Farpas' Lounge

Copycats

2007-05-14T01:09:00.000+01:00

Similarities in advertising

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After Elton...

2007-05-11T13:47:00.000+01:00

...takes a look at the gayest pop show on the planet: The Eurovision Song Contest.

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Walk-in technique

2007-05-08T00:40:00.000+01:00

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The Pessimist's Mug

2007-05-02T15:03:00.000+01:00

"it makes everything taste bitter."

Race

2007-05-02T11:40:00.000+01:00

"We expect people to look different. And why not? Like a fingerprint, each person is unique. Every person represents a one-of-a-kind, combination of their parents’, grandparents’ and family’s ancestry. And every person experiences life somewhat differently than others.

Looking through the eyes of history, science and lived experience, the RACE Project explains differences among people and reveals the reality – and unreality – of race. The story of race is complex and may challenge how we think about race and human variation, about the differences and similarities among people.

Are We So Different?
A fantastic interactive website produced by the American Anthropological Association.

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The Spectrum revolution

2007-04-23T17:25:00.000+01:00

In April 1982 a small British company, led by Sir Clive Sinclair, launched the ZX Spectrum computer and sparked a revolution. Indeed it revolutionized my own life and changed it forever. Now BBC looks back at the history behind the machine.

rebellious graffiti...

2007-04-19T01:17:00.000+01:00

... on a patronizing sign.

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See you monday!

2007-04-05T11:32:00.001+01:00

Animals Hand Painting

2007-04-03T11:16:00.000+01:00

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From the spaghetti harvest...

2007-04-01T01:10:00.000+01:00

...to the instant color tv here are the top 100 April Fool's Day hoaxes of all time.

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Crash Test Dummy

2007-03-31T09:16:00.001+01:00

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Incredible things...

2007-03-22T10:28:00.000Z

...people (actually) said in court.

Q: What is your date of birth?
A: July fifteen.
Q: What year?
A: Every year.

Changing lights

2007-03-18T20:20:00.000Z

The European Union is going to ban old style light bulbs in the next couple of years substituting them for the new low energy light bulbs.

Incandescent light bulbs, whilst cheaper than their fluorescent counterparts, use much more electricity and obviously therefore create more carbon dioxide.

In the long run it will surely be a change for the best. And the much speculated led based bulbs might come sooner than we expect...

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Design Candy

2007-03-11T20:00:00.000Z

The ChonrArte Canna clock uses a liquid display made up of 12 tubes that slowly fill with colored water. It uses radio reception to sync the time and automatically changes from standard to daylight savings time.

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20 must-have...

2007-03-07T18:43:00.000Z

...Firefox extensions.

12 quick tips...

2007-03-05T18:35:00.000Z

...to search Google like an expert.

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The Vista Experience

2007-03-03T11:49:00.000Z

The oddest of errors...

...and BBC's Falling into the Vista trap article.

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Answering today's question

2007-02-28T21:51:00.000Z

Why there are only 28 days in February?

The Masa in New York...

2007-02-24T20:53:00.000Z

...is the most expensive restaurant in the USA with the prix fixe menu ranging from $350 to $500 per person not including alcohol. The meals include five appetizers, a sushi entrée with up to 20 types of seafood flown directly from Japan and a dessert course served with tea.

The other restaurants that fill up the top 10 list can be seen here.

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10 new uses...

2007-02-23T15:25:00.000Z

...for coffee filters.

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Five great ways...

2007-02-22T21:24:00.000Z

...to leave a tip.

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The money maker

2007-02-21T10:19:00.000Z

An interesting interview with graphic designer Robert Oxenaar who worked for the Dutch Bank and created several note designs that are among the most beautiful in the world.

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Home again

2007-02-20T19:00:00.000Z

The trip was long but worth it. Tomorrow I'll resume posting.

Have a good fat tuesday!

Pause

2007-02-12T00:00:00.000Z

I'm going on a trip so this week there will be no updates.

Deadly beauty

2007-02-09T15:42:00.000Z

The most poisonous animal is not a snake or a spider. It’s a beautiful little frog! "Most frogs produce skin toxins, but the dart poison frogs from Central and South America are the most potent of all. The golden poison frog, called terribilis (the terrible), is so toxic that even touching it can be dangerous."

A gallery of colorful (and Sometimes Poisonous) frogs.

