This is just unbelievable: The state of Florida wants to take back a license plate which says \’ATHEIST\’ from a man who\’s been using it for 16 years. Apparently some people complained to the DMV and now the plate is considered \”obscene or objectionable\” and must be yanked. Ugh.
[ From Signal vs. Noise ]

Here is an incredible map showing all 7,000,000 miles of road in the U.S. Unfortunately they make you download a weird plug-in to view it.

Make yourself a martini to get in the mood, for it\’s the Art of Shag, some very cool lounge/cocktail/retro artwork.

A guy dropped his digital camera into a pond by accident. He eventually got the water out and it still works, but the pictures it takes are crazy and unpredictable. Kind of like a digital version of those overpriced Lomos.
[ From Ars Technica ]

Message to 12,000 AD is a very interesting paper about keeping people out of a radioactive waste disposal site for the next 10,000 years. It\’s much more difficult than you\’d think, since the site must survive for 10,000 years and the message must be understandable in the future. The site also can\’t look like a monument or a place of worship, and the materials it\’s made of must be low value so they won\’t be stolen. Pretty cool reading.

Each year a retired air force officer gives $1000 to the student who can find the most overuse of the phrase \”you know.\” The winner was a speech that had \”you know\” 30 times in a 135 second interview.

Reminds me of my high school history teacher who used to always say \”ok\” and \”alright\” in his lectures. Me and my friend kept a tally once and we lost count after 200.

Wow, you can find everything on the internet. Got Phone Books? touts itself as \”possibly the world\’s largest collection of online phone books.\” The site has a huge gallery of phone book covers from the U.S., Canada, and a few other countries. If you want to start your own collection, some of the phone books are also for sale. Also interesting is the first phone book, issued in 1878.

For all you cypherpunks out there, crack Meganet\’s proprietary Virtual Matrix Encryption and win a Ferrari 360. Better get started with those brute force attacks, the contest ends August 31st.

Leave it to the Germans to create a video game that punishes you when you lose. It\’s based on Pong and the players put their left hands over a \”pain execution unit\” and use their right hands to control the bat. When you miss the ball the game punishes you with varying levels of pain, depending on where the ball landed. I dunno, this sounds like those science experiments where you teach a mouse not to eat the cheese or something. Eventually we\’re gonna have a whole bunch of Germans terrified of Pong.

Florida Students Admonished for Fainting

Mandarin Middle School Principal Joy Recla said the students used a technique that apparently involves exhaling deeply and not breathing in before passing out from lack of oxygen. Some were caught doing it in class.

Stupid kids. I hope they fucking get brain damage.