The fucked up schizophrenic society that is Saudi Arabia

From an article in The New Yorker. A fascinating insight into Saudi culture. Here's just a few quotes about this dangerous and unstable country.

My take? Education. Make younger people want to look further than their Imam's sandals. Maybe Mars missions may do this. I cannot see anyway out other than teaching about the stars. Sure love, life, passions would also be good, but that ain't gonna come out of their current system, which is blocked with religious repressive insanity fearing that if they were to let the lid off, their country would implode, and into what, it seems, nobody knows.

There is no feeling, in this article, nor, in anything else I have read, that there is a light, a way out. All I read is blackness, hopelessness.

Perhaps the stars will be such a commonality it may get through.

Suing grannies for MP3 swapping - will it start in the UK?

"So the trick will be to make enough noise to dampen-off file-swapping while avoiding suing anything that's going to look like a victim of heartless pigopolist greedheads."
If anybody has been to a car boot sale, and seen the huge, huge crowds around the bootleggers' stalls, or heard of a friend of a friend who makes thousands of pounds a week copying DVDs, CDs computer games...
And this has had me scared, worrying that me replacing some hard to find hip hop tracks from knackered tapes given to me years ago, is going to get me sued. I guess I shouldn't be so paranoid.

Orgasms 'at the touch of a button'

"The Slightest Touch does not provide an orgasm. It gently stimulates the sexual nerve pathways taking the woman to a pre-orgasmic plateau where she dangles on the edge of orgasm for as long as she wants."
Interesting, obviously. There was also this story a month ago, about a doctor with two electrodes.


Not quite the some thing, but still, worthy of a back link.

How to wrap your friend's apartment in tin foil

"The prank took five days to complete and foil was used to cover everything in the apartment -- down to the quarters in the coin jar, the casings of each CD -- and suddenly, an innocuous joke is magnified into speed freak Warhol Factory-like proportions."

Royal Mail unveils the digital stamp. Online: Royal Mail today enters the digital era by introducing Britain's first digital postage stamp. Called SmartStamp, customers will create their own stamps on their computer - with or without an image of the Queen - pay for them via the internet and print them on envelopes or labels.

You can add your own logo too! But it cost £4.99 a month to subscribe.

Current Weather. 2C Partly Cloudy.
Brrr! Better put the heating on.

An Orion Deep Field

Adrift 1,500 light-years away in one of the night sky's most recognizable constellations, the glowing Orion Nebula and the dark Horsehead Nebula are contrasting cosmic vistas.  They both appear in this stunning composite digital image assembled from over 20 hours of data that includes exposures filtered to record emission from hydrogen atoms.  The view reveals extensive nebulosities associated with the giant Orion Molecular Cloud complex, itself hundreds of light-years across.  The magnificent emission region, the Orion Nebula (aka M42), lies at the upper right of the picture.  Immediately to its left are a cluster of of prominent bluish reflection nebulae sometimes called the Running Man.  The Horsehead nebula appears as a dark cloud, a small silhouette notched against the long red glow at the lower left.  Alnitak is the easternmost star in Orion's belt and is seen as the brightest star to the left of the Horsehead.  Below Alnitak is the Flame Nebula, with clouds of bright emission and dramatic dark dust lanes.  Fainter tendrils of glowing hydrogen gas are easily traced throughout the region in this Orion deep field.

I love Astronomy Picture Of the Day. If only I could get this in my RSS aggregator, I could have a few minutes each day pondering the meaning of it all.
The Orion Nebula is hundreds of light years across. Our nearest star is 5 light years away. To get to Mars under rocket power would take 6 months. Current (possible) technology would allow us to sail under the power of our own sun's light at (eventually) 10% of light speed. Thus, it would take us 50 years to get to our nearest neighbour, and 1000 years to sail across the Orion.