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Conversation With A Burglar

2007-02-07T18:42:00.000Z

The Best Place To Hide Money

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Nice photo

2007-02-07T08:52:00.000Z

Going to work nowadays.

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Armed America

2007-02-04T09:23:00.000Z

The photographer Kelly Cassidy went on a mission to find the faces behind the gun-owners of the United States. The results were published in a book called "Armed America: Portraits of Gun Owners in Their Homes" and some of the photos can be seen here. Notice the sometimes surprising juxtaposition between owner and type of gun owned.

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Iraq exit strategy

2007-02-01T22:58:00.000Z

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Nostalgic mail

2007-01-31T22:40:00.000Z

What happened when you mailed a letter in 1951, an era when they still had a big network of pneumatic tubes connecting all of the post offices in Manhattan.

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Why do we cry?

2007-01-29T00:36:00.000Z

The complexity of teardrops revealed.

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Top 10 Foods...

2007-01-29T00:27:00.000Z

...for a good night's sleep.

"What is the secret to getting a solid 7 to 8 hours of sleep? Head for the kitchen and enjoy one or two of these 10 foods. They relax tense muscles, quiet buzzing minds, and/or get calming, sleep-inducing hormones - serotonin and melatonin - flowing. Yawning yet?"

What we don't know

2007-01-27T13:10:00.000Z

42 of the biggest unanswered questions of our days, including:

Why placebos work?

What causes gravity?

How the brain produces consciousness?

and the eternal Where are my keys?

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Comparing San Jose...

2007-01-25T23:09:00.000Z

...between 1975 and 2005.

Gallery here.

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Sex (un)education

2007-01-22T01:23:00.000Z

"Some advice on sex and love from a 1917 medical manual written by the well-respected doctor of medical things pertaining to women, William J. Robinson, M.D."

on sexuality
"While a woman may be able to give a man perfect sexual satisfaction, and she may have an angelic character, if her body is not all that could be desired, the man will be dissatisfied and unhappy."

on homossexuality
"A homosexual, man or woman, has no right to marry. Homosexuality is hereditary, and nobody has a right to bring homosexuals into the world, for there is no unhappier being than a homosexual."

on obesity
"Nothing is more fatal to a woman's beauty than a big stomach, and particularly a hang-down stomach. Some savage tribes prefer obese women with enormous abdomens, but this is not the case with the Caucasian race."

on infidelity
"Many wives drive their husbands to other women, and are alone responsible for their suffering, and for the cooling of their husbands' affections."

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Are all the Xs on The Departed...

2007-01-21T09:44:00.000Z

...just a coincidence or have and additional meaning?
Click here for the gallery and take your own conclusions.

Sensitive light

2007-01-21T02:30:00.000Z

An interesting gallery of coloured smoke.

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What I've learned

2007-01-19T12:36:00.000Z

As told to Esquire by the late chef Julia Child in June 2000:

If you're in a good profession, it's hard to get bored, because you're never finished--there will always be work you haven't yet done.

There is nothing worse than grilled vegetables.

Being tall is an advantage, especially in business. People will always remember you. And if you're in a crowd, you'll always have some clean air to breathe.

Always remember: If you're alone in the kitchen and you drop the lamb, you can always just pick it up. Who's going to know?

I don't believe in heaven. I think when we die we just go back to the great ball of energy that makes up the universe.

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Famous logos...

2007-01-18T23:29:00.000Z

...recreated using the typical web 2.0 style:

[click image to zoom]

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The order

2007-01-17T22:20:00.001Z

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Golden Globes 2007

2007-01-16T16:35:00.000Z

The best and the worst of the ceremony.

Lines from Alanis Morissette's "Ironic...

2007-01-15T16:00:00.000Z

...modified to actually make them ironic:

A black fly in your Chardonnay... poured to celebrate the successful fumigation of your recently purchased vineyard in southern France.

A death row pardon two minutes too late... because the governor was too busy watching Dead Man Walking to grant clemency any earlier.

Rain on your wedding day... to Ra, the Egyptian sun-god.

A free ride when you've already paid... all of your money to the good-natured cab driver when you mistook him for a mugger.

The good advice that you just didn't take... after reading Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking and resolving that the key to success is making your own decisions.

A traffic jam when you're already late... to receive an award from the Municipal Planning Board for reducing the city's automobile congestion 80 percent.

A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break... at the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco corporate offices in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife... with which to kill your spouse for sleeping with the young soup chef who works at the Au Bon Pain.

