Nikki Roda

Google Translate covers the songs of our people!

A family in Nanjing, China, was left embarrassed and apologetic after their 15-year-old son was found to have defaced an ancient Egyptian relic with the phrase "Ding Jinhao was here."

A photo of the 3,500-year-old Luxor temple relic and the teenager's contribution was posted by another tourist to the Chinese social networking site Weibo last Friday.

It sparked significant outrage, which led to a massive "human flesh search" for the boy's identity.

He was eventually tracked down to a middle school in the Jiangsu Province capital, and reporters soon arrived in droves to interview the boy's family.

In a statement published by China Daily, Ding's parents said they wished to apologize to the Egyptian people on their son's behalf, as well as "to people who have paid attention to this case across China."

Speaking with Modern Express, the parents said they had failed to "properly educate their child" and asked they he be given another chance.

Many aren't quite ready to forgive, but at least one person, a Tourism Management professor at Fudan University, is sticking up for the parents.

"It's not only the boy, there are other tourists that leave graffiti on relics," Gu Xiaoming is quoted as saying.

Indeed, the problem has apparently become widespread enough for the Chinese government to enact a Tourism Law granting travel agencies the authority to punish violations of "social ethics."

As for the defaced relief, efforts to restore it have been met with some success.

[photo via Weibo]

It's kind of a cliche at this point to lament the loss of once venerable institutions of televised knowledge such as The History Channel and The Learning Channel to the scourge of "reality" TV.

Did you know that Bravo started as a channel devoted to airing highbrow culture and works of art?

But cliche or not, the state of TV is sad and getting sadder with every bachelor (17 and counting!).

Hoping to use this to their advantage, New York metropolitan area PBS affiliate Thirteen recently teamed up with CHI&Partners to launch an ad campaign mocking real reality shows by promoting fake reality shows that look real.

"The fact that you thought this was a real show says a lot about the state of TV," says a tagline pointing to mock promos for such upsettingly possible shows as Bad Bad Bagboys, Married to a Mime, Knitting Wars, and Bayou Eskimos.

"It’s pretty scary when you look out there and see what’s on television these days," CHI Executive Creative Director Jeff Anderson told Entertainment Weekly. "If New Yorkers want an inspiring and educational option, they need to get behind a network that we sometimes take for granted."

The five posters will begin appearing in NYC subways this week.

[images via Entertainment Weekly]

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Matygo emerged out of Vancouver’s GrowLab accelerator in late 2011 to take advantage of the growing popularity of the “flipped classroom” philosophy in education, which, as Knewton describes it, seeks to invert traditional methods of teaching by delivering instruction online (through videos, etc.) outside of class, while moving homework into the classroom. Khan Academy is one of many examples of how startups are applying the flipped classroom model to improve the learning process.

Initially, the startup focused on developing a cloud-based learning management system (LMS), along with providing free, online courses to let anyone learn how to code, for example, along with classroom collaboration tools. However, as it goes in the burgeoning EdTech space, the startup’s learning platform never quite hit its stride, struggling to reach scale and profitability amidst slim margins.

Instead, after pulling back and delving into months of research, the startup identified three areas in which EdTech businesses are finding success: They help get internal teams up to speed, create customer evangelists, and they improve partner channel revenue through sales and product training. In November, Matygo rebranded as Learndot, focusing instead on bringing universities to businesses and the enterprise.

In other words, Learndot is building a training and certification platform for businesses that enables anyone within an organization to build courses, certify customers, educate partners and get employees up to speed, from the cloud. Learndot launched its new platform in beta in November, and were quickly overwhelmed by the response, receiving hundreds of trial requests within the first few months.

The startup wasn’t ready for the response, Learndot founder Paul Roland Lambert tells us, and they had to turn people away, as it initially took the startup nearly a week to set up a single trial manually. Now, with customers like Get Satisfaction, Clio and Zirtual on board, Learndot is officially coming out of restricted beta and opening its platform to the public.

