The 14th of July

From McSweeney's Bastille Day Party how-to by Jim Stallard: 

The final event is obvious: Let them eat cake! If you're ambitious, you can serve it dressed as Marie you-know-who. Just make sure each "peasant" gets a fair portion or you may find a barricade in your driveway! 

Yeah, that's a guillotine cake. Happy Monday!

What the Heck

From Andrew Sullivan's blog comes this bit of news about a technology being developed by the military. According to Wired:

The project is known as MEDUSA – a contrived acronym for Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio. And it should not be confused with the Long Range Acoustic Device and similar gadgets which simply project sound. This one uses the so-called "microwave auditory effect": a beam of microwaves is turned into sound by the interaction with your head. Nobody else can hear it unless they are in the beam as well.

What You Looking At? NYT Style Edition

Lan: do you think this guy is Indian
or did they just spray tan a model and send him down the runway?

b/c he looks a little orangey to me

me: he does look orangey

I vote whitey

Lan: so odd
oh fashion

Rats with Wings

About a year ago, Washington Square saw a spate of pigeon kidnappings. Ladies and gentlemen, this episode of "Law & Order: Avian Victims Unit" is over! The pigeon poaching perps have been caught! Or have they? Apparently the pigeon-snatching underworld is pretty extensive; the Upper East Side avian traffickers may be different from those downtown. But, uh, birds of a feather flock together, so maybe the mystery of the Village villains will be resolved soon.