When most people conjure the Pacific Northwest, specific images spring to mind—and Shi Shi (pronounced “shai shai”) Beach has it all: sea stacks towering above the ocean, Sitka spruce forests, and soaring herons. It’s 2.5 miles along remote, driftwood-strewn sands from the beach’s entrance to the iconic Point of Arches, a chain of enormous arched, piled, and pointed rocks—but we promise it’s well worth the walk.
Insider Tip: The muddy, three-mile trail from the parking lot to the beach crosses gorgeously forested Makah Indian Reservation lands. Before heading out, pick up a Makah recreational permit ($10; valid for one year), some picnic-ready snacks, and galoshes at Washburn’s General Store, located in town.
Parents beware! A new video-chat service bills itself as a safe place for users of medical marijuana to meet online and smoke (legally). Brian Ries gives it a try (legally) and finds out what’s really going on.
"Where da weed attt," my partner asked, staring out at me on webcam from an anonymous bedroom somewhere in the world.
She looked young, 18, maybe, and was drinking from a can of Yoo-hoo. Weedless, I took a sip of wine, hoping she would assume I was “cool,” and began typing.
Amanda, it would turn out, was from Austin, Texas. This was her second night videochatting on Seshroulette.com—a new site for marijuana users to smoke together on camera, randomly.
If the authorities do decide to come knocking, the site doesn’t make it terribly easy for them to follow the smoke.
Amanda’s older brother had introduced her to Seshroulette the night before and they had spent hours getting high with strangers. She had met some “funky people,” some teenagers, and decided it was different than smoking with real-life friends but that “that's what makes it more fun.”
It works like Chatroulette—the original randomized video-chatting service that made waves on the Internet earlier this year—except here users are paired with strangers to have face-to-face smoke sessions.
The site was created three months ago by Dan "Chill," 20, a Web developer and onetime Loyola Marymount University student from Playa Del Rey, California, who legally uses medical marijuana to cure the pain of morning intestinal cramps. He doesn’t get high, he says, just "pleasantly painless.”
The similarities to Chatroulette aren’t unintended. As that site grew in popularity, Dan saw an opportunity to create a place where smokers could meet and smoke in a safe environment—one free of the voyeurs and masturbators that plagued Chatroulette in its early iterations.
According to site rules, all users must be 18 or older and users may smoke only legally issued medicinal marijuana. Also, there are no acts of indecency allowed on Seshroulette, where the rules warn that transgressors “will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
“I am yet to see a penis on my site,” Dan told me. “And if I or one of my users does, I encourage them to contact me via the tools on the website to make sure we can get rid of them immediately.”
He used a clone script to “strike while the iron was hot” and launched Seshroulette nearly overnight. It got 1,200 pageviews the first night and has racked up more than 100,000 visitors to date, “which is big for a site with such a small-scale demographic.”
When I first tried it out, there were just three potential partners for me to chat with. A few days later, there were seven. With a recently launched Facebook application and a frequently updated Tumblog that’s listed in Tumblr’s official directory, Dan’s busy.
One of his goals with the site is to prove that you can smoke marijuana and still be a productive, successful person. In fact, he wants to change the connotation of the word "stoner.”
But are the acts on Seshroulette legal?
Dan says he spoke with a prominent criminal-defense lawyer in California to find out, and was told “it was perfectly legal to smoke on camera if you're smoking the marijuana legally in the first place.”
This means it’s OK to smoke and stream from Playa Del Ray, where medicinal marijuana is permitted, but not from Austin, where users can be charged with a Class B misdemeanor, resulting in 180 days in prison and/or a $2,000 fine, for possessing two ounces or less.
Still, even if the authorities do decide to come knocking, the site doesn’t make it terribly easy for them to follow the smoke: The site only tracks users at the city level to see where they are coming from, leaving them otherwise anonymous.
Asked if she was worried about the legality of smoking weed on live video, Amanda, my chatting partner, didn’t see any problem.
"Nah, no one will find out about it and, like, make a big deal out of it,” she said. “I mean I don't think that would happen."
"They say it’s anonymously tracked," I offered.
