I have found Religion!

Boing Boing: Pastafarianism: Flying Spaghetti Monster cult grows

Two months ago, Cory was among the first to blog about "Flying Spaghetti Monster" -- the overlord of a new parody religion created to protest a Kansas State Board of Education decision allowing so-called Intelligent Design to be taught in science classes.
The FSM cult now has a Wikipedia entry, with details that indicate that followers of His Noodliness -- Pastafarians -- are growing in number, like so many meatballs accumulating on a plate of linguini.

I know what you are thinking. Coherent Light and religion? Nope, no freakin' way. Yes freakin' way! I have seen the light! I have been been touched by his noodly apendage! I will eat of His body and drink of His blood! Yes all I am now a born again Pastafarian! For those unfortunate souls who have never heard His word please allow me to introduce you to the laws of Flying Spaghetti Monsterism from the Wikipedia entry
Beliefs:
* The Universe was created by an invisible and undetectable Flying Spaghetti Monster. All evidence pointing towards evolution was intentionally planted by this being.
* Global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct consequence of the decline in numbers of pirates since the 1800s. A graph showing the inverse correlation between the pirates and global temperatures was also provided. This was presumably intended to highlight the logical fallacy of correlation implying causation.
* Bobby Henderson is the "prophet" of this religion.
Codes of conduct
* Prayers are ended with the word "RAmen" rather than "Amen".
* Followers are expected to dress in full pirates' regalia.
Benefits of conversion
* Like the noodles they worship, Flying Spaghetti Monsterists have flimsy moral standards.
* Every Friday is a religious holiday.
* Promise of a stripper factory and a beer volcano in Heaven.
All praise the FSM!
As a newly converted member of Flying Spaghetti Monsterism the blog shall henceforth carry the mark of his noodlism (as soon as I figure out how) on the sidebar as a permanent link.

What?! Oh all right fine. FSM was started as an open letter to th Kansas City School Board in response to their decision to teach Intelligent Design (Creationism dressed up as science) in addition to Evolution.

Check out the home page for FSM and Pastafarianism for some good laughs.
I'm still gonna call myself a Pastafarian, watch.

Carbon nanotube printer outputs 7m/min

Boing Boing: Carbon nanotube printer outputs 7m/min

Jamais sez, "Researchers from the University of Texas, Dallas, and Australia's CSIRO have developed a way of making strong, stable and amazingly useful ribbons and sheets made of multiwall carbon nanotubes. Their system pushes the material out at seven meters/minute; a Quicktime video of the process in action is here. If you've been following the development of nanotubes, you know what kind of accomplishment this is. In my view, this is the biggest technology breakthrough of the year, quite possibly of the decade."

Update to previous post Carbon Tube Sheets May Have Many Uses. Wowzer, this is even bigger than I thought. Churning out sheets of nanotubes at 7 meters a minute (for the Yanks thats about 23 feet a minute). They even have a video of the process.

Steven Seagal's Energy Drink

Strange New Products: Steven Seagal's Energy Drink

Energy drinks are becoming a "dime-a-dozen" these days, so in order to grab any attention, you have to make them more exotic, more powerful, and glamorous. And who better to encapsulate those qualities than Steven Seagal!

Seagal's new "Lightning Bolt Energy Drink", claims to have pioneered the way for nutritional, all natural energy drinks, and includes a couple of ingredients not found in other such drinks, Asian Cordyceps, and Tibetan Goji Berries.

Snicker. Snicker snicker. Yeah, skip the Pimp Juice and Crunk bioch. Grab a mackin' lightning bolt playa.

Machine Gun vs. Katana

Machine Gun vs. Katana : Screenhead

A slow motion clip of .50 caliber rounds split in two when shot at a Katana style broadsword. Cool to watch, but possibly the biggest waste of bullets since the five that hit everything but Yoko Ono in 1980.

For your viewing pleasure.

Amazon offers short stories for 49 cents

Amazon offers short stories for 49 cents - Yahoo! News

EW YORK (Reuters) - On-line book store Amazon.com,, in what could be a literary equivalent of snacking, is now selling short stories, and even alternate chapters or single scenes from novels, for 49 cents each.
"Amazon Shorts," on sale from Monday, have no printed editions and are only delivered digitally.