In its newest form, Learndot is focused on providing enterprise clients with a results-centric education platform, in an attempt to improve training outcomes and to streamline the learning process, while allowing organizations to emphasize great content rather than simply prioritizing compliance.

Traditionally, business leaders and organizations have looked at training as a checkmark they need for compliance, which has led to corporate education taking a backseat on a company’s list of priorities. Recently, however, this mindset has begun to change as organizations realize that education can be used to deliver long-term results and give them a competitive advantage.

“We believe all organizations will benefit by nurturing a culture of learning, but people-powered businesses of all sizes see the greatest impact,” Lambert told Cantech this month. “This includes most service-based businesses, retailers, sales teams, or any industry where employee retention is a key metric.”

So, in essence Learndot is combining a course-creation tool a la Udemy with a platform for delivery, quizzing and analytics. Together, it allows anyone to create learning content and makes it easy to start small, test ideas with a few people, iterate and add as they go.

The idea is to offer a product that doesn’t require you to be an expert on workplace learning or training to build an awesome course. And, by providing easy access to analytics and data on employee performance within these courses, Learndot wants to make it easy for businesses to customize learning content, resulting in courses that are both more effective and aren’t excruciatingly boring.

This week, as part of exiting private beta, Learndot is launching Web signup so that anyone can sign up to use its SaaS tools mentioned above, beginning with a 14-day free trial. In addition, Learndot is adding a “forever free” plan, which provides access for up to five learners at no charge, in an effort to allow teams that want to test and evaluate Learndot do so without worrying about an expiration date. For organizations with up to 50 employees, Learndot offers a “Team” package that starts at $250, and a business plan for up to 150 employees at $500.

Through its new pricing scheme and re-organization, Learndot hopes to significantly lower the friction around testing out its product, while allowing small teams to use the platform for free. Startups helpin’ startups.

For more, find Learndot at home here or sign up here.

Between this rave review of Nathan For You and his recent attempt to strap himself to a flying plane, Canadian comedian Nathan Fielder is fast becoming someone you should know.

Or at least follow on Twitter.

It was there that Fielder set off a chain reaction that resulted in what was most likely the single largest collective headache ever experienced by American parents.

"Experiment: text your parents 'got 2 grams for $40' then right after 'Sorry ignore that txt. Not for you' Then tweet pic of their response," Fielder asked his thousands of followers.

As you might expect, comedy quickly ensued.

Below you can see a few choice reactions from parents who are less than pleased to "accidentally" learn about their child's extracurricular activities:

The rest are here and here.

[H/T: Splitsider, images via Twitter]

This clip from the Eden Channel shares two musical traditions of the BaAka Forest People: polyphonic singing — when two or more voices join together with independent melodies at the same time — and, dressed in a costume of leaves, a theatrical ceremony that features dancing and joking as forest spirits.

With cupped hands, girls and women of the BaAka Forest People play the river like a drum, each taking on a different rhythmic pattern that complements the others.

Ah, kids. They're born, they do some cute stuff and then they become obnoxious teenagers.

So goes for NASA technology, it appears. The twin Mars Exploration Rovers were launched nine years ago (they grow up so fast when they're left to fend for themselves on a maybe desolate planet) for the purpose of learning more about the red planet. Like your average angsty teens, they have taken to drawing giant penises all over everything.

[image via Reddit, NASA]

This photo fad has been circulating Instagram and parenting blogs, using a forced perspective illusion to make children appear as if they are sitting in a ceramic mug.

With a soundtrack by Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, artist James Nares’ STREET is an experiment in people watching with the benefit of slow motion. From the New York Times: 

Mr. Nares’s 61-minute video sits in a curious place, somewhere between still and moving images. It has the uncanny look of a 3-D slide show or some hybrid of photography and film; it also calls to mind the stereographic viewers that were popular in the 19th century. Shown in slow motion, the people Mr. Nares filmed on the streets of Manhattan look like cutouts placed into deep pockets of space.

Of the project (clip shown above), Nares said, “I wanted the film to be about people. All it needed were magical moments, and there are enough of those happening every moment of any given day.”

