For next year

I just found out about this so you will all have to wait til next year to get them from me, but what a great idea - to put Hubble's pictures on Christmas cards!

Travel light ... and free!

With a little practice and effort, you can travel the world for free. Click through and read the full article for some great tips on how to do it.

It can be scary to venture into the world with nothing more than optimism and good-will, but personal freedom begins with a leap of faith.

There's cold ... and then, there's Siberia

You can't help but feel bad for these poor people in Norilsk, Russia (Siberia) who are just trying to cross the road.

I've looked at clouds from both sides now ... but never seen this!

Punch Hole Clouds may appear as a circular or oval holes in a layer of supercooled clouds; sometimes they assume a form of a perfect circle and persist for quite a long time, drifting together with the cloud layer. One explanation seems to blame the air traffic (the jet contrail intersections) combined with a thermal inversion (a circular motion of a rising warm air).

Digital Billiards

I'm not sure that this device is 'ready for primetime' just yet (a few too many, "That was close!" comments by the inventors) but it is a cool idea that, with some development, could be coming to a bar near you.

Gay scientists isolate Christian gene

Village Person Takes It Off For Playgirl

Randy, the original cowboy of the Village People is making a splash in one of the last issues of Playgirl.* Get your copy today to find out what you were missing in the 80's!

* Playgirl Calls It Quits
Established 35 years ago as a feminist response to Playboy and Penthouse (Playboy sued Playgirl in 1973 for trademark infringement but settled amicably), the magazine could never seem to quite figure out who its audience was: women or gay men, a dilemma, it seems, that followed Playgirl to its grave.
The magazine’s final editor Nicole Caldwell worked to take the magazine back to its roots, interspersing shots of naked hotties with articles on issues like abortion and equal rights. Publisher Blue Horizon Media wanted fewer articles and more naked hotties, preferably ones that would appeal more to gay men. The schizophrenic focus has resulted in the January/February 2009 issue being its last. The Playgirl website will continue, but the graphic content is geared more toward gay men. For $19.55 a month, you can have all the “100% Man Juice” you want.

Sequels & Sequins

This looks like a funny movie with lots of recognizable faces! Watch for it when it comes to a cinema near you.
Visit the website [website]
Here you can have a look at some pix from the film [TLA Video]

Hot for Barack!

Funny Videos | Funny Cartoons | More Video Clips

Eve's worst nightmare

Merry Christmas!

Just wanted to wish you all a very happy Christmas. Now that I have gotten set up in my new city of Ottawa, I can relax and enjoy spending time with friends and relatives. I hope you are doing the same.

Here is a little ditty from Coldplay on the theme:

Google feature makes searches better

If you have created a Google profile for yourself, you may be interested to know that you now have more power in your mouse than you realize. This new feature in Google Search results makes customizing your info much easier.

Have you ever wanted to mark up Google search results? Maybe you're an avid hiker and the trail map site you always go to is in the 4th or 5th position and you want to move it to the top. Or perhaps it's not there at all and you'd like to add it. Or maybe you'd like to add some notes about what you found on that site and why you thought it was useful. Starting today [Nov.20 2008] you can do all this and tailor Google search results to best meet your needs.

Today we're launching SearchWiki, a way for you to customize search by re-ranking, deleting, adding, and commenting on search results. With just a single click you can move the results you like to the top or add a new site. You can also write notes attached to a particular site and remove results that you don't feel belong. These modifications will be shown to you every time you do the same search in the future. SearchWiki is available to signed-in Google users. We store your changes in your Google Account. If you are wondering if you are signed in, you can always check by noting if your username appears in the upper right-hand side of the page.

The changes you make only affect your own searches. But SearchWiki also is a great way to share your insights with other searchers. You can see how the community has collectively edited the search results by clicking on the "See all notes for this SearchWiki" link.

Star Trek's Majel Roddenberry dies

Majel Barrett Roddenberry, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's widow and a fixture of nearly every incarnation of the space travel franchise, died on Thursday. She was 76.

Roddenberry, who suffered from leukemia, died at home in Bel Air, Calif., according to a spokesperson.

Before Star Trek, the Ohio-born actress worked on a range of television shows, including Bonanza and Leave it to Beaver.

