This Is Just Stupid!

Dezeen Design Magazine is not a stupid website. In fact, they feature some really cool design stuff that is a pleasure to look at. So why did they have to come up with such a stupid title for their recent blog post about a gorgeous home that was built in India?

The title of their post was:

The House With Balls by Matharoo Associates

This title is just crass. Technically it does tell you about one key feature of the home – round concrete balls that are an intricate part of the final design of the space. However it reduces this really cool design feature to a bad headline joke.

So what are these balls of which the headline speaks? They are concrete balls that are linked to the shutters of the home. The home’s main room is lined with shutters. On one side, the shutters open on to huge tanks for breeding fish. When the shutters are opened, these concrete balls dip into the tanks so that you can’t see them. When the shutters are closed, these balls move around lightly in the breeze. The visual effect is very intriguing especially when some of the shutters are open and some are left closed.

There are also many other cool things about this house. For example, each window has a concrete frame built around it that serves as a window seat, a counter bar, a weather-protection device, a deterrent to snakes and rats and a set of steps to the garden area. Even if the house didn’t have these detailed features, it is a neat space just in the fact that it serves as both a summer retreat and a huge aquarium with an observation area.

It is unfortunate that the intricate details of such a cool building are reduced to a bad joke with the headline of this post. In fairness, it’s not really Dezeen’s fault since “House with Balls” is the actual name that the project developers gave to this project.

Daniel Chiang from Toronto, Canada sent in this picture that he took while he was out and about because he just couldn’t believe how stupid it was. Here’s what he had to say about his submission:

“My wife and I were driving down the street when we saw this woman and her child. They were on a moped riding along at 40km/h on a very busy city street here in Toronto.  To our horrid surprise, her son (who couldn’t be more than 5 years old) was hanging on for dear life as she zoomed down the street. Luckily he had his helmet on and a PERSONAL FLOTATION DEVICE to help him from drowning in his own blood after he falls off and gets run over by a Mack truck.”

Of course, we don’t really know why this child was dressed up in a PFD. Maybe they were off to swim class and were running late. Or maybe the child just wanted to wear the outfit outside … you know how kids can be about things like that! Nevertheless, we do agree that it’s stupid for this woman to be zooming along down the highway that quickly with such a young child clinging to her back. The only thing more stupid would have been if the child hadn’t been wearing a helmet at all. Unfortunately, this continues to be a problem for kids on bikes and motorcycles throughout the world.

Note: We are always happy to receive submissions from you about the stupid things that you see, hear and read during your daily adventures. In fact, you can earn a prize for submitting your stupid stuff. Learn more.

Paul Yarrow is a man in London who just might be really smart. Or maybe he’s really stupid. It’s kind of hard to say in this era when reality is something that you see on TV.

So who exactly is Paul Yarrow?

He’s a guy who has become very well-known for his television appearances. Where might you have seen him? In the background of live news reports in the area where he lives. That’s because Yarrow seems to have made it his mission to appear on as many news casts as possible. He ventures around town on the hunt for news cameras that are filming live. He then works his way into the background of whatever is going on.

Occasionally, Yarrow manages to end up on other television shows as well. For example, he was spotted on The Antiques Roadshow. However, he remains just a member of the crowd in the background, albeit a member who is starting to get noticed just for appearing everywhere.

Sometimes the news spots that Yarrow works himself into are rather controversial. For example, he made it into a news photo featuring an image of a memorial for the victims of the 7/7 terrorist attacks that happened in London. This was a really serious event and it takes away from the value of the event that Yarrow was there just to get his face in the news again.

In fairness, people who know Yarrow say that he’s a good guy. In fact, he’s even won an award for being a good Samaritan because of the kind acts that he performs in his community. So maybe it’s okay that he spends the rest of his time trying to get famous as an infamous person in the background of local newscasts.

What do you think? Is this a great way to gain some fame for doing nothing or is it stupid?

