Month: May 2016

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Last year my friends and I formed a club for (as Cory puts it) “people who aren’t good at magic tricks.” (Actually, Cory, John Edgar Park, and I are the only ones in the group who aren’t good at magic tricks. The others are pretty accomplished magicians and passed the audition to become members of the Magic Castle.)

At our last meeting Michael Borys introduced me to the FriXion pen. It’s an erasable pen made by Pilot. It comes with a small eraser, but you can buy a large eraser, which is a smooth brick of plastic. When you rub a mark made with the pen, the friction creates heat to erase the mark. The cool thing (or bug, depending on your use case) is that the writing will vanish instantly when you apply heat. It’s a heat-activated disappearing ink. I read that if you apply ice to the erased writing, the writing will reappear (it will be faded, however).

Amazon sells a 3-pack of the FrXion pen for $4, and a 4-pack of erasers for $6.

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Researchers are starting to think that Alzheimer’s disease could be caused by microbial infections that cause plaque to form in the brain. This opens the possibility for a vaccination against Alzheimer’s.

Support for the immune defence idea comes from work by Jacobus Jansen of Maastricht University in the Netherlands. Using MRI brain scans, his team has found that people in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease have more permeable blood-brain barriers, suggesting that they may have developed the disease because their brains were more vulnerable to attack. “The microbe hypothesis seems plausible,” says Jansen.

If infectious agents are kicking off the formation of plaques, then vaccines could head them off. “You could vaccinate against those pathogens, and potentially prevent this problem arising later in life,” says Moir.

If many microbes are involved, immunising against them all will be hard, says Jansen. “But if the frequency of certain pathogens is quite high, there might be a possibility.”

In the meantime, don’t get a brain infection.

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Vaping continues to become increasingly popular, meaning there is a growing selection of premium vaping products on the market. Here’s one that should get your attention: the AtmosRX Combo Vaporizer Bundle. 

This top-notch bundle includes the Rx Dry Herb Vaporizer, plus a bundle of accessories and flavors. Grab it now: it’s currently 73% off in the Boing Boing Store.

The Atmos Rx, which has garnered strong positive reviews, is a pen-style vaporizer that burns both waxes and herbs, offering a variety of options not often found in a portable pen.

The durable, compact Rx’s ample ceramic heating chamber fires up within 10 seconds and produces huge vapor clouds, allowing you to customize your vaping experience.

In case you’re already a fan of e-liquids, no worries: you’ll also get an e-liquid adapter for your Rx and two e-liquid flavors to try as well.

Find out why everyone’s jumping on the vaping train with the AtmosRx Combo Vaporizer Bundle, now just $59.99, while the deal lasts.

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See sample pages from this book at Wink.

Beautiful Birds

by Jean Roussen (author) and Emmanuel Walker (illustrator)

Flying Eye Books

2015, 56 pages, 8.9 x 12.2 x 0.4 inches

$17 Buy a copy on Amazon

In Beautiful Birds, author Jean Roussen and illustrator Emmanuel Walker fly through the alphabet with dozens of feathered friends. It begins, of course, with “A is for albatross, the admiral of the skies,” and progresses all the way to “Z is for zos-ter-o-pi-dae…” with details about all kinds of avians in between. The writing brims with clever rhymes and colorful words (ogling orbs, polychrome quills) making it delightful to read out loud. If I had to guess, I’d say Roussen is a fan of E.B. White’s idea that “children are game for anything… They love words that give them a hard time, provided they are in a context that absorbs their attention.”

Walker’s vibrant illustrations give kids all the context they need. His graphic, full-bleed drawings feel like those of mid-century masters Saul Bass and Charlie Harper. As an added bonus, the book’s design is also gorgeous. It’s bound in a neon salmon linen, with patterned endpapers to match. The neon color can be found on almost every page in varying doses, giving the optical effect of spying a ruffle of feathers in the wild.

– Sara Distin at Tinybob