Joining the microwaving marvel that is the popcorn button is the newest engineering innovation in kitchen convenience: The pizza bump.

The bump, whether bowed out from the back of the appliance or curved out in front, allows a round frozen pizza to fit into a toaster oven, which is relatively small and boxy…

“The pizza bump is because people are cooking a lot of frozen pizzas but also because appliance manufacturers are looking for something to differentiate their products,” said Sharon Franke, the longtime director of kitchen appliances and technology at the Good Housekeeping Institute.

I’m missing out on the freezer-case pie phenomenon, probably because I live in a place where it’s relatively easy (and cheap) to grab a fresh slice. I wouldn’t mind having the added bump-space for a hassle-free way to reheat leftovers, though.

In the half-century since Stanley Milgram’s famed psychological experimentation on unwavering obedience to authority, it seems that little has changed about human impulses, other than the need for television cameras to go with the simulated electrocutions:

The producers of [the French television documentary] “The Game of Death,” set to air Wednesday night, wanted to examine both what they call TV’s mind-numbing power to suspend morality, and the striking human willingness to obey orders.

“Television is a power. We know it, but it’s theoretical,” producer Christophe Nick told the daily Le Parisien. “I wondered: Is it so important that it can turn us into potential executioners?”

In the end, more than four in five “players” gave the maximum jolt.

“People never would have obeyed if they didn’t have trust,” Nick was quoted as saying in the paper’s Wednesday edition. “They told themselves, ‘TV knows what it’s doing.’”

In fact, this is worse than Milgram’s experiments. Back then, the test subjects at least had anonymity to mask their actions — they could rationalize that no one outside of a Yale University lab would ever know what they had done. But adding in the modern-day convention of a (fake) reality show means that the French participants carried out their deeds knowing full well that millions would be watching. Draw your own conclusions on how that reflects current societal mores.

Despite the false-front this time around, Europeans seem to approach reality TV a bit too seriously:

In the Netherlands in 2007, a game show titled the “Big Donor Show” was branded as tasteless and unethical for offering a kidney as top prize. Its aim, to raise awareness about those awaiting for organ transplants, appeared to work: over 12,000 people registered as organ donors after the broadcast. That was at least three times the normal average – for a month.

Silly Euros! Don’t they know that true reality television, a la the American iterations, has no redeeming value? At best, it produces forgettable celebrity and even more forgettable gross-out spectacles. No additional electricity required.

The reinvention of Mike Tyson continues: He’s literally going to the birds, via a reality show on Animal Planet.

Tyson, a life-long pigeon keeper, will star in a series about bird racing… “I may have stopped fighting,” says the former heavyweight champ. “But I never stopped flying birds. It’s my first love.”

The show, to be called “Take on Tyson,” pits Tyson and his birds against the best racing-pigeon owners in New York.

Apparently, pigeon racing is an organized sport, governed by something called the American Racing Pigeon Union. Presumably, the world of cockfighting would have been Plan B.

I don’t doubt Tyson’s devotion to his winged friends, as displayed on this old “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” segment. Still, don’t be surprised if one of the signature moments from this show ends up being Tyson taking a bird-sized bite out of an under-performing flier.

Once-proud branches of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now are now rushing to shed that video-stung ACORN tag:

One of the latest groups to adopt a new name is ACORN Housing, long one of the best-funded affiliates. Now, the group is calling itself the Affordable Housing Centers of America.

Others changing their names include what were among the largest affiliates: California ACORN is now Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, and New York ACORN has become New York Communities for Change. More are expected to follow suit.

The former close association with President Obama — which prompted the conservative targeting against ACORN in the first place — seems to have been lost in this rebranding scramble. Or, more likely, it’s long since worn off, and the taint of scandal has wiped out any lingering positive vibes that the brand might have retained.

Among the predictable anti-1960s culture-war changes proposed by the newly-reactionary Texas State Board of Education for school textbooks is an almost out-of-place targeting of the nation’s third President:

- Thomas Jefferson no longer included among writers influencing the nation’s intellectual origins. Jefferson, a deist who helped pioneer the legal theory of the separation of church and state, is not a model founder in the board’s judgment.