"Amazon Shorts will help authors find new readers and help readers find and discover authors they'll love," said Steve Kessel, Amazon.com's vice president of digital media. "We hope that by making short-form literature widely and easily available, Amazon.com can help to fuel a revival of this kind of work."

I know, not that interesting. But I was wondering if they could end up doing something like the Google films thing. Let people upload their own short stories and distribute for them. Would be kinda cool and provide a big break for burgeoning authors. Link

College Review Finds Humor, Quality In Florida

College Review Finds Humor, Quality In Florida - from TBO.com

TAMPA - With categories such as ``Dodge Ball Targets'' and ``Dorms Like Dungeons,'' a ranking in the Princeton Review's Best 361 Colleges might not seem like a good thing.

But the authors of the 2006 book, on sale today, insist all the schools featured are ``academically outstanding.''

Maybe that helps soften the blow for some Florida universities saddled with not-so- prestigious - and somewhat ambiguous - classifications.

Flagler College, in St. Augustine: No. 1 for ``Most Homogeneous Student Population,'' a category for schools that lack diversity.

New College of Florida, in Sarasota: No. 10 for ``Reefer Madness'' and No. 7 for ``Students Ignore God on a Regular Basis.'' That's shorthand for a liberal arts college that doesn't give grades, with students wearing Birkenstocks and smoking clove cigarettes.
...
The school took first in openly accepting gays, having the most politically active students and not having intercollegiate sports. Students attend New College for learning, not football. And, of course, to practice vegetarianism, though not on campus. New College's campus meals ranked No. 16 on ``Is It Food?''

Boy, it's a good thing I don't know anyone who went to frakin' New College. If I did I would surely make snide comments about it being a fuckin' hippy communist breeding ground. I mean really, looks like that school is nothin but a bunch of angry bleed with the moon pagan dope smokin' tofu eatin' hippy communist in comfortable shoes. Boy it's a good thing I don't know anyone who went there...where did you go to school again Eb?

ThudGuard Baby Helmet

ThudGuard Baby Helmet : Gizmodo

I love babies and their moist, delicious heads, but this is a bit too much. Little sparky should learn not to fall the hard way. I assure you that for every baby that is in any way damaged during the "learning how to walk" process there are about 5 billion children who bounce off of sharp objects with reckless abandon. Save your money, scared parents, and buy a box of white wine and just chill as junior slaloms down the basement stairs.

Well, it is too late for me or my daughter, who wants to get one for my smallest demon spawn?

New machine allows soldiers to hurdle buildings

New machine allows soldiers to hurdle buildings - Yahoo! News

The PowerQuick personal lifting device can raise or lower a load of up to 145 kg (320 lb) at the rate of one meter (yard) per second, enabling special forces, rescue services or even construction workers to quickly ascend or escape buildings.

New Scientist magazine said on Wednesday the operator would shoot a rope attached to a grappling hook to the top of the building and then attach the rope to a harness-like device which hauls them up.

It said one battery charge would be sufficient to climb 250 metres -- the equivalent of five times the height of the Statue of Liberty.

Remo Williams eat your heart out. Wow, doesn't that make those ninja grappling hooks we all wanted as kids look lame.

Aeon Flux Movie - Official Site

Aeon Flux Movie - Official Site: AeonFlux.com
Sweeeet. Check out the 2 trailers for the new Aeon Flux movie. Make sure to check out the new extended trailer. Way cooler than the theatrical.

Scientists Mess with the Speed of Light

Scientists Mess with the Speed of Light - Yahoo! News

Scientists have recently succeeded in doing all sorts of fancy things with light, including slowing it down and even stopping it all together. Now a team at the Ecole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland is controlling the speed of light using simple off-the-shelf optical fibers, without the aid of special media such as cold gases or crystalline solids like in other experiments.

"This has the enormous advantage of being a simple, inexpensive procedure that works at any wavelength," said Luc Thvenaz, lead author of the study detailing the research.

