LinkMachineGo

[mobiles] Man Badly Burned when Cell Phone in Pocket Flares … ‘A cell phone in the front pocket of a Vallejo man’s pants spontaneously combusted, quickly ignited his clothes and left the man with second- and third-degree burns across at least half his body, according to investigators. Luis Picaso, 59, was apparently sleeping on a white, all-plastic lawn chair in his room late Saturday night and was awakened as he was ablaze…’ [via Warren Ellis]

[mobiles] Cell Phones Filthier Than Bottom of Shoe … ‘The phones contained more skin bacteria than the any other object; this could be due to the fact that this type of bacteria increases in high temperatures and our phones are perfect for breeding these germs as they’re kept warm and cozy in our pockets, handbags and brief cases. These bacteria are toxic to humans…’

[robots] Jamie Zawinski on fixing his Roomba: ‘…let me rephrase that story: My personal cleaning robot has malfunctioning hardware.’

[lifehacks] 5 Ideas for Stressful Living … ‘I’ve compiled a short list of ideas for those who wish to add a dash of stress into their lives – all fairly easy to implement, not to mention widely encouraged by society at large and often easily observed in the behavior of those around you…’ [via Lifehacker]

[evolution] External testicles proves ‘unintelligent design’ … ‘”The religious right are always harping on about so-called ‘Intelligent Design’ but both the irrational and rational response has to be ‘bollocks’,” said anti-creationism campaigner Sean Duff. “Why would anyone intelligent put something as sensitive as testicles in a little sack on the outside? Surely this proves the concept of ‘Unintelligent Design’?”

[drink] Caffeine Content of Bottled Beverages — Red Bull comes out on Top. [via Minor 9th]

[funny] Courage award for man who threw out old computer cables … ‘‘We were stunned’ said Whitesmith. ‘There was a curly off-white cable with like, a round five pronged little plug on one end and a square blue plastic bit on the other. That must have been essential for something. And the redundant phone chargers might have worked as a back-up charger for another mobile phone that he might purchase in the future. It was madness.” [via Linkbunnies.org]

[religion] Top 100 Funies Say The Darndest Things Quotes! … ‘I appreciate your recommendation, and it is intriguing, but as a pro-lifer, I cannot support an organization that is opposed to the death penalty.’

[iphone] 30 Things the iPhone Could Do That You Haven’t Thought of Yet … ’17. Bring you to tears when it falls and skids face-down across a parking lot.’

[comics] Extraordinary Things to Come — Alan Moore discusses The Black Dossier his book about the history of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen … Moore: ‘Who did the music? It was me and Tim Perkins, pretending to be a 50s American rock and roll band. I’ve discovered, at this late stage in my life, that I am, in fact, an Elvis impersonator. But you’ll have to wait and listen for yourself, you know? [His voice assumes an Elvis Presley-like drawl] “Uh huh, thank you very much.” So there’ll be a lot of little goodies, because me and Kevin like that. We like having lots of nice little things in there. It reminds us of British comics of our youth, where there were always these kind of cheap giveaways included. But we’ve got some quite expensive giveaways in this one.’

[funny] Concepts Replaced by Grinning Faces? This is not Dumbing Down – it’s Dizzying Madness — another great column from Charlie Brooker … ‘Under this system, Schindler’s List = Vicky Pollard.’

[awards] 2007 Bloggies — nominations have opened for the long running Blog Award – if any regular readers of LMG want to nominate me for “Best British or Irish Weblog” I’d be eternally grateful.

[tv] Things I have learnt from Celebrity Big Brother, #1 — Troubled Diva on Celebrity Big Brother. ‘…by placing real-life inter-personal relationships under a microscope, and by raising the emotional temperature in order to elicit a series of controlled reactions, Big Brother is – whether by accident or design (and I couldn’t really care less) – usefully illuminating the human condition. This is why, for all its peripheral irritations, I never tire of watching it.’

[comics] The Bride of Pressbutton — four pages from an un-reprinted Alan Moore Stars My Degredation strip in Sounds Magazine from 1982 … ‘Holy Shit! Willya lookit the Micro-Tolerances on that!!’ [via Forbidden Planet]

[movies] Ask Metafilter: Why is the CGI in Jurassic Park so good? ‘…largely because of Spielberg’s restraint. ILM’s ambitions were commensurate with their abilities: their animators could create convincing scaly creatures, and that’s what they did. They could not create convincing CG cities, battlefields, or human faces, and they didn’t try. Additionally, they did a great job of simulating how large, heavy creatures move.’

