BCB International sells underwear made to protect your genitals and femoral arteries from injury by explosive blasts. They're made with a double layer of Kevlar and are fire resistant. The shorts have been tested on dummies with substantial success.

Link via Gizmodo

So, you've used a time machine to travel back to the London of 1835. You encounter Oliver, an impoverished street urchin of 12 years of age. For some reason, you've decided to explain to him what the Internet is. How do you proceed? Comedian and graphic designer Doogie Horner created a flowchart to illustrate your options.

Link via Urlesque

Previously by Doogie Horner: What Your Facebook Portrait Says about You

The robot-building team at Bellarmine College Prepatory School in San Jose, California built a t-shirt cannon that can fire 200 t-shirts before reloading. It can spit them out as fast as three shirts per second. Link via Make | Photo: Team 254 Prevously: The T-Shirt Cannon

The Tianhe-1A, which is at the National University of Defence Technology in Tianjin, is the fastest computer in the world:

According to Nvidia, a technology company that supplied parts for the Chinese computer, the Tianhe-1A was clocked at 2.507 petaflops, or more than two quadrillion calculations per second. It has the power of 175,000 high-end laptops.[...]

Until now, the fastest supercomputer was the Jaguar, built by Cray, and installed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. The Jaguar has clocked 1.75 petaflops in testing.

Link via Popular Science | Photo: NVIDIA

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Utah's largest pumpkin for the year, weighing in at 1,169 pounds, was dropped on an old Pontiac after being hefted up by a 175-foot crane:

The pumpkin was grown by Matt McConkie from Mountain Green and it is calculated that the descent of the giant pumpkin reached a top speed of 67.1mph for 3.1 seconds before meeting its end.

Link via Geekologie

Annalee Newitz of io9 compiled a list of some of the grossest jobs in scientific research, like fart statistician:

How do you know when you fart too much? Because gastroenterologists have studied human fart production, figured out what the average number of daily farts should be, and determined that levels above that might indicate a medical problem. All hail the fart counters, who are keeping our gastrointestinal tracts healthy. And because I know you want to know: The mean number of farts in humans is "13.6 episodes per day," according to one expert.

Other featured jobs include testicle crusher and corpse grinder.

Link | Photo (unrelated) via Flickr user Charles Williams used under Creative Commons license

Illustrator Brock Davis made this invoice. It's one that bounty hunter Boba Fett would have sent to Jabba the Hutt for capturing Han Solo.

Link via Nerd Bastards | Artist's Website

Previously:
Ghostbusters Invoice: Gettin' Paid for Ghostbustin'
Expressionist Versions of Classic Arcade Games

Zhipeng Wu of the University of Manchester (UK) has developed a breast scanning device that is more portable that mammogram machines. Also unlike x-ray mammography, it uses microwave technology to accomplish the same task:

[...]concerned patients can receive real-time video images in using the radio frequency scanner which would clearly and simply show the presence of a tumour.

Not only is this a quicker and less-intrusive means of testing, it also means women can be tested at GP surgeries, which could help dramatically reduce waiting times and in some cases avoid unnecessary X-ray mammography. The scanner could also be used at home for continuous monitoring of breast health.

The patented real-time radio frequency scanner uses computer tomography and works by using the same technology as a mobile phone, but with only a tiny fraction of its power.

Link via DVICE | Photo: University of Manchester

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Actroid-F looks almost human. Not just in the way its face is sculpted, but the way that it moves. Guinness World Records lists it as the first true android. In the above video, the robot mimics the expressions of its operator. The people behind the project suggest that it could be placed in hospitals as an observer.

via CrunchGear

When the space shuttle program shuts down, the orbiters will be sent to museums. Would it be more cost-effective to recycle them as space stations? Bjorn Carey of Popular Science says no. First, shuttles only carry about 14 days worth of power. But a larger problem would be refitting them so that they'd be habitable on a long-term basis:

But what really makes a shuttle station a bad idea is the lack of amenities. The shuttles don’t have room for all the exercise equipment that astronauts need to stave off rapid bone and muscle loss. They don’t have individual bedroom compartments like the ISS does; to get some shuteye, astronauts instead zip themselves in sleeping bags and Velcro themselves to a wall. They don’t even have a garbage chute. “They’d have to figure out some way to bundle up waste—human waste included—and toss it out a hatch,” Curie says. “And because there isn’t a launcher to shoot the waste into the atmosphere to burn up, it would just float and collect around the outside of the station.”

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-10/fyi-could-we-use-soon-be-retired-space-shuttles-space-stations | Photo: NASA

In the decision for Robinson vs. Crown Cork and Seal, Texas Supreme Court Justice Don R. Willet wrote:

Appropriately weighty principles guide our course. First, we recognize that police power draws from the credo that “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” Second, while this maxim rings utilitarian and Dickensian (not to mention Vulcan²¹), it is cabined by something contrarian and Texan: distrust of intrusive government and a belief that police power is justified only by urgency, not expediency.

The footnotes also include a quotation from Khan Noonien Singh.

Link | Image: Paramount

Do you miss the 70s? Of course you do! But designer Adrian Johnson now lets you relive those halcyon days of yore with a couch made from old refrigerator parts and the backseat of a car. One of his designs comes with a built-in stereo. Unfortunately, it's an iPod dock, not an 8-track player.

Link via Dude Craft

If you're going to rob a bank, it's a good idea to have your plan thought all the way through before starting:

Taxi driver James Anderson tells the Missoulian newspaper the man was acting strangely when he picked him up at a Missoula coffee shop.

He says the man first asked to be taken to the University of Montana campus, but couldn't give Anderson a specific location. The man then asked to be taken to a hotel, but not before stopping to buy cigarettes.

The cab fare was $7.50, and Anderson says the man tipped him $5 as they arrived at the hotel. Officers then pulled up and surrounded the taxi with guns drawn.

Link | Photo (unrelated) via Flickr user emilydickinsonridesabmx used under Creative Commons license

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YouTube user Hickok45 doesn't need a knife to carve a pumpkin. He has a Glock. At the end of the video, he shows what it looks like when it's lit up. via Say Uncle

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The Sleepbox is an architectural concept by A. Goryainov and M. Krymov. It's something like a capsule hotel or apartment, but it's mobile:

The main functional element in it is a bed 2x0.6 m., which is equipped with automatic system of change of bed linen. Bed is soft, flexible strip of foamed polymer with the surface of the pulp tissue. Tape is rewound from one shaft to another, changing the bed. If a client wants to sleep in maximum comfort, he can take the normal set of bed linen for an extra fee. SLEEPBOX is equipped with a ventilation system, sound alerts, built-in LCD TV, WiFi, sockets for a laptop, charging phones. Also under the lounges is a place for luggage. After the clients exit, automatic change of bed linen starts and quartz lamps turns on. Payment can be made on a shared terminal, which provides the client with an electronic key. It is possible to buy from 15 minutes to several hours.

Link via J-Walk Blog