Drool

The idea of a white boardroom with a Lego table is perhaps a bit geeky, but totally rad all the same.

Recyled kids toys

We’re almost sure that if we gather a collection of our own discarded bricks, we’d have our very own Cherryflava version of this one. The table consists of 22,742 pieces clicked together with traditional lego construction techniques.

New from old

More here

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In a blink of the eye, a lot can happen. A lot of astonishing things happen in a split of a second, but they are moving too quickly for us to see. High speed photography is the art of photographing a rapidly occurring event. Depending on the event to be photographed, methods range from use of ultra-short time flash exposures to producing lots of exposures in a split-second. Seemingly frozen in time, a lot of photographers have their own special method doing high speed photography. The usual photographic flash component offers a flash that lasts around a thousandth of a second (a millisecond). But photographic flash component used in high speed photography is so much quicker than this, and it creates a flash of light around a microsecond (a millionth of a second). This let you to freeze time through pictures that are happening tremendously fast.

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Huashang Morning Post, March 12, 2009

Shenyang’s Huashang Morning Post reports the death of 11 Siberian tigers: “The cause for death are mostly heart failure, kidney failure, haemorrhagic enteritis, experts say that main cause of death was malnutrition.”

The wildlife park has since stopped operating, the newspaper reports.

The front page lists the deaths and cause of deaths:

11 Siberian tigers

Date of death and cause

November 11, 2009, 1 dead, lung abscess

November 26, 2009, 1 dead, heart failure

December 24, 2009, 1 dead, kidney failure

December 28, 2009, 1 dead, kidney failure

January 5, 2010, 1 dead, haemorrhagic enteritis

January 23, 2010, 1 dead, haemorrhagic enteritis

January 30, 2010, 1 dead, heart failure

January 31, 2010, 1 dead, nephritis and kidney failure

February 8, 2010, 1 dead, myocarditis

February 14, 2010, 1 dead, extreme malnutrition

February 27, 2010, 1 dead, septicaemia

(Note: On November 13, 2009, the two tigers who were killed during their attacks on people were not included)

Nowadays there are still around 30 tigers in the wildlife park, we are worried that…

A combination of reporters for the newspaper － Li Yi (李毅), Li Meng (李萌), Jing Miao (经淼), Guo Lei (郭蕾), Duan Fangyu (段芳宇) and Yao Qidong (姚琦东) － reported inside the wildlife park and interviewed the deputy Party secretary of the Bingchuan Wildlife Park, Wu Xi (武席), about whether the tigers starved to death:

Did the 11 tigers starve to death?

In terms of this issue, the deputy Party Secretary of Bingchuan Wildlife Park emphasized that the tigers didn’t starve to death.

But the reality is, at present the 30 or so tigers left have not eaten, not even chicken, for two days…

Eye-witness account from the park: seven or eight monkeys stare at this reporter.

Yesterday afternoon, this reporter went back to Shenyang Bingchuan Wildlife Park.

This reporter enters the empty park from the side door. After walking around for 10 minutes this reporter didn’t spot any park employees, the path is covered with a thick layer of ice, there’s also some accumulated snow on the side of the road. The only house inside the compound is out of use.

Inside the park, this reporter saw camels and deers roaming on barren floors, their bodies obviously on the skinny side.

Around the area where monkeys are kept, this reporter saw that only one monkey was out in the open. Suddenly, six or seven monkeys came over － running towards where this reporter was standing. After this, these monkeys stared vacantly at this reporter…

When the reporter wanted to keep on investigating, a couple of men got down from a small truck and said to this reporter, “We’re closed, you should leave!”

This reporter saw that in the back of the small truck there were eight red plastic bags, with a couple of chickens in each bag. Whether these chickens are for feeding tigers, the men didn’t say. All they did was point to the official building inside the park, “Go and ask the leader!”

The cause of death: “If you ask me again I will put down the phone.”

Yesterday afternoon, the reporter contacted the deputy Party Secretary Wu Xi.

Reporter: Is it enough for the tigers left in the park to only eat chicken carcasses?
Wu Xi: They are able to sustain their living.

