It’s a bird, it’s a plane… it’s…
Mr. Rossy is the first man to successfully fly with wings powered by four engines on his back.
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Spongebob Rectal Thermometer
Best rectal thermometer ever? And yes, it does play the theme song while taking your temperature.
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Рабоче-Крестьянская Красная Армия
Comrades! Glory once again in the display of Soviet Russian military might at the revitalized May Day Victory Day Parade!
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Woman remotely logs in to her stolen Mac to catch thieves
A woman whose apartment was burgled has caught the thieves by hacking
into the laptop they’d stolen and taking pictures of them. On Tuesday
last week, one of the victims received a phone call from a friend
asking her if she was online: she said no, and was told by the friend
that his computer showed her as being logged onto the web. At that
point, the victim signed onto another computer and used the “Back to My
Mac” programme to deduce that her stolen Mac was online, and that
someone was using it to shop on the internet. She then activated the
stolen computer’s camera, allowing her to “see” what was in front of
the laptop. At first she saw only an empty chair – but a little while
later she was able to photograph a man sitting in front of her stolen
laptop, and then his accomplice. The victim did not know either man but
showed the photos to one of her roommates, who recognized them as
having attended a get-together at the apartment a few weeks before the
burglary. The burglars, both men in their 20s, were arrested at their
New York homes on Wednesday, after the woman handed the photographs in
to the police. Around $5,000 (over ?2,500) worth of electrical
equipment was recovered.
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How to talk to the dead
But remember, talking to the dead can be dangerous.
“All peoples of earth posess this natural ability,” says Nicole
Zapruder, who has been communicating with the dead since she was 4
years old. People aren’t disputing her ability to use the Grey
Walter-Berger Neurophysical Construct for communicating with the dead.
They’re asking her not to share it online because the technique is too
dangerous.
“The noise and clutter of modern times serves to
distance people from nature and therefore the realization that this
gift is in us all,” Nicole argues. An important warning. “Do not
contact any dead person who may have negative feelings toward you…”
Coming in October? A site for communicating with your dead pet.
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How the world’s oceans are running out of fish
A tuna transport floating tank being towed from the fishing grounds off Libya to tuna ranches off Sicily, Italy. Photograph: AFP/Gavin Newman
The future of our seas has never been more precarious. Ninety years of
industrial-scale overfishing has brought us to the brink of an
ecological catastrophe and deprived millions of their livelihoods. As
scientific guidelines are ignored and catches become ever bigger.Is there anyone not aware that wild fish are in deep trouble? That
three-quarters of commercially caught species are over-exploited or
exploited to their maximum? Industrial fishing is
so inefficient that a third of the catch, some 32 million tonnes a
year, is thrown away. For every ocean prawn you eat, fish weighing
10-20 times as much have been thrown overboard.These figures all come
from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which
also claims that, of all the world’s natural resources, fish are being
depleted the fastest. With even the most abundant commercial species,
we eat smaller and smaller amounts of fish every year, basically, we eat the babies before
they can breed.North Atlantic fish stocks have been in decline for well
over a century.Unlike global warming, the science of fish stock
collapse is old and its practitioners have been pretty much in
agreement since the 1950s.The Newfoundland cod fishery, for 500 years
the world’s greatest, was exhausted and closed in 1992, and there’s
still no evidence of any return of the fish. Once stocks dip below a
certain critical level, the scientists believe, they can never recover
because the entire ecosystem has changed.
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On Having a Black Name
“I am a white woman, a blond, blue-eyed white woman, and I have a first name
strongly associated with black women. My mother, a southerner by birth, never
stopped telling me she made the name up. The fact that she truly could not
remember ever hearing the name before, is a testament to the strength of
southern segregation. It is likely she heard it once or twice, and simply forgot
it until later. And so, even at 50 years old, I have a name that makes people do
a double-take. “You’re _____?” is something I have heard all my life. “Yes, that
would be me,” is what I say, as they look confused. I have upset the social
order. Names, I have learned, are a big, big part of it.”
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Accused penis thieves captured.