She was romantically involved with Roddenberry when he launched Star Trek in the mid-1960s. Though he cast her as the USS Enterprise's unnamed first officer in his pilot, she would go on to fame as the secondary character Nurse Chapel in the original series and in subsequent films. The couple married in 1969.

Link to Roddenberry website

Politics are a Drag - for RuPaul

The 48-year-old hot tranny diva posed as both Barack and Michelle Obama as part of a holiday promotion for her new drag queen competition TV series "RuPaul's Drag Race" on Logo.

Hong Kong's Gay Revolution

For a few hours, a city that usually seems immune to surprises watched in awe as approximately 1,000 parade-goers stopped traffic, filled the streets and spread their message to "celebrate love." A rainbow-colored dragon bobbed over the heads of carefully coiffed men donning dainty dresses and dancing to "Celebrate Pride," which warbled through a loudspeaker in the center of the city. Men with fiery red-feathered tiaras chanted, "Pride parade! Pride parade! Pride parade!" in Cantonese and English while marching through Hong Kong's congested Hennessy Road waving multicolored pride flags

View from a broad abroad

LGBT travellers can offer their services as volunteers in a variety of ways.

Imagine building floats for Sydney's Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, working with transwomen in Thailand, or planting trees in Katrina-devastated wetlands around New Orleans.

There are many opportunities for LGBT travellers to make a difference in the countries we visit, but we still face some unique barriers.

A new sole for Bush

During the holiday season thoughts often turn to giving away what we no longer need to those who will appreciate their significance. Now is your chance to let Geo. W. Bush know how you feel ... As a sign of your admiration, please feel free (compelled) to send your old shoes to:

George W. Bush Presidential Library
c/o SMU
6425 Boaz Lane
Dallas TX 75205

Classical Muppets

Two fantastic YouTube clips to introduce your kids to great works of classical music ... and puppetry. First, Beeker and his many clones perform Beethoven's Ode to Joy, then Gonzo the Great and his chicken orchestra cluck out The Blue Danube Waltz by Strauss.

Everything for a Cowboy/girl

Kilakitu is a swahili saying meaning "everything". And these Africanized cowboy shirts make interesting one-of-a-kind gifts.

The depths of Nairobi's [Kenya] sprawling secondhand clothing markets provide the finest and most inspiring preloved fabrics from the four corners of the world.

This project not only reuses, remixes and renews these materials to create one-of-a-kind garments, it also provides work to local tailors and provides a portion of the proceeds to a lunch feeding program for school children.

Timeless comedy

An hilarious 1954 clip of Sid Caesar and Nanette Fabray as their domestic squabble is set to the rhythm of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

A-ha! A new take on Take On Me

Many of you, my contemporaries in the '80s, will remember this song from the Norwegian group A-ha [Wikipedia link] and likely the video too. Here it is again only with the lyrics changed to a literal description of what's going on in the video ... it even makes a bit more sense than the original!

Justice is Served

Making decisions about crime and punishment is, it turns out, as complicated as a legal brief. For the first time, scientists have peered into the brains of people who are deciding whether a crime deserves punishment and how severe the penalty should be.

Those decisions involve parts of the brain associated with rational thought, but emotion-processing regions weigh in too, a team of law and neuroscience researchers from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., show in a new study in the Dec. 11 Neuron. The findings suggest that brain areas active in deciding a harsh punishment for a crime deliberately committed are different than those active when giving the accused some benefit of the doubt.

Canada ties for last among developed countries for child services: UNICEF

Canada fails to meet nine of out 10 proposed standards aimed at ensuring children get the best start in life through education and support programs, putting the country in a tie for last place among affluent nations, an analysis released Wednesday by UNICEF concludes.

The UNICEF benchmarks are crucial for children in their formative years, the United Nations organization says.

The New Face of business in America

In light of the recent changes in economic perspective, a few clever artists have come up with versions of famous logos with much more "truthiness"!

TV Censors in Italy gut Brokeback Mountain

IMHO: Removing the two scenes described below would make it completely impossible for a viewer to either understand or feel the emotion of this film.

Gay rights groups and free speech advocates have taken Italian state broadcaster RAI TV to task for cutting two sex scenes from Brokeback Mountain when it aired the Oscar-winning movie late Monday evening.

The expurgated version of the 2005 cowboy romance did not include the scene in which the two main characters, played by Jake Gyllenhaal and the late Heath Ledger, make love in a tent, and a later scene showing the two men kissing.

