As subtle as a flying brick.

Idiotic Crap

Rubber band warfare just got deadlier.

 

Motorized cordless twin rubber band minigun, capable of firing 40 bands per second.


Man sodomized stepson in revenge

A father sodomized his 18-year-old stepson to avenge the teenager’s alleged rape of the man’s 8-year-old daughter, police said. 
 
I’m not sure this guy quite got the meaning behind “spare the rod, spoil the child…”

Organ Orgasm

This IS safe for work despite the title. I’ve never seen a woman touch an organ with quite as much enthusiasm and skill.


But… they’re all Bishops…

Dildo chess set (NSFW, probably). Other suggestive chess sets, part of a small collection of, er, pawnography.


Hubble finds double Einstein ring

A very rare phenomenon found with the Hubble Space Telescope may offer insights into dark matter, dark energy, the nature of distant galaxies, and even the curvature of the Universe, according to an international team of astronomers who are reporting at the 211th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Austin, Texas.

This effect is created when three (four, if you count ours) galaxies line up perfectly behind each other while being great distances apart, the phenomena is an observable proof of Einstein’s general relativity. It’s not often you get to see a picture of space-time being warped by gravity, eh?

einstein_rings.jpg


Free Sex at Prague Brothel Tests Taboo: Reality Romp

If you want to watch Nick having sex with a prostitute, he’s happy to let you.
 
The 36-year-old bank-security technician drove eight hours from his home in Metz, France, to Big Sister, a Prague brothel where customers peruse a touch-screen menu of blondes, brunettes and redheads available for free. The catch is clients have to let their exploits be filmed and posted on the Internet.


Geography quiz

World location quiz a fun little quiz on world locations for a Friday afternoon.


Who Makes the Nazis?

“By the time I cut his balls off,” one settler boasted, “he had no ears, and his eyeball, the right one, I think, was hanging out of its socket.” The soldiers were told they could shoot anyone they liked “provided they were black”.


237 reasons

237 reasons why humans have sex (PDF). The research paper referenced in David Buss’ contribution to The Edge. NYT comment and analysis.


Improve your Rock Band drumming technique

Improve your Rock Band drumming technique. Rock Band as in the videogame, that is.


Bike boxes in Portland Intersections

Following up on some recent cyclist deaths in Portland where cyclists waiting in bike lanes at red lights were crushed by right-turning trucks the strongcity is introducting ‘bike boxes’ to encourage bikes to wait out in front of stopped traffic. The city also plans to promote lower-traffic streets as ‘bike boulevards’ as an alternative to bike lines on high-traffic streets. Last summer when I got smashed by a car taking a right turn without checking his mirror, I was lucky to not be seriously hurt, only my pride/smashed cell phone. The fact that people are dying from the same thing that hit me is a little scary to say the least.


Beautiful and Mysterious Chemical Reactions Create Undulating Brew

The Wired Science blog posted a YouTube video of a liquid that changes color from clear to yellow to blue over and over again.

In 1973, the spectacular demonstration was perfected by Thomas Briggs and Warren Rauscher, two amazing high school science teachers.

Over thirty-five years later, chemists are still trying to fully understand how it works.

What they do know: Several reactions take place at once. One of them produces iodine, which gives the amber color. Hydrogen peroxide reduces other chemicals into iodide ions. Along with normal iodine, the charged particles interact with starch to create it a blue-black color. The speeds of those transformations are constantly changing. As one overtakes the other, the color suddenly changes.

 


Sir Edmund Hillary, RIP

Sir Edmund Hillary died today, aged 88. Best known as the man who “knocked the bastard off”, by scaling Mt Everest, Hillary was an adventurer, activist, and all round kiwi bloke. We will miss you.


Physics of Information: great panel discussion

Last week on CBC Radio’s national science program, Quirks and Quarks, they broadcast a recording of a fascinating panel discussion on “The Physics of Information: What the Universe Doesn’t Want You to Know,” held at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario. In this wide-ranging discussion a panel of distinguished and likable physicists run down such subjects as the universe as a computer, quantum teleportation, the fundamentals of information science, The panelists were in a state of near-hilarity through much of the the event, and that only made the subject better. Included on the panel were: Dr. Leonard Susskind (Stanford), Dr. Seth Lloyd (MIT), Dr. Christopher Fuchs (UNM), Sir Anthony Leggett (Urbana-Champaign), and the moderator, Bob McDonald, host of Quirks and Quarks. Listen yourself.

