Next time you’re camping, instead of digging a hole or using one of those suspect comfort castle port-a-johns to dispense with No. 2, why not infuse a little portability into nature’s call with the Shit Box? It’s completely cardboard, fully biodegradable, and utterly ridiculous. And yet, I’m drawn to it. I want to see if it can hold my weight (77 kgs, colon empty). I want to know why designer Richard Wharton named his talking poo mascot “Little Jack,” and how the hell a company like this gets away with a returns policy page. But most of all, as a writer named Jack who also happens to go to the bathroom in the woods, I want to test one.
The enema is a gadget you probably don’t think about too often, but for many people it’s a invaluable tool that’s made many an uncomfortable situation flow more smoothly. For the Russians, it’s obviously something more, because one city there erected an 360 kg, US$42,000 statue to honour the device for its many years of unsung service to the backside of mankind. “There is no kitsch or obscenity, it is a successful work of art,” said Alexander Kharchenko, a resident of the regularity-loving Zheleznovodsk. “An enema is almost a symbol of our region.” That’s great, Mr. Kharchenko, but which “region,” exactly, are we talking about here?
Dell wrote us to say that due to popular demand (read: common sense), they are extending the deadline for customers who want to order systems with Windows XP Home premium. As of today, a Dell rep said customers can order select configurations of the Inspiron 530 or 530s desktops with Windows XP Home Premium through June 26. This means if you’re in the market for a Dell, and don’t want to pay the surcharge for downgrading your bundle from Vista to XP, you have a few more days to do it. [Dell]
Two weeks ago today, a tornado ripped through Illinois. At points it was up to 400 metres wide, and it did enough damage, cracking giant powerlines like toothpicks and yanking old-growth trees right from the ground, that it completely closed the major highway I57 for a 56-kilometre expanse south of Chicago.
I was lucky enough to be travelling that day (on the way to the airport for WWDC) and pulled off the road just in time to intersect with the tornado at its worst. Inside a gas station with no basement and plenty of active fuel lines, it was the first time in a long time–maybe ever–that I genuinely feared for my life, that I thought things were over. Watch that video above. Then know that I was a lot closer.
But as I’ve played the scenes back in my head over the last several days, it’s not the storm that’s proven to be the most haunting. It’s the way the people reacted. Because in the gas station, I watched a group of 20 scared people not take shelter, but stand in front of a wall of glass to record the event–to make some YouTube clips.
Some people celebrate anniversaries with food, or a little dancing, but Business University Turiba in Latvia decided to have a little fun with a Gizmodo favorite: the ol’ Mento in the Coke reaction. For the school’s 15th anniversary, the students set out the break the previous world record for this category, which was held by 1,499 Belgian students in the town of Leuven. Last Thursday, they succeeded, and the contents of 1,911 bottles of Coke were sprayed violently upward, and into history.
