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.