O-Bits: Black Cyber Monday Edition

Today is Cyber Monday. We can understand Black Friday—most folks have that day off. But if you’re going to buy on-line, couldn’t you do it on that Saturday or Sunday? The only reason we can come up with to explain why it’s Cyber Monday is that the internet revolution has allowed us to shop on the bosses’ time. So if you’re checking out the sales why not take a minute to check out  some news of the dead?

 

Want an out-of-body, near-death experience without having to deal of all the muss and fuss of actually, well, dying? Well, the makers of Outrospectre have made just the thing for you! Through robotics and 3D cameras, the inventor, Frank Kolkman, a Dutch designer, has created an experience that many who have gone through a “near death” have described” You can watch the world move away from your body. Eighty percent of those who have tried the device the the Daily Mail they experiencing sensations of physically moving or being present in a different location. Kolkman created the Outrospectre to help the terminally ill confront their deaths. He hopes it will help reduce the trauma of the real thing. While we at Obit think the only thing that reduces the trauma of death is not actually dying, we agree with him that the “fear and experience of death is a neglected topic.”

Also from the Daily Mail, a death that shows the grim reaper hasn’t lost his sense of irony. It concerns a cyber athlete, although we’re loathe to call anyone outside of a bowling alley who drinks while performing any kind of athlete. Regardless, Sergey Aksenov was one of the top cyber ath…players, a true armchair warrior, one of the top gamers in the world, and was celebrating his last victorious campaign in World of Tanks, when the real world intruded. And by the real world, we mean the glass cabinet this 21st century Rommel fell into, severing an artery.

Finally, data never really dies, even if  its owner does. A forensic science and cyber laboratory in India are closer to finding the killer of Tanishq Bhasin, a 19-year-old student who was found shot dead in his car earlier this month, the Indian Express reports. They were able to recover deleted photos from his phone that showed him and others with the murder weapon, a .32 caliber German revolver. These recovered photos have caused the police to reconsider their initial belief it was suicide.

Steven Mirkin

Steven Mirkin’s diverse career has taken him from politics to pop culture to high art, offering him a front row seat to some of the most fascinating events and personalities of our time: writing speeches, fundraising appeals and campaign materials for Ed Koch, John Heinz and independent presidential candidate John B. Anderson; chronicling the punk/new wave scenes in New York and London; interviewing musicians such as Elton John, John Lydon and Buck Owens; profiling modern masters Julian Schnabel, Paul Schrader and Jonathan Safran Foer; and writing for TV shows including 21, The Chamber, Let's Make A Deal, and Rock Star: INXS.

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