Thursday, March 12, 2009
Joke - Mirth on British Politics
A group of doctors were talking together at an international conference.
An Israeli doctor said, "Medicine in my country is so advanced, we can take a kidney out of one person, put it in another, and have him looking for work in six weeks".
A German doctor said, "That's nothing! In Germany, we can take a lung out of one person, put it in another, and have him looking for work in four weeks".
A Russian doctor said, "In my country medicine is so advanced, we can take half a heart from one person, put it in another, and have them both looking for work in two weeks".
The English doctor, not to be outdone, said "Hah! In Britain we took two arseholes out of Scotland, called Brown and Darling, put them in 10 & 11 Downing Street, and had half the country looking for work within twenty-four hours".
An Israeli doctor said, "Medicine in my country is so advanced, we can take a kidney out of one person, put it in another, and have him looking for work in six weeks".
A German doctor said, "That's nothing! In Germany, we can take a lung out of one person, put it in another, and have him looking for work in four weeks".
A Russian doctor said, "In my country medicine is so advanced, we can take half a heart from one person, put it in another, and have them both looking for work in two weeks".
The English doctor, not to be outdone, said "Hah! In Britain we took two arseholes out of Scotland, called Brown and Darling, put them in 10 & 11 Downing Street, and had half the country looking for work within twenty-four hours".
Weird News - One-eyed filmmaker conceals camera in prosthetic
The Associated Press
A one-eyed documentary filmmaker is preparing to work with a video camera concealed inside a prosthetic eye, hoping to secretly record people for a project commenting on the global spread of surveillance cameras.
Canadian Rob Spence's eye was damaged in a childhood shooting accident and it was removed three years ago. Now, he is in the final stages of developing a camera to turn the handicap into an advantage.
A fan of the 1970s televsion series "The Six Million Dollar Man," Spence said he had an epiphany when looking at his cell phone camera and realizing something that small could fit into his empty eye socket.
With the camera tucked inside a prosthetic eye, he hopes to be able to record the same things he sees with his working eye, his muscles moving the camera eye just like his real one.
Spence said he plans to become a "human surveillance machine" to explore privacy issues and whether people are "sleepwalking into an Orwellian society."
He said his subjects won't know he's filming until afterward but he will have to receive permission from them before including them in his film.
His special equipment will consist of a camera, originally designed for colonoscopies, a battery and a wireless transmitter. It's a challenge to get everything to fit inside the prosthetic eye, but Spence has had help from top engineers, including Steve Mann, who co-founded the wearable computers research group at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The camera was provided by Santa Clara, California-based OmniVision Inc., a company that specializes in the miniature cameras found in cell phones, laptops and endoscopes.
Zafer Zamboglu, staff technical product manager at OmniVision, said he thinks that success with the eye camera will accelerate research into using the technology to restore vision to blind people.
"We believe there's a good future in the prosthetic eye," he said.
The team expects to get the camera to work in the next month. Spence, who jokingly calls himself "Eyeborg," told reporters at a media conference in Brussels that the camera hidden in a prosthetic eye — the same pale hazel color as his real one — would also let him capture more natural conversations than he would with a bulky regular camera.
"As a documentary maker, you're trying to make a connection with a person," he says, "and the best way to make a connection is through eye contact."
But Spence also acknowledged privacy concerns.
"The closer I get to putting this camera eye in, the more freaked out people are about me," he said, adding people aren't sure they want to hang around someone who might be filming them at any time."
A one-eyed documentary filmmaker is preparing to work with a video camera concealed inside a prosthetic eye, hoping to secretly record people for a project commenting on the global spread of surveillance cameras.
Canadian Rob Spence's eye was damaged in a childhood shooting accident and it was removed three years ago. Now, he is in the final stages of developing a camera to turn the handicap into an advantage.
A fan of the 1970s televsion series "The Six Million Dollar Man," Spence said he had an epiphany when looking at his cell phone camera and realizing something that small could fit into his empty eye socket.
