Over at defective yeti, a potential solution to the culture wars over marriage: the Buddy System.

It's not every day you see a picture of a tank cosy. (It's the pompom hanging off the gun barrel that does it for me. Perfect!)

[Via web-goddess]

Best. Leather. Bag. Ever!

[Via DoubleViking]

From The Devil’s Dictionary X™:

Virgin Mary

A theory purporting a hymen can technically only be broken from the outside.

P Z Myers made a fascinating post outlining recent discoveries about how quite small changes in genes contributed to bats developing wings:

[The] fossil record of bats shows an abrupt appearance of fairly sophisticated creatures with elongated digits, clearly capable of gliding or powered flight, with no known intermediates. We expect there were less fully flight-ready predecessors, but fossil preservation is not kind to small, delicate boned animals. It's also possible that the transitional period was fairly brief; it looks like turning a paw into a long-fingered membranous wing may be a fairly simple change on a molecular level.

This is a story about how short, stubby finger bones are turned into long, thin finger bones, so let's start with how the bones of the hand form. [...]

Fascinating stuff.

Ed Felten has spent the past few days taking an in-depth look at High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection, the technology being adopted by Big Content for the next generation of DVD players to protect their content from being siphoned off by clever software sitting somewhere between the disc and the display. It would be fair to say that he's not terribly impressed by the way HDCP has been implemented: apart from anything else, it employs a weak system of encryption that will be ruined as soon as someone cracks the code and posts the details on the internet. (In that respect it's not dissimilar to the Content Scrambling System used on the first generation of DVDs and cracked within 3 years.)

So why hasn't the industry learned from the lesson of CSS? Felten's conclusion provides an extremely plausible answer:

[...] HDCP encryption exists only as a hook on which to hang lawsuits. For example, if somebody makes unlicensed displays or format converters, copyright owners could try to sue them under the DMCA for circumventing the encryption. (Also, converter box vendors who accepted HDCP’s license terms might sue vendors who didn’t accept those terms.) The price of enabling these lawsuits is to add the cost of 10,000 gates to every high-def TV or video source, and to add another way in which high-def video devices can be incompatible.

[...]

The bottom line is clear. In HDCP, "security" technologies serve not to disable pirates but to enable lawsuits. When you buy an HDCP-enabled TV or player, you are paying for this — your device will cost more and do less.

Mediocre technologies defended by armies of lawyers. Lovely.

The BBC reports on a recent study conducted by researchers from the University of Leuven:

Men about to play a financial game were shown images of sexy women or lingerie.

The Proceedings of the Royal Society B study found they were more likely to accept unfair offers than men not been exposed to the alluring images.

The suggestion is that the sexual cues distract the men's thoughts, preventing them from focusing on their task – particularly among those with high natural testosterone levels.

Hands up anyone who's surprised at this finding…

Paging Mr Spielberg:

DRIVE 20 miles northwest of Sarajevo through the mountains of central Bosnia and you enter the broad Visoko valley, dissected by the meandering Bosna River. Beyond the river sits the town of Visoko, watched over by its minarets. And beyond Visoko rises an extraordinary triangular hill, 700ft (213m) high and looking for all the world like an ancient pyramid.

Some say that is precisely what it is — a huge pyramid built perhaps 12,000 years ago by an unknown civilisation. And yesterday they set out to prove it.

In the spring sunshine, watched by crowds of locals, journalists and the contestants in this year’s Miss Bosnia competition, a team of archaeologists began excavating the so-called Pyramid of the Sun, hoping for one of the greatest finds in modern history.

[...]

The article is quite frustrating, since it quotes some objections to the theory that there's a pyramid under that hill but only very briefly. One archaeologist argues that there was no advanced civilisation in that area that could have undertaken such a feat of large-scale construction, whilst another argues that "they" (the group involved in this particular dig? self-funded amateur archaeologists in general? it's not possible to tell from the quotation in the article because we don't know what question was being answered) should not be allowed to "destroy genuine sites in pursuit of these delusions."

