XIAM007 - Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World: 11/03/10

Wednesday, 3 November 2010

New York City Cancels Christmas - memo told workers to stop sending out holiday cards and use double-sided copying -

I know we need to cut costs, but this? Say it ain’t so. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York City have cancelled Christmas.

Along with ordering agency officers to use double-sided copying and to cut travel expenses, a memo distributed to all city officials told workers to stop sending out holiday cards. Apparently it will save $50,000 a year. But is that really all Christmas is worth?

“If agencies wish to send holiday or other types of greetings,” said Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith, “they must utilize electronic greeting cards.”

Good try, Goldsmith, but it just won’t be the same.

Barack Obama sex doll for sale in China - exhibited at Sex Culture Festival in the southern city of Guangzhou -

Barack Obama sex doll for sale in China - exhibited at Sex Culture Festival in the southern city of Guangzhou -

The Barack Obama sex doll was exhibited at the recent 8th Sex Culture Festival in the southern city of Guangzhou

The Barack Obama sex doll was exhibited at the recent 8th Sex Culture Festival in the southern city of Guangzhou

A doll wearing a dark blue suit and red tie, and with Mr Obama's face carefully screen-printed onto its head, was exhibited at the recent 8th Sex Culture Festival in the southern city of Guangzhou.

The doll was photographed by Chinese state media nestling behind several other standard plastic female toys.

Mr Obama is widely popular in China, and a "Maobama" t-shirt, bearing an image of his face crossed with a portrait of Chairman Mao, has become a best-seller.

The Guangzhou show, which was only open to adults, cost 30 yuan (£3)

to enter and was visited by "tens of thousands" of people, according to a spokesman for the Guangdong Gongchuang Economic Development company, the organisers. One star attraction was a female doll costing 98,000 yuan.

"We do not know which manufacturer produced this doll," the spokesman added.

However, the picture of the Obama doll, which circulated on the Chinese internet, drew an wide array of responses. "How could they place the US president behind those other poorly-made models. He is the head of a big country, after all," wrote one anonymous commentator on the Netease internet forum.

"Why can't we have a Mao Tse-tung toy?" asked another.

Halloween Reveler Dressed As Breathalyzer Busted For Drunk Driving -

In the most amusing meta moment from the Halloween police blotter, a Nebraska man dressed as a portable Breathalyzer machine was arrested for drunk driving.

Matthew Nieveen, 19, was busted early Monday for DUI and being a minor in possession of alcohol. Nieveen, pictured in the police photo () at right, was collared after a Lincoln cop pulled over his Ford F-150 after the teenager was spotted driving erratically. Though cops identified Nieveen, they decided to black out his face in a photo snapped post-arrest.

[Click here to view mug shots of Halloween weekend arrestees who didn’t have time to remove their makeup.]

Nieveen’s blood alcohol level was more than twice the state’s .08 limit (though he wasn’t supposed to be drinking in the first place). A search of his truck turned up a bottle of vodka and beer.

Last Halloween, an Ohio college student wearing a similar Breathalyzer costumewas busted for drunk driving and underage drinking.

Google polling app misleads voters - 700,000 may have experienced errors that sent them to wrong polling stations -

Google can help you research candidates, watch their ads, poke fun at their gaffes and find out how they did on Election Day. But the site hasn’t exactly fared very well at getting voters to the right polling places.

One of the search company’s Election Center apps, which helps citizens find their assigned ballot boxes, has served up a series of errors that may have sent some voters to the wrong polling places.

A study Tuesday by Aristotle, a political technology company, predicts that more than 700,000 households in a collection of 12 battleground states may have experienced errors on the site that told them to head to the wrong polling stations.

“If you’re being sent to the wrong polling place, it’s a pretty big deal, especially if it’s toward the end of the day, and especially if it’s an election that’s closely contested like 2010,” said John Phillips, CEO of Aristotle, which maintains its own ballot box location service called whereivote.com.

Aristotle premised its prediction on a series of simulations: The company selected about 1,000 households in targeted states, compared their polling place data against Google’s app and derived an error rate it later used to predict the number of area households possibly affected by the mishap