When a dating site desired to trim its rolls of those who had gotten the most complaints about being the most problematic… actually no. Those whose posted pictures showing they gained a little over the holidays.
BeautifulPeople.com made more than 5,000 users re-apply after they posted pictures of themselves looking chubbier than usual celebrating the festive season.
Existing members were asked to decide if they were still pretty enough to be part of the website.
Only a few hundred were allowed back in.
The site, which bans so-called “ugly people” and calls itself an “exclusively beautiful community”, said it was responding to complaints from its customers.
Founder Robert Hintze said: “As a business, we mourn the loss of any member, but the fact remains that our members demand the high standard of beauty be upheld.
“Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model and the very concept for which BeautifulPeople.com was founded.”
Managing director Greg Hodge said: “People can be big and beautiful but it doesn’t suit everyone. If you join as a size six, or with ripped abs and a slim physique, you have to maintain this look or expect to be re-rated.
“Remember this is the opinion of our members, who have the final and completely democratic vote on who is let in or cast out of their community.”
Most of the people who were kicked off the site were from the US, the UK and Canada.
Managers sent them emails encouraging them to reapply when they have slimmed down.
[via Sky News]
So what do you think. Will they gain 50,000 or 500,000 new members?
Tags: appearance, dating, Internet
Andy Warhol was famous for his pop art stylings of famous people of the time. One of his most iconic subjects was the sex symbol Marlyn Monroe. And paintballers decide to do homage to the below work.
Here is a great example an usual art technique using a different… medium.
I love out of the box thinking, and here is a person who took a complicated process and simplified it enough that I’d almost call it revolutionary.
Michelle Khine arrived at the University of California’s brand-new Merced campus in 2006 eager. She was experimenting with tiny liquid-filled channels in hopes of devising chip-based diagnostic tests, a discipline called microfluidics. The trouble was, the specialized equipment that she previously used to make microfluidic chips cost more than $100,000 . Money she didn’t have. “I’m a very impatient person,” says Khine, now an assistant professor at the University of California, Irvine. “I wanted to figure out how I could set things up really quickly.”
Racking her brain for a quick-and-dirty way to make microfluidic devices, Khine remembered her favorite childhood toy: Shrinky Dinks, large sheets of thin plastic that can be colored with paint or ink and then shrunk in a hot oven. “I thought if I could print out the [designs] at a certain resolution and then make them shrink, I could make channels the right size for microfluidics,” she says.
I have run across many full things and stories in my life. But this is one which I hope is real, just because it’d make it finnier. Plus, I could very well see it occurring. I wasn’t involved, I just happened to see this scraped and thought you may enjoy it.
There’s the guy Jeff I work with, real smart guy. Has a past, though. One of the things he told me about from his college was too strange not to share. He told me this story after I told him were my relatives lived.
He and his friends declared war on Sweden.
No, really. It started when one of his friends wanted to start a Scrabble group, and I forgot what the name was, but the initials were SAAB. So he tried to register saab.com, only to find it was taken! By a Swedish car manufacturer, even! Well, he got mad, and while slightly drunk, declared war on Sweden. He wrote this letter, formally declaring war on Sweden, and sent it to the Swedish Embassy, The King of Sweden, and SAAB headquarters in Sweden. The letter outlined their rage at the name SAAB being stolen, and said that they would get their Navy, which consisted of three college guys and a canoe, row to Sweden (which they anticipated would take a few months), and attack in one of Stockholm’s harbors after they had a bite to eat.
A few months later, they got a box from Sweden. It was from the SAAB headquarters, and it had a letter of its own. SAAB said that they were sorry the name had been taken, and hoped the package arrived before their Navy departed. The explained that SAAB didn’t just make cars, but engines for military aircraft, and hoped that their contribution of an air force to their Navy war on Sweden would be taken as a formal apology.
The package contained about 100 of those “ready-to-assemble” balsa wood kits of rubber-band driven airplanes. With the SAAB logo, of course.
That is really cool! I am glad to say the people at SAAB have a good sense of humor.
[via Punkadyne Labs]
So start the way back machine and remember that cult like popular camera that allowed yo you see your picture immediately. The format died as digital cameras and the ability to easily print pictures became wide spread.
Well after declaring bankruptcy and shutting down the film division. It looks like they’ll be producing Polaroid cameras and film again. In a lot of ways I’m not surprised… I constantly hear people note that they miss those days of instant gratification.
