Keep your inner foul-mouthed Mexican teenager sequestered here. You'll have to take a few deep breaths to maneuver your way past the sensationalist tone and outright dishonest claims about the nature of Wii Fit to find the few decent criticisms at the core of this Daily Mail article. You're probably going to want to throw a stick of butter and shout "WHY SO SAD, FATTIES?" at the obesity experts in the UK criticizing Wii Fit for daring to call their overweight children overweight. But it seems to me that there's something to their complaining.

Summary: leading obesity experts in the UK are upset that Wii Fit uses BMI to pigeonhole children as being underweight, ideal or overweight. They are calling for the sale of Wii Fit to be banned for children. Wii Fit heavily uses the BMI measurement system, which isn't terrible as a very vague rule of thumb but, as an actual scientific system of determining health or attractiveness, is utterly worthless. More over, one of the Daily Mail's examples is that a 10 year old girl who weighed 84 pounds at 4 foot 9 was classified as "overweight." If true, that's either a serious bug or a loathsomely narrow definition on Nintendo's part of what constitutes fitness. However, that seems to be the sole data point in the evidence of the critique... hardly the sort of thing people who aren't already desperate to be offended would get up in arms about. It could simply be a broken Wii Fit board.

Like I said, the tone of the piece is both indignant and dishonest: they claim that children are being told they are "fat" in Wii Fit, even though the actual terminology is the far more neutral "overweight." Perhaps that's a semantic niggle, but it's the difference between telling a kid they need to do a bit more exercise and calling them an Orca and warning people not to get within splash zone for fear of mucus membrane infection. On the other hand, should a program marketed to kids be calling them overweight? Only doctors and parents should be telling that to a kid. A far better approach would simply be to encourage kids to become more active, not merely to get their BMI within a target zone. Wii Fit could have kept its own damn criticisms to itself and still helped a kid get in better shape.

I don't have Wii Fit, gleaning all my information about how it works from reviews online, so perhaps this is all being wildly blown out of proportion. If you own Wii Fit, what do you think? Is this much ado about nothing, or was there a better way for Nintendo to handle this? Perhaps a more sensitive and less judgmental Wii Fit children's mode?

Obesity experts condemn Nintendo's Wii 'Fit' game after it tells 10-year-old girl she's fat [Daily Mail]

A plucky businessman, accidentally receiving a shipment of futuristic dildos from his Chinese suppliers instead of the usual selection of jump ropes, ingeniously markets them as the JumpSnap, the world's first ropeless jump rope! Because jumping rope to jump rope is just too hard! That last sentence was something of a snarky joke, though truth be told, my muffed sense of equilibrium does make jumping a rope an exercise in frustration. Still, hopping up and down and swinging my arms around like a small child dizzy on lemonade is free.

An article on Newsvine nicely illuminates its readers on the future of corpse disposal: melted in a vat of lye into a brown, feculent sludge, then flushed down the toilet.

Since they first walked the planet, humans have either buried or burned their dead. Now a new option is generating interest — dissolving bodies in lye and flushing the brownish, syrupy residue down the drain.

The process is called alkaline hydrolysis and was developed in this country 16 years ago to get rid of animal carcasses. It uses lye, 300-degree heat and 60 pounds of pressure per square inch to destroy bodies in big stainless-steel cylinders that are similar to pressure cookers.

Getting the public to accept a process that strikes some as ghastly may be the biggest challenge. Psychopaths and dictators have used acid or lye to torture or erase their victims, and legislation to make alkaline hydrolysis available to the public in New York state was branded "Hannibal Lecter's bill" in a play on the sponsor's name — Sen. Kemp Hannon — and the movie character's sadism.

This quote from a Catholic priest is priceless:

"We believe this process, which enables a portion of human remains to be flushed down a drain, to be undignified," said Patrick McGee, a spokesman for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Manchester.

Frankly, I'm hard pressed to think of anything more undigniified than the current funeral industry, which makes a point of bilking grieving family members with cheap caskets marked up by maudlin sentimentality and insinuating branding. You can flush me down the toilet for all I care, just as long as my widow doesn't need to decide whether or not she loved me enough to spend another $10,000 on the "Cherished Forever" casket.

