Topic: logisch - on January 27, 2010 at 12:47:00 PM CET
Prolific hacker releases PlayStation exploit
On Monday, when we reported that the prolific hacker geohot had successfully penetrated the previously impervious PlayStation 3 gaming console, readers were understandably skeptical.
After all, the 20-year-old readily admitted his hack wasn't reliable, and he provided no evidence he was able to do some of the things modders love to do most, such as run arbitrary code or peel open the device's synergistic processing elements to take a peak at its most prized internal elements.
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Topic: logisch - on July 25, 2009 at 1:27:00 PM CEST
Swedish lesbians suck sperm banks dry
Sweden's fertility clinics are racking up a serious backlog of people waiting for artificial insemination, due in part to a "spike" in demand from lesbian couples for vital supplies of man juice.
So bad have things got that expectant customers at Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg are now forced to wait 18 months for treatment.
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Topic: logisch - on July 17, 2009 at 11:56:00 AM CEST
The Meaning of Life
What’s life for? That question stirred as I contemplated two rhesus monkeys, Canto, aged 27, and Owen, aged 29, whose photographs appeared last week in The New York Times.
The monkeys are part of a protracted experiment in aging being conducted by a University of Wisconsin team. Canto gets a restricted diet with 30 percent fewer calories than usual while Owen gets to eat whatever the heck he pleases.
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Topic: logisch - on June 3, 2009 at 11:44:00 AM CEST
Now you see it: Best visual illusions of 2009
Every visual illusion - from the way that simple lines drawn on paper seem to form a cube, to the logic-defying labyrinths of M. C. Escher - works exactly the same way: they expose discrepancies between physical reality and our perception of that reality.
That makes visual illusions appealing objects of study for neuroscientists: they offer clues to how our brains handle the information we receive about the outside world, in particular how we process visual images.
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Topic: logisch - on May 3, 2009 at 1:17:00 PM CEST
The 10 Biggest Intellectual Fights Of All time
In our modern, scientific world it is sometimes easy to forget that human progress often comes attached to some spectacular intellectual clashes between different ways of looking at things and differing interpretations of what is seen. There have been some notable intellectual mind-fights over the millennia, the following are ten such fights, the outcome of which changed the world into what we know of it today.
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Topic: logisch - on January 28, 2009 at 1:33:00 PM CET
15 Things Kurt Vonnegut Said Better Than Anyone Else Ever Has Or Will
1. "I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'"
The actual advice here is technically a quote from Kurt Vonnegut's "good uncle" Alex, but Vonnegut was nice enough to pass it on at speeches and in A Man Without A Country. Though he was sometimes derided as too gloomy and cynical, Vonnegut's most resonant messages have always been hopeful in the face of almost-certain doom. And his best advice seems almost ridiculously simple: Give your own happiness a bit of brainspace.
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Topic: logisch - on October 7, 2008 at 1:43:00 PM CEST
Hidden USB Storage - Create a Secret Data Stash with a Fake Phonejack
If you're like me, you may or may not have secret files plotting world domination and other devious deeds. These files obviously need to be hidden from the prying eyes of sisters, FBI agents, grandparents, etc. We are going to convert a phone jack in the wall into a secret USB memory device.
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Topic: logisch - on September 26, 2007 at 10:48:00 AM CEST
Nepal considers nudity ban on Everest
Attention climbers: Please keep your clothes on while climbing Mount Everest.
Nepal's mountaineering authorities are calling for a ban on nudity and attempts to set obscene records on the world's highest mountain, officials said Wednesday.
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Topic: logisch - on August 24, 2007 at 12:33:00 PM CEST
Parallel Universes, Alien Religions and Carl Jung: An Interview With Clifford Pickover
If you aren’t familiar with the books and website of Clifford Pickover yet I recommend you drop whatever you’re doing and go check them out for a intelligence boost, as the quick scan of the latest horrifying and stupid news websites I just did while eating my Subway sub hammered the point home yet again that this planet needs more and better ideas now, and the more people stretching their minds the better.
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Topic: logisch - on July 14, 2007 at 10:19:00 AM CEST
Douglas Adams lecture: "Is there an artificial god?" [mp3]
Avi sez, "'Is there an Artificial God?' is an illuminating 1998 speech by Douglas Adams. Good to listen to him speak."
This was fascinating. Adams was a brilliant and funny speaker as well as a fantastic writer -- in fact, he was arguably a better lecturer than novelist. The sound quality is terrible, but it hardly matters. He's just GREAT.
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Topic: logisch - on June 16, 2007 at 12:39:00 PM CEST
LED Art Fan
If you're the type that likes to call attention to yourself, and happen to need to lower the apparent room temperature at the same time, we can think of no better way than with this LED fan. With 42 LEDs mounted on the blades, the LED Art Fan spins and flickers at a brazillian* RPM to create beautiful persistence of vision images. Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so make sure you behold the video below.
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Topic: logisch - on May 15, 2007 at 11:11:00 AM CEST
Inside one of the biggest antiquities-smuggling rings in history
Early one morning in June, 2003, two dozen police officers drew their guns and prepared to raid a stately three-story brick-and-concrete home on a corner lot in Everest Colony, a quiet residential neighborhood on the outskirts of the Indian city of Jaipur. Several khaki-clad officers scaled the imposing stone wall surrounding the house, disarmed a guard, and opened the gate. Under the gaze of a security camera, the rest of the team filed silently onto the property. The raid was the culmination of a yearlong investigation and months of surveillance, during which officers had posed as vagrants and fruit peddlers. They had timed the strike for dawn, hoping to startle the inhabitants.
newyorker.com Yarn of the priceless pearl carpet that has vanished The seven-strand pearl necklace remained part of the Baroda Royal Treasury. Jewels and Relics from Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s Toshakhana South Asian Highlights
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