Spectator Business is a new magazine from The Spectator team. Edited by Martin Vander Meyer, it's a monthly look at the City and so on.

In look and tone, its not a million miles from its parent publication. They have tried to change a few things on their website though. Regular feeds from Dow Jones Newswire complement their own features, blogs (in a section called 'Trading Floor') and a weekly update; all of which means a more considered feel to the deluge of financial dross we are bombarded by on other websites.

My one real criticism is the music that punctuates the otherwise very good video pieces (current one is on non-doms). It would be better without the synths. Still, the whole thing sits very neatly within the Spectator's main site.

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Melting ice-cream... van, originally uploaded by zoom_eric.

It's hot.

These photographs of Japanese custom scooters come from Pink Tentacle's search of bike shop galleries, auction sites, and Flickr. Follow the links for more images.

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Bikeshop Rodeo has killer photos of their mean machines.

Suzuki Skywave

Honda Forza

Suzuki Skywave

Honda Fusion

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Gull Craft transformed Honda Forzas into these retro-futuristic KYBELE cyber scooters, and their photo report shows how to make your own. (Via AutoblogGreen)

KYBELE Cyber Scooter

KYBELE Cyber Scooter

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Flickr user tokyo scooter stuff has thrown together an awesome collection of found photos of custom rides.

Suzuki Skywave

Suzuki Skywave

Yamaha Maxam 3000 Concept @ Tokyo Motor Show

Yamaha Maxam @ Tokyo Motor Show

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This Yamaha Maxam is for sale on Yahoo! Auctions. With only a few hours left as of this writing, the highest bid is 400,000 yen (under $4,000).

Yamaha Maxam

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From Alfa Auto:

Honda Forza

Yamaha Grand Majesty

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From Lotaus:

Suzuki Skywave

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From M-Style:

Suzuki Skywave

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The Japanese Scooters Flickr pool has lots of great photos, too. Not sure what these guys are riding, but it looks like fun.

Beat (Photo by gori-jp)

More outrageous modes of transportation:

- Dekotora photo galleries
- Extreme Japanese custom vans
- Dekochari art bikes

Thank you Pink Tentacle!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzY3r76Ax48&hl=en]

Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club, Choke, Survivor) has a new book coming out: Snuff. As part of the jibber jabber in the run up to it, his marketing gang have commissioned some fake porno trailers (including this one).

Here is the book's blurb: "Six hundred dudes. One porn queen. A world record for the ages. A must-have movie for every discerning collector of things erotic." Cassie Wright, porn priestess, intends to cap her legendary career by breaking the world record for serial fornication. On camera. With six hundred men. Snuff unfolds from the perspectives of Mr. 72, Mr. 137, and Mr. 600, who await their turn on camera in a very crowded green room. This wild, lethally funny, and thoroughly researched novel brings the huge yet underacknowledged presence of pornography in contemporary life into the realm of literary fiction at last. Who else but Chuck Palahniuk would dare do such a thing? Who else could do it so well, so unflinchingly, and with such an incendiary (you might say) climax?

Droog Design's Do Hit Chair is a cube made from .04" steel. It's shipped with a sledgehammer for you to customize it's shape yourself. Created by Marjin van der Poll, it's available from Unica Home for $6718 for one that he pre-hammered. A smash-your-own model is $5924.

Link (via Paper Magazine)

UPDATE: Here is a video of the chair being customized. Link

Post nabbed from BoingBoing.

A fascinating post from Pink Tentacle:

Kage-e (”shadow pictures”) — a popular form of Edo-period woodblock print — were appreciated by children and adults and commonly used as party gags. These pictures consist of two parts: a “shadow” image and a “real” image. The shadow image, which typically bears the shape of a common, easily identifiable object, is viewed first. The real image, viewed second, reveals the surprising true identity of the shadow.

Here’s a nice example by ukiyoe master Kuniyoshi (ca. 1852). It shows what appear to be the silhouettes of goldfish…

But look again…

It’s a flying tanuki crushing a hunter under the weight of its mammoth testicles.

Here are a few more kage-e by Hiroshige (ca. 1842). The shadows cast on shoji doors belong to men in interesting poses.

Pine tree

Uguisu (Japanese bush warbler) on a plum branch

Salt-dried fish

Kettle

Hawk

Stone lantern

Goose on a rock

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anwlpTgbQTE&hl=en]

'nuff said.

Thanks BOB at Friday Linkage

This is the Uno. Aside from its looks, what sets it apart is that rather than coming from the darkest Honda garages or the research labs at Triumph, it was created in the workshop of Ben J Poss Gulak, an 18-year-old high school kid from Canada. He learned engineering from his grandfather, and has always tinkered.

Tinkering is a mean word for the Uno. The smog he saw at a recent trip to China (he is in the Canadian science team, which competes in international fairs) inspired him to start work on a compact electrical transport solution, and this is it. Frame is made from angle iron, supported by mountain bike wheels, driven by electric motors.

It has two gyros, one for forward and backward movement, the other for turning. Like a Segway, to go forwards, you simply lean forwards. To slow, you shift your weight back.

There's a big story and loads of pictures about it here.

(Thanks for the spot Gary!)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qglsrwrLJuk&hl=en]

The Apprentice. In Lego. You're fired.

