A classic way to keep your booze by your side at all times. Only $55, shipped. (Booze not included.)

DrinkoftheWeek.com
Amazon.com

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So why is check-in a turn-on? Do hotel chains put pheromones in their air-conditioning units? Is there something in the newness of the location, giving couples a risk-free opportunity to “take their act on the road”? Or is it as simple as the fact that hotels are places where someone else will replenish the linens and even deliver overpriced club sandwiches to your door, creating an atmosphere of freedom that encourages friskiness?

Maybe it’s the complete change of environment, free of all the old context that can bog down long-term-relationship fucking? Maybe it’s the smell of thousands of other people’s aerosolized fuck crusts? Maybe it’s the notoriously springy beds?

Frisky Business [Boston]

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Beer is not the drink of choice for most North Koreans, who prefer cheaper rice-based liquor that packs a big punch.

Regardless, North Korea is proud of its Taedonggang beer. Sadly, North Korea is kind of mess. They lacked the infrastructure, knowledge and perhaps the ability to keep everything as insanely clean and bacteria free to brew great tasting beer. What’d they do? Much like W.R. Hearst did when he wanted something — they bought a brewery in the UK, took it apart and moved it to North Korea.

North Korea’s quest to produce decent beer began in earnest in 2000 when it started talks with Britain’s Ushers brewery about acquiring its Trowbridge, Wiltshire plant that had ceased operations.

The North Koreans took apart the brewery that had been producing country ales for about 180 years, shipped it piece by piece to Pyongyang and reassembled it under the banner of its Taedonggang Beer Factory.

Tthe beer is becoming more available in Asia and maybe someday we’ll be able to try it here in the US. Sadly, the article doesn’t make it sound all that great.

North Korean beer: great taste, low proliferation risk [Reuters]

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Astronauts bound for orbit this week will dabble in science fiction, assembling a “monstrous” two-armed space station robot that will rise like Frankenstein from its transport bed.

It seems DEXTRE, as this monster robot is known, is guaranteed not to run amok or eat Tokyo — but its might eat up some jobs for astronauts. At least one Astronaut was a little defensive.

Even though it’s suited for space station maintenance, astronauts are faster, Linnehan said. As for Hubble, he said Dextre cannot compare to a human repairman because it lacks fine motor control, and cannot think and react to problems that might crop up.

Dextre can’t think and react yet — but wait until he gets hit with a massive dose of Gamma radiation and hulks out.

Astronauts will assemble robot in space[Yahoo News]

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Castro had attempted to overthrow Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista with an assault on a military barracks. The attack failed and Castro had spent two years behind bars. Viera says that while they chatted, Castro drew a map of the doomed attack and signed it for him with a flourish

Castro map of failed attack to be sold [Houston Chronicle]

What I found particularly interesting about this map is that the guy decided to sell it after hearing about the beau-coup bucks someone got for a lock of Che’s hair.

He says he is auctioning the map because of its historic value and because he needs the money. He had read about a similar auction Heritage held for a lock of hair snipped from Castro ally Ernesto “Che” Guevara before his burial in 1967. That lock of hair brought $100,000 in October.

I don’t know, but if I’m gonna buy a map it’ll be this one or this one. I only wish I could find a link to a picture of the Map to Curly’s Gold.

Those are maps that worked. Fidel’s failed!

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Popular Mechanics has a short, fact-filled piece on “Very Light Jets,” or VLCs, a new class of consumer jets that are not only small—two pilots, three to four passengers—but inexpensive, at least compared to current entry-level jets. (Prices are around one to three million.) They new class of jets, which some are betting will spur a new short-hop commuter revolution, have been made possible by the development of tiny new jet engines.

That success spurred a Williams effort to reduce the jet engine another notch, from Light to Very Light. In 1996, the company partnered with NASA on a $100 million project to develop an even smaller experimental jet engine, the FJX-2. With three exquisitely tiny compressors and a weight of just 85 pounds, the radical and complex little FJX-2 churned out an astounding 770 pounds of thrust in NASA’s test cell. The unprecedented 9:1 thrust-to-weight ratio was nearly double that of any commercial jet engine.