New idea in mortuary science: dissolving bodies with lye [Newsvine]

Japanese tobacco-smokers must get themselves a special puffing passport if they wish to get their fix from the nation's ciggie vending machines. From Wired:

"The legal smoking age in Japan may be 20, but schoolgirls in need of a nicotine fix have always had an easy workaround: "Vending machines can't tell if you're 16," says Haruka Narazaki, a student in Osaka."

Well, now they can. But do they eye older buyers suspiciously when they grab 5 packs at once, while their banned teenage friends watch from a safe distance?

Japanese Schoolgirl Watch: Tobacco Vending Machines Block Underage Smokers [Wired via Oh Gizmo!]

A tailor is making a suit that will protect you from cellphone broadcasts. Electromagnetic sensitives rejoice: hucksters are treating your condition as an opportunity! You know you've arrived when, eh?

"Clothing company Remus has cut a gents' suit with an interwoven metal frame that’s claimed to reflect Bluetooth and mobile phone radiation, despite the jury still being undecided about the dangers such signals may or may not pose to our grey matter.

However, a spokesman at one of the suit’s stockists told Register Hardware that the so-called E-Blocker suit doesn’t mean the wearer’s mobile phone reception will be hampered. He said that the suit is “purely designed to stop any potential radiation” and is suitable for “someone who’s a little sceptical about the risk of such rays”."

So, let's get this straight. Firstly, we are to accept that "phone radiation"—radio waves, in other words—is dangerous. Then we are to accept that this E-Blocker suit and its weasel-worded marketing will protect you from it, even when you're using your own cellphone. Doesn't accepting the former as a fact only make the latter proposal seem doubly ludicrous? Unless they make it like the one in the photo here, of course, from the photoset of "Mr. Rubber Bear."

Product Page [Douglas and Grahame via Reg]

The exercise-while-desk-jockeying initiative is a valiant idea for a sedentary age, but despite assertions to the contrary by the companies selling gizmos, it's actually harder to concentrate on that spreadsheet when your heart rate has popped your eyeballs out of their sockets and a miasma of your own foul drippings has turned your screen jaundice-color. There is a reason why physicists don't crack superstring theory when in the middle of a series of hundred kilo clean-and-jerks: it's pretty hard to pay attention when you're about to puke out your heart.

Nevertheless, TrekDesk is selling an adjustable desk add-on for your treadmill which they claim will increase concentration and productivity. No, it jolly well won't, but it's a valiant effort, and I like their bouncing chair accessory. It's an exercise ball attached to a seat, and TrekDesk claims it allows you to work on your core muscles while sitting, but upon seeing the pictures, I immediately thought: "Hmm. Bouncing while working does sound like fun." This is Boing Boing, after all.

TrekDesk will be available in Q3 this year, price undetermined.

Trek Desk [Official Site via Oh Gizmo! via Uberreview]

In a refreshingly non-evil move from a company that seems to make a point of not being quite as evil as I think they secretly must be, Microsoft has announced that they are teaming up with the Companions in Courage Foundation to install special Xbox 360 kiosks in children's hospitals around the country.

The kiosks will be packed with games, movies and television shows — most likely of the more innocuous Viva Pinata sort instead of eyebrow-raising murder-death-kill simulations. Even better, the 360s will come installed with a special version of Xbox Live that will only match up sick kids in multiplayer matches from children's hospitals around the country. The sound of sobbing is about to be replaced with peals of laughter, automatic weapons fire and triumphant shouts of "OWNED, NOOB!"

Nothing to criticize here: this is just pure class. Good on you, Microsoft. If you want to donate to help bring more 360 Kiosks to hospitals around the country, consider giving a donation to Companions in Courage.

360 Kiosks Coming to Children's Hospitals [Kotaku]

Daily Tech has a great article up about the newest revisions of Second Sigh Vision's Argus electro-occular implant technology, which aims to partially restore sight to the blind.

The earliest trials in 2004 featured a 4x4 inch grid of electrodes to translate incoming light into electrical signals to be passed onto the brain, but Argus Mach II is now up to 60 electrodes in a 10x6 grid. That doesn't sound like a lot, but Second Sight thinks the 60 electrode version will allow the blind to read, and even 16 electrodes is enough for the blind to live dramatically improved lives.

