portraitoftheartistasayoungman:
It is not quite the fastest way to cook an egg, but researchers in India have found that if a raw egg is placed in between four switched-on cellphones, it will be ready to eat in about 80 minutes.
Researchers at Panjab University, studying the impact ofthe electromagnetic radiation emitted by cellphone devices on living matter, have found that the radiation adversely affect tiny insects, wheat and mustard grains, in addition to eggs.
Scientists have already linked the extinction of common birds like the house sparrow to the excessive electromagnetic radiation in the environment.
According to the researchers, Mr V.P. Sharma, Dr R.K. Kohli, Dr H.P. Singh, and Dr Upma Baghei, the radiation released by the cellphone devices has two kinds of effect: Thermal effect and non-thermal radiation effect.
These rays, the same as those in a microwave oven, generate heat and adversely affect seed germination in plants and impair cell expansion.
In the experiments, four cellphones were connected to pre-recorded tapes and kept live with an egg in the middle.
After around 80 minutes, the egg was found to be hard-boiled.[here via Tim]
portraitoftheartistasayoungman:
[March 21 1951]
Student explaining to me (after getting 55) that when reading a novel (“Ulysses” in this case) he likes to skip “passages and pages” so as “to get his own idea, you know, about the book and not be influenced by the author”.
Vladimir Nabokov.[via viz via the New York Public Library]
portraitoftheartistasayoungman:
Marshall McLuhan on the 1976 presidential debates: “he skewers the presidential debates for being completely the wrong form for the medium of television. It’s interesting to note that it’s hard to imagine an interview like on the Today show of 2008. It goes on for ten uninterrupted minutes; there are no cut-aways to video footage or text crawls at the bottom of the screen; and most significantly McLuhan speaks his mind, critical of the mechanisms of political discourse to an extent unimaginable in today’s sanitized mass media landscape”
[via If:Book]
viz:
Vladimir Nabokov (from here via Nigel Beale)
At Land - Maya Deren
The experimental short film with music taken from Jonny Greenwood’s Bodysong ost.


Nothing could be worse than the fear that one had given up too soon, and left one unexpended effort that might have saved the world.
Jane Addams
(via thesaurus)
“cloud chamber” via booby4649