Fig Leaf Underwear Promises to Fight TSA Invasion

fig_leaf_underwear.jpg

Remember the Flying Pasties? Consider this a decidedly more…Old Testament take on that concept. A Colorado-based inventor is selling fig leaf underwear, which use a form of powdered metal to shield your junk from prying TSA security cameras.

The underwear, which is currently available through RockyFlatsGear.com, promises to conform to the wearer’s body, meaning that it’s tough to hide anything (other than what god gave you) beneath their leady sanctuary. The powdered metal in the inserts, which is made up of a mixture of tungsten and other metals, won’t set off the metal detector.

Of course, back when we told you about the aforementioned Flying Pasties, we quoted a TSA spokesperson, who said, “any item that appears to be an anomaly during advanced imaging technology screening will require additional screening,” meaning that donning a pair of these biblical-styled briefs many actually require a closer inspection than walking through a scanner without them.

Wii Balance Board Powered Transport. For Babies!

robo-chairWii-240x300.jpg

This sounds like a far more horrible idea than it actually is. Read on.

Researchers recently presented their work on a robo-chair for infants that was fitted with a Wii balance board. The chair would allow rugrats to move about by simply leaning to where they want to go. Collisions were avoided via a sonar system built into the chair.

Sounds like a recipe for injured babies protected only by their own rolls of sloth-borne blubber, right? But actually it’s a techno-hack that could do a lot of good for special needs children.

The chair was developed for infants with mobility issues such as spina bifida or cerebral palsy by allowing them to explore surroundings that would otherwise be off-limits to them. The paper presented at the recent RESNA conference (Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America) states that “Children with physical disabilities and restricted mobility have been
found to demonstrate increased dependence, frustration, depressed
motivation, lack of curiosity, and a lack of confidence.” Giving these ankle-biters the ability to explore may help with these emotional issues that can stem from physical shortcomings.

via PopSci

Deflexion Body Armor Hardens on Impact

Deflexion Vest

Perhaps the holy grail of body armor is the type that’s flexible and soft when you’re in motion or need to move around, but that firms up the instant something hits you or when you take some kind of impact, offering protection when you need it and flexibility when you need it. 
That’s the promise of Deflexion, a new silicon-based smart fabric from Dow Corning, which is made from a fabric that compresses into a strong, solid, hardened surface when something impacts the surface of the fabric. 
The key is in the material’s molecular structure: under normal conditions, the molecules in the silicon fabric are free to move about. Upon sudden compression, they tighten up, are unable to move freely, and become near-solid, distributing the impact of the compression across the entire fabric. This feature makes it ideal for wearable armor like bulletproof vests, motorcycle riding gear, or shock-resistant shoes and boots. 
[via DVice]

Attachmate Acquires Novell for $2.2 Billion

novell_logo.jpg

Christmas is coming early over at the Attachmate Corporation. The IT company is set to acquire Novell for a cool $6.10 per share–an amount that works out to roughly $2.2 billion. The amount is nine percent higher than the stock price the company carried when the market closed on Friday.

Novell is also set to sell intellectual property to the technology consortium CPTN Holdings for $450 million. The group is headed by Microsoft. According to TechCrunch, the “payment is reflected in the merger consideration to be paid by Attachmate Corporation.”

Attachmate, interesting, seems to have less brandname recognition than Novell in the IT world. Quoting TechCrunch again,

The company primarily focuses on terminal emulation, legacy modernization, managed file transfer, and enterprise fraud management software. It is the largest privately-held software company in Washington, USA.

The company’s CEO Jeffrey Hawn was sentenced to 10 days in jail for animal cruelty for slaughtering 32 of his neighbor’s bison, after they ended up on his land.

The transactions are expected to close in the first quarter of next year, assume both companies’ bison stay in line.

Sarah Palin Book Page Leaked to, Pulled From Gawker

sarah_palin_america_book.jpg

If you managed to catch a glimpse of Sarah Palin’s forthcoming book America by Heart : Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag on Gawker last week, consider yourself lucky (?). Excerpts from Palin’s sophomore tome popped up on the gossip site last Thursday, prompting a copyright infringement suit from the book’s publisher.

Gawker published 14 excerpts from the book, which is set to launch tomorrow. Interested parties can still view the previews through a Google Webcache.

Palin responded to the leak by tweeting “The publishing world is LEAKING out-of-context excerpts of my book w/out my permission? Isn’t that illegal?”

Gawker’s Maureen O’Connor responded by writing, “”You may want to take a moment to familiarize yourself with the law,” and linking to Wikipedia’s fair use entry.

Palin’s publisher, Harper Collins, meanwhile, responded with a lawsuit. A federal district judge in Manhattan ordered the excerpts removed. A hearing will follow on November 30th, by which point you all will surely have secured your copies of America by Heart : Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag.

Creationist Says Jupiter’s Gases Disprove Evolution

On Gearlog, you’ll find a lot of coverage of the latest in the world of science and technology. But too often we neglect to cover the wide world of pseudo-science: power crystals, Yeti sightings, newest theories on the plane-eating aqua monsters who control the Bermuda Triangle.

