Happy birth day?

For those who do not have the privilege to experience one of life's natural processes, here's a chance for you to share the joy/pain (depending on the circumstances) with your beloved. Two hospitals in the UK - Southmead Hospital in Bristol and Gloucestershire Royal Hospital - have been using a so-called PROMPT Birthing Simulator to teach midwives and obstetricians many of the practical skills required for the successful management of childbirth. This, apparently, is an integral part of the PROMPT (PRactical Obstetric Multi-Professional Training) course.

Below is a video clip of how the simulator works. Watch at your own peril.



The thing that struck me was how flexible the simulator's legs are. If only they can make it more realistic by adding some sound effects. Cursing and swearing such as "You asshole! If I live through this, I'll gonna fucking kill you for doing this to me!" might do the trick. Adding an arm or two to the simulator to smack the doctor and significant other around might also come in handy.

Technorati Tags: PROMPT birthing simulator Southmead Gloucestershire Royal childbirth video clip

Colvin's rant against government intervention

I'm beginning to tire of Geoff Colvin's anti-government stance in his regular Value Driven column in FORTUNE magazine. In a recent piece ("Will the Motor City Shakeup Work?", April 27), Colvin argued that General Motors' fate has less to do with the new CEO Fritz Henderson than with the restructuring model the US government is using.

To say that the screw-ups by the GM board is beside the point is a convenient excuse for failing to be accountable. The problem is, Rick Wagoner was both the CEO and the Chairman of the board before he was asked to step down at Obama's behest. So if Wagoner does not have the guts to bite the bullet, the postulation by Colvin that the government's approach will not work is simply an exercise in futility.

Related post:
Anal, retention!

Technorati Tags: Geoff Colvin Value Driven FORTUNE General Motors government intervention Rick Wagoner restructuring

Apocalypse Meow

Arguably related post:
:CueCat reborn

Technorati Tags: Apocalypse Meow Cat Shit One anime trailer manga Vietnam War Motofumi Kobayashi

:CueCat reborn

If Eric Schmidt is serious about saving the newspaper industry, perhaps Google can come up with a :CueCat-like device (I even thought of a name for this: CURL) that can recognise URLs published in news articles and wirelessly direct a user's computer to the relevant webpages without requiring the user to manually type out the URL. (Whether this device integrates with IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome or other Web browsers is a question that I shall leave to other people to ponder.)

Even better if the device has built-in memory to store the URLs scanned for later access. An LCD screen can further enhance the user experience by allowing convenient URL management - maybe a function to post links to Twitter, Facebook, Plurk and other social networking sites would be the icing on the cake.

Technorati Tags: :CueCat Eric Schmidt newspapers URLs web browsers social networking ideas gadgets

Celebrities' words of wisdom

Women might be able to fake orgasms, but men can fake entire relationships.
~ Sharon Stone

I saw a woman wearing a sweatshirt with "Guess" on it. I said, "Thyroid problem?"
~ Arnold Schwarzenegger

Hockey is a sport for white men. Basketball is a sport for black men. Golf is a sport for white men dressed like black pimps.
~ Tiger Woods

And God said, "Let there be Satan, so people don't blame everything on me. And let there be lawyers, so people don't blame everything on Satan."
~ George Burns

My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son of a bitch.
~ Jack Nicholson

Women need a reason to have sex. Men just need a place.
~ Billy Crystal

According to a new survey, women say they feel more comfortable undressing in front of men than they do undressing in front of other women. They say that women are too judgmental, where, of course, men are just grateful.
~ Robert De Niro

In the last couple of weeks I have seen the ads for the Wonder Bra. Is that really a problem in this country - men not paying enough attention to women's breasts?
~ Hugh Grant

There's a new medical crisis. Doctors are reporting that many men are having allergic reactions to latex condoms. They say they cause severe swelling. So what's the problem?
~ Dustin Hoffman

See, the problem is that God gives men a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time.
~ Robin Williams

It's not easy being green.
~ Immortal words of the great American philosopher Kermit the Frog