Reporter: Some outside parties think that these tigers were starved to death.
Wu Xi: The tigers were not starved to death. It was caused by a combination of factors, such as malnutrition, illness, and the cold weather.

Reporter: But if they don’t eat then their physical health will decline, and nutrition values will also deteriorate….
Wu Xi: (Interrupts the reporter) Didn’t I just say, the cause of the tigers’ death are due to combined factor, if you keep asking me I’m going to hang up!

Almost 30 tigers have been hungry for two days, there isn’t even chicken to eat

Reporter: How many days has it is been since the tigers ate?
Wu Xi: Two days, yesterday and today (10th and 11th). The employees are on strike, so no-one has been feeding them.

Reporter: Can’t other people feed them?
Wu Xi: Only professional keepers can feed tigers. The park owes people their wages, so they’ve stopped working. In the past the Breeding Department still came to work, but now even they aren’t working.

Reporter: So the tigers are just going hungry?
Wu Xi: A way of solving it will have to be thought of tomorrow, let’s see what we can do to feed them.

Reporter: What is the chicken on the back of the truck for?
Wu Xi: For feeding tigers.

Reporter: Is that left over chicken, or chicken that hasn’t been fed to the tigers yet?
Wu Xi: The road is slippery, it’s hard for the vehicle to get near the tiger enclosure… we’ll think of a way to feed them tomorrow.

Reporter: Didn’t you say that only professional keepers could feed them?
Wu Xi: But we can’t watch as the tigers go hungry, will have to think of something tomorrow…

The cause of the tigers’ death: “Lack of tap water in the tigers’ enclosure?”

Reporter: What really were the “combined causes” for the tigers’ death?
Wu Xi: We submitted report forms to the Wildlife Preservation Center, some of the tigers were ill, but the enclosure didn’t have any tap water. Immune systems were down in the cold weather, so some of the tigers didn’t make it through.

Reporter: What does “there was no tap water in the tigers’ enclosure” mean?
Wu Xi: In the past the tigers were allowed to roam so there was a lot of space for their movement. But after that incident last November, they have now entered tiger enclosures, and their movements are definitely not as free as before.

Reporter: Is this one of the reasons the tigers died?
Wu Xi: For specific reasons you should ask the Preservation Center, they know everything.

Bingchuan Wildlife Park: “We didn’t do anything wrong”

Reporter: This time 11 tigers died in the space of three months. When only a few had died, why didn’t you take measures?
Wu Xi: When they were ill they were treated straight away. We gave them injections － you can ask the Preservation Center, there are records for their treatment.

Reporter: But so many have died.
Wu Xi: It’s not as if they died suddenly. We treated them, there was a process of treatment.

Reporter: Some people say that the park did something wrong, because 11 tigers died in three months.
Wu Xi: The ordinary folk can say whatever they like, why do you care what they say?

Reporter: Do you think the park was wrong?
Wu Xi: We didn’t do anything wrong, if we can’t treat (a sick tiger) then what can we do?

Reporter: Apart from waiting, what else can the park do?
Wu Xi: The park has already reported to the parent company and to the relevant departments in the government. We can only report to the above, and communicate with the employees, but the employees won’t listen, what can we do? Just tough it out.

Reporter: The problem now is that no-one is feeding the animals…
Wu Xi: Have to think of anther plan.

After the tigers died, experts from Shenyang Agricultural University will investigate the illness to verify the cause of death; at the same time, the animal hospital staff at the park will dissect the bodies, separating the flesh, bones and skin.

The bones, skin and other valuable things will be frozen.

If the cause of death wasn’t because of infectious diseases, the flesh will be used to feed other animals. If the tigers died from infectious diseases, the flesh will be treated by deep burials etc.

Tags: death, Huashang Morning Post, Shenyang Bingchuan Wildlife Park, Siberian tigers

This article is from Danwei.org.

Mainland accessible mirror on Danwei.TV

Jobs in China: danweijobs.com

View full post on Danwei – Media, Advertising, and Urban Life in China

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It was an unlucky day for David Kiely, an employee of Macquarie Bank, who got caught browsing nude photos of Miranda Kerr GQ Magazine shoots while his colleague Martin Lakos was live on the air.

