It was a good death.

But how good was it? How does it rate compared to other deaths? What were its distinguishing characteristics?

If it is death on the silver screen that interests you, you will find your questions answered at the Movie Deaths Database.

Do you remember where you were . . .

When you heard that John Lennon had been shot?
When you heard that the space shuttle had been destroyed?
When you saw the Berlin Wall coming down?
When you heard that planes had hit both towers of the World Trade Center?
When you read that ogged was giving up blogging for good?

Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents

Reporters Sans Frontières (Reporters Without Borders) has published a freely-downloadable guide to blogging anonymously entitled "Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents". In their words:

Blogs get people excited. Or else they disturb and worry them. Some people distrust them. Others see them as the vanguard of a new information revolution. Because they allow and encourage ordinary people to speak up, they’re tremendous tools of freedom of expression.

Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure. Only they provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the government and sometimes courting arrest.

Reporters Without Borders has produced this handbook to help them, with handy tips and technical advice on how to to remain anonymous and to get round censorship, by choosing the most suitable method for each situation. It also explains how to set up and make the most of a blog, to publicise it (getting it picked up efficiently by search-engines) and to establish its credibility through observing basic ethical and journalistic principles.

Not that this blog has any journalistic aspirations, but it is useful to know how to let loose my inner freak online without those around me being any the wiser.

Honey, can you help me prepare for my speech?

File this under "News You Can Use." From the BBC, via Boing Boing:

For a fortnight, 24 women and 22 men kept diaries of how often they engaged in various forms of sex.

Then they underwent a stress test involving public speaking and performing mental arithmetic out loud.

Volunteers who had had penetrative intercourse were found to be the least stressed, and their blood pressure returned to normal faster than those who had engaged in other forms of sexual activity such as masturbation.

Those who abstained from any form of sexual activity at all had the highest blood pressure response to stress.

Fastr

Via the FlickrBlog, Fastr is "a game where you are shown a group of pictures from Flickr and have to guess the tag before other people do." Moderately addictive. Direct link.

Captain of the Crosswalk

Someone who goes by the handle The Nabob recounts a quotidian yet somehow compelling tale of an intractible pedestrian:

The cars behind us began honking their horns. The Captain remained in front of our car, preventing us from moving forward. Illegally parked cars prevented us from driving around him. The angle of our car had blocked most of the intersection and prevented anyone from driving around us.

The Captain stated that pedestrians always had the right of way and continued to stand fast. The Courier and I apologized again, pleaded that we were in a considerable hurry and asked if The Captain could remove himself from the middle of the street. He instead removed his cell phone from his pea coat pocket and claims to dial the police. The Courier and I exchangd looks of confusion and surprise.

Read the entire saga.

Recreated from an actual photo.

I look just like this. Honest.

Great for exhibitionists . . .

. . . not so great for those with "stage fright."

This got me wondering . . .

Before the advent of blogs, which give everyday people the opportunity to show off their bizarre behavior to the entire internet, did people do weird stuff like installing big-ass inflatable swimming pools in their living rooms and filling them with water?



Via Chaos Digest.

They Sure Don't Build 'Em Like They Used To

If you really want to travel the highways in style, there is no substitute for the 1952 Executive Flagship.


From an article describing this land leviathan in the Feb. 1953 issue of Popular Science Magazine:

It weighs 18 tons, rolls on 10 wheels, sleeps six, and not only has a portable swimming pool with diving board but is complete with kitchen, two bathrooms, a seven-foot bird’s eye maple bar, two refrigerators, wall-to-wall carpeting, radio-phonograph, 21-inch TV, movie screen, indirect lighting, wine cellar, air conditioning, intercom, radiotelephone, “pooch porch” for the dog, and three elephant guns in case you have to shoot your way through a herd of pachyderms on the Lincoln Highway.

And if this isn’t enough for you, the upper sun deck can be used to board your private helicopter.

Link.

Golden Globe Awards

Contrary to the evidence in this photo, the Golden Globe Awards apparently have something to do with movies and acting.

L'enfer, c'est les autres.

Beelzebub has a devil narrow-minded, anal-retentive, letter-of-the-law bureaucrat put aside for me.

Down with stereotypes!

I generally don't find humor that relies on stereotypes to be too amusing, but I must admit this blonde joke made me chuckle.

It's better this way.

Some guy has created a website that creates a three-panel Garfield strip by randomly choosing three panels from archive. Much better than the original. Hell, I'll bet even "Prince Valiant" would be enjoyable given a similar treatment.

Via Boing Boing, of course.

2006

Still here.