friday night that one million N95 masks will be distributed to the poorest 200,000 households free of charge. But a story in Today also reported Teo Chee Hean saying that

The Government, he said, is dealing with the situation “decisively”, and is pushing more masks to retail outlets.

– Today, 21 June 2013, Govt to distribute N95 masks to low-income households, Link.

Meanwhile people are going around wearing surgical masks and paying quadrupled prices for them too. But, as I understand it, surgical masks won’t make much difference because they do not fully seal the nose and mouth.

This massive confusion stemming from poor planning and communication only shows how ill-prepared the authorities are. Yet, haze is not something new. It has been occurring annually since the at least the mid 1990s. Each year, we don’t seem to have planned for it, nor through these twenty years, have we bothered to come up with solutions we can implement ourselves to protect our own people.

I’m so so so excited to get a glimpse at the private emails of Kate and Laura Mulleavy and Lena Dunham as part of a new project by Miranda July called “We Think Alone“. A compendium of ten emails will arrive each Monday, from July 1 – November 11, 2013.

I’m always trying to get my friends to forward me emails they’ve sent to other people — to their mom, their boyfriend, their agent — the more mundane the better. How they comport themselves in email is so intimate, almost obscene — a glimpse of them from their own point of view. WE THINK ALONE has given me the excuse to read my friends’ emails and the emails of some people I wish I was friends with and for better or worse it’s changed the way I see all of them. I think I really know them now. But our inner life is not actually the same thing as our life on the computer — a quiet person might !!!! a lot. A person with a busy mind might write almost nothing. And of course while none of these emails were originally intended to be read by me (much less you*)  they were all carefully selected by their authors in response to my list of email genres — so self-portraiture is quietly at work here.  Privacy, the art of it, is evolving. Radical self-exposure and classically manicured discretion can both be powerful, both be elegant. And email itself is changing, none of us use it exactly the same way we did ten years ago; in another ten years we might not use it at all. Thank you to Kareem, Kirsten, Sheila, Danh, Lee, Etgar, Kate, Laura, Lena and Catherine for their daring and diligence.

–Miranda July

image credits:

1. Rodarte sisters
2. Lena Dunham
3. Miranda July

A Tumblr filled with incredibly charming animated gif drawings, by Thoka Maer: It’s No Biggie.

The Internet is going nuts today for some lost-and-found footage from a very-little-known South Indian softcore porn film.

Read more...

The FW created nine posters that call bullshit on Disney's original titles, and deliver the Truth. Filed under "Wish I would've thought of that first!" and also, "More, please!"

Related: Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting (and things that are interesting to screenwriters!) (and other people, too!), has a super fun and interesting breakdown of Little Mermaid. They go into detail with the original fairy tale vs. the Disney version, and let me tell you: the original is FUCKED (ALL CAPS). Plus, plenty of talk about how Ursula is tops, and maybe the greatest, fattest, sexiest sea bitch villainess of all time. Anyway, the whole episode is highly recommended — I listened to it on a drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco and didn't fall asleep once! A++!

[The FW via Anorak]

Neko Case has a new record coming out and she made a trailer for it and here it is and you should buy her record and hopefully now she'll drop those losers at Jalopnik and start hanging out with us.

Read more...

Political leaders often appear at disaster areas to offer words of support, comfort, and provide coordinating leadership such as declaring “no red tape.”

Obama and Governor Chris Christie in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy

Wen Jiabao at the Sichuan Earthquake

During such moments of crisis, these are performances that political leaders are uniquely suited for because of the particular stature that they have. They are no experts in disaster relief, but have the authority and charisma to lend to make people “feel better.” Plus it may also win them votes.

But why would political leaders “inspect” minor problems? In the recent weeks, we have ministers “inspecting” relatively minor problems in their constituency or portfolio. In addition to K Shanmugam inspecting the Sembawang Shell Station leak which occured in his constituency, Vivian Balakrishnan also headed down to the controversial hawker centres in Kaki Bukit (unfortunately no photos found), and mentioned that he would inspect “the quality of work.”

K Shanmugam at Sembawang Shell Station where there was a leak

Now, this puzzles me quite a bit. These ministers certainly have no expertise in the area of work – K Shanmugam was trained in law, not chemical engineering, whereas Vivian B was trained as a ophthalmologist, not a cleanliness expert. Neither do they have stature of any sort to galvanize people to work towards some common objective, particularly since the issue is so small. What could they possibly contribute or achieve by their “inspection” of such relatively smaller issues? Will they win more votes? Maybe K Shanmugam perhaps, but certainly not Vivian B, who appears stuck in a time-warped world of his own.

Perhaps it may be argued that “Well, it is better that they show face and do something, rather than not turning up at all right?” But it still doesn’t answer the question of what exactly is it that they “do” when they turn up. What exactly do they “do”??

