Robot Monkeys

Fashion designer Alexander McQueen is dead. I was never someone who followed fashion, in fact for years I found haute couture baffling until I stopped seeing them as ostensibly clothes, but rather simply as art.

The reason I bring this up is not only because the guy apparently committed suicide, or that the man knew how to put on a show, but because I’ve been sitting on that picture of the Milan Fall 09 “The McQueensberry Rules” show for a year in my drafts folder, and I’ll never get it out if I don’t use it now.

Any of these would have been perfect for someone attending the Edwardian Ball.

If you’re like me, you probably never heard of the “Amen Break,” but you have heard it. It’s inescapable, as this documentary points out. While the origins and the spread of the “Amen Break” is interesting, what really sets this apart, is the turn it takes around the 13 minute mark. The narrator, Nate Harrison, examines the legal situation surrounding the “Amen Break,” since it has become quite a lucrative six seconds of audio.

The other thing struck me about this video was the simple visual of the turning record. Watching it evokes thoughts of The Replacements’ “Bastards of Young” video.

I’ve posted about my morbid fascination before, but today the Chron wrote about the demographics of a jumper. (Well actually, it’s just a press release from The Bridge Rail Foundation dressed up as news, but it’s fascinating none the less.)

The report, examines 15 years of jumpers, and answers some of my long standing questions about jumpers.

How many people travel from outside the Bay Area simply to jump?

83% are from the bay area, with just under half (49%) coming from Marin, Napa, San Francisco, and Sonoma counties. 6% come from outside of California, and only 3 (less than 1%) came from outside the US.

Follow Up Question: How does the 6% outside of the state compare with other popular suicide sites? Is the bridge truly a “suicide magnet?”

What does the typical jumper look like?

White (80%), Male (74%), Never Married (56%), 40 year old student.

In case you’re wondering: I’m against the rail and the nets. I think it will just move them behind closed doors and away from the tourists. Plus, there’s something romantic, and yet simultaneously incredibly selfish, about doing it in public.

When I relaunched this, I kind of made a promise with myself that I would try to keep this to things I liked. “No rants,” I said; but somehow, I just can’t keep myself from sharing this.

Seth Godin pointed out, that that the difference between a luxury good and a premium good, is that a luxury good was priced beyond its utility, while a premium good commands an above average price, because it provides above average utility. A luxury good is meant to be conspicuous consumption. We are supposed to long for the diamond encrusted iPhone, simply because it is expensive.

With that in mind, I present you, Gläce Luxury Ice. Yes. Ice. Not even exotic ice, like dry ice, or anything. No. Just regular old frozen water.

In addition to the unsurpassed quality and peace of mind, Gläce Luxury Ice allows differentiation for those consuming a premium drink from those with less discerning taste. Gläce Luxury Ice is a symbol of status for those accustomed to the very best. Simply put, Gläce Luxury Ice will help your drink taste better, and enhance your spirits the way they were intended.

It also will may your dick look bigger for the paltry sum of $40 for 5 balls. That’s $8 per drink – for ice – one of the most ephemeral materials in the world. Good thing, it’s shown with a “premium drink” that I can get from my local BevMo! for $30.

via Laughing Squid by way of eyebeam

BLDGBLOG writes about Nina Burleigh’s book about the French in Egypt during Napoleon, Mirage. In it, Burleigh mentions how each neighborhood in Cairo was walled off from each other. Only small gates, sometimes, just a single gate for a neighborhood interconnected the city. A city of cities if you will. Napoleon ordered that the entire city be mapped.

[I]t was deemed so daunting that at first the engineers hoped the order [to map Cairo] would be rescinded” – but, of course, “it was not.” Edme-François Jomard, the cartographer in charge of the project, wrote: “The city is almost entirely composed of very short streets and twisting alleys, with innumerable dead-ends. Each of these sections is closed by a gate, which the inhabitants open when they wish; as a result the interior of Cairo is very difficult to know.” Jomard, Burleigh writes, would spend his time “knocking on gates that hid whole neighborhoods.”

When I read this, I thought of two things. First, it sounds like 18th century Cairo was almost like Harry Potter’s Diagon Alley. Only if you knew where you were going, and knew the password, would the hidden areas be open to you. The other was the Forma Urbis Romae.

