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Thursday, December 8, 2005 25 years ago today... "John Lennon's dead," he said, stunned. "Fucking Christ, Henry. It's on the wire, Lennon's dead. Somebody shot him." @ 09:48 AM CST [Link] Coke and Mentos mixes well. I really have to try this. embedded video @ 04:05 AM CST [Link] Tuesday, December 6, 2005 USB heated slippers, coaster, and gloves. This can't be good for your computer. @ 08:36 AM CST [Link] Smoking ban coming to Chicago tomorrow? After countless nights of coming home smelling like the Marlboro man, I can't wait. "It's Chicago politics at its finest," said Dan Rosenthal, owner of Trattoria No. 10 and spokesman for Chefs and Owners United for Good Health--a group of 120 restaurants that support a comprehensive smoking ban. "It's clout over caring. Personal benefit over personal health. It's absolute insanity. Every major city in the country should be laughing at the process we're going through." The smoking ban debate "makes me want to puke," Rosenthal said. @ 07:09 AM CST [Link] IT Gigolo. This can't be real, but who knows. Sounds like a porn intro to me, except replace pizza delivery boy with tech support geek. @ 07:06 AM CST [Link] Top 20 overlooked games. Wow, I remember playing Shadowrun, Herzog Zwei, Phantasy Star, and Jet Set Radio. Before the rise of the internets you would just walk into the videostore, rent something, and take your chances. Sometimes this approach found some real gems. Nowadays, it seems like there are top 3 or 4 titles and everyone plays them. Like World of Warcraft or Battlefield 2. WoW is just an old school MUD and Battlefield is another multiplayer FPS, albiet a very good one. These older games were a bit more innovative. @ 07:03 AM CST [Link] New mammal discovered. And there's a catch-22 here. The palm oil trade is causing enough deforestation to spot new animals, but the deforestation itself could endanger them. "It's more likely to be a viverrid - that's the family which includes the mongoose and civets - which is a very poorly known group," Dr Isaac said. "One of the photos clearly shows the length of the tail and how muscly it is; civets use their tails to balance in trees, so this new animal may spend chunks of its time up trees too." That could be one reason why it has not been spotted before. Another could be that access to the heart of Borneo is becoming easier as population centres expand and roads are built. The WWF says this is the heart of the issue. It accuses the governments of Indonesia and Malaysia, which each own parts of Borneo, of encouraging the loss of native jungle by allowing the development of giant palm oil plantations. @ 06:47 AM CST [Link] Sunday, December 4, 2005 Xbox vs Xbox 360. This is a neat comparision of the graphics between the two systems with a simple and nifty mouse-over effect. Xbox360? Maybe next Xmas. And after seeing this amazing Nintendo Revolution teaser trailer, probably never. @ 10:29 PM CST [Link] Sound Opinions moves to Chicago NPR. I was wondering what happened to those guys. Whenever I heard talk on XRT I thought "Hey, its sound opinions, it must be tuesday." Also: Sound Opinions website. @ 10:15 PM CST [Link] Dogs laugh and calm other dogs. They say the long, loud pant is the sound of a dog laughing, and it has a direct impact on the behavior of other dogs. "What we found is that it had a calming or soothing effect on the dogs," said Patricia Simonet, an animal behaviorist in Spokane who has studied everything from hamster culture to elephant self-recognition. "Now, we actually really weren't expecting that." Nancy Hill, director of Spokane County Animal Protection, admits she was skeptical at first that this noise would affect the other dogs. "I thought: Laughing dogs?" Hill said. "A sound that we're gonna isolate and play in the shelter? I was a real skeptic … until we played the recording here at the shelter." When they played the sound of a dog panting over the loudspeaker, the gaggle of dogs at the shelter kept right on barking. But when they played the dog version of laughing, all 15 barking dogs went quiet within about a minute. So how long until the "dog laugh" becomes looped on some little eletronic device you give to dog owners for xmas? @ 10:05 PM CST [Link] Terrorist website design contest announced. With a unique prize: A message has been posted to several radical Islamist - or jihadi - websites announcing a competition to design a new site for a militant group in Iraq. The prize offered is the chance to fire missiles remote-controlled by computer at a US military base in Iraq. @ 09:57 PM CST [Link] [Archives] Search entries: