Well this is the most claustrophobic thing I’ve ever seen: security camera footage of a man trapped in an elevator for 41 hours. What happened to the man afterward is also very sad:
The lawsuit he filed, for twenty-five million dollars, against the building’s management and the elevator-maintenance company, took four years. They settled for an amount that White is not allowed to disclose, but he will not contest that it was a low number, hardly six figures. He never learned why the elevator stopped; there was talk of a power dip, but nothing definite. Meanwhile, White no longer had his job, which he’d held for fifteen years, and lost all contact with his former colleagues. He lost his apartment, spent all his money, and searched, mostly in vain, for paying work. He is currently unemployed.
There’s lots of boring stuff in the article about the history of elevators, but skip though it to read the account of this man’s ordeal.
[Click here to see the video] (Note: I can’t get it to work in Firefox, but it plays fine in Safari)
[Click here to read the article]
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Header photograph by | spoon |
Story via boing boing
Japan is starting a manner squadron to shame people into being polite on the trains. From the article:
the spiraling decline of train-seat etiquette may be about to end with the arrival of an elite, fearless and impeccably polite “manners squadron” - to be unleashed on the Yokohama underground network in an attempt to avert a breakdown of the “Japanese way”.
The unit’s mission is simple: to patrol the length of the train and make sure that any seats - highly prized on Japan’s packed commuter lines - are vacated by the young and offered to those who need them.
the squadron will consist almost entirely of officers over the age of 60.
I quite like the idea of an army of old people giving hell to those young whippersnappers.
[Click here to read the article]
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Header photograph by kalandrakas
The bizarrely named Smell-O-Mints is an adorable periodic table for OS X. If you’re a chemist or a chemistry teacher, this one is worth a look.
[Click here to download Smell-O-Mints]
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Over at TED, Johnny Lee demonstrates how, with the right computer software and a projector, to change a Nintendo Wii Remote into a kick-ass, multi-touch interactive whiteboard. And, almost as a throw-away idea, he also shows a new kind of 3D display that I hope catches on soon (Steve Jobs, I’m looking at you)
[Click here to see Johnny Lee at TED]
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Header photograph by edans