(Shoutout to J. Stone for this one)

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(Blame Manous for this sage advice)

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From the pages of Wikipedia:

“King Goujian of Yue, king of Yue, was once imprisoned after a defeat in a war by King Fuchai of Wu, king of the State of Wu. The state of Yue later became a tribulatory to Wu. Secretly planning his revenge, Goujian’s minister Wen Zhong suggested training beautiful women and offering them to Fuchai as a tribute. His other minister, Fan Li, found Xi Shi and Zheng Dan, and gifted them to Fuchai in 490 BC.

Bewitched by the beauty of Xi Shi and Zheng Dan, Fuchai forgot all about his state affairs and on their instigation, killed his best advisor, the great general Wu Zixu. Fuchai even built Guanwa Palace (Palace of Beautiful Women) in an imperial park on the slope of Lingyan Hill, about 15 kilometers west of Suzhou. The strength of Wu dwindled, and in 473 BC Goujian launched his strike and put the Wu army to full rout. King Fuchai lamented that he should have listened to Wu Zixu, and then committed suicide.

In one disputed account of her fate, it was written that Goujian ordered Xi Shi to be drowned by being thrown into a lake, to avoid being tempted by her as Fuchai was.”

This tale of a kingdom laid low by beauty has become the historical illustration for Stratagem #31, the “Beauty Trap”, from the Thirty-Six Stratagems.

Categories: That's F*cking Historical!
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This knife, in addition to putting holes in things, injects them with what, at standard temperature and pressure, would be a basketball-sized volume of gas, but has been compressed for the occasion. The gas, once injected, simultaneously expands rapidly and freezes everything around it. Perfect for shark attacks and other tense social situations.

Link

(via William Gibson’s blog)

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3. People who sit in cramped cubicles answering customer service calls in drab corporate callcenters are overjoyed to help fix your DSL modem.
I don’t know Ron, but I guarantee you that Ron has never said “allow us to provide you with excellent customer service.” In fact, I’d be willing to bet that Ron provides satisfactory, but not excellent customer service, jerks it to manga, gets in heated arguments over Battlestar Galactica, and hates his job because his boss doesn’t appreciate him enough. But some day Ron will get his degree in computer science, quit his job, and then his boss will be sorry for not paying Ron more! Until then, he’s an undersexed shill. Unless the beefy, goateed computer programmer look is making a comeback, and based on personal experience, it hasn’t.

Link

(via Monochrom)

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The FAIL Blog again fails to fail to amuse.

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http://www.getfirefox.com

In honor of the Firefox 3 release today, this site will unerringly crash Internet Explorer. Try it and see!

Categories: Smart Art, Technology Porn
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Declining US$ sending cocaine trade to Europe

Afghani opium farmers switch to wheat

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Good stuff:

 –f8 is generally the aperture that provides the sharpest point of focus on lenses. That doesn’t mean you should always shoot at f8.
——
–Rules were meant to be broken, yes, but it feels much better if you know what the rules were in the first place. Picasso started as a realist. Once he had that down he could paint whatever he wanted. Be like Picasso. He got laid a lot.
——
–Never be ashamed to take a picture. It’s not a bad thing, it’s a good thing. You’re not soul-snatching, you’re soul-preserving. Also, is there a picture you really really want to take of someone? Just ask nicely and confidently and 90% of the time they’ll say yes.

More

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(Click for larger images. Originals from here)

Venus: Slightly smaller than Earth, mostly flat (due to frequent volcanic activity and killer winds), and a 3% axial tilt, meaning minimal seasonal variation. Apparently, if we could just terraform it, it would be a damn paradise, and would have surface temperatures close to those of Earth. Anybody got a mass driver I can borrow?

Categories: Yay Science!, Technology Porn
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Deadly Sins-themed wine glasses!  Brilliant! Compelling! Capacious! In some cases, downright impractical! Pictured: Lust. Link

via boingboing

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More excellent photos here

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“The best way to deal with bureaucrats is with stealth and sudden violence.”

– Boutros Boutros-Ghali, former Secretary-General of the U.N.

Categories: Evil Space Monkeys, arses
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I think it is for exactly this sort of thing that we created the Smart Art category (if by “think” I mean “blindly speculate” and by “we” I mean “Ennui”):

dawdlr is a global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: what are you doing, you know, more generally?

Great idea! Be sure to drop them a postcard, nextime you’re engaged in something general.

Link

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(from Qnonymous)

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Operation of the 54.4 kg (120 lb) machine is simple, in fact it’s so simple there are no controls except for an on-off switch. To go forward you simply push your body weight forward to tilt the machine. To back up, just lean back on the seat to tilt it backwards and back it goes. The farther you lean, the faster it accelerates. The gyro tells the ECU how much to accelerate and that in turn delivers the proper amount of current to the electric motors, one for each wheel.

‘Fraid not, folks. Although, in its defense, it does look a bit like The Cheat.

Link

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Not that meddling in the affairs of other nations is anything new, especially speaking as an American, but it is interesting how much more press Chinese maneuvers are getting now that, as the rising global superstar, they are in the spotlight. So: what are they doing in Zimbabwe?

Chinese troops have been seen on the streets of Zimbabwe’s third largest city, Mutare, according to local witnesses. They were seen patrolling with Zimbabwean soldiers before and during Tuesday’s ill-fated general strike called by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).Earlier, 10 Chinese soldiers armed with pistols checked in at the city’s Holiday Inn along with 70 Zimbabwean troops.