Technorati Tags: Arnold Schwarzenegger Sharon Stone Tiger Woods Jack Nicholson Billy Crystal Robert De Niro Hugh Grant Robin Williams Kermit the Frog wisdom quotes

Rare Stefanie Sun photo

Technorati Tags: Stefanie Sun 孙燕姿 class photo funny stuff

A collection of spam subjects

Dunno about you, but sometimes spam subjects make me laugh. A couple of gems:

If you have a small bulge, the world around you seems small as well. (Wow, theory of "relativity")
Women will be able to read the number of your inches on your forehead. (We have foreplay, and we have foresight.)
Embrace the future of massive size
It is more. Thicker. Longer. More long. (Yes, more thick too)
The longer your instrument is, the shorter the ladder to success. (Only if you sleep your way to the top)
With your big horse you can insert him even into the Statue of Liberty.
It's better to have a decent size than to be wise. (People do have different priorities.)
Your little friend looks like he is still in puberty?
Turn your snake into a python
Your nose is hung because you are not hung?

Ok, maybe not everything is sex-related:

US senator crapped his pants!
Bum party formed!
Chinese community lived on skyscraper roofs
Videogames that form epilepsy
Even if you are in poverty nobody will guess that.

Sometimes you wonder, WTF:

Real triangle butt!
Women will be compliant when they see that it is giant.
Tourist raped painting
I suppose we are lookalikes!
Your little friend is watching you tie your shoes

And, of course, rumours and stuff that will benefit from a little proofreading:

Obama's health is in danger
Paris Hilton pees like men
You forgot your T-short
You have no expensive car, A real man doesn,t need it!

Finally, a few Q&A:

Damn, where the hell are you?
Mom called police, where were you?
I was there, filming his death

So, have you come across other interesting spam subjects? Drop me a spam.

Technorati Tags: spam funny subjects sex-related rumours proofreading Q&A

What if I rename my blog Monster Stuff?

Monster Cable is at it again, this time suing Monster Transmission, a Florida-based outfit that supplies automotive parts. Apparently, the lesson from the Blue Jeans episode has not been learnt.

So what happens if I rename my blog Monster Stuff? Will I get a cease-and-desist letter from Monster Cable?

Technorati Tags: Monster Cable Monster Transmission Blue Jeans Cable litigation trademark cease-and-desist

The G spot blueprints

Now that Dennis Publishing has decided to cease the UK print edition of Maxim in May and take the brand online-only after 14 years of publishing, here's something to remember the magazine's irreverence.


Technorati Tags: G spot blueprints Dennis Publishing Maxim print edition online magazine

Are you man enough to reach 10,000rpm?

If you are, take the wrist ball (a.k.a. power/strength ball) for a spin to prove your mettle. How does it work? Just attach and pull the red cord, and rotate the little gadget in your hand as fast as you can. The faster you spin it, the heavier it will seem in your hand and the more your muscles will feel the burn. The built-in LCD shows your score. Check out the video at the site, but don't laugh at the seemingly silly demo.

Apart from improving your performance at any sport that requires shoulder, arm, or wrist strength, the wrist ball may let you achieve a bone-crunching handshake after a few training sessions. All for the price of £7.99.

Technorati Tags: wrist ball power ball strength ball spin handshake gadgets

Bet you didn't know these animal facts

A rat can last longer without water than a camel.
A male emperor moth cansmell a female emperor moth up to 7 miles away.
A giraffe can clean its ears with its 21-inch tongue!
In Lebanon it is legal to have sex with a female animal, but illegal with a male one.
Chocolate kills dogs! True, chocolate effects a dog's heart and nervous system, a few ounces enough to kill a small sized dog.
Orcas (killer whales) kill sharks by torpedoing up into the shark's stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode.
Human birth control pills work on gorillas.
Cat's urine glows under a black light.

Technorati Tags: animal facts strange stuff

All your rooms are belong to us

Ok, maybe not all. Created as part of Linz's efforts to celebrate being the European Capital of Culture for 2009, the six rooms of the Pixel Hotel are essentially recycled spaces scattered across this quaint city in Austria. Hotel guests - if they can even be acknowledged as such - get to stay, for example, in a room onboard an old dragboat, in an art gallery, in a soup kitchen, within an architect's office, an old campervan, etc. Or as the official website puts it: "All of Linz ist [sic] a Hotel!"

