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About Geek Chic...

For when you have better things to do and deadlines to meet ... but just can't be bothered with them. We present an overview of the latest Weird Stories, Funny Links and other crazy stuff from the web to waste your precious time with..


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Mutant super-cockroaches from space

Posted by liam on January 22, 2008 2:48 PM

Does anyone else find this story on the New Scientist blog very scary

According to Russian news agency Novosti, baby cockroaches conceived aboard a satellite in September have apparently grown up to be faster and tougher than their terrestrial brethren.

After all the science fiction showing space flights giving creatures super powers - why would these cosmonauts get permission to take cockroaches into space. Where is the health and safety people?

The internet: Now with amazing beards

Posted by Aaron on November 30, 2007 11:32 AM

Ah, the beard.

In the Victorian era, no self respecting gentleman would be without a neatly trimmed, immaculately turned out facewarmer, but in recent times the beard has become a scarcity, relegated to the visages of Professors, hard-up students and heavy metal fans of dubious taste.

Google's gonna beat climate change

Posted by liam on November 28, 2007 9:30 AM

Google yestarday announced plans to make Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal

The search engine super giant will invest into research and development and plans to

to develop electricity from renewable energy sources that will be cheaper than electricity produced from coal. The newly created initiative, known as RE

"We have gained expertise in designing and building large-scale, energy-intensive facilities by building efficient data centers," said Larry Page, Google Co-founder and President of Products. "We want to apply the same creativity and innovation to the challenge of generating renewable electricity at globally significant scale, and produce it cheaper than from coal."


So after taking on the internet and completely owning it, Google is now gonna take on global warming.

Scared yet? The Government lost your details, who are you again?

Posted by liam on November 20, 2007 7:36 PM

As if we didn't have enough to worry about in life,

Two computer discs holding the personal details of all families in the UK with a child under 16 have gone missing.

The Child Benefit data on them includes name, address, date of birth, National Insurance number and, where relevant, bank details of 25m people.

Geek Chic's guide to saving dosh: Build your own speakers

Posted by Aaron on November 13, 2007 2:46 PM

Are you tired of spending moderate amounts of money on speaker systems?

Why not simply make your own instead?

All that is required is a plastic cup, a magnet, a business card, some wire, paper bond, tape, glue, scissors, a ballpoint pen, some lego pieces, a ruler, some free time and before you know it, you'll be wowing your friends by squealing out Bryan Adams at low volume.

Yes, it really is that easy!

Ghost ship?

Posted by liam on April 20, 2007 1:25 PM

An empty yacht has been found adrift off the Queensland coast. Why did the crew abandon ship? The BBC also has a video report of this story

Is this a modern day Mary Celeste?

Humans - Natural born runners

Posted by liam on April 19, 2007 8:35 PM

Here is a story to make you feel better when you are slogging away on the treadmill

Human's are one of the best adapted creature on the planet for long distance running and this may have gave our ancestors a huge evolutionary advantage in survival terms. Whilst we're not the strongest, most agile or the fastest, the fact we are designed to go the distance against our animal competitors changed us from being the hunted to being the hunters.

Modern humans and their immediate ancestors such as Homo erectus sport several adaptations that make humans, instead of some ferocious, furry, or fleet creature, the animal world’s best distance runners.

“Humans are terrible athletes in terms of power and speed, but we’re phenomenal at slow and steady. We’re the tortoises of the animal kingdom,” Lieberman said.

Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?

Posted by liam on April 16, 2007 12:35 PM

Good story in the Independent today - Scientists claim radiation from handsets are to blame for mysterious 'colony collapse' of bees

The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.

This could have a major impact on the food industry in the United States, where as much as $14 billion worth of agriculture business depends on bees for crop pollination.

Sony News

Posted by liam on March 8, 2007 4:05 PM

This week the Games Developers Conference was (and is being) held in California.

Sony has unveiled a few developments that have caught the media's eye. Over on the BBC's technology blog (not as good as mine of cause) Darren Waters talks about LittleBigPlanet

The concept is simple - build your own levels/worlds with a very simple tool set and with extremely cute characters and then play in that world and share it with others online.

Sounds like fun, though its not available till later in the year.