Cool new 5-Euro commemorative coin with theme ‘Netherlands and Architecture’

A new 5 euro commemorative coin pays tribute to the history of Dutch architecture.

Designer’s inspiration
The Architecture five-euro coin was designed by artist Stani Michiels (b. 1973). The design on the obverse of the coin pays tribute to the history of Dutch architecture, with the portrait of Queen Beatrix being distinctively constructed using the names of important architects from Dutch history. The artist used the internet as a popularity-meter to determine the names’ order of appearance.

The reverse of the Architecture five-euro coin draws attention to the striking fact that many Dutch architects have also included publishing books on architecture in their professional activities. To illustrate this phenomenon, recent books on architecture rise up from the sides of the coin like buildings. Through their careful placement they combine to outline the Netherlands, while birds’ silhouettes suggest the capitals of all the provinces.

Link to the Dutch Mint webpage

Pin-up icon Bettie Page dies at 8

American glamour model and pin-up girl Bettie Page has died at the age of 85.

Raven-haired pin-up icon Bettie Page, whose provocative magazine photo spreads helped set the stage for the 1960s sexual revolution, died Thursday at 85.

"She was a remarkable lady, an iconic figure in pop culture who influenced sexuality, taste in fashion, someone who had a tremendous impact on our society," said Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, who featured Page as his then-fledgling magazine's January 1955 centrefold.

Mission Accomplished ... mas o menos

Glad to be back to blogging!

The move is over and I am now finding my way through a new city, but I am up for it.

I will hopefully be able to start publishing this blog on a regular basis again, but for now it may be in fits and starts. So, please forgive me for now.

It will however, show you some of the things that I thought were cool, funny, conceptual, ironic, well-designed, inspiring, satirical, heart-warming and/or life-changing along the way.

If you get why I put it here, please let me know as a Comment - it will inspire me to share more.

Douglas

Put your mouse where your mouth is ... Eyeball it !!

This is a very cool and surprisingly fun visual challenge that you must try. WARNING: It may show you whether ... or not ... you have ACTUALLY been right all these years!

THIS IMAGE | Featurepics.com

Some people are bothered by pictures on the wall hanging slightly crooked. Others may not even be aware that something may be amiss.

If you are somebody who is into woodworking or construction, its good to be one of the people who notice when things are crooked. But I suspect the ability to notice that things might be just a little off square, off centre, or not quite straight, varies greatly. I thought it would be fun for people to try to test their abilities to see if things are straight or crooked in a little game.

And thanks to LCD monitors, its possible to display geometry with absolute accuracy on a computer now. So what better way to try this game concept than to put it on the web!

How the game works
The best way to figure out how the game works is to simply play it.

Support companies that support LGBT equality

More than 300,000 people have used The Human Rights Campaign's Buying for Equality Guide to make informed choices about their purchases. This year, you can do your part to support fair-minded businesses by requesting or downloading Buying for Equality 2009.

Next time you are buying groceries, planning a trip, or making investment decisions check out who supports the advancement of LGBT rights and who doesn't.

TTC barns finally become artists' colony

A community initiative has transformed a set of 95-year-old streetcar maintenance barns into an artists' colony and community centre in mid-town Toronto.

The Wychwood Barns Project (Christie + St. Clair, Toronto) opens Thursday after a $21.2-million redevelopment of former Toronto Transit Commission barns unused for more than 25 years.

The barns, built between 1913 and 1921, were converted into:

• 26 units of housing for artists and their families.
• 15 affordable studio spaces.
• 13 offices for non-profit arts and environmental groups.
• Two theatre spaces and an art gallery.
• A community space that will be home to a farmers market.
• A year-round greenhouse.
• Parkland and playgrounds.

Brief Hiatus

Hey everybody,

Just a short note to let you know that I won't be posting for a week or so ... in the process of moving house.

I will be back soon with bigger and better stories for you.

Until then,
Douglas
The Sympathetic String

Old and new

Up near Nottingham in England, is the estate of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, called Chatsworth [website]. About 20 years ago, I took a tour of this extravagant mansion and its grounds (that were landscaped by Lancelot "Capability" Brown so that the Duke and his family didn't have to look at the nearest village!). At the time they were looking for ways to use the spectacular property to pay its own bills, and this exhibition puts the site to dramatic use.
'Beyond Limits', a selling exhibition of modern and contemporary sculpture, at Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, held in association with Sothebys. September-November 2008.

