February 08, 2010
Today's dramatic reading
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Long live the Queen
Here's a page with a collection of photos of Queen Elizabeth II with every U.S. President since Harry (The Buck Stops Here) Truman. She's been queen since 1953. In three more years, she'll mark her Diamond Jubilee -- as her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria did.
H.T. Steve
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Sapporo snow festival
It's snowing here and of course we had the snowpocalypse (above) on the U.S. east coast over the weekend. So this is very timely.
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February 06, 2010
Super Bowl tech ads
ComputerWorld selected its Top 10 Super Bowl Tech ads. The oldest is a Xerox ad from '76. But the funniest, IMO, is this EDS ad from 2000.
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Record rattle snake
Steve sends some pix of this monster rattlesnake which was caught in St. Augustine, Florida. The article about it -- where there are more pix -- says it was 7 feet, 3 inches. It looks longer than 7 feet in this image.
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Listening with your eyes?
Watch this 6-second clip. Then play it again and listen to it with your eyes closed.
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February 05, 2010
"Safe and ineffective"
This is hilarious - though the New Scientist's calling it 'alleged ineffectiveness' is pretty lame.
Mass drug overdose – none deadNo ill effects were reported by hundreds of volunteers who took part in a mass-overdose stunt around the world to demonstrate that homeopathic remedies are nothing more than sugar pills.
"There were no casualties at all, as far as I know," says Martin Robbins, spokesman for the "10:23" campaign, created to highlight the alleged ineffectiveness of homeopathic remedies.
"No one was cured of anything either," says Robbins. Like an estimated 300 volunteers in several cities in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US, he swallowed a bottleful of around 80 homeopathic "pillules" at exactly 10.23 am on Saturday.
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Save Dave
So first, this guy working in an Australian bank gets busted viewing nude pix on his computer during a newscast. Naturally, his managers want him gone.
Now there's a campaign to spare him his job:
Campaign to save Dave the libidinous banker
Australian banker in hot water after being caught viewing salacious photosSYDNEY - An online campaign has started to save the job of an Australian banker who became an Internet sensation after he was caught on live television viewing images of scantily clad supermodel Miranda Kerr on his computer.
The financial Web site "Here is the City News" [...] has set up a "Save Dave" page that encourages readers to e-mail the public relations department of Macquarie Bank to save banker David Kiely's job.
The web campaign lists four reasons for Kiely to keep his job: he seems like a nice bloke; the photographs were not hardcore; he has suffered enough, and there's just too much political correctness in this world anyway.
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Make Valentine's Day special
...depending on your definition of special. Here's news from Toronto:
Restaurant promotes sex in its bathroomsMildred's Temple Kitchen is inviting customers to have sex in its bathrooms.
The Valentine's weekend promotion takes uncomfortable but electrifying sex from the close confines of an airplane and transfers it to the unisex stalls of the Hanna Ave. restaurant.
The Liberty Village restaurant proposes its modern bathrooms become one of the "101 places to have sex before you die."
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A woman's best friend
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Thumbthing looks pretty good
If you know any inveterate readers, here's just what they need: the Thumbthing. I got to get me one.
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February 04, 2010
Markets in everything (6)
Student sells her virginity online to pay for tuitionA student has auctioned her virginity to a stranger for almost £20,000 to help fund her university tuition fees.
The 19-year-old New Zealand woman offered her virginity to the highest bidder in an online auction on the www.ineed.co.nz website after she found herself desperate for money.
The student, who called herself "Unigirl", said that she was delighted with the outcome and thanked auction participants who had bid more than she expected.
"Thank you to the more than 30,000 people who viewed my ad and to the more than 1,200 offers made," she said on the auction site yesterday. "I have accepted an offer in excess of $NZ45,000, which is way beyond what I dreamt."
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Frog fail
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A generous lawyer
One afternoon a lawyer was riding in his limo when he Saw two men along the roadside eating grass. Disturbed, he ordered his driver to stop and he got out to Investigate. He asked the men, 'Why are you eating grass?'
'We don't have any money for food,' one of the men replied. 'We have to eat grass.'
'Well, then, you can come with me to my house and I'll feed you,' the lawyer said.
'But I have a wife and two children with me. They're over there, under that tree.'
'Bring them along,' the lawyer replied.
Turning to the other poor man he stated, 'You can come with us too.'