"Yeah," Amanda said, "and everyone loves weed :)"
The most negative reaction Dan has faced so far has come from HighDEAS.com, another “stoner website,” where users submit ideas and thoughts they had while high. It gets over 170,000 unique visits a month, according to Quantcast, and has secured both a book deal and a reality-show pilot with Comedy Central that’s being executive produced by Michael Davies’ Embassy Row.
One recent poster on the site, an alleged employee of McDonald's, wrote, "I work at McDonalds and its so great when the high people roll through the drive thru because I know I'm making they're day so much better by providing them with mountains of burgers, mcnuggets, and fries. The dollar menu was made for stoners."
Another, pondering the existence of roads, asked, "What the fuck are we gonna do bout all these roads when we get flying cars?"
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When Dan first reached out to HighDEAS creator Nowfal Akash with a proposal to form a partnership, he received an email back with “a blatant NO.”
In it, Akash said that HighDEAS was working on its own video-chatting application and therefore wouldn’t need Seshroulette’s technology.
That same day, HighDEAS moderators began deleting user posts that linked to Seshroulette.
Seeing them disappear, Dan emailed back to “call him out on it.”
“He thought I was spamming,” Dan told me. “But I think that was an excuse.”
Akash told me whether it was Dan or anyone else posting the link-based ads, they qualified as spam under the site’s terms and conditions. Plus, he said, the two sites just weren’t comparable.
“We’re up here and they’re down there,” said Akash. “We’re more of an original idea, that’s just a Chatroulette clone.”
When Dan later created a site that copies HighDEAS’ format to provoke them for deleting the posts, Akash wasn’t amused.
He sent Dan an email threatening legal action if he didn’t back off, and so Dan did.
At the end of the day, Akash says, he feels just fine about Seshroulette, with one condition.
"Just don't troll around my site, it's that simple," he said.
Back on Seshroulette, it’s a little after 4:20 p.m. on a Thursday and I’m surfing from cam to cam. In total, there are 12 users logged on. Each time I refresh, there’s another fresh-faced kid, looking on in anticipation as my camera activates.
There are the two teenage-looking boys playing Xbox, dancing in place, passing around a decent-size joint. I click “Next Sesh.” There’s the twentysomething girl in a cowboy hat, sitting at her desk straightening the camera, smiling. “Next Sesh.” There’s the kid staring out from my screen, his chin resting on his fist, as a tie-dye poster hangs on a closet door in the background. “Next Sesh.”
There’s no way to tell whether these people are actual licensed medical-marijuana users in search of a support network. Probably they’re exactly what they look like: young people, just sitting at home and looking for some funky people to smoke with.
Brian Ries is a Philly-born senior editor at FREEwilliamsburg.com and tech and social media editor at The Daily Beast. He lives in Brooklyn.
Some have missiles; some have swimming pools; some have 90-person staffs—all of these boats are enormous vessels of power, expense, and luxury.
The newest yacht in Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich's fleet is the largest private yacht now in existence. It boasts a missile-detection system, a luxury spa, two helipads, a swimming pool, and a miniature submarine. It reportedly cost more than $400 million. To keep out the prying eyes of the paparazzi, the yacht has an electronic "shield" that can detect light sensors in digital cameras and make them unable to take photos.
Police believe children are targeted because of a belief by witch doctors that the blood and body parts of albinos can bring good luck and fortune when used in potionsPhoto: AFP/GETTY
The child had been washing clothes and bathing at a river with friends and was returning home when she was grabbed by a man wearing a balaclava.
As her friends looked on, the man shot her in the back before dragging her away. Her headless body was found upriver a short time later.
The murder is the latest in a series of albino killings in Sub-Saharan Africa, where sufferers of the rare skin pigmentation condition are concentrated.
Earlier this year, another 11-year-old albino child was killed close to the same spot in Swaziland and her hand was removed.
Police believe both children may have been targeted because of a belief by witch doctors that the blood and body parts of albinos - who lack pigment in their eyes, hair and skin - can bring good luck and fortune when used in potions.
Their value for black magic practitioners sees them often fall prey to human traffickers, one of whom was jailed for 17 years in Tanzania this week for abducting and attempting to sell a live albino man.