Despite a rationalization that Jefferson’s ideas were derivative of others’ (and thus are curriculum-redundant), it’s pretty clear that his lack of devotion to strict Christian ethics puts him out of favor with modern-day conservatives.

As it turns out, this makes for strange bedfellows. A long-standing argument on the left that Jefferson was too much of a socio-political extremist to merit continued reverence basically aims for the same result: A marginalization of Jeffersonian ideals within American political culture. While there hasn’t been a concerted push from the liberal side to excise the Sage of Monticello from U.S. history, an unexpected impetus from across the political aisle could prompt a critical reappraisal that transcends ideology.

Considering all this, I guess it’s a wonder that Jefferson hasn’t been purged from his founding-father perch yet. The notion of his ideals might be just about correct, considering that they incur offense from both sides of the political divide, might be what’s saving him.

Rielle Hunter is back, with a tell-all interview in GQ Magazine about her Presidential-quashing paternity affair with John Edwards.

Not that I care much for political scandal, even one as sorted as this one. I am happy to see that Hunter took a little time in the interview to acknowledge her antecedaneous 1980s fictional depiction:

There’s been one time period in my entire life that I would qualify myself as promiscuous. There’s this Jay McInerney book ["Story of My Life," narrated by a character based on Hunter, who briefly dated McInerney], and let’s correct a part of that right now. In my early twenties, there was a time period when I, in the late ’80s, did cocaine. And partied. I was living in New York City… But the point being, I was never, as it’s been reported, a drug addict. The word “addiction” means inability to stop. I stopped doing drugs in my twenties. As for being promiscuous, I would say that I was a bit promiscuous for about six months. But it was because I was partying, and there were a lot of very good-looking available 20-year-old men around that you’d be partying with, and there was a lot of, you know, hooking up going on.

So Hunter confirms that she was the inspiration for Alison Poole. At least, the Alison Poole character in “Story of My Life”. Maybe not so much for Poole’s crossover appearance in another, contemporary literary setting:

It must have also impressed fellow ’80s lit sensation Bret Easton Ellis, because he wrote McInerney’s Alison Poole right into the cultural earthquake that was “American Psycho.” Being “American Psycho,” Poole’s scene was short and includes brutal sodomy — and the Kentucky Derby, if memory serves.

No need for Hunter to deny ever attending the Kentucky Derby. Or hooking up with Patrick Bateman — because let’s face it, Edwards was close enough.

UPDATE: I guess I need to reread “Glamorama”, because I’d completely forgotten that Ellis had revived Poole-slash-Hunter in that later novel:

In “Glamorama”, Poole’s characterization is amplified, but only slightly more nuanced. She’s the coke-addled, sex-fiend girlfriend of a jealous club owner who happens to also be sleeping with the protagonist of the novel, Victor Ward, who is a model and promoter. Once again, the first time readers meet her is during a sex scene. After which, she berates Ward for not breaking up with his other girlfriend, a supermodel… Later, Poole loses it at her boyfriend Damien’s club opening after a rival for Ward’s affections, Lauren Hynde, sets her off.

As with the “American Psycho” appearance, no surprise that Hunter wouldn’t have brought up this later, even more unflattering portrayal. All told, I still go with the late truth about Hunter, because it’s easily stranger than either Ellis’ or McInerney’s fiction.

Take two parts Dr. Seuss, blend in one part Edgar Allan Poe, and you’ve got “Horrton Hears A Heart!”:

One day I told Sam that I’d sample his pork.

He gleefully held out a bit on a fork

and I ripped the utensil from him with my trunk!

I poked out the Eye of that ham-sucking punk!

I jumped toward him with my whole two tons intent

on quashing Sam’s life – one hundred per cent!

I wish I could look forward to forthcoming editions, like “One Death, Two Death, Red Death, Blue Death” and “The Grinch and the Pendulum” (not to mention the sequel to the above, “Horrton Hatches The Raven”). But considering that “Edgar Allan Seuss” hasn’t expanded upon this literary mashup since 1996, despite a brief spurt of rediscovered fame five years ago, I’m not holding my breath.

