Year: 2009

Categories
History Site Announcements

Birthday Girls & Boys – 14th January

antonyandcleopatracoin

Mid-week! Ya-fracking-hoo! HAPPY BIRTHDAY y’all. Hope you have a super day and remember it’s only 3 more days til the freaking weekend.

Also born on the 14th of January are:

  • 83 BC – Marcus Antonius aka Mark Anthony, Roman politician and General, best pals with Julius Caesar, lover of Queen Cleopatra of Egypt. He famously committed suicide and was shortly followed into the afterlife by Cleopatra. Their love story was immortalised by Shakespeare.
  • 1741 – Benedict Arnold, accomplished American Continental Army General and turncoat/traitor during the American Revolutionary War.
  • 1861 – Mehmed VI, last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, reigning from 1918 to 1922
  • 1875 – Albert Schweitzer, Alsatian, physician, Nobel laureate, theologian, musician, philosopher, and one of colonialisms harshest critics. Famous for founding a free hospital in rural Gabon at a time when most Europeans were only interested in exploiting Africa.
  • 1904 – Sir Cecil Beaton, English fashion and portrait photographer, and Academy Award-winning stage and costume designer for films and theatre. Beaton worked as a staff photographer for Vanity Fair and Vogue , and in addition photographed many members of European royalty and Hollywood celebrities. Royal family. He was a raving bi-sexual but tended towards boys rather than girls.
  • 1941 – Faye Dunaway, critically acclaimed American actress of Bonnie and Clyde, Chinatown, and Network fame. She received Academy Award nominations for Best Actress for her performances in Bonnie and Clyde and Chinatown, before winning the category with her 1976 performance in Network.
  • 1946 – Harold Shipman, English general practitioner (i.e. a doctor) and convicted serial killer. He is the most prolific known serial killer in British history. 236 murders are ascribed to him, though the real number may be much higher, perhaps over 450.
  • 1954 – “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan, American professional wrestler, inventor of the “American patriot” and kidney cancer survivor. He is currently the oldest active wrestler in WWE.
  • 1963 – Steven Soderbergh, American film producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor, and Academy Award-winning director. Soderbergh launched his career with the film Sex, Lies and Videotape, but is better known for directing Erin Brokovich, Traffic, and the Ocean’s Eleven franchise.
  • 1968 – James Todd Smith aka LL Cool J, American rapper and actor. LL Cool J stands for “Ladies Love Cool James”. Can you believe that this great big yummy hunk of rapping manliness spent most of his youth singing in the church choir, participating in the Boy Scouts, and delivering newspapers?
  • 1969 – David Grohl, American drummer for the brilliant and all too short lived grunge band Nirava, and frontman songwriter for the almost as good (as Nirvana) Foo Fighters.

Thanks for the info Wikipedia.

Let me know if you’d like me to add a friend, family member or little ol’ you to our daily birthday lists of (famous) people. Mail me names, years of birth, and what makes you or them famous.

Categories
Arty Flash Games

Auditorium – A Game of Music and Light

Auditorium is a fantastic, relaxing puzzle game composed of music and light. In each level, you need to manipulate the flow of light towards what look like equalizer boxes. You can move the directional buttons, and click and drag the edges to herd the light. When  all the boxes are full, you proceed to the next level.

Auditorium is a really intriguing and addictive multisensory experience — part puzzle game, part light sculpture, part musical instrument – Peter Cohen, Macworld

Pay the game at Play Auditorium.

Categories
Hints & Tips Science & Technology Useful/Useless Info

Hacking Your Brain

I’ve always thought hallucinations came at a price – drugs like LSD and mescaline aren’t cheap and I’m not arsed to pay for them. The Boston Globe, however, seems to think you can fling open the doors of perception without having to visit your local dealer.

Here are two simple tricks that mad scientists have thought up to tricking your brain into perceiving what we know isn’t real.

The Ganzfeld Procedure

This trick involves using a radio and ping-pong balls. Turn on the radio and find a station playing static. Then lie down on a couch or bed and secure a pair of halved ping-pong balls over your eyes. You should experience some bizarre distortions within a few minutes. Hallucinations may vary from seeing horses prancing about in the clouds to hearing the voice of a dead relative.

Incredible Shrinking Pain

This trick uses the newest painkiller on the market – inverted binoculars. Oxford University scientists have found out that test subjects looking at a wounded hand through the wrong end of the felt less pain and swelling. By making the hand appear smaller, the brain is tricked into reducing the bodily sensations of pain.

See more tricks to hack your brain at The Boston Globe – via Blame it on the Voices.

Categories
Animal Kingdom Awesomeness Massive Cuteness

Habla Espanol?

img_48783

Congratulations to Amy and Grant on the arrival of two beautiful Spaniel pups. They are ridiculously cute guys! I are jealous.

