Today at Boing Boing Gadgets, we loved the Logitech Mice That Weren't, hailed The Sharper Image's comeback, and wondered whether its "Inventor's Lab" would stop it becoming just another brand-for-hire.

Uncut currency wrapping paper made Christmas morning a felony, a new iPhone app made it easier to log into free WiFi hotspots, and a Spectrum ZX81 was ressurected as an Ubuntu PC.

Oobject listed ten fascinating toolboxes, Joel cooked in the Kitchen of 1943's Future while wearing Too Late watches, and we learned that If man were meant to fly, God would have given him wood-working tools.

John, meanwhile, experienced Sonic Nausea — no, not yet another hedghog game. Rob reviewed Antec's Skeleton PC case

There was an Animal screen cleaner for your dirty display, classic Andy Rooney going ape over computers, and LEGO Pirates, ahoy!

Netbooks are the hacker's friend, birds live in Bird House CCTV Cameras, and Cameraphones became your weapon in the coming price-match wars.

There was a Vintage PC hardware gallery, a A drinking straw made from straw, and an Eee Box with HDMI and a swankier video chip. You want a
shuriken magnets.

Nighttime video was shot with Canon's 5D mkII, Cats rode Roombas, and an inflatable outdoor projection screen was made to accompany inflatable pools and inflatable barbecues.

Just Married. Joi blogs:

Mizuka and I just got married. We went to the Inbamura town hall, filed our papers and visited the local Shinto shrine, Munakata Shrine. It's the second marriage for both of us so we decided to keep it pretty minimal. The only non-minimal thing was setting up and taking shots of ourselves...

We also posted the next Ragdoll Metaphysics column from Jim Rossignol, who looked at why 2008 was a crucial year for indie gaming, particularly generative MMO Love and 2D Boy's World of Goo, saw how Deus Ex's J.C. Denton responds to an ontological quandary, watched millions of copies of the Half-Life franchise fly off retail shelves, and previewed tracks from UK games podcast OneLifeLeft's new chiptune compilation CD.

Finally, we played a Space Invaders game from an invader's perspective, and were excited to hear that news is afoot for Brütal Legend, the new black metal adventure from Psychonauts creator DoubleFine which stars Jack Black as its hessian lead.

When I was 21 I worked as an intern at a magazine. The art director and I would brew a gigantic pot of coffee around 9 a.m. to help us get through the day. The pot would simmer in the coffeemaker, and through evaporation the coffee strengthened noticeably at lunchtime. In the evening hours, the remaining coffee had turned to a black concoction with a stinging smell and tar-like taste. We endured it without flinching.

Oh, man, this is sad and unexpected news: 16-year veteran CNN reporter and anchor Miles O'Brien will be departing CNN, as the network closes its sci/space/enviromental/tech news division. Snip from mediabistro:

O'Brien's departure comes as the network dismantles its science, space, environment and technology unit in Atlanta. That includes O'Brien as well as six producers. O'Brien has been CNN's chief technology and environment correspondent since being replaced as anchor of American Morning in April 2007.

Miles is truly one of the greats. I can't think of a single broadcast journalist as knowledgeable on space, aeronautics, and other tech topics. I am so sorry to hear this news.

Update: The screengrab above from Miles O'Brien's twitter feed. (Thanks, Matt West)

"My right arm and leg aren't really usable so I can't play guitar," Cox explained to the Telegraph. "That was a nightmare because it meant the band couldn't carry on and my livelihood had suddenly gone..."

"I know things might never be the same again and nobody can give me a definite answer about whether I'll play guitar again but I'm getting back on track," Cox said.

There are three camps -- the people who think it's possible, the people who think it isn't, and the people who don't know. All three camps have members claiming to have degrees in physics, engineering, and aeronautics, and members from each camp are guilty of name-calling, insults, and cheerleading for their "side."

One fellow, a proponent of the idea that DWFTTW is possible, even told me that I should "prepare to be disappointed" because I have my doubts about DWFTTW! I would actually be delighted to learn the truth about this, whatever it is.

In MAKE Vol. 11, Charles Platt made a miniature model of the vehicle and came to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a wind-powered vehicle that can travel downwind faster than the speed of the wind. Last year, while Charles was working on the MAKE piece, he emailed me this charming sketch and description:

Lack of imagination among wind-cart enthusiasts has prevented them from realizing that a simple modern invention can solve the problem of net forward air flow trying to stop the cart. That invention is--the air duct!

A swivelling duct would be able to take advantage of wind coming from any direction. A vane at the rear of the duct would automatically turn it into the wind. Even on a windless day, the lucky owner of this windmobile would only have to give it a push before leaping aboard, to create some relative air flow that would power up the fan and accelerate the cart. Who could have imagined that the answer to the problem of non-renewable resources could be so simple?

I have browsed the huge discussion in response to your cart posting. Amazingly, so far as I can see, no one has addressed the fundamental problem that if the cart transitions from moving slower than the wind to faster than the wind, the reversal of air flow will try to turn the propeller backward, thus tending to stop the cart. It bothers me that so many people are conned by this idea (or con themselves).

--

Three questions for cart enthusiasts:

1. When the cart begins running slower than a tail wind, does the air move through the propeller from the back toward the front?

2. If the cart can somehow accelerate faster than the tail wind (as its proponents claim), does this means that air will now move through the propeller from the front toward the back?

3. If the flow of air through the propeller reverses in this way, will it tend to reverse the rotation of the propeller?

Answers to (1) and (2) are clearly "yes." Answer to (3) can be determined empirically by blowing air at a small fan, first from the front, then from the back, and watching which way it turns. Answer to (3) will also be "yes."

Therefore, the reversed air flow will retard forward motion, the speed of the cart is self-limiting, and the claim is false.