One eyewitness, who asked not to be named, said: “We’ve never seen Chinese soldiers in full regalia on our streets before. The entire delegation took 80 rooms from the hotel, 10 for the Chinese and 70 for Zimbabwean soldiers.”

This should be a veeeery interesting century. Hell, the remainder of this decade should be plenty entertaining. Link

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Check out the latest in a long line of flash games you just can’t stop playing! In this one, you draw shapes in an old-school mspaint-style interface, and you use the shapes which acquire gravity and momentum, and use them to collect flags. Screw you, Productivity! Link

Categories: Smart Art, Happy Happy Joy Joy
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“In Japan, the task of extracting their dead has become a bit more advanced.

Meet Robokiyu the Rescue Robot, whose job it is to come in and extract the dead from any situation.

Owned by the Tokyo Fire Department and controlled by remote control Robokiyu uses two movable arms to drag a person’s body up the slide located in the front of the machine.

Don’t worry if you happen to be presumed dead and picked up by Robokiyu, he has fresh oxygen pumping through him at all times for your convenience.”

Public utility my ass. That thing wants to kill us. Link

(purloined from Grinding.be)

Categories: Evil Space Monkeys, Technology Porn
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A CATHOLIC priest who floated away under hundreds of helium balloons in a bid to raise money for his parish is missing off Brazil.

See video here of him taking off here.

Only pieces of the party balloons have been found by searchers looking for Reverend Adelir Antonio de Carli off the coast of Santa Catarina state, the Associated Press reported.

Mr de Carli, 41, lifted off from the port city of Paranagua yesterday afternoon wearing a helmet, thermal suit and a parachute.

Link

(via Arbroath)

Categories: Smart Art, Wot's All This Then?
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It’s been a while since I blogged a killer asteroid, but I think this one has the highest probability thus far:

“A German schoolboy, Nico Marquardt, has revised NASA’s figures for the chances that the Apophis asteroid will hit earth. Apparently if the asteroid hits a satellite in 2029, its path could be diverted enough to cause it to collide with Earth on the next orbit, in 2036. NASA had calculated the chances as 1 in 45,000 but the 13-year-old, in his science project, made it 1 in 450. NASA agreed.”

Nice going, Small German Kid. You couldn’t just build a baking soda volcano like everybody else, could you? Just had to go and destroy the Earth. Link

Update: NASA’s expert on near-earth-objects is now saying otherwise:

“We have not corresponded with this young man and this story is absurd, a hoax or both. During its 2029 Earth close approach, Apophis will approach the Earth to about 38,900 km, well inside the geosynchronous distance at 42,240 km. However, the asteroid will cross the equatorial belt at a distance of 51,000 km - well outside the geosynchronous distance. Since the uncertainty on Apophis’ position during the Earth close approach is about 1500 km, Apophis cannot approach an Earth satellite. Apophis will not cross the moon’s orbital plane at the Moon’s orbital distance so it cannot approach the moon either.”

I guess we’ll see, come 2036. Place yer bets, folks!

(via /.)

Categories: Chaos Purge, Global Death Wish
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“The divorce of poetry and music was first reflected by the printed page.”

– Marshall McLuhan, 1911-1980, notorious thought-provoker

Huh. He says “reflected”, but I wonder to what extent it was caused by the printed page?

(from the @marshallmcluhan twitterstream)

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Based on exhastive research (which for my attention span means ten minutes of dedicated googling), the French phrase “Zut Alors!” can be alternatively translated as “Damn!”, “Shoot!”, “Blimey!”, “Dang!”, or for some reason, “Holy Mackerel!”.  “Alors” seems to literally mean “then”, and is added for emphasis, as in the similar case of “Merde Alors!”.

But what does “Zut” mean?  I can’t find that anywhere, other than its arbitrary value as a mild curse word.  Is it a nonsense word used by custom, or does it have some really cool etimology?  Can I even spell etimology?  These are the things that haunt my dreams and disrupt my toilet-time. Any Francophiles, or actual French people, feel free to chime in on this one.

Categories: Wot's All This Then?
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(from Mr. Gadget)

Categories: Wot's All This Then?, Technology Porn, arses
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ZOMG! Diverting food crop production in to fuel production turned out to be Bad! They had to subsidize the hell out of it to make it even remotely economically viable, and now it’s adding to a global food crisis. And, ladies and gentlemen, if you think oil scarcity causes wars, wait until you see what food scarcity does. Time to write your congressbeings on both sides of the aisle and tell them that, while it is good to work toward reducing foreign oil dependence, biofuels are Not The Way. Link

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For a generation raised on cardboard box forts, what could be more awesome than modular load-bearing self-assembled cardboard architectural units? These suckers (single unit pictured left), like big cardboard pixels, snap together to make furniture, partitions, shrines, gazebos, sweatlodges, arsenals, or whatever your imagination can concieve of. Perfect for the urban loft-dweller unwilling to commit to a floorplan, or to any former lego enthusiast who always wanted to take their snap-together legerdemain to the next level. Link

(via TechCrunch)

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Categories: Thank You Internet!, arses
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because gapingvoid is the XKCD of drawing cartoons on the back of business cards.

Categories: Smart Art, Introspection
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