Oh my god. This creepy, unthinking mechanical thing is the precursor to the terrible things that will replace us. I, for one, welcome them with open arms.
Categories
Tag: weird news
Categories
Space Void!
More human remains have been found at the former site of the World Trade Center.
According to the Washington Post article above, ~20,000 pieces of people have thus far been found. ~2,749 died in the attack. This means that, statistically, every person who died at the World Trade Center that day was blown into an average of about 7 pieces.
Really brings it home, huh?
Scientists Take Step Toward Invisibility
Dr. [David R.] Smith warned against getting ahead of the day’s announcement and envisioning the disappearing Romulan warbirds of “Star Trek†on the horizon. The work “is really a scientific explanation,†he said, adding, “Whether it’s useful is always a question.â€Creating a cloaking device in the visible spectrum would be vastly more complex, he said, since the device would have to warp all of the wavelengths of light. The chance of creating such a device is “dim,†he said, but, “The theory doesn’t prevent it from an electromagnetic point of view.â€
A real invisibility cloak? Wizard!
“Our cloak allows a concealed volume, plus the cloak, to appear to have properties similar to free space when viewed externally,†Professor David Smith, of Duke University, said. “The cloak deflects microwave beams so they flow around a ‘hidden’ object, making it appear almost as if nothing were there at all. The waves’ movement is similar to river water flowing around a smooth rock.â€
Marijuana May Slow Alzheimer’s
THC, the key compound in marijuana… blocks the formation of brain-clogging Alzheimer‘s plaques better than current Alzheimer’s drugs.
Janda’s team found that THC blocks an enzyme called acetylcholinesterase, which speeds the formation of amyloid plaque in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease.
The Alzheimer’s drugs Aricept and Cognex work by blocking acetylcholinesterase. When tested at double the concentration of THC, Aricept blocked plaque formation only 22% as well as THC, and Cognex blocked plaque formation only 7% as well as THC.
I’m not a marijuana smoker, but I do believe that it is just plain stupid to maintain its currently illegal status. We smoke cigarettes, which do nothing for us but kill us in the end, or at least reduce our life span; we drink alcohol, which makes us stupid and often violent, impairs our reflexes, and causes cirrhosis of the liver. Cannabis has shown time and time again that it is a valuable plant which should absolutely be legalized. Having had a great grandfather who had Alzheimer’s, I’ve seen first-hand what a truly horrifying thing that disease is (note: not “can be,” it simply “is”). If there’s a better-than-with-current-drugs chance that I may be able to stave off the potential onslaught of a slow, mind-reducing, soul-killing, life-crushing disease like that, I may just start toking myself. Better yet, I may start eating the stuff. Trust me, there are very few things worse than dying over a period of several years from a disease which eventually completely eradicates all memory and personality from a human being’s life.
Screw glaucoma (which I may one day develop as well), I want to see more research on this!
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Milky Way packed with planets*
We may be getting closer to ‘solving’ the [in]famous Drake equation. The only worrying variable is L, the lifespan of an intelligent civilization. Although, if other civilizations are as keen on self-destruction as are we, then that might also explain Fermi’s Paradox.
* However, the Nougat Quotient remains, sadly, unknown :(
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Mark Foley (R-Fla) is a… Democrat?
Fox News is now pretending that disgraced Republican congressman Mark Foley is a Democrat! Simply incredible. The lies and bullshit that they spew on the unsuspecting and curiously unbefuddled masses just continue to grow in scope and effect. How this may affect the elections is anybody’s guess, but if enough people who get their news exclusively from Fox are duped that easily, it may turn ugly.
Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin killed by stingray | The Australian
I always thought this poor guy took things a little too far. Maybe he was just crazy or had a death wish. R.I.P. Steve Irwin :(
The Yes Men, a group of painfully satirical culture jamming pranksters, have done it again: they duped organizers of the Gulf Coast Reconstruction and Hurricane Preparedness Summit into thinking that Andy Bichlbaum was Rene Oswin, an official stand-in for Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Alphonso Jackson, announcing that HUD was not going to tear down 5,000 units of affordable public housing (projects) in New Orleans …a blatant lie meant to bring attention to the fact that HUD was actually planning on doing the exact opposite, even with people clamoring to return to some semblance of normal home life.
William Loiry, president of meeting sponsor Equity International, said he was duped.
“We were contacted about a week ago or so by someone who we believed to be [public relations firm] Hill & Knowlton [saying] that they were representing the HUD secretary and that he wanted to make a major announcement at this summit.”
Loiry said he was told a few minutes before he had planned to introduce Jackson that the secretary would be replaced by Oswin.