Very Light Jets [PopularMechanics.com]

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It sounds like there are still some good beers to sample, though, and I rather enjoyed Evan Rail’s piece in the Times documenting his travels around Germany sampling the regional styles. Not all the unique styles of German beer have been snuffed yet, but I want to go check them out anyway, just in case.

On a German Beer Trail, One More for the Road [NYTimes.com]

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Don’t take too much of what I’m about to say about these floating Dutch “Capsule Hotel” units as gospel, as my information is gleaned primarily from a Google translated German information page. As far as I can tell, these are “survival modules” from the ’70s, original designed for shipboard usage, which have been converted into on-the-water rooms. Don’t expect a lot of ammenities: the “Luxury survival” package is the only one that includes a way to go to the head—and even that is with an “emergency toilet.” (Don’t worry, though; there are “all kinds of Bordgadgets.”

A single night in the luxury model will cost you 150 Euro, but you can spend a night in the bare-bones model for just €70, if you can live without the in-cabin disco ball. Have a look at the pictures page for some idea of the accomodations. Don’t let the sign saying “DANGER: LEVER DROPS CAPSULE” discourage you.

Hotel Site [CapsuleHotel.info]

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While spending any unnecessary time in Illinois is still low on my list of things to do, I appreciate the Illinois Bureau of Tourism’s pluck in promoting this new set of posters (of which these are only two of maybe two dozen) that attractively detail the things that Illinois is famous for. Besides Chicago, of course.

The complete set of posters [EnjoyIllinois.com]

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Teachers have refused to stop an annual striptease by pupils despite a video of an onstage lesbian love romp ending up on YouTube. … But news of the striptease got out when some of the girls this year stripped naked and began to touch each other’s breasts – then started rubbing baby oil over each other’s bodies.

I am deadly serious when I say: this is absolutely the way god intended high school to be. If we’re not going to pay teachers a fair wage, they should at least be able to watch the hot students rub oil over themselves in the lunchroom before filling them up with their hot, sticky wisdom.

I tried looking for the video on YouTube but could only find a shrill douchebag commenting about it.

Students’ stage strip for teachers [Metro.co.uk]

Update: We Are All Photographers Now’s blog has the video.

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Jet Airways has decked out its Boeing 777-300ERs with eight luxury suites in what it’s dubbed the “Orient Express of the Skies.” Surprisingly, they’re claiming that a ticket in the suite is cheaper than a first-class seat on British Airways—just £4,421, or almost $9k US.

The exclusive mini-suites boast a wall-mounted 23 inch flat TV screen with more than 200 hours of the latest movies as well as a seat that converts into a seven foot bed – the world’s longest.

Each passenger even has his or her personal hanging wardrobe as well as office facilities for working. Meals are served on hand-painted Bernardaud porcelain dinnerware with Dom Perignon and Krug among the champagnes on offer. … There’s also a communal bar.

Airline offers travellers private cabin to India – for less than a BA first class seat [This Is London]

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Then it’s back uptown to Crush Wine Co. a cutting-edge wine store. If you come from a part of the world that doesn’t have exciting wine stores, Crush will knock your socks off. The backlit, serpentine wall display that holds the bottles horizontally will have you shuffling down its entire 60-ft length with your head tilted to one side. Be sure to go in the “cube” of fine wines at the back of the store. A great selection will yield some (more) great wines for dinner and to bring home in your checked baggage.

We should write up one of these for beer lovers, shouldn’t we? Expect it by Friday—got any suggestions? (It should be more than just bars.)

36 Hours in New York City for Wine Lovers [DrVino]

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Dethroner was created with one over-arching goal: to create a business that would allow me to do what I want with my life, which is to travel around the country and planet, learning new things, and document them in writing and pictures. I’ve lost the plot a bit over the last few months, falling too easily into patterns I learned while working at Gawker Media as a blogger, instead of making smart decisions in pursuit of the goal as a business owner. 4-Hour Work Week comes on the heels of several hand-delivered slaps to the face by circumstance. Which is great—it’s time to stop wallowing that things haven’t worked out as effortlessly as I’d hoped.