Thanks, Tallulah, Jasper & Jenni.

From Tumblr’s Storyboard blog: The Fine Art of Portraiture… in coffee. 

Meet Mike Breach, barista extraordinaire, who “paints” everything — and everyone — into his lattes. “I’m an esspressionist,” he proudly proclaims. Just last year, Breach was idling away his customer-less hours in the back of a hotel kitchen with only a dormant espresso machine for company. He was “so, so bored.” So he taught himself how to inscribe ornate hearts in coffee foam, with a bamboo skewer as his paintbrush.

And that was just the beginning… check out baristart.tumblr.com for more portraits, animals, and lovable aliens…

via Colossal.

Your baby boy loves to cry. Loves it.

You could find a way to patiently and lovingly console him and coddle him until the latest tantrum passes, but that's no fun.

Here's a much better idea: Start a blog with the sole purpose of photographing him every time he cries, and caption each photo with the asinine reason he's crying this time.

That's what one particularly dog-tired dad did when he launched "Reasons My Son Is Crying."

There is, of course, some debate over the impact this might have on the child, but those comments are likely being left by people who are either not parents themselves, or else lack the sense of humor necessary to survive those first few years of parenthood.

Besides, in a few short years, they'll be on Tumblr themselves, writing their own whiny blog.

I wouldn't let him drown in this pond.

I turned the volume of The Hokey Pokey down… from "ear-splittingly loud" to only "mind-numbingly loud".

He is in a giraffe costume.

[H/T: Reddit, photos via Tumblr]

Every morning at 9:05 AM sharp, a strikingly dapper octogenarian saunters by Zoe Spawton's coffee shop on his way to work in the Berlin borough of Neukölln.

That man's name is Ali.

He is an 83-year-old Turkish tailor who has been living in Germany for the past 44 years. He has 18 kids, and an impeccable sense of style.

Many of the clothes Ali wears were handmade by him, and he rarely wears the same thing twice.

His uncanny sartorial elegance so fascinated Spawton, that the Australia-born photographer started a blog dedicated to "what Ali wore."

After getting his permission, of course.

"At first he thought it was funny," Spawton admits to Spiegel Online. "Now he is the one who gives me instructions and shows me where he would like to pose."

Uncle Ali, as he likes to be called, does have some restrictions, Spawton says.

"Sometimes he just does not feel good, is a bad mood or sick," she tells the German publication. "Also, if he has the feeling of being not dressed very neatly. Or if he thinks that I have already photographed him in a certain outfit."

Spawton and Ali have bonded over the course of their joint project, and Spawton says she now considers them to be close. "Once we went together on a trip to pick apples, which was very nice," she said.

Word of Ali's new-found fame has even reached his native land, where he is seen as a fashion maverick, breaking down age barriers in a world typically ruled by Bright Young Things.

And it seems Ali's might not be minding his accidental celebrity, either.

Writes Spawton in her latest blog entry: With the help of Google Translate I tried to explain to Ali today that he might be recognised on the u-bahn…he seemed quite pleased."

[H/T: MeFi, photos via What Ali Wore/Zoe Spawton]

Joann and Mike Moser weren't even mad when they found out their 2-year-old son Kyle was using fingernail clippers to break into his sister's room late at night to steal a stuffed unicorn.

"Kyle has always been one to fiddle things and try to see how things works," Mini-MacGyver's mom told ABC News. "We were impressed that he found the fingernail clippers in his room, flipped them open and used those to open the door."

Kyle's impressive talent was recently caught on camera after his parents set up a sting to catch him in the act.

Joann described to Huffington Post how it all went down:

Our 8-year-old daughter came to us one night and told us our 2-year-old was taking stuff at night out of her room. We told her to ... just lock the door. A couple nights later she told us he had opened the lock on his door. We were VERY skeptical so we set up the camera in the hall to see what would happen. Sure enough within a few seconds of closing his door and locking hers he was at the door opening the lock. The rest is on the video. We could not stop laughing afterward and we let him sleep with the pillow pet that night.

