Remember Pee-Wee’s Playhouse? It was that awesome Saturday morning children’s show that’s extremely creepy if you watch it now as an adult. At the beginning of each episode, a Secret Word was revealed to the viewers, who were supposed to scream and make a fuss whenever someone said the word in the episode. UGO provides us with a nice montage of all of the Secret Words that caused parents to secretly resent the show because of all the rampant screaming it created.

(UGO via I Heart Chaos via The High Definite)

In this wonderful photograph by the Expedition 24 crew and NASA, astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson gazes down at earth from the International Space Station’s cupola window bay. Did you know the ISS orbits Earth once every 90 minutes? I didn’t.

(APOD via Twisted Sifter)

Antihydrogen trapped at long last (New Scientist)

FBI reportedly asks Google, Facebook to help in expanded wiretapping (Switched)

Is OpenTable worth it? (Incanto)

NYC’s Mayor Bloomberg and Spider-Man team up for propaganda (Bleeding Cool)

Wearable Lego Master Chief helmet (Geekologie)

Kinect hacking explained (Lady Ada)

Steve Jobs at home (AllAboutSteveJobs)

(title pic via ThinkGeek; available as a t-shirt)

After the eh-ness that was the Green Lantern official trailer which leaked last night, the trailer for Cowboys & Aliens is refreshing in at least one way: It actually makes you want to see the film. The Jon Favreau-directed, Stephen Spielberg- and Ron Howard-produced film stars Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, and Olivia “I’m in House, in case you don’t remember who I am” Wilde and is based on a short graphic novel of the same name, and is due in theaters on July 29, 2011.

(via Yahoo Movies)

If anyone’s ever seen Armageddon, they know the state of Texas is big enough to accurately describe the level of terror one should feel in relation to asteroid size. It turns out that Texas is so big, in fact, that Stratford, Texas is closer to Alzada, Montana than it is closer to another town within its own state, Harlingen, Texas. As the graphic shows, Stratford is 708 miles away from Alzada, but is 843 miles away from Harlingen.

Gaming blog VG247 claims to have obtained the world’s first public images of a development prototype of Sony’s long-rumored, not-yet-officially announced PSP2, the successor to its handheld PSP console, which launched in North America more than five years ago.VG247 says that this isn’t the PSP2’s “final form factor.”

Picture of the back below, along with further thoughts:

Reports are circulating from Brazil that an evangelical cult known as “Paz do Senhor Amado” has banned USB devices from the homes of its followers on the grounds that the USB symbol looks like Satan’s trident.

The Guardian translates from the Portuguese:

The evangelical cult “Paz do Senhor Amado” (“Peace of the beloved Lord”) in the interior of Brazil forbids its followers to use any USB technology by contending that it uses a symbol that shows sympathy for the devil.

According to its founder, the “Apostle” Welder Saldanha says that this is just another symbol of Satan, which is always present in all Christian homes.

“The symbol of that name (a name which he doesn’t even like to pronounce) is a trident, which is used to torture souls that go to hell. Use only a symbol of those shows that all users of that vile technology are actually worshipers of Satan” – explains the” Apostle”.

Measures were taken so that all the USB connections of his followers were exchanged for common connections and even the Bluetooth (sic), which according to Saldanha Welder is permitted, for “Blue was the color of the eyes of our savior Jesus Christ”.

Good thing Welder Saldanha hasn’t heard about SATA.

Related: A video guide to knowing your Satanic cults. (via TDW)

(Guardian via BuzzFeed)

This guy is playing the Rhythm Tengkou minigame “Samurai Slice” by slicing a beam of light with a samurai sword in real life. He set up a light sensor to a robotic finger, then slashes the beam of light with a samurai sword, which causes the light sensor to trigger the robotic finger to press a button.

Yes, Rhythm Tengoku is a Game Boy Advance game, and he’s playing it on a Nintendo DS, but remember, the DS Lite has a slot for GBA games, presumably built into the unit with the sole intention of doing something like this.

(Kotaku via GamesRadar)

Star Trek Online has announced a very intriguing contest: starting on December 9th, they’re going to start taking design submissions on the next version of the Enterprise. One lucky winner will have their idea made into an actual in-game ship. What’s most intriguing is the implication that this will make their design canonical.

Cryptic’s announcement states that they are working with CBS to offer the contest, which begs the question: is the new design going to be used in a future Star Trek movie?

The span of time from tonight until predawn tomorrow marks the peak of the Leonid meteor shower, which occurs every year in mid-November due to the activity of the comet Tempel-Tuttle.

According to Space.com, the best time to watch the meteors is “in the last two or three hours before sunrise, when the moon has set”: “‘From the time of moonset until around 5:15 a.m. when the first streaks of dawn begin to appear in the east the sky will be dark and moonless,” advises Joe Rao, Space.com skywatching columnist. “That interval will provide you with your best opportunity to see any Leonid meteors.’” You can use this TimeAndDate calculator to determine when moonset occurs where you live; it’ll most likely fall around 3am.

A few other useful meteor-watching resources:

Before we get down to the winning 10 word sentences and poems, we have a just couple of comments on our first contest:

We didn’t realize so many people would take up our challenge and then further complicate things by submitting haikus or rhymes.  It was very impressive, and we got so many great entries that we couldn’t narrow it to just one.  So three runners-up will be receiving three Scars of Mirrodin booster packs each!

And now, the winners:

Today is National UnFriend Day according to Jimmy Kimmel. So, instead of being productive at work, you should sift through your Facebook friends and remove whoever you aren’t actually friends with. It’s a friends list after all, not a dude-you-met-that-once list.

For those curious, here’s a five minute bit where Jimmy Kimmel further explains National UnFriend Day, says Mark Zukerberg doesn’t have any friends and jokes Zuckerberg is trying to destroy friendship.

Like Jimmy says, “in order to save friendship, we must unfriend.”

The LA Times is reporting that one of our favorite science guys appears to be having some health problems.

“Tristan Camacho, a USC senior who attended the lecture, said [Bill] Nye was walking toward the podium when he collapsed mid-sentence. “Then after about 10 seconds, he popped back up with much gusto and asked everybody how long he was out for and went on with a story about how a similar thing happened to him that morning.”

Nye attempted to finish his presentation, but exhibited slurred speech and a certain wobblyness of stance and was eventually led off stage.  Paramedics responded to the scene, but the LA Times was unsure if Nye was determined to need treatment.”

We certainly hope that what ever the problem is, it is minimal, and wish Mr. Nye a speedy recovery.

NYU computer science professor Ken Perlin has devised a small yet remarkably readable screen-ready font.

Perlin: “I’ve noticed that Microsoft’s smallest screen fonts are unreadable, whereas their smallest readable screen fonts are way bigger than necessary.”

Above: the first 500 words of the Declaration of Independence.

(Ken Perlin via MAKE via Coudal Partners)

About six months ago, an entrepreneurial Bronx 17-year-old named Fei Lam had a bright idea: Since Apple customers wanted white iPhones so badly and the company didn’t seem to be satisfying their desires anytime soon (and may never do so this generation of phones), Lam contacted Foxconn, Apple’s Taiwanese supplier, and was able to get access to white iPhone 4 parts.

Lam launched a site called WhiteiPhone4Now where impatient iPhone fanatics could get full conversion kits for $279; major media attention followed, and Lam says that he’s made more than $130,000 since August, money which he says will go towards his college education.

But Lam could be in trouble. He says that yesterday, he received a letter from a presumably Apple-backed private investigator accusing him of “selling stolen goods,” the consequences for which could be steep: