Designer Paul Smith “laments the decline of the peacock male in the modern world and bemoans the decline of flamboyant youth tribes, from mods to hippies to the crazy-colored British goths, that have kept menswear interesting over the decades.”

An MIT grad student and synthetic biologist won the 2008 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for inventing processes that help kill drug-resistant bacteria and eradicate biofilm, also known as slime cities. If you’re thinking, “wouldn’t it be fun to play with slime cities as a strategy game,” you’re in luck. And not alone.

Read up on Charles Martel, why don’t you.

A “blockbuster” 300-piece Marilyn Monroe exhibit is coming to the Chicago Cultural Center in July. The collection includes paintings, photographs, sculpture and prints from 80+ artists.

A “self-appointed protector of squirrels” (does he have an iron-on badge?) pays for hundreds of squirrel homes in a NYC park. In Grant Park, the squirrels have large nests in the top of trees that are visible in winter. But if our squirrels had little houses, they could decorate, read apartment therapy and buy things at Jayson. You know, if they could fit into the little houses. Write your alderman.

A ten-year-old girl won the National Geographic’s Planetary Mnemonic Contest with her whimsical mnemonic for the 11 recognized planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres (dwarf), Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto (dwarf) and Eris (dwarf). Very cool. Her mnemonic will be published in a book and recorded in a song by Lisa Loeb.

Chicago Sells Well: the Midwest correspondent for The Economist “observes the unexpected beauties of Chicago.”

South Carolina is trying to woo us here in Chicago (and even I’m tired of the cold by now.) Today I saw a tour bus with the “Time to Thaw” theme. It was empty on the exposed upper deck, except for two snowmen. Bummer, though, that Southwest doesn’t fly to South Carolina.

Crain’s Chicago Business reports that a panel (a cabal, meeting in a conclave, no doubt) wants to improve Michigan Ave between the river and Millennium Park. Changes include ornamental steps leading to the Illinois Center and streetlights. But extending Lake Street to the Lakeshore East development? Lake Street ends at an entrance to the Aon Center. They would have to build a bridge over the stair area, because that entrance is part of the Aon structure. Not that I’ve looked at the blueprints or anything. But extending Lake Street is about as likely to happen as the Mandarin Oriental actually getting built within the next 10 years.

The Art Institute has a free day-long symposium on the opening day of the exhibition Ed Ruscha and Photography, on March 1. Ruscha opens the symposium with a lecture at 10:30. Other speakers follow, including exhibition curator Sylvia Wolf.

I mention this little Q&A with an explorer for the following quote: “My first wife and I wanted some quail’s eggs so we could breed them. We ordered 200 but they delivered 2,000. We bred them and in six months, every single one had escaped.”

Finally, there’s a fucking great story by Joshua Davis in the March issue of Wired. Here’s their logline: “When a freighter packed with 5,000 Mazdas worth $103 million flips onto its side in the North Pacific, a team of high-tech rescue artists, who call themselves Titan Salvage, get the call.” The Sea Cowboys swoops in on each member of the team in different parts of the world, and in a kind of Italian Job/Ocean’s 11/Sneakers style (though more in depth), describes the specialty of each man on the team and limns some good context. The article has a kick-ass narrative, with big hairy obstacles culminating in a hard-fought victory tempered with grief — and the Titan team, with their different specialties, is fascinating to read about. Someone’s gonna make this a movie. How could they not? I’m compelled to write a script from it right now.

I was at the Whole Foods on Huron St. this past weekend, buying two sacks of traditional whole wheat flour. They have the mother lode of flour at that store, so that’s where I get whole wheat, spelt, oat, whole wheat pastry, etc. My husband and I start checking out and the guy at the register — a stoutish, bespectacled man old enough to have watched Welcome Back Kotter — gave me a look and actually said “What are you going to do with all this flour?”

Like 100% whole wheat flour is a common ingredient in the Anarchist’s Cookbook. Like I rolled up to his checkout with a wheelbarrow full of flour. But hey, I go through two bags of whole wheat flour in no time.

