In today’s troubled times, it’s a wonder that so many strange ideas can survive. Today’s Strangelet: a T-shirt that notifies you of adjacent Wi-Fi networks. From DigitalInspiration:

The wi-fi shirt, made of pure cotton, can detect wireless networks in your vicinity and displays the signal strength as animated glowing bars as shown in the picture.

It requires three AAA batteries, so this shirt is not for jogging.

Want proof? Doubt the usefulness of such a Tee Shirt? Watch the video!

Nicole Lapin Shows Off Her Wifi T-Shirt – Click here for another funny movie.

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It’s been awhile since the last Strangelet, the Nerdlets.org repository of all wacky, weird, or unexpected news. But today marks a strange blast from the past. Those familiar terms like “CGA” and “Cobal” will be glad to learn that their nostalga for outdated games will soon be satisfied, curtosy of the iPhone.

That’s right: the Oregon Trail, the ultimate in ambiguously educational gaming will soon be available for the iPhone. Now you can get sick with Malaria in the comfort of the passenger seat of your minivan.

Related posts:

1. View All Your Documents on your iPhone
2. An Open-Source Alternative to Apple’s iPhone
3. Every iPhone Captive: Poythress on Technology and Christianity

Well, was he? Read about it here.

Update: Phil Gons has the answer for us.

HT:   Digital Inspiration.

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Nothing is free...

Burger King has released a new Facebook Application that will provide you with free food, provided you are willing to sacrifice a few friends. CNet reports:

Now is the time to put your fair-weather Web friendships to the test. Install Whopper Sacrifice on your Facebook profile, and we’ll reward you with a free flame-broiled Whopper when you sacrifice ten of your friends

Be warned: the sacrifice is public:

The funniest part: The “sacrifices” show up in your activity feed. So it’ll say, for example, “Caroline sacrificed Josh Lowensohn for a free Whopper.”

So, if you’re hungry, now may be the perfect time for a little Facebook cleaning. Come on, are you really that good of friends with what’s-his-name? Be honest, you just clicked yes to up your total friends, right? Well turn your low facebook-friend standards into free food! You can get the Facebook App here.

Related posts:

1. A Social Site for Academics
2. Dropbox: Part Sync, Part Backup, All Good

Since we all apparently survived the activation of the Large Hadron Collidor, it’s about time for another strangelet. So what if the world did end, and you (or those you love) didn’t know it? Well, the good people at “You’ve Been Left Behind” have a solution:

You’ve Been Left Behind gives you one last opportunity to reach your lost family and friends For Christ.

The problem is this: once you’ve been raptured, who will tell your friends and family where you’ve gone? Hey, this is a Web 2.0 world; there’s got to be a solution, right?

I have a team, of Christian couples, scattered around the U.S. 4 active couples and one alternate. One of each, of the active couples, are required to log into the system everyday. They are scattered to protect us from having the team wiped out by attack, natural disaster, or epidemic. They are couples in case one is sick, injured, killed, and to assure their walk with God. If they (3 out of 4) fail to log in for 3 days the system figures the Rapture has taken place. There are then notices sent out to each of us daily, for 3 more days, warning us we must log in to prevent the sending of documents. If, we do not, then the system sends out all of the stored data to all of the email addresses. There is one alternate team member to ready as a replacement for a lost teammate. Also one team member is located near enough to the server bank, with access, in case the net goes down, or malfunction.

Foolproof.

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I’ve decided to introduce a new segment to an already crowded blog: the strangelet. Strangelets are like Nerdlets, but weird, wild, and, well, strange. The term “strangelet” derives from the controversy surrounding the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which powered up today after a long and convoluted history (remember the Super Conductor Super Collider?)

In other words, it is appropriate that our first strangelet be about, well, the strangelet. Here is the definition from wikipedia:

A strangelet is a hypothetical object consisting of a bound state of roughly equal numbers of up, down, and strange quarks. The size would be a minimum of a few femtometers across (with the mass of a light nucleus). Once the size becomes macroscopic (on the order of meters across), such an object is usually called a quark star or “strange star” rather than a strangelet. An equivalent description is that a strangelet is a small fragment of strange matter. The term “strangelet” originates with E. Farhi and R. Jaffe. Strangelets have been suggested as a dark matter candidate.

So what’s the big deal? Well some believe that the strangelet, if it exists, could destroy the world. Don’t believe me? Well the BBC documentary End Day lists this as one of six possible doomsday scenarios.

For a more balanced perspective, and a history of the controversy, be sure to check out this story on NPR’s Talk of the Nation. And here is today’s news on the subject.

Assuming we are all still here tomorrow, I hope to have another wild and wacky post from the world of strange news. And, as luck would have it, it also deals with the end of the world…

Update: See the story by Ars Technica here.

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