My friends Christy Canida and Eric Wilhelm of Instructables dressed up their lovely daughter Corvidae as a three-armed happy mutant (!) baby! Naturally, they posted an Instructable about it:

This year we were a Nuclear Family for Halloween, with our 4-month-old daughter Corvidae dressed up as a 3-armed happy mutant.

While we wanted to be subtle, this was almost too subtle - she wore the costume all day, and hardly anyone noticed!  But when they finally detected a problem, the responses were excellent.

Happy Mutant 3-Armed Baby Costume

Our dear friend and guest blogger alum Richard Metzger (show here with his wife Tara in a photo that Coop took) is now in charge of the This Is Brand X blog. Brand X is the Los Angeles Times' entrant into the "alt weekly" market, edited by Deborah Vankin. There are over 100,000 copies in distribution boxes around town.

Richard is the most knowledgeable and most interesting cultural critic I know. The LA Times scored a major coup when they signed him on.

From the press release:

Richard comes to Brand X with a decorated background, most notably as one of the New York Post's "top 20 most important new media executives" and having also been named one of the "top 100 people on the Internet" (twice!) by Silicon Alley Reporter. He's a Webby-award winner and was recently given the "New Business Award" by the Tribeca Film Festival for co-founding The Disinformation Company Ltd., a New York-based book publisher and DVD distributor, where he served as the company's creative director for 11 years.

This is Brand X

I love this commercial for a mobile home liquidator produced by I Love Local Commercials, a couple of guys who travel around the country making free commercials for independent businesses.

Video of exploding capacitors shot at 300 frames per second. The real fun starts at around 2:30.

MAKE: Exploding capacitors in high speed

Evelyn Border (above) and Tina Griekspoor of Bedford County, PA got some old-timey style public shaming for stealing gift cards that a child misplaced in a store.

"I'm just standing out here being humiliated in front of people," Griekspoor said.

"I admit we did make a mistake," said her mother, across the street.

Both agreed to the penance to avoid jail time for theft of lost property.

Thieves must proclaim their deed

From a slew of new brainwave toys and bionic monkeys to advanced brain scans and wireless neuro-implants that will soon enable paralyzed people to remotely operate computers with their minds, the gap in the human-machine interface is closing. But while mind-reading gets all the glory, other researchers are developing new amazing non-drug methods to control the brain as well. We've posted many times about zapping regions of the brain with magnetic pulses, called transcranial magnetic stimulation, to treat depression, boost creativity, or even improve reaction time. And brain "pacemakers" are increasingly common treatments for epilepsy, Parkinson's, and even depression. What's next? Mind control through sound and light.

Edmund Wilson's all-purpose bugger-off reply. (Via Tim Ferriss)

Joy! You can now buy a T-shirt featuring the likeness of everybody's favorite horrific-looking, behind-the-toilet-dwelling, cockroach-eating centipede. Will Bower from the Facebook group House Centipedes Are Your Friends sent a link to these great shirts, available on Etsy (where else?). The centipedes look hardcore, and (as you can tell by looking at the models) simply putting a Scutigera Coleoptrata on your chest is sure to make you appear 10x as hip as normal.

Scutigera Coleoptrata T-shirt
Scutigera Coleoptrata T-shirt, fitted version

If you flip the Dodge Viper logo upside down, it looks like Daffy Duck. (Via Bits & Pieces)

Leander Kahney of Cult of Mac spotted this $0.99 app for the iPhone 3GS. It's called Car Finder and it helps you find your parked car.

The app uses the iPhone's camera to overlay the direction of your car and how far away it is. The app relies on the camera and a digital compass, and is  compatible only with the iPhone 3GS  running 3.1 or later.

Car Finder iPhone App Uses Augmented Reality To Find Your Wheels

The number of people affected by food shortages is starting to rise again. Is the solution a new biotech version of the Green Revolution, or a green Green Revolution based on organic farming? The New York Times brought together six experts to address those questions. Most fall squarely on one side of the fence or the other, but I'm interested in the more balanced opinion of Jonathan Foley, director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota. I've done a lot of research on agriculture issues recently, both for National Geographic News and Discover magazine, and Foley's "third way" seems to make the most sense to me, in context with what I've been hearing from global agriculture experts.

Currently, there are two paradigms of agriculture being widely promoted: local and organic systems versus globalized and industrialized agriculture. Each has fervent followers and critics. Genuine discourse has broken down: You're either with Michael Pollan or you're with Monsanto. But neither of these paradigms, standing alone, can fully meet our needs.

Rather than voting for just one solution, we need a third way to solve the crisis. Let's take ideas from both sides, creating new, hybrid solutions that boost production, conserve resources and build a more sustainable and scalable agriculture. There are many promising avenues to pursue: precision agriculture, mixed with high-output composting and organic soil remedies; drip irrigation, plus buffer strips to reduce erosion and pollution; and new crop varieties that reduce water and fertilizer demand. In this context, the careful use of genetically modified crops may be appropriate, after careful public review.

Can Biotech Food Cure World Hunger, in the New York Times, via the Science and Development Network.

Watch: MP4 download, YouTube, Dotsub (with captions/text translations).

In this episode of Boing Boing Video, we test-drive "Sarriugarteis (Odontochile) trilobiteis," also known as The Electrobite.

This trilobite-shaped DIY vehicle was created by "Oilpunk" enthusiasts Kyrsten Mate + Jon Sarriugarte, with help from fellow makers Amy Jenkins and Tansy Brooks.

Pesco previously blogged about the little bugger here -- it's even been to Burning Man, where it no doubt terrified some trippin' hippies.