Norman Wilson Edmund died Tuesday. He was 95, and he was a hero of mine. Oh, I didn’t know much about him, but there was only one thing I needed to know: He was the founder of Edmund Scientific, which, for a nerdy kid growing up in a faceless mid-Atlantic suburb back in the pre-Internet days, was the greatest catalog ever.

I was a science geek in my formative years. I was destined for a career in science until college, when Chem 102 (Organic), my creative streak, and my interest in the media pretty much wiped that out. But as a kid, one of the highlights of every year was when my father would return from the New Jersey Education Association’s Teachers’ Convention in Atlantic City with a copy of that year’s Edmund Scientific catalog. It was, along with the Phillies and Mets yearbooks I would annually procure and maybe The Sporting News, the single most influential publication of my childhood. (More adult publications came later. Get your mind away from there)

Photo: Halfblue (via Wikipedia)

What was it? It was, as the video above (from someone selling the 1972 catalog on eBay) shows, a thick pamphlet from a store in Barrington, New Jersey, somewhere in Camden County, showing off only the most amazing collection of science gadgets, gizmos, and curios I’d ever seen: weather balloons, microscopes, telescopes, drinking crows, little discs that would jump off the table, black lights, prisms, freaky lens filters, fiber optic lamps, all sorts of surplus optics…. There was not one thing in that catalog I wouldn’t have wanted. Not that I had any use for most of it, but I wanted it all. I wanted to see the stars, to bend light, to send a balloon to space, to… well, I didn’t know what I could do with a lot of it, but I knew I wanted it.

And I couldn’t afford any of that stuff, so the catalog was the best I could do. But it was the Edmund Scientific catalog that helped nurture a love of, and respect for, science that’s lasted all these decades, even though I ended up not really having the aptitude to do anything with it, or even retain the knowledge that college organic chemistry knocked out of me. (Whenever Chris gets on a real science roll on the podcast, I can only strain to remember all the things I once learned and eagerly absorbed. It’s been a looooonnnnng time) The Edmund family still runs the optics company; Edmund Scientific, run, it appears, by another company, still exists, and there’s still a catalog (the last time I saw one was in the studio at Y107 back when Chris was the morning co-host) but they don’t have the Barrington store and it’s not the same when you’re not a kid.

Or is it? When I heard that the founder had died, I went online and the current incarnation of the company has a lot of what I remember desperately wanting as a kid, and more. Drinking crows, Buckyballs, the star and planet locator, potato clocks, weather gear, magnetic stuff, it’s all there, and for a moment, I was a kid again, only, more dangerously, a kid with credit cards. If only I had those when I was 11 years old, paging through the Edmund Scientific catalog and dreaming of a house full of wonder.

Thank you, N.W. Edmund.

It also lets him hover above the water and do acrobatics; the difference between this and your regular off-the-shelf jetpacks is that you get to both zip beneath the water’s surface and hover above.

It’s $6,400 if you’re interested. I don’t think you can buy it from Walmart yet. Maybe Sky Mall.

HT: Popular Science

Hi friends! This week, BBC Worldwide announced that a full Doctor Who video game, The Eternity Clock, will be released in early 2012, via digital download “initially on PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, and PC consoles,” the implication being that it would expand to other consoles. The official press release about the storyline is as follows:

Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock will immerse gamers in the universe of Doctor Who, allowing them to take on the role of the Doctor and River Song as they travel across time and space to save the Earth. Gamers must learn to master the complexities of time travel with exceptional time based game play, changes made in one time will impact another creating multiple possibilities and challenging players to solve puzzles across the centuries.

“A wholly new storyline has been developed especially for this new Doctor Who console game franchise, written in collaboration with the BBC Wales team. Photo-real graphics, television quality scenes and highly realistic characters will bring the world of Doctor Who to life immersing fans completely in the twists and turns of an action filled plot. The stars of the series Matt Smith (the Doctor) and Alex Kingston (River Song) have recorded full voiceovers for their characters in Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock and motion capture has been used to create in-game characters that are incredibly realistic providing the ultimate Doctor Who gaming experience.”

I don’t know about youse guys, but this sounds very intriguing. I’m quite excited to play it.

And in quick related news, Doctor Who‘s sixth series was just named as the top-selling series on iTunes for 2011. The full story is HERE. Well done, Whovians.

-Kanderson has an eternal clock that always wakes him up at 7:54…PM. Follow him on TWITTER

DESIGN

The Tracks HD are on-ear, like the Beats Solos. They sport a clever minimalist design that allows you to take them apart. The concept is you could customize them with different color cables, headbands, or speakers. The cable contains an inline mic with iPod controls. The mic works fine. No one I talked to complained of any problems. Normally with headphones this price, you’d receive a simple clip that keeps the line close to your body, ultimately dampening noise that travels up the cable from movement. There were plenty of times the cable bounced off my walking or pathetically dancing body, causing a noticeable tapping sound. Also, don’t crouch. You’re putting yourself at risk of catching the wire under your knee and pulling the connections out of the speakers. Remember, they are made to be removed. It’s just annoying. This can be easily remedied by using a clip from a different set of headphones if you have one.

The headband is made of some fancy, shmancy polymer that doesn’t seem to want to break. They call it Flextech. I call it awesome. I bent these backwards and twisted them up. It didn’t even misshape them. If there is anything I HATE about the Beats, it is how you can easily break the damn headband. A durable headphone these days is hard to come by.