A bit of googling provided some context. A fuller accounts of the objections to the notion of a Bosnian pyramid, and a possible explanation for the various items that have been excavated so far, can be found at the Bosnian Federal News Agency site and in The Art Newspaper. I also found a weblog post pointing to this petition against the dig, though the objections to the dig cited in those cases are at least as much on political grounds as scientific ones.

(For what it's worth, while googling around I also found an aerial photograph of the area on Flickr and what appears to be an official (or at any rate extremely uncritical) site devoted to the Bosnian Pyramids.)

[Via rebecca's pocket - the link is to the site's front page because the permalink to the post in question doesn't work for me right now.]

If you find yourself having to give a Powerpoint presentation, will you be Yoda or Darth Vader?

[Via The Tao of Mac]

Researchers at Singapore's Mixed Reality Lab are developing a video game that will allow pets to play games against their owners:

As in a traditional video game, players navigate a virtual world in a bid to stay alive. The twist? Computerized movements in Mice Arena are mapped to and from the real world, where an actual predator (your hamster) gives chase to a digital avatar (you) by pursuing a real piece of bait. The avatar's movements in the virtual environment direct the bait around a small tank fitted with actuators that mold and twist an elastic latex floor into the changing terrain of the game map. The hamster's pursuit in the tank is monitored by infra-red sensors that relay its position to the computer screen.

Heaven help us if they ever let cats loose on this system.

With the supervisor visiting the office today, we're going to need to reevaluate our wanking policy…. Not terribly work-safe, but very funny.

(Doesn't Simon Pegg look young in that clip? Does anyone know what show this was from?)

[Via Chocolate and Vodka]

Livejournal of the Last Dalek:

[...]

Date unknown

OH GREAT. THE DOCTOR. WOULD EXTERMINATE, BUT DALEK GUN BROKEN. WOULD PLUMB, BUT PLUNGER BROKEN.

I AM THE LAST DALEK. I AM ALONE IN THE UNIVERSE. NO ONE WILL SAVE ME FROM TORTURE AND A SLOW, LINGERING DEATH. THINGS COULD NOT BE ANY WORSE.

Later …

PREVIOUS ASSESSMENT INCORRECT. THE DOCTOR HAS SENT A TEENAGE POP SINGER INTO MY CELL. HE WOULD MAKE A GOOD DALEK.

[...]

[Via Words]

Simon Hoggart relates a tale told by former Director of Central Intelligence James Woolsey at a recent conference:

I like his story about travelling with his wife to San Francisco for a class re-union. His obsessional security people told him they needed to go on different flights, and he had to travel under an alias, protected by armed secret servicemen. So he sat all the way in the back of the plane, flanked by two burly guys with bulging jackets. When they arrived a flight attendant took one of them aside and said something that made him burst out laughing.

He reported that she'd said: "I have been in this job for 20 years and have never seen such a polite and well-behaved prisoner."

The CO of Ellsworth Air Force Base now has conclusive proof that at least one of the base's hangars has a fully functional fire-fighting system.

[Via del.icio.us/popular]

Over at Pajiba, a suggestion for a reality TV show:

Item #4: Also joining the reality TV fray is Bobby De Niro, who is, along with Tribeca Films and “Black. White.”’s R.J. Cutler, working on a super-double-secret untitled show for NBC. The only thing known about the show is that it’s not a competitive show and, according to Cutler: “It’s a very simple idea … a simple concept. Amazingly, nobody’s ever done it before.” The best speculation I’ve heard so far comes courtesy of the “Kevin & Bean” show on KROQ — what if it’s just De Niro living in a house with a dozen people, and each week he whacks someone? Now, if it’s old-school Godfather Part II/Taxi Driver/Goodfellas/Heat De Niro, I would totally watch. But if it’s new-school Meet the Parents/Analyze This/Hide and Seek De Niro, well, yeah, I’d still watch. Only I’d be rooting for the housemates to whack De Niro.

I know I'd watch…

Over in the States, the TBS network have been having a little fun with their promos for this weekend's showings of The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers.

