“A man who went missing in western Japan survived in near-freezing weather without food and water for more than three weeks by falling into a state similar to hibernation, doctors said.”

Now, here’s a man who’s DNA is worth expanding. Hopefully, he will donate some sperm to do his part in the evolution of the species (I am not kidding).

After reading more sad stories in the news about judges not allowing euthanasia,

I hereby make my wishes known, should I ever get into a coma or vegetated state and the doctors believe that almost certainly I won’t wake up from it, to euthanize me via lethal injection (much preferred over removing the machine support, which is slow and torturing).

Eugenia Loli
21 December 2006

Here is a great example how democracy just doesn’t work. Not because democracy is bad (I prefer it over other forms of ruling), but random people are just not good-enough to administer. Democracy is as good/bad as the quality of its subjects.

So, Thom submitted his editorial to digg.com, story got live after 11 hours, only to get buried within 15 minutes from the front page and not to be seen again. The story is legit, it’s not trolling (don’t let the zealots fool ya). It’s an honest, personal opinion on the state of the Linux desktop. And I also happen to agree with it, along others too.

But, some readers buried the story. Burying is not provided by Digg for people who disagree with the editorial, but as a tool to report abuse/spam/lameness. And yet, the Linux zealots buried the story, simply because they didn’t agree with it, or because they didn’t wanna damage Linux’s image to the world at large. That’s Digg’s democracy for ya.

This is also the reason why I also don’t like OSNews’ own thumbs up feature. People don’t vote for the story quality, but they vote if they agree with the story or not. For example, you might have a very controversial, but extremely well-written linked story, and yet it would get 0 votes just because people think they are voting for their own opinions instead of the quality of the story. They don’t want “food for thought”, they want “peace of mind”. It gets personal when you, for example, do an extremely interesting interview with let’s say, a Microsoft employee, and yet no one votes it up because they don’t like Microsoft, even if the article was insightful. It makes the editor –who spent time lovingly working on the article– feel bad for getting hammered for the wrong reason.

But then again, I don’t need to be “popular”. If I was to have “popular ideas and opinions”, I would just be like the rest of the non-thinking mass. I never allowed myself to be one and the same with the mass, not even when I was 12 (one of the reasons I left Greece was because I didn’t fit in with my ideology and interests). I got myself popular with my unpopular ideas and strong opinions, and I am proud of this. I better die rather than go along with the tide.

Whoa… Earlier I turned on the TV and there was an X-Files episode at the time on HD. I haven’t seen that episode before, so I left it running in the background. Sudenly, I caught something in the screen that felt weird. Out of the ordinary. I kept watching. Apparently, the scene is endless! Scully is running from one room to the other in the FBI building, from one floor to the other, from elevator to elevator — for 10 minutes straight! The camera-man is following her; there are no cut-scenes, just one continuous footage. This is not how TV series are shot at all. I did a bit of research and apparently the director is Chris Carter himself. Obviously, he was having fun…