The Impossible Project inspires Polaroid to re-launch Instant Cameras
We are pleased to herewith announce a history making cooperation between Polaroid and The Impossible Project:
As we have created quite some buzz about Analog Instant Photography over the past 12 months, the Polaroid licensee – The Summit Global Group – now can’t resist any longer and announced at a press conference on October 13th in Hongkong that they will re-launch some of the most famous Polaroid Instant Cameras.
Therefore they are commissioning The Impossible Project to develop and produce a limited edition of Polaroid branded Instant Films in the middle of 2010.
The Impossible Project is proud and excited that its ambitions and all the relentless work that has already been invested are now becoming the foundation for Polaroid’s comeback as a producer of Instant Cameras.
Large-scale production and worldwide sale of The Impossible Project’s new integral film materials under its own brand will already start in the beginning of 2010 – with a brand new and astonishing black and white Instant Film and the first colour films to follow in the course of the year.
[via The Impossible Project]
I originally ran across this on Pedestrian.tv.
Tags: camera, Interesting, Photography, polaroid
In a case of I just want to get rid of you. Instead of forcing a grandparent into a home, a 10 year old girl thought she might as well make some money off her…. until eBay stopped her.
Internet auction site eBay stopped a 10-year-old girl’s attempt to auction off her “moaning” granny online.
Zoe Pemberton from southern England put her 61-year-old grandmother up for sale on the auction website with no reserve price, describing her as “rare and annoying and moaning a lot.”
But she also said pensioner Marian Goodall was “very cuddly,” loved word searches and enjoyed drinking tea.
More than 20 bids were received for Goodall, but she has since been withdrawn from the site, eBay said.
“While no doubt Mrs. Goodall would have fetched a princely sum, eBay does not allow the listing of any human being on the site,” an eBay spokeswoman said in an emailed statement.
“Mind you, we were impressed to see a total of 27 bids for the lady in question!”
[via Reuters]
I’d be curious on how many where actually real bids and how many where fake. Also it doesn’t explain why the 10 year had done it. Was the grandmother lonely and this was her idea to get her company? Was she mad at the grandmother and figured to get rid of her? Also the child was 10 years old, and could put together an auction? People pay big bucks for other people to do it, since they can’t figure it out themselves.
A funny situation and considering all the unusual things you find on eBay one of the more MORE unusual ones.
Tags: auction, eBay, England, Family, Grandma, Lonely, Slave
then all you need is 4 minutes… 
Major props to Scott Beale for pointing this video out. It is entertaining.
100 Greatest Hits of YouTube in 4 Minutes. Check out the YouTube description for the complete list of videos. The song is “M.A.D” by Hadouken.
Be geeky with me and listen to Carl Sagen explain space and the involved science. Here is an amazing Auto-Tune (Software that attmpts to fix the pitch and has been used by singers for years, now turned towards many other projects…).
[via nerdist]
Tags: auto-tune, carl sagen, Music, Space, Video
One reason I’ve noted I do have swords nearby at my house. A gun has bullets that can travel.
A Johns Hopkins University student armed with a samurai sword killed a man who broke into the garage of his off-campus residence early Tuesday, a Baltimore police spokesman said.
According to preliminary reports, a resident of the 300 block of E. University Parkway called police about a suspicious person, department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said. An off-duty officer responded about 1:20 a.m. to the area with university security, according to Guglielmi. They heard shouts and screams from a neighboring house and found the suspected burglar suffering from a nearly severed hand and lacerations to his upper body, he said.
The suspect was pronounced dead at the scene.
The student told police that he heard a commotion in the house and went downstairs armed with a samurai sword, Guglielmi said. He saw the side door to the garage had been pried open and found a man inside, who lunged at the student.
Detectives were still interviewing the student and his three roommates Tuesday morning, Guglielmi said. Burglars had already stolen two laptops and a Sony PlayStation from the student’s home Monday, according to Guglielmi.
Dennis O’Shea, a spokesman for Johns Hopkins, said all four residents of the house are undergraduate students at the university.
The suspected burglar, whose name was not released pending notification of next of kin, had prior convictions for breaking and entering and had just been released Saturday from a Baltimore County facility, Guglielmi said.
[via baltimoresun.com]
I can imagine that if they had been robbed only a week before the students would be jumpy. Even medical students are quite often on a short budget so it must of hurt bad. And then to hear noise…. I’d been prepared also.
And FYI most “Samurai Swords” are cheap knock offs with very superficial edges. I can’t imagine that the robber died too quickly…