[comics] Which Superhero are you? — I’m Spider-man apparently…

[blogs] World Weary Detective — another UK job blog … ‘Metropolitian Police detective london UK. A view of life from the thin layer between you and the underclass.’ [via Guardian News Blog]

[books] The Great Right Place: James Ellroy Comes Home — Ellroy on returning to LA… ‘My mother was murdered. The crime was purely L.A.-adjacent. It was a hot Saturday night. She was out with a man. He strangled her and dumped her on an access road. I was in the real-L.A./safe-L.A./now-non-safe-forever-L.A. that weekend. The central event of my life occurred off-page. The crime remains unsolved.’ [via BeaucoupKevin]

[comics] Alan Moore’s MySpace Profile …

leah moore's posting to her father's myspace

[blogs] A Blackmailing Email Sent By Nicholas Hellen of the Sunday Times — Girl With a One Track Mind publishes an email sent by the Acting News Editor at the Sunday Times just before they revealed her identity – essentially a blackmail attempt to get her to acquiesce to a photo shoot … ‘We also have a picture of you, taken outside your flat. Unfortunately, the picture is not particularly flattering and might undermine the image that has been built up around your persona as Abby Lee. I think it would be helpful to both sides if you agreed to a photo shoot today so that we can publish a more attractive image.’

[mp3] Use iTunes to add embedded album art — another useful iTunes tip from Lifehacker.

[comics] A Tourist Map of Gotham — Who knew there was an Archie Goodwin International Airport in Gotham City? [via Kottke]

[comics] Another Free Comic to Download: Phonogram #1 by Keiron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie. [via Warren Ellis]

[unabom] Unabomber’s Secret Code Cracked … ‘Schneier described the code as so complicated that “it would not surprise me if this was the most complex cipher the FBI has seen since World War II.” Schneier said with that code, Kaczynski could certainly be successful in keeping information away from the authorities. But Kaczynski succeeded only up to a point. Agents discovered the first of many clues to solving the puzzle in one of Kaczynski’s notebooks, on a page labeled, “Unscrambling Sequence.”‘ [via Wired’s Monkey Bites]

[comics] Two Free Crime Comics to Download: Criminal #1 and Cross Bronx #1.

[net] Just Can’t Get E-nough — the New Scientist on unhealthy habits created by technology. On Cheesepodding: ‘In certain circles there is even an ironic cool to be had from out-cheesing your friends. There is a problem, though. As with all addictions, you end up needing bigger and bigger hits to get the same buzz. Once I started downloading Celine Dion power ballads, I knew it was time to stop. Fortunately, I have found a variant that is, if anything, more entertaining. I download songs I know my wife hates and put them onto her iPod while she isn’t looking.’ [via the Guardian’s Technology Blog]

[trivia] 100 Things We Didn’t Know Last Year — from BBC News for 2006 … ‘Flushing a toilet costs, on average, 1.5p.’

[xmas] Attack of the Sprouts — sick of sprouts? Try this game to release some tension…

[via Minor 9th]

[xmas] A News of the World Christmas — from Pandemian.

[xmas] Merry Christmas to Everyone … from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. [via Blah Blah Flowers]

[comics] Have A Cosmic Christmas, Earthlets! — a slightly bonkers Kevin O’Neill Christmas Cover for 2000AD.

[media] VLC Version 0.8.6 — New release of the swiss-army knife of Media Players – it will play anything.

[fun] Warning Signs from the Future … [via Warren Ellis]

warning sign from the future - lack of internet connectivity

[comics] For Sale on eBay: Ultimate X-Men, Collected 1-3, 4-8 by Mark Millar and Andy Kubert.

[xmas] Professor Richard Dawkins Speaks at Fair Hills Kindergarten Regarding Santa Claus — a ‘short imagined monologue’ from McSweeneys … ‘I can see that the topic makes many of you uncomfortable. However, this should not be viewed as a bad thing. You may weep now, but your tears are a positive, not a negative. You are now facing the truth, which comes in many forms and is not always comfortable. This is a fact that you will be exposed to again and again throughout your lives. If you wish to live a life that contains only comfortable information and not necessarily the truth, then yours will be a highly deluded existence. Your intellectual maturity depends on whether or not you are capable of accepting the truth at this early age. That is why there is no better place to begin than with the absurdity that is Santa Claus and Christmas Magic.’ [via Kottke’s Remaindered Links]

[itunes] iTunes Power Tips — some useful ideas from Lifehacker … ‘Want to separate your speed metal collection from your spouse’s Broadway tunes fetish? How about your, ahem, grownup movies from your regular collection? Used to be that you had to maintain separate playlists, or log onto the same machine under different usernames to do so. But with iTunes 7, just hold down the Shift key (Option on the Mac) when you launch iTunes to create or choose a separate iTunes library.’

