2002.06.15
Link of the Moment
This oddly nihilistic ad for the Xbox was banned in Britain. You can see an explanation and a screenshot at Slate. You can also play with the very cool yet very irritating UI at the Xbox playmore.com site...funky little wireframe critters roaming around in a bar cyberscape...
History of the Moment
When Germany invaded Denmark at the beginning of World War II, exporting gold became a crime. Niels Bohr, entrusted with the Nobel Prize medals of Max von Laue and James Franck, didn't want those gold medals to fall into German hands or risk smuggling them out of the country. He and a colleague hid the medals for the duration of the war by dissolving them in acid, each medal in its own jar. When the war ended, the gold was recovered from solution and recast by the Nobel Foundation.It reminds me of a very primitive version of the old thought experiments, can you tell if a Star Trek style teleporter tranports "you", or if it just kills you on one end and makes a clone on the other?