The girl murdered in Swaziland was named locally as Banele Nxumalo. A man identified as her father, Luke Nxumalo, told The Times of Swaziland that his late uncle had also been an albino.
“What happened to my child is very painful. I wonder why albinos are targeted because they are just humans like us and a gift from God,” he said.
Andrew Bettles for The New York Times (Shoes provided by Immigration and Customs Enforcement)
By NICHOLAS SCHMIDLE
In southern China, making fake shoes has become a very big business. Chinese authorities are slow to enforce the law, and it's becoming harder and harder to tell which shoes are genuine. Click here for http://www.nytimes.com/
When Lady Gaga premiered her "Bad Romance" video last year, everyone overlooked her sexy moves and barely-there outfits and, instead, was spell-bound by her big eyes.
Specifically, the wacky contacts that make your pupils a size only found in anime videos or "Bambi."
Since they're illegal to sell in the U.S., fashion-forward teens have been venturing to online stores in Asia to seek them out.
Though they're only $20 a pop, opticians are afraid they may cause infections, damaged vision -- even blindness. However, Korean contact-lens company CircleLens2U told BBC's Newbeat, "They are just like any normal, soft-color contact lenses you could found [sic] on the market."
While we'd all love to have peepers like "America's Next Top Model" contestant Rachel (who was born with the look), we might be better off letting Lady Gaga keep this trend to herself, rather than risk it all just to look more innocent.
Check out how Lady Gaga rocks the doe eyes after the jump.
A lot of folks are like “I would love to shoot a lot of Nerf darts at my friends and fellow cubicle dwellers, but my arm is too weak to keep pumping the Nerf gun. What can I do?” Dude. Get a Nerf Stampede ECS-50. This fully automatic gun shoots 18 darts in about a minute and includes 3 full clips and one smaller 5 dart clip. It also has a bipod and a blast shield.
Seriously. This is a monster. I’ve never seen a Nerf gun like this one. It makes you feel like freaking Rambo with a gut.
Click through for video.
The first fully automatic NERF Clip System blaster to date, the N-STRIKE STAMPEDE ECS blaster features a new pop-out bipod, which doubles as a handle, and a removable shield allowing players to transition to Attack Mode. The NERF N-STRIKE STAMPEDE ECS blaster also comes complete with one six dart Clip and three extended Clips which hold 18 darts each, offering the highest Clip capacity from NERF yet. The NERF N-STRIKE ECS blaster is one of the most awesome and exciting N-STRIKE developments released in over 40 years of NERF brand history. Includes 60 Clip System darts. Requires six D batteries; not included.
The gun will cost $55 once it’s available later this year. I’m not quite sure how appropriate something like this is for the kiddies – it’s a lot of fun but it is so totally badass that it belongs in Dad’s toy box rather than junior’s.
4 clips of Robert Rodriguez’s new Mexploitation flickMachetehave surfaced online, and while the last glimpse we had of Danny Trejo’s blade-wielding anti-hero made excellent use of blood ‘n guts, these clips are little less gory and show off the impressive supporting cast, including Michelle Rodriguez, Jessica Alba and Robert DeNiro doing his best George W. Bush impression.
Look, up in the sky — it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s the Heliotrope! The brainchild of Architect Ralph Disch, this rotating solar home was the seed for the extraordinary Sonnenschiff Solar Development and the modern solar movement in Germany. The home takes full advantage of the sun by rotating with it, allowing daylight to course though its triple-pane windows and energize its large roof-mounted solar array and solar thermal pipes. The result is one of the first zero-energy modern homes in the world — one that actually ends up generating five times the energy it consumes.
Twenty-five years ago, when Ralph Disch’s hometown of Freiburg, Germany considered building a nuclear power plant built nearby, he fought vigorously to keep it from happening. As he applied his passion to finding an alternative, he looked to the sun. The resulting Helitrope home is a vigorous concept that makes incredible use of solar energy thanks to its kinetic design. Mounted on a pole, the home is timed to rotate 180 degrees through the day, following the sun’s track. The 6.6 kWH solar panels on top produce more than enough energy to make the home net energy positive. A unique hand railing system on the roof doubles as solar thermal tubing that heats the home’s water and radiators.