[fun] Where is Jesus? — can you find Jesus in a crowd? [via Meowwcat]

[wikipedia] My Wikipedia Contrail: Larry David … ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm was credited with helping clear a Los Angeles man named Juan Catalan of a first-degree murder charge. Catalan, who was arrested on suspicion of murder, maintained his innocence, saying he was at a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball game on May 12, 2003, during the time of the slaying. During the game, an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm was being shot in Dodger Stadium which contained footage of Juan Catalan with his daughter. When told that his show had released a wrongfully accused man, Larry David commented in a New Yorker article, “I tell people that I’ve now done one decent thing in my life. Albeit inadvertently.”’

[comics] Eddie Campbell on the murders in Ipswich: ‘I used to think Alan was making too much of the recurrence of names and odd details in the Whitechapel Murder cases, but here it is all over, with a Police Superintendent Gull, and one of the victims named Nicholls.’

[drm] Bill Gates On The Future Of DRM — Some interesting quotes. Gates on DRM: ‘People should just buy a cd and rip it. You are legal then.’

[future] Bruce Sterling’s Final Prediction — Sterling’s last column and Prediction for Wired Magazine … ‘The Internet, for instance, crawled out of a dank atomic fallout shelter to become the Mardi Gras parade of my generation. It was not a bolt of destructive lightning; it was the sun breaking through the clouds. Everything we do has unpredicted consequences. It’s good to keep in mind that some outcomes are just fabulous, dumb luck…’

[net] Map of the Internet — neat hand-drawn map of the address space of the internet. [via Waxy’s Links]

[facts] 100 Things We Didn’t Know This Time Last Year … ’76. The day when most suicides occurred in the UK between 1993 and 2002 was 1 January, 2000.’ [via Linkbunnies.org]

[rumours] The 40 Best Celebrity Rumors Ever … On Richard Gere and Gerbils: ‘…none of Gere’s interviewers have had the guts to go there, or maybe there’s some kind of publicist-issued fatwa, but Gere has never publicly addressed the rumor. Would you?’

[comics] Howard’s End? — Journalista takes a look at Howard Chaykin’s career … ‘Armed with a drawing style that owed more to J.C. Leyendecker than Jack Kirby, a storytelling sensibility closer to Raymond Chandler than Chris Claremont, and design chops seemingly on loan from God, Chaykin produced work during the 1980s that in many ways still has yet to be equalled by anyone creating adventure comics to this day. American Flagg!, Time2, Blackhawk, The Shadow: these were graphically challenging works of surprising and lasting storytelling sophistication, capable of entertaining thinking adults like few other works being produced outside the still-embryonic art-comics scene at the time. An implied blowjob scene from Blackhawk, not actually depicted but suggested through clever use of juxtaposition and framing, shocked DC Comics’ readership but signalled that Chaykin was an artist capable of anything…’

[drink] What Happens To Your Body If You Drink A Coke Right Now? … ‘In The First 10 minutes: 10 teaspoons of sugar hit your system. (100% of your recommended daily intake.) You don’t immediately vomit from the overwhelming sweetness because phosphoric acid cuts the flavor allowing you to keep it down.’ [via A Welsh View]

[time] Accurate Time — website which tells you how accurate the time is on your computer … [via Linkbunnies.org]

[film] Hot Fuzz — another trailer this time for the new movie from Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright. [via Sore Eyes]

[film] 300 — movie trailer for Frank Miller’s 300. ‘Spartans! Ready your breakfast and eat hearty… For tonight we dine in hell!’

[politics] Dick Cheney’s Google Searches: ‘birdshot pellet removal, quail hunting “involuntary manslaughter”, katherine harris naked, iraq exit strategy, mullah omar MySpace’

[iraq] Steve Bell: I Will Leave Forn Policy to the Grown Ups.

[tv] Imagine Links — nicely annotated link list covering Alan Yentob’s BBC documentary on the Internet. ‘I did try to track down Yentob’s myspace and livejournal but they appear to have been removed.’

[comics] Todd McFarlane on Neil Gaiman and Spawn #9 (from long before the their court case):

todd mcfarlane cartoon about neil gaiman and spawn #9

[secondlife] Second Life Avatars consume as much electricity as Brazilians: ‘…an avatar consumes 1,752 kWh per year. By comparison, the average human, on a worldwide basis, consumes 2,436 kWh per year. So there you have it: an avatar consumes a bit less energy than a real person, though they’re in the same ballpark.’ [via the Guardian’s Technology Blog]

[google] How Google handles hacked sites — interesting post from the head of anti-webspam at Google on why a website got de-listed from their index and how Google deals with the problem … ‘So talkorigins.org has these porn words and spammy links, and it’s all hidden via sneaky JavaScript. We have pretty good reason to believe that this site was hacked, but it’s still causing problems for regular users, so Google has to take action…’ [via Scobleizer]

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