Darth Vader Mask, Gun Do the Job for Bank Robber

Thought this would have happened more by now, yet this story is news precisely because it is out of the ordinary.

Seems a man wearing a Darth Vader costume robbed a bank. He (of course it was a he – woman just don't don the Darth helmet and robe, especially when they're robbing a bank) wielded not a light saber but a gun, which is what made the other customers and especially the bank sit up and take notice, enough to give him the large pocketful of cash that he got for his efforts.

Comic-Con is going on these days, in San Diego, the natural assumption would be that some Star Wars fan really needed money to buy a collectible and so went from the convention to the bank, one thing led to another, and the security cameras tell the rest of the story. But not, this happened in New York, a continent away from Comic-Con. This was the real deal, and it went down in Setauket, a Long Island town with the modest population of just more than 15,000.

No word yet on how the man's voice sounded (and whether it resembled the deep tones of James Earl Jones). Supposedly, the security tape that will be eventually released in this world of 24/7 video publication will contain this crucial information.

This wasn't a joke. The gun the man had was real. The customers and bank staff believed that he would use that gun, which is why the customers got on the floor and the bank staff gave away the money.

The man was seen running from the bank, his cape billowing behind him.

Bizarre? Sure. But is the Darth Vader costume any more ridiculous than the ski masks or pantyhose that other bank robbers have worn? The key is to mask their identity. This man's identity was certainly masked — by his helmet.

The one little detail that the man might want to work on for next time is changing his below-the-waist attire. Look closely in the photo to the right. See the camouflage pants? SO not-Force-like.

Literature via Tweets? What a Novel Concept

So this guy recently published a novel made up of Tweets. Specifically, he Tweeted first, then put them all together and made a book out of it.

New social media experiment? Sure. Noteworthy? Certainly. Good book, as good as the Tweet? Remains to be seen.

But it does suggest the possibility of other, more well-known books being devolved into Tweets. This would probably have worked for Dickens, who wrote a chapter at a time anyway. But just imagine the following via Twitter:

• A Tale of Two Cities: It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Tune in next week for more.
  
  
• Moby Dick: Call me Ishmael. On insane revenge mission. Seeking hearty crew and great white whale. Interested?
  
  
• War and Peace: The sheer number of Tweets would be enough to give anyone a headache just counting them all, let alone reading them all.
  
• 
  Crime and Punishment: Just thinking about how to condense this grim, excellently in-depth psychological drama into 140-character bursts is enough to make one want to think of something else.
  

Poems might be a bit easier:

• How do I love thee? Let me count the ways, in 140 characters or less.
  
  
• This is the way the world ends, not in fire but in Tweets.
  
  
• "The time has come," the Walrus said, "to talk of many things. Must keep it short, though. Character limit, you know."
  

Shakespeare by Tweet might be a bit exciting:

• "To be or not to be, that is the question for another Tweet."
  
  
• "Double bubble, toil and trouble. How many Tweets? More than a couple."
  

There is precedent for the Shakespeare, after a fashion. A real-life theater company just recently completed its production of Such Tweet Sorrow, a production of Romeo & Juliet modernized and presented via Twitter.

There is precedent for shortening famed works of literature, too. It's called Cliff Notes.

Shark on Beach No Cause for Alarm

Cue the scariest two-note musical introduction in movie history. Clear the beaches. Get everyone out of the water. Shark on the loose!

OK, so it wasn't that bad. The shark was rather toothless, if a bit large.

Seems a 20-foot-long shark washed up on Gilgo Beach, on New York's Long Island recently. That's a big fish, and the people on the beach at the time all had to have a look.

Turns out they could have a look with impunity since the shark was dead at the time. Even though the finned swimming machine weighed a ton, it wasn't a threat because it was no longer breathing.

More people had to have a look once they discovered that the shark was dead. Surely a few Jaws jokes were bandied about. Surely some fearless New Yorkers could be heard to say it was sad that it wasn't a great white after all, as if "Where's the thrill in that?" were the proper response to the beach-prone funeral of one the planet's largest seagoing creatures.

