My mother has always been the leave-the-TV-on-all-day sort of person and I remember often laughing at the wacky, pretty much unwearable clothing that I'd sometimes see on the "Style" segments on CNN when I was a kid -- funky space vampire/hoopskirt/robot/zombie inspired stuff that I'd always assumed was for some kind of demonstration of the artist's talent or craziness or something.

I'd always assumed that the really weird stuff was never intended to actually be produced as clothing you could buy. Is that not true? In this case I think the headgear is just a gimmick and the outfits themselves are intended to be serious, but maybe there really is someone out there who wants to wear a pacman head to her next dinner party...

Heh, reminds me of the 28-hour day strip... (it's especially worth hovering over the image to check the title text on this one...)

When I was growing up, my mother smoked Marlboro Lights, at least back in the days before she realized it was costing her a fortune over time, at which point she switched to generics.

One might think that she was responding to this advertising campaign, except she had a different reason for brand loyalty. Her father, the actor Paul Smith (screen name Paul Birch) was the first Marlboro Man.

(For what it's worth, he also played one of the first characters to get killed in War of the Worlds... "we're friends!")

Someone recently posted a comment (which has just been deleted) with a link to other various images of science fair projects, doctored for humorous effect. After looking at them and noting that the person who did them clearly states that they're photoshopped and not real, I see it for what it is. It's parody, and it's actually pretty funny. I don't think it's intended to demean the individual students or their projects.

@RadioTube, your complaint about the CC license may have merit, and at any rate I can certainly understand your position. But I think it's clear to anyone who looks at your photo, and the derivative work ... his picture is a funny, if somewhat immature joke. Your project on the other hand, was really cool. I hope you can see that there is nothing about this that should be embarrassing to you.

The tiny wheelchair is the one detail that makes this video truly great.

Whoa, this stuff is pretty deep....

At least we can guess that terrorists will be unlikely to employ the same name-changing tactic, given the hassle of getting all their official documentation and accounts changed.

I'm reminded by #12, a long time ago I saw a photograph (actually a slide I think?) of an extremely penis-shaped hoodoo which I believe was somewhere near Arches National Park in the Moab, Utah area, appropriately called "the Phallus". The likeness was absolutely amazing. I've occasionally searched for a picture of it online, but haven't turned up anything...

This is the same size as the Leviton's "Decora" product line, which is rapidly becoming the modern standard in the US. What they came up with was to invert the lower outlet, move the pair off to the side, and take advantage of the pointed wedge shape of the bottom of a typical grounded plug, to squeeze in another sideways. With normal plugs, they'll fit.

Funny, I've already been occasionally seeing these for sale used on Craigslist, etc. I've been seriously thinking about getting one; seems like one of those tools that lends itself most often to uses you hadn't thought of when you bought it.

Ah, Ridgid. Helping rednecks misspell the word rigid for over 80 years...

This one is obviously pretty polarizing.

For my part, I'm with Ashground -- I avoided watching it until I saw it here, because I thought it was going to suck. I'm not really a Seinfeld fan, and I only use MS software where I'm forced, due to software availability. (Gentoo and Fedora everywhere else.)

But I actually thought this was pretty cool. It's actually refreshing to see Gates depicted as a somewhat entertaining human being, instead of the mildly autistic tantrum-throwing weirdo CEO or the Borg-accessorized Slashdot icon. (Of course, who knows how many takes were required to get that "affable" thing right) :o)

Surely, somewhere amongst the 6 billion people on earth there must be a female didgeridoo virtuoso, who has children.

I guess I can't also expect that she's a BoingBoing reader, but somehow I don't think I'd be surprised. :o)

However funny or amusing this sort of thing might be to those of us who tend to agree with whatever message it might be intended to send (allegiance between McCain and the policies of the Bush administration, etc), it's hard to see this as productive or meaningful.

Do the people handing these out really believe this sort of juvenile potshot will change anyone's minds? Of those who are impressed by this, how many will be of legal voting age? If you're going to the effort to hand out flyers or leaflets, why not something more rationally compelling? Why waste the opportunity on something so easily disregarded as trash by those you'd be trying to reach?

This doesn't seem to have slowed the outsourcing of child care overseas...

I guess the kids must be sedated and well-packed.

This is the kind of situation where you want to have some big Kennedy half-dollar coins in your pocket to slip in there, and hope that the next song has a good tempo. Or slugs made of just the right alloy of bronze to make them ring basically nonstop, preferably at frequencies just different enough to make the apparent sound pulsate annoyingly off the beat of the music.

I haven't read more than a few tidbits of Naked Came the Stranger, but I did enjoy reading Stranger Than Naked, the followup book that described how the original hoax was pulled off. I especially liked that they had to edit to make it crappier.

I'll start by saying that I agree this is an overreaction, and I'm not trying to argue that the police reacted properly.