Linda Morfoot, 64, living in Long Beach, California, has suffered from retinitis pigmentosa from her initial diagnosis at 21, and by 50 was almost entirely blind. She received an implant of the 4x4 version in 2004. She says the device is life changing and a complete success. She explained, "When they gave me the glasses it was just amazing. I can shoot baskets with my grandson, I can stay in the middle of the sidewalk. I can find the door to get out of a room, and I can see my granddaughter dancing across the stage. When we went to New York I could see the Statue of Liberty, how big it was. In Paris we went to the top of the Eiffel Tower at night, and I could see all the city lights. I feel more connected to what's around me."

What an incredible world we live in, where blind grandmas deftly swish basket after basket from the three point line with the aid of their cybernetic eyeballs! That's a bit of hyperbole, of course, but that's the wonderful thing about it: soon enough, it won't be.

Bionic Eyes Impolants Give Partial Vision to Blind Patients [Daily Tech]

Lee Spievak, RC flight enthusiast, knew something was wrong from the very moment his model plane loop-de-looped in the crisp spring air. The controls were unresponsive; it was as if the plane had a mind of its own. As the tiny toy flying machine dive-bombed towards him with the ruthlessness of a bird-of-prey, its propellor blades flashing like silver talons, Lee remembered a seemingly random event with the sudden clarity of newly forged associative connection. It was only yesterday that he had cut the side of his palm. Suddenly, Lee knew what was wrong: that model plane had tasted human blood. Worse? It wanted more. Knowing full-well that if he ran he would be chased down, Lee steeled himself, shielded his face with his hands. His finger slid through the plane's blood-thirsting teeth and out the other side. His finger tip was gone, chewed up by a propellor and digested into a slurry.

It's a terrible thing to lose part of a finger, but luckily, Lee had a connection: his brother, Alan, a shaman of regenerative medicine, who sent him a small packet of "pixie dust." Like all good hoo-doo, the dust had comes from the remains of an animal: in this case, a pig's bladder scraped of its lining. The resulting cells are formed into a cellular matrix which, placed on a wound, stimulates cells to grow rather than scar. Applying the powder liberally for a month, Lee claims he was able to grow the end of his finger back... an application that has obvious promise for helping people to re-grow skin, tissue, limbs or even organs.

Unfortunately, it seems like Lee might be full of it. His finger does appear to have been badly sliced, the tip lopped off, but the before-and-after pictures make clear that he lost neither bone nor nail. The pixie dust was likely nothing more than a psychological placebo, making Lee think the body's normal healing process was miraculous. Which, of course, it is. But restoring a bit of flesh on the tip of a model plane enthusiast's finger is a far cry from re-growing the amputated limbs of Iraq war veterans.

The man who grew a finger [BBC]

Simon Mwacharo is a Nairobi entrepreneur whose firm, CraftSkills, aims to make a thriving business out of building renewable energy projects in sub-saharan Africa. AfriGadget interviews him, finding out what it took to bring power to homes—such as his own—which had not had electricity for years.

"I was inspired by a challenge from my rural home where we have not had power for the last 40 plus years since [Kenya’s] independence [in 1963]. I come from a hill side village in Sagalla, Taita Hills in Coast Province where we receive quite some strong wind from the Nyika Plateau. This wind passes through without being tapped and sometimes our roofs can not stand in its way."

Solar is, in Africa as in the west, mostly impractical. But wind, like sunlight, is "everywhere," providing a natural, inexhaustible supply of energy. Among the most interesting of CraftSkills' installations is the one at Chifiri, which uses a turbine's power to run a pump, which filters 422 liters of water an hour from a brackish pond that is the only source of water for 500 villagers.

AfriGadget Innovator Series: Simon Mwacharo of Craftskills [Afrigadget]

Bio International of Japan makes tiny nose filtration pads, held in place by an inconspicuous transparent pince-narine. At $15, they're cheap and yet somehow grossly overpriced. Do they work? Medgaget suspects not. As a test, could someone who suffers from allergies stiff coffee filters into their nostrils, dash through a field of hay, and get back to us?

