The four are members of a new idol group, Machikado Keiki Japan, and stocks play an important part in their performances.

“We base our costumes on the price of the Nikkei average of the day. For example, when the index falls below 10,000 points, we go on stage with really long skirts,” Mori explained.

The higher stocks rise, the shorter their dresses get. With the Nikkei index ending above 13,000, the four went without skirts altogether on the day of their interview with The Japan Times, instead wearing only lacy shorts.

{ Japan Times | Continue reading }

{ Cattle brands, those unique markings seared into animals’ hides with a hot iron, must comply with a rigorous set of standards and are developed using a specific language ruled by its own unique syntax and morphology. […] When it comes to getting your brand approved by the authorities, location is as important as design. The reason? The same brand can be registered in the same country as long as its located on a different part of the animal. | Smithsonian | More: How To Design A Brand }

{ Decoding The City: The Road Graffiti Placed by Utility Workers. }

{ via Brad Feuerhelm }

{ Jay Owell }

Russian criminal tattoos have a complex system of symbols which can give quite detailed information about the wearer. Not only do the symbols carry meaning but the area of the body on which they are placed may be meaningful too. […]

Tattoos done in a Russian prison often have a distinct bluish color (due to being made with ink from a ballpoint pen) and usually appear somewhat blurred because of the lack of instruments to draw fine lines. The ink is often created from burning the heel of a shoe and mixing the soot with urine, and injected into the skin utilizing a sharpened guitar string attached to an electric shaver. […]

Barbed wire across the forehead signifies a sentence of life imprisonment without possibility of parole (tattoos on the face usually signifies an expectation that the bearer will never leave prison). […]

Celtic Cross: Part of the racist white power movement. It has also been used to represent crosshairs of a gun, meaning that wearer is a hit man and he too will meet a violent end one day. […]

Skull: Signifies murder, if the murder was significant enough to merit the tattoo.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }

images { Between 1948 and 1986, during his career as a prison guard, Danzig Baldaev made over 3,000 drawings of tattoos | more }

{ The eternal affirmation of the spirit of man, is not just a facet of the Archipelago tables, but a defining principle of Mr Rocks design philosophy. | Eagle Wolf Orca }

{ Grace Jones photographed by Chris Cunningham, 2008 }

What we know is that the consumption of shoes in the UK has undergone radical change during the last decade. A 2006 survey of attitudes and practices around shoes by the magazine Harper’s Bazaar revealed among its findings that 25% of British women would buy shoes before paying bills.

{ Sociological Research Online | Continue reading }

Objective: To describe the epidemiology of genital injuries caused by trouser zips and to educate both consumers and the caregivers of patients who sustain such injuries.

[…]

Conclusion: Zip-related genital injuries affect both paediatric and adult cohorts. Practitioners should be familiar with various zip-detachment strategies for these populations.

{ PubMed | Continue reading }

The purpose of this paper was to improve the butt lifting effect of tight jeans based on changing parameters of pattern by CAD. In the scope of research, body measurements were carried out and three kinds of hip shape (flat, normal and plump) were identified with K-Mean Cluster Analysis according to the hip convex angle. Then butt lifting effect of jeans was discussed through changing the back crutch angle and the style line angle of yoke. the corresponding sample jeans were fitted by 15 subjects of three hip shapes and evaluated by both subjects and 15 specialist people in fashion field. It was concluded that the butt lifting effect could be enhanced by increasing the back crutch angle and decreasing the style line angle of yoke.

{ IEEE | Continue reading }

photo { Man Ray, Homage to D.A.F. de Sade, 1933 }

{ The Public Domain Review/TNI }