Xenophilia (True Strange Stuff)

Blog of the real Xenophilius Lovegood, a slightly mad scientist

  • Past Posts

  • c

  • Flickr Photos

    Mad Beach

    More Photos
  • Video Picks

  • Subscribe

Archive for February 18th, 2008

Welcome to the temporary Blog of the real Xenophilius Lovegood (aka Xeno)

Posted by Xeno on February 18, 2008

2/18/2008: After a review, my ISP decided not to re-instate xenophilia.com which they were hosting because it was getting too much traffic.

It remains to be seen if Aplus.net will issue a credit for the balance of my 10 years of hosting with “unlimited bandwidth” or if I will need to file a lawsuit in San Jose where they are located.

This might make an interesting blog event: step by step with photos of my trip to the San Jose court house and so on. If they issue the full credit I won’t need to do that. I’ll just host my music files and blog elsewhere to keep the traffic down.)

 

2/15/2008: Xenophilia.com was suspended by my ISP because it became too popular. (As of January 2008 it was reaching over 15000 unique U.S. visitors per month according to Quantcast.)

- Xeno

Posted in Blog | No Comments »

How to Sleep at Work

Posted by Xeno on February 18, 2008

eyes.png

Are feeling sleepy in office? Really need some sleep..zzz…zzz… Here’s a solution, take a nap with these eyes stickers. Close your eyes and stick it, sleep for a few minutes and regain your energy.

Source: Bits & Pieces via Neatorama

Posted in Humor | 2 Comments »

More Recent Stuff

Posted by Xeno on February 18, 2008

The 63.02° house. [Dezeen]
10 insights from 11 months of working at Google. [Kaushik]
Want an obedient spouse? A new book says you should coach them like animals. [Newsweek]
5 common body myths debunked. [Cracked]
A license plate with nothing but the number “1″ on it went for a record $14 million at a charity auction. [ChinaDaily]
The development of dubai over the years. [Dubai-Architecture]
India unveils ‘people’s phone’ for £10 ($20). [Times Online]
Tea bags shaped like cigarettes. [FunniestGadgets]
Used missile base: rented to highest bidder. [Discovery]
Germs may actually help our bodies fight tumors. [Latimes]
A ban on the sale of cigarettes to anyone who does not pay for a government smoking permit has been proposed for Britain. [Guardian]
Machines will achieve human-level artificial intelligence by 2029, a leading US inventor has predicted. [BBC]
This Lego machine gun shoots a dozen 10 mm steel balls in less than 2 seconds. [YouTube]
Pictures of sunset meeting lightning meeting rainbows. [Wetter-Foto]
How we fell in love, by the brother and sister who grew up apart and met in their 20s. [DailyMail]
On Wednesday evening, February 20th, the full Moon over the Americas will turn a delightful shade of red and possibly turquoise, too. It’s a total lunar eclipse—the last one until Dec. 2010. [Nasa]
Funeral dinner on a subway. [OddityCentral]
Fish accused of sexual harassment. [LiveScience]
Police say the driver of a bus filled with about 40 former prison inmates abandoned the vehicle Thursday along a highway because her working hours for the day were over. [Wfaa]
Firefighter cat rescue takes strange twist. [Citynews]
The wheelchair that is able to climb stairs. [I-Am-Bored]
Astronomers discover distant solar system similar to our own. [Afp]


A woman who has the remarkable ability to recall every trivial detail of every day of her life may be the key to unlocking the secret of how the human mind works. [Telegraph]
An entire apartment’s furniture in one small box. [TreeHugger]
Chef Ben Shewry and his novel cooking technique, which involves a battery-powered, fan-forced bong (a water pipe used for smoking marijuana). [The Age]
Fish beer created by brewer. [Metro]
‘Spongy’ handshake with GP saves man’s life after doctor recognised rare killer brain tumour. [DailyMail]
Some cool pictures of things “swallowed” by trees. [Elitefeet]
For unlikely dessert, try hot chocolate and beer. [Ptr]

Posted in Health, Mind, Space, Strange Happenings, Technology | No Comments »