Product Page [Biopit via Medgadget]

These intimidating stiletto boots by Costume National contain a pedometer inserted in the ankle. An overlooked marketing opportunity, surely. The weight loss crowd will not buy these to jog in, Costume National. However, if you say the pedometer actually measures the number of testicles sadomasochistically crushed under heel, you'd have a good in with the stat-keeping BDSM crowd.

C'n'c... And Sun [Fashion and Runway via Gizmodo]

Lately, I've had my eyeball on all of the various gadgets and gizmos that come through the pipe, promising to help me — a repulsive fatty whose recent attempts at exercise most aptly resemble a greased walrus flapping on his belly after a fish suspended above a treadmill — measure the exact atomic rate at which my blubber is increasing or subsiding.

Okay. I'm not really that bad. I'm about half way through losing about 30 pounds. But the min-maxer in me is fascinated by ultra-precise fat measuring devices like National Electric's Overall Balance Scale. It measures your weight. It measures your muscle level. It measures your basal metabolic rate. It measures your BMI (bullshit). Hell, it measures your subcutaneous fat ratio... as opposed to exocutaneous fat ratio, which are the planetoid-sized masses of cellulite orbiting around your own personal gravity well, along with a set of planetary rings made up of Cheetos and Ding-Dongs.

Too fat to see the numbers on the scale over your belly? They've thought of that, though not too well: you can pull the sensor up above your belly, which would all be fine although it presumes you can actually reach down to touch your toes, which is clearly impossible if you can't see over your stomach to begin with.

Pretty neat, but my experience over the last month getting in shape has been that the more precise the numbers being thrown at me are, the more neurotic I become about them. I'd be tearing my hair out in bloody clumps at the hopelessness of the cause and consoling myself with a pepperoni pizza after a few hours with a scale this precise.

Overall Balance Scale fights dreaded “metabo” [Trends in Japan]

Jurors in California just found Hans Reiser guilty of murder in the first degree.

Linux developer Reiser, creator of an innovative file system that bears his name, was accused of killing wife Nina after her disappearance in September 2006.

Wired.com's Threat Level blog has streaming coverage of the verdict: Reiser Jurors Reach Verdict; Wired.com to Stream it Live, and the first story.

First tested in Japan under the "Kool Boost" brand, a new cigarette from RJ Reynolds will include a tiny menthol "powerball" in the filter that, when squished, will infuse the entire filter with lung-numbing flavor. They'll be sold under the "Camel Crush" brand and are being tested in a few markets.

Trends in Japan explains why testing cigarettes in Japan works better than testing in the States:

Back in the U.S., people will actually ask someone for a cigarette and then decline it when it’s the wrong brand, but Japanese are far more willing to switch brands for any number of reasons: Cool packaging, freebies, product modifications, limited editions, etc. Sure, the older generation of salarymen stick to their Mild Sevens, but young people treat cigarettes like they do any other FMCG. After all, who wants to drink the same brand of coffee their whole lives?

Camel Crush cigarettes tested in Japan? [Killian-Nakamura.com]

The wall was a symphony in plastic photoframes, meaningless qualifications and semigloss beige. Vern DeChambliss stared at it while his producer explained to him that the studio was shutting down his movie.

Science fiction just isn't doing well enough at the box office. No, straight-to-DVD isn't an option. Stem the losses. Credit crisis. Nothing personal.

As he shook hands and left and waited for the lift, Vern realized that he really didn't give a damn. The script sucked, the actors they'd lined up were notorious pricks, and he could finally get out of town for a while. Nevertheless, money had been spent on props and costumes: like corpses in the arctic circle, this presented something of a disposal problem.

Most of it could be sold on, but the tubes. What to do about the cryotubes? That shit was too cheesy for even the Sci-Fi channel; he'd be lucky to get rid of them on Craigslist, let alone with an asking price.

As the elevator swooped him to the ground floor, he caught a brief glimpse through its windows of the world around him. Lighting a cigarette, he pondered the question until it became a statement: someone, somewhere, would be stupid enough to take them off his hands.