Meeting the man of my dreams and then meeting his beautiful wife... who happens to be the psychiatrist I recently hired in hopes of improving my luck with the opposite sex.

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The Simpsonzu

2007-01-11T16:01:00.000Z

[click image to enlarge]

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Then and now

2007-01-10T08:27:00.000Z

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The science...

2007-01-10T00:19:00.000Z

...behind why people cry.

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A day in the life...

2007-01-09T10:34:00.000Z

...of a goldfish:

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A 1000 words

2007-01-07T14:47:00.000Z

From the migrant mother that was the face of the big depression to Einstein with his tongue out here are the 13 photographs that changed the world.

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The miracles of Photoshop

2007-01-03T12:32:00.000Z

2007 calendar edition:

Before

After

More images here.

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New Year's...

2007-01-03T00:47:00.000Z

...weight loss hacks.

Lounge wishes...

2006-12-30T05:06:00.000Z

Have fun! See you in 2007!

New stuff

2006-12-29T01:46:00.000Z

100 things we didn't know last year

Just 20 words make up a third of teenagers' everyday speech.

The Pope's been known to wear red Prada shoes.

Coco Chanel started the trend for sun tans in 1923 when she got accidentally burnt on a cruise.

Eating a packet of crisps a day is equivalent to drinking five litres of cooking oil a year.

While 53% of households have access to a garage, only 24% use them for parking cars.

The caffeine graph

2006-12-28T00:40:00.000Z

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Music from hell

2006-12-26T08:53:00.000Z

The 10 worst songs of 2006.

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iPod Retro

2006-12-25T20:35:00.000Z

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Xmas pause

2006-12-22T01:02:00.000Z

See you Tuesday!

Foggy weather

2006-12-22T01:01:00.000Z

Some nice photos of the fog that has covered England.

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Religion history

2006-12-21T17:13:00.000Z

An interesting animated map depicting 5000 years of religion in 90 seconds.

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Year in review

2006-12-19T18:12:00.000Z

JibJab style.

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Google circa 1960

2006-12-19T02:16:00.000Z

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Believe it or not...

2006-12-17T14:33:00.000Z

...this is the official federal-government highway to Yakutsk, in Russia, one of the top five most dangerous roads in the world.

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The wild wild world

2006-12-14T17:13:00.000Z

Michael Poliza is a successful German IT entrepreneur who sold his companies in 1997 and started an expedition photographing the remote wildernesses of the world.

Here are some pictures from his amazing work already featured in magazines like National Geographic and Nature.

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Names of things...

2006-12-10T13:54:00.000Z

...you never knew had names:

AGLET
The plain or ornamental covering on the end of a shoelace.

ARMSAYE
The armhole in clothing.

CHANKING
Spat-out food, such as rinds or pits.

COLUMELLA NASI
The bottom part of the nose between the nostrils.

DRAGÉES
Small beadlike pieces of candy, usually silver-coloured, used for decorating cookies, cakes and sundaes.

FEAT
A dangling curl of hair.

FERRULE
The metal band on a pencil that holds the eraser in place.

HARP
The small metal hoop that supports a lampshade.

HEMIDEMISEMIQUAVER
A 64th note. (A 32nd is a demisemiquaver, and a 16th note is a semiquaver.)

JARNS, NITTLES, GRAWLIX and QUIMP
Various squiggles used to denote cussing in comic books.

KEEPER
The loop on a belt that keeps the end in place after it has passed through the buckle.

KICK or PUNT
The indentation at the bottom of some wine bottles. It gives added strength to the bottle but lessens its holding capacity.

LIRIPIPE
The long tail on a graduate's academic hood.

MINIMUS
The little finger or toe.

NEF
An ornamental stand in the shape of a ship.

OBDORMITION
The numbness caused by pressure on a nerve; when a limb is `asleep'.

OCTOTHORPE
The symbol `#' on a telephone handset. Bell Labs' engineer Don Macpherson created the word in the 1960s by combining octo-, as in eight, with the name of one of his favourite athletes, 1912 Olympic decathlon champion Jim Thorpe.

Click here for more.

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God's inbox

2006-12-07T18:23:00.000Z

Complete pdf version here.

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Stop the music (please!)

2006-12-06T00:38:00.000Z

From Paris Hilton's Stars are Blind to James Blunt's Your Beautiful here are the 10 most annoying pop songs of 2006.

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Buttonless lifts...