This was a basking shark, the second-largest fish in the world (after the whale shark, of course). This one wasn't basking in the sun, though. It had lived its life and then lost it. Such living in the waters off the cost of Long Island is common for that species; such last-gasp activity is not so common. Marine biologists plan extensive examinations to determine cause of death.

Basking sharks eat plankton and other small, rather harmless creatures of the not-so-deep. The typical basking shark, although sporting a huge fin and giant mouth, has no teeth so isn't really of a primary danger to humans intelligent enough to avoid getting trapped in the shark's mouth. (We can still be gummed to death or swallowed whole.)

Plans now call for the shark to be buried in sand dunes near its final resting place, where the deceased can finally bask in the sun.

Permit 'Taxes' Threaten Existence of 'Vermontasaurus'

Where does art end and silliness begin?

With apologies to those who detest art, the answer to that question, for the purposes of the subsequent discussion, is in the dead-serious hands of the good people of various government officials in Vermont, many of whom think that "Vermontasaurus" should be dismantled.

Let's back up a bit. Meet Brian Boland. He's a pilot who puts his piloting skills to good use by running an airfield near the town of Post Mills, Vt. He's also really good with his hands, as evidenced both by his previous forays into building that turned into hot-air balloons and by his latest creation, a giant wooden sculpture that happens to bear a passing resemblance to a creature that has been extinct for many millions of years.

Not too long ago, Boland got fed up with a pile of wood scarps, got together a good band of volunteers, got them kitted up with the tools needed to create a lasting work of art, and guided them through the construction of a 122-foot-long dinosaur made entirely of wood planks. (It's also 25 feet tall.)

It's obvious that the word "makeshift" accurately describes this thing. Sticking out from all angles are parts of bunk beds, guitars, and other odd-shaped panels of wood. The sculpture has already attracted attention from passers-by, attention that will only grow.

This is by no means a structure, yet the officials of a nearby village told Boland that he needed to pay them $272 to buy a structural permit and the brilliant minds on the state Natural Resources Board have released a preliminary finding that Boland might yet have to pay another $150 for yet another permit because he has somehow altered … something. He has already bowed to one demand and shored up the framework of the work, so that it doesn't suddenly fall over and crush whoever is standing underneath. (Again, this was never intended to be a slide or merry-go-round or any other sort of plaything. People are meant to keep their distance.)

What this man has really done is create an artwork out of scrap bits of wood. He doesn't intend to live in it. He doesn't intend to rent it out. He doesn't intend to open it as a theme park for children to play on, in, under, or around. Frankly, he doesn't intend to do much of anything now that the thing is built.

A former teacher, Boland knows his audience. He has said that his intent was to build something that the children and adults in the small community (population 349 as of 2010) could call their own, could gather around as a bit of fun or communal spirit. And the good people of Post Mills and the other surrounding towns that make up the village of Thetford can certainly do that, as long as Boland doesn't go bankrupt in the process.

It's obvious that this endeavor wasn't undertaken with the intent of creating a lasting landmark, to put Post Mills on the map. It was a bit of fun, a bit of working together, a bit of shared vision, a bit of handyman and handyman coming together in these troubled economic times and creating something of which they could be (at least sort of) proud. Such shared efforts should not be taxed, which is, in effect, what these permits will do if they are approved. Rather than pay that tax, the head artist, Boland, will surely tear "Vermontasaurus" down. And that would be a crying shame.

New Twist on the Book Club: Dream Sharing

A recent story in the New York Times covered groups of people who got together to discuss their dreams — a book club for the subconscious, if you will. The people involved reported feeling more understanding of their dream experiences and of the subtext of those dreams. The more people shared their dreams, the more other people joined in the shared experience.

In the age of Facebook and Twitter, when we're sharing absolutely everything all the time, in snippets and in longer bits, this sort of Dream Club is probably not surprising. The line between personal and public gets blurred more and more with the further advent of social media. In a way, however, we're only just taking things to a new level, updating traditional practices with new technology and a new lens.

