Today’s Japanese phrase is 世界 (sekai) – the world; society; the universe
This must be why they call it a cell block – Family visits in Sao Paulo prisons only take place once a week but jailed Brazilian gangsters chat on their contraband cell phones every day. Smuggled cell phones are used to keep in contact with families but also to direct criminal operations outside the penitentiary walls — such as the gangster offensive unleashed in Sao Paulo in the past week. You’d think they’d scramble the frequencies there blocking cell phones from entering or leaving.
Friends Repay Joker With Human-Cage Prank – A practical joker got a taste of revenge when friends turned part of his apartment into a human-sized hamster cage, complete with shredded newspaper bedding, a six-foot exercise wheel and a giant water bottle. “It was a lot of work, but it was one of those cases where you do it because you have to,” said Keith Jewell, a longtime friend and neighbor who engineered Monday’s hamster-cage prank on Luke Trerice. Trerice, 28, had it coming: In 2004, he enlisted others to help him encase another friend’s apartment and most of his belongings in aluminum foil. … The group worked through the night before Trerice’s arrival, shredding newspaper, blowing up a beach ball, installing the water bottle in a window and filling a metal feed bucket with Cheetos. There wasn’t time to finish a few details, such as lining the walls with wire fencing. Sounds like fun!
Girl, 10, Goes for Drive, Hits Other Cars – A 10-year-old girl who drove off with her guardian’s sport utility vehicle with a toddler and a 5-year-old on board crashed the vehicle into several cars, authorities said. … Sheriff’s deputies charged the girl as a juvenile with kidnapping and false imprisonment and vehicle theft. The highway patrol charged her with careless driving, not having a driver’s license and not using a child restraint. I just found the charges silly…
Chinese salesman jailed for organising gay orgies – A Chinese salesman has been jailed for a year for organising homosexual orgies through the Internet, Xinhua news agency said on Friday.
Morgellons Disease Baffles Patients And Doctors (from /.) – … Instantly, he says, a bolt of pain shot up his arm. He tugged on another one and the pain snaked up his neck. Then the really creepy part began. “It felt like bugs under the skin of my arms, in my joints,” Lawrence says. “I freaked out.” Across the country, thousands of people complaining of the same horrifying phenomenon have formed an illness subculture. They share lists of symptoms, medical speculation and tales of run-ins with mainstream doctors at www.morgellons.org, the official Web site of a group called the Morgellons Research Foundation. This totally reminded me of the scene from Oldboy.
Apple Store, Fifth Avenue (from /.) – Grand Opening – The Apple Store, Fifth Avenue, is now open — and it will stay open 24/365, so we can help you around the clock. Wow, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year… Wow. Do check out their photo gallery. Apple stores are so pretty. I think Belldandy has a reason now to visit NYC.
Gotcha! (MOST DEFINITELY NOT WORK SAFE!) Internet cybersex pranks… Good thing the guy didn’t show his face. This is like bloodninja on a totally different level.
Elephants Dream (from /.) – A 3D animation project completely done using open source software. The video is also licensed under the creative commons license. From Wikipedia: Elephants Dream is a story with quick-witted dialogue, tightly designed architecture and unusual sound effects. The main characters, Emo (a cool young trumpeter) and Proog (a confused – or maybe not? – loner) are each stuck in a world of their own. At a certain moment they cross paths with one another. The oddball Proog cautiously tries to introduce his young friend Emo to his world. When Emo realizes that Proog primarily wants to push his ideas on him, this leads to a conflict between them. But can Emo survive in Proog’s world? And can they overcome their conflicts, or will they each go their own way in life? Tygo Gernandt and Cas Jansen create two unique personalities that command the imagination, and carry the viewer along into a bizarre world that consists of a bleak wasteland with a tangle of cables and other alien landscapes, a living typewriter, an enormous elevator shaft, and especially a lot of very strange birds. It was a weird experience. I didn’t think much of the 10 minute video at the beginning. The animation and designs were incredible, but the voice acting and the storyline was truly lacking. However, reading the description from Wikipedia, I guess it was a bit deeper than what I had orginally imagined. They have torrents for 480×270 | 720×405 | 1024×576 | 1920×1080. The last one also comes with AC3 5.1 SRS.
Japanese lab creates ‘Da Vinci’ voices (from /.) –
Using methods employed in criminal investigations, the Japan Acoustic Lab says it has analyzed the skeletal structures of the historical figures’ faces to replicate how their voices would have sounded. The voices are part of the intense promotion of the Hollywood film on Microsoft’s Japanese site at http://promotion.msn.co.jp/davinci/voice.htm. … Suzuki, who frequently appears in popular media, has used his skills in a variety of fields, such as analyzing voices in purported recordings of Osama bin Laden. Many people on /. were arguing how does one compensate for local accents and other factors. I’m not an anatomist, but I’m guessing the facial bone structure and other factors like height and body size can give a pretty good estimate on what pitch and tone someone is likely to have. Thinking about it some more, I believe the pitch/tone someone uses in normal daily conversation is probably the voice that requires the least amount of energy. I mean I talk in a really high pitch, but that would require me exerting extra energy to accomplish. What would be interesting would be to see them do it on real people today. The article claims they have done a sample on Osama bin Laden. It would be interesting to see how well it compares to the recordings.
Friend left as deposit at gas station – A German woman left her friend as a deposit at a gas station because she did not have enough cash to pay for her petrol, police said Wednesday. “She didn’t have enough money to pay the bill, so her friend stayed behind as a human deposit while she went to withdraw cash,” said a spokesman for police in the southern town of Muenchberg. “Unfortunately, the woman did not return.”