Video here; CNN article here.
And to explain, from The Yes Men‘s website:
Identity theft: Small-time criminals impersonate honest people in order to steal their money. Targets are ordinary folks whose ID numbers fell into the wrong hands.
Identity correction: Honest people impersonate big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them. Targets are leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else.
The Yes Men have impersonated some of the world’s most powerful criminals at conferences, on the web, and on television, in order to correct their identities. They currently have hundreds of thousands of job openings. Sign up today!
See also:
Situationist International (you must absorb this information to fully understand culture jamming!)
The Yes Men movie
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Dark matter
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link apeshit
National Film Board of Canada: 50 animated shorts – excellent stuff!
Dr. Miracles – short film. Completely juvenile, and hilarious. ER gone badly weird.
This Flash “mind reader” seems spooky at first – until you figure out how it works (but do try it first, following the site’s instructions): Notice that the symbols repeat. Also notice how one number may have different symbols when you repeat the process. Then, notice that you can’t just pick a symbol, you HAVE to do the math. NOW… try this: Do the math for 5 different numbers. Do you see a pattern? They’ll all be the same symbol! So no matter what number you pick, if you do the math and pick the correct symbol, it will ALWAYS be right!
Bizarre fish with human-like teeth caught in Texas lake. (Not just human… British.)
Speaking of which… catfish, um, really get this big?!
Bandai’s hilariously weird “God-Jesus” robot toy from the 1980s.
Experiments in the Revival of Dead Organisms. Fucking creepy. Found via Grey Lodge Podcasting Company’s YouTube link dump.
Mazen Kerboj, musician and artist, blogs from ground zero in Lebanon. Check out his improv piece, Starry Night, during which you can hear bombs and air $raid$ sirens in the background. Beautiful and unsettling, all at once. Read his blog and pass it along. Chilling. I hope that he stays safe. He seems like a good man. He says things like:
“we know you are with us. we know you are seeing us. we know you hear the fucking bombs we are hearing. we know you worry for us. but don’t. because you know we are tough guys. you know that we’ll [survive?] this shit. you know that we survived massacre and we’ll do it again today. you know we’ll see each other soon. keep in touch and stay with us.”
People get ready: all this Middle East violence is giving the End-Timers a serious hard-on for the Rapture. A sicker bunch of fuckwits probably do not exist. Zealots are fools. It is religious zeal that has got the world into the mess that it’s in now. How do you spell worldwide suicide? Z-E-A-L-O-T-R-Y.
Zealots of the world: fuck you. I do hope that you all die the vainglorious deaths that you ridiculous, ignorant fools are all hoping for. So GO APESHIT FOR JESUS/MOSES/MUHAMMED! Kill each other to bloody, pulpy fucking smithereens and let the rest of us get on with our futures!
Andrew Shimery-Wolf of “McDonald’s Interactive” gave a bizarre presentation at the UK Serious Games summit, where game developers meet to discuss games made for corporate and educational use. The presentation focused on the potentially devastating climate changes brought about by shady corporate practices.
According to Shimery-Wolf, the group had created McMarketplace, a simulation of the global effects of the burger business. It worked well for training, but in long-term predictions, business ended in 2050, when everyone died due to climate change and dead earth. (source)
They also announced that McDonald’s Interactive was splitting off from the McDonald’s parent company.
“We can no longer stand by while McDonald’s corporate policies help lead the planet to ruin,” said Shimery-Wolf, co-director of the “Interactive Division”, which supposedly was founded to help strategize business for future markets.
Nobody seems to know who this group really is, or whether or not the organizers of the conference knew what was going to happen, although it’s a safe bet that they didn’t. The group’s domain’s WHOIS resolves to an Italian registrar and the registrant is obviously a fake, with a contact email at mcvideogame.com, a spoof videogame created by political subversives Molleindustria to blast McDonald’s.
Apparently, RTMARK also has something to do with this mysterious and hilarious jake, as a response to a press inquiry was sent from an rtmark.com e-mail address. It seems highly likely, to me at least, that Molleindustria and RTMARK collaborated on this joint venture.
Check out the PowerPoint presentation itself, and watch as this hilarious story develops. For more info, see:
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religion, and weird science
Onward, Christian soldiers: Sick, twisted revenge-fantasy that is the Left Behind series to be made into sick, twisted revenge-fantasy videogame. Violence! Killing heathens (Jews, Buddhists, Muslems, pro-choicers, non-radical-right type Christians, profaners, etc.)! Now YOU can be the vehicle for God’s Final Holocaust!
Microbes from outer space rained down on India. No shit. Alien life forms! Well, maybe.
