Image via Cherry Bombed

BitTorrent search site IsoHunt will shut down, pay MPAA $110 million - Ars Technica

Brazil’s biggest drug cartel promises a ‘World Cup of terror’ as violent demonstrations take over the streets - Daily Mail

Skull of Homo erectus throws story of human evolution into disarray - The Guardian

Kim Jong Un’s luxurious ‘seven-star’ lifestyle of yachts, booze and food - Huffington Post

Regardless of bladder size, all mammals pee for approximately 21 seconds (with video goodness) - Discover Magazine

New study shows that brains process the pain of villains more than the pain of people we like - iTech Post

Justin Bieber covers Metallica’s “Fade To Black” (sorry in advance) - NME

“Don’t Try”: Charles Bukowski’s concise philosophy of art and life. Learn and practice it - Open Culture

Pope to auction Harley Davidson motorcycle to benefit homeless - NCR

Man throws parrot at police - Boing Boing

An army of robot baristas could mean the end of Starbucks as we know it - Quartz

Brain treats rejection like physical pain say scientists - The Independent

Dolphins butchered for shark bait in illegal hunt off the coast of Peru - ITV

First 24 hour automated library in U.S. installed in Norman, Oklahoma - KFOR

Astronomers discover a massive asteroid that could hit us in 2032 - io9

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Thursday classified outdoor air pollution as a leading cause of cancer in humans - Raw Story

Sources confirm Minneapolis Police officers will wear body cameras starting in 2014 - KSTP

Study: Poor children are now the majority in American public schools in South, West - Washington Post

Below, crooks steal 7-foot Gumby sculpture:

 
So, you’re a fan of Alien, and probably, like me, have watched it a-half-a-dozen times or more, and maybe still jump every time that nasty old Xenomorph bursts on screen? It’s something else, isn’t it? But did you know that the sound of the Alien, that high pitched pig squeal grunt, wasn’t created by some kind of Special FX, but by a 70-year-old animal impersonator, ornithologist, and entertainer, called Percy Edwards?

Edwards was born in Ipswich, Suffolk, in 1908, and from a very early age had a fascination for wildlife. This lead to his discovery that he had an uncanny ability to impersonate animals. By the time he was twelve, Edwards’ party trick was to tell short stories interspersed with his imitations of birds and other animals. As he grew-up, this little party piece soon became a career. Edwards was able to imitate over 600 different birds, and dozens of other four-legged friends. He started working for BBC radio in 1930, and was soon in considerable demand, providing the animal sounds for comic Ted Ray’s series Ray’s a Laugh, and then Psyche the Terrier on Life is Bliss. He also enthralled audiences at Music Halls and Variety Theaters across the country.

He also supplied the bird song for Kate Bush’s album The Dreaming, and the voice for such on-screen animals as the frogs in Michael Palin’s Ripping Yarns; whale in the Richard Harris/Charlotte Rampling movie Orca; the incessant buzz of The Killer Bees; most of the animals in Plague Dogs; “Fizzgig” in Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal; and the extraterrestrial in Alien.

I’ve been looking for clips of the famous scene where the Alien bursts out of John Hurt’s chest, as you can clearly hear Edwards’ inspired vocal creation but, alas, every time this clip appears YouTube, THWACK!, Fox has it taken down. Understandable, I suppose, but you can still make out some of his animal sounds in the film’s trailer.

What’s more surprising is how little there is of dear old Percy’s vocals skills available on the Internet. I can still recall watching him on ye olde BBC light entertainment shows, when I was a child, which (if you closed your eyes) was like listening to a whole menagerie of animals delicately taking over the front room.

The clip I did find (shot off some smartphone), only gives a wee sample of the man’s skills as both impersonator and comedy performer. It comes from The Morecambe and Wise Show in 1973, but at least you can now put a face to the voice of the Alien.
 

Percy Edwards as Fizzgig from ‘The Dark Crystal’—with thanks to Trisha Sheeley.
 
Bonus documentary on the making of ‘Alien,’ after the jump…
 

 
Deep into the night during an HBO broadcast of The Falcon and the Snowman in April 1986, subscribers were startled to see the start of the action interrupted by a four-and-a-half-minute transmission from a certain “Captain Midnight.” Over a test pattern, the message from Captain Midnight ran as follows:
 

GOODEVENING HBO
FROM CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT
$12.95/MONTH ?
NO WAY !
[SHOWTIME/MOVIE CHANNEL BEWARE!]

 
Captain Midnight turned out to be a John MacDougall, an engineer at a satellite transmission facility in Ocala, Florida. MacDougall’s hacker attack was motivated by frustration at HBO, who he felt was overcharging satellite customers and hurting his satellite dish business. MacDougall was sentenced to one year’s probation and a $5,000 fine.

