Charlie Chaplin movie cell phone?
If only AT&T could deliver the coverage that this lady is getting in 1928.

Some impressive optical illusions

Sony is finally halting production of the cassette Walkman.
I was surprised to find they were still being made.

The xerox alto - first computer with a mouse a just went for 30k on ebay: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320602942545&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT@

The MakerLegoBot is a lego bot that makes lego structures - in this case, a small house.

Project C-90 - the art of the audiocassette

Watch Jimmy McMillan, karate expert, beard enthusiast, and candidate for NY Governor representing The Rent is Too Damn High Party, debate.

One in five plants, one in five mammals, one in seven birds and one in three amphibians are now globally threatened with extinction.

This problem is a fact.  Another problem is that American Republican politicians, emboldened by anti-intelligence and anti-experience Tea Party ideals, are once again denying this fact.

The candidates are not simply rejecting solutions, like putting a price on carbon, though these, too, are demonized. They are re-running the strategy of denial perfected by Mr. Cheney a decade ago, repudiating years of peer-reviewed findings about global warming and creating an alternative reality in which climate change is a hoax or conspiracy. 

Town in England turns off traffic lights.  Results surprise. (via metafilter)

Subway Science: A whistle-stop journey through modern science

UFOs coming today. (Yahoo "We'll print anything" News)
A newly-published 352-page book by a retired Air Force officer, Stanley A. Fulham, tentatively predicts October 13, 2010 as the date for a massive UFO display over the world’s principal cities. According to the author, the aliens will neither land nor communicate on that date; they are aware from eons of experience with other planets in similar conditions their sudden intervention would cause fear and panic.
The book, Challenges of Change (3rd ed.), reports this event will be the initial interaction in a process leading to mankind’s acceptance of the alien reality and technologies for the removal of poisonous gases from the earth’s atmosphere in 2015, if not sooner.

The Banishment of Beauty
part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGX0_0VL06U
part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIVaTCRyblM&feature=related
part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMA1rn7q7t0&feature=related
part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byRaMfoiJP4&feature=related

The Wood-stacker (designobserver)

Gap goes Helvetica?  I know they've never been known for breaking down doors creatively, but this is a new level of mundane, anonymous, generic.  Even their most bland striped sweater wouldn't be caught dead with helvetica.  Is this real?  And the gradient blue square looks like it's an unbalanced, tacked-on attempt at recalling their last square-centered logo.  Either that or it's a window that the letters are trying to jump out of.  Bad. Design.

Healthcare: how the Public Option was removed as an Option (salon)

But now, definitive evidence has emerged that this is exactly what happened:  a new book by Tom Daschle.  As Igor Volsky of ThinkProgress expertly documents -- both by citing to Daschle's book and by interviewing him -- the White House had negotiated away the public option very early in the process (July, 2009), even though Obama and the administration spent months after that assuring their supporters that they were doing everything they could do have a public option in the bill.

So, we get all of the political damage associated with the massive push for equitable healthcare for all Americans, but none of the benefits thanks to back-room deals that took place before a vote was ever called.  Special Interests style democracy in action.

Scale of the Universe

Fear and Favor (NYTimes Krugman)