Still, being the proper thing to do, Joann and Mike sat Kyle down the following day to explain why unlocking other people's doors is wrong.

"He said, ‘OK, and went about his business," Joann said. "He hasn't done it since."

[video via Joann Moser]

Purveyor of celebrity-themed puns and hybrid creatures, street artist Hanksy has adorned Los Angeles with yet another creative cast of characters. As a sort of antithesis to the serious sanctimoniousness of some street art, Hanksy prefers to make jokes that involve Will Ferrell Cats or Nicolas Cage Against the Machine.

Hanksy was taken in by the police just as he added the finishing touches onto the Weird Gal Yankovic design—though the police were reportedly delighted by the pun and took lots of photographs as they handcuffed the street artist. Hansky is preparing for an upcoming solo exhibition at Gallery1988 in LA, which opens May 24.

Scroll down for an abundant offering of the jokester's latest inventions, including a ferociously overjoyed Ghost-Buster Bluth, hook and all.

Pee-Wee Merman with a gingham tail, obviously.

DJamie Foxx looking mildly displeased.

Toe-bias Fünke. Did anyone else see Walter Egg White for half a second? I mean, it's a toe for sure, this was just a momentary lapse.

The Walken Dead, although I will point to you to my favorite Walken pun, here.

Flock of Segels. That man always looks so happy to be where he is.

Weird Gal Yankovic. Eh.

The Whizard of Oz. That would be one James Franco, apparently giggling on a toilet seat.

[Hansky, image via Jared Soule]

Last week in Egypt, a group of Russian photographers apparently climbed the Great Pyramid of Giza—hiding from guards for four hours after closing time before beginning the ascent. Climbing the pyramid, one of the photographers claims, carries a punishment of one to three years. But it was worth it. "I was speechless," one wrote. "I felt a chilling delight, absolute happiness." Here are some of their photos:

Since they were visible to guards, the photographs took most of their pictures from a prone position:

[Mister-Marat, Raskalov via EnglishRussia]

Two hero lawyers have filed a class-action lawsuit against the Metropolitan Museum of Art over the museum's attempts to make its absurd but optional $25 admission fee appear to be mandatory:

The lawsuit contends that the museum uses misleading marketing and training of cashiers to violate an 1893 New York state law that mandates the public should be admitted for free at least five days and two evenings per week. In exchange, the museum gets annual grants from the city and free rent for its building and land along pricey Fifth Avenue in Central Park.

Most people who've been to the Met more than once know that the fee is "recommended" and not required, even if the cashiers are mean about it and the signage is more than a little misleading. But if you are a decent person seeking to support important cultural institutions, you may find yourself feeling obligated to pay out the full $25. These are hard times, after all, and surely a nonprofit like the Met is suffering. Why would it ask for such a ridiculously high figure otherwise? Shouldn't we just treat the fee as the cost of seeing a world-class collection of art and artifacts? (As a Canadian tourist tells the AP, "It's a beautiful museum and I was happy to pay.") Doesn't the Met need our money to survive? Well: no.

The Metropolitan Museum is one of the world's richest cultural institutions, with a $2.58 billion investment portfolio, and isn't reliant on admissions fees to pay the majority of its bills. Only about 11 percent of the museum's operating expenses were covered by admissions charges in the 2012 fiscal year. As a nonprofit organization, the museum pays no income taxes.

So: no, the Met is not suffering; it doesn't need your money; it is required by law to open its doors to the public; and the cost of having a(nother) world-class collection in the city is already partly borne by your tax bill. (And should be borne further.)

Also that "world-class" collection is largely stolen.

[AP, image via AP]

On random days this month, Tilda Swinton (actress, Bowie-enthusiast, badass) will be performing her 1995 piece "The Maybe," which consists of Swinton sleeping in a glass box. In fact, at this very moment, Tilda Swinton is sleeping in a glass box at MoMa for your viewing pleasure.

Gothamist spoke with a source at MoMA who told them that the "Museum staff doesn't know she's coming until the day of, but she's here today. She'll be there the whole day. All that's in the box is cushions and a water jug."