Whereas a generation or two ago, a top-flight Manhattan nightclub had to worry about getting busted for fostering the inevitable late-night narcotics trade, nowadays mere tobacco smoke threatens to get a joint shut down:

The nightclub, the M2 UltraLounge on West 28th Street in Manhattan, went on trial last week at a special administrative court that the city uses when it seeks to take away property. If the case against the club succeeds, it would be the first time the city had closed a business solely for flouting a ban on smoking.

City officials have also moved to take several other clubs before the court, seeking to revoke their food and beverage licenses. It has been an open secret for years among the late-night set that there is a network of so-called smoke-easies throughout the city, from little neighborhood dives to glossy, exclusive boîtes, that let patrons smoke illegally.

The law’s the law, and I’m no big fan of ciggie smoke clouding up the bar. Still, it says something about the sanitized state of current New York club culture. I’m wondering how much street toot of the non-Marlboro nature is circulating in these same locales, while the health department is focusing all their efforts on the filtered tips.

The dismal science meets spiritual quantification in “The Economics of Sainthood (a preliminary investigation)”, a paper out of Harvard’s Economics Department:

Saint-making has been a major activity of the Catholic Church for centuries. The pace of sanctifications has picked up noticeably in the last several decades under the last two popes, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Our goal is to apply social-science reasoning to understand the Church’s choices on numbers and characteristics of saints, gauged by location and socioeconomic attributes of the persons designated as blessed.

Among the econo-ecclesiastical terms applied to this analysis: “Saint-making fatigue” and “canonization per capita”. What, no “initial beatification offering (IBO)”?

The opening paragraph from John Fante’s “Ask the Dust”:

One night I was sitting on the bed in my hotel room on Bunker Hill, down in the middle of Los Angeles. It was an important night in my life, because I had to make a decision about the hotel. Either I paid up or I got out: that was what the note said, the note the landlady had put under my door. A great problem, deserving acute attention. I solved it by turning out the lights and going to bed.

A good analogy for what’s going down with me lately, up to and including the solution. And so far so good, I might add.

Now that the Supreme Court has OKed unbridled corporation spending on political campaigns, one intrepid company is cutting out the middleman:

In a soothing voice, a narrator bemoans that “as much as corporate interests gave to politicians, we could never be absolutely sure they would do our bidding.” The ad includes images of gleaming office towers and disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and promises Murray Hill will bring “enlightened self-interest and corporate accounting” to Congress.

It concludes with a rousing call to action: “Vote for Murray Hill Incorporated for Congress — for the best democracy money can buy.”

Yep, Murray Hill Inc. for Congress is dripping with sarcasm, right down to a franchising program for other corporate-politico aspirants:

The first corporation to enter into a franchise agreement with Murray Hill Inc. is Computer Umbrella Inc. of Sterling Virginia. Computer Umbrella’s own Designated Human, Jonathan Stewart, is charting the corporation’s run for U.S. Congress in Virginia’s 10th District.

“We are proud to embrace the Murray Hill Inc. Brand,“ Stewart says. “From steel to silicon, it’s America’s entrepreneurs who find and exploit the new markets. The democracy market in Washington DC today looks like Silicon Valley 30 years ago. CUI wants to position itself as early leader in this emerging market along with Murray Hill Inc.”

There are pesky electoral and Constitutional requirements to overcome before corporate entities start stumping for office. But imagine the possibilities:

- Individual office-seekers setting up their candidacies as corporations, so that any irregularities or scandals later on can be deflected from them personally (“I didn’t hire those hookers, it was my limited liability partnership!”)

- Launching single-purpose business ventures every election cycle

- Watching mergers and acquisitions consolidate a fragmented corporate-constituent landscape

- Initial public offerings and stock market indexes for tracking incumbent performances

And if Murray Hill Inc. doesn’t make it to Capitol Hill, maybe the plucky PR firm could run for a local position in New York. I’m thinking a certain Manhattan neighborhood would be a good fit.