I can see how it could be quite refreshing to share a puzzling dream with other people who knew you. No one in the group has to be a psychologist, of course; in fact, psychologists would probably avoid such groups on the theory that they wouldn't really be getting away from their jobs but would, on the contrary, be looked at as the experts that they assuredly were. (Hold that thought for later.)

Having your friends and acquaintances discuss or otherwise interpret your dreams could be quite a thrilling experience, especially if someone who knows you can lay their finger on the meaning of the dream that your conscious mind couldn't quite come up with. The same could be true for you, in reverse, as you connect the dots for a friend in a way that he or she couldn't because they were too much in their own headspace.

The members of the group profiled in the New York Times story said that they refrained from sharing really intimate or potentially embarrassing dreams, especially if they involved other members of the group. The one thing that did come across, though, for many members of the group was an increase in their level of understanding of the events, people, fears, and hopes that featured prominently in the dreams of the people who shared those dreams with the group. Such shared understanding can certainly serve to increase bonds between people, as they come to understand not only what makes other people tick but also, potentially, how similar concerns can be found within their own dreamsphere.

But back to the professionals. Practicing psychologists obviously have training in dream interpretation. They have studied the issue and the symbols and the patterns and all manner of other elements of people's dreams. Psychologists get paid to do this sort of thing, and they might just resent nontrained people offering up their own opinions of what other people's dream events, patterns, and people are on about. But that really isn't the point of the group; rather, the people are sharing their experiences in the hope that they will learn more about themselves and the other people in the group. In a sense, it's one more way to get people together with shared experience. Not all dreams have to be interpreted. Not all dream-sharing groups have to get down into the detail of what means what and who means what. What is clear, though, is that these people are enjoying the discussions, and that can only be to the good.

So add dreamsphere to the blogosphere, the Facebooksphere, and the Twittersphere. And maybe try it yourself. Learn more about your friends, your acquaintances, your family by sharing what doesn't keep you up at night.

World Cup Equals Lost Productivity

The workplace can be a strange place when the soccer is on.

That's definitely the case in Brazil, where businesses and schools close so that the country can en masse watch its team play. Some Brazilians have been known to postpone elective surgery until after a match. (Their doctors probably had a hand in those decisions.)

In other countries, employers have learned the hard way not to get between workers and their soccer. Hundreds of night-shift workers went on strike from a Fiat plant in Italy because the factory wouldn't give them time off to watch the country's opening match against Paraguay. (Of course, given Italy's dismal performance at this year's World Cup, maybe the factory owners were on to something.)

German fans seem particularly fanatical about their team's performance, so much so that one recent study estimated that the productivity lost during the monthlong World Cup tournament totaled $8 billion. Given this, many employers find ways to enable their workers to see the national team play. (Indeed, many managers are as fanatical as their employees and so have no problem granting time away from work for the couple of hours needed to feed the obsession.)

Eager to keep workers onsite, businesses in many countries have set up special viewing rooms, so that employees can watch as a team. On the other side of the coin is something akin to what happened in the Netherlands recently, when the workday ended at 1 p.m., so that workers could leave work in time to see the Dutch team play.

Then there's the surfing. It's altogether one thing to not work while the game is on. But what about before and after? That $8 billion lost productivity figure out of Germany probably includes time spent by employees trawling the Internet for analysis about their national team's performance (and potential next opponent). Internet aside, there's still the large number of water cooler conversations surrounding World Cup goings-on that necessarily take time out of many a workday (although these kinds of production-loss-enducing conversations are much more difficult to pinpoint, since almost anything could be the subject of a water cooler conversation).

What does it all mean? Good question, that. It's a mixed bag. Soccer is bigger in some countries than it is in others. In the U.S., for instance, the World Cup is taking place in the summertime but during the workday (given the time difference between U.S. time zones and South Africa). Figures released by the TV network that broadcast the American team's last game, against Ghana, show that about 20 million Americans tuned in to watch the game. That figure might seem quite high until you reflect on the population of the country, which exceeds 300 hundred million by a good bit. There's always something bigger going on in the U.S.

