This is well bloody disturbing. His raucous laughter in this context seem like the pitiful screams of a tortured soul. [via]
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DRM drummed out?
Following on from Eliot Van Buskirk’s Wired column Who’s Killing MP3 and iTunes? (in which he pontificated on the future of the MP3 file format in comparison to DRMed alternatives like Apple’s AAC format as sold in their iTunes online store) there is the news that EMI has announced that it will no longer produce CDs with DRM.
One swallow doesn’t make a summer but this would seem to be an indication that even the record companies are coming to doubt the efficacy of DRM.
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Pizza or your life.
Frankie Flood a University of Illinois School of Art and Design student produced a number of beautiful but deadly looking pizza-cutters for his MFA Thesis Exhibition[via]
This is my favourite of his works featured.
PLF “Pizza For Life” 2002
Powder coated aluminum, stainless steel, and ball bearings
4″ x 9 1/2″ x 1 1/2″
This one looks like a particularly vicious weapon as used by an assassin in a steampunk novel. Cardinal Chang of The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters
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40 million sheep in New Zealand
Whilst idly surfing the web one day I discovered that there many more North Poles in the world than I’d thought. Not only do we have the Geographic North Pole, the Magnetic North Pole and the Geomagnetic North Pole, there are also North Poles in both the states of Alaska and New York and curiously a North Pole in the centre of London.
The curious 10 year old boy that lives inside me and loves watching The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures decided to email them to find out why it was called the North Pole station.
North Pole station [Incident:061229-000103]
Could you tell me please why it is called North Pole?Thanks
Matt Wharton
Dear Mr Wharton
Thank you for your e mail,
The North Pole International Depot in London is so called because the depot is linked by rail to the three main North London termini: Euston, St Pancras and Kings Cross.
Kind Regards
Julian
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Boymongoose’s 12 Days of Christmas
The 12 Days of Christmas by boymongoose is so damn good I might just have to buy the album ready for next year.
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Real men Wii standing up.
Jason Kottke’s puntastic t-shirt design.
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Christmas virgin birth
BBC News: ‘Virgin births’ for giant lizards
There have been two reported cases of Komodo dragon “virgin births”
The largest lizards in the world are capable of “virgin births”.
Scientists report of two cases where female Komodo dragons have produced offspring without male contact.
One of the reptiles, Flora, a resident of Chester Zoo in the UK, is awaiting her clutch of eight eggs to hatch, with a due-date estimated around Christmas.
Kevin Buley, a curator at Chester Zoo and a co-author on the paper, said: “Flora laid her eggs at the end of May and, given the incubation period of between seven and nine months, it is possible they could hatch around Christmas – which for a ‘virgin birth’ would finish the story off nicely.
“We will be on the look-out for shepherds, wise men and an unusually bright star in the sky over Chester Zoo.”
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Billions and Billions
To commemorate the 10th Anniversary of Carl Sagan’s death fans and bloggers are planning a worldwide blog-a-thon, plus the launch of a new site titled Celebrating Sagan.
My own contribution is to reprint this Sagan related urban legend.
Once upon a time, Carl Sagan met the pope (John Paul II) and asked him what he would do if somehow science convincingly and irrefutably disproved the foundations of Christianity. The Pope proceeded to lecture Sagan for about 15 minutes about why this was impossible.
Later, Carl met the Dali Lama and asked him the same question about Buddhism. His reply was that he would immediately tell everybody, because it would mean millions of Buddhists would be living their lives incorrectly.
Also I’d like to add a link to this site which posits that Sagan was the reincarnation of 18th century astronomer David Rittenhouse.
I wonder what Carl Sagan would have thought of that, as a renowned sceptic he would probably have laughed like I did.