He was pushed down a mountain.
He slipped and fell down.
He was stabbed … twice!
He was thrown to the ground.
He walked through three feet of snow, barefoot.
And that's only Part One.

It sucks to be Frodo.

[Via kottke.org remaindered links]

Argentina On Two Steaks A Day has been linked to all over the web, and for good reason:

The classic beginner's mistake in Argentina is to neglect the first steak of the day. You will be tempted to just peck at it or even skip it altogether, rationalizing that you need to save yourself for the much larger steak later that night. But this is a false economy, like refusing to drink water in the early parts of a marathon. That first steak has to get you through the afternoon and half the night, until the restaurants begin to open at ten; the first steak is what primes your system to digest large quantities of animal protein, and it's the first steak that buffers the sudden sugar rush of your afternoon ice cream cone. The midnight second steak might be more the glamorous one, standing as it does a good three inches off the plate, but all it has to do is get you up and out of the restaurant and into bed (for the love of God, don't forget to drink water).

[...]

It's possible that coffee, like Argentine yogurt, is just meant as a delivery mechanism for sugar. The sugar cubes here are the size of Lego bricks, and when you order an espresso you are given three packets of sugar the size of a small wallet. Every pharmacy has an aisle devoted to artificial sweeteners, for those who must do without, and there is a general inability to imagine a dessert that does not make your teeth hurt. Items are preventatively glazed with sugar whenever there is be the slightest doubt as to whether they are supposed to be sweet or savory; this is what prevents the otherwise excellent Argentine croissants (medialunas) from being the king of breakfasts.

There is a more serious kind of confectionary panic that goes beyond glazing, and it brings us to the true dark side of Argentine cooking. I am talking about dulce de leche.

Dulce de leche is a culinary cry for help. It says "save us, we are baffled and alone in the kitchen, we don't know what to do for dessert and we're going to boil condensed milk and sugar together until help arrives". This cloying dessert tar is so impossibly sweet that you wish you were ten years old again, just so you could actually enjoy it. It is everywhere. There is a special dulce de leche shelf in the supermarket dairy case, and the containers go up to a liter in size. Even the churros are stuffed with it – the churros, Montresor! For anyone who has had pastries in Europe, the added horror is that dulce de leche is identical in color, texture and consistency to a number of much less sweet, tasty fillings, like the earthy chestnut material the French call créme de marrons, or the tart kind of plum butter popular in Eastern European bakeries. You see a thick layer of dark brown jam-like material and think, this couldn't possibly be caramel, there's just too much of it. And so worldliness leads you to great giant bites and then disaster.

[...]

Yum.

[Via MetaFilter]

In the middle of an article in the Guardian about the mutual attraction between the film business and heavy metal, a surprising statistic:

The most prosaic reason for metal's popularity with film-makers may simply be its popularity. In the Recording Industry Association of America's list of the 100 bestselling albums of all time, it is easily the best-represented genre: almost half the records in the list are metal albums.

And yet, it turns out that that statistic looks to be about right. Going through the RIAA's Top 100 Albums list I can see as many as 43 "metal" albums, though no doubt the precise number any given reader will come up with will depend upon where they draw the line between heavy metal, rock and grunge.

You really do learn something new every day…

The Evolutionary Timeline:

From first life-forms to homo sapiens

• The background indicates inches and feet.
• 1/20th in. = roughly 100 thousand years. (108,000)
• 1 in. = about 2 million years. (2,160,000)
• 1 ft. = about 26 million years. (25,920,000)
• The whole page is about 135 feet wide, almost half a football field, representing 3.5 billion years. (3,500,000,000)

Prepare to do a lot of scrolling rightwards.

[Via Pharyngula]

If you enjoyed Honda's Cog TV advert a couple of years ago – the one with the chain of car parts nudging one another from one side of the room to the other – then you simply must see Incredible Machines. It's twelve minutes of that sort of Heath Robinson/Rube Goldberg tomfoolery, apparently from a Japanese TV show.

Hypnotic stuff.

[Via plasticbag.org]