Here is a link to some beautiful Flickr photos of the same exhibition.

Flaw in smart cards poses security risk for transit, building access

Transit systems across Canada stand to lose tens of thousands of dollars to fare fraud, and access to office buildings could be compromised, after a security flaw in some of their smart-card technology was widely publicized this week.

Computer-security researchers at the Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands revealed how the smart-card technology, called Mifare, can be hacked to let anyone with a computer and $100 worth of parts create counterfeit transit and building-access passes.

Mifare uses a radio-frequency-emitting computer chip embedded in a plastic card. Transit riders wave the card over a reader to pay fares, while employees and students flash it at secured doorways to gain admittance in many offices and schools.

The technology has been implemented in transit systems in St. John's, Gatineau, Que., the Greater Toronto Area and the Ontario cities of Kingston and Brantford, and is under consideration for use in Saskatoon.

Rust to dust

I have been a collector of (clean-but-)rusty objects for a number of years, and this article fits right in with my own fascination for the inevitability of Entropy!

The Beauty of Decay

Take the stairs instead

This trompe-l’œil staircase inside an elevator is actually an ad for Becel margarine in Istanbul, Turkey!

HIV 'Fossil' reveals virus history

A preserved specimen of lymph node nearly half a century old has revealed how rapidly the HIV virus has diversified, according to international research.

A team of researchers from around the world has been trawling through decades-old tissue samples from African hospital archives in the hope of finding samples containing the HIV virus.

They struck it lucky with a sample that was collected back in 1960, from a woman living in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.

This is the second-oldest sample of the HIV virus ever found - the oldest is from 1959.

Canadian banks ranked soundest in the world

U.S. has fallen to No. 40 in World Economic Forum list

Canada has the world's soundest banking system, closely followed by Sweden, Luxembourg and Australia, a survey by the World Economic Forum has found as a financial crisis and bank failures shake world markets.

The World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report based its findings on opinions of executives and assigned banks a score between 1.0 (insolvent and possibly requiring a government bailout) and 7.0 (healthy, with sound balance sheets).

Canadian banks received a score of 6.8, just ahead of Sweden (6.7), Luxembourg (6.7), Australia (6.7) and Denmark (6.7).

The Woman Whisperer

This video is a funny ad, but I would REALLY like to see "The Man Whisperer"

In space nobody can hear you sing

This bit came about as a result of those long hours between star systems, and too much Andorrean Ale in 10-Forward!

Link to the webpage for the Hi Fidelity Quartet

Spray-on latex condoms…because sex isn’t messy enough already

Warning: this post acknowledges the existence of sex, sex acts, and implies that people engage in sex

Ever been in the middle of an intimate rendezvous and wish you didn’t have to fumble with the noisy, hard-to-open packaging condoms come wrapped in? Well how about getting rid of the packaging all together and just spraying on a condom? This is the thing for you.

Rabbis oppose California anti-gay-marriage initiative

Proposition 8 is stirring great fervor this election season, as supporters and opponents of gay marriage gear up for their Nov. 4 duel at the ballot box. Now comes the latest group to weigh in — the Board of Rabbis of Southern California.

The board — a collection of leaders from the Reconstructionist, Reform, Conservative and Orthodox movements — this week declared its opposition to the measure, which would amend the California Constitution to define marriage as only between a man and a woman. Leaders of the board said they wanted protect the civil rights of gay and lesbian couples.

The early bird beats up the protester

The Denver police union is selling T-shirts that poke fun at protesters at last month's Democratic National Convention, but the main target isn't laughing.

The back of the shirts reads, "We get up early to beat the crowds" and "2008 DNC," and has a caricature of a police officer holding a baton.

The diary that fell to earth

Pages from a diary that mysteriously floated down to earth went on display at a museum in Israel on Sunday.

The diary holds the words of Ilan Ramon, Israel's first astronaut, who was killed along with six other astronauts when Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon re-entering the atmosphere in February 2003.

The book survived temperatures of more than 1,000 degrees Celsius as Columbia tore apart while it re-entering earth's atmosphere

The 37 pages found fell 60 kilometres to the ground, landing in Palestine, Tex., named after the biblical region of Palestine.

