— a must for every self-proclaimed geek —
(if you are to believe this article)
Alek has been raising awareness for Celiac’s disease, an autoimmune disease which affects his kids. He has been doing this by rigging his gruesome abundance of christmas lights and making them controlled by buttons on his webpage.
Please try for yourself (and donate! Every amount of any currency helps)
These are some examples from a book. It’s about 19th century ways to determine if someone is really deceased.
–Christian Friedrich Nasse’s Thanatometer was a long thermometer that was inserted into the stomach, supposedly measuring a core body temperature that would determine if life was possible (and published in 1841);
–The (Englishman’s) Barnett scalding death cure, which recommended burning the skin of the arm to see if it blistered (no blister/no life);
–the German Middeldorph invented a heart flag, a needle device that would be thrust into the heart, which if functioning would trigger something or other that would cause a flag to be released at the top of the needle (I can’t stop laughing at this one);
–Christian August Struwe’s interesting Lebenspruefer (1805) was an electrical device that delivered a dual shock to the eye and lip, the logic here being that if the person was still alive that there would be a resulting twitch;
–the nameless tobacco enema, which blew smoke…(delivered in the beginning by breath through a tube and improved later to replacing the lips with a bellows, this secondary improvement by Antoine Louis2 and furthered by Dr. P.J.B. Previnaire’s much more powerful anal tobacco furnace (This is a nice invention for my Eberron artificer). )
–Leon Collongues believed that he could hear the capillary functions of a possibly-dead person’s fingers if placed in his ear;
–Jules Antoine Josat3 invented a nipple-pincher (“pince-mamelon”) life-rejuvenation device, operating on the assumption that a deeply sedated person could not resist a strong pinch of the nipple and would have to wake up if alive.
I love that century! But I’m really grateful I was born in this time, because although the ideas are brilliant, they are also often very sinister.
For more information – and very interesting articles in general – go here
I have a couple of websites I visit everyday. Those are Deviant Art, FARK and I can has cheezburger.
The latter has a lot of sister sites as well, containing pictures stapled with macros, and although nothing is quite as funny as macroed cats, macroed celebrities sometimes come close.
And this is why:
Sean Connery (no really! Sean Connery.)
I think the last picture is funnier without caption though. A post about it will follow, I assure you.
And yes, I know people will condemn me for thinking a macroed cat the funniest thing. But I don’t care. As long as I can has cheezburger! Viva le cheezburger! Viva la revolucion!
This growing collection of mugshots is well-worth your time!
They have categories like Hollywood, Gangsters and Historical but also a mugshot of the week, featuring random people, not necessarily famous before they got arrested.
I found this really nice autumn theme, made by Geek with Laptop.
So thanks! I’m enjoying it 
Snoeshi from www.snoeshi.nl
I think I will create my own very soon. I just got my PC returned from repair facilities, and installed CS3, and I really think its time to get the hang of Illustrator.
Since I miserably failed at it for one assignment in school (back in 2001) I never got on good terms with Adobe Illustrator.
Now, my friend here, made this really beautiful design for her blog with illustrator, and it gave me courage. So I’m going at it again!
The past weeks a whole soap opera evolved from the actions of Stichting Brein vs The Pirate Bay. The short version:
TPB: we have been brought to court in Sweden. Great injustice!
SB: TPB accomodates crime. Dutch websurfers need to be protected.
*SB sues TPB*
Today, on my work, something like this happened:
Collegue: I bought a new phone with a navigation system.
Me: Well, just be careful to check. My mum bought one of those and they didn’t tell her you had to pay loads of extra money to download the navigational charts.
Colleague: Oh, if that’s the case I’ll just download an illegal version.
It was said so casually, it seemed this person did not even consider the fact it would be the same as tucking it under its coat and walking out of a store with it.
It’s available online for free, so it can’t be illegal. Something like that.
And almost all my colleagues, average, polite, decent human beings, seem to think about it the same way. They have no awareness of digital property. It’s bits and bytes, it’s not an object.
I don’t think shutting down torrent sites will have the desired effect. The only beneficial effect I can think of is that it’s a stimulus to invent and develop new ways of exchanging files.
So, it’s not as much the p2p and the torrents which are the problem, it’s the way people perceive ownership when the object is on a computer.
Should this change?
I found a bunch of awesome old Star Wars pictures here
Here are some of them:
I actually like the last one best, because it’s the kind of picture soldiers would send home from where ever they’re stationed across the world (or galaxy) ^^.
Here’s the link to the original article again: http://www.uniquescoop.com/2009/07/rare-star-wars-photos.html
see more Funny Graphs
Is Pluto a planet after all? Is it important?
In the classical world there are seven planets, the moon and sun among them. (the others being Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn).
Pluto, Neptune and Uranus don’t count because they are not “classical”. They weren’t discovered yet.
There was also a time when Venus not a planet. She was two stars: the morning star and the evening star.
It seems strange to me to change the status of a planet to dwarf planet, but then again, why would you cling to Pluto being a planet? Only because “it’s always been a planet”? Times change and with that the way we regard the world.
So it’s not a valid reason to keep on calling Pluto a planet.
Anyway, it seems the dispute continues… Is Pluto a planet after all? – space – 27 July 2009 – New Scientist
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I’m reading “One hundred philosophers: a guide to the world’s greatest thinkers” by Peter J. King.
Something which struck me while I was browsing the book: the fact that many people regard “the material” as inherently evil or the most degenerated state of being. They insist we have an eternal consciousness, which we hone through many lives until it’s so far developed it doesn’t need to materialize anymore but can go on to unite with the One. They insist mankind has a higher purpose.
When I look up at night and see the gazillion stars pinned against the velvet expansion, or I picture the huge seething orbs they really are, travelling the vast kosmos at high speed, I suppose I feel envious. These stars were there long before I was born, and will still be there long after I’m dead.
And then I wonder if it is this same feeling of envy, or perhaps longing or fear, which inspired people to invent the immortal soul. Just because they cannot imagine a universe in which their existence is fleeting, like snowflakes are. Nice to look at, intruiging from close by, but gone before you know it and replaced by thousands of other seemingly similar ones.
An image like this does not void my life of meaning. To me, it’s not that important if I live on for centuries to come or if my life ends with my last breath. Either way, to live and to think is fascinating in itself.
So, what I wanted to say is that I quite enjoy reading my book. Even only scratching the surface of some philosopher’s thoughts inspires interesting questions.
I’m looking forward to reading more in depth material, though it’s going to be difficult to decide where to start.