Chelsea Clinton recently got married. Good for her. But how ridiculous was her wedding?! Here is a look at five of the reasons why Chelsea Clinton’s wedding was incredibly stupid:

1. She reportedly paid $15,000 for luxury port-a-potties. Sure, it’s nice that her guests had flushable toilets for the big day but did they really need full-porcelain seats and a stereo playing music in the bathrooms? What a waste of money!
2. The famous people were no-shows. There were rumors buzzing around for weeks before the wedding that attendees would include famous people such as Oprah Winfrey, Barbra Streisand and Steven Spielberg. None of these people made an actual appearance at the wedding. In fact, they may not even have really been invited.
3. It was partially a real estate marketing ploy. The wedding was held at the Astor Courts Estate, a property that had been up for sale. It was taken off the market for the wedding. It’s now back on the market and the hope is that it will sell now that it has the distinction of being the place where Chelsea got married.
4. The menu is still a secret. It has been revealed that the wedding cake was a gluten-free cake but the rest of the menu is strictly a secret. Contracts have been signed not to reveal this information. Why does this need to be a big secret?!
5. The wedding poem was a disaster. If anything should have been kept secret it was the choice of The Life That I Have as the wedding poem for the ceremony. The choice has been mocked in headlines around the world since it isn’t really about love but basically about torture and death.

The new iPhone 4 (and the upgraded iOS 4) is not a stupid product. There is a reason that everyone loves the iPhone so much that they will wait in line for it for entire days. However, Apple really did some dumb stuff when it came to this most recent release.

5 examples of stupidity on the part of Apple this time around:

1. Lack of product. The company didn’t prepare in advance for the onslaught of new customers which meant that pre-orders sold out. Some people who are already loyal Apple fans couldn’t upgrade because the company hadn’t prepared properly.
2. Website down. When so many people did try to pre-order, the Apple website went down. Having been through this before during phone launches and busy times like Black Friday shopping, a site like Apple should be ready to have their website flooded with hits.
3. No white iphones. Making people who want a white version of the phone wait several weeks after the original launch is a bad business move. The products should have both been ready at the same time.
4. Problems with iOS upgrade. Customers upgrading older versions of the phone to iOS 4 experienced significant problems ranging from slowed-down phones to completely unusable devices. Shouldn’t Apple have their iPhone upgrade problems fixed by the fourth time around?!
5. Response to reception problem. It was bad enough that customers with the new phone immediately started complaining about its reception problem. But Apple’s response was really dumb. They said that iPhones had always had such terrible reception and that the old iPhones just showed more bars of service incorrectly. So basically they announced that they’d always had terrible phone reception and were just now caught in the act.

Some of the stupidest criminals out there are the ones who steal from their own employers. It’s a common enough practice but that’s precisely why it’s dumb. Employers have safeguards in place to protect themselves from internal theft. Employees who know about those safeguards and ignore them then get caught in the act of stealing are just plain stupid. But the even stupider criminal is the one who does this at a place of employment that is owned by cops.

Cops & Doughnuts is a bakery in Michigan that is owned by nine officers. (Whether or not doughnut-eating cops should be owning their own bakery and presumably eating all of their profits is another dumb story altogether!) An employee of the bakery decided to enter a locked office and steal several hundred dollars from the cops. When you combine stealing from the cops with stealing from your employers all you get is a whole lot of trouble.

One of the selling points of this shop is that it’s one of the safest places you can go to hang out over a cup of coffee. After all, it’s not like there’s likely to be a lot of crime in a place that’s owned by cops. If you were dumb enough to commit a crime here then you’d have to expect punishment in order for the cop owners to keep up appearances.

The city-based cops didn’t handle things themselves in this situation. They went for the big guns and called in the state police. They had proof on video of the theft (although thefts prior to the installation of the video camera were not punishable) and the young employee is facing some serious jail time as a result of his dumb actions. Cops are serious about their business and they are serious about their doughnuts; being in the business of stealing from them is definitely not a smart move!