Amy and I try to find couple costumes, so unless we go as Mr. and Mrs. Zipperface, this idea’s not for us. But I was struck by how realistic it looks, and how simple the project basically is. It’s just a regular zipper, glued to his face, blended in with makeup, and fake blood underneath.

He’s got a more detailed set of instructions at the YouTube page.

Starting with one single tweet — “RIP Gordon Lightfoot” — the false news was picked up, retweeted, and amplified until it hit the mainstream media (all of which took a mere 10 minutes, frighteningly).

Lightfoot himself, apparently on his way to a dentist appointment when he heard the news of his own demise on the radio, was actually alive and well, and everything was quickly cleared up.

Now, though, the author of that first tweet — let’s call her Tweeter Zero — has written an essay in the Globe and Mail about how the whole thing got started, and how it brought the wrath of the internet down on her:

By the time I went back online, Gordon Lightfoot was officially undead (phew!) and the witch hunt was on (uh-oh!). Media guru and sleuth Ian Capstick was hot on my trail, and even had my picture and the dreaded tweet in question on his blog. Commenters were gleefully posting personal information about me: my full name, where I lived, whom I worked for. So I did what anybody in my situation would do. I opened a bottle of wine, and began to drink.

(Full disclosure: I was briefly acquainted with the aforementioned Mr. Capstick during my days at Canadian University Press.)

Lest you think the poor Tweeter Zero is fully to blame, she broadcast the message only to her meagre 100 Twitter followers, and she blames the origination of the whole episode on a telephone prank call (“But nobody seems to be interested in him. He used the telephone. And dude, that’s just so 20th century.”)

A lesson, perhaps, in the power and speed of the information superhighway.

Now, we came not to bury Gordon Lightfoot, but to praise him:

privacy ≠ wrong

Reading about the magnetar burst that blinded satellites five years ago left me agape. Some facts, gleaned from this blog post at Discover Magazine:

If you crushed every car in the United States into the size of a sugar cube, that’s the density of this magnetar. Except the magnetar is 20 kilometres wide. That gives it a gravity that’s maybe 100 billions times as strong as Earth. And a magnetic field that may be a quadrillion times as strong.

So what happens when the surface cracks? In a ‘star quake’? Well, such a quake might have a Richter value of 32 — and remember, a Richter earthquake that’s 9 (like the one that caused the Indian Ocean tsunami, also five years ago) would be 10 times as powerful as Richer 8. A Richter 10 quake would be 100 times as powerful as a Richter 8. A Richter 11 would be a thousand times as powerful as a Richter 8. And so on. And this is a Richter 32.

The quake released a blast of energy — so much that in a fifth of a second, the magnetar released as much energy as our sun does in a quarter-million years.

It was 50,000 light years away, thank goodness. Which is really freaking far. But on some satellites, the resulting wave of photons completely washed-out their detectors — even through the photons had to travel through the satellite itself.

I can’t do it justice — and even the Discover blogger seems to struggle for superlatives to describe it — but let’s just say I’ve awed by how insignificant we are.

The odd part is that she only got a yellow card, or a warning. Since the video emerged, her team has suspended her, though.

An original short story, by Grant Hamilton. Based on the folk tale.

Read it, after the jump.

The Legend of Stingy Jack

Long ago, before your grandparents’ grandparents were even babies, back in the days when people didn’t much leave their towns or villages for most of their lives, and when the woods and empty fields that surrounded their homes were lonely, frightening places, there lived a man named Stingy Jack.

Of course, no one actually named him Stingy, not to his face. But there weren’t too many who spoke to his face much at all.

While villagers lived in the village, and farmers lived in the fields, Stingy Jack had a ramshackle old place deep in the dark woods, where few people ever went. Even hunters who stumbled across it got chills, and turned away.

He had a wee vegetable patch in the back, overgrown with thistles and weeds, and he kept a skeletal old goat tied up with rope. When he needed something else, he’d march to the village, where townsfolk would look down and cross the street to avoid him. Stingy Jack would snatch something from the shelf of some poor shopkeeper, and grudgingly offer up a coin to pay for it.