Swinton first performed "The Maybe" in London, followed by a repeat performance in Rome.

MoMA describes the piece's random schedule:

An integral part of The Maybe's incarnation at MoMA in 2013 is that there is no published schedule for its appearance, no artist's statement released, no museum statement beyond this brief context, no public profile or image issued. Those who find it chance upon it for themselves, live and in real-shared-time: now we see it, now we don't.

[Images courtesy of Gothamist]

Blake E. Reid's "The Digital Millennium Copyright Act Is Even Worse Than You Think" is a potted history of the ways that the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has confounded the efforts of disability-rights groups to make media more accessible to people with various disabilities. The Copyright Office holds hearings every three years to establish temporary exemptions to the DMCA, but this has been totally inadequate as a way of dealing with this problem:

I’m a teaching fellow and staff attorney at Georgetown Law’s Institute for Public Representation clinic, where I work on media and accessibility issues. In 2011, my students and I filed a new exemption request on behalf of the nonprofit TDI (which advocates for equal media access for people who are deaf or hard of hearing) to allow researchers to develop advanced closed captioning and video description features to help make video programming more accessible—development hindered by the DMCA. (Gallaudet University and the Participatory Culture Foundation also signed the petition.) Crowdsourcing, customized user interfaces, error correction, and other innovations could help realize the goal of equal access to video programming on the Internet—a goal enshrined by Congress and President Obama in the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010.

But our proposal faced opposition from a coalition of copyright lobbyists who insisted, for example, that errors in closed captions were a “mere inconvenience” to people with disabilities and that developing accessibility features might even constitute copyright infringement. In the end, the librarian issued an exemption, but it was so riddled with caveats that it was difficult to identify precisely what accessibility research it was intended to enable, if any.

We also proposed a general exemption for accessibility technology, urging the librarian to take action in light of the widespread and demonstrated negative impact of the DMCA on the ability for people with disabilities to experience copyrighted works on equal terms. The Copyright Office did not even solicit comment on the proposal, and the librarian effectively ignored it.

Requiring nonprofit disability groups to ask permission from the government every three years and navigate a complex legal minefield to implement urgently needed accessibility technology is not compatible with progressive, conservative, or libertarian values; the goal of equal access for people with disabilities; or common sense. Even the librarian admitted in 2010 that the DMCA exemption process “is at best ill-suited to address the larger challenges of access.”

Especially poignant is the closing quote from Helen Keller: "Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book-friends."

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act Is Even Worse Than You Think (via Freedom to Tinker)

Now that Google Reader is slowly making its way down that old dusty trail, alternative services have started cropping up begging for your traffic and your feed-reading clicks. We'll all miss Google Reader, but when we asked you last week what your best alternatives to the service were, you responded with more nominees than we could possibly feature. We highlighted the top five in the five best Google Reader alternatives, and then put them to an all-out vote to determine the Lifehacker community favorite. Now we're back to highlight the winner.

By a massive 65% of the vote, Feedly was your Google Reader alternative of choice, partially because it's free, cross-platform, and available on multiple devices. Plus, they make importing your Google Reader subscriptions so ridiculously easy that it's worth a try. As of right now, they still use Google for syncing, but the team at Feedly is planning their own syncing engine to replace their dependence on Google Reader before it shuts down. With luck, all Feedly users will have a seamless transition to a post-Google Reader era, and never even notice that Google turned off the lights.

In second place with over 17% of the vote was The Old Reader, a web-based feed reader that was modeled after Google Reader and incorporates many of its features (including some that Google removed from Reader long ago.) It's a little slow to import and there's massive demand (and there are no mobile apps yet), but it's a good alternative if you want a service that's as close to Google Reader as you can get. Behind it in third place with close to 7% of the vote was NewsBlur, another sharp looking webapp that makes importing easy—just look out, they've shut down free accounts for now, so stay tuned for when they open them back up. Right behind it with 6% of the vote was Pulse, which doesn't use Google Reader's backend at all, but still lets you keep tabs on the news (and now offers a way to import your Google Reader subscriptions.) Bringing up the rear in fifth place with just over 5% of the votes cast was Netvibes, a free and functional replacement for Google Reader that also serves as a good-looking dashboard, complete with widgets for weather, news, and other events.