2006-12-05T01:34:00.000Z

...known as destination elevators, are springing up in new buildings all over the world, promising to speed rides and reduce waiting time.

Here is how it works: As you approach the bank of elevators, you first have to push the buttons to enter your desired floor and then you are directed to wait by a specific elevator door.

...Once inside you don't have to do anything else but wait till you get to your destination. And of course, there are no floor buttons...

Will this be the future of elevators? the goal of this new kind of system is to make busy buildings more efficient but a procedure so interiorized like catching an elevator may be hard to change.

Sleep facts...

2006-11-30T18:22:00.000Z

...that you probably didn't know.

Scientists have not been able to explain a 1998 study showing a bright light shone on the backs of human knees can reset the brain's sleep-wake clock.

After five nights of partial sleep deprivation, three drinks will have the same effect on your body as six would when you've slept enough.

Most of what we know about sleep we've learned in the past 25 years.

More facts here.

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Guide to Borat

2006-11-30T03:03:00.000Z

Salon reveals everything you wanted to know about the Kazakh road trip -- what was staged, who was an actor, and who was just hapless comedy roadkill.

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signing-off emails...

2006-11-28T20:54:00.000Z

...seems like an no-brainer but etiquette and communications experts agree that it is becoming increasingly difficult to say goodbye. The New York Times explains the variations of sign-offs in the digital age.

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Twin Peaks: Then and Now

2006-11-28T01:06:00.000Z

A blogger captivated by the world of Twin Peaks traveled to Washington and photographed as many of the original filming locations as he was able to find. Here are the results of his expeditions.

It's time for a diet when...

2006-11-27T03:33:00.000Z

Ads for Pedigree Light dog food.

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The odds of dying

2006-11-27T01:23:00.000Z

Click the image to enlarge

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Sky gourmet

2006-11-26T14:25:00.000Z

A site that lists images, descriptions and news about airline meals for more than 500 different companies.

Happy thanksgiving

2006-11-23T12:47:00.000Z

The best analogies...

2006-11-22T19:31:00.000Z

...collected by english teachers from actual high school essays:

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a ThighMaster.

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

3. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.

9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.

10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.

11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

15. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.

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Modern times

2006-11-22T18:33:00.000Z

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Make love not war

2006-11-22T18:27:00.000Z

Male crayfish fake sex with one another to exert dominance and reduce violence, LiveScience has reported. It's the first such behavior observed in invertebrates.

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Design Candy

2006-11-20T14:24:00.000Z

This is not your grandma's string of beads necklace. It's 80 rare earth magnets held together by – you guessed it – their magnetic force which it's just as good as any string except it gives a lot more room to be creative. So it can be molded into a necklace, a choker, bracelet, ring or whatever else comes to mind.

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The megapixels myth

2006-11-19T20:48:00.000Z

Camera vendors and consumer electronics retailers sell digital cameras as if the pixel count -- the number of pixels a camera's electronics can capture -- is the most important measure of quality. But in reality pixel count has become unimportant almost to the point of irrelevance. Megapixels don't matter anymore. Mike Elgan from ComputerWorld explains why.

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While waiting...

2006-11-15T11:59:00.000Z

...for Casino Royale here are the best and the worst Bond Girls ever.

The incredible adventure...

2006-11-14T12:17:00.000Z

...of trying to install Microsoft's Zune software.

UPDATE: If the installation has issues wait until you read about Zune's payment system.

Overrated or plain unlucky?

2006-11-13T17:44:00.000Z

Joe Queenan takes a look at some of Hollywood's biggest names who turn virtually every movie they make into a disaster.

3D floating art

2006-11-10T20:08:00.001Z

More here.

Everybody dies.

2006-11-07T16:59:00.001Z

It's a fact of life. But some people like to cross over to the other side with some style. So from the new book by Michael Largo here are some of the most unusual ways people have cashed in their chips in the past.

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Passage to Pacific

2006-11-07T12:18:00.000Z

A two minute timelapse video of how a cruise ship transits through the Panama Canal.

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The (expensive) price of ink

2006-11-04T23:58:00.000Z

Printer refills were always expensive so a Gizmodo reader went out to compare HP ink to other various fluids, some bodily in nature. Here are the results:

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Claire's artwork...

2006-10-30T12:43:00.000Z

...in Six Feet Under explained by the producers and the artists that created them.

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Bingo!

