Toilet Paper Wedding Dress

Who knew you could make a nice looking wedding dress out of toilet paper?  Cheap-Chick-Weddings.com has been holding contests were contestants make wedding dresses out of toilet paper for the last few years.  In the picture above you can see the winner for 2010.  They’ve got plenty more images from the same contest and previous years.  Amazing…

Video Taped on the Toilet!

I’ve really neglected this blog recently, and the tone has been way too serious.  I realize I must get back to the subject of toilets, reading on the toilet, and toilet talk…or at least things that you might be interested in while sitting on the toilet.  I’m going to start now, and hope to do better in the future.

So what’s with the sad girl above?  Well, apparently she was video taped while using the toilet.  That’s not nice.  But neither is drunk driving, asstard!  If you drive drunk, expect to get video taped while you’re on the toilet.  The end.

Interested in more toilet news?  I thought so.  The Vancouver Sun has a report about a toilet lid killer who is going to try to claim self defense.  That’s not so funny.  The Wall Street Journal blog has a story about a company that expects to sell toilet paper online.  And in South Africa, they apparently need to make the walls surrounding toilets bulletproof, otherwise you may get shot when you’re on the pooper!  In this article, a lady was rightfully pretty pissed that she was unable to use the public toilet.

So there it is, your toilet news for today.  Check back soon for much more toilet talk!

I’ve been into martial arts for a while, and found a great site a few months ago on self defense.  Yesterday I noticed the guy had published a new self defense ebook, and ordered it.  The book is awesome, so if anyone is interested in self defense or martial arts I’d highly recommend it.  It’s great from a mixed martial arts perspective, as it covers a lot of MMA training as a base, but then goes into specific techniques you can add for self defense.  Plus, the guy has a post on the palm stick where he mentions how awesome the Surefire LX2 is, which I blogged about the other day. 

For more of his great work check out his New Orleans gallery.

My last post dealt with the need for alternative sources of energy, to save money, decrease pollution, and help slow climate change.  A cautionary post should be added, as the race to develop and utilize alternative energy is not all good.  I took the above picture on a trip to Borneo in 2008, riding in an Iban long boat on a multi day trip deep into the jungle.  Here’s a picture of what much of Borneo is becoming due to the demand for alternative energy:

After spending time in the jungle, seeing the incredibly diverse flora and fauna and the lifestyles of the few tribes still able to live there, it was depressing to see how much of Malaysian and Indonesian Borneo was being deforested to make room for palm oil plantations.  These plantations are wiping out jungle around the world at an unbelievable rate, to satisfy the demand for alternative energy.

The fact is, palm oil and ethanol are worse for the environment when you consider the cost in energy, water, land, and fertilizer to grow the crops necessary for production.  AND, they’re destroying enormous amounts of jungle, driving plants and animals into extinction and producing more CO2 as the jungle is cleared and burned.

While developing GOOD alternative sources of energy is necessary, it needs to be done in a smart manner.  An alternative to oil is no good if it does worse than oil.  While this should be obvious, it’s not being practiced now.   For further reading, here are two great articles from Foreign Policy:

Seven Myths About Alternative Energy

Is a Green World a Safer World?

In our quest to decrease pollution, save money, prevent deaths due to limited resources, and slow climate change, we need to think smart.  Renewable resources like wind and solar are great, but they’ll no doubt have their own problems.  Clearly, the best option for everyone is to reduce consumption.  What’s the point of moving away from oil only to destroy life even faster!?!?

A friend sent me a link to this Bill Moyer’s program with an interview with Rory Stewart, a professor from Harvard University who among other things has walked across Afghanistan during the war and written a book about it.  He explains why Obama and the West have it wrong in Afghanistan, and it’s one of the best interviews I’ve ever seen.  It’s excellent for its honesty, realism, and reason.  No doubt he’ll be proven correct.

Rack & Roll

We’ve gone a little too far into politics lately, and away from reading on the toilet.  It’s time to get back to toilet talk!  What better way to start than with the best toilet paper holder in existence?  The people over at Rack and Roll have created the perfect, stylish solution for reading on the toilet.  They call it “the neat solution to a dirty habit“.  Instead of having a bunch of books and magazines sprawled out on top of your toilet, or getting soiled on the floor, you put them on a stainless steal rack next to the roll!  Awesome!  Here’s a close up of the rack:

The Rack

Enjoy!

If there’s one thing that definitely needs to be flushed down the toilet, it’s high frequency trading.  If you’ve got any money in stocks, you’re likely losing some due to companies like Goldman Sachs using your bailout money to artificially inflate the value of stocks by using super computers to make millisecond trades.  They’re watching your orders, and quickly sneaking in and inflating prices before you can buy.  See this NYTimes article for more, along with this PDF from 12/08.  If Sal L. Arnuk and Joseph Saluzzi knew about this at the end of 2008, why hasn’t the government put a stop to it!?!?!?!?

Fortunately Senator Charles Schumer has decided to do something about this, according to the Bloomberg article High-Frequency Trading Faces Challenge From Schumer.  Better late than never…  A couple of quotes:

“It’s an arms race driven by technology,” said Sang Lee, managing partner at financial-services consultant Aite Group LLC in Boston. “Someone like Chuck Schumer getting involved in the process will create a deeper conversation about where the whole market is headed”…

“This kind of unfair access seriously compromises the integrity of our markets and creates a two-tiered system, where a privileged group of insiders receives preferential treatment,” Schumer wrote. “If allowed to continue, these practices will undermine the confidence of ordinary investors, and drive them away from our capital markets.”

While high frequency trading is not yet illegal, IT SURE AS HELL IS UNETHICAL! Tatyana Shumsky is saying the same, but also questions the legality:

Forget for a moment how lucrative this can be: how is it legal? Front-running, the practice of getting ahead of other people’s orders, is illegal. Yet this is exactly what high frequency traders do – see your orders, get ahead of them, buy low and sell higher to you.

Here are a few more articles on the subject:

High Frequency Trading Programs Ripping Investors Off

High Frequency Trading Is A Scam

Controversial High-Frequency Trading Yields Billions in Profits

Flush it down!

Thorny Tomato

I came across this great food blog today with an interesting post on space food.  Not much to add here besides…happy moon walking anniversary.