The Hive Five is based on reader nominations. As with most Hive Five posts, if your favorite was left out, it's not because we hate it—it's because it didn't get the nominations required in the call for contenders post to make the top five. We understand it's a bit of a popularity contest, but if you have a favorite, we want to hear about it. Have a suggestion for the Hive Five? Send us an email at tips+hivefive@lifehacker.com!

Starting a new job is never easy, and often times you're left wondering what's really expected of you on a granular scale. 99U suggests that one of the best ways to make a transition to a new job easier is to establish expectations with your boss early on by defining what a "win" is in their eyes.

Chances are that you're going to spend the first 90 days at your job finding a balance impressing your new boss and not screwing things up too much. It might sound like common sense that you need to figure out what's expected of you, but it's often not as cut and dry and you'd think. 99U explains:

According to [author Michael] Watkins, one of the keys to success in a new role is to secure early wins: "Early wins excite and energize people, build your credibility, and quickly create value for your organization." But it is important to define what a win is in your boss's eyes. What does she expect you to learn and accomplish? How quickly does she expect to see results? The more clarity you build around these issues, the easier your transition will be.

Once you know what those expectations are, and what really qualifies as exceeding those, you can work on all those other things that are expected of you when you start a new job.

The First 90 Days: Your Road Map For Success at a New Job | 99U

Photo by Infusionsoft.

Back in the day, checking your bag on a trip only cost you 20 minutes of your time after a flight. Now you're lucky if it only costs you $20. With rampant theft, high bag check costs, and overhead bins filled to the brim, learning how to pack efficiently matters more than ever. With the right strategy, you can fit everything you actually need into the seat in front of you.

I hate checking bags. I really hate checking bags. I've had luggage lost, items stolen, property destroyed, and a myriad of other issues. After an incredibly degrading experience with checked luggage, I decided to approach every future flight as a challenge. I tested new ways to ensure I get my bags on the plane and, more recently, that they can fit underneath the seat in front of me if necessary. After four years of practice, I can pack for a two week week trip and fit everything into a tiny space. In this post, we'll look at how.

Pick the Right Bag(s)

Most luggage wastes space in favor of added protection or aesthetics. You'll want that protection when traveling with fragile items, but most of the time your primary bag won't require much padding because you'll fill it with clothing. Clothing serves as a wonderful source of padding on its own, so even if you do have a fragile item or two you can pack it inside of your clothing to avoid damage. When fitting a large number of items underneath the seat in front of you, and still retaining room for a personal item (like a medium-sized backpack or messenger bag), flexibility matters most.

Few bags provide more flexibility than—or cost as little as—the duffel. For around $30, you can get a malleable carrier that houses about as much as a carry-on suitcase. As a result, size isn't paramount because you can fill a portion of the bag and squeeze it under the seat with little effort. You don't have a lot of room under the seat—bags are supposed to measure no larger than 8"x17"x12"—but because a duffel compresses well, the bag's measurements can exceed those limits without causing a problem. This Adidas duffel bag costs $25 and only exceeds standard underseat bag measurements by a few inches in each dimension. It also offers an outer pocket on one side, providing an optimal temporary storage space for liquids you'll need to remove during security screenings. Most any small-to-medium-sized duffel will do the trick, but bags geared towards sports activities tend to be smaller and flex a bit more than their canvas and leather counterparts.

What you put inside of the bag counts, too. While you can pack arbitrarily with good technique, you lose the advantage of organization. A few inexpensive tools can help solve that problem. First, packing cubes provide structure so you can separate pants from shirts from undergarments. They even work well with technology if you have enough of it. Additionally, mesh bags work well when separating smaller items like toiletries and some travel documents. Utilizing both will keep everything in order and much easier to unpack.

As for your second bag, or "personal item" as the airlines like to call it, read our guide on creating a modular go bag for help with packing a great one.

