Girl-hating gamer boys: Quit thinking with the Smaller of Your Two Heads

ACCORDING to 1980s pop culture stereotypes, anyone who likes computers is compensating for being a socially clueless nerd who cannot get laid.  Kudos to pop culture for evolving beyond that, but why the hell are today’s gamer boys trying so hard to revive old stereotypes?

For over a week now, male gamers have been freaking out over news that a woman— 19-year Microsoft veteran Julie Larson-Green — has been named the new head of the Xbox division. Not that the company is any feminist utopia (or dystopia, depending on your preference); it’s the same Xbox which, just last month, got called out by Anita Sarkeesian for introducing its new line of games and  “revealing to us exactly zero games featuring a female protagonist for the next generation”.

Jennifer Abel

Posted: 13th, July 2013 | In: Key Posts, Money, Technology, The Consumer | Comment (1)

Don’t use the Internet if you want to keep secrets – Russian spies revert to paper economy

I ASSUME that we all actually know this by now, that you cannot keep things secret on the internet? At least, we should all have learnt it from the revelations by Edward Snowden I think, no? That the only truly secure computer is one that’s not connected to anything at all?

It would appear that the Russians have worked this out:

In the wake of the US surveillance scandal revealed by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden, Russia is planning to adopt a foolproof means of avoiding global electronic snooping: by reverting to paper.

The Federal Guard Service (FSO), a powerful body tasked with protecting Russia’s highest-ranking officials, has recently put in an order for 20 Triumph Adler typewriters, the Izvestiya newspaper reported.

Tim Worstall

Posted: 12th, July 2013 | In: Money, Technology | Comment

In photos: Buttercup the backwards walking duck gets a 3D-printed prosthetic leg

BUTTERCUP the duck only had one leg facing the right way. The left leg faced backwards.  Buttercup was going nowhere fast. But science could help.

At the Feathered Angels Waterfowl Sanctuary, Buttercup’s leg was was amputated. The medics built him a 3D-printed prosthetic leg based on a mould on his sister’s left limb.

Anorak

Posted: 11th, July 2013 | In: Technology | Comment

How to perfome a fecal microbiota transplant (that’s poo donation to you)

WOULD you give a friend or loved one some of your bone marrows. What about a kidney? An eye? what about, erm, donating your poo? Marie Myung-Ok Lee did. In the New York Times, Lee, tells us how her turds and, more vitaly, the beneficial bacteria in them, saved her friend’s life.

How did she do the donating? At home.

We’ve distilled some of the highlights from Lee’s casebook. This is how she helped Gene get over his ulcerative colitis, a colon riddled with bleeding ulcers:

The procedure is called fecal microbiota transplant, or F.M.T.

Transplanting the stool from one person into the digestive tract of another seems, well, repulsive, but it also makes sense. The majority of the matter in stool — roughly 60 percent — is bacteria, dead and alive, but mostly alive. While bacteria can make us sick, they also constitute a large part of who we are; the hundreds of trillions of cells in an individual’s microbiome, as this collective is known, outnumber human cells 10 to 1. The bacteria serve many functions, including in metabolism, hormone regulation and the immune system.

Yellow soup:

In the 16th century, during the Ming dynasty, fermented fecal concoctions, euphemistically named “yellow soup,” were used for digestive problems. In the 17th century, Christian Franz Paullini, a German physician, compiled a stool recipe book for treating dysentery and other digestive ailments. 

Whose poo?

The donor question was a tricky one. The donor has to be healthy (and will be screened, via stool and blood, for transmissible diseases like H.I.V., as well as for pathogens and parasites); has to avoid any foods the patient might be allergic to; and has to be nearby, as freshness is an issue: the bacteria mix may begin to change once the stool leaves the body.

The process:

Gene’s marching orders were to procure a dedicated blender and sieve, enema tubing and syringe, and lots and lots of newspaper. F.M.T. basically consists of blending stool with saline, straining it, and reintroducing it into the colon via enema.

Gene got better.

What about others?

