I've seen this home-made iPod charger all over the place today (I first saw it posted at Popgadget). And while the idea of being able to charge your iPod on the go with a couple of batteries is pretty darn appealing, I was even more fascinated by the inventor. A former MIT grad student, Limor Fried designed the thing, but amongst her other brilliant inventions is a totally illegal cellphone jammer (it was part of her thesis)! The idea is simply that when you're sitting next to an annoying... READ ON
If you've been hunting for the top of the line, Rolls Royce of disposable cameras, this probably isn't it. On the other hand, if you've been hunting for the one disposable camera on the market that takes extraordinarily fake pictures of you standing next to Rock n' Roll icon Elvis Presley, then we've somehow found exactly what you're looking for! Of course, just showing people your really fake pic with Elvis might not convince them you've met the... READ ON
I firmly believe God doesn't want me to swim. At least not in any way in which my hair gets wet. I mean, I can doggie-paddle my way around the deep end of a pool like a pro. And the truth is, I was the star student in the Polliwog and Guppy classes I took at the Y when I was a kid, and no one can take that away from me. But tragically, that's where my swimming career peaked. Every summer after that was spent in the remedial section of the Minnow classes until I was 11, when the frustrated... READ ON
According to New Scientist magazine, a fresh study from the University of Queensland suggests that moderate doses of caffeine will make you more likely to agree with arguments that go against your beliefs. While two cups of the beverage, or 200 mg of caffeine, seem to be the optimal dose, it suddenly sheds new light on why coffee drinkers seem to think morning DJ's are funny, and why those date-ending invites up for a cup of Joe always turn into pajama parties. Â Click here to read... READ ON
Forget all those romanticized notions you have of life in the good old days. According to this article in New Scientist magazine (titled "Muggings Were Rife in New Stone Age") there's evidence that people living between 4000 and 3200 BCE in Neolithic Britain didn't have it nearly as good as that filthy Flintstones propaganda would have you believe. In fact, the study reports that not only was the era considerably more violent than previously thought, but on the Mean Streets of... READ ON
According to this Business Week article, the Turkish government has announced that they are officially banning the sale of all energy drinks with more than 150 milligrams of caffeine in them. Tea and coffee will still be allowed (thank God!), but popular energy drinks like Red Bull are being forced to change their formulas to comply with the stricter standards. Of course, the saddest part of this whole announcement is the bad timing. If only the Turkish government had known that BOTH Hulk Hogan and Steven... READ ON
I saw this skull for sale, via Neatorama... Admittedly, I'm pretty naive about body modifications in different cultures. My knowledge of foot binding and lip plates, for instance, is completely limited to what I've seen flipping through National Geographics as a kid (or flipping through cultural anthropology textbooks as a major). Still, I'd never heard ANYTHING about skull binding. According to the website, skull binding dates back about 9,000 years (this particular skull is from Peru) and was... READ ON
We've spent countless pages in mental_floss talking about how those old subliminal advertising studies from the 1950's were totally bunk (they were... the research was fabricated, and after all the hype the hack scientist, James Vicary, could never duplicate his results). But today, I saw this article in New Scientist, that claims researchers from the Netherlands are actually able to steer people towards preffing one brand of beverage over another through subliminal advertising. I was pretty excited about... READ ON
I actually have very little interest in cars, but I saw this new vehicle on the New Scientist site, and figured I had to share. The car, which is cleverly called CLEVER (despite the fact that the acronym stands for Compact Low Emission Vehicle for Urban Transport Vehicle and should be called CLEVUTV), is the result of 9 Eurpean countries teaming up with BMW to produce a smaller, greener vehicle. And it looks amazing! It seems like it's part motorcycle, part go-kart, and part indestructible (unlike... READ ON
While I can play the piano like Schroeder, and have a way with the ladies that's only rivalled by Peppermint Patty, as Will likes to point out, I'm most certainly the Charlie Brown of travel. My planes are ALWAYS delayed without fail (though I'm always at the airport on time). I'd be willing to bet that I've spent more hours in the Birmingham airport than most of the people who work there. But that's just scraping the surface... I once bought a ticket to Italy from Al Italia, and they gave me a 45 minute... READ ON
5 Questions: Maybe, Maybe Not
Troy McClure Film or Actual Terrible Movie?
The duffel bag is named for Duffel, Belgium, where the cloth used in the bags was originally sold.