Learn Efficient Packing and Organization Techniques

Most people fold and pack their clothes into squares, but other packing methods save more space and can even avoid wrinkles. While we could cover a myriad of options, you only need two techniques to fit a lot into your bag: rolling and building a foundation.

First, the rolling method couldn't be more straightforward. You literally take your clothing and roll it up into a tube. In some cases, rolling multiple shirts into one tube can save space. The image to the right demonstrates how many items you can fit into a suitcase with this approach.

Second, you need to build a foundation by packing heavier items at the bottom and lighter items at the top. Whether you've opted to use packing cubes or just dump everything into your bag, heavier items create a foundation at the bottom to reduce movement and can withstand more weight. Lighter items cannot, so putting them at the top keeps them in good form and aids the rolling method in preventing wrinkles. Perhaps these methods seem almost too easy, but you don't have to trust me—flight attendants pack the same way.

Know What You Need (and What You Don't)

Most people don't know what they need to bring on a trip, save packing for the last minute, and end up bringing twice the number of items they actually need. I am, by no means, exempt from this situation. On my last trip, I packed five pairs of pants when I needed only two or three (or, if you're like some crazy people I know, one). Why? They were new and I wanted to wear them. Did I end up wearing them all? Not even close. Packing well allows you a little bit of inefficiency, but many travelers could probably halve the contents of their suitcases. Nobody thinks they can, but a little forethought goes a very long way.

When you pack a bag for a trip, you want the following items:

• Everyday clothing (e.g. shirts, pants, underwear, socks)
• Weather-specific clothing (e.g. coats, swimsuits, boots)
• Toiletries (e.g. toothpaste, toothbrush, deodorant, cosmetics)
• Travel documents (e.g. boarding passes, itineraries, your passport)
• Entertainment items (e.g. computer, tablet, books)

While you won't require every example of every category, you'll certainly want a few items in each. Problems occur when you start thinking of everything you pack as "single use" items. With the exception of undergarments, most clothing can survive at least a second day and retain a clean feeling. Jeans last even longer, especially if you can toss them in a freezer overnight. Because travel often feels boring, we feel the desire to pack too many entertainment items. If you start looking at your belongings as a little more versatile, rather than how you may use them in your everyday life, you can save yourself a lot of room in your suitcase. Here are some examples:

• Pants: In my book, a pair of pants (or skirts and dresses) have a usage life of 2.5 days. Unless an awful spill occurs, your pants should survive more than one use before washing. If you're traveling for a week, you can wear one pair and pack two. This saves a ton of room in your suitcase and offers three different pant styles for good versatility in your outfit choices.
• Shirts: While undershirts and t-shirts tend to get dirty after one day of use, overshirts (especially quality button-downs), sweaters, sweatshirts, and hoodies can last about as long as pants. If you're traveling for a week, wear one and pack three. Save room for more undergarments. If you overpack anything, that's what you'll want to have in case of emergency. You can spot clean an overshirt, but undergarments will leave you feeling dirty unless they're washed after one use.
• 
  
