Penile plethysmograph
Good lord; until today, it was a routine practice by a service of the B.C. Ministry for Children and Family Development to assess a convicted sex offender by "attach[ing] a device to his penis [and then] play[ing] images of adults having sex and of naked children while monitoring the youth's level of arousal".
Sounds like something from the early half of this century.
Bill Murray will see you now
Great interview with Bill Murray by Dan Fierman of GQ.
Interesting – though fitting – that he hates Los Angeles, and purports to have never seen any episodes of Sienfeld except the last (and thought it was terrible).
Alberta family’s cat found in Yukon
I love reading unusual yet oddly heart-warming articles like this, wherein a cat managed to travel over 1100 km north to Whitehorse.
Update: Not two days later, a similar story where a doggie makes his way home over 80 km south to Winnipeg!
Why people play FarmVille
Good essay here on why people are apparently drawn to that Facebook game, and musing on its reflection of our societal problems.
Code that makes any song swing
Some dude has developed a Python tool that will apply a swing rhythm to any waveform. Some nifty examples. Crazy talk.
(via Andrew)
Weird news day
From the CBC:
Feces-squirting thieves sought in Toronto, after a spate of spraying bank-machine customers with liquid shit and then stealing their money. Bizarre.
And, Gary Coleman was apparently in hospital on life support (update: now dead. RIP.)
End of the line for Final Cut Studio?
According to AppleInsider, Apple is scaling back the Final Cut Studio apps to fit "prosumers". This sounds like an unfortunate disaster for the professional industry, but certainly seems to fit with Apple's trends the last few years.
I wonder if there's more to say.