Now, the unlucky shopkeeper would always marvel, later, at the fact that Stingy Jack’s coins were universally bright, and shiny, and polished. They were  obviously well cared-for, which nobody could understand, since Stingy Jack himself lived in a hovel (said those who had seen it) and always wore rags that were near to falling apart.

But the shiny coins that he pulled from his wallet were always good, and the shopkeepers could never fully prove that when Stingy Jack paid for one thing, three or four other things seemed to disappear from the store as well.

Until, that is, one harvest eve, when Stingy Jack made a pilgrimage to the village and entered the blacksmith’s shop. The smithy had done a good deal of work this harvest, and his shop was filled with metal tools and trinkets.

Stingy Jack picked up a long, nasty metal spike, and offered a small coin to the blacksmith in payment. As always, it was a coin that looked new from the mint, crisply round, and bright and shiny. But the blacksmith was used to looking at bright shiny embers, and hot, glowing metal, so perhaps his eyes weren’t taken quite so much with the coin as other shopkeepers in the village. For even as the blacksmith took the coin from Stingy Jack’s begrudging hand, he glanced over to see a well-made silver cross disappearing into Jack’s other pocket.

“Aha! Thief!” cried the blacksmith, and Stingy Jack leapt up to flee.

Though it burned Stingy Jack to leave his coin behind, he knew he had been caught red-handed, and he burst through the door and out to the street, brandishing the spike menacingly, with the valuable silver cross hanging low in his pocket.

Attracted by the cries of the blacksmith, a dozen or more villagers were crowding around, and Stingy Jack knew that he had to flee. He raced through the village square and out into the fields beyond, with townsfolk pursuing him, hot on his heels.

He knew his only chance was to disappear into the woods — woods that they found fearful, and woods that he knew all the secret paths and groves.

But even as the sun set behind him, and he managed to dash through the trees, the pursuing townsfolk were close behind. He couldn’t lose them.

They were gaining on him, closer and closer; he could hear dogs barking, and see the glimmer of torches being lit.

Then he rounded a tree and stopped short. And old man, withered and gray, stood in his path. Stingy Jack could smell the smoke was all around him, and he trembled to think of what justice the townsfolk might dole out.

“Get out of my way,” he threatened the old man. “Get off my path!” But the figure in front of him lifted up his head, staring down Stingy Jack, and Stingy Jack knew, with a glance into the dark eyes, that he was face to face with the Devil himself.

“No, I think we’ll be walking this path together,” said the Devil, and Stingy Jack felt a shiver run down his spine, though his heels and deep into the cold ground.

“They’ll have their way with your body,” said the Devil, and a howl went up from the dogs of the townsfolk. “But your soul is coming with me.” And the Devil turned to take a fork that Stingy Jack knew hadn’t been there before.

“Stop!” cried Stingy Jack. “I know my soul belongs to Hell, and my body belongs to the dogs and men back there. But would you give up the chance to bedevil those that chase me? Why don’t you leave me the chance to befoul their lives one last time before you take me to my punishment.”

And the Devil, intrigued, allowed that a final trick would be in order. For in truth, the pleasant villagers were not easy pickings for the master of Hell, and he hadn’t much hope of capturing their souls.

“They give chase because I stole,” Stingy Jack said to the Devil. “And I left my coin behind. But I know that the Devil can assume any form. Make yourself appear to be a gold coin big enough to more than pay for my thefts. I’ll hand it over to those that chase me, and they’ll have to accept it. But when you later disappear, they’ll soon turn to fighting amongst themselves.”

“Agreed,” said the Devil, and in a flash of dark light, he became a dull, heavy coin, reddish-gold in the twilight. When Stingy Jack picked it up, it bore a deep warmth that nevertheless sent another chill down his spine.

As the villagers closed in, Stingy Jack didn’t hesitate. He plunged the coin deep into his pocket and pressed it close against the stolen cross.

Instantly, he could feel the Devil’s fury, but he held the cross tight against the evil coin.

“Release me!” demanded the Devil, furious at Stingy Jack’s betrayal. But Stingy Jack held fast, knowing that the cross kept the Devil powerless.

“I’ll release you under three conditions,” said Stingy Jack.