The Forma Urbis Romane was an detailed marble map of Rome circa 200 CE. It outlined every street, alley, doorway, and stairwell in the city. Not just public areas, but the internal plans to the buildings as well. Unfortunately, a majority of the map was destroyed and used for lime and other building materials. Today, only about 10% remains.

I’ve always had a soft sport of maps every since I was little. Whether the map was a real location, or a fictional one, a map always filled me with wonder. It was a window to an adventure. With a map, I’m prepared to go.

The US Department of Transportation is changing the highway sign font. Out with Highway Gothic, and in with Clearview.

Don’t miss the slideshow that points out the differences between the fonts.

via Swiss Miss:

Quotes on Design (also via Swiss Miss)

Previously

Coilhouse discuses Jesse Reklaw’s Applicant, a collection of found photographs and applications to the an “Ivy League” Biology PhD program from 1965 to 1975.

It’s so amazing just how sexist and horrible each of these comments are. Good Ol’ Boys Club indeed.

This has been kicking around the tubes for a while, but
Bre Pettis of Make, Thingiverse, and of NYC Resistor fame, along with Kio Stark have written what they call The Cult of Done Manifesto. It’s only 13 lines, but it boils down to the same sage advice that’s been around for years.

1. Start today.
2. Build one to throw away.
3. Nothing is ever finished.
4. Nothing succeeds like success

As some may know, I have a morbid fascination with people jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge. I’ve had this fascination ever since I read “Don’t Jump!” in Salon back in 2001. There was just something about how everyone in that article was just so matter of fact. I think what really got me was the just how wonky it would get. I fascinated by the fact that most deaths are caused by the ribs shattering and puncturing major arteries, rather than drowning, and how ironically suicide jumpers are more likely to survive than people who fall accidently. Most alluring of the topic was that the bridge has about 25 jumpers a year – or as I like to think of it: on average, one every two weeks. (The frequency spikes over the holidays no doubt.)

Everyone, perhaps, thinks about what goes through the mind of the jumper as he falls. We laugh about how if it’s too far down, you have to take a breath to continue screaming before you hit. I on the other hand became enamored with the moment that the jumper’s center of gravity moves over the water, and the inevitable plunge begins. That moment, when your heart skips a beat, and your stomach tenses, and you think “Here we go!” It’s not the moment of total commitment. No, it’s the moment just after that. Did they intend to go just then, or were they just trying to get up the nerve when they slipped? More disturbingly, do they change their mind on the way down?

Of the people that survive the fall (and a rare few do), many do. The New Yorker had an interview with one survivor, Kevin Hines, who jumped, changed his mind, hit feet first, and then survived in September 2000.

Kevin Hines was eighteen when he took a municipal bus to the bridge one day in September, 2000. After treating himself to a last meal of Starbursts and Skittles, he paced back and forth and sobbed on the bridge walkway for half an hour. No one asked him what was wrong. A beautiful German tourist approached, handed him her camera, and asked him to take her picture, which he did. “€œI was like, ‘€˜Fuck this, nobody cares,’€™€” he told me. “€œSo I jumped.”€ But after he crossed the chord, he recalls, “€œMy first thought was What the hell did I just do? I don’€™t want to die.”

In 2005, film maker Eric Steel, created his controversial movie, The Bridge, which captures the fatal plunge of most of the 19 jumpers in 2004. I haven’t seen it.

Then finally, we get to the granddaddy of all articles. The SF Chronicle’s six-part series Lethal Beauty. A tour de force of Golden Gate Bridge jumping. Interviews, maps of jump sites (Notice how they’re biased towards the east side, where you get the more scenic view, and more practically, the pedestrian walkway is located. Also notice how it’s skewed towards the SF side and away from Marin. Apparently people don’t want to bother to walk far to their final act.

The bridge has been called, “the world’s top suicide magnet”. I am not surprised. It’s iconic, and accessible. Unlike jumping from the Empire State Building, or Taipei 101. What I do wonder about is how many people travel from outside the Bay Area simply to jump. Does anyone fly from the East Coast, simply to kill themselves? Maybe.

I’ve been wanting to write about this fascination for a while. Perhaps even after I read that first article some seven years ago. What prompted me to write it now was, this Metafilter post about the Army’s PTSD program. Who’s talking to soldiers about suicide? Jumper Kevin Hines