And, here is the Miranda Kerr’s GQ shoot (censored ) in the screenshot above:

Here is the captured video:

It looks like David Kiely was reading some emails (1:00) and the photos are email attachments. His another colleague was noticed first (1:25) and he turned his head back (1:33) at the end of the live TV.

Moral of the story: Always watch your back when you are naughty.

[via MethodShop]
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Sequence photography is a technique of shooting a series of images in where the subject is captured in successive motion. Sequence photography is a wonderful way of conveying motion in a static image. A merged photo sequence can radically show a different perspective much more than what can be captured in a single image.

When you’re creating a sequence photo make sure you get all the action you need. This can be done by choosing shooting a moving. Make sure you have a camera that able to do high shutter speeds. A DSRL that can shoot 3-5fps can get you great results. Then set the camera up on a sturdy tripod so displacement between frames. Then determine the exposure and multiply by the quantity of frames you are going to shoot. Another way would be to quickly shoot a series of separate frames and merged them all together later with the help of photoshop. Below are some truly amazing examples of sequence photography. We hope you enjoy them.

More on photography:

• Tilt-Shift Photography
• Toy Photography
• Captivating Fire Photography
• Urban Decay Photography
• Macro Photography I, II
• Night Photography

Full list after jump.

More on Sequence Photography

• Sequence Photography – Flickr
• How to Create a Radical Photo Sequence – Abduzeedo
• How to Create a Sequence Photo in Photoshop – eHow

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For the first time in my life, the Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day fell on the same day, February 14, 2010.

The question of “Do you celebrate with family or girlfriend on the day?” never popped in my mind. Family always has the highest priority then only followed by girlfriend.

Not that I don’t love my girlfriend enough but.. well, she understands it and we will celebrate later. You see, that’s why I love her so much!

“If you are in love, everyday is a valentine’s day.”

(only applies when your other partner agrees too)

After all, why can’t celebrate both Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day at the same day? I don’t see any conflicts between two.

For me, the Valentine’s Day is the “make money day” for businessman. They came out all kinds of so-called special valentine’s promotions to steal money from your pocket.

For my family and I, the biggest day of Chinese New Year is the reunion dinner on CNY’s eve. Every family member must sit together and have the steamboat dinner.

The Chinese New Year day is the vegetarian day. Mom will cook one vegetarian dish and one dessert, and that’s our meal for the whole day. We spent the 1st day of CNY with family and we usually don’t go out on the day.

A peaceful day…

I will have old friends gatherings during CNY too~

How about you?

How did you celebrate Chinese New Year and Valentine’s day? What’s the valentine’s day gift you received/gave? Share with us!

Wish you all Happy Chinese New Year & Valentine’s Day! Be happy and healthy always!

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Many of us feel ripped off in our day to day spending, so much so that bringing up even a single rip-off story in a group of people is likely to trigger a flood of them from everyone else. Whether it’s at the movies, in restaurants or on vacation, we seldom believe we are getting as much for our money as we ought to. Of course, some rip-off stories are more debatable than others. Often times, what is called a ripoff is little more than someone’s subjective opinion of what they “really” deserve for their money, whatever that means. However, other purchases actually do appear, by all objective criteria, to be a raw deal just about all the time. Today, BillShrink analyzes some common ripoffs as mentioned recently by CNN Money, that most of our readers are likely to be well acquainted with.

Movie Theater Popcorn

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Movie theater popcorn is as much an American icon as baseball and apple pie. Like a moth to its flame, movie-goers instinctively load up on hot, buttery popcorn before sitting down to enjoy the show. It’s hard to imagine things being any other way. That being said, movie theater popcorn is without question one of the biggest, most egregious ripoffs around. ABC News reported in July 2008 that a small bucket of movie theater popcorn will run you “around $5.50 — more per ounce than filet mignon.” University of California-Irvine professor Richard McKenzie, who wrote a book on this very subject, conjectures that popcorn costs less than ten cents an ounce to produce. That makes the markup somewhere between 900%-1,300%! The reason appears to be that movie theaters do not make much money on actual ticket sales. According to McKenzie, “the theater can be paying 70 or more percent of the ticket price to the studios.” That leaves concessions, like popcorn and candy, as the next logical place to raise prices and recoup some of the revenue being sacrificed at the ticket counter.

