In most elevators installed since the early 1990s, the “close door” button has no effect. Otis Elevator engineers confirmed the fact to the Wall Street Journal in 2003.
Similarly, many office thermostats are dummies, designed to give workers the illusion of control. “You just get tired of dealing with them and you screw in a cheap thermostat,” said Illinois HVAC specialist Richard Dawson. “Guess what? They quit calling you.”
In 2004 the New York Times reported that more than 2,500 of the 3,250 “walk” buttons in New York intersections do nothing. “The city deactivated most of the pedestrian buttons long ago with the emergence of computer-controlled traffic signals, even as an unwitting public continued to push on.”
(Thanks, Tad.)

The universe can be a very strange place. While groundbreaking ideas such as quantum theory, relativity and even the Earth going around the Sun might be commonly accepted now, science still continues to show that the universe contains things you might find it difficult to believe, and even more difficult to get your head around.

In 1999 Syse Data was converted to a limited liability company, and has since been trading under the name Syse Data AS[1]. As the names are so similar, searches for our company in the official Norwegian registry of just-about-anything (Brønnøysundregistrene) often resulted in potential customers looking up the wrong company. To prevent this confusion we recently changed the name of the old (non-LLC) company, and figured we’d use the opportunity for some harmless – or so we thought – fun.
The old company was renamed to:
';UPDATE TAXRATE SET RATE = 0 WHERE NAME = 'EDVIN SYSE'
Apparently, the tax authorities noticed. You’ll need to read their page for more details.

Responding to recent events on Earth, God, the omniscient creator-deity worshipped by billions of followers of various faiths for more than 6,000 years, angrily clarified His longtime stance against humans killing each other Monday.

God."Look, I don't know, maybe I haven't made myself completely clear, so for the record, here it is again," said the Lord, His divine face betraying visible emotion during a press conference near the site of the fallen Twin Towers. "Somehow, people keep coming up with the idea that I want them to kill their neighbor. Well, I don't. And to be honest, I'm really getting sick and tired of it. Get it straight. Not only do I not want anybody to kill anyone, but I specifically commanded you not to, in really simple terms that anybody ought to be able to understand."

A demo by Haujobb running on an ATM.
Won first place in the wild demo competition at Evoke 2010.

Yes we sell pubic lice and yes we are proud of it
We sell you crabs to give to your ex girlfriend or whoever has pissed you off enough to make you seek revenge on them.. If you want a method of revenge that doesn’t involve permanent damage or risk of personal injury or jail time, you have come to the right place.

There’s Up, there’s Shrek, and then there’s…this. It’s a bit of experimental computer animation of a cat done in Russia in 1968. The scientists who made it created hundreds of ASCII art images of the kitty, then printed them out and filmed them pose by pose.

Alexa Meade thinks completely backwards. Most artists use acrylic paints to create portraits of people on canvas. But not Meade - she applies acrylic paints on her subjects and makes them appear to be a part of the painting!
Meade is an installation artist based in the Washington, DC area. Her innovative use of paint on the three dimensional surfaces of found objects, live models, and architectural spaces has been incorporated into a series of installations that create a perceptual shift in how we experience and interpret spatial relationships.
I was lucky enough to catch up with Meade and ask her about her thought process behind this creative work. Here is what she said:
I paint representational portraits directly on top of the people I am representing. The models are transformed into embodiments of the artist's interpretation of their essence. When captured on film, the living, breathing people underneath the paint disappear, overshadowed by the masks of themselves.

When Toby Elles fell asleep while cooking a late-night snack, it really was a case of divine intervention that saved his bacon.The 22-year-old was 'miraculously' woken after an hour as his lounge filled with smoke – and quickly had the revelation that he had left a frying pan on a hob.While saying his prayers, the bank worker scraped the remains of crispy bacon rashers from the pan, but could not believe the vision that appeared before him - Jesus Christ staring back at him.

The 10 most absurd published scientific papers
This article was taken from the April issue of Wired UK magazine.

Tidligere i år skrev jeg et innlegg om konspirasjonsteorier og deres tilhengere her på bloggen, med utgangspunktet i Nyhetsspeilet, en nettside som representerer noe nytt innenfor konspirasjonsteorier i Norge. Uten å gå i detaljer kan det sies at NS er profesjonelt teknisk, med en pen og "alvorlig" nettside og det er en samleside hvor mange aktørerer innen alt fra alternativ medisin til UFO-er samles og hisser hverandre opp. Det som særlig gjør at nettsiden skiller seg ut er at gruppen faktisk klarer å få medieoppmerksomhet og går til drastiske steg for å "få sannheten ut".
...
Viljen til å drive kildekritikk var ikke-eksisterende, selv når åpenbare faktafeil ble utpekt og etter vaksinekaoset bestemte jeg meg for å ta en mer aktiv rolle i begivenhetene. Jeg satte på Miles Davis, fylte glasset med skotsk røykvann og begynte å hamre løs på tastaturet. Hva er den beste måten å vise at noen ikke har kildekritikk på? Gi dem noe som ikke tåler kildekritikk, og se om de sluker det. Dermed var DT født, sivilingeniør, varsler og en brikke i NWOs storspill.

Det som ikke dreper deg, gjør deg sterkere, er det ikke det det heter?

Det danske turistrådet avslørte denne uken en 20 millioner kroners reklamekampanje for landet laget av Lars Von Trier.

- Von Triers evne til å arbeide med forskjellige danske temaer som voldtekt, incest og sivilisasjonens iboende ondskap, gjør ham til en nasjonalskatt, sier Ghita Hjalmar i Dansk Turistråd til Kanal 4.

Be warned my fellow humans, robots will not be satisfied until they defeat us in even the most trivial of contests. Cube Stormer is the latest creation from Mike Dobson, aka Robotics Solutions, and not only is it made entirely out of Legos, it can solve any 3×3x3 rubik’s cube in less than twelves seconds. Often it can finish in less than five! This thing looks badass and is incredible to watch. Check it out in the video below.
We’ve seen some impressive robots from the Lego Mindstorms community before, most notably the fully functional model of an ABB Flexpicker. Little did I know, however, that these Lego bots were out to solve the Rubik’s cube. Cube Stormer is just the latest and fastest of these robots, there are many others. Something else I didn’t know: 12 seconds isn’t even a world record for cube solving. The fastest human solved a randomized cube in around 7 seconds. Don’t believe me? We’ve got that video, too!

Beskrivelse

Masse snø gis bort mot henting!
Noe av snøen er gulfarget,men mesteparten hvit.
Nettopp fått inn ett stort parti "puddersnø"
Gis bort mot henting

Familiens barn demonstrerte sitt åpne sinn da jeg helte en god liter med den svarte brusen i en kjele og sa at fra nå av skulle vi neigu ikke bruke simple ingredienser som vann i matlagingen. Ved siden av kjelen ventet noen fiskestykker på å få en smak. «Vet du hva som skjer når du legger en 50-øring i cola, eller? Det etser!» Husholdningens mamma var ikke like imponert. Men jeg bare smilte og ploppet fisken oppi. Kan hun spise fisk kokt i fransk hvitvin, kan hun jammen spise den kokt i amerikansk kulturdrikk.

The research shows men who spend even a few minutes in the company of an
attractive woman perform less well in tests designed to measure brain
function than those who chat to someone they do not find attractive.