Belkin's washable mouse

This one has horizontal scroll capability as well.
Keyboards and mouses (correct plural for the device) are excellent media to transmit microbes. My customer service days around trading stations can attest to that.

MizPee -- need to find a restroom while you're out?

To your cellphone's browser. User-contributed database of locations. Unfortunately, it looks like they have no times of availability, nor even a Google map, but it's a start. Don't know if there's anything for beyond the States.
Cleverly includes promotions for nearby businesses as a menu option.

Wow-cleaner to scrub industrial emissions

Given the development rate of behemoths India and China, this interim technology is required:

Wow's technology was shown to remove 85 - 95% of heavy metal pollutants and up to 85% of carbon dioxide from emissions, compared with other scrubbers, whose technologies only removed an average of 50 - 60% of mercury from emissions.

The technology works by first cooling the emissions and then adding chemicals to allow them to be converted into water soluble, non-polluting compounds and solid particles that can then be washed out. It is highly versatile: it can be installed on coal-fired power plants, furnaces, incinerators, gasifiers, gas turbines and a bevy of other utilities.

However, note the comments.

Adequate sun exposure no guard against low vitamin D

Fifty-one percent of the 93 studied in Hawaii had abundant exposure, but still low vit D levels.

Zentation: Online video and PowerPoint get married

You have to be online, but surely there have been times you would have liked to apply PowerPoint to a video.

Is The Office's Ricky Gervais already a has-been?

We have to bear in mind that each of the two seasons were only six episodes long and that he and Merchant declared to the world that they had run out of stuff to write. So, the man does understand quality over quantity. Ergo, he can be held culpable for his present desperation.

Rise of libertarianism: Affluence giving rise to hippies and then right-wing fundamentalists

A review of the book, The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America's Politics and Culture. The self-denying, Protestant work ethic provided the material stability for self-realization to become a common goal. However, this generally meant reaction against the very institutions that allowed it to arise in the first place. Then came the right-wing backlash self-realization.
This article, by the book's author himself, goes over more blow-by-blow of each side and concludes that they have both made their marks on society and that what middle exists today are libertarian inclinations. One of the more interesting lines regarding the right:

(Oral) Roberts now saw: God wants us to be healthy; God wants us to succeed; God wants us to be rich!

This alignment of Christian fundamentalism with money is apparently recent, antithetical to the tone of 19th century belief.

I haven't had the time to go over it, but here's an essay on types of libertarianism and why it's not workable.

Finally, here are the Nine Circles of Libertarian Hell for those who think they care about liberty.

Cylindrical rooftop wind turbine from Australia

Five of these in Perth can take care of a house's needs; surplus sold to grid. Of course, you can mix and match with solar or other sources instead.

Time's interview with Rupert Murdoch

This was in anticipation of picking up the Wall Street Journal. Some of that history plus some personal psychology.

Pay to see your friends humiliate themselves on the internet

Socially networked, Jackass lite. A few categories like romantic, challenging (?), and X-rated.

Using drugs to intentionally loosen memory's grip

Presumably good for PTSD and the like.
One of the side effects of the hypertension drug propanolol is memory problems. This treatment experiment, however, administered the drug during measured stressful recollection of trauma that occurred ten years back. Apparently, by disrupting the phase of restoring a memory after recollection, the researchers were able to reduce the anxiety associated with the memory.
Although the second experiment mentions that the U0126 drug used is known to induce limited amnesia, there's otherwise nothing in the article to suggest that a memory itself has been erased; it could be just the emotional association.

Swaptree -- swap books, CDs, DVDs, video games

Limited bartering. You only have to pay shipping.

Future urban boom chance to set things right

The great thing about concentrating population is efficiency of information dissemination. Resources need to be targeted to women, who actually take care of the local community. Having easier access to information on health, education, family planning will make the huge difference.
The UN report notes that to avoid shanty town sprawl, investment is needed now in basic urban infrastructure for housing, as well as the laws to mitigate unscrupulous landlords.

Bad airline seat

A handwritten note complaining of seat 29E. We need to find out which aircraft this is.

Quartz knuckles

A two-finger ring meant for ornamentation, I guess, but it more says, "watch out,"
to me.

100 most mispronounced words/phrases

Like saying pronounciation instead of the proper pronunciation.

The spread of sushi as good globalization

A review of the book The Sushi Economy, which shares history and tramps around the world to make the connections for us with cool anecdotes of the trade of moving fish and sushi.

Dirt cheap, wall-sized whiteboard

With parts from Home Depot, for $28.

Excise HIV from infected cells

Nowhere near in vivo yet, but "the discovery of the Tre recombinase proves that enzymatic removal of integrated HIV-1 from human chromosomes is a current-day reality." Present treatment is suppression of load, but HIV can remain dormant in infected host DNA, reactivating later.

World clock of birth, death, forest loss, ...

Number cumulatively ticking up to tally things like divorce, cars produced, etc. Extended subtable for types of death.

Protect the soil, release less carbon, slow global warming

With organic farming techniques like no tillage and winter cover crops, carbon is better sequestered in the soil. Carbon dioxide emission for the States could go down 10% if all US farmland went organic.

