It’s a Cronenbergian thing

knee

I was just in to the local clinic to have a misbehaving knee taken care of: I got a needle stuck in there, some fluid drawn out, an injection of steroids and an anesthetic, and then I had blood drawn for another test. I know some people have a horror of needles, but I think I have the opposite — I find my internal fluids fascinating, and seeing technology digging into them is actually kind of cool. Not that I’m going to seek out opportunities to be stabbed and poked, though…being a smoothly running machine that doesn’t need repair work is even cooler.

I also quite enjoy getting dental work done. There may be something wrong with my brain.

Creepiest item on Amazon

I don’t want one. It’s an Infant Circumcision Trainer, and what it is is a plastic baby torso, with a collection of little disposable rubber baby penises that you can plug into it and practice snipping bits off.

No, don’t click the link. It will haunt you, and the FBI will put you on a list, and Satan will appear in your living room and make an offer on your soul. As another curse, every time you visit Amazon you’ll get offered the strangest stuff. Customers Who Viewed This Item Also Viewed Nicolas Cage Pillowcase Covers, Sperm in Testis of a Rat Peel and Stick Wall Decal, and Look And Feel Canadian Breath Spray.

But hey, if you’re in the market for the kind of tchotchke that will scare all the neighbors away and make them whisper warnings to their children about you, it’s only $192.

Becoming one with John Galt

mahakala

Here’s a weird mashup for you: Dark Buddhism, one man’s attempt to fuse Buddhism with Randian Objectivism. To his credit, he’s quite clear on the flaws in the Cult of Ayn Rand, but it’s still strange to care so much about Rand’s bogus philosophy that you want to rescue it by stitching it up: building a hybrid of selflessness and selfishness is a contradiction sure to spawn deepities.

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Ding-a-ling-a-ling

Happy-Rapture-Day

Cody Carson is an inventor, and he’s also one of those weird fundamentalists who believes in that load of unbiblical nonsense that is the Rapture (this is not to imply that if it were Biblical, it wouldn’t be nonsense). He has invented a device to detect when Christians magically disappear.

A Spring Clamp Switch was the type of vanishing sensor I built to demonstrate a working model of a Rapture Alarm in a demonstration given to a church congregation a few years ago. I used this type because it is easy to understand and can be built for less than $7. I purchased a medium size spring clamp and a pull chain switch from a local home center. I then drilled two holes in the handle of the clamp. I mounted the switch in one hole and mounted the pull chain in the other hole. Squeezing the clamp once cocked the switch. Releasing the handles cause the chain to be pulled, thus activating the switch. I then hooked the switch up to a light and placed the clamp onto a broom handle. When I snatched the broom handle out of the clamp, the light came on. When mounted to an arm or leg of a deceased Christian, the sensor would activate when the body vanishes, thus detecting the rapture.

In my demonstration, I clamped the sensor to a cow’s leg bone to represent a bone surgically removed from a Christian organ donor. This was to demonstrate that rapture related devises could be constructed in controlled lab settings and would not require the use of a grave or tomb. That sensor was wired to a computer tower and when the bone was removed from the clamp, the congregation heard an audible alarm.

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