Categories
History Site Announcements

Birthday Girls & Boys – 13th January

orlando bloom

Hiya and HAPPY BIRTHDAY girls, boys & others. Have a grand day and I hope you don’t have to spend time with a bunch of feck arses like I do.

Also born on the 13th of January are:

  • 1777 – Elisa Bonaparte, younger sister of Napoleon I of France. Apparently she had a sharp tongue and used to tell Napoleon off quite a bit which caused their relationship to be strained at times, nevertheless he made her the Grand Duchess of Tuscany when he annexed it in 1807.
  • 1884 – Sophie Tucker, Russian-born performer who played piano and sang burlesque and vaudeville tunes, at first in blackface (i.e. like a “black sambo”). She said that theatre managers insisted on this blacked up disguise because she was “too fat and ugly” for audiences to endure otherwise. Her sense of humour was legendary, and she sang songs that acknowledged her heft, such as “Nobody Loves a Fat Girl, But Oh How a Fat Girl Can Love”. Her comedic style has influenced some of Hollywood’s funniest women including Mae West, Joan Rivers, Roseanne Barr, and Bette Midler.
  • 1898 – Kai Munk, Danish playwright, Lutheran pastor, and WWII martyr. Munk criticised Hitler and Mussolini’s persecution of Jews during WWII in a Danish newspaper, he was subsequently arrested and assassinated by the Gestapo.
  • 1927 – Sydney Brenner, South African born molecular biologist, huge fan of the soil round worm, and 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine co-laureate.
  • 1935 – Mauro Forghieri, Italian automotive and mechanical engineer who designed the Ferrari 312 series. While he was Technical Director of Ferrari’s racing department, Ferrari won the driver’s F1 world championship title four times, with John Surtees (1964), Niki Lauda (1975 and 1977), and Jody Scheckter (1979). Ferrari also won the builder’s F1 world championship title eight times.
  • 1949 – Rakesh Sharma, Squadron Leader in the Indian Air Force, first Indian and 138th man to visit space.
  • 1961 – Julia Louis-Dreyfus, American actress, and daughter of a writer and a billionaire business executive. Julia started out her TV career by performing on Saturday Night Live from 1982 to 1985. She then went on to make a lot of money acting as Elaine on Seinfeld from 1990 to 1998. According to Jerry Seinfeld “She cracks you up without breaking your nuts” – apparently she can do the same thing to a peanut M&M.
  • 1977 – Orlando Bloom, English actor, Buddhist, tree hugger, dog rescuer, underwear model dater, Obama supporter. He is most well known for his roles as immortal elf-prince Legolas in The Lord of the Rings and blacksmith Will Turner in the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy. He was equally limp-wristed Troy and Elizabethtown, and only slightly better in Kingdom of Heaven. His is cute though.

Thanks for the info Wikipedia.

Let me know if you’d like me to add a friend, family member or little ol’ you to our daily birthday lists of (famous) people. Mail me names, years of birth, and what makes you or them famous.

Categories
Cartoons & Comics Lists Useful/Useless Info

Fascinating Cigarette Smoking Facts

During the last century, cigarettes have gone from being the darling playmate bunny that everyone wanted to shag to the drunken stepfather that you’d wouldn’t leave alone with your children. At one time, sportsmen, actors, and celebrities promoted the coolness of cigarettes on television, but now smoking is considered an nasty, socially-unacceptable habit that could endanger you and the people around you.

Here are some interesting cigarette smoking facts you, or president-elect Barack Obama, may or may not have known.

  • Cigarettes are the single-most traded item on the planet, with approximately 1 trillion being sold from country to country each year.
  • U.S. cigarette manufacturers now make more money selling cigarettes to countries around the globe than they do selling to Americans.
  • Urea, a chemical compound that is a major component in urine, is used to add “flavor” to cigarettes.
  • The ‘Cork Tip’ filter was originally invented in 1925 by Hungarian inventor Boris Aivaz, who patented the process of making the cigarette filter from crepe paper. All kinds of filters were tested, although ‘cork’ is unlikely to have been one of them.
  • Contrary to popular social belief, it is NOT illegal to smoke tobacco products at any age. Parents are within the law to allow minors to smoke, and minors are within the law to smoke tobacco products freely. However, the SALE of tobacco products is highly regulated with legal legislation.
  • Scientists claim the average smoker will lose 14 years of their life due to smoking. This however does not necessarily mean that a smoker will die young – and they may still live out a ‘normal’ lifespan.
  • The United States is the only major cigarette market in the world in which the percentage of women smoking cigarettes (22%) comes close to the number of men who smoke (35%).
  • Sugar approximates to roughly 20% of a cigarette, and many diabetics are unaware of this secret sugar intake. Also, the effect of burning sugar is unknown.
  • Smokers draw on ‘lite’ and menthol cigarettes harder (on average) than regular cigarettes; causing the same overall levels of tar and nicotine to be consumed.
  • Smokers often smoke after meals to ‘allow food to digest easier’. In fact, this works because the bodies priority moves away from the digestion of food in favor of protecting the blood cells and flushing toxins from the brain.
  • According to the World Health Organization, approximately 25% of cigarettes sold around the world are smuggled.
  • Nicotine reaches the brain within 10 seconds after smoke is inhaled. It has been found in every part of the body and in breast milk.
  • ‘Toppings’ are added to the blended tobacco mix to add flavor and a taste unique to the manufacturer. Some of these toppings have included; clove, licorice, orange oil, apricot stone, lime oil, lavender oil, dill seed oil, cocoa, carrot oil, mace oil, myrrh, beet juice, bay leaf, oak, rum, vanilla, and vinegar.