Some patients have resorted to Craigslist. There is the possibility of creating synthetic stool, but given that there are thousands of unknown species of bacteria in human stool, there’s no way to know if it would be effective. In an ideal future, a universal screening panel will be put in place so that healthy people can donate their microbiota, the way you can with blood.

Maybe they’ll pay for good poo?

Anorak

Posted: 11th, July 2013 | In: Technology | Comment

Apple conspired to keep e-book prices artifically high as libraries die

BOOKS are not just objects to buy and trade. The BBC reports on a ruling that Apple “conspired with publishers to fix the price of electronic books”.

And those are the electronic books that thanks to convoluted copyright rules you are not permitted to pass on to friends, as you can with an actual paper book.

Anorak

Posted: 10th, July 2013 | In: Books, Money, Technology | Comment

Oliver Sacks: old age is a time of freedom and exploration

A FRIEND in her mid-40s recently opined that she would like to live no longer than 74 years. After that, she said life is too miserable to endure.

Oliver Sacks says she’s mad:

Last night I dreamed about mercury — huge, shining globules of quicksilver rising and falling. Mercury is element number 80, and my dream is a reminder that on Tuesday, I will be 80 myself

Elements and birthdays have been intertwined for me since boyhood, when I learned about atomic numbers. At 11, I could say “I am sodium” (Element 11), and now at 79, I am gold. A few years ago, when I gave a friend a bottle of mercury for his 80th birthday — a special bottle that could neither leak nor break — he gave me a peculiar look, but later sent me a charming letter in which he joked, “I take a little every morning for my health.”…

…

I feel I should be trying to complete my life, whatever “completing a life” means. Some of my patients in their 90s or 100s say nunc dimittis — “I have had a full life, and now I am ready to go.” …

…

I can imagine, feel in my bones, what a century is like, which I could not do when I was 40 or 60. I do not think of old age as an ever grimmer time that one must somehow endure and make the best of, but as a time of leisure and freedom, freed from the factitious urgencies of earlier days, free to explore whatever I wish, and to bind the thoughts and feelings of a lifetime together.

I am looking forward to being 80.

Oliver Sacks is a professor of neurology at the N.Y.U. School of Medicine and the author, most recently, of “Hallucinations.”

Anorak

Posted: 9th, July 2013 | In: Reviews, Technology | Comment

Professor Green calls female journalist a ‘fat whore’ for invading his privacy – works for Chinese mobile phone company accused of spying

WHEN The People’s Katie Hind wrote about Professor Green, the singer was upset.

but this woman @katiehind wrote a disgusting article of which the tone was disgusting and belittling and basically gave away my address

He tweeted:

She practically printed my address – she’s a fat pig faced c**t of a no news whore.”

It’s an invasion of privacy, then, by a woman who sells herself to her paymaster? This makes her in Green’s eyes a “whore”, a “c**t” and a “fat pig”. He adds:

I had my life and privacy put at risk by this woman and people have the cheek to defend her? what did i ever do to her? these scum bag showbiz journalists need a f**king wake up call.

He then advised:

treat people how you wish to be treated. there’s not another woman in this industry I’ve met who wouldn’t tell you what a gentleman i am.

Hind, The People’s Showbiz Editor and gossip columnist – “She brings you the latest celebrity news from the A listers” – may care to note the Professor’s relationship with a company called ZTE:

Professor Green has partnered with ZTE Corporation to promote the UK launch of the ZTE Grand X dual-core smartphone… This follows a previous partnership between ZTE and the musician in 2011.

Says the Prof:

“ZTE is a great, innovative brand that is really shaking things up with their new mobile phones. With gigs and shows all the time in different countries, I am constantly on the move, so anything that enables people to watch videos, listen to music and play games on their phone gets my vote!” 

What do we know about ZTE? Reuters reports:

ZTE said in March 2012 that it would curtail business in Iran following a report by Reuters that it sold Iran’s largest telecoms firm a powerful surveillance system capable of monitoring telephone and Internet communications. The company is now facing a U.S. criminal investigation over the issue.

