Author: Adam Frucci

And you thought taking your shoes off was annoying! In the TSA’s never-ending quest to make traveling possibly safer and definitely more annoying, they’re going to start randomly swabbing passengers’ hands at airport checkpoints.

Really, this makes a hell of a lot more sense than the shoe-checking and liquid-limiting that makes traveling such a pain in the ass now. In fact, if they let me keep my shoes on and carry a cup of coffee through security, they could swab my hands to their heart’s content. And the experts seem to think it’s a smart idea:

Security experts consulted by CNN said swabbing hands is a good move, and privacy advocates said they support the new swabbing protocols, provided the agency tests only for security-related objects and does not discriminate when it selects people to be tested.

It’s a “very good idea,” said security expert Tony Fainberg. TSA screeners currently swab luggage handles and parts of bags that are likely be contaminated by human hands, he said, and swabbing a person’s hands increases the chances of finding explosive materials. “Looking at the hands means you will probably get a better dose,” he said.

So to sum up: more security, but smarter. It’ll probably cause some more delays at airport security lines, but it’s tough to argue with the logic of searching for people with explosive residues on their hands. [CNN; Photo via Flickr]

Everything you thought you knew is wrong. On almost every exterior shot you see on TV, the background is filled in via green screen. Watch this video and have your mind blown. [That’s How It Happened via Kottke]

What happens when a dude gets kicked in the hangin’ brains by an MMA fighter and American Gladiator? Well, when he’s a crazy “combat expert” who’s taken hundreds of nutshots, not what you think.

Apparently, this Roy Kirby guy has been hit in the balls so many times that they’ve toughened up and also given up on telling his brain that it hurts. Good for him? It was all worth it for them to be able to show that kick about 200 times in a five minute video. [GammaSquad via Gawker]

For this week’s Photoshop Contest, I asked you to come up with more derivative services Google had in its pipeline. And here’s hoping Googmodo becomes a reality; I want to eat at the Google Cafeteria!

First Place—Zacqary Adam Green
Second Place—Cliff De Roode
Third Place—Eaton Jonah

Leave it to a bunch of engineering students at Yale to design a crazy spokeless bike. It’s not the first spokeless bike we’ve seen, but it looks a lot more like a real bike than past models.

Only the back wheel is spokeless, but that’s just because they only had a limited amount of time and money to build this. It would be pretty simple to do what they did to the back wheel to the front wheel. As for how it works:

It’s a single speed setup. We used two cranks and two bottom brackets in the front to gear up the ratio. It goes from (IIRC) 53 to a 13, which is connected to the second crank and another 53 which connects to the rear hub. The rear hub is just a normal ratcheting rear hub that we mated to our belt pulley. Not sure if all these bike terms are right, but that’s the general idea.

The front wheel would be almost exactly the same as the rear wheel except that it could be a little lighter. Some of the aluminum can be shaved off since there’s no powertrain to connect to.

[Reddit via Crunchgear]

As long as humans have had genitals, we’ve found artificial ways to stimulate them. But it took the repressed Victorian era to create the vibrator, a device aimed at curing a disease that doesn’t exist.

It’s Valentine’s Day weekend, a time where those without honeybears to take out to dinner are probably feeling a little lonely. And you know what happens when people get lonely: they go to town on themselves. According to Pamela Doan of Babeland, one of the biggest sex toy shops around, sales were up 22% overall last February, with Valentine’s Day itself being the highest single retail sales day they ever had. In fact, they were so high that they accounted for 19% of Babeland’s sales for the entire year. That’s a lot of vibrators.

I talked about the earliest vibrators with Dr. Rachel Maines, author of The Technology of Orgasm, the definitive history of vibrators and the repressed era that spawned them. I had no problem talking to Dr. Maines about vibrators, but back in the 19th century, talking about masturbation was very taboo. So the first vibrators weren’t marketed as such. Instead, they were sold as medical devices used to treat “hysteria,” hysteria being something that ladies came down with when they hadn’t gotten their rocks off in a while.

According to the 2nd century anatomist Galen, hysteria was caused by the retention of “female semen,” which could get into the blood and corrupt it. So clearly, it had to be periodically let loose.

So doctors took to “curing” hysteric single women who didn’t have a husband to cure them of their ailments the normal way. They would stimulate the vagina until “parosysm” (read: orgasm) was achieved. But their hands got tired so quickly, what with all the vigorous rubbing required. And so the vibrator came into existence.

Vibrators have been around longer than electricity has—the first model came out in 1734 and used a crank like some sort of hedonistic egg beater—but it took electricity to really bring them to the mainstream.

According to Dr. Maines, all vibrators are just inefficient motors. “All motors vibrate. If you make a motor that’s especially sloppy, it’ll vibrate more. That’s the principle behind the vibrator: a very sloppy motor that’s designed to vibrate.” An efficient motor, such as the one that runs your fridge, would make for a seriously crappy vibrator. But the Manipulator, which was essentially an inefficient steam engine with a dildo attached to it, did the job swimmingly.