Using a technique called Stimulated Brillouin Scattering, the researchers were able to slow down or ratchet up the speed of light like the gas pedal on a car. They succeeded in reducing the speed of light by almost a factor of 4 (although that's still plenty fast at 46,500 miles per second), but even more dramatically, the team was also able to speed up the speed of light.

Light in a vacuum travels at approximately 186,000 miles per second, but a popular misconception is that, according to Einstein's special theory of relativity, nothing in the universe can travel faster than this speed.

This seeming paradox can be resolved because a pulse of light is actually made up of many separate frequency components, each of which moves at their own velocities. This is known as the pulse's phase velocity. If all the frequency components have the same phase velocity, then the overall pulse will also appear to move at that velocity.

However, if the components have different phase velocities, then the pulse's overall velocity will depend on the relationships between the velocities of the separate components. If the velocities differ, the pulse is said to be moving at the group velocity.

By tweaking the relationship between phase velocities, it's possible to adjust the group velocity and create the illusion that parts of the pulse are traveling faster than the speed of light.

Wow, how cool is that? All those words and all I got was a headache. Either they didn't explain that to well or all those drugs I did in the 90's are finally catching up. So did it go faster than light or was it an illusion? And if it was an illusion then why the fuck would you tease me with a headline like that!?! Bastards. I'll bet Sony put 'em up to that.

Carbon Tube Sheets May Have Many Uses

Carbon Tube Sheets May Have Many Uses - Yahoo! News

Transparent sheets made from minute carbon tubes may have uses ranging from artificial muscles to light-producing displays to electronic sensors, according to researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas.
...
The researchers developed tiny carbon tubes, too small to see with the naked eye, and worked out a system to weave trillions of them into sheets about two inches wide and three feet long.

The sheets are stronger than equivalent steel or mylar, can carry electricity and produce polarized light.

Holy crap! A three foot long strip of nanotubes? I wonder how long before we can have those sweet trench coats those Japs were sporting in Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man? For the uniformed reader, those Jap dudes with the snarky trench coats were nothing more than thinly disguised agents of the evil Sony corporation. You buy mini disc now!

Silly "Stealth"

Defense Tech: Silly "Stealth"

Cockpits in unmanned planes. A stealth fighter that every radar can see. A drone so evil it illegally downloads MP3s. Popular Science's Eric Adams watches the supersonically silly Jamie Foxx flick, "Stealth," so we don't have to.

Oh yeah, it's a stinker. Bad news for all those who want to call this one for the 2nd Annual Bad Movie Festival. The Schram-man called this one off of the trailer.

Taking on record companies

Taking on record companies

Record companies have filed about 13,300 similar federal lawsuits against Internet users across the country since September 2003. Nearly 3,000 of those lawsuits have been settled. The offending music traders have agreed to pay an average of $4,000 to $5,000 and promised not to illegally download copyrighted songs anymore.

None of the cases has gone to trial.

That may change. And it may change with a soccer mom who said she would rather pay a lawyer's fees than give in to what she calls intimidation tactics by the record companies to get her to settle.

Finally! Over 13,000 lawsuits filed by the RIAA and someone has finally said no, fuck you, I ain't payin'. She is taking a major risk of course. If she loses she is facing millions in potential fines. The worst part, even if she wins, she is going to have to fork out thousands for lawyer fees. I very much hope the EFF will pick up her case pro bono. Are you listening EFF? This is why you were founded. Regular people don't have the kind of money or expertise to fight big industry by themselves. Pick up the damn case!

Coolest Bathtub Toy Ever Made: RC Laser Submarines

The Raw Feed: Coolest Bathtub Toy Ever Made: RC Laser Submarines

Tiny new remote-control submarines can make war against each other in a bathtub or aquarium near you. Each submarine has a small remote-control unit, enabling first-rate, 3D maneuverability. And the piece de resistance: They have LASER BEAMS ON THEIR FRICKEN HEADS. If you successfully zap your opponent with your laser, his sub is paralyzed for 20 seconds. It just doesn't get any better than this for seven-year-olds. (props to The Red Ferret Journal)

Looks like the day for gadgets. How cool are these?

