Cool finds of the day:


Netvibes – A truly customizable web-based homepage that lets me pool many of my RSS feeds and random snippets.

(Via The Top 100 of The Museum of Modern Betas)








Shredding scissors – Five-scissor blades on one handle. If it works as advertised, it's an excellent idea!

(Via Boingboing)

For those of you who have not been following the Uncle Bus saga, go here for a comprehensive and highly entertaining overview.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the winner of this year's Eurovision Song Contest - Lordi, a charming and talented band from Finland, with their catchy tune, "Hard Rock Hallelujah"!

Every boy's dream! A Super Soaker Oozinator!

From the Hasbro website:

Sneak up on your opponents with a surprise bio-ooze attack! Just when they think you're coming at 'em with water, blast 'em with a shot of icky bio-ooze! Shoot out globs of gooey bio-ooze and then drench 'em with water! It's a double blast attack that'll keep your opponents on their toes and running during every water fight. With the OOZINATOR blaster you don't just get soaked, you get drenched!

See how much the boys enjoy playing with their Oozinator!

People quickly caught on to the different kinds of fun you can have with this toy and filled the product's page at Amazon with exhilarative reviews, which were soon deleted by the power that be. Fortunately the Consumerist and its readers archived some of those tales here and here, such as:

As much fun as this toy is while it lasts, it does indeed tend to shoot the ooze
much quicker than I would want. It's good for me but my partners don't enjoy it.

I've always noticed the serifs in the digital clock of 24 and dismissed them as yet another stupid flaw in the show's pretense of reality. Never gave them much thought.


This analysis proves why 24 is actually a great show – because we're in the same audience as some of the greatest minds in the blogosphere.

Oh, the joy of over-analysis.

I was watching the news on TV and the incident of a potential case of cheating on the Academic English for Science Students exam was discussed. As usual, random shots of the venue – i.e. Hong Kong University – were shown, including some shots of the door of what I presume to be the exam room. There was a notice on that door asking students not to bring communication devices into the room. If they choose to do so, "you must switched them off."

Perhaps the student(s) was just trying to smuggle a copy of the exam paper out to mock it publicly??? Will post screenshot if I manage to find one.

Here you go:


No Photoshopping, I swear.

Heeheeheeheeee. I love this headline – Promotion may find Manneken Pis holding hockey stick, not self.




為配合在拉脫維亞舉行的世界冰上曲棍球大賽，比利時布魯塞爾著名的撒尿小童像也被迫穿上拉脫維亞隊服。

Very bad.

Toilet paper costs $417. No, not per roll. Four hundred seventeen Zimbabwean dollars is the value of a single two-ply sheet. A roll costs $145,750 — in American currency, about 69 cents.

By March [2006], inflation had touched 914 percent a year, at which rate prices would rise more than tenfold in 12 months. Experts agree that quadruple-digit inflation is now a certainty.
Zimbabwe has been tormented this entire decade by both deep recession and high inflation, but in recent months the economy seems to have abandoned whatever moorings it had left. The national budget for 2006 has already been largely spent. Government services have started to crumble.

Zimbabwe's inflation is hardly history's worst — in Weimar Germany in 1923, prices quadrupled each month, compared with doubling about once every three or four months in Zimbabwe. That said, experts agree that Zimbabwe's inflation is currently the world's highest, and has been for some time.

Oh my god! Colbert roasting the Bush administration on the stage of the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, an occasion known for its levity.

In the Chinese culture, one is not supposed to "ruin" a party by saying things that might, however remotely, embarrass the host. You can see the horror in the eyes of the guests, how afraid they are to laugh with the unrestrained and irreverent mockery.

On one hand, I feel that Steve Colbert is being rude; on the other hand, this is probably the only chance for him to be rude to this president living in a bubble, who is making important decisions that are adversely affecting many many lives.


What is more shocking is that this entire episode seems to have been deliberately ignored by the mainstream media, who instead focused on the safe satire by President Bush on himself. Instead, articles about how "stupid" or "unfunny" Colbert was began to surface only three days after the event.

Useless trivia of the day: Hong Kong did NOT sign the 1961 Vienna convention on diplomatic immunity mentioned in this article.

US tops 'congestion charge debt'
BBC news

US diplomatic staff in London have run up unpaid congestion charge fees of £271,000 in the past six months, new figures have revealed.

Transport for London (TfL) said embassy staff, the subject of a bitter tirade from London mayor Ken Livingstone, have jumped high up the debt table.

The US embassy has said it does not intend to pay the fees, instead claiming diplomatic privilege.

The figures were released under the Freedom of Information Act.

The mayor said US staff should pay the congestion charge as UK staff pay road tolls in the US.

The new figures show that many millions of pounds are owed in total by several of London's 160 embassies since the introduction.

The US embassy is number one on the list for fees not paid in the past six months.

And the figures show that the Angolan embassy owes more than half a million pounds in unpaid congestion charge fees since the scheme was introduced in February 2003.

'This is not a tax'

A spokesman for TfL said: "We are continuing to seek payment for any outstanding debts from embassies refusing to pay.

"Last month the United Arab Emirates embassy accepted the principle and have joined the many other embassies who have agreed this is a legitimate charge.

"This is not a tax, it's a charge for a service and gives no privileges to any VIPs, so we do not see why diplomats should be exempt.

He said embassies were immune from clamping and bailiff action under the Vienna Convention, but TfL would continue to press for payment for money owing.