It is almost four years ago that The Pirate Bay announced they wanted to buy the micronation of Sealand, so they could host their site without having to bother about copyright law – an ambitious plan that turned out to be unaffordable. This week, Pirate Parties worldwide started brainstorming about a similarly ambitious plan. Instead of founding their own nation, they want to shoot a torrent site into orbit.

Pirate Parties Plan to Shoot Torrent Site Into Orbit | TorrentFreak

One of the more fascinating psychotic conditions in the medical literature is known as Cotard’s syndrome, a rare disorder, usually recoverable, in which the primary symptom is a “delusion of negation.” According to researchers David Cohen and Angèle Consoli of the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, many patients with Cotard’s syndrome are absolutely convinced, without even the slimmest of doubts, that they are already dead.

Some recent evidence suggests that Cotard’s may occur as a neuropsychiatric side effect in patients taking the drugs aciclovir or valaciclovir for herpes and who also have kidney failure. But its origins go back much further than these modern drugs. First described by the French neurologist Jules Cotard in the 1880s, it is usually accompanied by some other debilitating problem, such as major depression, schizophrenia, epilepsy or general paralysis—not to mention disturbing visages in the mirror. Consider the case of one young woman described by Cohen and Consoli: “The delusion consisted of the patient’s absolute conviction she was already dead and waiting to be buried, that she had no teeth or hair, and that her uterus was malformed.” Poor thing—that image couldn’t have been very good for her self-esteem.

Bering in Mind: Being Suicidal: What it feels like to want to kill yourself

Over forty years ago, Theodore S. Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, began work on a book. Per usual, he had assistants working with him, one of whom managed the project. For reasons noted below, he put the manuscript aside. Then, in 1983, he reconsidered it when his former employee sent it to him for a long-lost look.

It consists of nineteen handwritten and drawn pages, the first seven of which are completely in the hand of Dr. Seuss. The remaining pages are mostly written by an assistant with corrections and doodles by Dr. Seuss, some taped on.
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BOOKTRYST: Lost, Unpublished Dr. Seuss Manuscript Surfaces

LONDON (Reuters Life!) – Starch grains found on 30,000-year-old grinding stones suggest that prehistoric man may have dined on an early form of flat bread, contrary to his popular image as primarily a meat-eater.nullnullnullnullnullnullnull

Bread was around 30,000 years ago -study - Yahoo! News

My name is Michael Roberts, and I am a pilot for ExpressJet Airlines, Inc., based in Houston (that is, I still am for the time being). This morning as I attempted to pass through the security line for my commute to work I was denied access to the secured area of the terminal building at Memphis International Airport. I have passed through the same line roughly once per week for the past four and a half years without incident. Today, however, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents at this checkpoint were using one of the new Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) systems that are currently being deployed at airports across the nation. These are the controversial devices featured by the media in recent months, albeit sparingly, which enable screeners to see beneath people’s clothing to an extremely graphic and intrusive level of detail (virtual strip searching). Travelers refusing this indignity may instead be physically frisked by a government security agent until the agent is satisfied to release them on their way in what is being touted as an “alternative option” to AIT. The following is a somewhat hastily drafted account of my experience this morning.

Well, today was the day

Oct. 4, 2010 -- People who spend prolonged periods of time studying, reading, or playing games on laptop computers resting on their upper legs could develop “toasted skin syndrome,” a case report shows.

The “syndrome” consists of a brownish discoloration of the skin caused by prolonged exposure to heat from the computer.nullnullnullnullnullnull

Laptop Risk: ‘Toasted Skin Syndrome'

Here’s a full transcript of the interview with John Sculley on the subject of Steve Jobs.

It’s long but worth reading because there are some awesome insights into how Jobs does things.

It’s also one of the frankest CEO interviews you’ll ever read. Sculley talks openly about Jobs and Apple, admits it was a mistake to hire him to run the company and that he knows little about computers. It’s rare for anyone, never mind a big-time CEO, to make such frank assessment of their career in public.

UPDATE: Here’s an audio version of the entire interview made by reader Rick Mansfield using OS X’s text-to-speech system. It’s a bit robotic (Rick used the “Alex” voice, which he says is “more than tolerable to listen to”) but you might enjoy it while commuting or at the gym. The audio is 52 minutes long and it’s a 45MB download. It’s in .m4a format, which will play on any iPod/iPhone, etc. Download it here (Option-Click the link; or right-click and choose “Save Linked File…”).

John Sculley On Steve Jobs, The Full Interview Transcript | Cult of Mac

When a man says he wants half a million dollars to build a steam powered computer, it’s not exactly the most conventional of funding pitches.

When that same man says he wants to build the world’s first digital, programmable computer, the pitch begins to look stranger.

But for John Graham-Cumming, the author of science history travel guide The Geek Atlas, the pitch makes perfect sense. That’s because he’s trying to take an 1837 design by Charles Babbage and make it a reality.null

1837 steam powered computer could finally enter production

ISAAC ASIMOV would probably have been horrified at the experiments under way in a robotics lab in Slovenia. There, a powerful robot has been hitting people over and over again in a bid to induce anything from mild to unbearable pain - in apparent defiance of the late sci-fi sage's famed first law of robotics, which states that "a robot may not injure a human being".

Robot arm punches human to obey Asimov's rules - tech - 13 October 2010 - New Scientist

The iconic writer reveals the shape of things to come, with 45 tips for survival and a matching glossary of the new words you'll need to talk about your messed-up future.

A radical pessimist's guide to the next 10 years - The Globe and Mail