The BBC reported:

The European Union is investigating whether China illegally subsidised several of its telecommunications companies – including ZTE – to enable them to grow quickly and overtake the likes of Nokia and Alcatel.

At a recent meeting to discuss the matter, Beijing warned that if Brussels pressed ahead with its investigation, there would be severe retaliation against other western industries such as motoring and agriculture.

The Financial Times quoted a source familiar with the events as saying: “Put it this way: it’s not like they went for a beer after and watched football.”

The Smoking Gun alleged:

The FBI has opened a criminal investigation targeting a leading Chinese telecommunications firm that allegedly conspired to illegally ship hardware and software purchased from U.S. tech firms to Iran’s government-controlled telecom company, a violation of several federal laws and a trade embargo imposed on the outlaw Islamic nation, The Smoking Gun has learned.

The federal probe, launched earlier this year, has also uncovered evidence that officials with the Chinese company, ZTE Corporation (ZTE), are “engaged in an ongoing attempt to corruptly obstruct and impede” a Department of Commerce inquiry into the tainted $130 million Iranian transaction, according to a confidential FBI affidavit.

Officials with ZTE allegedly began plotting to cover up details of the Iranian deal after Reuters reported on the transaction in late-March. The news agency revealed that the telecom equipment sold to Iran was a “powerful surveillance system capable of monitoring landline, mobile, and Internet communications.” Included in the material sent to Iran were products manufactured by U.S. firms like Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco Systems, Dell, and Symantec.

Concerned that they could no longer “hide anything” in the wake of the Reuters report, ZTE lawyers discussed shredding documents, altering records, and lying to U.S. government officials, according to an insider’s account provided to FBI agents by a Texas lawyer who last year began serving as general counsel of ZTE’s wholly owned U.S. subsidiary. ZTE, the world’s fourth largest telecom equipment manufacturer, is publicly traded, though its controlling shareholder is a Chinese state-owned enterprise.

Time magazine asked:

Are Chinese Telecoms Firms Really Spying on Americans?

What says the privacy-loving, anti-whoring Professor?

PS – ZTE deny spying.

Spotter: Popbitch

Anorak

Posted: 4th, July 2013 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, Technology | Comments (3)

Robert Samuelson’s Internet repeal

TO quote the philosopher Mick Jagger, “What a drag it is getting old.” Or watching others do the same; the voyage from virility to senility hurts to behold.

Consider the Washington Post, long considered a VIP (Very Important Paper), one of America’s most prestigious. And WaPo veteran Robert Samuelson is a Very Important Pundit who became an online laughingstock this week after publishing a Very Serious Column suggesting life would be safer and better if only humanity would abandon this newfangled dad-blasted “Internet” thingy.

“If I could, I would repeal the Internet. It is the technological marvel of the age, but it is not — as most people imagine — a symbol of progress. Just the opposite. We would be better off without it. I grant its astonishing capabilities: the instant access to vast amounts of information, the pleasures of YouTube and iTunes, the convenience of GPS and much more.”

Jennifer Abel

Posted: 4th, July 2013 | In: Key Posts, Technology | Comment (1)

Do we have to start saving our own pee to produce phosphorus for farming?

SOME scientists are working on the idea that we do you know. Fortunately, they’ve really not grasped an important part about the world that we live in:

American families may soon be using waterless toilets and recycling their urine, according to new research.

Chemical engineers at the University of Florida have been looking at ways to extract phosphorus – a life-sustaining element – from urine, before it enters the sewage system and becomes diluted.

Since estimates suggest that phosphorous – which occurs as phosphate rocks and is mined for crop fertilizer – could be exhausted in the next 50 to 100 years, urine recycling may be the key to conserving the non-renewable resource in the future.

Tim Worstall

Posted: 1st, July 2013 | In: Money, Technology | Comment

Google’s Tameside Hospital web search page censors an image of the Grim Reaper

A SEARCH for Manchester’s Tameside General Hospital on Google delivers a picture of The Grim Reaper lurking outside the building.