Chocolate Fountain

GadgetryBlog: Chocolate Fountain

Yes, chocolate-lovers, the spectacular Chocolate Fountain (89.95 pounds) really does flow with lashings of liquid choccy. All you have to do is fill it up, turn it on, and try not to make a fool or yourself by dipping your whole head in. Once you've recovered from the shock of seeing those mesmerising curtains of cascading Belgian chocolate you can get busy dipping your delicacies into the fountain's warm liquid embrace. WonkaTastic!

Shhhh. I need a moment. Granted, my chocolate fixation may be a little more extreme than most people but damn! Watching all that flowing choco-goodness is an almost sexual experience. Check out the video to get the full effect.

TonePro: USB-Powered Hendrix

TonePro: USB-Powered Hendrix : Gizmodo

Line 6, makers of digital audio gear that mimics the sound of ancient tube amplifiers, has a new line of hardware due this winter. Plug a guitar, bass, or mic into the TonePro, jack it into a CPU, and you have a clean sounding room along with a software UI that looks just like an amp.
Anyone who has noodled around with Line 6 equipment knows that it can make you sound like Jimi Hendrix. And you, sir, are no Jimi Hendrix.

Not that I'm even remotely claiming to know what this thing does (I think it lets you hook up instruments to the computer) but it looks cool. Our resident music dork (the Schram-man) says these Line 6 products are quite snarky. He has excellent taste when it comes to gadgets although his music taste pretty much suck more than Paris Hilton. Besides, it looks cool. Needs more blinky light though...

The IMSAI Series Two Computer

Retro thing: The IMSAI Series Two Computer

Imagine it's 1975. Everything is olive green and burnt orange, you're driving a Pinto, and the Internet is decades away. One of the most popular "personal computers" is the awkwardly named IMSAI 8080. Nearly 20,000 will be built before succumbing to a wave of easier-to-pronounce products from Apple and IBM.

Fast-forward almost thirty years and you'll be just in time for its reintroduction.

The new IMSAI Series Two is a hybrid -- it can function as a vintage S-100 computer running the archaic CP/M operating system, but there's room for a modern Windows & Linux compatible motherboard as well. In essence, you're buying the ultimate retro case mod. If you're a true ubergeek, a USB port can be used to interface the vintage system with an external PC.

Groovy man. A thousand bucks seems pretty steep for a case but damn is it cool. And major blinky lights bonus points!

ThinkGeek :: Lazer Trip Wire

ThinkGeek :: Lazer Trip Wire

According to all the James Bond, Pink Panther, and other spy or heist movies, valuables are always guarded by glistening red beams. Cross a beam and a loud alarm sounds, which normally summons scores of security guards, ninjas, or robot henchmen. Wouldn't it be nice if there was an inexpensive way to get this sort of security for your cubicle?

Go ahead and add this on to the what to buy Mr. Light for Xmas. I don't need no stinkin' pistol for home protection! I have Lazer frikkin' tripwires.

Furniture Causes FedEx Fits

Wired News: Furniture Causes FedEx Fits

Most of us have been there. You can just barely afford to pay the rent. But forget about buying furniture -- not if you want to eat, anyway.
Jose Avila recently found himself in just that predicament. Although he has a good job as a software developer, he's locked into two rents after moving to Arizona, and has no extra cash for an Ikea shopping spree. But instead of scouting street corners for a ratty, unwanted couch, Avila got creative and built an apartment full of surprisingly sturdy furniture -- out of FedEx shipping boxes.
Fanciful as his creations may seem, FedEx is not amused. The shipping giant's lawyers have sent Avila letters demanding he take down the site he created to document his project, invoking, among other things, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (.pdf), or DMCA.

Now, I fully admit to being a privacy nut with slight bouts of paranoia, but I remember when I was harping about the horror of the DCMA and got eye rolls from some of you. Well here ya go. Further proof that the DCMA is one of the worst laws we've ever passed. And I thought the Lexmark lawsuit was bad.
P.s. Fuck you Lexmark. I'm not buying any of your shitty printers again (I wasn't going to anyway, but this gives me a nice moral superiority angle).