MacDougall’s annoyance had to do with a change in HBO’s decision to deny free access to their signals, as had been the case earlier:
 

Back in the early-80s, satellite dish owners were responsible for owning and servicing their own equipment but had access to any satellite broadcasted programming including that of cable providers. In the mid-80s, cable channels began scrambling their programming and charging fees to home satellite dish owners who accessed the signals requiring many satellite dish owners were forced to purchase expensive descrambling equipment in addition to paying monthly or annual subscription fees to cable programming providers. Satellite. When HBO scrambled its signal, it offered subscriptions to home dish owners for $12.95 per month, which was either equal to or slightly higher than what cable subscribers paid. Dish owners were not happy and it triggered a national movement among dish owners to more strongly regulate the cable industry and force them to stop anti-competitive pricing.

 
On April 27, 1986, MacDougall was working at Central Florida Teleport, overseeing the uplink of the movie Pee-wee’s Big Adventure for the pay-per-view network People’s Choice (now defunct). At the end of his shift, he aimed it at the location of the satellite that carried HBO. As a protest against the introduction of those high fees and scrambling equipment, he transmitted his signal, which briefly overrode HBO’s own signal.

Finding out the identity of Captain Midnight was no easy task. The FCC reasonably started with the premise that the perpetrator must have had access to a large dish with a powerful transmitter. The signature of the color bar test pattern further narrowed down their search. The investigation received a big boost when a witness reported hearing a conversation on a pay phone in which the caller kept referring to himself as “Captain Midnight.” The search took several months.
 

 
via Museum of Hoaxes

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Public park ‘sound sculpture’ hacked with porno sounds
In the Realm of the Hackers

 
Incredible Instant Adoring Boyfriend is a DVD intended to provide a sort of simulated “boyfriend” experience, but only if your idea of a boyfriend is an obsessive simpering weirdo. The half hour performance feels like it was created by aliens who based their idea of heterosexual romance on a amalgam of sexist sitcoms. The “boyfriend” (shudder), compliments you on your thinness on one hand, while telling you how unattractive thin models are on the other. He buys you flowers, and does an extensive amount of chores, including your “hand-washing” (I’ve never trusted, let alone asked, a boyfriend to wash a bra in my life, but to each her own.) The entire thing is just watching a dude fawn and coo; it’s legitimately unnerving.

At the end of the “film,” the creeper proposes to you, and the camera actually refocuses in on the ring, as the the man becomes a blur in the background. How’s that for a symbol of matrimonial obsession?

While I assumed this “model boyfriend” was a total fabrication of what really obtuse men think women want, I checked around, just to see if there were any actual women endorsing the DVD. And holy god. I think I may have found her. Below is the single Amazon product review for Incredible Instant Adoring Boyfriend. Spelling errors have been preserved for posterity.

I got this out of curiousity and because it looked fun.People might think it’s lame, but it’s not. Just fun for the single girl. With all the good vibes and compliments he had, my “boyfriend” actually put me in a good mood! Sure, he’s just on a dvd and there isn’t anything interactive about him, but that’s sort of the point. You just sit back, relax and enjoy him complimenting you.

I work hard like most people, so it felt nice to be doted on, even if it was only pretend. Something about someone paying so much attention to you and thinking your special really is nice, so I guess now I know a little bit about what it feels like to have a boyfriend.

As to the content, I won’t spoil everything, but I will tell you that he treats you like a princess and “takes” you on vacations. (He just talks about taking you there.) He actually asks how your day was, too, and does chores. The ending is nice as well.

While the DVD is pretty good, I do have a few complaints.

It could have come with a rating. I was expecting something G or PG-rated, but it caught me off gaurd when he suggested getting in the shower with him and scrubbing my back and later started talking about, um, “relations”, to put it delicately. (Nothing graphic, mind you, just about his friends rating thier girlfriends and saying that “out of ten you’d be an eleven.”) Seeing him in a towel I could’ve also done without, particularly when he started showing a lot of leg. (Don’t worry, he keeps it on and changes off screen.) It’s not that I don’t like seeing guys in towels, but when that much leg is shown (his thigh, to be exact) I get uncomfortable. I know it’s nothing terrible compared to what you might see in a TV show, but some of the things I mentioned did manage to make me blush. Anyway, while it looks cute and innocent from the cover, I don’t think it’s suitable for a minor.

The editing or something wasn’t that great. While I watched it I’m pretty sure I heared the camera man or someone cough off-screen. Also, I think it’s kind of sad how you can tell it was shot in a very small studio, but I guess they didn’t have a very big budget.

Maybe it’s me, but the producers of this video could’ve found a more attractive man to portray the ideal boyfriend. The dude they picked is cute, but not gorgeous. A male model with some acting skills would’ve been better. There are quite a few moments in the dvd where all you do is stare at him for at least two minutes. I’d feel much happier doing that if he looked more like Tom Welling or Wentworth Miller. Too bad it didn’t come with a selection of men to choose from. That would’ve been nice.

All in all, it’s a fun dvd if you want to waste time or feel like being praised and doted on after a hard day’s work, but really is no substitute for a real boyfriend.