United we vote for the environment

VoteForEnvironment.ca was designed by Canadians who believe that we must start to reduce our fossil fuel pollution now to save the planet from dangerous climate change.

The Harper Government’s collusion with the Bush White House to obstruct progress on climate change at recent international summits does not reflect how Canadians want their leaders to behave on the world stage. Harper and the Conservative Party are simply not in step with what scientists say is needed, and with economic benefits of dealing with climate change.

All the other major Parties have programs that seriously address our critical climate concerns and are talking about them in this election.

Have Craigslist and inner tube - will travel

In a move that could be right out of a Hollywood movie, a brazen crook apparently used a Craigslist ad to hire a dozen unsuspecting decoys to help him make his getaway following a robbery outside a bank on Tuesday. He then made his escape in an inner tube on the Skykomish River.

Wave power

The world's first commercial-scale wave-power station has gone live off the coast of Portugal. This footage shows how the 140m-long snake-like devices work.

From a distance, they look like nothing more than thin red lines on the horizon, easily lost amid the tumbling blue of the Atlantic Ocean. But get closer and the significance of the 140m-long tubes, 10 years in the making by a British company and now floating in the sea off the coast of Portugal, becomes apparent: they are the beginning of an entirely new industry in the hunt for clean power.

Working on your tan - for women

A common sight in beach resorts in the 19th century, bathing machines allowed women to change their clothes in private, reach the waters without parading through open stretches of beach in their bathing suits, and then frolic about in relative privacy and without violating contemporary notions of modesty.

Queen Victoria certainly had one, and like it, these caravans of propriety, of social mores too foreign for our own eyes, were simple wooden structures. Lest they invite voyeurs, they were built without windows, otherwise there were little ones inaccessible to prying eyes. Some were made of canvas and still others were very luxurious affairs, but all of them were on wheels, pulled in and out of the surf by horses or brute human power.

Roses x Time = Art

Gus Harper is an LA/NYC artist who creates pop paintings of ordinary objects on large grids. This time-lapse video of Harper painting roses is quite entrancing. Gus Harper: Grid Painting video (Thanks, Jason Weisberger!)

The Copyright Pledge Gains Momentum

The Green Party and NDP Candidates On Board ...

Will you commit to a balanced approach to copyright reform that reflects the views of all Canadians by pledging:

1. To respect the rights of creators and consumers,
2. Not to support any copyright bill that undermines or weakens the Copyright Act’s users rights,
3. To fully consult with Canadians before introducing any copyright reform bill and to conduct inclusive, national hearings on any tabled bill ?
   

• Yes
• No
  

En Francais : Vous engagerez-vous dans une approche équilibrée de la réforme sur le droit d'auteur qui reflète les opinions de tous les Canadiens et Canadiennes en promettant:

1. de respecter les droits des créateurs et des consommateurs
2. de ne pas supporter tout projet de loi sur le droit d'auteur détruisant ou diminuant les droits des utilisateurs face à la Loi sur le droit d'auteur
3. de consulter pleinement les Canadiens et Canadiennes avant d'introduire toute réforme sur le droit d'auteur et de tenir des audiences nationales inclusives sur tout projet de loi proposé.

• Oui
• Non

This was the question being put to politicians last week, as part of the 2008 Election Copyright Pledge that focused on three commitments for copyright reform in Canada :

• respecting both creators and consumers,
• ensuring that any reforms do not undermine or weaken user rights such as fair dealing, and
• committing to full public consultations on any reforms before introducing a bill and inclusive hearings once tabled.

The initial reaction to the pledge has been very strong.
The Green Party (as a party) has agreed to the pledge. In addition, the following NDP MPs have added their names as supporters:

• Charlie Angus, New Democrat MP, Timmins-James Bay, ON
• Olivia Chow, New Democrat MP, Trinity-Spadina, ON
• Libby Davies, New Democrat MP, Vancouver East, BC
  
• Michael Byers, New Democrat Candidate, Vancouver Centre, BC
• Anne Lagacé Dowson, New Democrat Candidate, Westmount, QC
• Phil Brown, New Democrat Candidate, Nepean-Carleton, ON
• John Chan, New Democrat Candidate, Calgary Centre-North, AB
• Tyler Kinch, New Democrat Candidate, Calgary Centre, AB

There is still time before the election to raise the issue with local candidates.