The second man, in a pitiful voice, said, 'But I also have a wife - and six children.'
'Bring them all,' the lawyer answered.
They all entered the car, which was no easy task, even for a car as large as the lawyer's limo. Once underway, one of the poor fellows turned to the lawyer and said, 'This is very kind. Thank you for taking all of us with you.'
'Glad to do it,' the lawyer replied. 'You'll really love my place. The grass there is almost a foot high.'
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Trust no video
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February 01, 2010
Happy Palindrome Day
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Save the date
There are wedding invitations and then there are things like this...
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Prank call gone wrong
This NSFW clip has been sitting in the queue for almost 5 years. So it's hardly new - but it's still pretty funny.
[MP3 format. Save.]
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Tree house
This comes from a French site. Translated, the notes read:
This beautiful project, entitled Wilkinson Residence, is visible in the forest of Portland. With an architecture in perfect harmony with nature, this house built in the trees was conceived by creator Robert Harvey Oshatz.
A little more detail, including a floor plan, here.
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January 29, 2010
Martian Mojave
An animation made from HIRISE images of Mojave crater on Mars.
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That's loyalty
Loyal Blow-Up Doll Saves Owner's LifeThey say that a dog is man's best friend. For an elderly Shanghai resident known as Yang, however, no dog can ever take the place of his life-saving blow-up doll.
This story begins in a residential apartment complex lodged in the dead center of Shanghai, China, where Yang has been living by himself for several years.
Yang used to reside here with his wife and son, but then his wife passed away, and soon after his son moved away to study. [...]
Yang happened to stumble upon such a set of negative comments while perusing the Internet and was so hurt by it, that he chose to commit suicide.
And so we come to January 3rd, 2010, around 4pm, when Yang jumped off the sixth floor of his apartment complex in an attempt to end his life.
Eyewitnesses at the scene were horrified, especially because it appeared as if he was clutching onto a little girl. And as he landed, there was a large bang, which onlookers assumed was Yang slamming into her poor little body.
Thankfully, it wasn't a girl or even a human. It was his blow-up doll, which immediately blew open as he crashed into it. Yang was knocked unconscious, but he soon after made a full recovery at a nearby hospital.
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A 70 megawatt diesel
The Wärtsilä-Sulzer RTA96-C, the world's largest diesel engine.
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We don't discriminate against the unproductive
Some days I have to wonder if the news from Britain can get any stranger...
Employer told not to post advert for 'reliable' workers because it discriminates against 'unreliable' applicantsWhen it comes to hiring staff, there are plenty of legal pitfalls employers need to watch out for these days.
So recruitment agency boss Nicole Mamo was especially careful to ensure her advert for hospital workers did not offend on grounds of race, age or sexual orientation.
However, she hadn't reckoned on discriminating against a wholly different section of the community - the completely useless.
When she ran the ad past a job centre, she was told she couldn't ask for 'reliable' and 'hard-working' applicants because it could be offensive to unreliable people.
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Hitler and the iPad
This meme's getting a little worn by now but I still thought this iPad rant was funny.
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January 28, 2010
Still at work
This is from At work, part 2 at the Big Picture.
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Newswipe
I like that name.
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What expertise?
The 6 Most Statistically Full of Sh*t ProfessionsPeople get paid a lot of money to be experts on things, so one would assume they're much more knowledgeable than the average Joe or, at the very least, a blindfolded monkey throwing darts.
Sadly, in many cases this just isn't true, and the so called "expertise" in question amounts to little more than a shot in the goddamn dark. Here are a few cases of experts that probably shouldn't inspire as much confidence as they do.
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Dance of the Chairs
Danilo writes, "Do you know Campus Party? It's like a carnival here. This was the 'dance of the chairs'. Happened today, 2:00am. The geeks don't sleep. "
He's talking about Campus Party Brazil 2010in Sao Paulo this week.
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Eyeballing game
Here's an interesting time-waster: The eyeballing game.
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January 27, 2010
Vancouver City
A nice time-lapse music video of Vancouver, B.C. According to the notes at YouTube, it was shot with a 12 megapixel SLR.
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Better if they learn it on the street?
Menifee school officials remove dictionary over term 'oral sex'After a parent complained about an elementary school student stumbling across "oral sex" in a classroom dictionary, Menifee Union School District officials decided to pull Merriam Webster's 10th edition from all school shelves earlier this week.
