Lisa Selin Davis has an interesting examination of Americans and their relationship to malls, told through the prism of Michael Townsend and Adriana Yoto.  The Providence couple squatted inside Providence Place back in 2003.  Intending to stay there for only a week, they ended up creating a makeshift apartment for themselves and lived in the mall for four years.  They insist they would have lived there indefinitely had they not been caught.  What’s interesting about the article, aside from their story, is how malls are evolving from simply gigantic collections of indoor stores to something more.  The city and the suburban are becoming interchangeable.  [Salon]

Actually it was Masayuki Ishikawa, a 20-year-old, dressed up like everyone’s favorite honey-eatin’ chubby bear.  I first heard this on NPR before I had coffee and thought it was a joke.  Nope.  His two friends were dressed up as a mouse and panther and then Ishikawa and his friends beat up the two victims and stole $160 from them. Apparantly they didn’t like being looked at.  The reason they were dressed up?  According to police, they donned the unusual garb because they had run out of clean clothes.  [Reuters]

Someday I’d like to start a column here that’s called “Real or The Onion” which would be nothing more than posting a stupid real news story or something from the Onion and have some fun in the process.

To wit:

Police are hunting a robber dressed in an Arab headdress who brandished a Samurai sword at a shopkeeper in Preston.

The man, who has been described as white, burst into the Mini Mart on Avenham Lane at 4.10pm on August 10 and demanded cash from the till.

The man, who wore a Keffiyah type Arab headdress concealing his identity, pulled a 12 inch Samurai from his tracksuit bottoms and pointed it at the shopkeeper’s face.

The shopkeeper, a 44-year-old man from Pakistan, placed hundreds of pounds of notes on the counter which the robber stole and walked out of the shop down Frenchwood Street.

One customer who had spotted the man stood outside witnessed the incident.

Det Insp Lee Halstead, investigating the incident, said: “He pulled out a 10 to 12 inch bladed sword, like a small Samurai sword.

“He asked the shopkeeper to empty the till, snatched the money and ran off.

“The man who owns the shop was really badly shaken. He had just recently bought it and was asking: ‘Does this always happen?’”

The man is described as white late 20s 6ft slim build with short scruffy brown hair.

He was wearing dark hooded top, and a white cotton scarf with triangular black patterns.

Obviously this one was real.

Soul legend Isaac Hayes was found dead today at his home in Memphis, TN. He was 65. His wife found him unconscious next to his treadmill, which was still running. Paramedics could not revive him and he was pronounced dead shortly after 2:00 p.m., according to the Shelby County Sheriff’s Department. There is no foul play, but cause of death details are not known.

He was the larger than life soul singer, perhaps best known as the composer for the blaxploitation flick Shaft, for which he won an Oscar and recently as the voice of Chef on South Park. His passing somehow seems more sad and devastating than yesterdays passing of comedian Bernie Mac.

From CNN:

Hayes was a longtime songwriter and arranger for Stax Records in Memphis, playing in the studio’s backup band and crafting tunes for artists such as Otis Redding and Sam and Dave in the 1960s.

He released his first solo album in 1967, and his 1969 follow-up, “Hot Buttered Soul,” became a platinum hit.

In 1971, the theme from “Shaft” topped the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks and won an Academy Award for best original theme song. The song and the movie score also won Grammy awards for best original score and movie theme.

Hayes won a third Grammy for pop instrumental performance with the title track to his 1972 “Black Moses” album.

From the late 1990s through 2006, Hayes provided the voice of “Chef” for Comedy Central’s raunchy animated series “South Park,” as well as numerous songs.

The role introduced him to a new generation of fans, but he left after the show lampooned his own religion, the Church of Scientology.

He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002. In a CNN interview at the time, Hayes credited his success to “adjusting and constantly evolving, expanding and trying to stay as young as I can.”

The new generation of popular musicians, he said, “could use a little more substance like we had in the day.”

“They’re standing on our shoulders. Some of them don’t realize [it] because they sample me so much,” he said.