Organic money

Here's a great example of what we could easily call a "local currency" - that doesn't involve any bloody, anti-corporate revolution.

With currency unavailable from traditional, centralized money-lending banks, a tiny organic cafe called Comfort has been unable to raise the cash required to finish renovations and finally open.

As a way to get the necessary funds, the owner has decided to sell VIP cards. For every dollar a customer buys on a VIP card, they receive the equivalent of $1.20 worth of credit.

The owner gets the cash infusion he needs to build the new restaurant - and since he's paying for it in 20% tab adjustments, it just comes out of profits. He gets the money a lot cheaper than if he were borrowing it from the bank, paying back in cash over time. Meanwhile, customers get more food for less money.

Smoking fish in prison

It is well-known that the cigarette pack has been the standard currency for inmates in U.S. Federal prisons. But in 2004, when legislation prohibited smoking in prison, another currency soon took its place - the "mack" - that is a can of mackerel.

"It's the coin of the realm," says Mark Bailey, who was serving a two-year tax-fraud sentence in connection with a chain of strip clubs he owned. His 'in-house' lawyer, Mr. Levine, who was serving a nine-year term for drug dealing, says he used his macks to get his beard trimmed, his clothes pressed and his shoes shined by other prisoners. "A haircut is two macks," he says, as an expected tip for inmates who work in the prison barber shop.

Prisoners need a proxy for the dollar because they're not allowed to possess cash. Money they get from prison jobs (which pay a maximum of 40 cents an hour, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons) or family members goes into commissary accounts that let them buy things such as food and toiletries. After the smokes disappeared, inmates turned to other items on the commissary menu to use as currency.

I'd recognize that ASS anywhere

Chimpanzees may not forget a familiar face — or a behind, a new study says.

In a recent experiment, captive primates were able to identify photos of their acquaintances' rears and match them with the right faces.

The ability suggests that the animals possess mental "whole body" representations of other chimps they know.

Each participating chimp was flashed a picture of another's bum, with visible genitals, then shown the face of the derriere's owner and another face of the same gender.

Both males and females were successful in this anatomical match game, pairing faces and posteriors with much greater frequency than chance alone—but only if the photos showed chimps they already knew.

Cosmic Beauty

Pictured above is a spectacular single-exposure image of our Milky Way Galaxy, taken with a long duration exposure. The planet Jupiter is visible as the bright point just to band's left. Under that are picturesque buttes and mesas of the Canyonlands National Park in Utah, USA, lit by a crescent moon. In the foreground is a cave housing a stone circle of unknown origin named False Kiva.

Sarah Palin uses fascist's words to illustrate her philosophy

“Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin quoted an unidentified “writer” who extolled the virtues of small-town America: “We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity.” (9/3/08) The unidentified writer was Westbrook Pegler (1894-1969), the ultraconservative newspaper columnist whose widely syndicated columns (at its peak, 200 newspapers and 12 million readers) targeted the New Deal establishment, labor leaders, intellectuals, homosexuals, Jews, and poets.”

Girl who bleeds without being cut baffles doctors

Religious people will have a heyday with this phenomenon ...

Twinkle Dwivedi, 13, has a strange disorder which means she loses blood through her skin without being cut or scratched.

She has even undergone transfusions after pints of it seeped through her eyes, nose, hairline, neck and the soles of her feet.

Sometimes her condition is so bad she wakes up with her entire body covered in dried blood.

Villagers near her home in Uttar Pradesh, India, believe she must be cursed and shout cruel things in the street.

Her frantic family have sought help from numerous doctors as well as preachers from many different religions without success.

Wall Street Lost in America

The movie Lost in America is about a husband and wife in their 30's who decide to quit their jobs, live as free spirits and cruise America in a Winnebago. This scene, where the husband has lost their savings at a Las Vegas casino and tries to get it back, serves as a great metaphor for the Wall Street fat cats dilemma in the current financial crisis.

Superheroes United

I have been a HUGE fan of Jon Stewart & The Daily Show, and the subsequent spin-off The Colbert Report from their inception. These two show have shaped the discussions about American politics throughout the Bush era, and may well have managed to keep us all sane while the sky was falling around us.