In fact, these more mundane performances remind me of a similar inspection regime up north:

This is a commercial for...a hotel? I think? Bah, who even cares? Look at all the bunnies cuddling and sniffing the air warily, as if some voracious predator is going to leap out from under the covers and throttle them all to death. Stupid, adorable bunnies! Adweek speculates that the commercial maestros behind this ad for Ibis Hotels turned the air conditioning in the hotel down really low so that the bunnies would be forced to cuddle, and though that initially sounds a little manipulative from a bunny’s perspective, we should remember that bunnies don’t really have a perspective on anything except reproducing at an insanely high rate and being adorable.

[Adweek]

If you give birth in Finland, you're in luck! Along with your new bundle of joy, the government gives you a maternity box that's filled with clothes, sheets, toys, and a mattress. The mattress can be kept in the box and used as a baby-sized baby bed — so smart and so cost effective! Basically, a trip to a birthing center is like going to Ikea (in Finland), only you leave with all your furniture and a baby. What could be better?!*

Finland does this because they want to make sure all of their children, no matter what the background, are given an equal start in life. Obviously it's impossible to start all kids out on an even footing, but this small, helpful gift is thought to be one of the reasons Finland has one of the world's lowest infant mortality rates. That's because this box is worth quite a bit of money, and to receive it, women are required to get pre-natal checkups before their fourth month of pregnancy. It's a major incentive for moms-to-be to get the care they need. Very cool.

When Finland started the program in 1938, infant mortality was high — 65 out of 1,000 babies died. First the box came, and then the 60s brought a national health insurance system and central hospital network. Check out their progress:

So, as I was saying, who wants to give birth in Finland?

Here's my final selling point for any hold outs who aren't fond of eggbutter and cloudberries: The clothes in the boxes change every year, and are always super fashionable because hello! You're in Finland! So your baby is always So Fresh and So Clean.

Let's do this.

*Probably a lot of things if you don't want a baby.

[BBC]

Image via Shutterstock/Photobac.

The furor surrounding the Steubenville, Ohio rape case was sparked in large part by the raucous entrance of the hacktivist collective Anonymous into the story. Anonymous members organized digital and real-life protests and leaked information about the case, occasionally going beyond the law in their efforts to raise awareness and avenge the victim.

Read more...

In 2011, the National Sleep Foundation polled over 1,500 Americans and found that ninety-five percent of respondents used some form of technology in the hour before bed. That's not great, especially considering new research suggesting that all that time you spend reading Wikipedia's Unusual Deaths page in the comfort of your own boudoir is stressing you out and keeping you up. (Duh?)

The study from researchers at University of Texas-Pan American found that people who surfed the web or sent a text message within two hours of going to bed reported higher levels of stress than those who didn't.

Why?

Some researchers have suggested that light emitted from gadgets such as computers and cellphones may disrupt sleep. Electronic screens emit a lot of blue light, which is known to suppress melatonin, a hormone involved in the sleep-wake cycle.

Other evidence has suggested that interactive technologies, like texting and emailing, make a person more alert, and disrupt the onset of sleep.

The good news, if you just send emails or watch TV, you're about at the same stress as the average stressed out person. Which is still probably really fucking stressed out. Yay?

Obviously more research is needed, but it's probably obvious to anyone who's on a computer late at night that it's not great for you. I work most evenings, and it takes me a good one to two hours to fall asleep, and that usually requires some sort of aids (book, pills, whiskey, banging head on wall, etc.). The one thing that's helped a bit is this free (!) app called Flux, which makes the color of your computer's display adapt to the time of day — it's warm at night and like sunlight during the day. Right now, it's lulling me to sleep with the sweet tint of nighty night. Honestly, sometimes I have to turn it off just so I don't face plant into QWERTY.

However, if you don't have a job that requires you to look at cute animal videos into the wee hours (my life! so hard!), it makes sense to make your sleeping area a no tech zone. Remember, the bedroom is just for sleeping and sex and snacking.

[Live Science]

Shutterstock/Maridav

Grumpy Cat, a cat famous for having a constant look of disgust on her face and yes it's 2013 and this is what fame is like in the future, has been tapped to star in a "Garfield-like feature film." The movie will co-star Jack Black and Will Ferrell, and is considered a top priority at New Line Cinema. You cannot make this shit up — but if you had, you'd probably be a multi-gajabillionaire by now.

But who would see Grumpy Cat: The Last Grump (working title)? Well, me. And you. And, um, all of her millions of fans, and probably anyone with a brain and a heart.

“This started off as a picture of a cat, but rare is an image that evokes that much comedy,” producer Todd Garner said. “You read all of the memes and the comments, and one is funnier than the next. We think we can build a big family comedy around this character.”

I just want to really drive home the fact that a cat can get a movie made and 99 percent of the rest of us can't. Grumpy Cat is now the 1 percent. That is all.

[Deadline]

"This is why I was late" Art print by Lim Heng Swee aka ilovedoodle
http://www.ilovedoodle.com