Google-themed sari at Delhi mall:
Dave sez, “Spotted this Google-themed sari in a fancy shopping mall in Gurgaon, India (the tech hub south of Delhi). I couldn’t get the backstory because (proving that India is nearing Western standards in every way!) a guard started rushing over to bust me for taking pictures.”
I guess it really is true, what they say: Working for Google means never having to say you’re sari.
(Thanks, Dave!)
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(Via Boing Boing.)
"Pupils are being awarded marks for writing obscenities in their GCSE English exams even if they have nothing to do with the question." My kind of education!
(thanks, Auz)
Gallery of vintage cereal boxes:
WFMU discovered a big gallery of vintage cereal boxes posted by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel that are so bizarre they might as well be plucked from an edition of Photoshop Phriday. Anyone ever enjoyed a box of Mr. T?
*Previously: Best Cereal Commercials Ever.
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(Via Neatorama.)
Some Proof That Marijuana Is a Powerful Medicine:
Scientists prove that beta-caryophyllene, a chemical found in marijuana, soothes the immune system, increases bone mass, and blocks pain signals — without causing euphoria or interfering with the central nervous system.
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(Via Wired News: Top Stories.)
The New York Moon is an internet-based publication adhered to the lunar phases. It is a collection of experimental, reflective, and imaginative projects produced with every other month’s full moon. In the current issue visit the 6th Borough interactive map to discover imaginary precincts, find ephemeral street sculptures on The Trash Map, browse sketches of the moments in between Waiting, or redesign your neighborhood in Blueprints.
The present issue also visits Rwanda and Phoenix. Five previous editions have explored the language translating that occurs in the melting pot, underground New York, what to expect in the next century, a 4d investigation of time and space, and the art of irrelevant generation. The creator is a long-time MeFi member, although he has never posted.
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(Via MetaFilter.)
The digital natives who love Twitter are getting restless as company engineers try to save the patient from flatlining.
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(Via CNET News.com.)
Plane soars past destination as pilots doze:
An Air India flight headed for Mumbai overshot its destination and was halfway to Goa before its dozing pilots were woken out of a deep slumber by air traffic control, a report said.
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(Via sepia mutiny news.)
As a German soccer fan, I’ve been doing quite a bit of screaming the past few weeks—especially on Tuesday, after Germany defeated Turkey for a place in the Euro Cup finals against Spain on Sunday. This beautiful game inspires a fanatical devotion in its fans not seen in any other sport. But it wasn’t always the technical game you see before you today. In fact, soccer boasts a colorful history that has everything from roaming mobs to decapitated heads. Here’s a quick look.
The earliest recorded evidence of a soccer-type game comes to us from the third century B.C. in China. A military manual from the Han dynasty details an exercise in which a leather ball, filled with either hair or feathers, was kicked into a tiny net fixed on narrow bamboo canes. Similar games have been played all over the world, leading scholars to suggest that the game may have originated in some parts as a pagan fertility rite, with the ball symbolizing the sun. Or people just liked kicking things.
The predecessor of modern football (and by football, I mean soccer) started out a celebration of sorts. During the 3rd century, the British would celebrate victories against their enemies with a rousing game of football. Legend has it that the first time this celebratory sport was played in Britain was after the defeat of a Danish Prince. After decapitating the Prince, in true barbarian fashion, they decided to kick around his head. No word on who had to clean up after them.
By the 8th century, a good portion of the British Isles were playing soccer. The aptly named “mob football” had an indeterminate number of players, almost no rules, and wasn’t even played on a field. Hundreds of players, usually members of two neighboring villages, would attempt to get the ball into the designated area by any means necessary during matches that could last all day. This resulted in plenty of fighting, biting and punching as the large mob moved through the village streets. In some cases, the ball or sphere being used was too large to kick, so the players simply kicked each other instead.
Although the game was frequently played by aristocrats (who used a pig’s bladder as a ball), King Edward II was none too happy to see his citizens mobbing the streets and beating each other just for fun. To combat what he considered a vulgar sport, he passed laws that would imprison anyone caught playing soccer. In his proclamation, he said, “For as much as there is a great noise in the city caused by hustling over large balls, from which many evils may arise, which God forbid, we command and forbid on behalf of the King, on pain of imprisonment, such game to be used in the city future.” Queen Elizabeth I took it a step further. Not only would she send you to jail for a week for playing mob football, she would also force you to go to church to seek penance.
Early football players pretty much made up the rules as they went along, resulting in some very interesting and impossible-to-referee games. Some teams would pick up the ball and run around like mad, while others considered it cheating. To make it fair, teams decided to divide the game into halves, playing by the rules of one team during the first half and then switching it up for the second. The break we know as half-time was born.
In 1863, schools from across England met to decide on a standard set of rules for the game of football. Trouble was, they couldn’t agree on a standard set of rules. They remained divided into two camps, those who supported the Cambridge rules (no hands) and those who liked the Rugby school rules (carry the ball all you want). The camps split and as a result, The Football Association was formed.
Around that same time, those crazy kids at Oxford University created a trendy slang in which they shortened words and added “er” to the end (Rugby was now called “rugger.”) Legend has it that one such trendsetter, Charles Wreford Brown, was asked if he played the sport of rugger. “No” he replied, “Soccer,” having shortened association into “soc.” Just think, if this actually did happen, and if he had chosen differently, we could be talking about the sport called “footer.” Or “asser.”
[Image courtesy Euro2008.uefa.com.]
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(Via mental_floss Blog.)
Bookfilter: I am currently entranced with books about the end (or near end) of the world/civilization. But lately I’ve been ending up with some real junk. Can anyone recommend good books on this topic? Examples inside.
