“The trend to protective gear is pretty strong right now,” said Richard Geist, the founder of Uncle Sam’s Army Navy Outfitters in downtown Manhattan. “It’s big with rappers, alternative types and even some women.”

Uncle Sam’s sells protective gear to the military. But most of its clients are civilians who snap up authentic bulletproof vests for as much as $1,000 or trade down to look-alike versions stripped of their armored lining ($24). Real or fake, “the look is tough,” Mr. Geist said, “and customers love it.”

Okay, fine, but that’s not much of an explanation. Let me give it a go:

Tipper Gore would probably say something to the effect of, the line between entertainment/fantasy violence and real violence is so blurred that people think walking down the street looking like Jack Bauer is not only necessary, but fun! We’re so accustomed to violence, so fundamentally warlike, that kevlar is appropriate for any occasion, because you never do know when you’re gonna find yourself on the wrong end of the gat.

That’s the cynic’s view, in which the whole world plays out like a present-day Raymond Chandler novel. Here’s another take: Gangsta rap recedes, providing an opening for a somewhat more peaceful situation in hip hop*. As such, flaunting your glock becomes, to an increasing degree, a dated sentiment — surprised or not, I think a lot of us wondered exactly what the funk, in this day and age, Weezy was doing rocking a handgun while smoking weed on the street (the weed part I understand). 1997 would’ve been a more appropriate time for that, stylistically and functionally. In 2010, beef is boring.

Still, life can be brutish and short, and the inclination against performing violence, or just making lyrics about pretending to do violence (Rick Ross, I’m looking at you), doesn’t make it go away. So defense becomes the new offense. Self-awareness, at least as it relates to one’s own frailty, is the new unchecked aggression. It sort of — if you buy into this sort of thing, which I do — loosely follows trending interpretations of masculinity. The latter generations embrace, or at least pay lip service to, a less aggressive interpretation of manhood, which is to a degree focused inward (although it still helps to have a big dick). The “new man,” as it were, is more of a silent type. He can do violence, yeah, and is equipped for it — why carry this heavy fucking vest otherwise? — but isn’t begging for the opportunity. These days, man have scruples.

Here we bring it back around to the fashion. I’m on a limb here: wearing a bullet proof vest to the club or anywhere else looks real stupid. They weigh like a thousand pounds, you’re bound to sweat, coat checking must be a nightmare… and how easy are these things to get off when, as Pauly D says, its time to “get to the business”? Is this the best we can do by the mens these days?

Probably not. I’m going to go ahead and assume this is one of those things that happens when culture rethinks itself. A socio-evolutionary dead end, if you will. Surely the next iteration of this sort of sentiment will be more nuanced. Nuance being something we do really well.

Wow, that’s a lot of thinky-wording for one day. I’m all uptight. Luckily today is awesome television day.

*I’m going to limit discussion, as it relates to larger culture, to hip-hop, partly because its more convienent for me, personally, to do so, but also because the Times seems to suggest that’s where this style originates. I’m not sure who exactly “alternative types” are, but, in the interest of being as forthright as possible, I’ll say straight up that I’ve never seen anyone wearing a bulletproof vest in the hipster bars I go to. Ok scroll back up now.

The phone rang again, and the defendant yelled, “I did it, I did it.” While the defendant exclaimed he is currently “trying to have sex with someone,” he would not say if he was masturbating on the line with the operator as he claimed.

[...]

Basso admits he has made obscene calls to 911 in the past, but he has never been caught because he uses a false name and address when calling. Basso was asked why he chose 911 to call, of all the numbers he could have called and he stated that he called 911 because he was out of minutes and 911 is free.

The Weekly Vice has it that Basso is also a really bad car thief, and he beats women, and he gets caught smoking the herbals sometimes. So maybe this here is the least of his concerns. Also, he seems never to have a job, and his sense of bewilderment at being arrested never wanes.

[via The Smoking Gun]

So remember the Hadron Collider, which, some scientists speculate, might through normal use accidentally tear a hole in the universe through which all life as we know it would pass and be compressed to the size of a dust mite? It keeps breaking down. Matter of fact, development of a  superconducting supercollider has been going on, in various forms, for several decades, yet the God particle eludes us.

So why don’t they just fix the damn thing?

Two scientists think the universe might be trying to tell us something:

I’m talking about the notion that the troubled collider is being sabotaged by its own future. A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson [The God Particle], which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.

According to what we know about gravity and, uh, other weighty subjects, its not out of the question that matter is transferable through time, as long as you’re going backwards. And to the extent that “time travel,” as it were, would create a paradox that would totally fuck everything up (think Marty McFly’s siblings as they’re airbrushed out of that photograph), that might only be true if you disrupt events whose conclusions are foregone:

While it is a paradox to go back in time and kill your grandfather, physicists agree there is no paradox if you go back in time and save him from being hit by a bus. In the case of the Higgs and the collider, it is as if something is going back in time to keep the universe from being hit by a bus. Although just why the Higgs would be a catastrophe is not clear. If we knew, presumably, we wouldn’t be trying to make one.

[New York Times, Telegraph]

It seems he underestimated the strength of his employer’s feelings on the matter of which toilet he should use.

Other highlights include the fact that the boss had the employee show him which toilet he used before deciding to shoot him (aim twice?), the fact that the boss is being charged with attempted murder for shooting the guy in the ankle, and most insightfully the article provides a great peek into the  inexplicable love among British journalists of British bathroom synonyms. This article includes reference to Potty, Loo, Toilet, and our favorite, the ‘toilet cubicle’.

Sign up here; the Pollinator Project will set you up with an area, and some info, like the types of flowers that need monitoring and which types of bees are active at a given time. All you have to do is situate yourself before a flower and observe it for a half hour, write your observations on a data sheet they provide, and send it back. Think of it as a meditation. Its way easier than being an actual beekeeper, and the odds of being stung are probably pretty low.

[via The High Line blog]