So I said, “Uh, I make bread with it.” And the guy gave me another look that implied ‘What are you trying to pull, lady? Like I’m gonna believe you MAKE BREAD with this stuff.’

Which, by the way, was the same response I got at a Barnes & Noble for asking if they had any books about monkeys. The clerk said, “Why do you want a book about monkeys?” — in a derisive tone that said I was a total spaz for asking that.

This kind of exchange happens to me all the time. Every time I go outside, I think.

1. Ask yourself: do you really need a new hardwood floor? Do you have any idea how painful this is going to be?

2. Okay, but it’s going to be an unbelievable time-suck. Add the stress and hassle of the entire project, and you may as well learn how to install the floor and do the damn thing yourself. If you care about things being done right, then you’ll put many, many hours into researching flooring, viz. the best method of installation and what wood to buy. You also need to get estimates from several contractors, then select a contractor. Then you need to make plans for staying somewhere else for about four days per 1,000 sf (glue fumes), and move all your stuff, with the exception of large furniture, out of the rooms to be worked on.

After your new floor is installed and you straggle back home, you have to figuratively clean the Augean stables. Your place will look like a demilitarized zone. You’ll have to clean it, and remember, you need to move all the stuff back to their regular places. This is like moving. Do you like moving? You’ll be doing it twice: before the floor is installed and after.

3. I didn’t mention the Augean stables for nothing. Budget at least five days for clean-up. The installers probably have a no-cleaning policy, but it doesn’t matter, because they’d make a dog’s breakfast of the job, anyway. You’ll need to buy a contractor’s solvent (e.g. De-Solv It) and a floor cleaner (e.g. Earth Friendly Cleaner’s Floor Kleener). The regular cleaner is good to have around, but it isn’t strong enough to remove the boot prints and hardened glue the installers leave on the wood slats. You’ll need a solvent to remove those things (yes, even the boot prints).

Part of the clean-up involves touching up the paint the installers nicked, gouged and wiped glue on. Plan on touching up your walls and floor moldings — even if the contractors installed brand-new moldings — because they’ll be damaged.

Replace your HVAC filters, because they’ll be filthy.

4. If the installers tell you they’re going to tarp anything, they’re lying. Buy your own tarps and put them on everything tarpable before the work starts — especially anything you leave in the rooms where they’ll be working. It’ll save you some cleaning. For tarps, we bought Banana Bags, which are supposed to cover beds and sofas. They don’t. Buy two regular tarps for each large piece of furniture.

5. Get familiar with your local Ace Hardware (we like the Streeterville location — Ben was pretty helpful), for cleaning, paint and other ancillary supplies.

6. Take the approach of people who deal with lots of independent contractors and provide an incentive-based pricing structure: Take the asking price of the independent, non-corporate contractor and tell them they can have 10% more than that price if everything is done perfectly. But if things aren’t done in accordance with that standard, they get 20% less than their asking price. We didn’t do that, because we dealt with a corporation and a contractor, working together in disharmony.

The bath towels I purchased from The Company Store less than a year ago are coming apart on the edges — unthreading at a rapid pace — and driving me crazy, whereas towels I’ve had for 10+ years have perfectly intact edges. The following is my email to The Company Store and their response.

I purchased a set of cotton bath towels from The Company Store less than a year ago (there is no date on the receipt, by the way), and every towel is unraveling on the edges. We’ve purchased down comforters and quilts from TCS before, and have been pleased with those items, but our experience with these towels is giving us doubts about the quality of your material.

You can’t get enough of Chelus fimbriata, aka the Matamata. Or is it a clump of weeds and algae?

A Night Out With Brian K. Vaughan at the NY Times. Guests on hand to celebrate Y’s recent, final issue included Joss Whedon, Jeff Garlin, Damon Lindelof, and a capuchin monkey.

Also in the NYT, a Q&A with chef Rick Bayless at home in Bucktown.

In Slate, Flann O’Brien (whom I love and need to read more of) and his “playfulness, black humor, and deranged whimsy.” A cloth hardcover set of five O’Brien novels has just been published, and damn, do I want that.