An 18-year-old female was charged with grand theft of a baby jesus statue, which she stole from a nativity scene across the street. The statue is valued at $800, while the GPS system rings up at $400, and the girl is currently in jail with bail set at $3,500. Child hood traditions are now lost forever. Pretty smart though to jam a GPS into it (where was the hole for it???). Though I am trying to figure out what GPS that might have been, since most don't have any way to report home? Maybe it was a phone with GPS in it. Anyway, ruining this kid's future over what is most assuredly a prank, seems a bit over kill, but alas, "to forgive and forget" is yet another catholoic/christian tenet that has been tossed by the wayside. Oh well. via Engadget

I actually don't even care about this TV and if you want to know about it go to gizmodo. But I do care about the unfortunate decision of some unknowing designer or exec who decided to goatse the product. Looks like a pretty damn good TV though. good price/perfomance. If your looking to get your hands on one check out: uBid.com Shop.com VIZIO VO47LF HDTV

Make a bridge out of this so it will make less of a visual impact on the environment. Although this would be great for letting more light into a concrete space. It uses fiber optic threads embedded into the concrete to transmit whatever light is on one side to the other. I would assume you could also do the fibers in a hap-hazard method, to obscure what is within, but allow light. Another method that could be interesting would be to angle the fibers so that they aim more towards the sky on the outside of a structure, and aim down inside, thus capturing more direct light. I don't know though, seems like a technically difficult method. I'm also trying to figure out where this would actually get used. You could never paint it, because that would defeat the purpose and flush the money you spent on it down the tubes. I kind of like the idea though of making 'neccessary' structures like bridges and barricades and walls a little less obstructive. Still a neat idea though, and I'll be very surprised the first time I see it somewhere. via gizmodo photo poached from Dezeen

I am posting this from my new iPhone using a plugin for wordpress called WPhone. Although I probably won't ever post from it again, but I felt I had to try of out at least once. It actually wasn't purely a "cool I want that" impulse purchase, though of course that helped to make the decision. Both my wife and I used tmobile MDAs, which were great phones and PDAs all in one. A bit large maybe but otherwise great. Well, a couple of days ago I discovered the battery on mine had gone to the netherworld. Generally, when things break I look at options. For a few reasons, the iPhone had a bit of appeal. The obvious ones like cool, good looking, good product, blah blah blah. But there were others that are more legitimate. As a development platform and as cost. Yes cost. Ironically, switching to AT&T is saving us quite a bit. Actually enough to cover the cost of the iPhones in under the 2 year contract. Well almost. But when you add in the battery I would have had to buy, and the fact that I was paying more for basically the same service which is annoying, it started to make sense. Sure we could have just gone with cheaper phones and pocketed the savings, but what fun is that? Also we have dumped our Exchange Server service we were using, which was fantastic, but pricey. We could have dumped it before, but now I had incentive. So after all the shuffling around, I am now going to be paying off the iPhones in about 6-8 months compared to the prior setup. And I am now cool. And so is my wife. Go team BrainDonkey!

Eindhoven graduate Jelte Van Geest had an idea for a smart chair. Use your library card on the chair's sensor and it will follow you around, creepy like, so you can always have somewhere to sit when you find what you might want somewhere in the library. Very cool concept, though fundamentally dangerous I think. Short moving tripping devices just seem a bit excessive to me, especially when you could just provide really lightweight compact expandable chairs for people to carry. Though, I guess this thing could also haul your books for you as well, you fatty. Only improvement I can suggest is to make them no-directional, meaning, make it a stool, so it doesn't have to align itself to you any particular way. Other than that, what weapon are these weak to? Fire, Acid, or Electric? You know, when they take over. Via Gizmodo

Although its not native to the Zune anymore since the 2.x updates, auto playlists are now back through a workaround. YEAY! Although it is extremely stupid that auto playlists were removed in the first place, at least now you can rig up a solution that is not really that hard to deal with, or even that big of a deal. Zunerama forums has a post detailing it, though the details are short since it really is a "duh" moment. Auto playlists using WMP - Create an autoplaylist in WMP - Save playlist as m3u (use Save As option and choose m3u) - use that playlist in Zune - your done, since the zune can read m3u files, it works. The only real downside is that you need to use WMP each time you want the auto list to update, but really that should just be a matter of opening and closing WMP, then doing your normal Zune stuff.