Gizoogle - Fo all you beotches who wanna find shiznit

Gizoogle - Fo all you beotches who wanna find shiznit
I don't know how many of you remember the jive converter from the 80's but here is an updated one for the Zero's (and no, I don't give a shit what you are supposed to call this decade). It will even convert whole web sites.

New Scientist Doggy Stylin' News - Erotic images can tiznurn you blind

Researcha have finally found evidence fo` what good Catholic boys have known all along – erotic images makes you go blind. The effect is temporary n lasts just a moment, but tha research has added ta road-safety campaigna’ calls ta ban sexy billboard-advertis'n nizzy busy roads, in tha hope of prevent'n accidents.

Erotic images can turn you blind

New Scientist Breaking News - Erotic images can turn you blind

Researchers have finally found evidence for what good Catholic boys have known all along – erotic images make you go blind. The effect is temporary and lasts just a moment, but the research has added to road-safety campaigners’ calls to ban sexy billboard-advertising near busy roads, in the hope of preventing accidents.

What? Like I was gonna pass up posting anything that will let me use that title.

Motorola Debuts First Ever Nano Emissive Flat Screen Display Prototype

Motorola Debuts First Ever Nano Emissive Flat Screen Display Prototype

otorola Labs today unveiled a working 5-inch color video display prototype based on proprietary Carbon Nanotube (CNT) technology – a breakthrough technique that could create large, flat panel displays with superior quality, longer lifetimes and lower costs than current offerings. Optimized for a large screen High Definition Television (HDTV) that is less than 1-inch thick, this first-of-its kind NED 5-inch prototype harnesses the power of CNTs to fundamentally change the design and fabrication of flat panel displays.
...
“Motorola’s NED technology is demonstrating full color video with good response time,” said Barry Young, VP and CFO of DisplaySearch, a leading flat panel display market research and consulting company. “And according to a detailed cost model analysis conducted by our firm, we estimate the manufactured cost for a 40-inch NED panel could be under $400.”

Love them nanotubes. Not bad for something that was discovered on accident.

Key Argument for Global Warming Critics Evaporates - Yahoo! News

Key Argument for Global Warming Critics Evaporates - Yahoo! News

For years, skeptics of global warming have used satellite and weather balloon data to argue that climate models were wrong and that global warming isn't really happening.
Now, according to three new studies published in the journal Science, it turns out those conclusions based on satellite and weather balloon data were based on faulty analyses.
The atmosphere is indeed warming, not cooling as the data previously showed.
...
For the past 40 years, radiosonde temperature data have been collected from around the world twice each day, once during the day and once at night.

But while nighttime radiosonde measurements were consistent with climate models and theories showing a general warming trend, daytime measurements actually showed the atmosphere to be cooling since the 1970's.
Sherwood explains these discrepancies by pointing out that the older radiosonde instruments used in the 1970's were not as well shielded from sunlight as more recent models. What this means as that older radiosondes showed warmer temperature readings during the day because they were warmed by sunlight.
"It's like being outside on a hot day—it feels hotter when you are standing in the direct sun than when you are standing in the shade," Sherwood said.

Ooops. It's all hogwash! Ain't no glo-ball warmin'! Timmy! Go pour some water on your brother! His hair is startin' ta smoke again.

Apple Dictionary Says Bloggers 'Unhealthy'

The Raw Feed: Apple Dictionary Says Bloggers 'Unhealthy'

All the bloggers are going to be blogging about THIS. The dictionary in Apple's Tiger operating system defines a blog as something "run by twenty-something Americans with at least an unhealthy interest in computers.

Aha! Finally, irrefutable proof that I am 20 something! W00t!

re to Release 30 GB Holographic Card for Less than $1 at the End of 2006

Optware to Release 30 GB Holographic Card for Less than $1 at the End of 2006 -- Tech-On!