The image was created for the website Tameside Citizen, a blog about the area which has focused on the hospital’s death rates. The accompanying story tells readers:

Tameside is one of five hospitals to be subject to a probe in light of today’s Francis Report – which found that there were hundreds of avoidable deaths at Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust between 2005-9.

Sir Bruce Keogh, medical director at the NHS Commissioning Board (NHS CB) will launch an immediate investigation into Tameside Hospital NHS Foundation Trust – as well as Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust, Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust – immediately.

The hospitals were chosen because they had the worst mortality rates according to the so-called Summary Hospital-level Mortality Indicator (SHMI) for two successive years to 2012. 

This ends with a link the a full story at the Manchester Evening News. All fair and proper, then. It’s a worthwhile story:

Between October 2011 and September 2012, 18 per cent more patients at Tameside died than would be expected at a similar hospital, according to statistics.

But no. The MEN says the image rose to the top on Google’s  for searches for the hospital. It does not name the blog that published it. It offers no link to it. It reports:

Google has now stepped in to take down the image – which was revealed to anyone typing the name of the hospital into the search engine – after being alerted by the M.E.N

A Google spokeswoman admitted the automatically-generated image had been ‘inappropriate’ and confirmed it had now been removed from its image database.

Why admitted? Is it a crime?  And who decides what is and what is not appropriate? The  Google worker, whose name is not given, says to the MEN:

“In this particular case, we have now updated the panel with a more appropriate image. All of our panels include a link so you can tell us when we may have an inaccuracy in our information.”

So. The natural search on Google – all those keywords and links – is a fix.

Tameside Citizen follows up:

M.E.N. attempt to censor Tameside Citizen.

The Image “THEY” want to ban!

The Manchester Evening News has claimed that they have succeeded in having the above image removed by Google after it was used by “a BlogSpot”.

“A Blog Spot”. Don’t they mean TAMESIDE CITIZEN, the blog that brought you the news that “The Advertiser” had meetings with local politicians with a view to “Suppressing sensationalist reporting” The same Advertiser which is owned by the Manchester Evening News!

Yet again it is the small independent Blog which shows the big business newspaper the meaning of the phrase “Free Press”

What’s so bad about the image? A fee commentators write back:

* The hoody pictured near the hospital does not look well.

* I have an interest in this issue. My father died in Tameside Hospital last year. My mother died six months ago in Willow wood hospice, 4 days after transfer from Tameside Hospital. The patients were clearly not getting the best treatment they deserved. The staff were giving the best they could. The big problem I could see was that there were not enough nursing staff. Even the best most dedicated nurse can not be at two bedsides at the same time.

* My own mother died in TH and there was one nurse running the ward. She told me she also served the patients meals as well.

Not exactly a death cult, is it? But because Google and the MEN don’t like the image or the messenger, they want to make it harder for readers to find the story. Local news is vital. It’s where the big stories start. You’d think the MEN and Google, which takes you content for free, would know that…

Spotter: Karen

Anorak

Posted: 28th, June 2013 | In: Reviews, Technology | Comment

How the Lara Croft video game made me gay – the proof in photos

WHAT if Lara Croft has been a man? What if the creators of the 1996 video game Tomb Raider had made Lara Croft a man?

What would it have changed?

In 2008, the judge at Maidstone Crown Court looked at Ryan Chinnery in the dock and noted the “worrying mirror of conduct” between the accused and his enjoyment of Grand Theft Auto and other video games. Chinnery had sexually assaulted four female strangers. But no links between his game playing and cimes were ever investigated, let alone proven. Chinnery is a dangerous man imprisoned for eight years who, like many young men, played video games. Unlike most other young men, he  went out and attacked women.

Anorak

Posted: 27th, June 2013 | In: Technology | Comment

Incredible image of a baby born but still inside the amniotic sac

SOME images are just incredible. Thanks to a Greek doctor and his camera, we get to see this memorable image taken dyring a caesarian section. Oddly, the amniotic sac remained intact as the birth progressed. The baby is no longer in the womb but continues to take oxygen and sustenance from the placenta.

