Archive for January 13th, 2007
Welcome To Sealand!
The Swedish file-sharing website “The Pirate Bay” is planning to buy its own nation in an attempt to circumvent international copyright laws.
This “micronation” called Sealand has a rather interesting history. It was founded on the principle that any group of people dissatisfied with the oppressive laws and restrictions of existing nation states may declare independence in any place not claimed to be under the jurisdiction of another sovereign entity. The location chosen was Roughs Tower, an island fortress created in World War II by Britain and subsequently abandoned to the jurisdiction of the High Seas. The independence of Sealand was upheld in a 1968 British court decision where the judge held that Roughs Tower stood in international waters and did not fall under the legal jurisdiction of the United Kingdom. This gave birth to Sealand’s national motto of E Mare Libertas, or “From the Sea, Freedom”.
The official language of Sealand is English and the Sealand Dollar has a fixed exchange rate of one U.S. dollar. Passports and stamps have been in circulation since 1969.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not quite ready to start packing my bags just yet.
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Why settle for a boring computer mouse when you can surft in style with Road Mice, a wireless cool computer mouse that looks just like the car of your dreams? Road Mice is available in various Chevy, Chrysler, Dodge, and Ford models including the popular Corvette shown to the left. It's the perfect gift for the auto-enthusiast in your life! |
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Rickshaw Vespa.
Here’s a rickshaw Vespa, custom made by Indoscooter! Link – via The Wasp and the Beetle
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Hellholes, a Web Mini Series.
Hellholes is a web series from AtomFilm Studios, directed by Efram Potelle and Kyle Rankin, about a guy who discovered that his mobile home is a portal to hell.
There are two "webisodes" now. Update 1/14/07: Okay, some people were surprised there are scarry images in a horror-spoof series called “Hellholes”. Now you’ve been warned.
The pilot:
And the second installment:
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Laurent Perbos' Artworks.
See more weird sports-themed art made by Laurent Perbos: Link – via VVORK
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River Rock Doormat.
This clever doormat from Acacia won’t wear or fade, because it’s made from polished river rocks! (Maybe the rocks will pop out though…)
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| Wizard of Oz, the Short Version | See more T-Shirts
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Hans-Peter Feldmann's David in Pink.
Found at anArchitecture, who wrote that the 6-meter tall pink replica of Michelangelo’s David was used as a landmark for "The Eighth Square" exhibition of the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany.
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Pizza Chains Accepts Pesos, Gets Death Threats Too...
Pizza Patron, a pizza chain restaurants located near the US border with Mexico, just wanted to drum up business by posting a sign that it now accepts the pesos:
Many Pizza Patron customers have pesos “sitting in their sock drawers or in their wallets,” Gamm said. “We’re talking small amounts, where it would be inconvenient to stop and exchange on the way back — maybe 10 or 20 dollars’ worth of pesos.”
But it got more than it bargained for: death threats!
“This is the United States of America, not the United States of Mexico,” one e-mail read. “Quit catering to the damn illegal Mexicans,” demanded another. …
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Canadian Coin Bugged.
From the website:
They say money talks, and a new report suggests Canadian currency is indeed chatting, at least electronically, on behalf of shadowy spies.
Canadian coins containing tiny transmitters have mysteriously turned up in the pockets of at least three American contractors who visited Canada, says a branch of the U.S. Department of Defence.
Link – via Boing Boing
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Soviet Bus Stops.
A fantastic collection of Soviet-era bus stop by Christopher Herwig at Polar Inertia: Link – via Presurfer
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V-J Day, Times Square, 1945 Tattoo.
As you can see, the tattoo represents the image by Alfred Eisenstaedt from 1945 posted before on Neatorama.
CONTENT WARNING: If you follow the link, be warned that it may be hard to watch. The website contains strong body modifications, blood and more. Link
There’s also a cool Greta Garbo portrait tatoo here.
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Smart Animals.
Featuring a dog, a bird and a Badger who use tools. Link – via i-pets
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Ballpoint Pen Chandelier
This chandelier is made entirely from Bic ballpoint pens. It’s not known how many pens were required to make the chandelier. It was designed by Enpieza Design Studio and only 12 were made. Link. via Militant Platypus
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This Could Be the Face of Dante.
