The Null Device

2005/9/20

Blogging ambulanceman Tom Reynolds on how to tell if someone's faking unconsciousness:

The easiest, and quickest way to see if someone is faking unconsciousness is to lightly brush your finger against their eyelashes. If their eyes flicker, then they are almost certainly faking it. Also if they try to keep their eyes closed when you try to open them, they are definitely faking it. Another way of checking is to hold their hand over their face, and let it drop. People tend to be reluctant to let their hand hit them on the nose, and so the hand will instead magically drop to one side.
My favourite tale of how to uncover a pretender in a hospital setting was a doctor, who would loudly ask for the 'brain needle', to draw off some brain fluid from the unconscious patient via the ear. Of course, he would continue, the patient needed to be unconscious because otherwise they might flinch and the needle go into the brain itself. This was normally followed by the patient 'waking up' and asking, "Doctor, where am I?".

consciousness deception howto medical 0

NME darlings The Libertines tried to organise an anti-drug concert last year -- but pulled out to avoid being sued for slander by Pete Doherty, the band's drug-addled, bandmate-robbing former frontman and/or the first great primal rock'n'roll hero since Iggy Pop/Sid Vicious:

"At that point, Pete was embroiled in drugs and they assumed it would be on the offensive regarding his drug-taking so his lawyers contacted us and said no.
You can't make this up.

(via xrrf) carling-indie pete doherty 0

An artist in New York has pasted 50,000 blank speech bubble stickers to ads and posters, waited for the public to fill them in, and then photographed the results. The results included political commentary, existential angst, ribald humour, self-promotion and personal messages.

I Steal Music, and I'm not going away! Nice ass! Date me (please!)

(via jwz) advertising détournement ipod new york 0