His soundtrack for Shaft is perhaps one of the greatest things in life, a record that is constantly on at parties, while I’m cleaning, driving through town. There is no end to how much that record owns, just straight kills almost anything released currently. Isaac Hayes you will be missed.

Also, the track he did on South Park for “Chocolate Salty Balls” is one of the funniest thing that show has ever done. I think it was the same episode Cartman found out his mom was a German porn star because she was sleeping with everyone including Chef.

The obviousness of Chef singing about the recipe for his chocolate salty balls and how we should suck on them and put them in our mouths. Genius. They weren’t even trying to hide the subtext, which would have been one way to go, but going for the obvious sexual innuendo put it over the top. There is no denying this. There is no way you can say this song is not funny.

I thought this was a story in The Onion at first because it seemed so unplausible that wildlife experts just happened to stumble upon 125,000 western lowland gorillas just chillin’ in a swamp in the Congo. The gorillas were discovered by hunters, of all people, and experts had no idea there were there.

It’s like looking underneath a couch cushion and finding $50 instead of 30 cents. “It’s pretty astonishing,” Hugo Rainey, one of the researchers who conducted the survey for the U.S.-based Wildlife Conservation Society, told CNN Tuesday.

Astonishing indeed. Diane Fossey would weep tears of blood at this news. You know, if she were alive and all that. Details, details. The discovery is a boon. The last population survey of these gorillas was conducted in the mid-eighties and at that time there were only 100,000 or so gorillas. Since then, wildlife experts have assumed the population numbers have decreased to the ballpark of 50,000.

So this discovery essentially tripled their population. Though their estimates are based on the number of gorilla nests present at the site and not an actual hard count. Despite the discovery, the western lowland gorilla will remain on the critical endangered list.

“Separately, a report released today finds that 48 percent of the world’s primates — a group of humankind’s closest relatives that includes chimpanzees, orangutans, gibbons and lemurs — face extinction.

Shit, not cool.

Now this is how you turn bad PR into something hilarious. After being mocked by a John McCain ad, which obviously ruffled the sheets of the Hilton clan, Paris hits back with a funny ad of her own. It’s hard to imagine she knows what she’s even talking about but still. Showing you have a good sense of humor about being called a shallow celebrity makes her come out on top.

Also, I can’t help but think that if this were an Obama ad it would be great. John McCain is reeeeeeaaaally old.

Her energy policy is a little suspect, but still. Harumph.

We’ll see you at the debates bitches, which according to the WSJ left ABC out of the loop entirely (thank god after Charlie Gibson’s and George Stephanopoulos’s performance in the Dem debates sucked, no other way to put it) and favored veteran news journos over tv pundits. Not sure if there is a difference, per say, but we’ll see.

PBS anchors Jim Lehrer and Gwen Ifill will moderate one debate each, with Mr. Lehrer hosting the first presidential debate Sept. 26 at the University of Mississippi, and Ms. Ifill hosting the vice-presidential debate Oct. 2 at Washington University in St. Louis.

Former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw will moderate the second presidential debate, Oct. 7 at Belmont University in Tennessee, and CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer will moderate the final debate Oct. 15 at Hofstra University in New York.

I actually like there choice of moderators. Lehrer might be the last great television news journalist left and Gwen Ifil is his right-hand woman. We’ll see about Brokaw and Schieffer, but I think they’ll do just fine.

KBR recently announced a decision to ban employees from using cellphones in Iraq.  At the time of the announcement there was no reason given other than for “safety and security.” But now one potential reason has surfaced and it’s sick.  I don’t think the defense contracting company, which split for Halliburton in 2007 will cop to this being the reason, but there is ample evidence to suggest it’s directly related to employee Jamie Lee Jones and numerous rape allegations by female employees.

Jones was working in Iraq when she was gang-raped by her co-workers at KBR and held prisoner in a shipping container for several days.  She finally convinced one of her guards to loan her his cellphone so that she could call her father in Texas and get help.  KBR told her she would lose her job if she sought help in this matter.  Jones testified back in Dec. of 2007 about the affair.  Since then 11 different women have stepped forward to say they too had been raped by KBR co-workers.

