London has faced a second attack as bombers targeted three Underground trains and a bus. I was left with the impression that it was a copy cat attack, by people so mind-numbingly incompetent that you could almost hear the Benny Hill theme playing as they scuttled away
Produce industry service company Durand-Wayland developed a system for identifying produce with laser-etched codes in 2002. These fruit tattoos would replace those little stickers that always get stuck in your teeth when you bite into a nice, crisp apple while distracted — via BoingBoing
New Castle County police arrested a former pediatric nurse Thursday night, saying she tried to poison her 22-month-old son by injecting human faeces into his bloodstream. Authorities said Stephanie McMullen, a former pediatric oncology nurse at Alfred I duPont Hospital for Children, is accused of deliberately injecting faecal matter into her son, her only child, causing him to be hospitalised numerous times — via Warren Ellis
Did the book geek thing last night and went to a Neil Gaiman book signing. A hell of a lot more people there than when I accidentally fell over a signing at Kings Comics many moons ago.
He was really sweet, if looking totally shagged out from an insane schedule.
I picked up the Mirrormask script book, got my first and last issues of Sandman signed, am kicking myself for forgetting to bring Good Omens (which appears to have vanished into the depths of the bookcase) and my copy of NeverWhere now says Mind the Gap
.
He said there’s a new edition of NeverWhere due out in September with more bits in it.
Books Kinokuniya wanted to get him a gift for doing the signing, but he politely refused. Instead they decided to get everyone who came along to write a note in a book for him. I mentioned his brush with Cthulhu at WorldCon in Boston last year
Actor James Doohan, who transported the crew of the original Star Trek
television series through space on the command Beam me up, Scotty
, has died at the age of 85
A mob has fire-bombed the headquarters of a bizarre Malaysian cult built around a giant teapot. The attack comes two weeks after the sect was raided by religious officials. About 30 assailants armed with Molotov cocktails attacked the commune in the early morning. The blaze engulfed a car, burnt one building and scorched the giant teapot itself. The sect in Malaysia’s northeast believes the teapot has healing properties. Its leader, Ayah Pin, reportedly believes he is the boss of all religions
and the owner of everything in his Sky Kingdom
. State religious authorities have outlawed the teapot sect as a deviant cult — via Warren Ellis
Little Johnny Coward has lied about any link between the London bombings and the Iraq war as he visited two Australian victims of the attack during a trip to London and got cornered on camera
A new rock group featuring former members of The Clash and Generation X has taken a novel approach to the issue of piracy by urging their fans to copy their music. Carbon Silicon make all their recordings freely available online, and actively encourage bootlegging or filming of their gigs
A subwoofer so powerful it could loosen fillings, shake out the cholesterol from arteries and generally make a lot of noise. It seems that the Death Star, ignoring the weakness that ultimately lead to its complete destruction, was a pretty good design… so someone made his own (with a lot of help from a housemate). The Death Star Subwoofer is currently up for sale on eBay — via Slashdot
Like viruses and worms, spyware has become yet another scourge for enterprises. But it is possible, perhaps even likely, that spyware is becoming far more than a mere nuisance. With its potential for being used to do corporate espionage, spyware presents a security threat to more parts of a company than many CIOs might realise
A court in Nigeria has sentenced a woman to two and a half years in prison for her part in the country’s biggest ever international fraud case. Amaka Anajemba admitted helping her late husband to persuade an employee of a Brazilian bank to transfer millions of dollars into overseas accounts. Banco Noroeste lost $242m through the latter half of the 1990s. The court ordered Anajemba to surrender her houses in Nigeria, the US, UK and Switzerland to help repay the money
The open source Firefox browser and Thunderbird e-mail client will be updated for the second time in a week, due to code changes that have unintentionally stopped some third-party extensions from functioning correctly
The always enjoyable gpod has Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy
available for download:
The Complete 12 Episode Original Radio Series
The Tertiary Phase
The Quandary and Quintessential Phases
Major record labels in Australia have finally won a legal battle against a Queensland man and his ISP for alleged music piracy
A Japanese love hotel has apparently worked out how to make a buck for couples with a yen for partaking in the pleasures of the flesh. The hotel has set aside two rooms where any action that goes on is automatically beamed onto the Net to be viewed by paying subscribers — via Warren Ellis
Officials from UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee, meeting in the South African town of Durban, decided on eight additions to the prestigious list of protected sites. The sites are: India’s Valley of Flowers National Park, Thailand’s Dong Phayayen-Khao Yai forest, Japan’s Shiretoko Peninsula, Egypt’s Whale Valley, the west Norwegian fjords, South Africa’s Vredefort Dome, the Gulf of California in Mexico and Coiba National Park in Panama
With a billion-dollar DVD market hanging in the balance, studios and manufacturers are facing off in a standards war that could decide the future of home entertainment
A vampire has been arrested in Ukraine after luring street children into her home for their blood. Diana Semenuha, 29, believed that drinking blood could fend off a muscle-wasting condition. She kept the children intoxicated on drugs and alcohol and bled them regularly, selling the surplus to other black magic practitioners. When that weakened them, she dumped them back on the streets and lured replacements with the promise of a place to sleep and a hot meal. Detectives found seven drugged children strapped to beds and benches, and a large, black knife and silver goblet engraved with satanic symbols — via Warren Ellis
It sounds like something out of a Dan Brown novel (but is probably just a run of the mill jewel heist) — the Grand Lodge Officers Jewels are missing from the vault in the Mason’s Grand Lodge in San Francisco. The jewels are very nifty looking — via BoingBoing
According to the new study, about a third of all major studies from the last 15 years were subsequently shown to be inaccurate or overblown
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