Atypical optimism after the jump.

Ferriss’ concept can be summed up easily: establish self-sustaining sources of revenue, such as internet-based retail operations; minimize both your reoccurring fiscal and informational expenses by cutting fat and outsourcing responsibility at every opportunity; use your new-found freedom to travel, learn new things, and enjoy life’s adventures.

For me, as a writer, I’ve learned that diversifying is the secret to a strong freelance life. I have regular magazine work, occasional long-form/front-of-the-book pieces, and Dethroner. That works primarily because I want to do all those three things, but I’m doing the two former things to pay for the latter. (Making Dethroner pay for itself is an ongoing project, the ups-and-downs of which are best saved for another post.)

What I should now, according to Ferriss, is to add businesses unrelated to writing, or at least aligned in parallel to my skill set. (Technical knowledge, dick jokes.) I already have about half-a-dozen ideas waiting in the wings, which is frightening. What if one of them turned out to be a success?

There is a sense of guilt I get when I start thinking about living this sort of lifestyle, not just using currency disparity to hire Indian personal assistants, but even having people work for me at all. If I’m able to live the lifestyle I want because other people are working for me, shouldn’t I, too, be working as much as I ask of them? I haven’t quite figured this one out, but I think I’m going to put that aside for the moment to worry about until after I’m fully self-sufficient. (To paraphrase Nathan Rolf, I’m hoping trickle-down economics can be more than just paying a bum a dollar to let me piss on him.)

Even if you aren’t already self-employed, Ferriss has several ideas for regaining control of your time from your employer, mainly involving mild duplicity to slowly weasel your way out of your office, culminating in complete remote working that will allow travel, etc. (I suspect this will be difficult for those who work in steel mills or bordellos.) Again the middle-class guilt appears: why should I let myself live this lifestyle when it isn’t available to so many others? Another opposing-but-unrelated defense: Lots of rich people are assholes.

Anyway, a lot to think about, but I wanted to pass on my tentative thumbs-up. It’s a competently-written and practical read (and occasionally and surprisingly crass, which of course I think is awesome.) I can’t give it my full endorsement until I am writing one from the deck of a chartered dive boat steaming through the Caribbean.

The 4-Hour Workweek [Amazon]
Audiobook [Amazon]
Ferris’s Blog [FourHourWorkweek.com]

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This video is completely safe for work visually, but you’ll want to turn down the volume on your PC unless you want your co-workers to think you get off on a woman talking dirty to you while showing off her two-day-old socks. Really, though, the video is just gravy; you should go to the YouTube page and read all the perverts’ comments.

Sniff My Dirty Socks, loser [YouTube]

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Contributing to this prediction of doom is largely the fact that said girlfriend, Soanya Ahmad, is the tender, naive age of 23 years old, and she has never sailed outside of the Hudson river. Stowe, on the other hand, has lived aboard a boat for decades already.

They plan to be completely self-sufficient for the duration, including trapping rain water and desalinating sea water for potability. The 70′ double masted schooner, built by Stowe and his family, is crammed full of provisions, and both parties have undergone training in basic first aid. The Anne, as the schooner is named, is also outfitted with solar panels for their electrical needs. “The Mars Ocean Odyssey,” as they’ve called it, has been funded by individual contributions and corporate donations.

Reid Stowe is a lifelong adventurer, and given his experience and discipline I’m confident that he’s got the wherewithal to undertake such an expedition. But his companion is barely into her 20’s and I’m with the skeptics who fear that she’ll bug out and need to jump ship in less than the thousand day stretch.

N.Y. duo sets sail on 1,000-day cruise [ap.org]

1000 Days at Sea [1000days.net]

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These bags aren’t cheap, either, costing up to $70 for the largest bag. Plus activated charcoal will eventually slurp up all the man flavor it can, leaving you with plain black cloth.

Product Page [Flat-D.com via Thrillist]

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