This ice cream dispenser uses biometrics to tell how sad you are and gives you an appropriately cheery portion. We read so many gloom and doom reports about biometrics and big brother but it's fun to think of what else is possible beyond security, lie detecting and ferreting out dark thoughts. Imagine your car reading signals through the steering wheel and from a dash cam and automatically play music to suit your mood. Or a cell phone, through signals in the hand, ear and voice could detect a mood and alert the person being called that the incoming call is good news or being placed by someone stressed.
Oroboros is like one of those snake games where your tail gets longer as you eat things. Interesting how much it's like that Flow game I like so much.
How have I never heard of a coconut crab? Sounds like it's basically a giant hermit crab. How are these not available in pet stores?
The 10 Regions of US Politics - We don't really hear politics described in these categories but I get the impression that the professionals do.
Researcher: Bin Laden's beard is real, video is not - Was it ever officially announced that the recent bin Laden tape was fake? All the news shows I saw treated it like it was real but blogs found holes in it almost immediately from the time of its release. This piece does a nice job of summarizing the flaws in the video.
This is a pretty fascinating (if fawning) article about Colin Farrell buying clothes and rent for a homeless guy in Toronto during the film festival there. It's the stuff of movies but I'd love to see a follow-up piece a year from now. Are clothes and a room all it takes to get a beggar off the streets?
Speaking of helping the downtrodden in Hollywood fashion, did you see this story about the bullies picking on the kid who wore pink to school and the next day half of the student body wore pink to school. Certainly better than going on a shooting spree.
Bees in a bell jar - It's like an ant farm for bees. See them build a hive in a quick slide show.
The State of the First Amendment - You already know this is going to have all kinds of scary statistics about how little Americans understand or appreciate their rights.
We don't hear much about Blogger blogware, perhaps because it's outlived its own buzz, but they've got a new toy called Blogger Play that displays a slide show of images uploaded to Blogger blogs. They've got filters and stuff in place but be aware that there's no predicting what's coming up in the stream. It flips fast enough that it's remarkably attractive viewing considering it's a bunch of images (not just photos) you don't know anything about.
The scariest thing I have ever seen - How much does it mess up a 5-year-old to watch extremely graphic and sex-laced violence?
Barry Manilow won't go on The View because of Elisabeth Hasselbeck's political position. Obviously I don't care, but remember that story about Hasselbeck's husband brother-in-law being amazed at the negative response to his meeting with President Bush? I'm thinking he was either pretending to be naive or he doesn't talk to his wife sister-in-law. CORRECTION: Obviously I'm out of my depth when it comes to the Hasslebeck family tree. Thanks to alert commenters for the correction. HOWEVER: I'm not giving up my "Dissed by the Manilow" subheading on this entry unless someone can guess the cinematic allusion.
Speaking of follow-ups, Warming 'opens Northwest Passage' - Remember that guy who got stuck in the ice? I wonder if this means he's free now.
Iraqis Order Blackwater out of Iraq -- But Will It Leave? The role of hired guns in Iraq is a fascinating and under-reported aspect of the war. What an amazing twist to have the Iraqi government begin to turn against them.
We've seen a jillion diagrams and charts and videos showing relative size and space in the universe but the clip on this page is still quite impressive.
"NBC's recent withdraw from the iTunes store leaves the millions of users of Apple iPods without a legitimate way to purchase and watch NBC's content. Could this be the push that brings easy-to-use 'piracy' to the masses?" I understand the reasoning here, that if legal downloads are unavailable and piracy is easy, piracy will flourish. What I'm less convinced of is that people who would buy episodes from iTunes actually want to own them. Any time I've ever downloaded a show it was to catch up on something I missed. I know a lot of people keep media libraries, but my sense is that most people will be satisfied with the kind of on-demand services the networks began to offer last season. (By the way, the piece ends with lengthy instructions on how to set up a system to automatically download shows in case you're interested.
The cable folks are running the story of "the Craig stall" at the Minneapolis Airport becoming a tourist attraction. There's something very weird about hearing Nora O'Donnell give directions as specific as "across from the video kiosk, second stall from the right". Anyway, I only found this guy's photo but maybe it'll take a little while for Flickr to catch up.
Does Cooking At Home Really Beat The McDonalds $1 Double Cheeseburger? (They're talking money here.) The math is done here and the answer is yes, though there's quite a bit of debate in the comments.
Who has the oil vs. who uses the oil - We already know the answer to this but it's a cool infographic. Size shows who has it, color shows who uses it. (Also check out the entry on the wave hub. Cool idea.)
Name a new burger joint and win a grand. Looks like you can expect to get lots of spam to whatever contact information you enter but still a fun idea. DE-LINKED: This didn't set off any alarms on my machine but people are writing in and it's not like the site is amazing or anything. Not worth it.
Commuter Click: Billions over Baghdad - It's about the billions in cash that went missing in Iraq. I'm not sure I'll be able to read all the way through this without my head exploding, but I had a good time reciting the amazing numbers to my co-workers (24 million hundred dollar bills). Of particular interest to me is that the currency repository is down the street from MSNBC NJ headquarters. I was a jackknifed trailer truck away from shoveling my way through a blizzard of Benjamins.
Really sharp photos of the space shuttle Endeavour in space. (I can't vouch for the source, but that's not really the point.)
