Category: society

  • Rudd’s Downfall

    I’m really enjoying the ‘Downfall’ parodies (and the surrounding drama, and the parodies of the drama).

  • layers

  • Steve Jobs Cheese Head

    via the cooks den

  • there i fixed it

    I’ve been around the DIY / hacking world for a while now, thought I knew the field, but this site is amazing.

  • Butter Ball

    I was in Istanbul recently, which was great; the Hagia Sophia, the Basilica Cistern, the Spice Bazaar, wonderful friends, and this incredible butter ball. thanks to Glenn for the photo.

  • Meet ‘The Back-Up’ shotgun rack

    “enabling access to your shotgun while in the lying position in your bed”. Yes folks, it’s real. The theme here is obviously home defence, but I guess if you can’t live with the fear any longer, your gun is also conveniently located for a suicide attempt.

  • Mobile Phone Radiation Used To Treat Alzheimer’s Disease (in mice)

    As links between mobile phone usage and brain tumours become more evident there is some good news, mobile phones may also enhance your memory and prevent the development of Alzheimer’s disease. Via LiveScience

  • Freeze-Wait-Reanimate

    Yesterday was the 43rd anniversary of the death and subsequent freezing of Dr. Bedford – the worlds first successful cryogenics patient (successful in the fact that he is still frozen and, unfortunately, also still dead). Quoting from the 1967 issue of Freeze-Wait-Reanimate, there may be some hope for reanimation in the distant future when reanimation techniques have…

  • The Age Online Is A Horrible Publication

    Breaking News from The Age: But don’t just take my word for it. (ed. 15th Jan. Link now broken – or fixed, depends on your point of view) Via Backstoryesque

  • LOL (LOL)

    Confused? over 30? see Rocketboom

  • David Harvey on the right to the city.

    David Harvey speaks about ‘the right to reshape the city in a different image’. He presents the city as a manifestation of our heart’s desire; ‘In remaking the city we remake ourselves. The question of what kind of city do we want cannot be divorced from questions about what kind of people do we want to…

  • 1950’s Italian Police on Motorbikes

    via Alternative Displays.

  • Plan B

    My plan to turn the Brunswick Secondary College maintenance shed into a GIANT smoke ring generator has failed – not the slightest hint of a smoke ring formed at the 2m diameter hole we (the year 7’s and myself) constructed at the end of the 5m long shed. And so, despite my best intentions, the…

  • Smoke Rings

    I’ve been making smoke ring generators with students from Brunswick Secondary College. They are based on the one below. I was talking with the kids today about making a huge smoke ring machine, maybe using the maintenance shed for the ‘tub’. YouTube offered this up for inspiration.

  • Today in class…

    a student showed us: Times like this I struggle with the whole ‘duty of care’ concept.

  • Big Dog (Human)

    Continuing in the theme of humans-imitating-technology, I present these two videos from Rory.  

  • A gift from Youtube

    via Scott (and at the risk of becoming a mirror of his blog), I pass on this goodness. Get the backstory here, or simply continue with your day happy in the knowledge that such things exist.

  • A change has come.

    I got this from Super Colossal but I’m so blown away by it I had to re-post. The robots.txt file for whitehouse.gov has changed. Yesterday it was: User-agent:     * Disallow: /cgi-bin Disallow: /search Disallow: /query.html Disallow: /omb/search Disallow: /omb/query.html Disallow: /expectmore/search Disallow: /expectmore/query.html Disallow: /results/search Disallow: /results/query.html Disallow: /earmarks/search Disallow: /earmarks/query.html Disallow: /help Disallow:…

  • Steve for CTO?

    There is an absurd rumour floating around that Steve Jobs is going to be offered the soon-to-be-created position of Chief Technology Officer in Obama’s cabinet. As Dr. Macenstein points out, there are about 600,000 fat, Dorito-covered IT guys holed up in server closets across the country that are more qualified for the job. Clearly a stupid idea, will never…

  • A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, all the Ewoks died

    “Endor is a depopulated wasteland” and I’ve got to say that really makes my day. (Although I should mention the title for this post is a little misleading. Not all Ewoks were on Endor when the moon was destroyed and so it is conceivable that a small population of the fuzzy little fucks survived off-world. – regrettable, I know,…

  • Clean Coal

    from freeloveforum.

  • Corporate Cannibal

    Grace Jones has a new video. Steven Shaviro reflects on the video, gender, race, and capitalism and explains why Jones is such a compelling figure.

  • Curitiba, Brazil

    I just listened to an interview with Jaime Lerner (transcript here), president of the International Union of Architects and 3 time mayor of Curitiba. He has many insightful things to say about cities as instruments for change. What struck me, in our current climate of 2020 and 2030 plans, was his three principles for change: keep it simple,…