The Devil thrashed, but he knew that Stingy Jack had trapped him.

“What three?” he asked.

“Send the villagers home, make them forget that I ever stole,” said Jack. “That’s the first.” And the Devil agreed.

“A vault of riches,” added Jack. “A strongbox filled with gold and silver, enough to last me the rest of my life.” And the Devil agreed.

“And ten years,” said Stingy Jack. “You’ll not come after my soul for ten more years.” For Stingy Jack was sure that, with enough money, and with the forgetfulness of the villagers assured, ten years would be enough time to reform his own soul, and escape the Devil’s clutches forever.

“Ten years,” agreed the Devil. And so Stingy Jack released him from the cross in his pocket.

Instantly, the sounds of the pursuing villagers faded, and Jack found a chest overflowing with coins at his feet.

“Ten years,” repeated the Devil. “Mark me well — I’ll see you in ten years, Stingy Jack.”

Now Stingy Jack, alone in the forest with his new riches, was pleased, and thought that he had outfoxed the Devil. But as anyone knows, money doesn’t always make one good, and Stingy Jack found himself spending more and more time, alone in his ramshackle hut in the woods, counting coins and polishing them to be as shiny as could be.

His trips into town became even less frequent, and he begrudged handing over any of the Devil’s riches to the townsfolk, and he seemed to see them staring at him, looking out of the sides of their eyes as if they didn’t trust him, but didn’t quite remember why.

So one year became two, and two years became five. And five years became ten. And Stingy Jack was just as miserly as he ever had been, and just as miserable. And he was just as much an evil sinner. For though he didn’t steal, neither was he kind or neighbourly.

And as the sun went down one harvest eve, Stingy Jack found himself walking through the dark. The smoke from from harvest fires filled his nose and as he turned round a corner, he came face-to-face with a withered old man, and he knew instantly who it was.

“Ah, it’s you,” Stingy Jack said to the Devil.

“It’s been ten years,” the Devil said. “I’ve come to collect my due.”

And Stingy Jack hung his head, resigned to his fate, when inspiration struck.

“I’m an old man,” said Stingy Jack. “And I’m ready to face my fate. But if you wouldn’t mind granting me one small favour first.”

The Devil was wary, having been tricked before. But all Stingy Jack said he wanted was a single apple, so he wouldn’t have to go to Hell on an empty stomach.

And the Devil laughed, having a special love of apples, himself, and said he’d be happy to fetch starving Stingy Jack an apple from a tree. But as the Devil climbed up, Stingy Jack kept calling “Higher! The next one. The one that’s red!” until the Devil was near the very top of the tree, swaying in the breeze.

As the Devil reached out to finally pluck the highest apple, Stingy Jack reached into his pocket, and he pulled out the cross that he’d stolen ten years ago, and he planted it in the dirt at the base of the tree.

For a second time, Stingy Jack had trapped the Devil, and the Devil gnashed his teeth in fury, but couldn’t climb down past the cross.

“Leave me be!” shouted Stingy Jack. “I will free you only if you promise and pledge to never take my soul. Never!”

The Devil was furious angry, but powerless to refuse.

“Never, Stingy Jack, never will I take your soul — not even if you beg.”

This delighted old Jack, and he pulled the cross from the ground at the base of the tree, bowing with a flourish as the Devil climbed down and glared at him.

Then the Devil went his way, and Stingy Jack went home to his piles of silver and gold and his miserly life.

But, of course, the day soon came where Stingy Jack was on his deathbed. No one came to visit, but Stingy Jack didn’t care. He was still counting coins when he coughed his last, and his soul departed.

If you could see Stingy Jack’s soul, you’d see the last smile of his life, an ugly old grimace, self-satisfied as it cracked across his face.

Stingy Jack’s soul mounted all the way to Heaven, secure in the knowledge that he couldn’t belong to Hell. But the gates of Heaven remained closed fast, no matter how much he knocked or wailed.

And after months of trying, he gave up, and descended all the way to the doors of Hell. There, the Devil met him with a smile.

“Heaven won’t have me,” cried Stingy Jack. “And there’s nowhere else to be. You have my soul after all.” And he wept.

