I heard the story this morning, but on the radio, and they didn't explain it was a Photoshop twirl. I was *really* impressed, thinking they'd unscrambled mezzination. Twirliness looks far easier to reverse.

Or sending your dining companion into an epileptic seizure.

Actually, rape strikes me as a pretty poor reproductive strategy - courtship, by leading to several consensual matings over a period of time with neither party suffering stress and/or injury, would seem far more likely to produce pregnancy and healthy offspring.

That said, I think one of the big problems I have with Ev Psych (apart from the methodology) is that it focuses so much on successful conceptions, when the really hard part of human reproduction is devoting all the time and resources to raising the kids and making sure they give you grandchildren - I ranted about this a few months ago on my LJ:
http://moon-custafer.livejournal.com/129265.html?mode=reply

I think Dave Malki of Wondermark adapted this story.

I had a rather odd college English prof who went on about this subject a lot. Pity we didn't do David Copperfield that year.

Interesting. On the subjet of this project - given that a number of the African tech blogs have been covering the innovative uses of mobile phones on the continent, and saying "the cel phone is the PC of Africa," I have been wondering whether a better plan - or perhaps an addditional plan - should be to create versions of the more useful apps scaled down for mobile handsets. As a computer non-expert, I don't know how feasible that is.

Class-y.
If you hadn't stated it was a hairdryer, I would have taken it for a (cheap, "novelty") vibrator.

I saw the poster on the subway, but didn't notice the button - I think it was only really legible on a billboard scale. In fact when I saw a news story that the ad was controversial, I was expecting it to be about Asians offended by being stereotyped as harajuku kids.

To be honest I don't think the ad campaign (and the related one that shows old grad photos crying because they're not eligible for the student plan) is very effective - I feel so sorry for the weeping people that I wind up hating Solo for making them cry (at first I thought the grad-photo ones were protesting some policy unfair to people still paying off their student loans).

This reminds me that I saw a piece on Mr Wearing last month. As one can imagine, it's both poignant and wryly humourous - Wearing makes sense of his condition by constantly believing that he has just come out of a long illness, and several times he gives the same speech to the camera crew about how he feels his case has been terribly mishandled by the doctors - that in fact he can't recall a doctor ever once coming to see him. Then his wife comes back into the room, his face lights up and he rushes into her arms for the hundred millionth time.

My browser crashes whenever I try to click on the thumbnails after the link.

Glad to hear about this, as Little Fluffy hasn't been updated in over a year.

Excellent! I love art that makes witty use of pre-existing materials!

Does the fluttering of the notes give it any sense of animation? I'd love to see a video of this.

As several people have already said, no one would be allowed to treat animals this way. I've been thinking about this since yesterday and what bothers me most is that apart from the total inhumanity of the "treatment," it doesn't even make sense as a training method. I searched again through the Mother Jones article for the bit that stuck with me:
Employees are encouraged to use the element of surprise. "Attempt to be as discreet as possible and hold the transmitter out of view of the student," states the employee manual. This way, students cannot do anything to minimize the pain, like flipping over their electrodes or tensing their muscles.
Does this not demolish any argument that it's "for the kids' own good" by implying that it's more important to cause maximum pain to the student than to create any association between the punishment and the behaviour that triggered it?

Aw, Gates is kind of cute. He reminds me of a guy I knew at art school.

Does this remind anyone else of the Futurama episode in which Dr. Zoidburg gets punished for eating a U.S. flag in celebration of freedom?

May I also recommend this guy's site:

http://www.antiquetypewriters.com

I see him a couple of times a year at the Old Paper Show - beautiful machines.