See more facts at The List Verse.

Categories
Animal Kingdom Awesomeness Cartoons & Comics Cautionary Tales Weirdness

Wild times

In case you’ve been in hibernation, or a sex slave in the wilderness for the past couple of months, you’ll know that there’s a recession going on out there. And by out there I mean on your doorstep, in your wallet, and even in your bar fridge. I’m hating it – how about you? Anyway in both keeping up with current economic events (it’s a Bear Market apparently), and simultaneously taking your mind off them, I present a few pieces from Things Bears Love via Bored At Work (which I so am).

Bears love OVERWEIGHT HIKERS

hikers1

hikers2

Bears also love DRUNKS

drunks1

drunks2

And TEAM BUILDING EXERCISES

team_building1

team_building2

Get more laughs here.

Categories
Weirdness

Psycho killer gouges out and devours his own eyeball!!

eyeball soup

So this is nice. Texan death row inmate Andre Thomas has ripped out his one working eye with his fingers and eaten it. Hopefully he had the good sense to perhaps sauté it in a little garlic and serve it on a bed of lemon-scented basmati rice (and not blue soup/toilet duck as in the above image). Andre is not inexperienced at this sort of thing – he ripped his other eyeball out some years ago. Anyway this whack-job has been moved to a nice cosy psychiatric facility where he probably won’t be able to disfigure his blind self any further.

Oh and FYI Andre was on death row for brutally murdering his wife, son and infant stepdaughter. Apparently he ripped their hearts out. Literally.

This lovely tale via The Daily Mail.

Categories
History Site Announcements

Birthday Girls & Boys – 12th January

PW

Hello and welcome to a hard boiled wonderland um I mean a whole new week. If today is your birthday, I hope that it’s a really good, stress-free Monday, either that, or you’re still on holiday. You lucky bastards. You share your birthday with some very famous people including our own Groot Krokodil, transcendental guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and my favourite Japanese author Haruki Murakami.

Also born on the 12th of January are:

  • 1856 – John Singer Sargent, American portrait artist
  • 1876 – Jack London, American author of White Fang, Call of the Wild, and other rugged stories of life in American frontier states.
  • 1893 – Hermann Göring, German Nazi official, the “heir” to Hitler’s Germany, and commander of the formidable Luftwaffe.
  • 1916 – Pieter Willem Botha, farm boy, Boer commando, South African prime minister and executive state president, all around ring-wing Afrikaner nationalist and Nazi sympathizer. He also refused to testify at the TRC.
  • 1917 – Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Indian spiritualist and teacher of transcendental meditation to the Beatles, and countless numbers of hippy students in India, China, USA, Mexico, and the UK.
  • 1923 – Ira Hayes, Pima Native American, US Marine during WWII, and one of six United States service men immortalized in the iconic photograph of the flag raising on Iwo Jima.
  • 1949 – Haruki Murakami, Japanese author of the incredibly profound The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (one of the most amazing books I have ever read), and many other wonderful books.
  • 1951 – Kirstie Alley, fat again, thin again, fat again American actress.
  • 1965 – Rob Zombie or Robert Bartleh Cummings, American heavy metal musician, founder of White Zombie, successful solo artist, and director of films such as House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects.
  • 1966 – Olivier Martinez, sexy (ish) French actor, and on again, off again lover of Kylie Minogue.
  • 1968 – Heather Mills, painful ex-wife of the even more painful (and least talented Beatle) Paul McCartney.

Thanks for the info Wikipedia.

Let me know if you’d like me to add a friend, family member or little ol’ you to our daily birthday lists of (famous) people. Mail me names, years of birth, and what makes you or them famous.

Categories
Flash Games Science & Technology

The Eyeballing Game – How Good are You?

The eyeballing game tests how good you are at lining things up, finding the centre of a circle, or bisecting an angle.

Play it at Woodgears.

I scored 5.20 – Post your results in the comments.