Text Messages

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Another ripoff most of us would hate to go without is text messaging. According to Srinivasan Keshav, a computer scientist who testified before the Senate on the matter during summer 2009, text messages cost about one third of a cent each for a carrier to deliver. But despite that cost, the typical pay-per-text plan whacks cell phone users to the tune of twenty cents and ten cents per each outgoing and incoming text, respectively. That equates to an eye-popping markup of 6,500%. Nor do unlimited texting plans completely eliminate the ripoff factor, since the carrier’s overhead is likely to be right around the $10 or so that is usually charged for such plans. Most of the time, the carrier comes out ahead regardless.

College Textbooks

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College textbooks have the unique feature of being a ripoff on at least two different dimensions. First is the price charged to students. CNN cites a study by the Government Accountability Office showing that “textbook prices nearly tripled from 1986 to 2004 — a jump that’s twice the rate of annual inflation over the last two decades.” In fact, the average estimated cost of books and supplies in a given college year is $900, and many students report paying far more than that. However, it’s not just the actual price of the textbooks. In many college courses, the textbooks are never or seldom even used! Savvy college students have found that they can often glean the material needed from the Internet, or simply by looking on with a friend on rare days when the text is being used by the professor. It’s bad enough to be gouged at the checkout counter, but to rarely even use the textbooks takes the ripoff factor to new heights!

Branded Painkillers

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Brand name, over-the-counter painkillers like Advil are sold at a 60% markup, according to Yahoo! Finance. Many will no doubt counter this fact by objecting that yes, the price is higher, but the pain relief is superior. But this is incorrect. As Yahoo explains, the law requires all generic drugs to be just as effective (and even use the exact same active ingredients) as the branded drugs they are modeled after. Yet still, a 50 tablet bottle of 200mg Advil somehow costs $8.49, while Duane Reade charges “just $5.29 for the exact same bottle of generic ibuprofen.” So unlike the age-old “store brand” debate where there is a qualitative difference between a generic and branded product, painkillers are the rare exception of being, literally, the very same product for a lower price.

“Free” Credit Reports

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Admit it – you’ve found yourself humming one of those catchy FreeCreditReport.com commercials at least once or twice. But while the commercials are memorable, the service being offered – allegedly “free” access to your credit report – is an unmitigated ripoff. For one thing, it’s questionable that there is a need for any business to offer such a service, as the government mandates that all consumers can check their credit score once a year for free anyway. Beyond that, most of these services unwittingly bilk people into signing up for paid monthly subscriptions that actually charge them for what was supposedly being offered free. Time Magazine reported in November 2009 that the government went so far as to issue public warnings that FreeCreditReport.com and their ilk were not free at all. When you charge money despite the word “free” being in your corporate name, it’s tough to argue that your service isn’t a ripoff to consumers.

Wine Service at Restaurants

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This ripoff rests upon a shrewd appraisal of human psychology by bar and restaurant owners. Most people, when dining with a date, will never order the least expensive bottle of wine on the menu for fear of looking cheap. Instead, they will opt for the second least expensive wine to cover their bases. According to Time Magazine, “restaurateurs know this behavior well, and so they often put the heftiest markup on that second-cheapest bottle.” In fact, the cheapest bottle on the restaurant’s menu might actually cost more if you bought the same thing at a package store. The best course of action is deciding upon a wine that you objectively enjoy drinking (regardless of where you are) and order that without regard for the psychological pricing tactics of restaurants and bars.

Hotel Mini-Bars

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Anyone who has ever paid $2.00 for a minuscule bag of Doritos is already nodding their head in agreement. It’s true: hotel mini-bars are one of the biggest ripoffs around. Here, again, human psychology is taken into account by the hotel operators doing the pricing. Years of experience have demonstrated that the typical hotel guest is tired and weary from a day or more of traveling. Once they arrive, the last thing they want to do is get back into the car and drive around a strange new area looking for a convenience store. In fact, they are so loathe to venture out on the road that paying 1,300% more than usual for candy and soda starts to look like a decent idea after all. Rather than paying such inflated prices, just anticipate that you will want snacks in advance and stop off somewhere before checking in.