The baby is doing well.

Anorak

Posted: 24th, June 2013 | In: Key Posts, Reviews, Technology | Comment

Amazing moment as toddler hears for the first time

SHALL we all have a lovely moment? How about a really great video of a young boy called Grayson Clamp, and the exact moment he heard his father’s voice for the first time?

Grayson Clamp is three years old and until now, he’s never been able to hear.

Mof Gimmers

Posted: 24th, June 2013 | In: Reviews, Technology | Comment

Pigeon nests in jet engine at the 50th Paris Air Show at Le Bourget airport

FACE of the day:  At the 50th Paris Air Show at Le Bourget airport, north of Paris, a pigeon carries a small branch to make its nest inside the rear of a Boeing 747.

How d’you like your eggs? Scrambled?

A pigeon carries a small branch to make its nest inside the rear of a Boeing 747 which is displayed at the Air Museum, during the 50th Paris Air Show at Le Bourget airport, north of Paris, Thursday June 20, 2013.(AP Photo/Remy de la Mauviniere)

Luckily for the bird, the plane is on display at the Air Museum. 

Anorak

Posted: 22nd, June 2013 | In: Technology | Comment

The iPotty will teach your child to poop digitally

SIGNS that the economy is rebounding:  the CTA Digital 2-in-1 iPotty with Activity Seat for iPad:

Potty training can be a challenge for even the most patient parents and one of the biggest hurdles is gaining the child’s interest and then keeping their attention long enough to properly potty train. That’s where the iPotty comes in with its unique holder for the iPad. Many young children already love playing with their parents’ iPad, and now they can safely do so with the iPotty. It provides a fun and comfortable place to sit, while learning how to use the potty and engaging with apps.

iCrap.

Anorak

Posted: 21st, June 2013 | In: Technology, The Consumer | Comments (2)

Competition from Sony forces Microsoft U-Turns on the Xbox One ‘authorisation’ rip off

MICROSOFT has just done a complete u-turn on the terms and conditions under which their new Xbox One will operate. They had been proposing that used games would require “authorisation” to move from one box to another. Obviously, so that hands could be held out for a fee to facilitate this authorisation.

The machine had to dial in over the internet every day for any games at all to keep working. And finally there would be region blocking on games: no buying your stuff cheap off Amazon US and then playing it in more expensive Europe for example.

Tim Worstall

Posted: 20th, June 2013 | In: Money, Technology | Comment

Toddlers are more stupid than chickens – birds outperform kids in numeracy and logic

YOU’VE cooed and coochied at your darling little baby, posting endless identical photographs of them on Facebook and heard your friends tell you barefaced lies about how beautiful it is, and that it has it’s ‘daddy’s eyes’… but here’s some news for you and your little shit-machine – chickens could well be smarter than your human toddler.

A survey was conducted and found that chickens have the ability to out-perform young children at numeracy and logic.

Mof Gimmers

Posted: 19th, June 2013 | In: Strange But True, Technology | Comment

Professor of snot: biochemist researchers benefits of eating bogies

“SNOT has a sugary taste and that may be a signal to the he body to consume it and derive information for the immune system, ” says Scott Napper, professor of biochemistry at the University of University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon.

“Eating the pathogens  caught in the mucus could be a way to teach our immunte system  about what its surrounded by. 

“I’ve got two beautiful daughters and they spend an amazing amount of time with their fingers up their nose. And without fail, it goes right into their mouth afterwards. Could they just be fulfilling what we’re truly meant to do? All you would need is a group of volunteers. You would put some sort of molecule in all their noses, and for half of the group they would go about their normal business and for the other half of the group, they would pick their nose and eat it. Then you could look for immune responses against that molecule and if they’re higher in the booger-eaters, then that would validate the idea.”

“From an evolutionary perspective, we evolved under very dirty conditions and maybe this desire to keep our environment and our behaviours sterile isn’t actually working to our advantage.”

