Isabella Rossellini on Penises and Vaginas

"Penises are species specific- so i can't be screwed by a bear." IR. Watch them all here at Green Porno.

Hummmmmmmmmm a tune

This is so incredibly cool. It's like we're living in the future. The Catholic church has a 'position' on cloning, we've got robots on mars and now you can sing (or whistle) a tune into your computer's microphone and http://www.midomi.com/ will tell you what the tune is!

Try it. It worked for me- i didn't know i knew the tune of "Seven Nation Army"- nor did i know that i knew anything by "The White Stripes"- but there you go. I've tried making stuff up- and i must admit it often does sound like a horrible Vietnamese pop song. Maybe i should be a star there.

Who is Meekakitty?

I'm not sure. From what i can work out she's actually Tessa- 19 year old part-time model from New York. I know she's thinking about switching from PC to Mac, that she's been to Thailand on holiday and that she pops the lenses out of her thick-rimmed spectacles before vlogging. I don't know why i care but somehow i do. She's sexy in a very GEEKY way- and somebody should put her in a Woody Allen film quick! Listening to her stream-of-consciousness verbiage is exhausting but somehow she remains oddly endearing.

Eric Lewis

The Effect of Botox on Emoticons

>:-( -----> [:-)

Star Wars Cantina (old but v good)

"a punch up the bracket"

Nicks's Fireworks Emporium etc

... you go around the back of McDonalds, you see a guy named Angelo- he's missing a couple of fingers and one eye- you say "Angelo- is your name Domenic? He'll say yeah and you go "Where's Uncle Nick?" and he'll point you in my direction....

Sexy Abe Lincoln!!!

The Chameleon by David Grann

Incredible non-fiction from the "annals of crime" at The New Yorker. A child goes 'missing' - presumed murdered- only to reappear many years later. How cruel is the act of the imposter? The poor family, consumed with grief for all these years - now to have and hold their cherished lost child once again. Despite the glaring fact that his eyes are now brown- not blue- the family accept him as their own. Why? Is it grief that allows them to believe- or do they do so to cover their own evil deeds? Un-murder. The imposter, intent on spinning his own web- is caught in another. Creepy but true.

Impossible Triangles

This drove me crazy for 2 days. I is be an idiot- and you can too!

101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life

"Drink while urinating
For hundreds of thousands of years the vast majority of humans have lived and died without trying the following experiment. It is, however, both extremely straightforward and extremely interesting.
Like everyone else, you urinate. And at other moments you drink. What you do not know is what it feels like to do both at the same time. This experiment will show you.
So, just have a large glass of water at hand. When you begin to urinate, start drinking. As far as possible, you should try to drink the water straight down, without pausing. You will feel quite bizarre sensations almost immediately. The water you evacuate seems to be synchronized with that entering your mouth. You will then visualize, and above all feel, your body to be organized in a way which until then you had never imagined possible. The water you are drinking seems to exit directly from your bladder. In a few seconds you will feel directly wired, from throat to urethra, from stomach to bladder-a physiology that is impossible but that you intuit, directly and unquestionably, to be real.
It has taken no more than a few moments for you to discover this wonderfully simple body, and you feel there can be no other. No more intestine, no kidneys, no filtration time, no waiting. Water pours through you vertically, a cool liquid washes through you in a peculiar and palpable way. Your system seems to have opened inside out, with the water flowing smoothly from inside to outside. It is like-take your pick-the cosmic flux or an automatic washing machine.
This experiment, which can be repeated indefinitely, that costs nothing and is likely to procure ever new sensations and surprises, had not hitherto been considered a thermal cure."

Philosopher and Le Monde columnist Droit's strange and delightful little volume explores some of the biggest questions in philosophy with exercises instead of terminology-laden tracts, by encouraging readers to discover the ways in which small or familiar acts-fasting, prowling, playing, telling a stranger she's beautiful-can become "the starting point for that astonishment which gives rise to philosophy." Each of the 101 exercises is carefully, even lovingly explained, with duration, necessary props and intended effect listed first. Exercise #31, for example, instructs readers to "Watch dust in the sun": it should take about 15 minutes, a room and sunlight are needed, and its effect is "reassuring." When a ray of sunlight enters a dark room, an "invisible world" of sparkling dust reveals itself-a symbol of the "stratum of existence that is both invisible and present" always. There are other worlds within ours, Droit reminds us, worlds that we might be able to see with only a metaphoric readjustment of shutters. There are exercises to calm, to disorient, to humanize, to displace; for instance, listening to shortwave radio at night, Droit writes, will help readers realize that "perpetually around you, woven into the air...are these hundreds of voices murmuring, in dozens of unknown or unrecognizable languages, of which you know nothing, expect that they spread an obscure and changing human crust, unendingly, over everything."