School officials will review the dictionary to decide if it should be permanently banned because of the "sexually graphic" entry, said district spokeswoman Betti Cadmus. The dictionaries were initially purchased a few years ago for fourth- and fifth-grade classrooms districtwide, according to a memo to the superintendent.
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TMI
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The benefits of old age
- Kidnappers are not very interested in you.
- In a hostage situation you are likely to be released first.
- No one expects you to run--anywhere.
- People call at 9 pm and ask, 'Did I wake you?'
- People no longer view you as a hypochondriac.
- There is nothing left to learn the hard way.
- Things you buy now won't wear out.
- You can eat supper at 4 pm.
- You can live without sex (but not without your glasses).
- You get into heated arguments about pension plans.
- You no longer think of speed limits as a challenge.
- You quit trying to hold your stomach in no matter who walks into the room.
- You sing along with elevator music.
- Your eyes won't get much worse.
- Your investment in health insurance is finally beginning to pay off.
- Your joints are more accurate forecasters than the national weather service.
- Your secrets are safe with your friends because they can't remember them either.
- Your supply of brain cells is finally down to a manageable size.
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January 26, 2010
Meet Gumby
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Busted! (3)
Who is Ellie Light? Sounds like some serious astroturfing going on.
Obama has suspicious number of letter-writing fans named 'Ellie Light'
By Sabrina Eaton, The Plain Dealer
Ellie Light sure gets around.In recent weeks, Light has published virtually identical "Letters to the Editor" in support of President Barack Obama in more than a dozen newspapers.Every letter claimed a different residence for Light that happened to be in the newspaper's circulation area.
"It's time for Americans to realize that governing is hard work, and that a president can't just wave a magic wand and fix everything," said a letter from alleged Philadelphian Ellie Light, that was published in the Jan. 19 edition of The Philadelphia Daily News.
A letter from Light in the Jan. 20 edition of the San Francisco Examiner concluded with an identical sentence, but with an address for Light all the way across the country in Daly City, California.
Variations of Light's letter ran in Ohio's Mansfield News Journal on Jan. 13, with Light claiming an address in Mansfield; in New Mexico's Ruidoso News on Jan. 12, claiming an address in Three Rivers; in South Carolina's The Sun News on Jan. 18, claiming an address in Myrtle Beach; and in the Daily News Leader of Staunton, Virginia on Jan. 15, claiming an address in Waynesboro. Her publications list includes other papers in Ohio, West Virginia, Maine, Michigan, Iowa, Pennsylvania and California, all claiming separate addresses.
See also Who is Mark Spivey?
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Techno Jeep
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More reality TV
Movie made by chimpanzees to be broadcast on televisionThe world's first film shot entirely by chimpanzees is to be broadcast by the BBC as part of a natural history documentary.
The apes created the movie using a specially designed chimp-proof camera given to them by primatologists.
The film-making exercise is part of a scientific study into how chimpanzees perceive the world and each other.
It will be screened within the Natural World programme "Chimpcam" shown on BBC Two at 2000GMT on Wednesday 27 January.
Making the movie was the brainchild of primatologist Ms Betsy Herrelko, who is studying for a PhD in primate behaviour at the University of Stirling, UK.
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January 25, 2010
I think he likes guns
Steve Lee's a plain-spoken -- well, a plain-singing -- Australian who knows what he likes. Check out his site at ILikeGuns.com.au.
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Hell hath no fury... (2)
Unfortunately, http://charlesphillipsandyavaughniewilkins.com/, the URL that appears in the picture, is no longer in service.
Scorned Mistress of Married Obama Adviser Posts Billboards NationwideOn first glance, it could be the ultimate Valentine's Day card -- a gigantic billboard that towers over New York's Times Square, featuring a happy couple with the text: "You are my soulmate forever, Charles & YaVaughnie."
But as every scorned lover knows, looks can be deceiving. This billboard -- which also has gone up in Atlanta and San Francisco -- is the ultimate act of revenge -- a very public retaliation by a dumped mistress aimed at a very wealthy, and married, businessman who is an adviser to President Obama.
YaVaughnie Wilkins posted the signs after she learned that her lover, Charles E. Phillips — president and director of the tech conglomerate Oracle Corporation and a member of Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board — had reconciled with his wife, the New York Post reported.
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Clowns are scary
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