The home also re-uses greywater and rainwater for domestic use and features a composting toilet system. While the practicality of the home’s design may not have caught on, the principles behind it speak to a genuine revolution in sustainable design that many architects are only now starting to realize.
On a desktop computer, StumbleUpon makes sense. You’re on the prowl for cool stuff, click a button and find it. But there is a ton of competition these days among services that let you do this — and increasingly people are relying on Twitter and Facebook for this. But mobile is a different beast. A tailored, contained experience for the small screen is welcomed. That’s exactly what StumbleUpon has built with their iPhone and Android apps.
If you’ve ever used StumbleUpon, you’ll be familiar with how to use this app. At the most basic level, you simple sign in, hit the “Start Stumbling” button, and off you go. Content starts loading and depending on if you like it or don’t like it, you give it a thumbs up or thumbs down on the top toolbar. Or you can choose not to rate it at all and hit the “SU” button to go to the next site.
With the click of a bottom you can also share any page via email, Twitter, or Facebook. Or you can share it with another Stumbler. You can also see info about each page including how many views it has, who liked it, and read reviews about it.
But there’s also a way to use the app that’s perfect for the small screens of the iPhone and Android phones. Right below the Start Stumbling button is a “Best for mobile stumbling” area. Here you’ll find links to “Photos,” “News,” “Flickr,” and “YouTube” that will show you only that type of content. Obviously, each of these is great for browsing quickly on a mobile device.
Below that “Best for” area, there’s also a list of your topics (the areas you’ve indicated you’re interested in on StumbleUpon) so you can stumble that way as well.
You can find the app in the App Store here. Or you can search for it in the Android Market. It’s a free download.
Although you may not agree with every decision George Lucas has made over the years, nobody can deny the guy has a pretty good idea how to run a successful marketing campaign. Hey, if selling toys hadn't been been part of the picture, we might have even seen a different ending to Return of the Jedi!
Lots of companies have tried to cash in on Lucas' money machine since the first Star Wars came out in 1977 by paying homage to the film and its characters in commercials, including a certain evil Sith lord who you wouldn't think would make the best pitchman. But it turns out he is!
Check out 11 of our favorite commercials featuring Darth Vader, and let us know which ones you think are the most memorable.
Spike
Darth uses the force to help improve his poor golf skills. Makes sense to us!
Energizer
If Vader only had a set of Energizer batteries, the whole Star Wars saga might have ended differently.
Orange
Turns out those Jedi mind tricks don't always work.
Target
Even Lord Vader is excited by the presence of Heidi Klum.
WWF
Darth takes a stand against global warming. (We guess he only want to conquer temperate planets.)
DirecTV (Spanish)
Vader and friends (if you can call them that) celebrate Christmas.
Pepsi
Darth doesn't like theater audiences making noise during the movie any more than the rest of us.
NES
This vintage ad for Nintendo's first Star Wars game shows the only way any of us will ever be able to defeat Lord Vader.
M&Ms
Starring Red, Yellow ... and Darth Vader
TomTom
I don't know about you, but I'd never tell Darth Vader to try breathing more quietly.
Hagoromo tuna
Strange ... somehow we always felt Darth would choose red meat over fish.
Plastic causes a trifecta of problems. We’re running out of places to dump our non-biodegradable plastic waste and it’s clogging up our oceans. Burning plastic releases tons of CO2 into the atmosphere contributing to global warming. And to make the stuff, it soaks up 7% of our annual petroleum use, an in demand, diminishing resource.
Akinori Ito, the CEO of Blest, a Japanese company, has somewhat of a panacea. If plastic is just oil, why don’t we simply turn it back into what it was, he pondered. So the guy made a machine to do it. His solution is safe, eco-friendly and efficient.
“If we burn the plastic, we generate toxins and a large amount of CO2. If we convert it into oil, we save CO2 and at the same time increase people’s awareness about the value of plastic garbage,” Ito told Our World 2.0.
Blest produces the machines in various sizes suitable for more industrial purposes or simple home use. There are already 60 in use across Japan at farms, fisheries, and small factories with some beginning to ship overseas for the environmentally conscious and curious abroad.