Jesus fucking Christ, I hope that review is trolling me, because if this really is the earnest review of woman who truly got some sort of emotional satisfaction out of this DVD… I will personally find her a flesh-and-blood boyfriend. Below is the video… I watched the whole thing, and I’m pretty sure it eviscerated any interest I may have had in future human intimacy. Good luck.
 

 
In what looks to be a dream come true for him, Portlandia funnyman Fred Armisen interviews Mick Jones and Paul Simonon as “Ian Rubbish,” one-time member of Clash-wannabe group, Ian Rubbish and The Bizarros.

According to Billboard:

The Clash collaboration represents a full-circle moment of sorts for Armisen. “I first saw The Clash in 1982 at Pier 84 in New York as part of the Dr. Pepper music series, when I was about 14 or 15,” Armisen recalls on the phone from Portland, where he’s filming season 4 of IFC’s “Portlandia.” “And after the show, I was waiting outside the gate and Kosmo Vinyl, who was a tour manager, was pointing people in like, ‘You, you and you.’ And I totally got to talk to Paul Simonon and Joe Strummer. And then a couple weeks later I got to see a dress rehearsal of ‘Saturday Night Live,’ where Ron Howard was hosting, and I totally got to see The Clash play again. It was unreal.”

Ian/Fred even gets to jam with his heros!
 

 
Thank you Jo Caulfield!

“Ma’am, what primary factor would you attribute your astonishing longevity to?”

A new study published in the American Journal of Medicine finds that heavy pot smokers tend to be slimmer than former marijuana users and non-smokers.

In the abstract, the researchers went into the background of the study:

There are limited data regarding the relationship between cannabinoids and metabolic processes. Epidemiologic studies have found lower prevalence rates of obesity and diabetes mellitus in marijuana users compared with people who have never used marijuana, suggesting a relationship between cannabinoids and peripheral metabolic processes. To date, no study has investigated the relationship between marijuana use and fasting insulin, glucose, and insulin resistance.

They concluded:

We found that marijuana use was associated with lower levels of fasting insulin and HOMA-IR, and smaller waist circumference.

This would suggest that cannabinoids have a positive effect on metabolic processes.

I’m not a scientist, but the first thing that occurred to me is that this doesn’t seem to take into account the fact that bigtime potheads tend not to drink alcohol very much, if at all. I wonder how many of the non-smokers control group were in fact drinkers? I’d like to see a study pitting the physiques of big stoners versus moderate to heavy drinkers.

 
For those of you haven’t had a chance to read or get your paws on Penguin Classics’ Morrissey’s Autobiography yet, here’s Peter Serafinowicz singing the first page for you.

Now if we can only get Peter to sing the whole damned book. You know, kinda like a rock opera meets “books on tape” type of thing.

 
Recycling shipping containers to make desirable homes. One container can make an appealing guest house or office, while several can be used as building blocks to create larger, more spacious housing.
 

 

 
More container homes, after the jump…

 
I looooooove Bob Ross. Don’t get me wrong; I would consider anyone hanging one of his pieces in their home a domestic terrorist. I find his actual paintings schlocky and sentimental, but I love his attitude, accessibility, and his crusade to enable any would-be painter. So many people are too intimidated to even attempt making art. There’s something truly wonderful about a warm, encouraging voice teaching you a few basic techniques in the comfort of your own home. And “warm and soothing” was the Bob Ross trademark.

Ross actually developed his painting technique in the US Air Force, and while he assumed a “tough guy” demeanor on duty, it never really sat well with him. Hoping to leave the service someday, he wished to lead a more gentle lifestyle, and swore “never to scream again.”  Below is the beginning of the first episode of The Joy of Painting, (before he knew the show would run for 11 years), wherein Bob Ross soothes the ever-loving-fuck out of his audience members, and holds their collective hand through the process.

You didn’t have to be an expert, you didn’t even have to be good. Bob Ross was art therapy.
 

 
Via The Wall Breakers

 
Catherine the Great is one of those fascinating figures whose political power was often overshadowed by scandal. She did not, as popularly rumored, die attempting to have sex with a horse, but her real life was way more interesting. She had twelve well-known affairs, illegitimate children (no one’s totally sure which ones), and made lavish gifts to her consorts. She gave one of her boyfriends more than 1,000 indentured servants!

Cut to World War II, when a very surprised group of Soviet soldiers managed to stumble on ole’ Cathy’s special room while exploring a palace. It was packed with explicit art, wooden phalluses and some insane furniture. Instead of looting or burning the lot, the soldiers took pictures, and aren’t we grateful they did? Looking at the kinky personal effects of the rich and powerful is even better than going through their medicine cabinets! This is only some of the collection, as most of the photos and furniture have been lost or destroyed, but man… girl loved her some porn.

Definitely NSFW, unless you work at a really fun place, but since some of the most entertaining history is simply the gossip of yesteryear, consider this post educational!
 

 

 

 

Catherine the Great’s snuff box
 
ViaSang Bleu