Procrastinate Much? Well David Seah has just the fix for you. It’s the Procrastinator’s Clock!

Now, the problem is that you know that I know you know you’ve already set your clock ahead, so you cleverly take this into account and end up being even later. It’s a vicious circle. What we need is a way to channel fear and anxiety positively, while keeping you from getting too comfortable with your clock.

Enter the Procrastinator’s Clock. It’s guaranteed to be up to 15 minutes fast. However, it also speeds up and slows down in an unpredictable manner so you can’t be sure how fast it really is. Furthermore, the clock is guaranteed to not be slow, assuming your computer clock is sync’d with NTP; many computers running Windows and Mac OS X with persistent Internet connections already are.

This clock keeps you on your toes because you’ll never truly know if the clock is 15 minutes ahead or not. Of course, you could cheat and peak at your regular computer clock – but that doesn’t help you wanting to fix your procrastination much does it? I know I’ll be giving this clock a try.

Pretty soon the computer will exercise for us:

Windows/Linux only: Prevent RSI from setting in after long, uninterrupted hours on your PC with the free WorkRave timed break application.

WorkRave pops up and prompts you for a “micro break” or a longer exercise break at time intervals you determine. The app will even suggest anti-RSI exercises for your eyes, back and shoulders to help prevent backaches, headaches and carpal tunnel. WorkRave is a free download, Windows and Linux only. (Mac users, check out previously-posted AntiRSI for a similar app.) Thanks, gatorparade! — Gina Trapani

Thank you to the wonderful people at LifeHacker.

No more “Tomkat” or “Brangelina’s” please. No more “chipotles” or “we’re pregnant” couples. Oh thank you.

Lake Superior State University published its annual:“List of Words and Phrases Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness.”

Among the list are played out phrases from commercials – “ask your doctor” – to misused phrases – “gone/went missing.” Is missing a place you can visit?

From MSNBC:

Take “ask your doctor,” the mantra of pharmaceutical commercials. The university called it “the chewable vitamin morphine of marketing.”

Real estate listings were targeted for overuse of “boast.” As in “master bedroom boasts his-and-her fireplaces — never ’bathroom apologizes for cracked linoleum,”’ quipped Morris Conklin of Portugal.

THE OFFICIAL LIST FOR ‘06:

— Gitmo
— Combined celebrity names
— Awesome
— Gone or went missing
— Pwn or pwned, a misspelling of “own” used by online video gamers
— Now playing in theaters
— We’re pregnant
— Undocumented alien
— Armed robbery gone bad or drug deal gone bad
— Truthiness
— Ask your doctor
— Chipotle
— i-anything
— Search
— Healthy food
— Boasts

“Sometimes people write us and tell us, ’This isn’t working,”’ university spokesman Tom Pink said. “I tell them we need an enforcement division.”

Do you believe?The Flat Earth Website owns a website here, and a forum here: with such posts as:

Australia Doesn’t Exist
I own a space shuttle, and am giving free rides by “mbrooksay” who says, I own a space shuttle, and I am willing to give all you retarded **** free rides in space, AROUND the Earth, to once and for all end this crazy society. Sign-up list is here.

while another

moves to dispute the whole “water turns the other way in Australia” idea. Which brings to mind that funny Simpsons episode.

Here’s the interesting bit of their mission statement:

Then, in the year of our Lord fourteen-hundred and ninety-two, it all changed. For decades a small band of self-proclaimed “enlightened” individuals had been spouting their heretical nonsense that the Earth was in fact round. Citing “proof” based on nothing more than assumptions, half-truths and blind guesses, they dazzled the populace with their ” . . . undeniable mathematical and scientific evidence . . . that the world is shaped not like a pancake, but an orange!”

So are they just plain old cooks? Do you think they’re absolutely true? Or maybe you just like their quote at the top of their website…”Deprogramming the masses since 1547″.

The Queen of England sent an official Birthday telegram to Flook, the Burmese cat, for his 100th birthday. Few humans ever receive such an honor, and Flook may be the first pet to ever have his birthday officially recognized by her Majesty.

