A robot that can pluck and move individual hair follicles on a person’s head makes hair transplants look more natural than those performed by humans, a US company claims.

Oh, the wonders of modern medical science.  Don’t you just get a happy little tingle every time you see the words “robot” and “pluck” together in a sentence?  Neither do I.

Once the “harvest” is over, the patient sits up to let the robot implant the follicles into the top of their head.

Again, another word that is just sinister when paired with robot: “harvest”.  Shudder.

Behind doors on the tombstone that can be locked is a QR code — a square code read by mobile phones that can link to Web addresses. Grave visitors can use the code to access images and photographs of the person while they were alive.

I, for one, eagerly await the release of the “.dead” top-level domain.

(via BoingBoing)

I was very suspicious and asked a number of questions: Isn’t it dangerous? How do you know the learner doesn’t have a bad heart and can’t take the shocks? What if he wants to stop, can he get out of the chair? The professor assured me that the shocks were not painful or harmful since the amperage was lowered as the voltage increased. He let me feel what a 45-volt shock would be like: a slight tickle. I asked the learner if he was willing to do this and why he didn’t have any questions. He said, “Let’s try it.” With some trepidation on my part, we began the experiment.

(via MeFi)

Kodak provides a webcam in their nest, and you can watch the rest of the eggs hatch over the next few days.

You can see the results of the previous TimeShoot on Flickr here.

(via Thomas Fitzgerald)

Let’s just say that I don’t think season 1 aged very well.  Oh, those 90s clothes and haircuts.  I just can’t get over the horror of them.

Anyway, I think I’m going to start getting more selective, and watch either the mythology arc with all the “Monster of the Week” episodes trimmed out, or do it the other way around.

Having said that, I do have a bit of a custom when it comes to “retiring” a filled notebook and beginning another.  I did this with one of my Moleskines the other day.  The first one in a while, actually; it’s pretty rare when I fill one from cover to cover.  I always have a bunch of them going at a time, some for specific projects and others lying around for general note-taking and core-dumping.  So more often than not, I’ll abandon them at some point, and they’ll just get stuck on a shelf or tossed in a drawer.

But when I hit the back page of a well-worn Moleskine, it’s fun for me to use that as a reason to grab a fresh one, get it ready, and start filling it with ink.

I reached the end of this notebook the other day.  It’s been in use for a couple of years, staying near me on my desk or in my bag.  It’s gone with me pretty much wherever I’ve travelled.  It’s been places.  It knows things.

This wasn’t really a jot-it-down book so much as as a place for more fleshed-out ideas and concepts.  It’s full of scraps of paper, a writing “cheat sheet” that I keep in most of my notebooks, and other ephemera.  There was a lot of creative energy in that book, and now I’m tempted to scan it into a pdf so I can reference some of it later on without having to pull it down off a shelf.

There’s nothing like grabbing a fresh notebook off the shelf and taking the plastic off of it.  It’s not nearly as fun as unboxing a new Mac or other Apple gadget, but it’s such a great tactile buffet.  Peeling off the wrapper.  Cracking open the (so far) unbent cover.  Pulling the elastic band off.  Feeling the crisp paper.

It’s almost like the book asks something of you.  No, it demands something of you.  ”Put great things in here.  Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone if it sucks.  Just give me words. Lots of words.”

Alright, back to business.  I label the spines of all my Moleskines with a silver Sharpie.  Once you get a few dozen identical black books floating around your world, you have to be able to tell them apart.  I’ve gotten into the habit of scribbling a quote on the top of some of them too.  Whatever comes to mind, usually.  This one got a Balzac (and before you roll your eyes at me, I’ll tell you that the last one got a Ralph Wiggum).

For my more “important” notebooks, I’ll usually grab a new (or new-ish) pen to keep with that particular book.  I had a Lamy fountain pen that I wanted to use this time, but after trashing my office looking for it, decided to use this Acme rollerball instead.  I don’t use rollerballs much, but this one has a great balance to it, and the ink flows really well on the Moleskine paper.

The first ink to go into a fresh notebook is always the “if found” part.  I’ve put the exact same text into that space on every Moleskine I’ve ever used.  Only one has ever been lost, and I got an email the next day from someone who had found it in the coffeeshop where I left it.

Once the new book is prepped and “in circulation”, the retired one gets shelved somewhere in my office.

So then.  That’s my only admitted “custom”.  Silly?  Sure.  These little books, they’re cheap and ordinary.  But they’re the kinds of objects we creatives bring into our lives, and we invest into them so much more than black ink or colored chalk or elegant code.  They have power over us, and have power because of us.  They’re never just tools.  And because of that, I think, sometimes even a $10 hunk of paper can be worthy of a simple ritual.

¡Viva la somethingorother!

Automakers, parts suppliers, governments and global agencies from the United Nations to the OECD are all looking at ways to relegate to memory the roughly 1.2 million deaths and 50 million injuries caused by motor vehicle crashes each year.

But in what some analysts see as a bid to hold its lead in consumer perceptions of safety, the Swedish carmaker now owned by Ford is the first to set a target date to eliminate death and injury in its cars.

That’s great news, because maybe then they can finally start working on an uglyproof car.

(via Scientific American)