• Technology: If you're bringing your laptop, do you need your tablet? If you just want to relax and don't have work to do, will your tablet do the trick instead of your laptop? Figure out how many devices you actually need. Even if they don't take up a lot of space, chargers do. Choose your entertainment sparingly and choose your options based on battery life. The longer the battery lasts, the more use you'll get out of it. If you actually need to pack a handful of USB gadgets, however, consider creating this seven-port fast charger. It travels well, manges your cables automatically, and helps to ensure you (and probably any of your travel mates) always have a place to plug in.
• Toiletries: Travel-sized options cost more, so people often avoid them in favor or larger items. Instead of paying extra for tiny toiletries, just buy empty bottles and containers (from Target or The Container Store, for example). They cost very little and you can reuse them on future trips.
• Travel Documents: If you have a smartphone, you can store most of your travel documents there. Obviously you'll still need to carry your passport in some cases, but with an Evernote account you can have fast access to important documents when you need them. For boarding passes, many airlines can text a QR code to your phone. If that's an option, use it. You save paper, a tiny bit of space, and you load up your pass on the way to the gate if you forget.
• Books: If you're a fan of paperbacks and hardcovers, you probably don't want an ereader. That said, it will save you a lot of space. If you must take a larger, bulkier library, pick your books frugally. If you're traveling with others, share books so everyone can pack fewer options.
• Coats: You can wear your coat on the plane or just lean it against your seat if you don't want to put it in the overhead bin or shove it underneath the seat in front of you. Packing a coat just wastes space, so don't do it.
• Suits and formalwear: Apparel of the fancier variety often requires more care and space when packing, and fitting all your luggage into the seat in front of you doesn't really work if you have a lot of it—especially when it comes to suit coats. That said, sometimes you have an alternative option to packing your formalwear: nicely ask a flight attendant when boarding if they can hang it up front for you. Most planes have a place to hang a few items, but they're reserved for first and business class passengers. If you want, you can always fib a little and tell them you need your formal attire for an important job interview and you want to make sure it doesn't wrinkle. If they have room, and you ask them nicely, they may make an exception and store your clothing for you.
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• Shoes: If you can, pick only one pair of shoes that you can wear throughout the trip. A pair of tennis shoes serve as the most versatile option, but if you need something a little classier you in addition you should pack those. Tennis shoes add the most bulk, so wearing them on the airplane saves space in your bag. If you need to change later you can, but don't pack the bigger shoes even if your tennis shoes aren't a perfect match for your outfit. You'll only wear them on the plane, and nobody will ever see them.

This list doesn't encompass every item you'll ever need or want to pack, but covers the basics. In general, consider what you can use more than once and what items work in multiple situations. You'll find that much of what you want to pack can remain at home.

There Are No Packing Paradigms

You can't have a perfect packing system. You will find yourself in circumstances where everything you need will not fit underneath the seat in front of you. For example, you may move across the country and prefer to take a few items on the plane rather than ship them. You also may not want everything in the seat in front of you because you'd rather put your feet there. The goal of this guide isn't to force as much crap underneath someone else's seat as possible, but rather to provide the option. If you want to avoid checking bags, this is a surefire approach. When you can put a bag in the overhead bin, you should. If you find yourself in a situation where you must pack more, you should do that as well. When you can pack efficiently, however, you'll make your trips much easier. Good preparation makes for better travel.

Images by Vector pro (Shutterstock), Thor Jorgen Udvang (Shutterstock), and me.

A skinhead who thought it would be a good idea to do the Nazi salute on stage during a Dropkick Murphys concert at NYC's Terminal 5 last week learned quite a bit about what's in a band name, courtesy of founding member/bass player/lead singer Ken Casey.

Here's how it went down, courtesy of Rocks Off:

It was St Patty's Day week, the shows were packed, and people were getting drunk. And Rowdy. Really Rowdy. As has become tradition the band invited the ladies to come onto the stage for their encore of "Kiss Me Im Shitfaced" 50+ ladies made it past the barricade and onto the stage and danced the song away. The band then kicked into "Skinhead on the MBTA" and a ton of dudes werre getting past security and the stage ended up being packed tighter than the underside of a real man's kilt. As the band kicked into T.N.T. by AC/DC some moron started seig heiling (the nazi salute) in time to the beat.

Ken Casey noticed this and ran right over to the guy, smashed him in the face, took off his bass and hit him with that and then jumped on him and all out chaos ensued. We could only assume from our vantage point that said nazi got his ass kicked. About 30 seconds later Ken emerged from the pileup with his shirt torn and made his way back to the front of the stage. He strapped on his bass and said into the microphone "Nazis are NOT FUCKING WELCOME at a Dropkick Murphys show."

As it so happens, the Dropkick Murphys just announced a nationwide tour that's expected to last for three whole months and will include performances at Coachella, Sasquatch!, and Kanrocksas.

Those planning on attending one of the dates are advised to leave their sieg heils at home.

[H/T: BrooklynVegan via The Hollywood Reporter]