“The greatest value of the snot-eating question is that, when he brings it up with his first-year science students they are instantly engaged in the class. Get the student to think, rather than just sitting there taking down notes.”

Who knew that picking your knows was research..?

Anorak

Posted: 18th, June 2013 | In: Strange But True, Technology | Comments (2)

Edward Snowden: the best views on the spook who grassed up Obama

DOCUMENTS leaked by US techy spook Edward Snowden show us that the US government is able to access details of smartphone and internet activity under a scheme called Prism. The allegation is that the US intelligence agencies have an open line to Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, Skype and Apple. They also record all of your phone calls. The Guardian reprots that the UK’s electronic surveillance agency, GCHQ, has access to the data. This might explain why the taxes for so many big Internet firm are so low. The elite want to keep paying foreign companies for data on British citizens off the books.

 What does it all mean, though? We’ve picked out the best opinions on the news:

Mark Steyn:

Perhaps this is just the way it is in the panopticon state. Tocqueville foresaw this, as he did most things. Although absolute monarchy “clothed kings with a power almost without limits” in practice “the details of social life and of individual existence ordinarily escaped his control.” What would happen, Tocqueville wondered, if administrative capability were to evolve to bring “the details of social life and of individual existence” within the King’s oversight? Eric Holder and Lois Lerner now have that power. My comrade John Podhoretz, doughty warrior of the New York Post, says relax, there’s nothing to worry about. But how do I know he’s not just saying that because Eric Holder’s monitoring his OnStar account and knows that when he lost his car keys last Tuesday he was in the parking lot of Madam Whiplash’s Bondage Dungeon?

When the state has the power to know everything about everyone, the integrity of the civil service is the only bulwark against men like Holder. Instead, the ruling party and the non-partisan bureaucracy seem to be converging. In August 2010, President Obama began railing publicly against “groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity” (August 9th, a speech in Texas) and “shadowy groups with harmless-sounding names” (August 21st, radio address). And whaddayaknow, that self-same month the IRS obligingly issued its first BOLO (Be On the Look-Out) for groups with harmless-sounding names, like “tea party,” “patriot,” and “constitution.”

It may be that the strange synchronicity between the president and the permanent bureaucracy is mere happenstance and not, as it might sound to the casual ear, the sinister merging of party and state. Either way, they need to be pried apart. When the state has the capability to know everything except the difference between right and wrong, it won’t end well.

Anorak

Posted: 14th, June 2013 | In: Key Posts, Politicians, Technology | Comments (3)

Supreme Court rules that US companies cannot own the patents on human genes

SO. Can you patent human genes? The US Supreme Court – yep, it actually got that far before someone saw sanity – said you cannot:

The case involved Myriad Genetics Inc., which holds patents related to two genes, known as BRCA1 and BRCA2, that can indicate whether a woman has a heightened risk of developing breast cancer or ovarian cancer.

Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the court, said the genes Myriad isolated are products of nature, which aren’t eligible for patents.

The high court’s ruling was a win for a coalition of cancer patients, medical groups and geneticists who filed a lawsuit in 2009 challenging Myriad’s patents. Thanks to those patents, the Salt Lake City company has been the exclusive U.S. commercial provider of genetic tests for breast cancer and ovarian cancer.

The challengers argued the patents have allowed Myriad to dictate the type and terms of genetic screening available for the diseases, while also dissuading research by other laboratories.

America is going mad – stark, raving mad.

Spotter: @tylercowen

Anorak

Posted: 13th, June 2013 | In: Money, Technology | Comment

The second greatest eBay advert ever: The Mercedes E320 Cd with boot big enough for 2 small or 1 big person

FOR sale: Mercedes E320 Cdi.

It’s not pristine. AS the eBay advert goes:

If you are looking for an immaculate, well maintained example of a Mercedes e320 CDI… you have come to the wrong place.