Owner Chris Evans from Windermere, Cumbria, wrote to Buckingham Palace to inform the Queen that his beloved pet was set to celebrate reaching a century in cat years – that’s roughly 23 in human years.

And, in a surprising break with protocol, she received an official congratulatory telegram signed by Her Majesty.

Mr Evans said: “I have watched Flook grow up from a kitten and I am very proud of her. I really just sent the letter tongue in cheek and didn’t expect anything back. But when I got the letter from Buckingham Palace I nearly fell over.”

[Daily Mail UK]

Alexander Shopmann, a 55-year-old German retired stockbroker, thought of a bright idea one day to create Smokers International Airline, Smintair for short.

Shopmann claims that in an age of extremely limited freedoms, and cramped/stuffy/terrible airflights, his new airline will offer an experience that a flier won’t be able to find anywhere else. And it’s true:

SMINTAIR reinstates the liberty of smoking in all seats. Non-smokers will find the cabin air more refreshing than on any other flight with any other airline, as SMINTAIR adds fresh outside air to the conditioning system! This is more expensive, as it burns more fuel, but it is seen as an additional service to our guests.

Where do you think those colds you get right after a flight come from? STUFFY AIR!

More interesting “features:” Keep reading this »

To most, General Tso is recognized only by the fact that his name precedes the word “chicken” in the delictably sugary-spicy, deep fried, garlicky, meet tidbit dish universal to Chinese take-outs across the United States. However, what most people do not know is that General Tso was a ruthless military leader who met the height of his day during China’s greatest civil war, the 14-year-long Taiping Rebellion, which claimed millions of lives…. “Setting their chopsticks aside, patting their stomachs, the satisfied diners spare scarcely a thought for General Tso, except to imagine that he must have been a great connoisseur of hot stir-fried chicken.”

Tso’s compaigns were absolutely ruthless. During the Taiping Rebellion, he managed to smash the rebels in four provinces and put down an unrelated revolt called the Nian Rebellion. He THEN continued to march west and reconquer Chinese Turkestan from Muslim rebels.

Is it possible that, struggling to carve out a new life in America under backbreaking adversities, and having heard of the sword skills of the remorseless General Tso (who had the top leaders of the Nian Rebellion executed with the proverbial “death of 10,000 cuts”), the overseas exiles indulged in some gallows-humor about their old enemy? That the chopped-up chicken dish may have gotten its name from the sliced and diced victims of Tso’s grim reprisals?

How’s that for slice and dice chicken?

[Washington Post]

A new device, The Mosquito Box currently in used only in Britain, sends out 80 decible bursts of sounds that can only be heard by teenagers.

The ultra high-pitched noise can only be heard by those under 20, and is so discomforting that it forces young people around it to quicky disperse after a few minutes. The new gadget has been installed in hopes of deterring loiters and gangs around restaurants and other commonly frequented store-front areas.

The box can be mounted on the outside walls of any building, and it’s piercing 16khz pulsing sounds will not penetrate walls. To teenagers, the sound resembles a “demented insect” or “a very badly played violin.” Additionally, shop owners can control the strength of the signal as loiterers come and go.

Because the body’s natural ability to detect some frequency wave bands diminishes almost entirely after 20, adults are completely immune to the sounds.

[Telegraph.co.uk]

From “Edheads” comes VIRTUAL KNEE SURGERY: Take on the role of the Surgeon throughout a total knee replacement surgery.

The game starts out with a reception woman and the desk, and hospital reception noises.

Keep reading this »

Actual photo of pluto. (Click for larger verion.)

Pluto is a planet no more. The IAU classified the ex-planet as a “dwarf planet,” during it’s 2006 General Assembly. From AP, CNN:

Much-maligned Pluto doesn’t make the grade under the new rules for a planet: “a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a … nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit.”

Pluto is automatically disqualified because its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune’s.

Instead, it will be reclassified in a new category of “dwarf planets,” similar to what long have been termed “minor planets.” The definition also lays out a third class of lesser objects that orbit the sun — “small solar system bodies,” a term that will apply to numerous asteroids, comets and other natural satellites.

Pluto was discovered in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh. Here’s an interesting tidbit from Wikipedia: Keep reading this »