With the camera tucked inside a prosthetic eye, he hopes to be able to record the same things he sees with his working eye, his muscles moving the camera eye just like his real one.
Spence said he plans to become a "human surveillance machine" to explore privacy issues and whether people are "sleepwalking into an Orwellian society."
He said his subjects won't know he's filming until afterward but he will have to receive permission from them before including them in his film.
His special equipment will consist of a camera, originally designed for colonoscopies, a battery and a wireless transmitter. It's a challenge to get everything to fit inside the prosthetic eye, but Spence has had help from top engineers, including Steve Mann, who co-founded the wearable computers research group at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The camera was provided by Santa Clara, California-based OmniVision Inc., a company that specializes in the miniature cameras found in cell phones, laptops and endoscopes.
Zafer Zamboglu, staff technical product manager at OmniVision, said he thinks that success with the eye camera will accelerate research into using the technology to restore vision to blind people.
"We believe there's a good future in the prosthetic eye," he said.
The team expects to get the camera to work in the next month. Spence, who jokingly calls himself "Eyeborg," told reporters at a media conference in Brussels that the camera hidden in a prosthetic eye — the same pale hazel color as his real one — would also let him capture more natural conversations than he would with a bulky regular camera.
"As a documentary maker, you're trying to make a connection with a person," he says, "and the best way to make a connection is through eye contact."
But Spence also acknowledged privacy concerns.
"The closer I get to putting this camera eye in, the more freaked out people are about me," he said, adding people aren't sure they want to hang around someone who might be filming them at any time."
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Weird News - Magician who claimed he mailed self admits to hoax
The Associated Press
A magician who posted videos online detailing a "trip" he made in a crate aboard a cargo plane from upstate New York to Las Vegas admitted Tuesday that it was an elaborate hoax.
"It was a publicity stunt right from the start," said Wade Whitcomb, of North Syracuse, after federal officials declared the event a hoax. "If that's what they say, that must be the truth."
"The FBI spoke to Whitcomb; he did not ship himself anywhere. We have no further interest in this," FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said Tuesday.
Whitcomb had claimed he folded himself into a cramped wooden crate for the 26-hour trip on a United Parcel Service truck and a UPS plane. He posted a series of videos online of the purported trip shot with tiny cameras pointed out of the crate and one inside focused on him.
Whitcomb, who goes by the stage name Wade Live, claimed he made the trip last November to publicize a buddy's Web site.
The Transportation Security Administration and the FBI investigated Whitcomb's claim, saying it would violate a number of laws. The Atlanta-based UPS Inc. also investigated.
UPS spokesman Dan McMackin said he couldn't verify the claim.
"To me, it seems like a publicity stunt, and therefore, I think it could be a hoax," he said.
A magician who posted videos online detailing a "trip" he made in a crate aboard a cargo plane from upstate New York to Las Vegas admitted Tuesday that it was an elaborate hoax.
"It was a publicity stunt right from the start," said Wade Whitcomb, of North Syracuse, after federal officials declared the event a hoax. "If that's what they say, that must be the truth."
"The FBI spoke to Whitcomb; he did not ship himself anywhere. We have no further interest in this," FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said Tuesday.
Whitcomb had claimed he folded himself into a cramped wooden crate for the 26-hour trip on a United Parcel Service truck and a UPS plane. He posted a series of videos online of the purported trip shot with tiny cameras pointed out of the crate and one inside focused on him.
Whitcomb, who goes by the stage name Wade Live, claimed he made the trip last November to publicize a buddy's Web site.
The Transportation Security Administration and the FBI investigated Whitcomb's claim, saying it would violate a number of laws. The Atlanta-based UPS Inc. also investigated.
UPS spokesman Dan McMackin said he couldn't verify the claim.
"To me, it seems like a publicity stunt, and therefore, I think it could be a hoax," he said.