In other countries, however, like most of the South American and European powerhouses, where soccer (or football) borders on a religious pursuit, the chance to support the team by actually watching the games in real time is nothing short of a shared entitlement, expected as a right and definitely missed if that right is taken away. As has been seen above, many employers are taking the path of least resistance and in some way allowing their employees to watch the games.

It Smells Nice in Here and I Want to Buy More Stuff

That slight scent that tickles your fancy in the Sony area of the electronics store is vanilla. Or it's mandarin or bourbon or one of a host of secret ingredients. What it isn't is an accident.

Sony admits that it is in pursuit of giving its customers a pleasing time while they're browsing through the layers of powerful, sleek, time-diverting products that they usually have on offer. So Sony, always one to increase its fanbase and its market share, have gone to a company that specializes in scents, in order to keep customers in the store longer and keep them coming back.

Why the vanilla, though? Well, research shows that that scent is particularly pleasing to women. (We're probably talking about more of a candle-like scent here, rather than the baking vanilla variety.) The scent is subtle enough so as to not be confused with perfume, but it is there, along with the mandarin, so that women can feel comforted by at least one thing while they're looking for the latest form of entertainment for themselves, their friends or family.

Remember that bourbon smell among the named ingredients? That's in there for the men, who, on average, need much less encouragement for continuing to browse among high-powered electronics.

The mandarin, for both genders, suggests a bit of class (which we all have, of course, to varying degrees).

Recent studies have shown that Sony is on to something. One study out of the University of Michigan has found that people remembered more about products they saw in scented areas than about products they saw in areas with no (intended) scents.

Another scent commonly listed in these circles is lavender, which has been proven to slow down the human heartbeat just a fraction, enough to make us feel like we want to linger.

That idea of lingering is probably behind a well-known Vegas casino's strategy of releasing the aroma of coconut into the air, in an attempt to make casino patrons feel more comfortable, more at ease, more willing to part with their money, again.

This is what it's all about, really. Sony is, after all, after your money and my money and the money of the people who live across the street. The same goes for the coconut-scented casino and the car dealer whose used cars always smell the nicest and the hopeful homeseller who always bakes chocolate chip cookies just before the open house.

Still, as a consumer, it's nice to be pampered, especially when it involves exchanging money for things.

New Ad Proposal a License to Scare

You have to hand it to California. You really do. They're big. They're bold. And that's just the governor.

Seriously, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has just served notice that he's going to punish the state's lawmakers indirectly for not submitting a budget — by cutting the pay of 200,000 state workers to the federal minimum wage. (For those who haven't been on the minimum wage in awhile, it's up to $7.25 an hour.) Schwarzenegger promised that the workers would be paid their full salaries retroactively, once the budget gets signed.

The budget is overdue and probably won't be popular in any event. (Such squabbles are nothing new in California.) The deficit stands to be about $19 billion.

The governor's minimum-wage plan won't come anywhere near that type of savings, but fear not: other proposals are being bandied out, including this one:

One idea is to take one of California's prime assets, the sheer crush of cars and trucks on the road, and turn it into a money-making machine. How? By turning license plates into digital billboards.

Seems someone has had the bright idea (and enough people have approved of this bright idea to keep it moving forward) of converting the static face of a license plate into a digital screen that can broadcast advertisements. So now, when you're stuck in traffic, stalled on the highway in an unmoving queue of vehicles, you can entertain yourself by being impressed by the ad on the license plate on the car in front of you. With luck, the display will employ a rolling ad scheme, so that your anticipation of what's coming next can build and maybe even make you break out into a cold sweat (assuming that you haven't already done this from the static nature of your own vehicle because of the traffic jam).

All good, right? Companies should be lining up to pour wads of cash into the hands of the California State Treasury in order to buy face time on a million different license plates. That kind of money would surely double in an election year — which seems to be every year nowadays.