I’m glad Jones had the courage to come forward, since that is difficult to do, but also it’s one of the only ways to put pressure on the company to prevent atrocities like this from happening in the future.  And though there is no direct evidence tying the cellphone ban to these incidents, one has to be curious about who’s security and safety KBR is trying to protect.  [Think Progress]

Well, we still think he’s pretty special around here. A recent study by Microsoft, of their messenger services, found that all people are separated by only 6.6 human connections. So, whether it’s Kevin Bacon, Rush Limbaugh, Manny Ramirez, or the homeless guy whom you pass with disdain you’re only 6.6 people away from them!

So yay for that

The study was conducted in 2006 when Microsoft controlled almost half the world’s instant messaging traffic. They combed through 30 billion records from among 180 million people.

“To me, it was pretty shocking. What we’re seeing suggests there may be a social connectivity constant for humanity,” said Eric Horvitz, a Microsoft researcher who conducted the study with colleague Jure Leskovec. “People have had this suspicion that we are really close. But we are showing on a very large scale that this idea goes beyond folklore.”

Thankfully no one’s tax dollars were wasted here. Science at work and what not.  Now someone just needs to pull Kevin Bacon from ledge, seeing as how his legacy is tainted. It’s not just him, it’s everyone everywhere. [The Washington Post]

I like to joke about being a Furbush, it is a humorous last name, but one I’m proud of.  A name is your identity in many ways.  It’s caused me some grief, but at least I’m not Herman Libshitz.  The retired radiologist was denied DSL internet service from Verizon because, get this, his last name contains a swear word in it.

For real.  When you grow up with an even slightly amusing last name it hardens you, toughens your skin.  Verizon learned the hard way.  And it’s not like Libshitz is even that bad of a last name.  It’s actually kind of cool.

Dr. Libshitz wasn’t allowed to upgrade his internet online, because the online form repeatedly denied him access because his last name contained the word shit.  So he called Verizon and asked to speak to a supervisor.

What was Verizon’s respone?  Spell your name wrong buddy.  Seriously?  They told him to spell his name differently.  He went through several different supervisors, who all promised to help him out, and then finally told him no dice, doesn’t comply with company rules.

I should say here, that my sister works for Verizon and if she didn’t just have her second daughter last week (big ups for Aurore Bethany Bashford!!) I would demand that she defends her employer in the comments.  But we’ll let is slide seeing as how he daughters are too cute for school and I can’t wait to get home at Christmas and spoil them rotten.

Back to Lipshitz.  “These people have no trouble putting me in their phone book. They send me mail with that name, they send me a bill routinely, and they cash my checks with Libshitz on it. They just offended me,” he told the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Thankfully, the Philly Inquirer intervened and Verizon relented and Dr. Lipshitz got his DSL.  I do sorta wish his last name was Lipshitz or Dipshitz, that would be aces.

Back in college a buddy and me were having one of those 3 a.m. drunken conversations while listening to music and watching really bad infomercials staring the OxiClean Guy. For whatever reason, the conversation turned to the moment when you’re driving down the highway and you fall into line with another car and for a good stretch of the highway you’re riding in perfect harmony for no apparent reason.

The two cars are swiftly moving in and out of traffic, blocking during lane changes, allowing smooth passes, that sort of stuff. In a moment of Eureka, my buddy and I thought, holy shit we should study Traffic Psychology!

And that in turn developed our fascination with amateur traffic dynamics: the reason why traffic slows to a crawl at car crashes on the opposite side of the road and why it crawls to a halt for bottlenecks, the science of traffic patterns, and driver psychology, etc.

Seriously, there is an entire subculture of people obsessed with this stuff. I’m not alone.  MORE »

It was only about a month ago when a research team at MIT announced they had discovered a method of light filtration to absorb more energy from the sun.  Essentially, they turned regular old windows into power generating pains of glass and existing solar cells into ones on steroids.  Awesome!  Now another research team has figured out how to efficiently store solar energy to use day and night.  They draw inspiration from plants and have essentially mimed the process of photosynthesis.  Professor Daniel Nocera has figured out how to maximize solar energy and believes every house will generate their own electricity.  No more wires running from a central generator.  Outstanding.