We bought a couple of cool vests in desert tan from [coolvest.com] back in '05, and we still use them on hot days, particularly for gardening and garden parties. It's hard to stay social when you're sweltering. They actually do keep you a lot cooler for two to three hours. It feels like a much cooler day until either…

We call that ATM the Federal Reserve here in the states.

And the difference is?

Some of the folks complaining about how impossible it is to upgrade a MacBook Pro (or iMac for that matter) remind me of the folks complaining about cars in the 70s and 80s. "Gee whiz, we could swap in plutonium cylinder heads on our old '65 Dodge Destroyer, but on these new cars you can't even replace the camshaft."…

What a great idea. I've been wanting a thermostatic control for my pots for ages. Why not a tell me when it boils alarm? Why not a stirrer that tells me when the mixture has thicken? Why not a phase change detector (based on the temperature profile) for sugar mixes? Why not an optical or chemical sensor that tells me…

Mountain Lion makes a lot more sense if you assume Apple will be putting touch screens on all their models in the medium future. Given what a pain in the ass it is to play find the cursor, especially as more screens go HD, I'd appreciate being able to touch the screen and point, drag or gesture, and then go back to…

We had one like that in the late 60s. It was dymaxion, whatever that meant.

That's not true at all. UNIX was developed by Kernighan and Ritchie, so in a sense it was developed by a committee of two, but each too major credit for a particular component. The transistor was basically Shockley's work. The whole point of Bell Labs was as a place for individual innovators.

No, it was Mikhail Kalashnikov's own work. It was his entry into a competition for a better assault rifle that could take a particular type of ammunition.

Yeah, but don't mock the first law of heredity. If your parents were infertile, you'll be infertile.

This is why we NEED a three strikes rule. Three false takedowns and you lose the right to take down infringing content.

I haven't seen these since the 60s! They were made from flat metal with little adjustment clamps, and they sold them for trousers and for shirts.

We really enjoyed this when it came out. We were surprised it didn't catch on more. Who knows, it may find a whole new audience thanks to streaming. That would be very.

The original email address was probably your own private telegraph station, but you had to know Morse code or hire an operator. Then came TWX (Telex) which was the circuit switched teletype system that all the cool kids had after the war. Buckminster Fuller had the TWX address Bucky, and it was de rigeur on any trendy…

For a charming tale of the discovery of Greek fire, read Gillian Bradshaw's Alchemy of Fire. She's written a lot of historical fiction set in the Byzantine Empire.

Wasn't this a Make project back in '09. It's nice to see it in kit form.

A close my Facebook account would be pretty neat. Maybe Apple has the pull to make it happen without the waiting period and the gotchya, you looked at a Facebook page so we'll reset your account closing and make you start over idiocy.

I suppose Apple could have implemented user selectable backgrounds, but they stupidly decided to make a better product instead. What a waste of engineering talent.

Andre Soltner ran Lutece, one of the best restaurants in New York. He claimed that he had never invented a new dish. He just made old dishes better than anyone else. He changed and refined them, improving the technique and experimenting with new ingredients and new sources for them. Invention is overrated. As the old…

I moved from a Palm TX to an iPod Touch, and aside from the fact that the tide apps on the new platform are much harder to use than the Palm ones them move was pretty transparent from a user viewpoint. I think the jump from the Palm III to the TX was bigger than from the TX to the iPod Touch.