tech@vedella

[Video Link] Sure am glad someone posted a copy of this "Timeless Seasons" shopping network clip, so I could share the good news about these ladygadgets with Boing Boing readers. I almost expected them to feature the Petticoat v 5.0, but I suppose that's an older model, from another show. (thanks, Casimir Nozkowski)

AMC has posted six short webisodes intended to whet your appetite for season two of the TV adaptation of The Walking Dead, a kick-ass zombie comic. They're goddamned scary stuff. (via JWZ)

This image of a tiny crustacean called a copepod is one of the winners of this year's Nikon Small World photography competition. At Deep Sea News, blogger ParaSight explains how the photographer, scientist Jan Michels, got the shot: That right there is one gorgeous copepod, one of the bigger and more important groups of planktonic [...]

Letters to the Editor are an interesting feature of peer-reviewed scientific journals. The function of this section varies from journal to journal, but, in general, this is where you'll find things like critiques of research published in previous issues, and short write-ups on findings that don't yet warrant their own big, formal research paper. Neuroscience [...]

More than a quarter-century since its inital publication, Maus, Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer-winning graphic novel history of his father's Holocaust experience, is still counted as one of the seminal documents in the history of comics, of memoir, and of Holocaust stories. MetaMaus: A Look Inside a Modern Classic, Maus, just released, is an in-depth look at [...]

MIR is a Brooklyn based clothing co. that features designs inspired by old Russian criminal tattoos. A while back, I asked Roman Belenky, the designer, to tell me about  Russian criminal tattoos, which you can read here. The new line includes a military inspired sub-line called SHTRAFBAT, which repurposes military surplus items through reconstruction, alteration, [...]

Kevin Balktik says: Horizons is an annual forum for learning about psychedelic drugs in New York City. Its goal is to open a fresh dialogue on their role in medicine, culture, history, spirituality, and creativity. 2011 is its fifth year. During the 1960s, psychedelics entered worldwide popular culture. Fueled by the wild social dogmas of [...]

The New York Times has an op-ed out today, which claims that fMRI studies show that, when people are exposed to a pretty, shiny, ringing iPhone, the experience lights up the part of their brains that signifies a deep, compassionate love for something. iPhones trigger the same brain activity that your parents and loved ones [...]

[Video Link] Reason's Nick Gillespie talks to cartoonist Peter Bagge for Reason TV. He created great comic books: Neat Stuff and Hate, and was also the editor of Robert's Crumb's Weirdo for a while. Peter Bagge is the preeminent libertarian cartoonist. An intelligent, anti-authoritarian streak runs throughout his canon, especially in his hit comic book [...]

Glows in the Dark! by Darling Pet Munkee I was looking at the comments section for the Gweek 019 post and I learned about this terrific garage punk band called Darling Pet Munkee (Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling's Michael J. Epstein and Sophia Cacciola and Cathy Capozzi of Axemunkee) that has songs based [...]

Here's a set of instructions for "carving" precise shapes into a pumpkin by knocking them through using a cookie-cutter and a mallet. Place a cookie cutter on the pumpkin and tap firmly with a rubber mallet until at least half of the cutter has pierced the pumpkin's shell. (If the pumpkin shell is thin, the [...]

This year, six Toronto-area high school students will get to learn supercomputing from researchers at The University of Toronto. If you'd like to be one of them, check out the application materials. Deadline is October 21. (Via Jonathan Dursi)

A gem of a story, posted by The Futility Closet: “For Children Three Years Old,” from Lessons for Children by Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Philadelphia, 1818: There was a naughty boy; I do not know what his name was, but it was not Charles, nor George, nor Arthur, for those are all very pretty names: but [...]

Phytoplankton are tiny, plant-like organisms that live in the ocean and are, basically, at the very bottom of the food chain. But, sometimes, they get their revenge. When lots and lots and lots of phytoplankton get together, they can form what we call a "red tide," a discoloration of the water at a particular point [...]

Canada's Conservative government is set to bull through its copyright legislation, Bill C-11, which notoriously includes a special protection for "digital locks," making it illegal to remove such a lock even if you're not doing so for any unlawful purpose. That is, under Canada's proposed copyright law, it would be illegal to remove a digital [...]

Unicode has a special character, U+202e, that tells computers to display the text that follows it in right-to-left order; this facility is used to write text in Arabic, Hebrew, and other right-to-left scripts. However, this can (and is) also used by malware creeps to disguise the names of the files they attach to their phishing [...]

My IFTF colleague Mike Liebhold just snapped this photo of a strange juxtaposition of a "Darth Vader yacht at the entry to Mandraki Harbor on Rhodes, Greece by Agios Nikólaos a ruined 15th century fortress, now a lighthouse. "

[Video Link] What to do if you accidentally zip-tie your wrists together. How to escape from zip ties (Via TYWKIWDBI)

[Video Link] Gayageum is the new ukulele. (Via Cynical-C)

[Video Link] Dan Colman of Open Culture says: [A] vintage interview with Dick Cavett. Recorded 40 years ago (November 23, 1971), the conversation starts with light chit-chat, then (around the 5:30 mark) gets to some bigger questions -- Did Yoko break up the band? Did the other Beatles hold him back musically? Why have drugs [...]