What's to stop this grand plan? How about … safety? Can you imagine the kind of havoc that would be wrecked (pun intended) by drivers trying to get close enough to the car in front of them to see what's being advertised? Yes, it's a good idea to keep your eyes on the vehicle in front of you (especially if that vehicle is a big truck). It's also a good idea to keep glancing in the rearview mirror and keep looking to either side (Remember that peripheral vision that side mirrors can give?). Every distraction can cost seconds, damages, and lives. That goes for changing the radio station, picking a new playlist from the MP3 player, taking or making a mobile phone call (legal only in some states now), or otherwise taking your brain and wits away from their primary vocation when you're driving: keeping yourself alive.

Presumably, the digital ads will be controlled by some sort of frequency, meaning Wi-Fi or cellular transmitter or something like that. One shudders to think what an opportunity that would be for a hacker. Surely all political parties have access to people with such skills. The more frightening thought is hackers with access to indecent advertising. Talk about causing disruptions on the road!

Times are tough, belts needed to be tightened, and California has a veritable army of drivers on the road at any given time. But placing digital advertisements on license plates isn't a responsible way to make money (if responsibility is defined as putting safety first).

The Spies Among Us: Who's Next?

"They couldn't have been spies. Look what she did with the hydrangeas."

Such was a quote from a neighbor of Cynthia Murphy (right), one of the 10 people arrested recently on charges of spying for Russia. With varying degrees, each of these people had lived in the U.S. for a number of years, established a number of networks as if they were "normal" people, and given themselves enough of a public profile that they were, in effect, hiding in plain sight.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has released information claiming observations of those people, some during a number of years, engaged in all manner of espionage-like activities, including dead drops, swapping of bags containing sensitive material, and even exchanging coded electronic messages from stable laptops to moving vehicles via wireless networks.

What are we to make of this? Is this just Desperate Housewives run amok? Surely this sort of thing doesn't go on anymore. The Cold War is over. The Berlin Wall has come down. The Soviet Union is no more.

And yet spying exists in the world. Countries and their governments strive for dominance and hegemony and bragging rights and oil and gas rights and food supplies and all manner of other things on the world stage — always looking to get ahead, gain an edge, pull a fast one, embarrass enemies, strike first and (maybe) ask questions later.

This latest episode, a mixture of antiquated methods and up-to-the-minute technology, is nothing more than the latest chapter in an ongoing struggle between West and East — old enemies fighting in a new way.

Secrets are big business. People pay a lot of money, even kill, to obtain and/or protect them. A secret can be worth a thousand words or just a few letters or words of code that, put in the correct sequence or to the correct person, can make all the difference in the world between the access codes of a country's missile defense system and the menu at a Chinese restaurant.

It should be no surprise that Russia, tiring of hearing that the U.S. was the only remaining superpower, wanted a piece of all that, whatever all that was — economic, trade, military secrets. The nature of espionage is such that, when discovered, secrets never quite lend themselves to totally being unraveled, existing in murky shadows of cloak and dagger and mistrust as they do.

Then there are the hydrangeas. One of the alleged spies had quite a green thumb — which, of course, made a great cover for what she was really doing — namely, releasing secret information about her new homeland to her original homeland. She was not alone: many of the people arrested lived quiet or sometimes rather loud lives, in the public eye or at least in semi-public circles. These people made friends, bonds, and families and appeared for all the world like normal Americans, living in normal American homes. But they obviously were not normal Americans, despite the apparent normality of the homes in which they lived and the circles in which they traveled. (And by normal here is meant not spying for another country).

That these people were able to get away with such audacious activities for so long calls into question (or, at least, it should) the actions, intentions, and future plans of many others that we all know, know of, or perhaps want to know. The question should be asked, of course: How well do you know that family member, friend, or acquaintance? It's probably not time to get back into the boom shelter or have a spy flick night filled with The Manchurian Candidate, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and any number of James Bond flicks. However, it's probably a good idea as well to pay more attention to what's going in the immediate vicinity and how well we conceal our own personal information, especially in this day and age of open-source, open-book social media networks run rampant.

If your neighbor walks around with stained thumbs a lot, it's probably a good idea to make sure that the stains come from garden soil, not photocopied documents.