All You Can Eat Buffets

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All you can eat buffets thrive on an all too appealing sales pitch: pay once, eat all you want. It might seem difficult at first to find fault with such a generous offer. However, buffet operators do not offer that deal because they’re generous – they offer it because they know their numbers and study their customers. While the typical buffet charges somewhere between $12-$15, they know that that the average customer is not likely to eat very much more than they would’ve purchased for $7 or $8 at McDonalds, despite the fact that they can if they choose to. Furthermore, it’s questionable whether the quality of the food being served is much better than that of a fast food restaurant. Therefore, what often ends up happening is that a buffet’s customers pay for the ability to eat twice as much as they actually eat, on average.

Premium Gasoline

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This one is sure to draw the ire of at least a few people that swears by “premium” gas (when their car doesn’t need it). For whatever reason, many people believe that filling up with premium grade gasoline is somehow “better” for their car, or even that it “cleans out the engine.” Others actually believe that it is essential to put premium gas in their car and that it will malfunction if you try to run it on anything less. For most drivers, nothing could be further from the truth. Just check your car’s owners manual. If you need to use premium gas for a legitimate, mechanical reason, it will be stated in the manual so many times that it will be impossible to miss. Luxury cars (like Cadillacs, for example) often require premium gas because their high performance engines require higher octane – that is, slower burning – fuel. But if your owners manual makes no mention of it, you are simply wasting money on each premium gallon you purchase.

Actively Managed Investments

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In his book I Will Teach You to Be Rich, personal finance blogger Ramit Sethi writes that “fund managers fail to beat the market 75% of the time.” Not only do they fail to beat the market, Sethi writes, “but they actually charge a fee to do this.” With such a lousy track record of performance, one might expect mutual fund managers to lower the fees they charge. Unfortunately, nothing of the sort is true. It is common for mutual fund managers to charge 1.5%-3% on however much money you invest into their funds. It might not sound like much, but a 2% expense ratio on a $10,000 portfolio means $200 out of your pocket at the end of the year. Index funds, on the other hands, have few or no fees and generally at least match (if not slightly beat) the overall market’s performance year in and year out.

In-Room Movies

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As if gouging you at the mini-bar wasn’t enough, hotels are also happy to help themselves to your money via in-room movie sales. While there’s certainly nothing wrong with offering such a service, the rates charged are hardly what one would call competitive – as much as $10-$15 for a single movie, according to CNN. A Redbox machine, by contrast, will rent you a DVD for as little as $1 a night. A NetFlix account isn’t much more expensive, and streaming movies on your laptop is another inexpensive alternative. In other words, paying for in-room movie service at a hotel is just about the most expensive way to watch a movie imaginable. As with snacks and soda, it’s smarter to anticipate that you will want to watch one before checking in and make less expensive arrangements.

Health Club Memberships

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While not every gym or health club membership is a raw deal, many of them are. In most cases, it’s not the price that’s unjustified but the terms of the contract itself. Bally’s Total Fitness, for instance, hides a clause in their contracts stating that you cannot cancel your membership – even if you lose your job and sincerely no longer wish to use the gym – unless you die or move to a town where there are no gyms. No exceptions are made. Consumer Affairs even reports that a man who provided “military orders sending me to Europe” was denied the ability to cancel his membership. A gym that insists upon charging someone money for a service they are not using and do not wish to use, even when they are given orders to leave the country for combat, is a ripoff in the purest sense of the word!

Printer Inks (Bonus Ripoff via BillShrink Readers)

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You’re absolutely right, Shrinkage readers. How could we forget about the abominations that is printer ink — the bane of all consumer existence? As pointed out succinctly by the Oatmeal, and frequently noted by other people on the interweb, printer inks makes us want to scream in silent rage (especially during the checkout aisle at Office-Super-Max-Staple-Depot). Unfortunately for us, printer inks follow the tried-and-true razor blade marketing tactic of offering something at an hugely marked down price (printers) in order to sell something disposable, but needed continually, for a much higher markup price (printer inks).

