tech@vedella

In this clip from QI, the talk/quiz/comedy-show that Stephen Fry hosts, Fry asks the participants "where one percent of Americans can be found." The correct answer is prison, and the contests proceed to make a series of horrified remarks and jokes about this startling fact. (via Sociological Images)

In this sweet, melancholy, raucous video, several of Jim Henson's Muppeteers perform Henson's favorite songs at his 1990 memorial service. (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Dig the video for Wooden Shjips' "Lazy Bones," available on their new album West, out now from Thrill Jockey. The band's sound is an epic trip induced by 1960s psych, avant-garde minimalism, and the f/x-drenched guitar of Spacemen 3, whose Peter "Sonic Boom" Kember mastered this album. The West vinyl sold out in a split [...]

"The doctor felt no vital signs, ran tests and pronounced Rosa Celestrino de Assis dead. She was taken to the morgue and spent at least two hours in a plastic body bag. "'I went to give my mum one last hug, and I could feel that she was breathing. I screamed out - my mum [...]

Radley Balko shared this amazing photo in his Morning Links.

[Video Link] He must've been coached. (Via Dangerous Minds)

About one-third of sun-like stars are predicted to have at least one terrestrial planet in a habitable zone, says California Institute of Technology astronomer Wesley Traub after studying data from the Kepler orbiting observatory. (Thanks, Ariel Waldman!) (Also, as Rob previously pointed out, astronomers recently found more than 50 new exoplanets including 16 super-Earths, one [...]

Glitch, the whimsical free-to-play MMO game from Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield, is now open to the public. Glitch's developer team includes Katamari Damacy creator creator Keita Takahashi, and is as filled with delicious awesomeness as you could possibly hope for. They're overwhelmed with signups, so it might be a few hours before you're confirmed, but [...]

On Saturday night, some friends and I visited a collector of rare 78s and he played this delightfully raunchy 1936 tune "Get 'Em From The Peanut Man (Hot Nuts)" by Lil Johnson. Another one of Lil's lovely ditties, also from 1936, is "Press My Button (Ring My Bell)" with the fine lyrics of "Come on [...]

Caving is one of my weirder hobbies. But spending time underground has introduced me to a fascinating array of tools. This includes one of my favorite possessions: the incredibly durable waterproof roll-top caving pack from Swaygo. On any trip underground you're almost guaranteed to ruin one piece of gear or clothing. It's a tough environment, [...]

Back in the Nixon administration, George Bush (the elder) congratulated family planning advocates on all their successes: As United States Ambassador to the United Nations under the Nixon Administration, President George H.W. Bush (the first President Bush) wrote a letter to Alan Guttmacher (founder of the Guttmacher Institute) congratulating him on creation of a "family [...]

The ROFLCon Summit, a celebration of internet culture, is to be held next weekend in Portland, Oregon. There, I'll be joining a fantastic cast of panelists that includes Chris Poole, Andy Baio, Sherrod DeGrippo, Aaron Peckham, Patrick Davison, Jason Scott and more. The centerpiece of the event is apparently going to be a six-foot papier-mâché [...]

Want to be a successful blogger? Every new endeavor requires a period of ascetic dedication. You must write a minimum of 1,000 words a day. Some bloggers make this their ceiling, but many make it their floor. Either way, you must produce on a daily basis. How do you do this? You can crank out, [...]

Boing Boing reader Brian won the eBay auction for a device touted as the "World's most irritating musical instrument". He finds it not particularly irritating at all: "an incredible waste of $81.95, but I have no regrets!" You can't just expect to be an instant expert, Brian! Practice is everything: 10,000 hours, according to Mr. [...]

The Federal Housing Finance Agency was formed in 2008 amid the housing panic. Among other functions, it is the regulatory organ overseeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It has not escaped notice that the agency has one of the blandest seals in the federal sector, a design realm traditionally adorned with wreaths, garlands and star-studded [...]

From Craig S Wright, vice president of Global Institute for Cybersecurity + Research, a look at the use of SCADA systems that are connected to the Internet. You probably remember SCADA from the starring role it played in the Stuxnet worm. For those who do not know, 747's are big flying Unix hosts. At the [...]

Oona Kivela, winner of the I Pole World Cup, and Grazzy Brugner, organizer of Miss Pole Dance Brazil, held an impromptu dance-battle at Rio's Up Dance Studio, performing crazy, acrobatic routines that stagger the imagination and inflame the senses. It may be NSFW, but it's pretty wild acrobatics. (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Protesters at the "Occupy Wall Street" demonstrations in and around New York City's Financial District are being met with increasingly harsh police response. A growing number of videos show clashes between NYPD and activists, with police using tasers and mace on demonstrators. Here are several of the videos making the rounds today: one, two, three. [...]

Lee Wei Chen, a Masters student in design at Kingston University, created this hybrid washing-machine/arcade game that only washes your clothes if you're winning: ‘I realised that the skills I had developed in the virtual world were useless in the real world. I wanted to make them useful,’ says the 27-year-old. The machine looks like [...]

In Airshark: Detecting Non-WiFi RF Devices using Commodity WiFi Hardware (PDF), researchers from U Wisconsin (Madison) document a firmware for WiFi access points that can detect and dynamically adjust to interference from vacuum cleaners, baby monitors, and other non-WiFi devices that operate in WiFi's radio spectrum. This kind of thing is the backbone of the [...]