“McQueen: Sartorial Learnings of Kazakhstani Publicity Tart For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Hoxton” anyone? With his latest take on swimwear, Alexander McQueen seems to be “channeling” Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat character, offering a version of the audacious “mankini” the comedy actor wore in his movie a couple of years ago.
McQueen’s swimming brief might be a little more subtle than Borat’s but it is just as ridiculous. At least the Kazakstani mankini had a construction designed for practicality; its over-the-shoulder straps providing vital lift and support while ingeniously leaving a great expanse of white flesh completely denuded and ready for painful sunburn.
Unless you are a perfect model size, with torso and legs in a specific proportion, you may have trouble wearing the “McQuini.” Men with long, rangey bodies will find themselves encountering an eye-watering triple wardrobe malfunction of a garroted windpipe, testicular bifurcation and a tan with a stripe down the middle of the chest that will look like a particularly brutal open-heart surgery scar. In hot conditions, it would be possible to un-noose yourself from the collar and let the long tie thing dangle down between your legs, as if doing a schoolboyish elephant impression, but then you’d look even sillier.
More importantly, isn’t the mankini a bit spring/summer 2006, darlings? Hasn’t it passed its sell-by date, along with using the phrase “Jagshemash!” as a greeting? In short, aren’t these disturbing T-bar trunks the sort of thing that Alexander “Lee” McQueen shouldn’t be putting his name to.
Firebox, a Web site that specializes in party costumes, practical jokes and novelties, has been doing officially licensed Borat mankinis (10 percent elastane, 90 percent polyester, one size fits all — Naaice!) at US$19.80 each since November, 2007, and they’ve already sold more than 10,000. “We have been overwhelmed by the response,” says Firebox director Christian Robinson. “We never thought that something so humiliating would prove to be so popular.” Go to the Firebox Web site and you’ll see that lots of satisfied customers have posted up pictures of themselves wearing their mankinis on various raucous evenings out. Here’s Daz and Ben, Kevin and a Yorkshire-man called Rona whose mankini caption reads, “You’re never too old.” Actually, on second thoughts, don’t look at that one.
June 2 to June 8 Taiwan’s woodcutters believe that if they see even one speck of red in their cooked rice, no matter how small, an accident is going to happen. Peng Chin-tian (彭錦田) swears that this has proven to be true at every stop during his decades-long career in the logging industry. Along with mining, timber harvesting was once considered the most dangerous profession in Taiwan. Not only were mishaps common during all stages of processing, it was difficult to transport the injured to get medical treatment. Many died during the arduous journey. Peng recounts some of his accidents in
“Why does Taiwan identity decline?”a group of researchers lead by University of Nevada political scientist Austin Wang (王宏恩) asked in a recent paper. After all, it is not difficult to explain the rise in Taiwanese identity after the early 1990s. But no model predicted its decline during the 2016-2018 period, they say. After testing various alternative explanations, Wang et al argue that the fall-off in Taiwanese identity during that period is related to voter hedging based on the performance of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Since the DPP is perceived as the guardian of Taiwan identity, when it performs well,
A short walk beneath the dense Amazon canopy, the forest abruptly opens up. Fallen logs are rotting, the trees grow sparser and the temperature rises in places sunlight hits the ground. This is what 24 years of severe drought looks like in the world’s largest rainforest. But this patch of degraded forest, about the size of a soccer field, is a scientific experiment. Launched in 2000 by Brazilian and British scientists, Esecaflor — short for “Forest Drought Study Project” in Portuguese — set out to simulate a future in which the changing climate could deplete the Amazon of rainfall. It is
Artifacts found at archeological sites in France and Spain along the Bay of Biscay shoreline show that humans have been crafting tools from whale bones since more than 20,000 years ago, illustrating anew the resourcefulness of prehistoric people. The tools, primarily hunting implements such as projectile points, were fashioned from the bones of at least five species of large whales, the researchers said. Bones from sperm whales were the most abundant, followed by fin whales, gray whales, right or bowhead whales — two species indistinguishable with the analytical method used in the study — and blue whales. With seafaring capabilities by humans
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