Holiday Inn opens NYC hotel made entirely of key cards

by Katie Hammel

As part of an effort to build buzz around the relaunch of 1200 Holiday Inn hotels this month, the lodging chain has opened a very special hotel in New York. It's not your average hotel though. It's made entirely of hotel key cards.

The "Key Card Hotel" was built by Guinness World Record holder Byran Berg, who first broke the record for "World's Tallest House of Freestanding Playing Cards" in 1992 at the tender age of 17. Since then, he's broken the record 10 times. Now he's created a life-size (though small at 400 square feet) hotel made of key cards. Visitors can't actually stay in the "hotel" (and would you really want to sleep on a bed of plastic?), but they can come marvel at Berg's creation, which is made of 200,000 cards and weighs two tons, tour the lobby, guest room, and bathroom, and learn about the Holiday Inn's "Keys to Change" promotion and the many improvements that will be taking place at the brand's properties. By the end of 2010, over 3000 hotels in the chain will be updated, at a cost of $1 billion, making it the "largest relaunch in the history of the hospitality industry".

As part of the promotion, guests can enter to win free nights at one of the relaunched Holiday Inn or Holiday Inn Express locations around the world. One grand prize winner will also receive a 3-day, 2-night trip to any Holiday Inn hotel in the world, including round-trip air transportation. To enter, just sign up on the promotion's website.

The Key Card Hotel will be open at New York's South Street Seaport from now until September 21. During the promotion, Berg will also create a 9-foot tall replica of the Statue of Liberty using playing cards in the lobby. The online contest runs until October 22nd.

Silicone breast explodes upon landing at Los Angeles airport

by Scott Carmichael

Here is one you don't hear every day - exploding breast implants (partially) caused by flying.

Irena D. was on her way from Moscow to Los Angeles on an unnamed airline.

When she boarded the plane, she was not feeling too well, but things really got out of hand when she stepped off the plane and collapsed. Apparently, one of her size F silicone implants had ruptured.

Doctors were quick to point out that the plane may not have been the main reason for the damage, but that the pressure difference could have accelerated an existing defect in the silicone product.

She is out of danger now, but is stuck in bed for at least a week. Doctors explained that she won't be able to have the breast implant replaced, though I'm not enough of an expert to know why, nor was I aware that a simple defect in a silicone implant could cause it to rupture like this. You really do learn something new every day.

Think Irena D made waves on her flight? Click the images below to see what havoc these girls caused on their flights.

DEA Ignores Policy Changes and Raids SF Marijuana Dispensary

By Joe Eskenazi in

Bummer

Last week, Attorney General Eric Holder announced a policy shift away from the Drug Enforcement Agency raiding marijuana dispensaries in states that have approved medical marijuana.

So, it came as something of a shock that DEA agents today raided Emmalyn's California Cannabis Clinic at 1597 Howard Street. Calls to the dispensary did not go through; for whatever reason the phone did not ring.

Aaron Smith, the California Policy Director for the Marijuana Policy Project, was beside himself.

"It sounds like the DEA didn't get the memo, eh?" he said, noting that, immediately preceding President Barack Obama's inauguration, DEA agents raided Los Angeles Dispensaries. "But now, the message from Attorney General Holder couldn't be clearer. This is insane."

Smith was uncertain if some other sort of criminality prompted the raid, but still questioned the priority of raiding a licensed San Francisco dispensary.

"With all the violence at the Mexican border, I'm really surprised the DEA can find the time to raid permitted dispensaries in the city of San Francisco," he said. "I hope they have a good explanation for this, but I certainly doubt it."

Calls to the local division of the DEA were relayed to Special Agent Casey McEnry, who sent the following prepared statement from the ranking special agent, Anthony D. Williams:

"The documents relating to today's enforcement operation remain under court seal. Based on our investigation we believe there are not only violations of federal law, but of state law as well. As of now we are prohibited from releasing further details of the case. Items of evidentary value were seized and no arrests have been made. The investigation is currently ongoing."

McEnry said those documents could be unsealed "tomorrow or it could be months."

We have a feeling marijuana advocates won't be too pleased with this "explanation."

Apple quietly updates $999 white MacBook with unibody specs

by Thomas Ricker

Hmmm, what's this? Did Apple just update its lowly, $999 white plastic polycarbonate MacBook to more closely align with its new unibody MacBooks? Why yes, yes it has... sometime in the last 3 days according to Google's cache. So for the same $999 you now get that newer generation 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo processor with faster 1,066MHz frontside bus, 2GB of 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM memory standard (up from 1GB), and integrated NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics. Whitey is still stuck with DDR2 SDRAM though, not the speedier DDR3 found in the unibodies. Disk drive and other specs (including Firewire 400) appear to be the same. Getting ready for Snow Leopard's OpenCL GPU support are we Apple?

Update: Bluetooth received a bump from 2.0 to 2.1 as well. Anything else?

[Thanks, Uncontrol]

Read -- Old white MacBook
Read -- New white MacBook