Smallist

Amazon offers this tiny Sega Genesis — with games already included — for $9.99. Helluva lot cheaper than a Wii, and in stock.

To clarify, this doesn’t involve mini-potatoes. It uses a potato “slug” the diameter of a pen. And the fuel is hairspray, so you’ll need to carry some into battle with you. You’ll also ruin a perfectly good butane lighter. But if you’re really bored and not worried about losing your eyebrows in a freak accident, this might be the project for you. View the video here.

Via BoingBoing.

Ah, the humble peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Eating it at lunch instead of a hamburger will save 3.5 pounds of greenhouse gas. And every 16 sandwiches will save a chicken. Assuming, I guess, you were going to eat chicken instead. No word on how many of those sandwiches you’ll have to eat to save a cow, but I’d imagine it’s quite a few cans of Smuckers.

This is all according to the PB&J campaign.

A word of advice: If your kitchen is small enough that you need a built-in coffee pot, get your morning cup in the outside world. You need the air anyway. On the other hand, this built-in coffee machine is pretty nifty looking for a kitchen of any size, taps into your water supply, and it does save a bit of counter space.

Via Slashgear and Freshome.

The Delta Shelter is a luxury weekend cabin on stilts, designed by Tom Kundig. On Monday morning when you leave to rejoin the rat-race, simply crank down the steel shutters and relax in the knowledge that you won’t come back to find it infested with teenagers or Blair witches. Unfortunately this isn’t a mass-produced item; it was custom made for the owner.

Via Freshome

SciAm reports on a DNA-based computer developed by Harvard bioengineers. The DNA can be injected into a cell, make a calculation based on which chemicals are present, and then prevent certain proteins from being manufactured. Ideally, it could be used to detect disease and then trigger a treatment.

A short interview with the creator is available here.

Brando brings us this little 5 volt, USB powered cooler. Takes 5 minutes to get cold, holds a single can. Nifty!

They also have a category called “USB lifestyle“…. I had no idea a hardware standard could be so dope.

Via Engadget.

This tungsten needle takes the title. The dots are individual atoms.

Via Metafilter.

Thomas Allen cuts apart pulp fiction covers, and makes the tiny melodramatic characters spring out of the books. It’s like the opposite of what Gumby could do, but with 70% more lesbians. But it’s not all dime-store pulp: Allen does children’s books too. From the exhibit:

As a director would stage actors, Allen stages his cut-outs in ways that create humor, tension, mystery, and drama. A boxer fights his own shadow in Spar, and in Bookend a gunfighter stands over his recently fallen opponent. Although the characters are freed from the closed pages of books, the books themselves still remain present in each photograph. A ship sails across the curved pages of a dictionary-sized book in Swell. In Cover, a gunman finds safety behind the spine of a book. And in Recover, a worn paperback acts as a life raft to three weathered shipwreck survivors.

Via boingboing.

There’s a Thai miniature festival in Phuket this week. The miniatures depict traditional Thai life:

The light and sound exhibition highlights villagers’ lifestyles, Thai culture, and especially a Traditional Thai Temple Carnival and also a Buddhist Parade, while some of the cute tiny things that attracted lots of attention were a miniature parade of Jatukam Ramatape amulets that have become a hot topic among Thais at the moment, as well as the displays of the smallest crystal elephants in Thailand, even inside miniature bottles, which most visitors have to see through magnifying glasses.

More at minithai.com, if you can read it.