No, it didn’t take long after getting my iPhone 3GS for me to file an iPod Random Tracks post. Battery-drain be damned, I’ve gotta keep the music flowing during the daily commutes!

So this is the first edition of this little shuffled-up tunestream report to come out of my telephonic device. I’ve still got my iTouch, and it’s still going strong; but I don’t see listening to music on it as much anymore. The iPhone will be my personal jambox going forward (and no need to change the name of this Category, since the media-playing functionality is called “iPod” in the iPhone’s OS).

And with that, let’s get onto the list: The last five randomized tracks to pour through the earbuds, with accompanying lyrical snippet from each.

1. “Mathematics”, Little Boots - Don’t know my Fibonacci or Pythagoras.

2. “Great DJ”, The Ting Tings - Don’t you feel you’re growing up undone?

3. “Fancy Footwork (Death To The Throne remix)”, Chromeo - And maybe do the twerk.

4. “Ice Cream (Van She Remix)”, New Young Pony Club - Treat that treats you so mean.

5. “Hot Hot Hot!!! (Extended mix)”, The Cure - But I like it when that lightning comes.

YEOW! Just got a paper cut on my pinkie. Hurts like the devil.

Shouldn’t paper cuts would be a thing of the past? If that “paperless office” that Newsweek had predicted back in 1975 would get here already, I wouldn’t be in this pain right now. Nor would I be compelled to consult dubious preventative cures.

The above photo is from today’s New York Daily News article on the residential/merchant displacements caused by Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards project. I find this visual — a bunch of padlocks “strung” together in a row on a construction-site chain-link fence — that I wanted to preserve it here (and on Flickr).

It’s not explicitly stated, but I got the impression from the article that this arrangement of locks represents a protest by the locals against the neighborhood disruption. If so, it’s a creative way to get the point across. I’m sure I’ve seen this before, although it couldn’t have been more than 3-4 locks grouped together; anything more than that would have piqued my curiosity before coming upon this image.

Am I missing the boat, and this chain-linking of locks is common-knowledge way of expressing discontent? I don’t know if there’s a clear symbolism: Are the protesters “locking out” the transgressors, figuratively or concretely? Or is it simply a relatively cheap and tamper-proof way to plant a protest symbol?

If the idea behind Twitter is to encourage constant bite-sized chatter, the majority of the online flock ain’t chirping:

It seems that Twitter is becoming more of news feed than a social network, said Paul Judge, author of the report and chief research officer at Barracuda Networks. And that raises questions about its growth potential, as well as how the Internet phenomenon will make money.

As of December 2009, only 21% of Twitter account holders were what Barracuda defines as “true users,” meaning someone who has at least 10 followers, follows at least 10 people and has tweeted at least 10 times. That indicates that most Twitter users “came online to follow their favorite celebrities, not to interact with their buddies the way they would on Facebook or MySpace,” said Judge.

On a basic level, this is normal: Most networks, online and off, are driven by a dedicated minority-vanguard of members. That’s the nature of any organization, social or not.

Still, the service’s nature does encourage a stalker-ish approach. Certainly, the celebrity accounts often sport a huge imbalance between “following” and “followers”, as practically a badge of honor. Their fans are bound to emulate that approach, even on a vastly smaller scale.

I’ll also point out that the notion of Twitter as more of an information stream, and less of a clubby hangout, is the chief reason I bothered to start using it. So maybe my instincts were right in the first place; or else the rest of the Twitteratti have come around to my viewpoint.

In the same sense that trees falling in the forest don’t make a sound, the recent global wave of earthquakes have taken on deadly significance only due to the presence of more people:

“Look at some of the big ones recently,” said Debarati Guha-Sapir, director of the World Health Organization’s disaster epidemiology research center. “Had the Izmit or Bhuj quakes happened 30 years ago, the events would have been relatively insignificant as the population of these cities were a third of what it was when it did happen. Increasing population density makes a small event into a big one.”

Same dynamic is at play with hurricanes, mudslides, and other natural disasters: They’re occurring just as frequently as they ever have, but nowadays, there are more people in the way. I’m guessing we’ve reached maximum capacity for the planet — short of colonizing deserts and ocean floors and such.

