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.

Dancing with dinosaurs

In 1994, while walking around a cement factory in southern Bolivia, Klaus Schütt discovered a limestone wall with a shear size of 25'000 square meters literally covered by dinosaur tracks. A few years later, in 1998, a scientific team lead by Swiss paleontologist Christian Meyer investigated the wall, and proved it was "the largest site of dinosaur tracks found so far".

The immense Bolivian site is the rock face of an outcropping on a slant of 73 degrees, 80 meters high and 1.2 km long. There are more than 5,000 tracks of 294 different dinosaurs made during the second half of the Cretaceous period.

There is such an impressive amount of tracks that some of the researchers said this place seemed to be a dinosaurs’ dancefloor.

It's a wonderful life

"Our Wonderful Nature" is a funny clip from a young German film-maker that gives us a glimpse into a world that normally takes place in the blink of an eye.

Researchers to study if out-of-body experiences are real

A group of British, U.S. and Canadian researchers will study whether out-of-body experiences are real, as some people have claimed after surviving cardiac arrest.

In a study run by the University of Southampton's Human Consciousness Project, researchers will examine 1,500 survivors of heart attacks over three years at 25 hospitals in Europe, the U.S. and Canada to determine if the phenomenon of seeing a light at the end of the tunnel or floating above as reported by some is genuine.

To test patients, doctors will place random photographs on shelves higher than the beds in emergency and intensive care rooms, which will only be visible if the heart-attack victims are looking down, the researchers say.

The photos will be confidential and changed routinely, they say.

Harper gets my (scape)goat

A staff member resigned and apologized Tuesday for writing a speech read by Stephen Harper in 2003 as leader of the Opposition that he plagiarized from an address days earlier by then Australian prime minister John Howard.

"Neither my superiors in the Office of the Leader of the Opposition nor the leader of the Opposition was aware that I had done so."

Lippert worked for Harper, then leader of the Canadian Alliance, when the speech calling for Canadian troops to be deployed to Iraq was written and read in the House of Commons.

Lippert, a former policy analyst for economic think tank the Fraser Institute, has announced his resignation from his current position working in the Conservative campaign headquarters.

The apology came hours after Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae accused Harper of plagiarizing from the Howard speech.

PHOTO: M.C. Escher, The Scapegoat from Diamond, S. Anger, Madness and the Daimonic, p. 80

Gay bashing in Vancouver investigated as hate crime

Vancouver police say they are treating an attack in the city's West End as a hate crime, after a 27-year-old man was struck in the face while walking hand-in-hand with another man.

Early Saturday morning, a group of four young men approached the pair, calling out gay slurs. One of the men then hit him in the face with enough force that he fell back on the sidewalk and was knocked unconscious.

Smith's jaw was dislodged and fractured in a number of places, and he's scheduled to go in for surgery Monday, which will leave his jaw wired shut for six weeks.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-I39sn2yL11ltM3SECUSVOM14ar-RZKyfXBgGpjrUe_5Wq6r0QbB5gR1hIntOeKETw6Rlb6zDhbAfwZTkJ109HJai11UdKXgfdUj40RFoMslWYIziUDdcuwKYQp5twwv4CPSwfSWNZk61/s1600/hateistaught.jpg

Michael Moore : Congratulations, Corporate Crime Fighters! Coup Averted!

Film-maker Michael Moore has championed many causes over the years, so you can imagine that he has a few things to say about the recent financial collapse of the U.S. markets. Here is an excerpt from his most recent letter:

Everyone said the bill would pass. The masters of the universe were already making celebratory dinner reservations at Manhattan's finest restaurants. Personal shoppers in Dallas and Atlanta were dispatched to do the early Christmas gifting. Mad Men of Chicago and Miami were popping corks and toasting each other long before the morning latte run.

But what they didn't know was that hundreds of thousands of Americans woke up yesterday morning and decided it was time for revolt. The politicians never saw it coming. Millions of phone calls and emails hit Congress so hard it was as if Marshall Dillon, Elliot Ness and Dog the Bounty Hunter had descended on D.C. to stop the looting and arrest the thieves.

The Corporate Crime of the Century was halted by a vote of 228 to 205. It was rare and historic; no one could remember a time when a bill supported by the president and the leadership of both parties went down in defeat. That just never happens.

... and while you are at his site, you can download his latest film on the state of the world, "Slacker Uprising" for FREE!