Product Page [Med-spa]

Tunbridge Wells ushers in the world's first LED spa [BornRich]

Researchers at the university of Heidelberg seem to have perfected the FluidHand, a prosthetic arm with the ability to manipulate each finger individually and provide sensory feedback to its user:

The flexible drives are located directly in the movable finger joints and operate on the biological principle of the spider leg – to flex the joints, elastic chambers are pumped up by miniature hydraulics. In this way, index finger, middle finger and thumb can be moved independently. The prosthetic hand gives the stump feedback, enabling the amputee to sense the strength of the grip.

An 18 year old born with a congenital limb deficiency is apparently very enthusiastic, prompting Futurismic to muse: "I don’t think it’s science fictional to suggest that we’ll be seeing prosthetic limbs that equal the functionality of the organic originals within a decade."

I certainly hope that's true. But I have a friend who was born deaf. A couple years ago, she got Cochlear Implants, which resulted in her being able to hear, but her being ostracized by her friends in the deaf community as some sort of race traitor. I wonder: do you think, if prosthetic technology becomes sufficiently advanced, we'll see a backlash from the congenitally limb deficient community? I can't imagine it from amputees, but what about those born without limbs? What do you think?

'Fluidhand': Each finger can be moved separately [Physorg via Futurismic via Grinding]

Dragan Golijanin of the University of Rochester Medical Center may want your testicles to glow.

This will help it help you maintain a healthy pair. Let's have the patent filing—"PRE- AND INTRA- OPERATIVE IMAGING OF TESTICULAR TORSION"—speak for itself:

"The invention provides methods for visualizing perfusion or lack thereof in the spermatic cord and testicle, as well as for detecting testicular trauma. A surgical forceps adapted to facilitate such visualization is also provided."

The problem: spotting a tangled sack using traditional imaging methods. The solution: fill it with luminescent dye, to see how the blood supply is occluded within.

For gents, it is all extraordinarily painful reading: "If this loss of blood supply is not corrected within 6 to 12 hours, it results in the death of the testicle," write the authors, discussing the consequences of poor blood flow. Other key phrases include "sudden scrotal pain" and "the jaws permit a firm grip to be maintained on the scrotum." And on and on it goes.

Patent Filing [WIPO via New Scientist]

The story has been developing all week, but once Wal-Mart decided to stop carrying bottles that use Bisphenol A — a chemical which may or may not induce hormonal changes, especially in children — bottle-maker Nalgene has announced they'll ditch the chemical in their manufacturing process.

Reports the Times:

Nalgene’s decision to drop the plastic that transformed it from an obscure maker of laboratory equipment into a consumer brand does not mean the company is leaving the drinking bottle business. It has long made bottles from other plastics that lack the glasslike transparency and rigidity that made polycarbonate popular.

Last month, Nalgene introduced a line of bottles made from a relatively new plastic from the Eastman Chemical Company, Tritan copolyester, that shares most of polycarbonate’s properties, including shatter-resistance, but is made without the chemical

Bottle Maker to Stop Using Plastic Linked to Health Concerns [NYTimes via Treehugger]

Puck, our elderly german shepherd, went missing. Some local kid reached though the gate, unlocked it and let our dogs out for his or her own amusement. After a morning spent searching, one question kept returning to me over and over again: "Why do GPS dog collars cost six hundred dollars?"

Times have changed, and Zoombak now offers a GPS-based dog locator for a much cheaper $200 — definitely worth it, as you will discover if a beloved pup ever goes off for a dangerous jaunt around the block. The flip side is that you need a subscription, costing $15 a month, with cancellation fees if you want out.

This is perhaps because it uses assisted GPS, which adds a cellular transceiver to improve performance, and because the service includes a web-based tracker you can access whenever you want, notification via SMS if the wearer leaves designated "safe" zones, and 24/7 emergency support.

From pics, it looks about the size of an MP3 player or pager; it's likely just marketing that has it as an animal tracker, and I see no reason it couldn't be used to track youngsters, cars, or anything else you might slip it into. Its battery life is OK: about 5 days on standby, with alerts sent to cellphone or email when it needs juice. A full week would have been nice, but it would then probably weigh too much for small dogs; as it is, Zoombak already recommends it for animals 15 lbs or larger.

By the way, Puck was found safe and well, having managed to travel more than three miles in just a few hours. A kindly person saw her wandering, braved a look at her tags, and gave us a call. Even now, though, I'd love to know how she got from one side of the city to the other.