Equations for Everyday Living

Hot NEW single from: Tits Are Made of Skin

These guys are great! Indie rockers Tits Are Made of Skin's debut self-titled album "Tits Are Made Of Skin"- featuring the smash hit single "Tits Are Made of Skin". Listen to what Rolling Stone calls "... it's OK....". But it's better than OK- it's quite good.

stereolab + rene magritte + italo calvino + richard dawkins = Tits Are Made of Skin.

Andy Gilmore

Arvo Part

Arvo Pärt refers to his current style as "tintinnabuli." This can be defined as the application of various inversions of a certain chord. Also, it is a word "which evokes the pealing of bells, the bells' complex but rich sonorous mass of overtones, the gradual unfolding of patterns implicit in the sound itself, and the idea of a sound that is simultaneously static and in flux." Pärt explains the term this way:

Tintinnabulation is an area I sometimes wander into when I am searching for answers - in my life, my music, my work. In my dark hours, I have the certain feeling that everything outside this one thing has no meaning. The complex and many-faceted only confuses me, and I must search for unity. What is it, this one thing, and how do I find my way to it? Traces of this perfect thing appear in many guises - and everything that is unimportant falls away. Tintinnabulation is like this. . . . The three notes of a triad are like bells. And that is why I call it tintinnabulation.

More specifically, tintinnabulation involves the predominance of a single triad in one or more voices. In a four-voice context, it is likely that two of the voices will sound only notes of a single triad, while the other two voices move in a step-wise fashion. This triad is, in most cases, the tonal center of the piece from which Pärt rarely departs.

Opical Illusion via Ted Talks

click me

Relativistic SpaceTime Explained

"The Fabric of the Cosmos" by physicist Brian Greene* spends quite a bit of time in it's 1st 100 pages discussing a rotating bucket however on page 50 there is a gem.

to paraphrase:

EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW (you, me,the cat etc) is travelling through spacetime AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT. The faster your motion through space, the slower your motion through time.

So, if you are completely at rest (i.e. not on the surface of a planet rotating, revolving etc) then you are travelling THROUGH TIME AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT.

If you are a light beam, (travelling at the speed of light), then your SPEED THROUGH TIME STOPS COMPLETELY. Photons experience no time.

That is cool. Does that mean that "1 second per second" along the 'time' axis is equivalent to "c" (speed of light) through space? I'm hoping to find out.


*("Objection your Honor- That's Immaterial!")

Animal Naturopathy: Stop the torture! Call PETA.

Driving past the local Vet clinic today and saw a new sign : "Animal Naturopathy". I think this should be illegal- but i'm sure PETA doesn't care.
If you're sentient to know better but actually choose to be stupid- then good for you for believing in astrology, naturopathy, god etc... but these poor dumb animals don't know any better.
Naturopathy relies on the placebo effect - but i'm pretty sure that a poodle would interpret a session of "Animal Acupuncture" as a hostile act. They didn't even stoop that low in Gitmo!
Pouring some green concoction down Snoopy's throat seems a little less like torture- but still you'd have to see it as an unneccesary annoyance to the dog.
When will the cruelty end?

p.s. i've emailed PETA and PETER (Singer that is) but have only received automated replies.

The Birds, Tippi & Melanie, Vietnamese Nail Bars, Sushi

I have just finished watching (Hitchcock's) "The Birds"... what a stinker! If that was his 1st film, it would have been his last. Fascinating though to watch a terrible wooden actress (Tippi Hedren) who would in later years give birth to another terrible actress (Melanie Griffith). Tippi's current wikipedia entry is a little strange:

"To the right is a picture of Hendren strung out on methamphetamines. She was introduced to the drug during her illicit love affair with Alfred Hitchcock on the set of 'The Birds', their first of many cinematographic and sexual collaborations."

and further:

In a Los Angeles Times article, Ms. Hedren was described as being a pivotal figure in the modern development of Vietnamese owned nail salons in the US. She was apparently drawn to the plight of Vietnamese refugees from the Vietnam War and, in 1975, helped 20 Vietnamese immigrants by having her manicurist teach them the skills of the trade. This single event in history has been cited as the genesis of the modern proliferation of Vietnamese owned nail salons in the US.^[21]

and further:

Melanie Griffith's half sister invented "sushi without fish" according to Wikipedia:

Griffith also developed her unique spin on sushi—sushi without raw fish. This led to a publishing deal for her cookbook “Sushi American Style”

When Pterodactyls Attack!

We have often have to tell grieving parents, "No one can bring your child back, except maybe the pterodactyl, but that's beside the point..."