George Carlin - The Illusion of Choice

Bow down to your corporate overlords! You don't know who they are? Just click on the picture below to see the few companies that own most of the products on which you rely, and then ask yourself what kind of freedom you have when so much of your choices depends on stuff going on behind the curtains inconspicuously serving the interests of corporate greed...

The picture kind of reminded me of some stuff George Carlin used to argue:

Boy, he threads a very fine line between a nutty conspiracy theorist and a true visionary

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Banksy on Advertising

And if you want some of his irreverent and thought-provoking humor, check out what he did with the intro to The Simpsons.

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Stuxnet: Anatomy of a Computer Virus

No, it's Stuxnet, not Skynet... and you may have more reason to fear the former than the latter, at least if your name is not John Connor... Stuxnet seems to be the first super weapon made entirely out of code. Unlike conventional weapons, it doesn't directly kill anyone, but this 21st century virus has the potential to wreak havoc in a scale and depth that's simply unprecedented, partly because it is open source and therefore because it can mutate...

Governments and corporations may be afraid of Anonymous, but it's probably Stuxnet they should probably fear more, as the following animation demonstrates:

And if you want to learn more, Ralph Langner describes in the following TEDTalk presentation how his team cracked the code that revealed the target, purpose and implications of this virus on steroids:

And you use Norton? How cute :)

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The Scanner's Prayer

If there is one thing most of us think is private, it's our thoughts. And the only time we tend to be okay with our private thoughts being heard by anyone would be when we silently pray.

If you happen to work with an MRI machine, however, you probably know that if there is anyone who can read your thoughts, it's that machine. So, before you have to use one, recite this prayer (and mean it... you can't fool it):

Our scanner, which art from Siemens,
Hallowed be thy coils.
Thy data come;
Thy scans be done;
In grey matter as it is in white matter.
Give us this day our daily blobs.
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive them that trespass onto our scan slots.
And lead us not into the magnet room carrying a pair of scissors,
But deliver us from volunteers who can’t keep their heads still.
For thine is the magnet,
The gradients,
And the headcoil,
For ever and ever (at least until we can afford a 7T).
Amen.

Via the Neuroskeptic blog.
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