Our bad.

So, in order to help correct this inherent bias towards logic and reason, here’s a video which incorporates audio from the popular radio program, Creation Moments. It’s like American Top 40 for home-school kids and rural hermits.

In this clip, the host brings up the point that astronomers–unexpectedly–found higher concentrations of light gases in the planet Jupiter than expected. 

Now, we could wait for Satan’s science nerds to go through their process of hypothesizing and testing to explain this allocation of gases in the solar system. But that would be boring. And it would be just as easy to find some bible passage that mentions words like “sun” or “star” and stretch its context and meaning beyond all recognition. And we have one! First Corinthians 15:41-49: “There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and
another glory of the stars: for one star differs from another star in
glory.”

Bam! So, now that the bible has been proven literally true, there’s no way we could have descended from a common ancestor to monkeys. Theory of Evolution, consider yourself pwned.

To most, that may seem like a desperate logical jump to support the literal truth of the translation of a 2,000-year-old text. But it’s what a frighteningly large minority takes as their basis for reality. 

This Week’s Best YouTube Videos: Grilling Phones, Green Lantern, Gropings, and More

TSA - Airport Rage

The news this week has been clearly dominated by horror stories of the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) “enhanced screening techniques,” which either involve you walking in front of a Backscatter X-Ray machine that can see clear through your clothing and that many people consider a massive invasion of privacy, or the aggressive patdowns you’re subjected to if you opt out of the machine. 
More on that below, but it wasn’t the only thing floating around YouTube this week: we also got our first trailer for the upcoming Green Lantern movie, and someone wasted a ton of money putting an iPhone 4, a new Windows Phone 7 device, and a brand new T-Mobile G2 on a hot grill to see which one grilled the fastest. Some people have a lot of spare cash, clearly.
 

Twitter’s Top Trending Topics of the Week: Prince William, Harry Potter, and the Sexiest Man Alive

prince william.jpg

This week in Twitter news revolved around a lot of dudes. We had Prince William proposing to his fiancée, Harry Potter being all dark and mysterious, the Beatles making their music available on iTunes, and People Magazine announcing its Sexiest Man Alive. If you missed out on all of this bro-tastic gossip, we’ve rounded up some of this week’s top trends on Twitter so that you can act like you know what your friends are talking about this weekend. 

Here are the top trending Twitter topics for the week ending on November 19:

1. Prince William / Royal Wedding
Prince William, the second-in-line-to-the-British-throne hunk, announced his engagement to Kate Middleton. Millions of Tiger Beat readers’ hearts were broken with this news. Also, the wedding day may even be called a public holiday. Only time will tell. #RoyalWedding (Photo Credit: NYTimes.com.)

2. Slap Yourself
This week, people were explaining situations that should result in people slapping themselves. For example, #SlapYourself if you’re following this meme.

3. Harry Potter

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1
, was released today. The thousands of people that waited online last night for the midnight showing might be interested in some of these Harry Potter-themed gifts. #HarryPotter

4. Ryan Reynolds
People Magazine dubbed Ryan Reynolds the sexiest man alive–well, at least for 2010. #RyanReynolds

5. The Beatles / Apple / On iTunes
Lucy in the Sky with Steve Jobs? Apple finally announced a deal to offer the Fab Four’s music collection on iTunes. #Beatles

Check out the next five Twitter trending topics after the jump!

The XShot iPhone 4 Case Gives Your Phone a Camera Mount

XShot iPhone 4 Case

Most cameras, digital or otherwise, have a standard screw-adapter on the bottom that you can use to mount the device to a tripod or extendable arm that makes taking photos a snap. Even a number of cell phones have the same adapter somewhere on the body. Not the iPhone 4, unfortunately – Apple would never approve of something like that on the iPhone’s chassis. 
Thankfully, the XShot Case for the iPhone 4 pulls double duty and protects your iPhone when you want to use it as a phone, but also has an attachment for the bottom-left and the bottom of the phone so you can easily screw your iPhone 4 onto a tripod or monopod for a little stability when taking photos or video with your phone. 
The adapter can be used in portrait or landscape mode, and if you prefer your phone without a case, you can easily slip it on or off when you want to use it. 
The XShot Case even comes with a small flexible tripod to get you started, or you can use the case with other popular stands like the Joby Gorillapod, for example. The XShot iPhone 4 Case will retail for $24.95, and should be available by the end of November, just in time for the holiday season. You can pre-order one now from their Web site.
 

Groupon, Google in Acquisition Talks

grouponheader.bmp

Daily deal Website Groupon is reportedly in talks with Google about a site wide acquisition. According to sources close to the site, Groupon is seriously considering the acquisition, but may well hold out until the end of the year before finalizing its decision.

The SF Gate suspects that the site is merely holding out to entertain offers from the competition–companies like eBay and Microsoft are mentioned as possibilities. How much would such an acquisition cost one of those software giants? The Gate is guessing somewhere in the ballpark of $4 billion.

So much for getting a great deal…