For a slightly different perspective though, I believe I've seen the damage that this sort of thing can cause if left unchecked. I remember a camping trip with a friend some years ago; another acquaintance of his (we'll call him Joe) came along with his wife and 4-year-old child. Late at night around the campfire, my friend was blending frozen strawberry daiquiris and to our astonishment, Joe and his wife were giving the kid his own glass, and letting him get drunk. Worse, this was something they were pretty casual about, saying they let him drink pretty often.

Today I understand the boy has some pretty severe developmental problems. I realize correlation does not imply causation and we're dealing with a very small data set, but I draw my conclusions anyway.

Maybe a couple days of bureaucratic hassle could be a small price for a suspected individual to pay, for society to verify that a young person's mind and life were not being similarly damaged?

Props to the original... :o)

(Relevant scene at time index 3:33)

For those who might otherwise miss it, there's a great Youtube video on the SFVISBF site. Well done!

Considering the era in which this was produced, I think it's actually pretty fair in its depictions.

The African American is shown as a gentleman in formal clothing, while they still were considered by most to be inherently lesser beings.

The native Americans are represented in a similarly respectful manner, despite battles with them having occurred well within the memory of most adults at the time. Custer was killed at Little Bighorn only 2 decades earlier.

It appears to me that this page is mainly a simple (and simple-minded) exploration of how humanity has taken different physical forms in various places in the world. I think the position of "Anglo-Saxons" at top center of the diverse spread of mankind is mainly Ptolemaic in nature. Not necessarily from a sense of superiority (or at least I think not exclusively so), but from a position of ignorance.

On first seeing it, I was immediately impressed that the representations are as visually unbiased as they are. As such it would be so despite the worldview of most European descendants at that time.

I won't get into the misinformation posted above about battery disposal and gasoline engine vs. coal powerplant emissions for EVs in this post, but just about the engine itself... This design already has a superior competitor, Carroll Shelby's OX2 engine.

While Brickley boasts of an almost linear piston travel, the OX2's piston travel is completely linear. The engine is designed for high torque at *low* rpm and very low parts count, an extended dwell time and in fact what appears to be a completely customizable piston movement instead of the simple sinusoidal reciprocation of crankshaft-driving engines including Brickley's. The images that are on the site now don't really depict that part of the mechanism very well, but a while back they had better diagrams showing a wave-shaped ring that the pistons pushed on.

I just took a look and unfortunately their website hasn't been updated in ages, but they still answer the phones. Don't know what the status is right now; the receptionist told me to call back tomorrow.

*Sigh*... Another facet of my uniqueness now proven illusory. Someone else whose middle name is "Elias".

Next I guess I'm going to find out that other people can roll their tongues, too.

XKCD, at the moment is definitely my favorite online comic -- <tangent> it would have huge competition from Perry Bible Fellowship, except that PBF is so infrequently updated these days and the recent ones aren't as consistently spot-on as ones in the past.</tangent>

The strip posted here and the ones in the ad are highly representative of that certain unspecifiable "something" that makes XKCD truly a work of art that transcends the apparent cheapness of its visual style. Pure genius. Toothpaste for Dinner tries and sometimes succeeds, but as the fellow says, XKCD speaks to peoples' souls. :o)

On the other hand, I have to say ... The type of girl he's looking for does exist (or at least I really hope so... *sigh*), but the likelihood he'll find her in College Station is unfortunately pretty bleak. I got out of there as soon as I could, and have been enjoying my years in Austin. This town feels more like home than CS ever did, and if you could calculate a ratio between XKCD fans and the local population, I'm just going to guess it would be several times higher here. :o)

"Of the 4,858,503,583 pennies minted in 1968, an untold number have been forever lost to history, which is why it is important to save the remaining 1968 pennies NOW while they are still relatively easy to find. If every American donated just one 1968 penny, the collection would number in the hundreds of millions."

If anyone's considering making a 1967 or 1969 collection, don't bother. Unlike the 1968 penny, they're worthless and have no collector value.

Um, ... (???)

Actually, besides taking more pennies out of circulation and encouraging those who have argued for the discontinuation of the penny as a part of our currency, this is a pretty cool project. :-)

Oil for lithium is an argument with some merit, as much of it doesn't come from domestic sources. And we're going to need a lot of it, for certain if lithium ion (lithium iron phosphate LiFePO4 especially) becomes the standard for hybrid and electric cars.

However, there is one very important difference. Lithium is a material. Oil and its products are a fuel. Lithium can be recycled.

I can only hope that a large industry and recycled lithium market develops around this, as it certainly should if the metal becomes sufficiently scarce.

A long time ago, I came up with a parody name, intended to be pronounced (with a hint of irritation) by Fabio, who was doing silly commercials for the product at the time... Just imagine him reaching into the refrigerator, pulling out a tub, and saying "hmm -- 'I Thought I Said To Get Butter'"

How about a combination of Jetman and wingsuits? This isn't as visually interesting as the original posted wingsuit clip, but the technical achievement is very cool, and it's something I'm sure more than a few of us have imagined -- jet engines on your ankles! :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eS2rjcVcaqQ&NR=1