The History of Maps
The History of Maps from the the oldest map of the world to prehistoric globalization to early modern worlds to nautical charts. Myths and facts.
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Doctor Who Returns in 2005
Doctor Who returns in a few months, here’s a teaser for us ubergeeks who can’t wait. (Realplayer warning on the link!). The "new" Doctor Who returns to BBC sometime in the first half of next year.
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Bzzt.
These are the toy tanks and they shock the people. I’m buying one for Austin and Simcha.
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Pornospammers = eternal innovators
Because GMail (and other popular email clients these days) blocks images by default, porn spammers have now begun to use 1980s style ASCII art in order to get their message across.
This textfile contains one simple example, with the words HOT GIRLS in big letters – it cunningly gets past spam filters by not containing any actual words in the body text. As its content is only apparent to humans, it will be tricky to catch by any filters – as long as the whitespace remains intact, the actual text can just be any random garbage. In theory, every spam email could be totally unique.
I confidently expect to see a renaissance in erotic ASCII art in the coming months, until someone figures out how to filter out this type of spam…
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All I Want For Xmas Is An Anthropomorphic Humanoid Guitar God Robot
GuitarBot "In designing GuitarBot, our goal was to create an electrified slide guitar that was versatile, responsive, capable of fast and slow playing, easy to control, with high-quality sound, modular and portable. We also wanted to extend, not simply duplicate, the capabilities of a human guitarist."
Don’t miss the video [16 meg Quicktime]. Brought to you by the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots.
Being a huge electronic music fan, the Quicktime movie blew me away.
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Workin’ Out
So been going to the YMCA a lot lately, not as much as I’d like, but still almost enough. It’s neat because I’m already starting get back some of the musscle I lost over the past few years.
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Eavsdropping on CRTs
This scientific paper was published two years ago. It may be an oldie, but it’s a goodie. Computer scientist Markus Kuhn demonstrated a way to read CRT computer monitors at a distance using a photosensor, even if you’re not facing the screen.
An image is created on the CRT surface by varying the electron beam intensity for each pixel. The room in which the CRT is located is partially illuminated by the pixels. As a result, the light in the room becomes a measure for the electron beam current. In particular, there is a little invisible ultrafast flash each time the electron beam refreshes a bright pixel that is surrounded by dark pixels on its left and right.
So if you measure the brightness of a wall in this room with a very fast photosensor, and feed the result in another monitor that receives the exact same synchronization signals for steering its electron beam, you get to see an image like this (after using a mathematical signal processing technique)
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Spam the spamming spammers.
Take care of the spammers during your idle times..Bill Gates promised to end spam. Now lycos is letting you take a shot back ala SETI. Get your copy and make love not spam.
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Religion in Star Trek
Religion in Star Trek. In which Ex Astris Scientia (an extensive Trek fan site) explores the future of faith and religion as depicted by each generation of the Trek universe, with elucidation on Gene Roddenberry’s own antireligous view of faith and science via Daystrom Institute Tech Library (another fan site).
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Karate Kid, The Musical
A musical for stage, based on the 80’s cheeseball film classic The Karate Kid. Now playing at the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center in NYC. Somewhere, Ralph Macchio is crying.
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Exploding lava lamp kills man
A 24 year old man left a lava lamp on his stove, and it exploded. A shard of glass pieced his heart, killing him instantly.
I thought the story might be bull, but went right to the Kent Police Department site and found this press release. It has a little more information that the AP report.
What sort of idiot do you have to be to put a glass sealed lava lamp on your stove?
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Still waiting for Batman vs. Superman
Superhero Hype! Is waiting for June 17 driving you batty? Does being patient until July 1 seem less than fantastic? Have no fear. Superhero Hype! will keep you up to date on all the latest news and rumors in the exciting field of comic-book-to-movie adaptations.
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Mmmmm…shiny
Endless AOL CDs can fill your mailbox, but some people seem to love them. Others have found creative outlets for their AOL junk mail. Still more people simply love to collect the buggers, although some for grander purposes than others.
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A bit of the ol’ ultra-violence
Whack Your Boss. Finally, a place to express your rage without harming a soul. Whack your boss, here in cyberspace, so you don’t have to. The challenge: Find seven ways to whack your boss.
The sad part is, I like my boss, so I don’t have any rage to get rid of, but I can picture a few non-work related people I’d like to put in this program.
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Someday, computers will only be the size of a football field.
Hercules! Not the shiny muscle man from the past, but a handy emulator for IBM S/360, S/370, S/390, and z/Arch mainframes. Unfortunately, because of IBM’s bullheadedness, you can only run operating systems released when the world was young, unless, for whatever reason, you decide to run something released after the Reagan Administration.
You can learn how easy you young whippersnappers have it now, but beware: to effectively use most of these systems, you will need to descend into Hell.
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Fake Lego burned to heat Finnish homes
A multi-ton shipment of Chinese fake Lego that was seized in Finland is being incinerated at a heating plant.
About ten tons of counterfeit Lego blocks were destroyed at the Kymeenlaakso waste processing plant in Anjalankoski on Thursday. The plastic will be mixed with other waste and burned at a district heating plant in Lahti…
Johannes Qvist, regional manager of Lego in Finland said that in addition to commercial considerations, the destruction was also a safety issue, as the pirated Legos do not comply with toy safety standards.
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Praise the lord and pass the ammunition
Once an eBook and now a website, A Christian’s Guide to Small Arms is described by author Gospel Plow as ” a primer for the Christian who is beginning to reject the false theology that requires him to be a pacifistic patsy in the face of heathen hordes.” Snip:
The most probable scenario that the Christian American, called to fight for God, family, and country, will be presented with is that of the guerrilla resistance. He will be facing an enemy occupational force that will have great superiority in materiel and organization. Outside sources of supply and instruction will not be likely. The wisest course in this situation is to choose weapons and tactics that minimize supply, training, and maintenance problems.
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Anime Popeye
In a desperate anime situation, Popeye is called in to make sense of it all.
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This CEOs Broken As Well, Can We Have Another?
McDonalds CEO “Flipping Burgers at 15” Quits Due To Colorectal Cancer You know, losing one CEO to coronary heart disease is unfortunate. However, losing another to colorectal cancer just seems careless. An increased occurrence of both diseases is linked with the consumption of red meat, especially processed red meat cooked or seared at high temperatures. Not exactly a good advertisement for McDonalds. Maybe it’s time to recruit some people who haven’t been enjoying the free employee meals quite so much?
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Must .. Go .. Must .. Work out.
My back is feeling a lot better now, I slept funny last night and it got all cramped up, but I did some exercises this am and feel -muxh- better. And on that note, I’m off to the gym to work out for an hour or two. But maybe first I’ll stop at the Farmers Market and get a quesidilla, mmm Wayne is the bomb.
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Pornoholics
Addiction to porn is destroying lives, Senate told. Experts compare the effect on the brain to that of heroin or crack cocaine.
RobDurdle.com 
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