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Museum of Sex Opening in New York City

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The Times reports on the impending opening of the for-profit Museum of Sex on 5th Avenue and 27th Street.


The guy behind the museum, Daniel Gluck, has been described in press reports as a “former software executive,” but I’ve been unable to find out his tech connection. When he started this project, he was teamed with artist Alison Maddex and her partner, the academic Camille Paglia. At the end of 2000, however, Maddex and Paglia apparently split with Gluck and the project.


There is a tech connection with the Museum of Sex: software developer, philanthropist, and art maven Peter Norton had some money in the project, back when it was still a non-profit. I don’t know if Norton is still involved.

Ground Zero Demolition Ends

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Nice piece by Charlie LeDuff of the NYTimes about the dismantling of the last steel column at Ground Zero:



Let history show that many of these men and women were here on the afternoon of Sept. 11, having abandoned their jobs elsewhere in the metropolitan region. How they scribbled their names and phone numbers on their forearms those first few days in case they were swallowed up in a hole and killed.


Also, let it note these small memories. How the workers wept over the abandoned shoes lying in the streets left by people running for their lives. How people laughed that second evening as the ironworkers wore cashmere coats and scarves and fedoras from Brooks Brothers as they burned the steel to brace themselves against the cold.

So Why Isn’t This Guy Teaching at Oxford?

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WARWICK, England (CNN) — A mathematical formula calculated by a British university professor has found that time actually is money.


Economics professor Ian Walker, of central England’s Warwick University, says process can show people just how valuable their time is in relation to any task they have to perform, from a lie-in or cooking a meal to sleeping and working.


You want the equation? Click the link. But hurry.

Explaining Blogspace

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Pretty good piece in Microcontent News about the weblog ecology. (First point: who knew that there’s a trade mag — even an online one — about microcontent?) The piece could use a serious edit, and the top of it shows some startling naivite about the media feeding chain. But when the author turns his attention to weblogs, there’s lots of good information here.

Feel Any Safer Yet?

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This is from The Register, and contains a link to the core document from the ACLU:



Face recognition kit fails in Fla airport. How about fifty false positives a day?


Authorities here in New York just put in a face recognition system to monitor the line of tourists queuing up to get on the boat to the Statue of Liberty. This despite ample evidence — even before these Palm Beach findings — that face recognition is not ready for prime time.


To answer my own question: No, I don’t feel any safer. Thanks for asking.

Whichever, You Can Hardly Blame Them.

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This story originated on Gulf News Online, but I heard about it through BoingBoing and New World Disorder:



Fighting against what clerics call “penetrating Western culture” with a crackdown on icons of America, Iran’s hardline judiciary has launched a campaign to confiscate all U.S.-made Barbie dolls in Tehran.

Recently Moral Police have stepped up arrest and harassment of shopkeepers for selling Barbie dolls and whatever decorated with different shapes of Barbie and its image which are immensely used by school children.

Tehran Judicial Department has arrested many of Barbie traders and shopkeepers mainly in Tehran  and other places accusing them for spreading obscene Western cultures since last month.


I’m intrigued by something in the lede: Why “U.S.-made Barbie dolls”? I mean, I understand why they might want Barbie dolls out of the culture. And I understand why they might want U.S.-made goods gone, too. But why specifically “U.S.-made Barbie dolls”? Would Taiwan-manufactured Barbies be less of an anathema? Or are we just knocking up against less-than-fully conversational English?