-
Hufu, tofu textured and flavored to resemble human flesh,
"the healthy human flesh alternative". "Society is always flirting with
the consumption of human flesh: true-crime novels, The Silence of the
Lambs film series, zombie flicks, survival epics, even sit-coms. Pop
culture loves a good cannibal. Now, thanks to Mark Nuckols, cannibalism
has finally made it to the American dinner table." The
company web site includes
recipes. (Thanks to
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dfn_doe for the
link.)
- Look up unfamiliar idioms at
WhatDoesThatMean?: "This site is a free lexicon of English
idioms, words, and catch phrases from around the world. This is
also a 'user built' site - in addition to searching for a definition, you
can add your own. Indeed, we encourage you to do so!"
-
Fantasy Bedtime Hour, a local-access cable show in San Fransisco
that consists of two naked women in bed reading and discussing
the novel Lord Foul's Bane, with guest appearances by
experts who attempt to answer some of their questions about the book.
Stephen R. Donaldson, the author of the novel, likes the show. I think
I'd like to see this. (Thanks to merde for linking to
it.)
-
A funny tale of a distractable person and their encounter with
local fauna
-
The vampire squid from hell -- really, Vampyroteuthis infernalis.
Click through to see why the discoverer named it that. Asid from the
cool/creepy appearance (and no, merely being a cephalopod is not enough
to qualify it as creepy-looking in my book) it sounds like a rather
fascinating creature: "The vampire is a phylogenetic relict and
possesses features of both octopods and decapods. In addition, it has
many features that are probably adaptations to the deep-sea environment.
Among these are the loss of the ink sac and most active chromatophores,
development of photophores and the gelatinous consistency of the
tissues." You could even say it glows (I'll leave the implied filk
to someone else to flesh out): "[...] The photophores all glow
simultaneously or they all can flash at a rate of one to three per second
or pulsate. With the arm-tip organs apparently glowing continuously, the
vampire moves the arms round rapidly exposing and hiding the photophores
which is '...very disorienting [to an observer] when trying to visually
fix the animal's position'. Often a flash of the arm tips is followed by
a rapid escape response." (Thanks to qmarq -- it's his
favourite deep-sea squid -- for the link.)
- This got passed around a bit a week or two ago, but a few of you
might not have seen the
warning from Canada describing the social upheaval caused
by the legalization of same-sex marriage north of the border.
What's in store for us if we follow suit? "Since then, the social
fabric of Canada has been torn apart. Every single person in Toronto,
our largest city, is participating in a massive gay orgy. They've
already ran out of batteries, chocolate (twice) and whipped cream
(they sent the Blue Jays to Chicago to get more - you don't have to
give them back). 101% of our marriages have broken down. We have been
hit with no less then 15 Biblical plauges. I only thought there were
10 myself - but that one with chili cheese dogs is really nasty. And
Richard Simmons - who knew? Rabid moose are roaming the streets,
trying to violate people with antlers. [...]" The mainstream
media have been curiously silent regarding this distressing state
of affairs.
-
The Dark Side of Love (as explained by Lucifer), an unusual
interpretation of The Fall, the nature of God and of love, and of Hell.
It includes lovely quotable bits, but the one that wouldn't be a
spoiler also doesn't convey why you'll want to read it, so I'll save
the quotes for my
QotD queue
sometime after most of y'all will have already read this. I don't
agree with the theology/philosophy, but it does raise some interesting
(a bit disturbing) thoughts, makes some, "gee I never thought of it
that way" points, and is very nicely written.
-
"So Much Drama in the PhD", a techie rap song
with such lines as:
Blowin' up the rap scene faster
than factorial functions,
I'm dope like PNP transistors and I'll saturate your junctions.
By the time you've rhymed one line, I've already busted ten;
You rap in exponential time and I'm big-O of log(n).
I haven't listened to
the MP3 yet. And that seems like a good lead in to this next
item ...
- I'm guessing that madbodger will be pleased by news
of
ribbon-beam vacuum tubes, which may solve some problems facing
the wireless communication explosion because "A ribbon-beam vacuum
electron device requires less energy than either conventional
vacuum electron devices or the solid-state transistors that replaced
them in many applications decades ago." Vacuum tubes
(or, if you prefer, 'valves') that beat transistors for power
consumption? Gimme a little while to adjust my worldview ...
"Ribbon beam amplifiers (RBAs) are smaller, generate less heat,
require smaller backup batteries, are more electrically efficient and
cost thousands of dollars less than solid-state amplifiers. And because
they could be mounted directly on a base-station tower, less signal
decay would occur during transmission." They're predicting this
could have a major impact on the growth of next-generation wireless
networks. "[...] dramatically improving throughput and reducing the
cost of base stations by 65 percent [...] reduce the cost of delivering
voice and data from the current 50 cents per megabyte to five cents per
megabyte [...] from 1.9 GHz for third-generation U.S. wireless base
stations to 5.8 GHz for WiMAX, or wireless broadband networks [...]"
It'll be interesting to see how this works out.
-
A scientific analysis of the effects of orgasm on women's
brains, using modern brain-imaging technology (the
article just says "brain scans" without specifying which technique):
"You see extreme deactivation of large portions of the brain,
especially the fear centres, the brain that controls emotions."
and: "The deactivation of these very important parts of the brain
might be the most important thing necessary to have an orgasm. If you
are in a high level of anxiety it is very hard to have sex."
The scientists attempted to study men's brains the same way but were
presented with challenges because "it typically took only 20 seconds
to reach ejaculation" which made it difficult to interpret the data.
They suspect some similarities between the sexes but have already noted
some differences. [Edit at 13:45: Here are
two more
articles about the same study (thanks to moominmolly).]
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Yeah, that would be me to sleep.
That was one boring series.
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I tried "blowing smoke up one's ass" and a few permutations and it couldn't find it. :-(
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A second "Duh" on the 20-seconds. Who knew?
---
*I read maybe 7 of those Donaldson books because you did.
*Love the cephalopod (of course.)
*Puking at the hufu concept. I guess you'll become a fruitarian?
(no subject)
I wonder if they've gotten to the rape scene yet :-P
"The deactivation of these very important parts of the brain might be the most important thing necessary to have an orgasm. If you are in a high level of anxiety it is very hard to have sex."
I could almost buy this if they substituted "an orgasm" for "sex" at the end there. Maybe.
"it typically took only 20 seconds to reach ejaculation"
Unfortunately, the therapeutic drugs that have "sexual side-effects" are also brain-muckers. I have it on good authority that delayed orgasm is one of those effects.