tech@vedella

This really is news: the TSA has identified and fired the screener agent who, upon finding a sex toy in a woman's checked luggage, left a creepy note for her. Update: The TSA has not fired the agent. The TSA announcement states that the agent has been identified, "removed from screening operations and appropriate disciplinary [...]

Matthew Yglesias, observing Shani O. Hilton's twitpic of the Washington Post front page today: "It's amazing that Oakland PD managed to disperse the Occupy Oakland crowd solely by petting kittens." Says Shani, "Not teargassing a soul!" She writes more about it here.

My how time flies and civil liberties fade. Ten years to the day since the Patriot Act passed, making potential enemies of the state of us all. And no signs of retirement in sight.  Patriot Act is worse than you think, senator says – Boing Boing Patriot Act search warrants overwhelmingly used for drugs – [...]

Tha Business is a concept design by Hoang and Anh Nguyen that rethinks a number of antipersonnel objects (pepper spray, knives, brass knuckles) as stylish, wallet-sized gizmos. Also includes a whistle. Tha Business Self Defense Kit (via Beyond the Beyond)

SuperMagnete documents a clever method for removing dents from brass instruments using powerful magnets. You insert a steel ball (smaller than the dent) in the instrument, and then use a padded magnet on the outside to "rub out" the dents. A more elaborate method uses a "reverse hammer" that works on harder surfaces. To remove [...]

Etsy seller Bunnywithatoolbelt made this "white and walnut" abstract nativity that reminds me of Danish modern furniture crossed with classic starburst clocks. Nativity Set - white and walnut (via Making Light)

This is not the best photo, but it is pretty damn mind-blowing. What you see here is Jerry Glover, National Geographic Emerging Explorer, holding the root system of a single perennial wheat plant. The photo was taken by Scientific American editor Mariette DiChristina at the Compass Summit in Palos Verdes, California. There's more to this [...]

In the spring, Cory and I both linked to the Kickstarter campaign for Coffee Joulies. Here was the promise of these intriguing metallic lozenges: Coffee Joulies work with your coffee to achieve two goals. First, they absorb extra thermal energy in your coffee when it's served too hot, cooling it down to a drinkable temperature [...]

Gaius, a self-described member of the 1% ("Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan would save me roughly $400,000 a year in taxes, and President Obama's tax proposals would cost me more than $100,000") writes on DailyKos in support of the Occupy movement and describes the absurdity of the pitched battles over raising taxes on the rich by [...]

[Video Link] 3ric Johanson of Hackerbot Labs shot this beautiful video. He says it "shows the upper deck of the viaduct being demolished by massive jackhammers, while a brave construction worker sprays water to keep the dust down. It looks like we should expect an alien to come jumping out of this video at any [...]

60,000 peer-reviewed papers, including the first peer-reviewed scientific research journal in the world, are now available free online. The Royal Society has opened its historical archives to the public. Among the cool stuff you'll find here: Issac Newton's first published research paper and Ben Franklin's write-up about that famous kite experiment. Good luck getting anything [...]

CNET reports that a man in California has been sentenced to eight years in prison for identity theft after federal police GPS-tracked his phone and discovered a hard drive with over 300,000 victim profiles during a raid of his home.

"See if you can tell the difference between a corporate tax avoidance scheme and a Fall song title, by playing our soon-to-be-household-favourite game."

[Video Link] Mike Springer of Open Culture says: This past weekend, Pete Seeger marched through the streets of Manhattan with the Occupy Wall Street movement. He was a spritely 92. It was the latest in a lifetime of political engagement by Seeger, dating all the way back to his youthful support of the Spanish Civil War. [...]

Reddit poster mdrabz is a middle school science teacher who just got a $5500 state grant to set up a lab for his 7th and 8th grade students in the Mississippi Delta. How do you choose what to buy with that money? Mdrabz turned to the Internet for suggestions. Answers range from the inevitable Breaking [...]

“And then he said, ‘I have Libya’s best composer, most famous composer write this song for you,’ and it was called ‘Black Flower in the White House.’”—Condolezza Rice, describing her stalker, Muammar Gaddafi, in The Washington Post.

Ossian Brown was a member of the dark, magical electronic music group Coil and is currently in Cyclobe, a duo with his partner Stephen Thrower. Ossian is a strange attractor. Weird things find him. Like his exquisite collection of antique vernacular photographs of Halloweens past. Brown compiled his favorites of the freaky found photos, all dating between 1875 and 1955, into a lovely new book titled Haunted Air. David Lynch wrote the introduction and Geoff Cox the afterword. Here is a glimpse of how the old, weird America celebrated All-Hallows Eve.

In the deep sea, there dwell amoebas of unusual size. Of course, "gigantic" is relative. Although they would dwarf other amoeba species, the biggest xenophyophores are a little more than 4 inches across. (Via A Moment of Science, which suggests, rightly, that this would make an excellent Halloween costume.)

This short film, "Zombie in a Penguin Suit," is a very high-production-value, often scary, and ultimately very touching seven-minute short film by Chris Russell. It's a good example of how a gimmick played for laughs -- the titular penguin suit -- can become a real emotional touchstone because it seems like such a lightweight gag [...]

Please marvel at Wired's great slideshow history of the spacesuit.