tech@vedella

In case you were curious, that atmospheric research satellite crashed to Earth without hitting a single person. It landed in the Pacific—scattering bits and pieces over an 800-mile-long stretch of ocean. But, if your great dream was to be killed by a piece of falling satellite, never fear. Phil Plait points out that you'll have [...]

Hrm.

In Counting the Cost: corporations and human rights abuses in the Niger Delta, Platform and a coalition of NGOs accuse Shell Oil of funding vicious conflicts between rival gangs in the Niger Delta, bribing local militias to gain access to oil, and contributing to terrible human rights abuses in the region, including devastation in the [...]

[video link] The Star Wars "Imperial March" played on two modded floppy drives. (Thanks, Jim Leftwich!)

Roger Hanlon is a scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. He studies cephalopods—octopus, squid, and cuttlefish. Specifically, he studies the way these animals change their skin color and texture to match with their surroundings. I've talked about his research before on BoingBoing Video and showed you some truly astounding footage he [...]

Brian Lam, former Gizmodo editor, today launched a "list of amazing gadgets" called The Wirecutter. I dig the look, and the Big Idea.

If you live anywhere near St. Peter, Minnesota, I highly recommend taking tomorrow and Wednesday off from work to attend the 47th Nobel Conference at Gustavus Adolphus College. Every year, the school brings in eminent scientists from around the country for a two-day public lecture series centered around a theme. This year, it's "The Brain [...]

Dorrit Moussaieff, the first lady of Iceland, made a dramatic gesture over the weekend by joining a group of demonstrators hit by the debt crisis. As the Icelandic president and MPs came under fire from angry protesters on Saturday, on their traditional walk to mass marking the opening of the parliamentary session, the President’s wife [...]

"Erroneous analyses of interactions in neuroscience: a problem of significance," a paper in Nature Neuroscience by Sander Nieuwenhuis and co, points out an important and fatal statistical error common to many peer-reviewed neurology papers (as well as papers in related disciplines). Of the papers surveyed, the error occurred in more than half the papers where [...]

A new study suggests that crows can recognize symbols that represent quantities of items. At Japan's Utsunomiya University, crows were shown two containers. Only the container marked with five symbols contained the food. The researchers trained the crows to identify the food container 70% of the time. Alfred Hitchcock could not be reached for comment. [...]

The young lad in this video, four-year-old Faris, is about to learn who Luke Skywalker's father is. His face should be in Wikipedia under the (nonexistent) entry for "mindblown." Kudos to young Faris's parents for capturing this moment for scientific scrutiny. (via IO9)

In 2002, The Economist writer/editor Emily Bobrow gifted me a copy of Helen DeWitt’s The Last Samurai and my life changed forever. It’s one of those novels that you can go back to every couple years anew, discovering and rediscovering with each re-read. Not to be confused with the Tom Cruise movie of the same [...]

Rockefeller University in New York says Ralph Steinman, co-winner of this years Nobel Prize in medicine, has died. The immunologist and cell biologist is reported to have died on Friday after a four-year battle with pancreatic cancer. The Nobel awards committee was unaware that he was no longer alive. Associated Press, New Scientist, Washington Post.

In 1979 Kirk Demarais bought a comic book at a neighborhood gas mart. It was a copy of Micronauts #9. Kirk was a kid at the time, and the comic book’s plot confused him. But he was drawn to the advertisements. Here’s how he describes it: I turned to an overcrowded page of fascinating black-and-white [...]

Prywatna Wytwórnia Lamp is Aleksander Zawada's one-man vacuum tube factory, now housed in Warsaw's Institute of Vacuum Technology (Zawada's original vacuum tube factory was in his apartment). Sébastien Bourdeauducq met Zawada and did a great writeup on his handcrafted valves -- and no, it's nothing like Portlandia's artisinal lightbulbs. He starts the triode by assembling [...]

Oh, I could read Debbie Chachra's #dailyidioms buzzword tweets all day long: * uterine replicator, Turkish delight doughnut, Galapagan isolation, ghost craters, empathy system, nonconsensual collaboration. * molecular motors, ruin-exhibitionism, sensor grenade, group-level phenomena, Mylar L-sleeve, surreality TV show. * weaponized social steganography, pin bin, ekranoplan, spline connection, bee space, memory engineering. * damnatio memoriae, [...]

Here's a whole whack of extremely talented and energetic young people doing awesome and fun acrobatic routines on a slackline -- a bouncy rope that works like a cross between a trampoline and a tightrope. (Thanks Fipi Lele!)

Ticktock Showroom's handmade "Timing Chain" clocks are a really appealing way of telling time. They run $100, and you'll need 26" of clearance below them for the chain-hang. Innovative chain driven clocks suitable for home or office. These clocks feature laser-cut acrylic numerals and motor mounts. They keep accurate time by using industrial synchronous A/C [...]

"A Bloomberg Markets investigation has found that Koch Industries -- in addition to being involved in improper payments to win business in Africa, India and the Middle East -- has sold millions of dollars of petrochemical equipment to Iran, a country the U.S. identifies as a sponsor of global terrorism." (via Steve Silberman)

(Image: Woman at Occupy Wall Street, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from 33498942@N04's photostream) A manifesto of sorts has emerged from Occupy Wall Street: As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel [...]