Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
They got you and dad in one hit. If you’re 7, male, and live in Japan, you are freaking out over Gokaiger this weekend, with your newly assembled DX Gokai-oh and his latest add ons. And your daddy has a tear in his eye. Wait…daddy is buying as many toys for himself as he is for you! Yes, Toei is getting all ages on board this year. The 35th anniversary brings dad’s favorite Sentai back, as the current team can change into any/all of the old guys…yes even the rainbow one and the lady with real hair sticking out of her helmet are back. Happy fathers day. Mommy, why is papa crying? And yes, I have received over 12 emails from fathers living in Tokyo who have all confessed to me that this show has brought them to tears. This one is mine. http://davidhorvath.tumblr.com/
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“In a deeply traditional part of Austria shielded for centuries from much of the rest of the world by towering mountains and steep valleys, the apparent secrecy surrounding the project has also revived suspicions of outsiders.” These days, imitation isn’t really the sincerest form of flattery so much as it is the sincerest form of commerce. And in the global economy, no one can be more sincere that the Chinese. It seems that Hallstatt, Austria is the latest thing a Chinese company has taken a shine to and wants to duplicate. Minmetals Land Ltd., a real estate development subsidiary of China Minmetals Corporation, has spent the last several months taking numerous photographs and recording the technical details of Hallstatt, an Austrian UNESCO World Heritage site nestled on the shores of an Alpine mountain lake. And armed with their exhaustive research materials, Minmetals has started building a copy of the Austrian town in China’s Guandong Province. It is being advertised as a high-end residential development. Many of Hallstatt’s residents are not happy about this. They’re angry that Minmetals basically snuck around for months pretending to be tourists while planning to basically steal the look and feel of the town. At the very least, however, many Hallstatt residents are circumspect. They’re quick to point out that there is no way the Chinese could ever copy Hallstatt’s surrounding landscape, centuries of history and culture, or the people themselves. (KOMO News Seattle – Chinese Copy of Austrian Town)
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“Pink Dot has grown significantly since 2009, when about 2,500 people attended; in 2010, attendance grew to 4,000 with more families participating.” By the time you read this, Pink Dot, Singapore’s third annual public gathering and celebration of sexual freedom and acceptance, will be over. According to the attendance numbers reported in Singapore’s Straits Times (see the link below), attendance at this LGBT gathering topped 10,000, more than double last year’s number. By American, Australian or European standards, this is not the biggest gay pride event around. But it is significant because it happened in Singapore, a delightful island-nation known for amazing food and true multi-culturalism, but not for its wide acceptance of gay culture and lifestyles. In fact, Singapore still has a law in its penal code, Section 377A, that makes consensual sex between men a crime. But if the growing popularity and support the Pink Dot event has gotten for three years running is any indication, Singapore is softening its conservative attitudes towards its gay sons and daughters. And it seems about time a nation this advanced in finance and technology updates its attitudes towards boys holding hands. (CNNGo – Singapore’s Pink Dot) The brief Straights Times report on the even is here: 10,000 at 2011 Pink Dot.
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“Two years ago, one of its most successful groups, Dong Bang Shin Ki, took its management company to court, on the grounds that their 13-year-contract was too long, too restrictive.” The music is really fun, very danceable, and the young boy or girl singers are really cut, have great moves, and some have amazing voices. Yup, Korean pop, or K-Pop, is fun to hear, fun to watch, and is really starting to find a fan base outside of South Korea and Japan. But behind those happy singing young faces apparently lurks a music management machine that does not have a track record for always treating the talent very well. Seems that many K-Pop acts are subjected to very restrictive contracts which are not very financially rewarding for the performers and instead focus on ensuring singing coaches, choreographers, wardrobe specialists and other management expenses are paid before band members ever see a check. Sure, this overall scenario sounds similar to stories we’ve all heard about exploitative music managers in Motown and Hollywood. But in Korea it seems to be aggravated by the youth of the performers and a general cultural distaste for aggressive and fair negotiations. K-Pop is sure fun and definitely growing in “pop”-ularity, so here’s hoping this young industry can get past these unpleasant internal growing pains. (JYJ3 Official Website – K-Pop Industry Woes)
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“Somehow this feels like a Vonnegut plotline: population boom equals food shortage. Solution? Synthesize food from human waste matter.” Actually, this story made us think of the classic 1973 Charlton Heston science fiction movie “Soylent Green”. In that grim cinematic scenario, the world was so crowded and resource-starved that human beings weren’t cremated or buried upon their death, they were turned into breakfast. And lunch. And dinner. No one is really sure if we are headed for a similar future; but just in case we are, a scientist in Japan has figured out a way to take our feces and turn it into….steak. Actually, this strange journey from the toilet to the dinner table began when the Tokyo Sewage Company asked Okayama Labs scientist Mitsuyuki Ikeda where there might be value in the many tons of excess sewage mud generated in the Tokyo metropolitan area every year. Ikeda found that the mud contains vast amounts of usable protein molecules which can be synthesized into a viable, edible meat product with the addition of a little food coloring and soy protein. At the moment, the “excre-meat” costs an average of 15 times more than real beef, largely due to research and development costs. But science has a way of making new discoveries affordable very quickly, so in the next several years you might be able to find this stuff in your grocer’s freezer. (Yahoo News – Feces Filet Mignon) Daily Tech also has a report on this with some additional information on the technology: Daily Tech Fake Steak
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