2006-10-29T13:51:00.000Z

On Oct. 12, in the basement of a Unitarian church on the town green in Lexington, Mass., a carpenter named Michael Cresta scored 830 points in a game of Scrabble. His opponent, Wayne Yorra, who works at a supermarket deli counter, totaled 490 points.

The two men set three records for sanctioned Scrabble in North America: the most points in a game by one player (830), the most total points in a game (1,320), and the most points on a single turn (365, for Cresta's play of QUIXOTRY).

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The browser's war

2006-10-27T01:46:00.000+01:00

Alex Iskold from Read/WriteWeb compares the current batch of browsers:

IE7: "Solid release, which is going to help Microsoft maintain the market leadership in the near future"
Firefox: "We think that Firefox is going to continue narrowing IE's lead, but await with interest the next major version!"
Safari: "It's a clean and simple web 1.0 browser, but needs a major feature boost in order to be a contender even on the Mac."
Opera: "We can see why fans like this browser, but a bigger future depends on spicing it up and poring in the marketing dollars."
Flock: "Great productivity browser for web 2.0"
Maxthon: "Need to apply Occam's Razor (i.e. make it simpler), but definitely could be a contender because of solid service integration."

To read the full browser faceoff article click here.

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An impressive resume

2006-10-26T16:15:00.000+01:00

From astronaut to film producer here's the impressive list of Homer Simpson's jobs.

Now that Firefox 2.0 is out...

2006-10-26T00:04:00.000+01:00

...here are the first config tweaks.

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From sucking venom from a snakebite...

2006-10-25T23:58:00.000+01:00

...to slapping a raw steak on a black eye here are 10 useless or even dangerous First Aid Myths.

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Some very (very) short stories

2006-10-25T17:02:00.000+01:00

Hemingway once wrote a story in just six words ("For sale: baby shoes, never worn.") and is said to have called it his best work. So Wired Magazine asked sci-fi, fantasy, and horror writers to take a shot themselves. Here are some of the results:

Leia: "Baby’s yours." Luke: "Bad news…"
- Steven Meretzky

Computer, did we bring batteries? Computer???
- Eileen Gunn

We kissed. She melted. Mop please!
- James Patrick Kelly

The baby’s blood type? Human, mostly.
- Orson Scott Card

Dinosaurs return. Want their oil back.
- David Brin

Corpse parts missing. Doctor buys yacht.
- Margaret Atwood

Dorothy: "Fuck it, I'll stay here."
- Steven Meretzky

Read the rest of the entries here.

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Money matters

2006-10-23T12:46:00.000+01:00

The battle between euro and dollar is benefiting the newcomer. Slate explains why.

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Everybody loves lists

2006-10-19T18:24:00.000+01:00

The richest 400. The 50 most beautiful. Hollywood's 100 power players. The FBI's 10 most wanted criminals.

Now three self-described "rowdy philosophers" from New Jersey — Allan Lazar, Dan Karlan and Jeremy Salter — have ranked the 101 "most influential people."

With an asterisk. Because none of them ever lived.

Topping the list at No. 1: "The most famous killer of the last two hundred years," The Marlboro Man. The cowboy of death is followed by "Big Brother" of George Orwell's 1984,a symbol of totalitarianism, intrusive government control and surveillance. The rest of the top 10 is completed by:

3. King Arthur
4. Santa Claus
5. Hamlet
6. Dr. Frankenstein's Monster
7. Siegfried
8. Sherlock Holmes
9. Romeo and Juliet
10. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

The full list can be seen here.

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An interactive timeline...

2006-10-17T12:46:00.000+01:00

...of M&M's history.

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20 Things...

2006-10-15T17:17:00.000+01:00

...the average person doesn't know about XP.

This month...

2006-10-15T14:42:00.000+01:00

...the U.S. population is expected to reach the 300 million mark. But back in 1967, the country hit another noteworthy population milestone - 200 million.

CNN.com takes a look at how life has changed in these past 39 years.

Defective by design

2006-10-12T14:44:00.000+01:00

A simples video on why DRM is bad.

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Is the show "Weeds"...

2006-10-09T15:45:00.000+01:00

...closer to home than we may acknowledge?

"Stoned in Suburbia" is a very interesting BBC documentary that examines the change in people's opinions and attitudes to cannabis over the last 50 years.

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The 7 deadly sins of resumé design

2006-10-07T18:13:00.000+01:00

From the awful Times New Roman font to weird paper sizes here's some guidelines of what not to do with your resumé.