Interesting

Five out-of-sync metronomes end up clicking in unison.

There’s a fairly straightforward reason for why this happens.

Causing a stir online today is a new website that invites users to posthumously convert Mormons to homosexuality.

The single-serving site is a rather candid knock at the common Mormon practice known as “vicarious baptism” or “proxy baptism,” which involves the baptizing of a living person on behalf of someone who has passed on.

LDS Church members have received significant criticism in the past for attempting to baptize deceased individuals who belonged to a different faith in life. Of particular contention are conversion ceremonies conducted on behalf of Holocaust victims.

Earlier this month the church was forced to apologize to the family of noted Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal, whose parents, it was revealed, had been baptized by proxy in January. Yesterday, a similar story involving iconic Holocaust victim Anne Frank appeared in the media.

The Church has since released a statement vowing to discipline “individual abusers” of the the controversial practice.

[fark.]

Stephen King Reads Shining Sequel

Last September, Stephen King announced he was writing a sequel to The Shining, entitled Dr. Sleep.

King has read an early excerpt from Dr. Sleep before, but he recently unveiled the beginning of the book during an appearance at the Savannah Book Festival.

Dr. Sleep pits a grown-up Danny Torrance, now working at a hospice facility and using his mysterious powers to help the terminally ill comfortably pass on to the other side, against a group of psychic vampires called The Tribe, who want to feed on his supernatural energy.

Danny also uses his powers to bet on horses, something he learned from Dick Hallorann — the chef who died in Stanley Kubrick’s film version of The Shining, but survived in King’s novel.

King said in November that he had finished the first draft of Dr. Sleep, but he hasn’t yet announced a release date for the Shining sequel.

[geektyrant]

Geeks and Repetitive Tasks

Marketing Campaign: To promote the return of The Walking Dead in South Africa, a local ad company produced a (fairly realistic) fake trailer for a romantic comedy, and then showed it to a theater full of people unaware they were about to be visited by a walker.

Trust me, it all makes sense in the end.

[copyranter.]

Disabled? Josh Dueck, a Canadian alpine skier who became paralyzed from the chest down after breaking his back on a ski flip in 2004, returns eight years later to attempt the first-ever backflip on a Sit Ski.

[thd.]