If however, you are low on self esteem, with a strapped budget, but shooting for the stars, welcome to my auction. May I present to you, one of the finest feats in Germanic engineering politely modelled by my ‘more to love’ missus. As you can see from the photos this car has seen things… things it cannot forget. I have owned this car for 3 years, and up to then it had been lovingly cared for and maintained. Since owning the vehicle, it has been thrashed, raced, rallied, and the interior has been smashed up in a domestic, not to mention the time my wife booted the wing because I suggested she eat a salad or two. ( please refer to photo of foot next to dent for reference) The car was lovingly cleaned in preparation for the 2012 summer olympics, and may be in need of another one now. This car has been a dream, and only broken down twice. But since it has had new brake pads, discs, thermostat, front springs, all the fuel lines replaced, and i even put some water in the squishes. as for the bad bits… there are none… just kidding there are lots. The cd changer in the boot doesn’t work, but the radio does ( we have already preset the channels to suit our clientelle)
The air conditioning isn’t working, but the electric windows do, so bonus. The car smokes when you boot it hard.

The rear subframe bushes could probably do with being replaced…

The good bits. Boot is big enough for 2 small or 1 big person ( see pictures)

This car is well admired and often stopped by members of her majesty’s police, who give out FREE advice concerning your drinking habits and whether or not your tires need replaced. ( which is soon by the way)

Purchase of this vehicle will result in a severe rise in the number of looks of admiration you get in your local town centre, I would personally recommend wearing a large gold plated chain, a half open shirt, shaving ones head, and wearing 1 bottle of cologne at any given time to truly get desired female attention.

The stereo system is suited to playing Russian Techno, Polish house, Bulgarian dubsteb, Romanian hard house, and turkish trance at full volume, whilst not detracting from the over glamour of the avian fecal mattered roof and rusty panels. Seriously now gentlemen. Ladies flock to this car. I’d like to say that I have customised the horn, but i haven’t. It would be great if someone did. If you win this auction I will save you time, effort and eye watering hassle by telling you where i hid the sardines. This car in the limbo of being to good to break, and to bad to be fat and seen in. all questions welcomed. We do not accept food as payment, nor coupons for iceland. As for terms and conditions, we will happily airlift this car to any destination in west africa, should you be in the possession of a cheque which you have overpaid, we will happily send you the difference. If you are a diplomat or sovereign who has 46,000,000 USD, but can’t access it for lack of a processing fee, please call us straight away, as I have a team of lawyers waiting for my signal to help. Get back in touch buddy, i’m worried the troops got to you. As for real terms and conditions. The car is crap. If you want it come and buy it. I guarantee 100% this car will cause you trouble, and cost you money. Do not plan on coming to try and shake us down on the price, we KNOW EVERYTHING that is wrong with this this vehicle. WE have driven the thing for 40,000 miles. We wouldn’t be selling it if it was any good whatsoever… it runs. be happy. SERIOUS BIDS ONLY. NO TIME WASTERS!

Unfortunately we have had to re-list this item, as it was taken down by ebay for not complying with a few of their rules. It is now compliant. Please feel free to bid, it is a genuine auction, the CAR is for sale… only the car.

sorry, has had to be re listed for a second time, we have revised it so it won’t get taken down again.

please no false bids. We actually want to sell the car.

Bid here.

The greatest ever reBay car advert is here.

Anorak

Posted: 12th, June 2013 | In: Technology | Comment

New Apple website fails to work on Macbooks (laughs)

THE Apple website  – motto: “This is what matters… We don’t believe in coincidence or dumb luck”– fails to work on Macbooks. Something to do with a QuickTime permission issue.

Given the pomposity of its mission statement (see below), we find it rather amusing:

Anorak

Posted: 11th, June 2013 | In: Technology | Comment (1)

Video of a rotating supercell forming over Texas

MIKE Olbinski is an Arizona photographer who recorded this rotating supercell forming over the northern Texas plains. He writes:

One thing to note early on in the first part is the way the rain is coming down on the right and actually being sucked back into the rotation. Amazing.

He’s right. Amazing.

Anorak

Posted: 10th, June 2013 | In: Reviews, Technology | Comment