When I first saw Dial Complete foaming soap, I thought it was a great idea. A soap dispenser that spits out a wad of foamy soap that is easier to get all over your hands, and washes off easier than liquid soap. I have never really liked bar soap because the bar gets gross and slimy and leaves colored gooey residue where it ends up sitting on the sink. Well, my tune has now changed, for a few reasons actually, some of which apply to liquid soaps in general. The big one however is pain... I have persistent eye allergies, and end up rubbing my eyes at least a billion times a day. So, if I have something on my hands, it tends to end up in my eyes. I know I know, brilliant way to get an eye infection, but meh, what you gonna do, they itch and have crap in them. Well, as a result I wash my hands after many activities, like petting my dog, eating, bathroom, and a few random times during the day. I have noticed a trend though. The more I wash my hands, the more my eyes start burning. And I don't mean like fire, I mean like sand in my eyes hot sauce. Which of course makes me rub more, which of course makes it all worse. I now know it's the soap. God help anyone who wears contact lenses and rubs their eyes after using this stuff. Unless I have some kind of magic skin that absorbs all the burning substances from the soap and saves them up to release into eyeballs, this stuff is horrible. It feels like it washes off, but it actually doesn't, no matter how hard you try to rinse it off, it still leaves a slight residue from what I can tell. Yes, I tested it by sticking my finger in my eye after using the soap, then really rinsing the crap out of my hand and sticking my finger in the other eye. So now, how much of this stuff are you eating when you eat a sandwich? It's just soap right? Wrong, it is a cleanser, not soap. Soap is a specific substance made from lye and fat. I don't know much about these liquid hand cleansers, but I do know you would never want to swallow most of the stuff these are made of. Anyway, if you use this soap and have been wondering why your eyes, or any other mucus membrane or sensitive skin area might be burning all the time, this might be your culprit.

I just realized something after watching "The Story of Stuff" that I mentioned in the previous post. Buying online is wasteful on many levels. This of course is not a popular thing to say, and of course since I don't have any direct sponsors that I need to suck up to, I can say it. A few reasons are pretty obvious once you think about it for a minute. One reason is shipping. I don't mean the cost to you, but I do mean the cost to the environment. When you buy local, the item you buy was shipped more efficiently to that store than if you were to buy it online (usually). For example. Lets say you live in California, and you buy an item online from a store in New York. Most likely, if that item was imported from Asia, then it came in through a California port. It then got shipped across the country to NY so it could sit in a warehouse waiting for you to order it. You place your order and the item is then shipped to you via some package carrier like fedex or ups. 6000 miles to get you a package that was probably only a hundred miles away from you at most at some point. I don't know what the actual impact of that is, but i'm sure it's not helping out the planet. Another reason is taxes. I don't like paying taxes of course, just like no one else does either. But, if I am going to pay taxes, especially on things I purchase, I sure as hell want those taxes local. But go a little deeper than that. Most items online charge shipping. So often you are not really saving the tax, but you are maybe saving on the cost of the item. So at first it does seem like a great deal. The convenience is higher as well. Click Click type type, done. Versus, get in your car, drive, wait in line, get annoyed by traffic, done. Of course driving is polluting just like shipping. But here's the rub, those few bucks you might save by buying online might not save you in the end. Your property taxes will go up to get the cash that is missing from sales tax. Cities will start to need to assess income taxes when they didn't before maybe. And continue that all the way up the tax tree. 1 dollar in savings is gonna start costing you more possibly. Or stuff will just start falling apart around you, like schools without books creating more dumb kids who turn to crime. Or streets with potholes/canyons which now ruin your shocks on your car faster. The shipping box. Oh, i wish I had a recent package that I got. It was 4 devices, all the same. packed into shelf display boxes, like you would see at the store. Each pair was packed into a brown plain box, I assume because the deal was 2-packs for a discount, and it didn't seem like that was a manufacturer box, since packing in sets of 2 is a bit weird for a manufacturer to do. Then those 2 boxes were packed into a box that was easily 5 times the size needed. The shelf box already had all the protective packaging needed, so peanuts wouldn't have been needed if the gadget was shipped as is. But instead, this 5x sized box was stuffed with peanuts. This is partly the fault of the shippers, since they make deals for "standard box sizes" forcing the merchant to always use boxes that are WAY too big. What a waste. If i had just run down to the local BigBoxStore, I could have saved all that packaging, but alas, I was lazy. A subtle issue is social graces. This may be more of a personal problem since I am self employed, but I get the feeling from friends and family and just observing the people around me that America has become way too impatient. We used to wait at the Deli counter in a supermarket WITHOUT NUMBERS. "Oh, she is next" was very common. Today, if you don't have your number, or there are no numbers, you have to defend your place in line like it is the fucking thunderdome. Driving is the same way. God forbid you let me merge into the highway in front of you, since after all, you REALLY need to get where YOU are going. So i wonder. Does all this quick click buying that is happening seem to be affecting our souls? Like that Visa credit card add, where everyone is happy-go-lucky buying at a brisk pace, until that one schmuck bust out his checkbook and brings everything to a screeching halt. I know when you see that ad, you think, "god i hate when i get stuck behind someone like that". Like me, you are an impatient dick. Is shopping online partly to blame for this?