Catching Up: Recent Strange News

Posted by Xeno on February 18, 2008

(WINK News) Weird Worshippers praise youth pastor for confessing to murder
Local6 Florida Girl — worried that her ex-boyfriend was going to hurt her — calls police so much, they threaten to arrest her. Less than one month later, she’s the victim of a murder-suicide carried out by her ex-boyfriend
ABC 2 Hero Woman dodges bullet — literally — and it’s caught on tape. Then whips out her own gun and chases the robber out of her store
BBC Weird NZ society for the prevention of cruelty to animals are planning a U.S. release of a music CD which makes dogs turn beserk and violent when they hear it
SFGate Amusing “Not everybody signed the Declaration on July 4. Some patriots said, ‘I’m going to have my people kick this around, and I’ll get back to you.’ Only they said it with all their s’s looking like f’s.”
ICNetwork Weird Couple sees UFO, nearly wreck car. “It was a clear night and I thought ‘blinkin’ ‘eck, what’s that?’”
  • Leading thinkers ponder the greatest challenges of the next 50 years.
  • Fragments of world’s oldest Christian manuscript found in Egyptian monastery.
  • Opportunity watches the clouds drift by — on Mars. Cool videos.
  • It’s Bubble O seven: James Bond’s underwater car becomes a reality.
  • Magnetic Reconnection: Thunderblogger Donald E Scott says astrophysicists have no excuse for trying to reinvent the wheel.
  • Gecko ‘begs’ insect for honeydew.
  • Earth’s oceans are vast, but not big enough to escape humans.
  • Phytomining and the Biomass Backlash.
  • Cannabis casualties, hybrid cars, and gamma rays in your brain.
  • If you’re wondering whether the media is actually this confused about science (to put it charitably), or trying to confuse us, read this (’cause such rare and pricey candor deserves a bigger audience).
  • Nonsense, dressed up as neuroscience, is being peddled to school children by their ‘credulous and apparently moronic teachers’. (Right up there with video game doping.) A better explanation of the research the first article talks about can be found here…
  • How extended explanations in refutations affect their acceptance, or, what negative political campaigning has to do with Pride and Prejudice.
  • Evolution in the classroom: Willful ignorance is the product of more than just ‘a change over time’.
  • Dumb and Dumber: Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge? The Age of American Unreason is available at Amazon US & UK.
  • What have we become?: Thoughts on Some Lessons From The Underground History of American Education.
  • New research shows that humans flock like sheep and birds, subconsciously following a minority of individuals.
  • When and why did languages become untranslatable? A proposed answer.
  • Study finds some thoughts really do require language.
  • Cognitive Dissonance: A recent example brings the original case study to mind.
  • How the ‘engineering mentality’ produces terrorists.
  • Wired’s Lore Sjöberg recently discovered that ‘the mind is a cruel, lying, unreliable bastard that can’t be trusted with even an ounce of responsibility.’
  • Dopamine and Orgasm.
  • Australian scientists are developing a remote-controlled contraceptive implant for men. Guys and their gadgets…
  • Jonah Lehrer on the psychology and neuroscience of back pain.
  • How to get smarter, and (incidentally) save the world.
  • The Peace Drug: Post-traumatic stress disorder had destroyed Donna Kilgore’s life. Then experimental therapy with MDMA, a psychedelic drug better known as ecstasy, showed her a way out. Was it a fluke — or the future? Editor’s Note. Ironic, don’t you think, considering this next article…
  • One thousand lives a month: A renowned researcher estimates that 22,000 patients could have been saved if the Food and Drug Administration had removed the heart surgery drug Trasylol two years ago, when his study revealed widespread death associated with it. (Video segment from ‘60 Minutes’.)
  • Spiritual healing: More hokum, or the ‘missing link’ in medicine?
  • Paranormal investigator called in after sewage workers are stalked by ‘zombie’ in underground tunnels.
  • Officials mystified by three bodyless right feet, each in a sneaker, that have washed up on the shores of British Columbia over the past six months.
  • Man says he’s found long-lost civil war gold, but the state won’t let him dig.
  • Newly-found documents related to JFK assassination expected to be grist for conspiracy theorists.
  • China: From basket case to superpower in 30 years.
  • How Attila the Hun, aka ‘The Scourge of God’, ground the whole of Europe to dust. If you’re into historical fiction, try William Napier’s Attila trilogy (books one, two & three) at Amazon UK.
  • We were stardust, we were golden: Memories of Australian rock festivals past.
  • The Wiki History of the Universe in 200 Words or Less. Why am I suddenly humming the melody to We Didn’t Start the Fire?
  • How imperfect symmetry shaped the universe we know.

Posted in Strange Happenings | No Comments »

History Channel: Real Man Made Space Saucers tested in Roswell, NM

Posted by Xeno on February 18, 2008

Posted in Technology, UFOs | Tagged: | No Comments »

Hello world!

Posted by Xeno on February 18, 2008

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!

Posted in Blog | 1 Comment »