But the Devil laughed. “Oh no, Jack!” he said. “I’ll not take your soul. A promise is forever!”

Stingy Jack howled. “But where shall I go? Neither Heaven nor Hell will have me!”

The Devil cackled. “No punishment, no reward.”

As Jack turned, miserable, knowing that his soul was condemned to walk the earth forever, alone, the Devil called out.

“Take this!” the Devil shouted, tossing Jack an ember from Hell, which would never burn out. “It will light your way.”

The fires from the ember were too hot for Stingy Jack’s soul, so he went back to his shack in the woods, and he dug up a turnip from the weedy, overgrown patch, and he carved it into a lantern to hold the ember.

Some say that he wanders his woods to this day. Others, that he wanders the whole world.

But all agree that, in the dark or in the mist, especially on All Hallow’s Eve, if you’re very unlucky, you can feel the chill of Stingy Jack’s soul, the icy grip of his ghostly fingers tapping your shoulders.

But turn as you might, no candle or light can reveal him. He can only be seen in the fiery glow of his Hellish ember, flickering out from his carved turnip lantern.

The End

——–

(I wrote this myself, but the folktale is real. I drew on the information in this Wikipedia article, this Noareinna page, and this History.com page. Note that Wikipedia also refers to the legend on its “Jack-O’-lantern” page, where it also asserts that a Jack-O’-Lantern is not the wandering soul of miserable old Stingy Jack, but instead a term for a night watchman, with a lantern. Or a will-o-the-wisp. But I think we all know what is much more plausible.)

If you speak Indonesian, you’ll hear the news announcer telling you about a meteor that exploded in the sky above South Sulawesi, Indonesia, earlier this month. The clouds of smoke are the aftermath. I just saw an article about it in New Scientist:

[It released] about as much energy as 50,000 tons of TNT, according to a NASA estimate released on Friday. That’s about three times more powerful than the atomic bomb that levelled Hiroshima, making it one of the largest asteroid explosions ever observed.

However, the blast caused no damage on the ground because of the high altitude, 15 to 20 kilometres above Earth’s surface ….

The amount of energy released suggests the object was about 10 metres across, the researchers say. Such objects are thought to hit Earth about once per decade.

No telescope spotted the asteroid ahead of its impact.

I’m a big fan of increased spending to monitor the risk from spaceborne rocks. Until we colonize other planets — better, other solar systems — the human species remains at risk. We basically have all of our eggs in one basket. We call that basket “Earth.”

Have you ladies out there ever been travelling, and decided you were unhappy with your hair colour? If you’re in a strange city, you may not be able to find a salon, and who knows how expensive that would be? Never mind the hassle of traditional colouring methods! Or maybe you just need a quick and easy change.

If that’s the case, the  Lady Elegance Hair Colouring Brush is the product for you! Simply fill the brush with your favourite hair dye and voila! Instant change!

As Michael K. notes on Dlisted, the woman in the picture isn’t even using the brush on her real hair.

This reminds me of another ridiculous hair product that I can’t imagine anyone would use: the Flowbee. Because nothing says “great idea” like taking a glorified vacuum to your head.

At first, this looked kinds of fun. Then funny. And then frightening like all get out.

I have gone skydiving, but this looks like a wee bit more danger than I’d like to get into.

(via BB)

I have no idea what the purpose of this video was, if it was a  commercial, or an instructional video, but I am enthralled. Not only is it ridiculous with it’s “stats” but the advice is terrible! If a guy ever started trying to suck the air out of my mouth, I would think he was an Incubus trying to take my soul!

And no one, ever, would do the “Music Kiss.” Not ever.

(via Everything is Terrible)

Which uses all more electricity: all the video game consoles in the United States (Xbox, PS3, Wii, etc), or the entire city of San Diego?

The answer is, they’re tied. I’ll throw some numbers at you, for context:

• 40 per cent of all homes in the U.S. have at least one console
• San Diego is the ninth-largest city in the U.S.
• A PS3 or an XBox uses about as much energy over a year as two brand-new refrigerators
• A Wii uses less than 15% the power of a PS3 or an XBox
• There are 1.3 million people in San Diego, many of them chugging air conditioners in the southern California heat.