Police in the Congo have arrested 13 individuals suspected of stealing, or
shrinking, their victims’ penises. It seems that the accused practitioners of
black magic were nabbed for their own protection. A dozen years ago, mobs killed
a group of men rumored to be penis snatchers. From Reuters:
Rumors of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa,
Democratic Republic of Congo’s sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants.
They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of
fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.Purported
victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply
touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents
said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure…“But
when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell
you that it’s become tiny or that they’ve become impotent, (said Kinshasa’s
police chief, Jean-Dieudonne Oleko.) To that I tell them, ‘How do you know if
you haven’t gone home and tried it’,” he said.
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Inflatable tube man dances to Cream’s “Glad”
One of the best songs ever combined with one of the most whimsical roadside
advertising gimmicks equals a video of pure joy.
I drive a 12 year old Pontiac convertible to my place of work, so I
get quite the panoramic view. I was waiting for the light to change across from
a storage complex, when I noticed how the end of Cream’s “Glad” matched so
beautifully with the tube man on top of the storage complex’s roof as he waved
his pneumatic arms and whipped his pneumatic head back in an unbridled
expression of glee and air-filled pride.
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Kids’ book about pot: “It’s Just a Plant”
Sure enough, it’s a kid’s book about grass. But the book is actually
a lot more thoughtful than the provocative premise might seem to be at first
glance.“It’s Just a Plant” is a children’s book that takes a similar approach to sex
education in talking about another difficult topic. That is, the book explains
that marijuana can be a positive and healthy thing for adults, but it’s not for
children. In twenty years I haven’t seen anything quite like this in how it
approaches the topic.
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It Can’t All Be Brass, Dear
accompany the genre along its transmogrification from a form of fiction into
fashion, music, and ‘misapplied technology’.
“It was a time where art and
craft were united, where unique wonders were invented and forgotten, and punks
roamed the streets, living in squats and fighting against despotic governance
through wit, will and wile.”
Yet the clever adventurer may wish to ignore
the anemic, spluttering blog of this budding
contraption and enjoy the gilded gas-lit forum or go straight for the
high-mineral content of its sturdily constructed journal, the four extant issues
of which being entirely downloadable.
Riveting.
Brace for interviews with the likes of Michael Moorcock; art
from the likes of Molly
Crabapple (of Dr Sketchy’s fame) and
Colin Foran; as well as
contributions by the Catastrophone Orchestra
collective, inter alia.
Of course, they’re not alone; others have
refined the steampunk blog into a well-oiled engine: Brass Goggles; Aether Emporium; Voyages Extraordinaires;
and of course the Steampunk
Spectacular.
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How to catch and eat a rat
rat. Really. This is for if the bartending or the blacksmithing don’t work
out.
When the recession starts, you won’t be able to earn a living mixing daiquiris
anymore, and after that, during the depression, it’ll be tough to make it as a
blacksmith,
so when it gets really bad, this will give you the skills that the
times require.
Your instructor, Cody Lundin, is not unaware of the
humor in this, so I sense. But there’s still a hardcore element there, eh?
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Purgatory Iron Works
The folks at Purgatory
Iron Works are making a series of 10-minute how-to videos for beginning
blacksmiths. Current introductory topics include anvils, building a forge (part 2), and making charcoal (part 2); if there are
topics you’d particularly like to see, the host is taking requests.
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Cancer Cured?
Crazy, But good news…
What if we told you that a guy with no background
in science or medicine-not even a college degree-has come up with what may be
one of the most promising breakthroughs in cancer research in years?Well it’s true, and if you think it sounds improbable, consider this: he
did it with his wife’s pie pans and hot dogs.His name is John Kanzius,
and he’s a former businessman and radio technician who built a radio wave
machine that has cancer researchers so enthusiastic about its potential they’re
pouring money and effort into testing it out.Here’s the important part:
if clinical trials pan out-and there’s still a long way to go-the Kanzius
machine will zap cancer cells all through your body without the need for drugs
or surgery and without side effects. None at all. At least that’s the idea.