The BBC reports:
Dante died in 1321 shortly after finishing Paradise, the last book of the Divine Comedy.
His bones were moved to the northern town of Ravenna in 1509 by monks who feared they might be stolen from his home town.
The face has been modelled from measurements taken of the skull when the crypt was opened in the 1920s.
The measurements are thought to be correct but the
jawbone, which was missing from the crypt, has been engineered to fit
the skull.
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Stalin, The Original Man of Steel.
The Basics: Joseph Stalin [wiki] is stirring proof that if you get into an organization at its very beginning, you can rise to great prominence even if you happen to be an evil, tyrannical murderer whom no one ever liked. Stalin became a Marxist in the late 19th century, and although Lenin mentored him for a long time,
he grew to mistrust him, and other Communists thought he was crazy. But Stalin managed to hang around the circles of power. After Lenin’s death, he muscled Leon Trotsky and others out and took the reins himself. He went on to consolidate his power in the late 1930s by killing everyone who’d ever said or thought anything vaguely negative about him. Unfortunately, he also threw the country into a disastrous famine with his farm collectivization project, and he sent millions to Soviet concentration camps known as gulags. In short, he was pretty horrible.
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Although he took great pains to hide it, Stalin was not, technically, Russian. Born in Gorgi, Georgia (which later had the pleasure of having its population decimated by Stalin’s disastrous economic policies), Stalin was christened with the distinctly un-Russian last name Dzugashvili. ("Stalin" was a nickname derived from the Russian word for steel.) In fact, throughout his life, Stalin spoke with a thick Georgian accent. Mentioning his accent, however, was verboten in government circles.
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Also, you were well advised not to ridicule that famous Stalin ’stache. In a poem intended only for friends, Osip Mandelstam [wiki] compared Stalin’s mustache to a cockroach. Thereafter, Mandelstam was repeatedly arrested and sent to a series of those infamous gulags.
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Before he was an atheistic tyrant, Josef Stalin was, oddly enough, a seminarian. He studied at a Georgian Orthodox seminary in Tiflis for five years, between 1894 and 1899. He left the seminary either because of poor health (his mom’s story) or revolutionary activity (Stalin’s story). Either way, Stalin clearly didn’t take much of what he learned to heart. That is, assuming he had one.
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Nikita Khrushchev wrote that Stalin loved his daughter, Svetlana, like a cat loves a mouse. And Stalin’s other two kids didn’t even fare that well. He mostly ignored his son Vasily, an alcoholic with a sadistic streak. Stalin’s other boy, Yakov [wiki], was driven to shoot himself by his father’s relentless cruelty. When he learned that Yakov had only been wounded, Stalin said, "Ha! He can’t even shoot straight."
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In August 1941, Stalin announced that the government would arrest the families of all captured Russian officers because only "malicious traitors" would get captured by the Germans anyway. But then Yakov got captured, putting Stalin in the awkward position of technically being required to arrest himself. (Instead, he arrested Yakov’s wife.) When
the Germans offered a prisoner exchange, Stalin told them, "I have no son Yakov," which Yakov no doubt wished was true. Shortly thereafter, Yakov was shot and killed while running for the prison fence.
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Stalin once famously said, "One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic." Well, then, the statistics are staggering: Some historians believe that between the murder, the stage-sanctioned famine, and the concentration camps, Stalin was responsible for 40 million deaths. Forty million people is, approximately, the population of Spain.
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From mental_floss’ book Scatterbrained, published in Neatorama with permission.
Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ extremely entertaining website and blog!
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Big Family Rocking Chair
Hal Tayler, a custom rocking chair maker doesn’t like when someone is left out. So he built this chair to serve them all. – via smartstuff
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Update: Giant Rabbit off to North Korea
This 22 lb giant rabbit from Germany, higlighted by Neatorama last week, will soon be on its way to a new home – North Korea. The Communist state has determined that Karl Szmolinsky’s prize winning rabbits are the answer to its food shortages, and has already purchased 12 rabbits that they keep in a petting zoo until Szmolinsky can teach them how to bread the beasts. Link [Spiegel]
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