New animal species found in Israel! At least 8 new sightless animal species found in Israel cave: 4 land, 4 water (2 fresh and 2 seawater). The giant cave, scientists believe, has been entirely closed off for millions of years, allowing the independent evolution of these strange species.
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Breaking robot/chicken news!
No matter how much you want to believe otherwise, you’re just not ever going to believe these startling, floor-dropping-out-from-under-you news stories of Ro-bots*, and of chickens. Science to the rescue?! I think not, good sir! If only we could turn back the hands of time toward yesterday, when things were so more… innocenter.
The tables have finally turned! Humans can now control The Ro-bots via thoughts! Never again will a Ro-bot control my thoughts, or control me with its thoughts! And i’m kinda glad about that, i guess, but i think that by some measure, i will miss the old days.
This just in: Egg came first after all. I really do wish i didn’t have to keep continually using this next phrase, but it certainly is warranted in this case: Sorry, chicken.
* or, as Holly calls these metal demons, “Ro-bits”
So, ya know how those wacky scientists have been slowing down light more and more over the past several years now? To the point where you could physically see the motion? And even to the point where it’s stopped?
Now, Robert Boyd, the M. Parker Givens Professor of Optics at the University of Rochester, has actually slowed time so fucking much that it moves backwards.
That’s right. Backwards. But that’s not all!
It apparently does so faster than the god damn speed of light.
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link roundup
Korea unveil’s world’s 2nd (life-like) android. I had no idea there was another, but there is: it’s Japanese.
Best Buy invaded by faux blueshirts! Hail Eris!
Security guards and managers started talking to each other frantically on their walkie-talkies and headsets. “Thomas Crown Affair! Thomas Crown Affair!,” one employee shouted. They were worried that were using our fake uniforms to stage some type of elaborate heist. “I want every available employee out on the floor RIGHT NOW!”
Student kicked out of private university for – get this – being gay! Honestly, wtf?!
This revolving kitchen is a serious space-saver. How awesome is that?
Superhero underwear fetish spoof! Female superheroes have always been objectified as so much T&A… now male superheroes can be fluffy C&B models!
German superhero Robin Hoods steal gourmet food to give to the poor!
“The Not Your Soldier Project gives youth the tools we need to stop the military invasion of our schools and our communities.”
Creationism dismissed as ‘a kind of paganism’ by Vatican’s astronomer.
Remix My Life in the Bush of Ghosts tracks!
The Skeletor Show. Yup. The Skeletor Show.
Terrorist video game mod is a hoax. Who knew? Anyone with half a brain, that’s who.
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The Bobliographon
New SubGenius book in the works. It’s about damn time. Praise Dobbs!
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link roundup
from the Missing Link files: 375 million year old Fishapod fossil discovered. A fish with a freaking neck. Oh, and finger-like bones attached to wrist-like bones. Fuck you, Creationistas! (See also: Ray Troll’s related artwork)
“Dark Miracle: Trinity, the Manhattan Project, and the Birth of the Atomic Age”, a fabulous piece by Josh Ellis (see also: video of Ed Grothus’ Black Hole tour)
SXSW video coverage. Sweet.
Big Brother is (or will soon be) watching you, via SkySeer. Already this drone camera-plane is in use in L.A. skies.
Remember this, GWB? “Leaks of classified information are bad things. We’ve got too much leaking in Washington… I want to know who the leakers are.” Does anyone have a mirror for Mister Bush?
It’s All in the Mind, man: psychedelics research.
Israeli soldier murders journalist. From a related BBC News story:
“The inquest has heard that Mr Miller approached an armoured personnel carrier, carrying a white flag which he shone a torch on, calling out that he was a British journalist and wearing a helmet marked TV. He was shot in the neck, unprotected by his body armour.He had been attempting to ask for permission to leave the area.”
So, yeah, just keep on supporting Israel, all you Left Behind-reading end-times obsessed know-nothing Revelationist fuckwits.
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link roundup
Sun’s idea for an open-source DRM has the potential to fix many extremely problematic issues with potentially dangerous, proprietary DRM.
Goodbye, PSP movies. We hardly knew ye.
When you tell He-man gung-ho shootemup types that war is just plain bad, and that the American war against Iraq is one of the worst, maybe you should make him read this article entitled “Baghdad By Night” instead, from NPR producer JJ Sutherland. To paraphrase Serena Tali, the author of comment #1 from that article, Americans don’t know about this kind of thing because they just don’t want to know.
Still don’t think the US is becoming a police state? Bully cops suck the worst.
Evil terrorist mastermind Mario apparently on the loose in Ohio.