One kilogram of plastic waste produces almost a liter of oil while using about 1 kilowatt of electricity.
“To make a machine that anyone can use is my dream,” Ito says. “The home is the oil field of the future.”
Photographer Dave Mead traveled to Anchorage, Alaska, to capture portraits of men who competed in the 2009 World Beard and Mustache Championships. His portfolio can be found at DaveMead.com.
Ochoa stunned the golf world in April when she announced her retirement from professional competition despite being ranked No. 1 on the LPGA Tour. She will continue to play and host the Lorena Ochoa Invitational, an LPGA event held annually in Guadalajara, Mexico.
Tennis players dominate the top 10, making up half the list, while golfers nab three spots. Here are the top ten highest paid athletes of the world.
No. 9: Paula Creamer (Golf)
Income: $5.2 million
Creamer missed the first half of 2010 with a thumb injury, but won her first major, the U.S. Open, in only her fourth tournament back from her layoff. Creamer’s $7.7 million in career prize money is 12th-best of all time.
Jankovic became the first woman to ever be ranked No. 1 without reaching a Grand Slam final in 2008. Last year she signed an apparel and shoe deal with China-based sportswear company Anta.
No. 7: Ana Ivanovic (Tennis)
Income: $7.2 million
Adidas announced a lifetime deal in February with the former No. 1-ranked player in the world. Ivanovic has struggled on the court since winning the 2008 French Open, but her website remains one of the most popular among all athletes.
The eight-time player of the year retired from the LPGA at the end of 2008, but still retains deals with the likes of Callaway, Cutter & Buck, Lexus and Rolex. Other business interests include golf course design, a golf academy and a winery.
The 2010 Olympic gold medalist has an impressive endorsement portfolio including Hyundai, Nike and Samsung Electronics. Her sponsor, Kookmin Bank, took out insurance on its $1 million bonus if Kim broke her world-record score at the Olympics. She smashed it.
Patrick’s part-time move to Nascar has been a bit bumpy, as her average finish was 30.5 in her first six starts. She remains one of racing’s biggest stars with 10 personal sponsorship deals.
Williams pitches for Oreo, Powerade, Tide and Wilson, among others. She co-authored the book, “Come to Win,” released in July, which looks at successful people who played sports as kids, including Richard Branson, Bill Clinton, Jack Welch and Meg Whitman.
Williams won two Grand Slams and a record $6.5 million in prize money in 2009. Last August Williams and sister Venus became minority owners in the NFL’s Miami Dolphins.
The top-paid woman in sports signed an eight-year contract extension with Nike this year that could be worth as much as $70 million, thanks to royalties from her own tennis line and a line of bags and shoes through Nike subsidiary Cole Haan.
Barton Gray, a 31-year-old Connecticut resident, topped off a June 22nd Phish show at Great Woods in Mansfield, Massachusetts like any other phan: selling nitrous oxide in the parking lot of a Red Roof Inn, throwing rocks at the cops who came to bust him, then running off into the woods. And as a perimeter of police closed in around him, Gray disappeared into the sewers, where he got lost for two days because most of the pipes are about 2 feet in diameter, and not wide enough for him to turn around.
It wasn't until June 25th that he began heaving a manhole cover up and down in the parking lot of a Stop & Shop, and a manager at the supermarket was able to help him out. Gray wandered off, but then came back, prompting the manager to call police and report an intoxicated man on the premises (presumably offering heady nugs for their "extra.") Patrolman Roy Bain, who responded to the call, tells the Sun Chronicle Gray was "extremely disheveled," speaking nonsense, was "dirty," and "looked like he'd been dragged through a briar patch." In other words, he looked pretty much the same as when he showed up for the Phish concert two days earlier.
Bain took Gray to a local hospital, but didn't connect him to the incident at the Red Roof Inn until he talked about it with the department's court prosecutor. Fortunately for Gray, the local police decided not to press charges, probably figuring that two days in the sewer and a lifetime spent following Phish was punishment enough. [Via Yemblog]
When Lady Gaga premiered her "Bad Romance" video last year, everyone overlooked her sexy moves and barely-there outfits and, instead, was spell-bound by her big eyes.
