Smallist

From the “what could possibly wrong?” file, the Planetary Society will be sending germs to the Red Planet. Or at least to the neighborhood. The experiment will be piggybacked on the Phobos-grunt probe, which will orbit Mars, touchdown on Phobos (one of Mars’ two tiny moons), and then come home with the dirt. Comic book writers are probably salivating at the prospect of radioactive moondirt and germs landing back on Earth. More at the Phobos-Grunt mission home, and at the LIFE Experiment: Phobos home page.

Dancer is a 4-inch, 18 ounce Chihuahua. He’s being submitted to the Guiness Book of World Records as the smallest dog. More pictures, and video, available at the Orlando Sentinel.

Nothing new here really, but SFGate has a writeup on Tumbleweed houses, and their founder Jay Shafer. Plus some great pics. His site is here.

On the heels of quitting shopping altogether, here’s a few ways to save some money if you get hornswaggled into showing up at the S-mart. And in Smallist fashion, here’s my abridged list:

• The more important the item, the farther away from the entrance.
• Roomy, plentiful, enticing shopping carts.
• Impulse items near checkouts. (Gum wouldn’t exist without this rule. Think about it, it’s a piece of sweetened rubber.)
• Tags that look like they say “on sale” but really say something like “everyday low price” or “not not not on sale!”

Elliott is trying to reduce his life to one bag. So far, the site looks very promising. For instance, he’s demonstrated the art of fitting dress shirts into a fedex envelope. Definitely one to watch.

Bankrate, of all places, has this article on a group of granola-types in California who found a great way to save: They stopped buying stuff! Not everything of course, but anything beyond the basics. From the article:

The thrifty bunch called themselves “The Compact,” a group of friends in the San Francisco area who agreed not to buy anything new for one year except for food, medical necessities and toiletry items. Buying secondhand was OK since battling consumerism was the point, not saving money.

But they did save money. “I actually had a lot of credit card debt and paid off quite a bit of that,” Rosenmoss says.

A few helpful tips from the article include:

• Don’t deprive yourself, just figure out ways to get what you want without buying something new.
• Do a trial run, a few weeks or so. It’ll teach you how much you can potentially save, then you can come up with a longer term plan that you can live with. In other words, think of it like kick-starting a diet with a one-day fast.
• Listen to the Stones: Wants and needs are different things. Figure that out.

Some of the couples saved a few hundred dollars per month. One couple with a combined income of 65,000 a year eliminated 30,000 of credit card debt in 15 months.

Via consumerist.

The smallest piece of flat art in the world? That’s what ARmark is claiming of this little guy. He’s 1/8th the width of a strand of hair. The technique is called “nanoentonography,” and the press release claims it was invented by “artist J’Sha”. Googling, however, suggests that J. Sha is in fact a nanotechnology scientist. Making this the smallest piece of outsider art, I suppose.

Earthling is having a vote to see which new blog will get on their blogroll. If I weren’t on the list I’d vote for Paleo-future, an awesome site about yesterday’s tomorrows. Or maybe suicide food, a site dedicated to food advertising where the creature to be eaten is personified. But I am on the list, so screw them. Vote for Smallist!

Remember how George Jetson could fold his bubble space car into his wallet? Well I guess Hanna Barbera couldn’t predict the need for emissions-free vehicles, or the law of conservation of mass. So we’ll have to make do with this folding suitcase bike. It’s expected to sell for $399. Via Treehugger.

Oh and don’t Google image search Jetsons without the filtering adult content, unless you want your inner child to be irreversibly damaged.

I never knew stumbling could be this much fun! Sumotori Dreams is another example of the previously mentioned demoscene. This little wrestling game will cost you 96k of desk space. You’ve probably written papers in Word that take up more disk space. And unlike the produkkt stuff, this won’t sit there generating textures for two minutes. Via Metafilter.