Man charged for dumping silicone girlfriend

On August 21, the 60-year-old unemployed resident of Izu, central Japan wrapped his 1.7-meter tall, 50-kilogram silicone girlfriend in a sleeping bag, drove to a remote wooded area, and dumped her. Two weeks later, a couple while out walking their dog spotted the body and frantically called the cops. The doll body had been wrapped in a bag and bound around the neck, waist and ankles. A head of black hair was visible from one end of the bag. via Guardian

Sex dolls now available from Japan

FIONA RABY: Do you want to replace the existing normal? – an error message from Microsoft word

FIONA RABY (Royal College of Art, Dunne & Raby)

“Do you want to replace the existing normal? this is a piece of poetry when it pops up on the screen unexpectedly. And its very interesting as it is exactly what we have been specialising all our time through what we attempt to do in design. Design sits entirely in the normal, the banal, the popular, the trivial, the norm is the starting point for every project. The norm is always there to keep as a point of reference no matter how strange the project might seem.”

Fiona opened the conference with an insight in to the way that design tries to sit itself in the tangibility of the everyday. This was an interesting lead into describing the design for debate approach that deals with the implications of science and technologies in our everyday lives through using design as tool to enable provocation, stimulation and most importantly discussion and reaction. Fiona continued to give an overview of the various designers who have taken this approach in their work and how that has been evolving over the past ten years and how some of the outcomes from a variety of design practitioners has culminated into the recent exhibition Design and the Elastic Mind, curated by Paola Antonelli at the MOMA in New York.

With this introduction she lead on to give an summary of the collaborative workshop between the various designers and social scientists that has occurred via the New Sciences of Protection Designing Safe Living research programme at Lancaster University. Emphasizing the fact that this collaborative experiment has been about broadening the way designers ask questions and consider dilemma in society.

How much is your dead body worth?

Horizon – How much is your dead body worth

BBC2 Tuesday 18th March (today)

“A modern medical revolution has fuelled a market for body parts which has seen a cadaver sell for as much as $250,000. Horizon investigates the booming industry that supplies human bodies. It has spawned a grisly black market trade in stolen body parts which includes among its victims the veteran broadcaster Alistair Cooke. After his death in 2004 what happened to his body as it lay in a funeral home would reveal a story of modern day grave robbery and helped smash a body-snatching ring that had made millions of dollars by chopping up and selling-off over 1000 bodies. Dead bodies have become big business.

Looking Good For Jesus cosmetics

Looking Good for Jesus: Look your Sunday best! Guaranteed to help you be worthy and get noticed by the King of Kings!
A leading retailer in Singapore has withdrawn a cosmetics range with a Jesus theme after complaints from local Roman Catholics, local media report.

The Meetings

A coca cola and 3 “hail marys” please!

x 5 =

The power of prayer is all it takes to relax with a drink at a newly opened Croatian cafe. Customers at the Jedro coffee shop in Zagreb are asked to say a certain number of prayers in return for their drinks.The most expensive beverage is a Coca-Cola which costs five ‘Hail Marys’. A cappuccino costs four ‘Our Fathers’.The shop, which does not serve any alcohol, is run and financed by local parish authorities in Zagreb’s Jarun district. A spokesman said: “We started out with only five tables but we have so many people coming here now that we are already up to 20 tables and it is growing all the time.”

Workshop 4: Protocols, Procedures & Institutions

Read more about the Protocols, Procedures and Institutions workshop here>

The Tower Hamlets Unregulated Zone

A CONFIDENTIAL MEMO discussing the IF-POLITICS membership and duties of the Lancaster University Expert Assessors of Tower Hamlets Unregulated Zone from the UK Government Regulation Office, Division 3496723. Source: ANON