The "rooms" are equipped with standard amenities such as en-suite bathroom, TV, mini-bar and Internet access (except on the dragboat). Other than that, you're on your own. Guests are given a map and Linz travel pass to explore the city for their meals and entertainment. And that's the concept of this unconventional lodging experiment: allow visitors to experience the city up close and personal.

Prices for the rooms begin at 87 euros a night for a single room, and packages are also available to give visitors a chance to experience different rooms on different nights. A "flying receptionist" hands over keys and invoice at the start of your stay.

But hurry, the experiment will end when Linz's year as Capital of Culture is over.

Technorati Tags: Austria Linz Pixel Hotel European Capital of Culture accommodation unconventional

Here's one for the bling bling crowd

Latest to join the ever-growing family of Swarovski-studded gadgets is a limited edition 19" LCD TV sold by Marks & Spencer. The unit is festooned with more than 500 Swarovski Element Crystals and comes with a built-in DVD player plus Freeview channels.

The blingy LCD TV is HD ready, but features a peculiar, PC-monitor-like 1,440x900 resolution. It does support 1080i signals though. One wonders, however, what function the Swarovski crystals serves, other than distraction.

I bet Paris probably has one of these in her apartment.

Technorati Tags: LCD TV Marks & Spencer Swarovski crystals Freeview HD ready Paris Hilton

Social networking on the fly

For those who are not contend with chalking up "friends" online, now you can boost your tally offline as well. A service called Satisfly aims to seat frequent flyers in an "intelligent" way by mining passenger data so that they end up sitting next to somebody with whom they have something in common - whether it's a preference to fly in silence, to engage in non-stop chatter, or a mixture of both.

Satisfly combines information mined from a variety of public forums (e.g. Facebook, Dopplr and Xing) with the airline's passenger data and the passenger's own choice of four travelling behaviours - "business networking", "social networking", "business alone" and "relax alone", and its software determines whether you and your neighbours are compatible.

The downside of this is that frequent flyers may become pigeonholed and stuck in little silos with people who eat the same food, listen to the same music, vote for the same party and share the same faith. Perhaps what we need is to learn to accept differences, even if this means a bad flight from time to time.

Technorati Tags: Satisfly social networking frequent flyers friends data mining Facebook Dopplr Xing travel flight seating arrangement

1,000th post: What my blog says about me

Mindful of Freudian slip, I decided to check out Typealyzer, a website that will analyse your blog and tell you what it says about you. It says that I'm a Doer (ESTP).


Created by Mattias Östmar of PRfekt, a Swedish research and development company focused on media analysis, Typealyzer scans your blog and comes up with personality types derived from the Myers-Briggs model for looking at how people perceive the world and make decisions.

To find out your personality type, take the Jung Typology Test. I'm a Mastermind (INTJ), so don't play play ok, even though my online personality indicates otherwise.

Technorati Tags: Typealyzer blog Mattias Östmar of PRfekt Myers-Briggs Jung Typology Test ESTP INTJ personality types

I have a hunch...

...this isn't gonna work.

Like the troubleshooting scripts straight out of a Windows help playbook, Hunch purportedly allows users to harvest the collective wisdom of Netizens by answering questions they're interested in and then getting a second opinion based on some information about themselves as well as the answers of those who have jumped through the same hoops.

I'm saying "jump" because this beta site, which is a startup by Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake (real name, btw), resembles a video game dance pad with different conclusions printed over it. All you need to do is jump to the conclusion of your choice.

That would be the least of your concern if you consider the fact that it is possible for Hunch to identify holders of anonymous accounts in social networks. ("The more Hunch learns about each individual user's personality and preferences, the better Hunch can customize decision results for that users.")

But the more immediate question is: How does Hunch monetise its service? I'm still waiting for the chance to ask that question.

Technorati Tags: Hunch netizens Flickr Caterina Fake decision opinion question collective wisdom

The world's most alienating airport?

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