Forget those weird amorphous pink blobby stress buster things. All you need is one of these handy fake plastic beans. It's the hot new craze that's taking Japan by storm! Witness the hilarity as your buddies chow down on fake edamame. Or not.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtUy5HIYQac&hl=en]

From Jack Dyson

Forget those weird amorphous pink blobby things. All you need is one of these handy

Michael built a Claude Shannon/Marvin Minsky "Ultimate Machine" -- flip a switch and a hand emerges and flips it off.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMGJB410Ccs]
About 7 years ago I was reading an article on Claude Shannon and came across one of the funniest ideas I had ever heard. Claude, you see, was one of these incredibly brilliant engineers with an obviously great sense of humor. As I understand it, he, along with Marvin Minsky came up with an idea they called the "Ultimate Machine". Basically a plain box with a switch on the top. When you flip the switch, a hand comes out of the box and flips the switch off. Thats it.

Well, after reading the article, and laughing out loud, I decided that I HAD to build one of these boxes.

Link (via Make)

(pinched this off boingboing)

Here is an insanely comprehensive collection of "x does it with..." statements. It's funny, silly, sophomoric, and alphabetized! Link

From me.

Via Boingers

Check the T's here

Thank you BOB!

The Onion's fake news goes from strength to strength. Like a cross between Brass Eye and GMTV.

Expert On Anteaters Wasted Entire Life Studying Anteaters

Oh, and this wee gem:

Anonymous Philanthropist Donates 200 Human Kidneys To Hospital

Forget politicians in stab vests or footballers rapping against racism. This is how you fool the kids. Teach them about the careers ladders of today. All while they think they’re watching some sort of badass anime/manga.

NOTE: I hugely applaud this kind of marketing/packaging. If more people understood how to say things like this, a lot more people would listen.

Mr. Pink was also the author of the fine article on Manga in Wired last year. Check it out if you haven’t yet had a chance.

Johnny Bunko trailer from Daniel Pink on Vimeo.

Via TV in Japan - another place you should checkout frequently.

An open source platform, SongBird is basically iTunes (right down to the design) mashed up with the Web. Via http://friday-linkage.blogspot.com/.

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Don't fall in, originally uploaded by Meg Pickard.

How annoying - they've gone and put a fence around the Tate Modern's shiny crack. Never one to pass up a cliche, I'll say it's political correctness gone maaaaaaad. Nanny state. Etc. etc.

Mum's shop, The Dining Room Shop, has some special treasures hidden away in the china section. Plates with optical illusions in them, hidden faces and so on. They're very rare, and when I used to work there as a (usually sulky) teen I'd spend ages staring at them, working out not how to find the riddle, but why the person who designed it had chosen that particular face.

They came, I think, from a 19th century affection for playful prints and pictures for the parlour. An early form of light entertainment for middle-class Europeans, I guess (well they didn't have Eastenders or Wii). But of course, the trend was not confined to our neck of the woods. The far east had its own versions too. Here's a fantastically colourful post from Pink Tentacle:

'Joge-e, or “two-way pictures,” are a type of woodblock print that can be viewed either rightside-up or upside-down. Large numbers of these playful prints were produced for mass consumption in the 19th century, and they commonly featured bizarre faces of deities, monsters or historical figures (including some from China). Only a few examples of original joge-e survive today. Here are a few.

'This print by Kuniyoshi (c. 1852) depicts Hotei (Laughing Buddha) and Shoki (a character from the “Romance of the Three Kingdoms“). When viewed upside-down, Hotei becomes Asahina (a character from a popular novel of the time) and Shoki becomes Zhang Fei.

'This woodblock print was published by Ezakiya Tatsuzo (c. 1842). Left to right, top to bottom (upside-down image described in parentheses): 1. Small tengu (Gedo, an evil person), 2. King Zhou, Shang Dynasty (Guan Yu), 3. Wind god (Thunder), 4. Nyudo (Pair of frogs), 5. Tengu looking up (Tengu looking down), 6. Tofu Kozo (Mitsume Kozo), 7. Onamuchi-no-mikoto, Shinto god of nation-building, farming, business and medicine (Iruka-no-omi), 8. Cao Cao (Shoki, Zhang Fei), 9. Mikenja (Ghost of Mirin).

'This print by Kuniyoshi (c. 1852) shows a Daruma and Tokusakari (a character from a famous Noh play). Viewed upside-down, the Daruma becomes a Gedo (an evil person) and Tokusakari becomes Ikyu (a character from the famous play “Sukeroku”).

'Created by Yoshitora, 1861. Left column (top to bottom): 1. Fukusuke, god of merchant prosperity (Frog), 2. Evil man (Ebisu, god of fishermen and good luck), 3. Fukurokuju, god of wisdom and longevity (Tanuki, racoon dog with giant scrotum). Center: 4. Ikyu (Foreigner) , 5. Okame (Dekusuke), 6. Gedo, an evil person (Asahina). Right: 7. Hotei, Laughing Buddha (Yakko), 8. Earth god (Mountain god).

'Created by Yoshitora, 1862. Left column (top to bottom): 1. Tadafumi (Gedo, an evil person), 2. Hunter (Frog), 3. Small tengu (Big tengu), 4. Bad guy (Bad guy). Center: 5. Two-horned demon (One-horned demon), 6. Kasane, possessed female character in famous Kabuki play (Ugly man), 7. Daruma (Daruma). Right: 8. Foreigner (Ainu), 9. Nio guardian (A-un guardian).

[Images from: Edo no Asobi-e, Tokyo Shoseki, 1988 (out of print)]'