One of the first mechanical vibrators was the steam-powered Manipulator (pictured up top), invented by Dr. George Taylor in 1869. This monster machine hid its engine in another room with the apparatus sticking through the wall. Terrifying!

Today, vibrators have come a long way. First of all, they don’t require an entire room to run properly. Secondly, they can be purchased for their intended use instead of pretending like they’re curing whatever disease it is that makes women horny. Add onto that the advancements made in plastics and moulding makes them feel less like cold appliances. It’s the golden age of vibrators, everyone!

To make you truly thankful for the era we live in, here’s a selection of some of the weirdest and most uncomfortable-looking vibrators to ever see the light of day, with descriptions courtesy of Dr. Maines. The Manipulator is scary, sure. But then there’s the Electro-Spatteur, which spiced up its vibrations with electric shocks. You can’t make this stuff up.

For more information on the history of sex toys, be sure to check out The Technology of Orgasm by Dr. Rachel P. Maines and Passion and Power, a documentary on the subject.

Google Buzz is strangely familiar. Probably because what it does already exists in the form of Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr. But that’s not stopping them! What’s next in Google unceasing march towards doing everything?

Send your best entries to me at [email protected] with Google Services in the subject line. Save your files as JPGs or GIFs under 800k in size, and use a FirstnameLastname.jpg naming convention using whatever name you want to be credited with. Send your work to me by next Tuesday morning, and I’ll pick three top winners and show off the rest of the best in our Gallery of Champions. Get to it!

Google is really pushing to expand Street View off of the streets. First they talk about Google Store View, and now the Google Snowmobile is mapping ski trails.

The new mapped trails are all in Vancouver at Whistler, the site of the Olympic games. Since the tie-in is with next week’s games, I wouldn’t expect Google to rush out and suddenly map a bunch of other areas. But still, it’s pretty cool to be able to virtually tear down some of those awesome-looking runs. [Google Blog]

Have you heard the exciting news?! Comcast is rebranding as Xfinity! We decided to help them out by calling on our lovely readers to create the first Xfinity ads, and I think they did a bang-up job.

First Place—Jeffer Mitchell
Second Place—Alexander Deluca
Third Place—Die Hard Dan

The military currently trains its soldiers using PCs, but they were interested in switching to the Xbox 360 for a number of reasons. Unfortunately, Microsoft was not too interested in helping them out.

According to Danger Room, Microsoft refused to sell consoles to Roger Smith, chief technology officer for PEO STRI, the Army command responsible for purchasing training equipment. Why wouldn’t Microsoft sell them consoles? Well, according to Smith, three reasons:

* Microsoft was afraid that the military would buy up lots of Xbox 360s, but would buy only one game for each of them, so MS wouldn’t make much money off of the games.
* that a big military purchase would create a shortage of Xbox 360s.
* that if the Xbox became an Army training device, it would taint its reputation. Microsoft was concerned that “do we want the Xbox 360 to be seen as having the flavor of a weapon? Do we want Mom and Dad knowing that their kid is buying the same game console as the military trains the SEALs and Rangers on?” Smith told me during an interview for Training & Simulation Journal.

When asked about this, a Microsoft rep claimed to have no knowledge of that conversation and suggested the Army uses the XNA Game Studio development tools. Sure, Microsoft. But they didn’t say they were opposed to working with the Army.

But at this point, Smith doesn’t seem so interested anymore, saying he’d “be happy to reopen these discussions if Microsoft is interested in selling these products to our community.”

A weird situation all around. The soldiers just want Xboxes! Come on guys, let’s work this out. [Danger Room]

Ross Berens’ gorgeous planetary posters feature incredible artwork and real-deal factoids on all eight of our planets, plus our old friend Pluto. Space aficionados, you’ll want to check these out. [Cargo Collective via Kottke]

Is the new world’s tallest building going through some issues? While so far only the observation deck is open, it’s been temporarily shut down due to “unexpected high traffic” and “electrical problems.” Ruh roh!

Residential and commercial tenants are due to start moving in this month, but it’s not clear just what the problems are with the building that’s keeping it closed up. Will there be a delay? Will it turn into a big, empty symbol of overdevelopment? Or did something just get screwed up with the elevators that they’re now fixing? I don’t know, but it all makes me glad I live and work nice and close to the ground. [Houston Chronicle via Fast Company]

Dell appears to be prepping a WiMAX version of its Mini 10 netbook, one that will let you surf the web using a 4G wireless connection via Clear or Sprint.

The new model is essentially the same as the current crop of Mini 10s, with the exception of the wireless-N and WiMAX abilities combined on a single chipset. There’s no word on when this guy will be released, but CTIA next month might be a good time for an announcement. [Unwired View via Electronista]