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Woman goes on YouTube to air divorce grievances
A woman who is divorcing a rich Broadway executive is airing her grievances on YouTube:
A New York woman involved in a divorce battle spilled
secrets about her husband, his family and their intimate life in a
“scary, new step” in user generated content, attorneys said.Tricia
Walsh-Smith can be watched on YouTube lashing out at her husband,
Broadway executive Philip Smith, in a teary and furious clip that has
been viewed more than 150,000 times.Local 6 reported that lawyers can’t think of another case like Smith’s and are calling it a “scary, new step.”
>During
the video, Walsh-Smith goes through their wedding album on camera,
accuses her husband of trying to evict her out of their apartment, and
even makes embarrassing claims about their intimate life.
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Tail-slapping rooftop dance nets charges in Saint John
Wow.. Nothing is funnier then the news. From CBC:
Saint John police spent an hour on Tuesday night trying get an intoxicated
man down from a rooftop.Police arrived at the home on Duke Street West to find a man dancing on the
roof.The man then took off his clothes and danced a bunny-hop across the roof
while slapping his buttocks, police said.The man was drinking out of a bucket he said contained tequila, police
said.Despite police efforts to convince the man to come down, the man remained on
the roof until a friend arrived and talked to him.He was arrested and charged with indecent exposure and causing a disturbance,
police said.Police are not releasing the man’s name.
He is expected to appear in court in Saint John on Wednesday.
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Go Bots!
Screw Transformers. GOBOTS hits the big screen this 4th of July, and the special effects are AMAZING! A first look at this glorious film is brought to you exclusively by Black20 Trailer Park.
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Rule of Thumb
The Rules of Thumb, a website created by Rules
of Thumb author Tom Parker, is off and running, with thousand of
user-submitted rules of thumb. Some are more useful than others, but they are
almost always interesting.
DIRECTION CONVEYS TIME AND EMOTION
In advertising, art and photography, the direction the subject is looking or the flow of the composition
can affect the tone of the image. Left is the past, right is the future, up is
positive, down is negative. For example: a subject looking up and to the right
is looking positively into the future. Submitted by: Jeremy Reid, Graphic
Designer, Belleville, Ontario, Canada
MAXIMUM VALUE OF A SERVICEThe value of any service is highest *before* the
service has been rendered.FINDING SMALL THINGS ON THE FLOOR
To find something very small that you have
dropped on the floor, lay a flashlight on the floor and rotate it. A small
object looks a lot bigger when it has a shadow too.WALKING WITH SMALL CHILDREN
When walking with small children who are falling
behind, the slower you walk, the slower they will walk, until they stop. If you
maintain your pace, they will keep up with you, albeit somewhat behind.
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Elephant Polo and other strange things
Elephant Polo.
Alf Leif Erickson is the Captain of the American Screw Tuskers Elephant
Polo team . Alf is a retired attorney and former law professor from
Florida. This alone doesn’t make much of a post, but, you guessed it,
there more, sometimes NSFW, inside…..
It seems that Alf retired to Bangkok and maintains a site called “Alf’s Balloons”, with a focus on, well, balloons, and of course corkscrews, and elephant polo.
Alf’s elephant polo team seems to consist entirely of transexuals (the riders, that is, not the elephants).
Don’t let the somewhat odd nature of the polo team throw you, because
it doesn’t really get strange (and, by the way, NSFW) until you begin
to explore the inner workings of Alf’s PatPong Corkscrew Club. This is no casual club, annual meetings are held, and the club, like, I assume, all corkscrew clubs, of course, its own balloon and meetings where the members sit naked on Alf’s lap.
Spend some time exploring Alf’s world.
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Four miles of yarn on a car
Timothy Klein gets art. I mean, he really gets it. And he likes cars. So when he decided to become an artist, he covered a 1967 Chrysler Imperial Crown luxury car with yarn. Correct, yarn. Then, Tim didn’t just show his car off to the local cruzers at the Dairy Queen. No. Tim took it to Artscape at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore in 2002, where he met other famous automotive artists like Harrod Blank and Chris Hubbard. He took it to the Outsider Art Fair in New York in 2003. Wherever he takes the Yarn Car, he documents the trips on his site.
He got featured in Reader’s Digest and “made Diane Sawyer giggle”. Tim will be in Houston on May 10 for the 2008 Art Car Parade. Don’t miss the yarn phone in the car.
RobDurdle.com 
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