The Physics of Information was the topic of a recent public forum, sponsored by Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, and moderated by Bob McDonald. And Quirks was there to record the event. Do ideas about information and reality inspire fruitful new approaches to the hardest problems of modern physics? What can we learn about the paradoxes of quantum mechanics, the beginning of the universe and our understanding of black holes, by thinking about the very essence of information? Those are some of the questions our panel tackled.


AT&T mulls copyright censorship at the network level

AT&T is considering adding content filters to its network. These will try to figure out if your network connection contains a copyrighted work, and censor any communications that are believed to be infringing.

This strategy will work for approximately 30 seconds — about as long as it takes for people who like to download copyrighted works to switch to using an encrypted protocol — and thereafter it will be primarily useful to bullies and schemers who will use it to silence critics (by claiming their works infringe and getting them censored) and prevent competition (by raising the cost of operating an ISP through the inclusion of the spyware and the hardware to run it on).

Of course, AT&T has already shown its commitment to its customers by helping the NSA conduct wholesale warrantless wiretapping on their entire nation — adding a censorious, expensive, and useless piece of spyware to its network operations is entirely in keeping with its behavior.

“What we are already doing to address piracy hasn’t been working. There’s no secret there,” said James Cicconi, senior vice president, external & legal affairs for AT&T.

Mr. Cicconi said that AT&T has been talking to technology companies, and members of the MPAA and RIAA, for the last six months about implementing digital fingerprinting techniques on the network level.

“We are very interested in a technology based solution and we think a network-based solution is the optimal way to approach this,” he said. “We recognize we are not there yet but there are a lot of promising technologies. But we are having an open discussion with a number of content companies, including NBC Universal, to try to explore various technologies that are out there.”


Sysadmin fails at being l337 hax0r, gets jail time

A 51-year-old systems administrator from New Jersey has received the longest federal prison sentence for attempting a crime designed to damage a computer system. Yung-Hsun Lin (also known as Andy Lin) was given 30 months in jail for planting code on a company server in 2003 that was supposed to destroy a medical drug database. He was also ordered by US District Judge Jose Linares to pay $81,200 in restitution to his former employer, Medco Health Solutions.

Dumbass


CandyFab

Sweet! Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories has made a 3D printer that forms objects out of sugar.


Rules to Live By

50 Things I’ve Learned in 50 Years.
Best one:

17. Don’t waste your breath proclaiming what’s really important to you. How you spend your time says it all.


Fifty car pileup closes 1-4 in Florida

I watched man burn to death, heard others screaming in the fog.” A massive, 50-car pileup, the result of three or more crashes on I-4, has led to at least 3 fatalities and 82 injuries in central Florida near Orlando. The smoke and fog were so bad that rescue efforts were hindered. Drivers with no visibility did not know whether to stay in their burning cars or risk running out onto the highway for help.


Spoiled teenage pageant princess

The Huffington Post’s round up of “must see” online videos for the week includes this clip from the TV show Wife Swap, about a spoiled teen and her doting parents.


Blonde girl kicks things!

Sugarshock (2 3): A webcomic by Joss Whedon.


Jujitsu Moves and Techniques

This section shows many different jujitsu moves and techniques from the traditional art of Jujitsu, along with Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu ground-fighting moves.  
 
If you are a training student, many of the traditional techniques may be on your own syllabus at your club. There will obviously be some differences since all clubs will train slightly different, giving more emphasis on particular moves.
 
 
Solid presentation of some of the basics. I may not know kung-fu, but I’m willing to learn.


Is Your Son a Computer Hacker?

Leo Laporte and Martin Sargent of TechTV’s “The Screen Savers” discuss an infamous satire article from Adequacy.org


Talking with Americans – Rick Mercer

Talking with Americans… love it.

 

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