My eyes just about popped out of my head when I realized just how much power is being used by people leaving their video games on for days at a time, just because it’s easier than hitting the save button.

I learned about this from a New York Times story, but you can download the original report here, where you will also find out that using you game console as a Blu-Ray player uses several times more energy than a standalone player would.

Oh, and by the way: that’s 16 billion kWh of energy that San Diego and video games each use every year. The report’s authors estimate that 11 billion kWh of that could be trimmed with simple energy-saving ideas like an auto-save hibernation feature, like the one on your laptop.

So this was an eyeopener:

http://whattheinternetknowsaboutyou.com/

It displays a selection of your browsing history — including many popular websites, but also some of what you did there.

It’s currently uber-popular, and getting a bit slammed, so if you test it out, be prepared to wait a while, or come back later. Still, it’s worth visiting, just to see how much your web browser rats you out.

Try the (even slower) “all” page to see the full trail you leave behind you.

Now remember, the next site that seeks out this data might not be named “what the internet knows about you”. It could, in fact, just be code that’s hidden on whatever server supplies ads to one of your favourite sites.

And if you don’t care what your browser history tells, what about the saved passwords for your online banking, etc?

Uh-oh. I’ve made fun of the endless stream of “there’s an app for that” products for a while, but life is beginning to imitate humour just a little too much for my taste.

First, I saw this intelligent post over on Boing Boing Gadgets about how blogger Lisa Katayama lost her mind to her GPS:

I started to forget how to get places without it. The map in my brain became a distorted blur. And then my driving became more reckless. I invented this game where I tried to beat the estimated arrival time that the GPS gave me. Often, that entailed running yellow lights and exceeding the speed limit. Sometimes, the GPS fell off of its suction cup on the windshield and onto the floor, and I would have to fumble around with my right hand while steering the wheel and shifting gears with my left.

The string of comments is insightful — people comment that with cell phones, they no longer need to remember phone numbers, they no longer recall birthdays thanks to Facebook, even simple math is a skill that’s being forgotten. “Technology makes us lazy and dumb in specific ways so that we can (theoretically) use that brain-space for something else. Doesn’t always work that way,” says one.

Of course, this has been an argument since at least the invention of the pocket calculator. But I think the smartphone explosion — characterized by the iPhone, though not exclusively Apple’s fault — has really exacerbated the issue.

Because just now I read this little vignette:

“I’m running an app on my iPhone that tells me how much I can drink before I get into my car. And the lady behind the bar has poured you 8 ounces, not 6.”

“So you trust your iPhone to tell you precisely when to stop?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah. I also run a calorie app,” said Oliver, a little too enthusiastically.

“What’s a calorie app?” I said, dumbly.

“It’s an app that tells me exactly how much I should eat every day,” he replied. “But it’s a bit of a problem to be honest, because when it tells me I’m 300 calories under my limit, I then order a dessert, even though I don’t actually feel like eating a dessert.”

“So you let these apps tell you what to do and how to live?” I asked, feeling a weird frown forming above my shades. “Don’t you realize that half of this techy stuff was designed by people who barely see the light of day, adore only numbers and secretly want you to be a little more like them?”

Now, according to a piece on the BBC, scientists have discovered that super-colonies from different continents are, apparently, at perfect peace with each other.

Argentine ants in Europe, the US and Japan will not fight each other, and in fact treat each other as members of the same colony, according to the story:

The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination.

In Europe, one vast colony of Argentine ants is thought to stretch for 6,000km (3,700 miles) along the Mediterranean coast, while another in the US, known as the ‘Californian large’, extends over 900km (560 miles) along the coast of California. A third huge colony exists on the west coast of Japan.

…

Whenever ants from the main European and Californian super-colonies and those from the largest colony in Japan came into contact, they acted as if they were old friends.

These ants rubbed antennae with one another and never became aggressive or tried to avoid one another.

In short, they acted as if they all belonged to the same colony, despite living on different continents separated by vast oceans.

Freaky! And you know what? Even human colonies (we call them countries) separated by oceans sometimes fight and disagree. So I think the ants have one up on us there.

I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.