A must for mobile baby protection, the Heavy weight bulllet proof stroller provides 100% protection against all modern ballistics including Armor Piercing rounds. It’s heavy enough to maintain stability even under a heavy barrage, and yet has light steering enabling the stroller to turn on a dime if required. For the smart urban baby.. this stroller is the ultimate in style, comfort and extreme combat protection.

Skeptical? There’s video. The baby looks pissed.

And for the toddler, try my first riot helmet.

Ah, teh interweb. Via about:blank. Aggregate and enjoy.

George Orwell’s 1984 is really 1948, the year in which he wrote it. It can’t be about the future. It’s about where the person who wrote it thought their present was, because you can’t envision a future without having some sort of conviction, whether you express it or not in the text, about where your present is.

From a great interview with Bill Gibson, who’s latest science fiction novel Spook Country apparently takes place in the past.

If you have trouble getting to the article (I did) try the google cache. Apparently the origin server is mildly dead.

Via boing boing, via futurismic.

The gold farmers created hundreds of identical level 1 gnomes, postion-hacked them into mid-air, and let them fall to certain doom in a way that spelled out the web address of their gold-selling site, which I’m not going to name here because I don’t want anyone to get keylogged or anything.

OK, so I was bugged last night about not posting.

Then, I laughed out loud reading this post in my aggregator. So I decided to share the love. You’ll laugh too. You may also feel a little frisson of fear, especially if at any point in the post or articles you asked yourself “What is this WoW thing?”

Don’t worry, it will pass.

BTW, if you’re interested in a really, really good SF, I can heartily recommend the work of the above blogger (Charles Stross) and the book Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge, which is very much a propos of the subject matter of Charlie’s post. It’s set 30 years in the future, which aligns perfectly with Charlie’s mental stretch back to 1977.

Hat tip to Marc Andressen, who turned me on to both of these authors in a recent post. Go thank him for your means of experiencing teh intarwebs, whence flows much now-shock.

The vast complexity of the simulation meant that it was only run for ten seconds at a speed ten times slower than real life – the equivalent of one second in a real mouse brain.

I don’t know about you, but this makes me feel a bit better. I think.

You see, it can get worse!

via “http://openthefuture.com/”, via … somewhere. Sorry, blogger.

I couldn’t say it any better myself.

via emergent chaos

Ever wanted to see a Tickle-Me Elmo—on fire? Of course you have.

Behold: the interwebs make it so

“Tee hee hee…Oh, stop it! Stop it!”

The successful flame-proofing of the 2006 goat was not the first time authorities have put their faith in retardants – a substance tried once before washed off in the rain.

Just so you have some perspective, this is last year’s goat:

via the BBC.

The new discovery – spied in Madagascar – is the first time moths have been seen feeding on the tears of birds.

Only evolution could produce something this…weird.

In an evolutionary twist, Flora, the Komodo dragon, has managed to become pregnant without any male help. It would seem the timing is auspicious: seven baby Komodo dragons are due this festive season.

Get ready! It’s the Second through Eighth Comings all rolled up into one Komodo-riffic package! Apparently the Holy Spirit had a touch of the ol’ Dragon fever, or perhaps just lost a bet with the Father and Son. Repeat after me, “Holy Flora, Mother of Gods, Hallowed Be Thy Name…”

A word to the Wise Men—don’t bother with the frankincense or myrrh this time around, and mind your fingers. These tots would be happy to just eat the horses you rode in on.

Children are particularly fond of haunting any site where things are being visibly worked upon. They are irresistibly drawn by the detritus generated by building, gardening, housework, tailoring, or carpentry. In waste products they recognize the face that the world of things turns directly and solely to them. In using these things, they do not so much imitate the world of adults as bring together, in the artifact produced in play, materials of widely differing kinds in a new, intuitive relationship.

Check out this bizarre/wonderful collection of slightly ramshackle and…unique…Russian playground equipment.

I’m not quite sure what that image has to do with that quote, besides the fact that it lept to mind when I browsed those pictures.

The sculpture is like a high-school heavy-metal doodle, a primal twisting up of stuff. I guess I believe these playgrounds do capture something of that ‘face’ of the ‘world of things’ that I so enjoy revisiting through the eyes of my daughter. So…uncomplicated. Inviting. And frightening.

via ze digg

What I’m talking about here is the full-frontal objectification of the library itself.

via project.ion.ist

This morning in Florida, a large alligator tried to eat a naked gentleman who was smoking crack.

I know. I used to live there.

via BB (news article if you doubt)

Mmm… illustricious.

Do visit BibliOdyssey. Quite an amazing collection of illustrations from old books, on any number of topics. From SignalVsNoise.

What is this squid doing with a bottle of tea in a parking space?