Alternatives? We suggest finding a printer you can trust that has all the features you’ll need for years to come, and find a good alternative/generic brand ink cartridge set for that particular printer. You should note however that many generic brands may be manufactured from refurbished ink cartridges (there’s a huge industry for this), and at times, some generics or refilled ink cartridges may not work well. Always do your homework before you buy!

Beyond the nine ripoffs mentioned by CNN, we’ve threw in three more ripoffs that we think fits the bill completely. What are some other ripoffs you can think of?

View full post on Shrinkage Is Good

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The death this week of J.D. Salinger ends one of literature’s most mysterious lives and intensifies one of its greatest mysteries: Was the author of “The Catcher in the Rye” keeping a stack of finished, unpublished manuscripts in a safe in his house in Cornish, N.H? Are they masterpieces, curiosities or random scribbles?

And if there are publishable works, will the author’s estate release them?

The Salinger camp isn’t talking.

No comment, says his literary representative, Phyllis Westberg, of Harold Ober Associates Inc.

No plans for any new Salinger books, reports his publisher, Little, Brown & Co.

Marcia B. Paul, an attorney for Salinger when the author sued last year to stop publication of a “Catcher” sequel, would not get on the phone Thursday.

His son, Matt Salinger, referred questions about the safe to Westberg.

Stories about a possible Salinger trove have been around for a long time. In 1999, New Hampshire neighbor Jerry Burt said the author had told him years earlier that he had written at least 15 unpublished books kept locked in a safe at his home. A year earlier, author and former Salinger girlfriend Joyce Maynard had written that Salinger used to write daily and had at least two novels stored away.

Salinger, who died Wednesday at age 91, began publishing short stories in the 1940s and became a sensation in the 1950s after the release of “Catcher,” a novel that helped drive the already wary author into near-total seclusion. His last book, “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour,” came out in 1963 and his last published work of any kind, the short story “Hapworth 16, 1924,” appeared in The New Yorker in 1965.

Jay McInerney, a young star in the 1980s thanks to the novel “Bright Lights, Big City,” is not a fan of Hapworth and skeptical about the contents of the safe.

“I think there’s probably a lot in there, but I’m not sure if it’s necessarily what we hope it is,” McInerney said Thursday. “`Hapworth’ was not a traditional or terribly satisfying work of fiction. It was an insane epistolary monologue, virtually shapeless and formless. I have a feeling that his later work is in that vein.”

Author-editor Gordon Lish, who in the 1970s wrote an anonymous story that convinced some readers it was a Salinger original, said he was “certain” that good work was locked up in Cornish. Novelist Curtis Sittenfeld, frequently compared to Salinger because of her novel “Prep,” was simply enjoying the adventure.

“I can’t wait to find out!” she said. “In our age of shameless self-promotion, it’s extraordinary, and kind of great, to think of someone really and truly writing for writing’s sake.”

Some of the great works of literature have been published after the author’s death, and even against the author’s will, including such Franz Kafka novels as “The Trial” and “The Castle,” which Kafka had requested be destroyed.

Because so little is known about what Salinger was doing, it’s so easy to guess. McInernay said he has an old girlfriend who met Salinger and was told that the author was mostly writing about health and nutrition. Lish said Salinger told him back in the 1960s that he was still writing about the Glass family, featured in much of Salinger’s work.

But the Salinger papers might exist only in our dreams, like the second volume of Nikolai Gogol’s “Dead Souls,” which the Russian author burned near the end of his life. The Salinger safe also could turn into a version of Henry James’ novella “The Aspern Papers,” in which the narrator’s pursuit of a late poet’s letters ends with his being told that they were destroyed.

Margaret Salinger, the author’s daughter, wrote in a memoir published in 2000 that J.D. Salinger had a precise filing system for his papers: A red mark meant the book could be released “as is,” should the author die. A blue mark meant that the manuscript had to be edited.

“There is a marvelous peace in not publishing,” J.D. Salinger told The New York Times in 1974. “Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy. I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.”

Read More at Yahoo News

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