Blunder Leaves Woman Awake for Surgery

A woman lay awake during surgery for 45 minutes, unable to move or call for help, after staff forgot to hook up the machine pumping out anaesthetic, the Austrian daily Kurier reported Monday.

The woman was temporarily paralyzed because she had been given a muscle relaxant, and her ordeal ended only after a replacement doctor who came into the operating room saw tears in her eyes and noticed the machine was not connected properly.

Jesus christ! This has now become my new biggest fear.

Surreal photos from Matrix Reloaded screenings in Japan, where hundreds of people turn up in costumes and re-enact scenes. The organizers need to get together with the flash mob guys and create instant Agent Smith crowds. That would rock .
[ From Boing Boing ]

In July Kraftwerk will release their first new album in 17 years. This\’ll be interesting. Kraftwerk were very influential on electronic music and I\’m wondering if they can still make something fresh and innovative.
[ From Kottke.org ]

Realworld versions of the bike from Akira, the seminal cyberpunk anime. Sadly, they don\’t actually run. The most accurate model is only a prop, and the ones that do work aren\’t very accurate. The Dodge Tomahawk would make an excellent platform to build a replica from.

Don\’t forget mateys, September 19 is Talk Like a Pirate day. I\’m gonna have to write down some phrases on index cards, pirate talk\’s pretty hard to make up on the spot.

U.S. Launches National Do-Not-Call List. Woohoo! Once in a while the government does something right. People west of the Mississippi can sign up at www.donotcall.gov starting today but the FTC won\’t begin enforcement until October 1st. You\’ll need to renew every 5 years.

I\’m not sure how effective the list will be though. This quote doesn\’t quite instill me with confidence:

\”We are going to assign dozens of people to enforce this very important rule,\” Muris said.

Oh well, still better than nothing.

The BMW Films DVD with all 8 short films is available for only $3.75 plus tax. Cheap price to watch some badass driving.

This article about Dumb and Dumberer as a prime example of the \”dumb-buddy film\” genre has a great quote about Bill & Ted\’s Excellent Adventure:

Their motto, \”Be excellent to each other,\” was already so out of its time that it could only be presented as the dogma of a futuristic air-guitar-based faith.

Beautiful.
[ From Scrubbles.net ]

Volkswagen is offering the PhatNoise mp3 system for their cars. It uses 20GB cartridges which you load with mp3s from your computer and then insert into the trunk-mounted player. It\’s a very well integrated system: the player mounts in the CD changer bracket and it\’s all controlled by the stock headunit. This would be perfect for my Golf except I got rid of the headunit long ago. It\’s also rather expensive ($795 from the DriverGear catalog). I have my iPod hooked up to my car stereo through an auxiliary input cable and it works fine, plus I can use the iPod anywhere.
[ From Gizmodo ]

Heh heh, I like the display example that\’s playing on the iRiver iHP-100 mp3 player.