How for another feather in Stephen Colbert's cap:

Marvel is proud to reveal that Spider-Man and acclaimed television personality Stephen Colbert will join forces in an all new eight-page story featured in the extra-sized AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #573!

Acclaimed writer Mark Waid and fan favorite artist Patrick Olliffe present Stephen Colbert, a candidate for the U.S. Presidency in the Marvel Universe, teaming up with Marvel's most iconic crime fighter. What could bring these two together? And what will it mean for both their futures?

The Romulans have landed

Invisibility cloaks that are able to steer light around two dimensional objects have become reality in the last few years. But the first real-world application of the theories that made them possible could be in hiding vulnerable coastlines and offshore platforms from destructive tsunamis.

The first working invisibility cloak, built in 2006, guided microwaves around a small, flat copper ring as if it wasn't there. By October 2007, a device repeated the trick for harder-to-handle visible light, and some progress is reported on the yet more complex task of making cloaks to hide 3D objects.

Now Stefan Enoch at the Fresnel Institute in Marseille, France, says that established cloaking principles could be applied to ocean waves, which are essentially two-dimensional. Such techniques could be used to render vulnerable coastlines or offshore platforms invisible to damaging waves, he says.

This link will take you to an article about the first cloaking device.

Work-Safe Porn ?!?

DIRECTIONS: Take filthy pornographic pictures and use Photoshop to magically transform them into something more wholesome!

Diesel (a porn company) was inspired to use their existing footage to make an SFW XXX video. And here it is:

http://view.break.com/577249 - Watch more free videos

Come on Baby, light my Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system and one of the most prominent examples of free software and open source development; typically all the underlying source code can be freely modified, used, and redistributed by anyone.

Linspire adds proprietary software, drivers, and codecs to provide the world's easiest Linux-based operating system designed for laptop & desktop PCs.

Here is their anti-Microsoft advert set to a modified version of The Doors' "Light My Fire" ...

Borat star busted for film stunt in Italy

Outrageous comic actor Sacha Baron Cohen has found himself in hot water again, after storming onto the catwalk at a fashion show in Milan.

Cohen, in costume and in character, leaped onto the runway during Spanish designer Agatha Ruiz De La Prada's show in Milan and strutted around before security chased, captured and turned him over to police,.

The Cambridge University-educated star was detained at a police station for about half an hour, during which someone fetched his passport to vouch for him. He was released without charge.

The British star is filming a new movie based on another of his over-the-top characters: Austrian fashion reporter Bruno. The mockumentary Bruno: Delicious Journeys Through America for the Purpose of Making Heterosexual Males Visibly Uncomfortable in the Presence of a Gay Foreigner in a Mesh T-Shirt is slated to hit theatres in May 2009.

Private rocket blasts into history

After three failed launches, SpaceX has made history. Its privately developed rocket, Falcon 1, has made it into space.

The entire spectacle was broadcast live from Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. Cameras mounted on the spacecraft showed our planet shrinking in the distance and the empty first stage engine falling back to Earth.

As the rocket ascended, cheers rang out during every crucial step of the launch sequence, and at the final stage their headquarters in Hawthorne, California erupted in excitement. (Wired.com viewed the launch over the Internet on SpaceX's live webcast.)

The tensest moment came just before stage separation. At that critical juncture, the third launch attempt had failed. This time, it worked out perfectly.

Sarah Palin : The Movie

Picture it ... The United States, 2008. The McCain-Palin ticket is a winner and Sarah is prepared to use every tool she has in her arsenal to make the world a better place.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Guess where part of that $700,000,000,000 goes

As the U.S. Congress argues over how to get the financial system back on its feet, they have had to debate limits on executive pay. The New York Times reports that the chief executive of Washington Mutual, who was on the job just 17 days, is eligible for $19.1 million in compensation.

For short-time CEO Alan H. Fishman -- named to run the failing bank less than three weeks ago -- that would work out to $1.12 million per day (assuming he worked weekends). If he worked eight-hour days, it works out to $140,000 per hour.

He's either really smart or really stupid!

A Swiss man has become the first person to fly solo across the English Channel using a single jet-propelled wing.

Yves Rossy landed safely after the 22-mile (35.4 km) flight from Calais to Dover, which had been twice postponed this week because of bad weather.

The former military pilot took less than 10 minutes to complete the crossing and parachute to the ground.