Side note: I emailed Adam Savage about this, and he said it's "in the hopper" for a Mythbuster's experiment! Im considering running another article about this in a future issue of MAKE, as well.

“I was standing right next to it,” says Frank Robinson, founder of the world’s leading helicopter company, describing a close call he had during a 1961 test of a gyroplane. “I had to grab hold of it and hang on and ride the damn thing down. You don’t want to be standing out there when it starts to jump around — it can jump on you. And there’s not a good way to get out of it. Just cut everything, hang on and hope..."

The destruction is wrought by the considerable energy stored in the rotor blades. The shaking rapidly grows in violence, exceeding the strength of the mast, transmission mounts, and landing gear. The cyclic control in the cockpit flails about so violently that the pilot cannot hold it, the rotor blades strike the tail boom or the cockpit, parts begin falling off, and moments later the helicopter may be a heap of scrap.

PES's new screensaver is a Yule Log that transforms your computer into a Fireplace.

Funny yule log screensaver from PES films

Our chocolatier friends at TCHO have released their 1.0 "gold master" bars. I've been nibbling on their betas for months, and can hardly wait to taste these.

For the past year, we asked for your feedback during our Beta program to help us create our first flavor-driven chocolates. And an astonishing 46 percent of you gave it. Now, a year and 1026 (literally) iterations later – your “Chocolatey”, “Fruity”, “Nutty”, and “Citrus” have arrived. They have been worth the wait - they are, indeed, obsessively good.

Introducing TCHO’s first “gold master” formulations in our stunning new packaging.

We did it together, and we couldn't have done it without you. Thank You! And now that we have arrived at 1.0 formulations, Susanna Dulkinys, partner in one of the world’s leading design firms, Spiekermann Partners, has designed new 1.0 packaging that's as delightful and innovative as our chocolate. Susanna's new packaging delights - it's bright, colorful, tactile, sophisticated.

Personnel at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, report extracting 52 foreign objects that 10 teenage girls deliberately embedded in their arms, hands, feet, ankles and necks over the last three years, including needles, staples, wood, stone, glass, pencil lead and a crayon.

One patient had inserted 11 objects, including an unfolded metal paper clip more than 6 inches long...

The study, presented Wednesday at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America in Chicago, is the first to report on this type of self-inflicted injury among teenagers, the researchers said. They call the behavior "self-embedding disorder."

Dr. William E. Shiels II, the study's principal investigator and the hospital's chief of radiology, said that uncovering the behavior was unexpected but that researchers are now hearing about cases in other cities. The hospital recently set up a national registry to track incidents and conduct research.

The concept of an individual swapping his or her body with that of another person has captured the imagination of writers and artists for decades. Although this topic has not been the subject of investigation in science, it exemplifies the fundamental question of why we have an ongoing experience of being located inside our bodies. Here we report a perceptual illusion of body-swapping that addresses directly this issue. Manipulation of the visual perspective, in combination with the receipt of correlated multisensory information from the body was sufficient to trigger the illusion that another person's body or an artificial body was one's own. This effect was so strong that people could experience being in another person's body when facing their own body and shaking hands with it. Our results are of fundamental importance because they identify the perceptual processes that produce the feeling of ownership of one's body.

I made this, you play this, we are enemies (via Wonderland)

Droidel, Droidel, Droidel (via Make)

I enjoyed this Funny or Die video about Prop. 8. (Thanks, Shawn!)

While we now enjoy this exploitative genre for its campy kitsch, gloriously bad writing, and outlandish misinformation, drug paperback books were once a transgressive medium with a perversely seductive quality.

Dope Menace collects together hundreds of fabulously lurid and collectible covers in color, from xenophobic turn-of-the century tomes about the opium trade to the beatnik glories of reefer smoking and William S. Burroughs’ Junkie to the spaced-out psychedelic ’60s. We mustn’t forget the gonzo paranoia brought on by Hunter S. Thompson in the ’70s, when anything was everything.

For its initial edition of The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People in 1981, the legendary Wallace family read 1,500 biographies, pored over rare correspondence, legal transcripts and medical reports, and interviewed lovers, confidants and associates of many distinguished men and women in world history.

This 600-page illicit encyclopedia of the private lives of writers, politicians, athletes, popes, rabble-rousers, composers, rock stars and sex symbols has been revised and enlarged, with a dozen new entries, including ones on Kurt Cobain, Malcolm X, Wilt Chamberlain, Ayn Rand, Jim Morrison, Nico, Aleister Crowley, and more.

The page on the left is from a 1978 book called Nate the Great Goes Undercover, by Marc Simont. The poster of Emily the Strange on the right is from 1991.

From "We Thought You Wouldn't Notice," a blog that points out art swipes:

If you’ve ever walked into a Hot Topic, you are somewhat familiar with Emily, but on the off-chance that you haven’t, you can get aquainted with her at her big fat website. She was designed in 1991, according to creator Rob Reger, as an image for use on skateboarding merchandise. Since then, she has morphed into a kind of goth pop icon. At first she was just a mouthpiece for typical Hot Topic tee slogans (”I WANT YOU to go away,” “Problem Child,” etc. etc.) but since has moved to full-fledged characterdom, with her own comic book series and a film slated for 2010.

Google searching for any information on this rip has yielded a tiny handful of bemused observers (this one offering the most analysis), but as far as I can tell no real action has been taken. I doubt that neither Marjorie Weinman Sharmat nor Marc Simont (the author and illustrator of the Nate the Great books, respectively) is aware of the appropriation of their character. I plan to send a letter to each c/o of their publishers as soon as possible. I really do think something should be done. This stolen character has already made millions for its “creator” and the fact that she will have her own film is clear testament of how big she’s gotten.

Emily the Strange is a rip off of a 1978 book character