Spring is in the air in New York, so that must mean it’s time for the City’s official condoms to get a provocative wrapper-redesign:

More than 15,000 online voters have spoken: City-sponsored condoms will come packaged with a computer power button logo. “There’s a subtle message in the shape, so I figured if I don’t get disqualified, it will work great,” said contest winner Luis Acosta, a 29-year-old graphic designer…

His limited-edition design won 23% of the vote, with others running close. A top hat earned 21%; a colorful circle design won 20%. A manhole cover and a train design got 19% and 17%, respectively.

Congratulations, Department of Health. For the next year, no one in the five boroughs will be able to start up their power-buttoned tech devices without letting loose a phallic-inspired giggle.

I have to admit, that humble circular-stick icon does suggest an at-attention member. The “sac” hanging below is probably too round to represent the average male’s package, but stylization trumps anatomy when it comes to symbolism. Makes me wonder if some hardware-designing geek didn’t have this interpretation in mind years ago, and it took this prophylactic application to make us all catch on.

I’d already tweeted this earlier today, but it’s worthy of expanded cross-posting to the mother-blog:

March, the most wardrobe-challenging of months. I’m shiver-cold in the mornings, and sweaty-ish by late afternoons.

It’s the in-between weather that’s not-quite-Winter, and not-quite-Spring, that makes dressing up such an ordeal for this 31-day span. Which, vapidness aside, is why I think that T.S. Eliot was off by a month in his “cruellest” estimation.

As with any techie-computer default setting, the “Sent from my iPhone” email signature has become a familiar sight in inboxes everywhere.

When the Mail app came to my iTouch, I naturally resented the inclusion of that inaccurate descriptor on my outgoing email messages. So I made a point of editing it to: “Sent from my iPod (not iPhone!)”. And the few people who noticed it got a kick out of it.

Now that I’ve got an iPhone, I suppose I can comfortably use the rest of the iNation’s default tagline. And yet, my previous declaration regarding my iTouch-origined email compels me to retain my previous qualifier. So then, my iPhone’s email signature reads as follows:

Sent from my iPhone (not iPod!)

For those that know my mobile-email history, it’s clear enough. For those that don’t, well, they’ll just have to wonder.

It’s been said before, so why not say it again: New York City’s Internet industry is on a comeback trail.

“Book publishing, advertising, media and even the fashion industry are all located in New York. These are the main industries that are being reshaped and redefined by technology and the Internet,” says AnnaLee Saxenian, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies regional economics and technology entrepreneurship.

To get a vivid snapshot of this new generation of Web innovation, one needs to look no further than the portfolio of Fred Wilson, co-founder of Union Square Ventures and a force within the New York start-up scene. Run through a list of Web darlings here — Boxee, software that pipes video from the Internet to a television; Tumblr, a microblogging platform; and Foursquare, a mobile social network — and Union Square is an investor.

“The software business has morphed into the Internet business,” Mr. Wilson says. “Ten years ago, maybe 80 percent of software was being built for enterprise. Now, it’s being written for consumers and is more media-centric than ever. And, historically, those have been New York’s strongest sectors.”

The thing is, the same claim was made exactly four years ago. That’s where the accompanying map came from; many of those lean-running operations are still around, and are thriving. Either this latest declaration of five-borough tech-blooming is the result of a critical mass having been established in the middle of the past decade, or else the concept is simply being periodically recycled.

In the space of 20 minutes of walk-around time this afternoon, my feet led me to two distinctly different ground-level encounters:

- As I first set out, a quick glance down to my shoes yielded my find of a shiny 25-cent piece, about which I duly tweeted.

- As I was heading back along almost the same paved terrain, a slippery-ish step made me look back — where I saw a squished bird that I had just re-trampled. (Unlike the quarter, I let this found object lie where it lay.)

Quite the swing in underfoot discoveries. If it portends the way this week will go for me, I’d better buckle up for a wild ride. (And no, the Twitter/bird parallel is not lost on me; hopefully my tweeting didn’t karmically trigger a dead-bird theme.)