Optware Corp., a developer of holographic data storage systems, is planning to release a Holographic Versatile Card (HVC) media product around the end of 2006. The card capacity is expected to be 30 GB. The company aims to price the product around 100 yen. Optware also intends to set the price of a reader device lower than 200,000 yen and a reader/writer device lower than 1 million yen. The launch of these HVC-related products is planned to coincide with the standardization of the technology, expected in December, 2006, by Ecma International, an organization promoting standardization of information and communication technologies. The company also revealed photos of mockups. Dimensions of the card are almost the same as those of a credit card, while the drive system is designed to be the size of a surface-mounted hard disc drive system.

For those not conversant with the yen that is $9000 for the reader/writer, $1800 for the reader, and a fucking dollar for the media. Yeah, 8 large is a bit of money, but remember, cd writers were $50,000 when they came out and dropped to $500 within 5 years.

Toshiba Develops Flatbed 3D Display

Toshiba Develops Flatbed 3D Display -- Tech-On!

Toshiba Corp. has developed a display technology allowing 3D images to be viewed on a flatbed display. All the various conventional 3D displays developed thus far have been upright displays. By switching the way displays are placed, "We can offer a realistic touch of depth," said a company spokesperson.

Finally, a table to satisfy your inner anorexic.

Microsoft "Genuine Advantage" cracked in 24h: window.g_sDisableWGACheck='all'

Boing Boing: Microsoft "Genuine Advantage" cracked in 24h: window.g_sDisableWGACheck='all'

AV sez, "This week, Microsoft started requiring users to verifiy their serial number before using Windows Update. This effort to force users to either buy XP or tell them where you got the illegal copy is called 'Genuine Advantage.' It was cracked within 24 hours."

Before pressing 'Custom' or 'Express' buttons paste this text to the address bar and press enter:

javascript:void(window.g_sDisableWGACheck='all')

It turns off the trigger for the key check.

Thought I'd post this cause validation crap sucks. Works too. Just tested it 5 seconds ago.

Google Earth - Home

Google Earth - Home

Want to know more about a specific location? Dive right in -- Google Earth combines satellite imagery, maps and the power of Google Search to put the world's geographic information at your fingertips.
Fly from space to your neighborhood. Type in an address and zoom right in.
Search for schools, parks, restaurants, and hotels. Get driving directions.
Tilt and rotate the view to see 3D terrain and buildings.
Save and share your searches and favorites. Even add your own annotations.

All right, I admit, I heard the buzz about the Google Earth project for a bit now. Oh great, that's what I was really needing another fucking map. Go ahead, admit it. You thought it too. Hell, if you haven't seen Google Earth you're still thinking it. Time to start forgetting. For starters, it is not what you think! This thing is staggering. I spent the first 30 minutes using the program saying, "Whoa. Whaaat? Holy crap! You can't do that!". Repeat non-stop for 30 minutes. I'd like to describe it to you, I can't. Everytime I think too much about it I sart sounding like Jessica Simpson confronted with a Physics question. Just go take a look. Just for a minute. C'mon man the first hit is free.

Grandmother Sues Grand Theft Auto Maker

morons.org - Grandmother Sues Grand Theft Auto Maker

Yet this isn't enough for some particularly prudish customers who can't stand the idea that those bits are on the disc at all, accessible or not. One such customer is 85-year-old Florence Cohen of New York. She's suing the makers of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas claiming they engaged in false, misleading and deceptive practices.

Cohen bought the game, rated M for Mature, suitable for persons ages 17 and older, for her grandson. The symbol on the box says "Mature 17+" and a large letter M. (The rating was eventually changed to A-Adults Only.)

Now how old do you suppose Cohen's grandson is? 19? 18? 17? This was, after all, a rated M (for Mature, over 17) game. Would you believe 14? That's right: Florence Cohen bought her 14-year-old grandson an M-rated (for mature) game, and now she's suing Rockstar over the game's content.

Ahhh, more Coffe-gate goodness. Will the irony never cease?

Mozilla Firefox 1.0.6 Released

Mozilla Firefox 1.0.6 Release Notes
Time to update. Go grab the latest version!