Meeting the Asteroid Threat

Posted by liam on February 20, 2007 1:00 PM

One of the funniest intro's to a news story i've seen in a while.

Astronomers say they can now compute with great confidence which asteroids pose a threat to our planet. The problem is preventing a collision

So scientists can tell us whether we will be getting destroyed by an asteroid but can't really fix the problem yet. It's a good strory if you read on, apparently the best idea so far is a gravity tractor (which is a great name in my opinion)

best way to deflect an asteroid is with a "gravity tractor"--a spacecraft displacing about 1 metric ton that simply hovers near an asteroid and gently tweaks its orbit

Video games help traumatised soldiers de-stress

Posted by liam on February 20, 2007 12:01 PM

Sounds like a strange story but i saw this recently, apparently computers are being used to let soldiers relive war time trauma to help prevent post traumatic stress syndrome

A "virtual Iraq" simulation that allows soldiers to re-live and confront psychological trauma has produced promising results for the initial handful of patients treated using the system.

Attacks on the Internet

Posted by liam on February 7, 2007 3:13 PM

Hackers have attempted to topple key parts of the internet's backbone, in one of the most significant attacks of recent years.
The target was servers that help to direct global internet traffic.

News from Apple

Posted by liam on February 7, 2007 2:59 PM

Steve Jobs, the chief executive for Apple Computers made the headlines today. Mr Jobs is a sort of geek superman who helps shape a lot of the agenda for techie stuff, and was a big driving force behind the all conquering ipods and itunes revolution. Anyhows he's calling for record companies to drop the anti piracy restrictions they impose on music downloads. Considering his company has been the biggest driving force behind the expansion of music downloads, has probably got the record companies sitting up and taking notice.

Scandal in the Nasa ranks

Posted by liam on February 7, 2007 12:00 PM

CNN has some good pieces about astronaut Lisa Nowak, who has been accused of a number of charges including kidnapping and attempted murder of a romantic rival. The latest story can been read here but there is also a decent video here and photo gallery here

Heartwarming Blog

Posted by liam on January 18, 2007 5:53 PM

Alrite it is probably not very good business practice to advertise other people's blogs, but i'm not getting paid so I ain't worried.

Spotted this story in the Liverpool Echo about The family of a little girl who has a rare form of cancer, called Neuroblastoma, are keeping an internet diary of her struggle.

Bloody good read though as you'd expect of the subject area it is heart breaking at times. I do think it's a bloody good site and worth taking a look. You can visit her website, www.babyemma.co.uk here

Also if you would like more information about the illness Wikipedia's article is probably a good starting point

Irrepressible

Posted by liam on October 27, 2006 1:55 PM

The BBC online is reporting this story "Bloggers of the world are being asked to show their support for freedom of expression by Amnesty International." The human rights group also wants web log writers to highlight the plight of fellow bloggers jailed for what they wrote in their online journals, The organisation said fundamental rights such as free speech faced graver threats than ever before.

To show your support and sign the online petition visit Irrepressible here at http://irrepressible.info/ or to read more about the organisation

Infected iPods

Posted by liam on October 19, 2006 1:00 PM

Apple recently announced that a shipment of its new Video Ipods contained a hidden virus, which can damage computers

This started up a debate over on the Guardian Online website here where a story also broke out claiming

McDonalds Japan has launched a recall after discovering that MP3 players it offered as a prize were loaded with a particularly nasty strain of malware. Up to 10,000 people might have been exposed to the problem after claiming a Flash MP3 player pre-loaded with ten tunes and a variant of the QQpass spyware Trojan.

Online crime fighters

Posted by liam on August 25, 2006 4:05 PM

AN INTERNET user in America caught a gang of thieves raiding a Liverpool store red handed as he logged on to webcam sites.

On the same day Merseyside police released this video for the web

Top 15 websites

Posted by liam on August 16, 2006 12:11 PM

Observer has a list of the websites which changed the world

Scary thought

Posted by liam on August 3, 2006 12:10 PM

As if there weren't enough global warming scare stories. Now people are asking could global warming destroy the internet

Which came first - finally we know

Posted by liam on July 17, 2006 9:32 AM

Dear readers Geek Chic is proud to answer a philosophical question which has pl