My mom pointed me to this video, which is only about 20 minutes long so I had no excuse to avoid watching it. It's a documentary I supposed, or maybe more like an educational film about where your stuff comes from, goes to, and affects the world. There my be some argument about the details of percentages and boldness of some statements, just like with An Inconvenient Truth. But that doesn't matter. The concept is still sound, and the reason to want to change is irrelevant of the numbers or details. In the global warming argument, why not err on the side of caution and make some changes in your lifestyle that could stem the tide of climate change, whether it exists or not? Why not? In the end these climate related changes would make your life at least a little healthier i think. We the same goes for the idea behind the story of stuff. House sizes are twice as big as 30 years ago. Why? To fit bigger families? NO, it's to fit more stuff. Family sizes are down actually, almost a whole person. The fact that a durable item no longer is expected to last is crazy. The one thing that was a bit "oversimplistic" in the Story of Stuff was the complaint about computers and upgrading them. That the processor is the only part that changes, but the socket is different, so you have to get a whole new computer. Obviously this may seem like an evil plan, and i'm sure to some extent it is planned obsolescence, but its not the only part that changes. Ram speeds get faster, and more pins are added to increase bandwidth. Clock cycles increase so again, more pins are needed on the ram and proc. The motherboard now can't keep up, so all the supporting chips need to be upgraded as well, such as northbridge and southbridge. The card slots also change to deal with wider pipes. So in the end, part of it probably is planned obsolescence, but part is necessary. The real hit for me though was the idea that advertising is basically telling you that you suck for not having the thing they are pushing. Watch some TV with that in mind, and you will start to see it also. You need new clothes so that your friends don't think you're a complete tool. Or you need a new phone so people don't think they can't reach you on your ancient cell phone. We are all guilty of it in America. Other countries, not so much. Amazingly though, since the idea of a consumer economy was launched in America, happiness has been going down. People are overwhelmed by the amount of crap they have to keep up with. Some would say that we need to do it to progress, but does everyone need to do everything? Does everyone need a cellphone, an mp3 player, an HD tv, a new car, a new computer, a new... everything? I actually do a pretty good job of keeping things and recycling internally. I keep all my old computer parts, and build out crappy development boxes. I pawn them off eventually onto either family or donations. My desktop is only about 1 year old, but the prior one was 3, and I and a computer guy for a living. But because of this, I accumulate alot of crap, since it all stays in use. I need to figure out how to change that. In the end though, regardless of the details, the idea of The Story of Stuff is sound. Spend less, keep more, do more. Externalized costs are the biggest evil of consumer America right now I think. Walmart saves you money at the door, but your taxes are higher to foot the bill for the 54% of Walmart employees that are on state assistance. The idea that things can be almost free is rediculous, and only comes at the cost of something else. You may not see it the moment you buy it, but one day you will, when you get car-jacked, or when you HAVE to drink bottled water from some far off land, or you go camping in the woods for 300 bucks a night because those are the last woods on earth. The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard

I found this Replug magnetic headphone jack the other day, and thought it was a good idea. It's a very short extension, and a small "stud" plug that you use to connect your headphones to your electronic device. The purpose is to prevent breaking your device, or breaking the headphone pin off inside the socket of your device when you get your cable tangled on something, or any other number of bad events that happen to your wires. I do not have one, but it seems like a great idea, similar to the magnetic power plug on Mac laptops, which I also thought was brilliant. The Replug only comes in 3.5mm stereo jacks, which covers a majority of personal electronics. However, there are a few devices that use 2.5mm plugs, as well as cellphone jacks which actually have a 4th band for the microphone. I think the 4 band jack would be a smart addition to their lineup, but maybe its moot since most people just use bluetooth anyway. You can pick it up at ThinkGeek for $18, which is not bad for protection of your more expensive device. I also wonder about the sound quality, since there is yet another contact point for the signal to flow across when you use these.although frankly I don't think an Magnetic field would adversely affect the electrical singal. But the contact would most likely move a bit while you move, making for some changes in current flow, which I would guess you might hear as a crackle. But I really don't know, just guessing. If there is no real signal loss, then this is something I would get for my devices. UPDATE: apparently there was some misleading or just bad info out there in the tubes. This is NOT a magnetic plug. This is purely a silicone jacket that secures the 'breakaway' part of the cable to the plug adapter. Still a good idea, but the cool factor just dropped into the pooper. Magnets might be unrealistic in a package that small I suppose. oh well, still a good idea i guess.