Shots of water as fire

How to get ketchup out of a normal, glass bottle

Itemizing of the wrong ways, and a bit of physics.

The story of the record industry's decline

Opportunity after opportunity blown. The big entertainment industry, for all of its supposed hipness, has too few gatekeepers from insular circles without an ear to the ground. New distribution is punishing their arrogance.

Fragile X mental retardation reversed in mice

With fragle X syndrome, the subject's mutation in a particular gene on the X chromosome leads to cognitive difficulties, all the way to mental retardation in the extreme. At the synaptic level, the dendrites seem to be thin, stubby and immature, impairing signal transmission.
A protein, actin, helps to shape dendrites (as well as other parts of the neuron). Actin, in turn, is regulated by the enzyme, p21-activated kinase (PAK). The researchers speculated that by knocking out PAK activity (genetically in this case), actin production would go up and make for healthier dendrites. Indeed, fragile X mice without PAK production showed more normal cognitive behavior.
So, theoretically, if PAK production could be inhibited in fragile X humans with a drug or something, things could look better for them. Who knows, however, about side effects.

PC World's 100 loved blogs

Auto to fashion to media to politics ...

Does GDP matter?

Real income is the proper measure of our command over resources. Using this figure instead, a nation doesn't have to increase productivity, just buy cheap. Of course, to buy something, you have to actually sell something, rather than taking out another mortgage or auctioning more T-bills.

Plastic back into oil

Using an industrial microwave.

The Hauntening

Some harmless, minute-and-a-half of fun.

Gladiator truths counter movie myths

Gladiators were bean-eating vegetarians who fought barefoot, participated in refereed matches and suffered floggings if they became inebriated or behaved inappropriately with women, new findings suggest.

Confessions of Staples drones

Guide to some insider stuff for shopping at Staples.

The Netherlands restricts drugs and prostitution -- liberal identity expiring

It's especially organized crime's involvement which is making the trades appear more lurid. Not just the orthodox Christians are raising the alarm:

Increasingly, politicians from the more center-left Labor Party are among the most outspoken proponents of closing some brothels and marijuana shops -- known here as "coffee shops."

The Harold & Kumar sequel will appear out of step when released.
Update: Now going after mushrooms.

Waitress beating experienced hands at picking stocks

A 46-year-old waitress is close to the top performer for a million-dollar CNBC stock contest prize. Results today on July 8? She plays earnings moves. Has never touched the markets before.

How Facebook could crush MySpace, Yahoo! and Google

The opposing view to the earlier one which I had neglected to credit to Jason Kottke. You can indeed sit in one place and do many things -- like third-party Lending Club -- but you also get updated as to what friends are doing.

Sure, the other portals incorporate Gmail and BBC headlines and YouTube searches and podcast directories. By adding a social context to all of this content, however, Facebook would immediately trump its main competition. With Facebook's News Feed, it's elementary to see when your friends sign up for a new product or service. That means the best add-ons become viral instantly...

Kottke argues, though, that like AOL, Facebook closes off public browsing and participation (yes, its reason for its growth) and that limits how much of a success it can be in the Wild Web. It personally makes sense for me if the friend activity update functionality (news, links, events, products, services, ...) would just fit as a fancier looking feed in my reader. They need to widget parts of it so it can fit into other platforms.

Gene therapy success for Parkinson's patients

A cold-like virus is used as a vector to deliver genes that help convert glutamate into gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) and thus calm down the subthalamic nucleus. Three months after injection, all recipients had at least 25-30% improvement in symptoms.
Apparently, Parkinson's patients are notoriously prone to placebo effects, though.

Yotel - tiny hotel room

Small (though not capsule small), but very modern-looking and with internet access and entertainment wall in future iterations. Looks something like a boat cabin, no?

The Middle East -- middle of nowhere

Experts on the the Islamic Belt (I don't have a better term since it covers North, East Africa as well as Southwest Asia; the author seems to have no problem lumping Algeria into the region) are overestimating the region's importance and fighting capacity in their dramatic pronouncements.

With neither invasions nor friendly engagements, the peoples of the middle east should finally be allowed to have their own history—the one thing that middle east experts of all stripes seem determined to deny them.

He's actually quite disparaging of the region, calling it "backwards", but at least he acknowledges history:

The middle east was once the world's most advanced region, but these days its biggest industries are extravagant consumption and the venting of resentment.

3D foot measurement device rolling out

It's six 3D cameras which link to a database to recommend a best fit.

Credit is way too loose -- Austrian economics coming back

So, to avoid a serious depression, jack interest rates to curtail even more debt failures than will occur with all those leveraged money losers out there? But how can a choked money supply be okay for profitable businesses? I think we've painted ourselves into a corner. They had better get this right.
I didn't realize there was any dichotomy or distinction between a credit view and a money supply view of the Depression.

Evolution of style for the rich

Between the lines, I think it's saying that the moneyed class now do not avoid activities of the lower classes, but get to do and have more.

List of Web 2.0 lists -- for now

Hopefully, this one stays stable for a while.

The Guardian's top 1000 films

However, Ace Ventura and Heaven's Gate are on the list.