The good books (IMO) I’ve read so far related to this are: "The Road," "Cell," "World War Z," "The Stand," "Phantom," and have been searching for a copy of a new compilation "Wastelands." In searching for other books on this topic, I have been perusing random Zombie books, which have been pretty terrible, though it did prompt me to get a library card. (Unfortunately, the librarian was of no help with this.) Sorting through Amazon’s list and google has availed me much of the aforementioned garbage, but it could be I’m just terrible at searching.
Era or particular genre is unimportant, and any help with this would be greatly appreciated, as I will be having some extended free time on my hands soon.
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(Via Ask MetaFilter.)
Recommend me some good post-apocalyptic movies and books:
I have just found out I’m a big fan of post apocalyptic fiction books. Somehow I like the idea of an individual or small group of survivors almost alone in the world trying to find out what the hell happened to the planet and fighting for their survival. What are some good books and movies the hive mind can recommend?
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(Via Ask MetaFilter.)
News: U2 Reissue, Expand First Three Albums:
U2 will follow the trend they set with the 2007 reissue of possibly their most beloved album, The Joshua Tree, by remastering, expanding, and reissuing their first three full-lengths, 1980’s Boy, 1981’s October, and 1983’s War. The reissues will come in three formats– single CD, double CD with a bonus disc of rarities, and vinyl– on July 22 via Universal. All contain new packaging, new liner notes, rare photos, and full lyrics.
In other U2 news, Billboard.com reports that the band is currently working on a new album, rumored to be released later this year on Interscope. Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois are in the producers’ chairs. And they will probably be coming to a Live Nation venue near you sometime in the near future. [MORE…]
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(Via Pitchfork: Today.)
Get to Usenet Even if Your ISP Blocks You:
Internet Service Providers have started to censor Usenet by blocking it completely and now you are left out of your favorite newsgroups. Don’t panic, there are ways to tunnel through the information embargo and get back to flaming discussion boards and citing Godwin’s Law in no time.
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(Via Wired News: Top Stories.)
TinyPaste is a TinyURL for Long Text Strings [Text]:
If you’ve got a big heap o’ text to drop on your blog, in Twitter, or any chat program that doesn’t really love paragraph pasting, TinyPaste is a reasonable solution. Like TinyURL, the one-click tool simply takes in long strings of text and converts them to short URLs, which, when clicked, bring up the text inside a mostly clean screen. There’s also a Firefox extension for right-click transformation of text into TinyPaste links. The service is free to use, doesn’t require a sign-up.
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(Via Lifehacker.)
Kindle’s Bright Idea: College Textbooks [Kindle]:
Here’s one really smart idea that will convert a few Kindle-haters: textbooks. Princeton University Press join Oxford, Yale and the UC in putting some of their titles into e-book form, allowing students to bypass the used book store and directly download their textbooks onto their Kindles. You’ll save a few bucks for the digital version, plus shipping costs and shipping time. And if you figure out a way to hack it, that’s like, free textbooks dude. Whoa. We see this extended to concerned parents of elementary school kids who’ve been complaining about how many textbooks they have to lug from home to school and back. Then again, maybe that’s why your kids are so fat. [Yahoo Buzz via CSMonitor]
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(Via Gizmodo.)
AP Stylebook No Longer “Mentally Retarded” [Journalismism]:
Journo-nerds rejoice: the AP Stylebook has been updated! It’s the Bible of all that is considered acceptable in middle American newsrooms, and, like middle America itself, is consistently several years behind the times. So what changes can you look forward to in tomorrow’s edition of the Mattoon Journal Gazette? More text messaging, less malarkey, and no more retarded people!
Other new entries include anti-spyware, high-definition, outsourcing, podcast, text messaging, social networking, snail mail and Wikipedia and such sports terms as minicamp and wild card.
Among the outdated words gone from the new spiral-bound Stylebook are barmaid, blue blood, malarkey, milquetoast, Photostat, riffraff and WAC, which is no longer used by the U.S. military but may describe a woman who served in what had been the Women’s Army Corps.
Other changes in the A to Z update include the entry for “African-American,” which previously indicated that the “preferred term is black.” Now, the African-American entry states: “Acceptable for an American black person of African descent. Black is also acceptable. The terms are not necessarily interchangeable.”
In another significant revision, “mentally retarded” is no longer the preferred term, replaced by “mentally disabled.”
Is “wild card” really a new term? And I still say “riffraff” several times per week. Also missing: Nilla.
[AP]
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(Via Gawker.)
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(Via Neatorama.)
Use a Red Bull can as a radio interference shield:
Filed under: Hacks, How-tos, Tips and tricks, Odds and ends
I love the iPhone, save for one thing. It sits on my desk every night, right near my computer, and the speakers I’ve got hooked up to it. And every 15 minutes, when the iPhone checks email for me, I get that buzzing — the sound of radio interference flying across my speaker wires. And almost every night, I have to jump out of bed angrily just to shut off the speakers and stop the buzzing. Little did I know, all I’ve ever needed was an empty can of Red Bull.
Yes, someone has fashioned a “shield” out of an emptied and carved up Red Bull can, and supposedly it works like a charm — just fashion it around the dock that came with the iPhone, use a little doublestick tape to make sure it stays on there (and I would maybe put some around the edges, too, so you don’t slice your fingers open every time you pull the iPhone off the dock), and no more buzzing sound.
The maker does wonder if it would affect the actual signal of the iPhone at all, but it hasn’t so far. If you’ve got a Red Bull can around to cut up and are driven as nuts as I am by that buzzing noise, here’s your makeshift solution. The other option is to buy speakers that don’t buzz, of course, but this seems a lot cheaper.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)
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