Product Page [Zoomback]

In an attempt to get young automotive designers to understand the physical trials of old age — stiff limbs, poor eyesight, diminished ability to catch a mouthful of Viagra mid-backflip before landing a limbs-akimbo bedpost cockstand held only by quivering urethra — Nissan has swaddled its youngsters in an "aging suit" and put them behind the wheel. Think metal knee braces, but rusty, with a set of sandpapered goggles for clouded vision and an extra 11-pound weight to simulate a neck-snapping goiter or enlarged prostate.

"It's very difficult to drive, says Nissan's Naoki Yamamoto after a turn at the wheel in a suit that runs from neck to feet.

"You lose the freedom you're accustomed to, and while you can move, there are limitations, such as turning the steering wheel or switching on the blinker."

So that's why old people leave on the blinkers. They haven't forgotten; they just can't be arsed to make such a Herculean effort twice in one trip.

Japan ageing suit puts car makers in senior circuit [Reuters.com via Gadget Lab]

The 'Groom Mate Platinum XL Nose and Ear Hair Trimmer' is not, sadly, made of platinum. But it's still clad in a affirmingly masculine stainless steel, complete with prominent screw and gnarled grips. That means it's not all that expensive, either, at just $20, shipped. Not as manly as looping your nose hairs around a doorknob then telling your significant other that you'd like to break up, but what is?

It's also tiny — just 2.6-inches long. Hopefully the TSA will understand it's not a bullet.

No batteries included, because it doesn't use them. Instead, the clippers operate by rotating the bottom of the shaft.

Catalog Page [Amazon via Shaving Stuff]

The "Speedy Pedalofit"—a name which rolls off the tongue in a satisfying way that makes me think of an exercise routine for pedophiles only slightly*—is clip-on wheel and handlebar that coverts most wheelchairs into pedal-powered chopper trikes. And it's not just for paraplegics who want to be sent careening down mountain trails, limp legs churning with sinew-snapping speed. It's also good for those who have some use of their legs and need help building up the muscles again.

It gives the disabled a chance to exercise and travel short distances. When they reach their destination, they've already got their chair. What's not to like?

Speedy is a UK company, so I'm unsure if any of their products are available outside of their home country. And they make more than just the clip-on Pedalofit, producing a full range of interesting hand-powered bikes and wheelchair additions as well.

Product Page [SpeedyBikes.co.uk via Gearfuse via Oh Gizmo]

* But really, what doesn't?

Beth writes:

We got this fancy new lancing device for my 10-year-old son, who has Type 1 diabetes and has to check his blood sugar multiple times a day. Most lancing devices use a spring to jam a needle into your skin. Using a microprocessor and motor, the Pelikan Sun lancing device actually drives lancet in to a set distance, slows to a stop, and retracts in about one second. It really doesn't hurt at all, and in fact you can't even find the site a minute later. Anyone who has ever had to hold a screaming toddler on their lap at the pediatrician's so they can have their finger pricked will immediately understand why this technology is a godsend for children with diabetes. As an added bonus, it greatly reduces scarring.

I'm feeling charitable to humanity today, so I'm going to presume this isn't astroturf and just a competently written recommendation. Don't disappoint me, Beth!

The Pelikan Sun is available in the US, Germany, Spain, Australia, and New Zealand and may be covered by your insurance. If it's not, you'll have to pay two-hundred bucks, plus buy boxes of disposable lancets for a "comparable price to other high quality lancets." (Read: Probably a little more expensive than the average lancet.)

Product Page [PelikanTechnologies.com]

Crunchgear has initial details on the "ClarityLife," another phone designed for older cell phone users. I love the giant buttons and the big text, but I wonder if the contrast on the monochrome screen might be a little low. Of course, that could just be the picture.

There is also a large-button slider keypad inside, as well as the big, recessed red emergency call button on the back with a heart inscribed on the top. Is a heart the proper iconography for an emergency? It might be if you're ungoing cardiac arrest, but that seems unintentionally morbid.

The dual-band GSM phone will be available this summer, but no price has yet been announced.

Product Page [ClarityProducts.com via Crunchgear]

Since about a thousand sponges