A warning to my glasses-wearing brethren: On-ear designs may be uncomfortable. These aren’t the most uncomfortable, but long listening sessions can lead to sore ears.

SOUND

Please notice the tower of 50+ pizza boxes I own.

The metal “V10 Sound Engines” used in the Tracks HD pack in some serious value for $130. Someone looking for a flat or “natural” sound may want to stick with the similarly priced, but fairly ugly, Sennheiser HD 280 Pros or the Bose AE2s or OE2s. Where those will give you more of a sense of being in the recording studio with the musicians, the Tracks HD create more of a feeling of being in the center of floor at a concert. Everything is big and bold. The mid tones aren’t washed away by the swelling bass like the Beats are. Their presence is well known. The highs are bright and detailed. Unfortunately, some songs that contain a lot of feedback and hum can aggravate the ears slightly. That’s not to say these aren’t good for some solid rock listening. I particularly love what they do for cymbals. They brought out a quality in the drums on my Sonic Youth albums that is lost on most sub-$200 headphones.

If bass isn’t really your thing, may I suggest trout. HA! See what I did there? These do have a ton of bass. This adds to that concert vibe I mentioned earlier. They are punchy while remaining deep. Fast moving bass gets handled quite nicely. All my speed and black metal sounded badass. Even more impressive was my electronic collection. I was more than happy to put down my commonly used Bose to listen to a shit ton of Modeselektor, Thom Yorke, Little Dragon, MNDR, and M83. You want to shake your tail a bit, toss on the self-titled The Bird & The Bee release. This albums really jumps out on these headphones. Not only are the beats smooth and the bass deep, the phones do a great job with vocals. I love what they do for female voices. All vocals sound great, but female voices really shine.

They kind of make you look like a Cyberman!

If you listen to mostly folky, organic music, these may not be for you. Same with jazz and classical. If rock is more your thing, these are a great choice. There are other great choices out there, but these definitely contend. Electronic and hip hop fans should take notice. I found myself getting lost in all my electro-infused albums from Animal Collective to Kid Cudi.

The $100 versions of the Tracks are on display at most Best Buys. If you like the sound but want a little more clarity, I suggest the Tracks HD. However, do yourself a favor and make sure your files are at least 320kbps if possible. At times, the effects of low compression rates are obvious. Besides, you spent a lot on headphones. You might as well make sure to play high quality sounds through them.

There are a lot of deals out there for Black Friday. This is one of them.

No, this is THE Black Friday deal, if, that is, you’re in the market for the pizza cutter shaped like the original USS Enterprise– it’s ten bucks off at ThinkGeek today. Imagine, $19.99 for a pizza slicer modeled after the one and only original NCC-1701 Enterprise. They’ve got other things on sale, but, come on, who doesn’t want a Star Trek pizza cutter?

Okay, don’t answer that. But if you need one, they’re on sale (click here) until 12 midnight Eastern time tonight (Friday). Beats braving long lines and pepper spray to get a 42-inch flat screen TV. And you can’t cut a pizza with a 42-inch flat screen TV.

Firefly fans rejoice!  Quantum Mechanix will be releasing a 1:400 scale replica Serenity from Firefly, and it can be yours for $99.95.  A small price to pay to get your Mal Reynolds on (IMO).  Head over to Quantum Mechanix’s site to pre-order, or to check out some more pics.  Serenity now!

“QMx has recreated Serenity in 1:400 scale – about 8 inches long – out of dozens of parts, some as small as a millimeter. Her intricate design matches the Firefly TV series version of the ship in every detail: She was created using the show’s actual CG files.”

via [io9]

The iPhone 4S’s personal assistant, Siri, has some interesting and humorous answers for your queries.  Shit That Siri Says is posting submissions from iPhone users, and there’s nothing like a snarky robot to give us a chuckle.  Let us know if you had any funny responses from Siri in the comments.

I love my t-shirts and my action figures and I can indulge in a little ooh-ah over pricey spaceship models, but really, I adore ultra-geeky prop replicas. This insanely awesome replica of the Battlestar Galactica Top Gun stein prized by Galactica’s top dog Viper pilots now has a waiting list available, prior to the upcoming pre-order period. A back-up version of the actual stein from the show sold in Propworx’s second BSG auction for over $4,000, but this outstandingly detailed bad boy can be yours — because QMX are the best, they are my favorites — for a mere $59.95. BARGAIN.

Don’t fool yourself that you’re not buying it; Use that energy to start debating just what you’ll drink out of it. If you’re cool enough to drink out of it.  (Starbuck disdains you if you’re not):

* NOTE: We would like to remind you to drink responsibly, and not to get behind the wheel or behind a Viper throttle while intoxicated. KTHX.

But if that’s you, you’re not alone.  There have been other tech products that came and went and left loyalists feeling that they’d backed the wrong horse.  Game consoles, of course, were like that from the beginning — anyone have a Colecovision in the attic? — and there were laserdiscs and quad stereos and many other examples of tech products that, while they weren’t necessarily bad at all, didn’t last.

I know all about this.  My family had Betamax.

Yup, we had Beta machines in the early days of VCRs.  Everyone else had VHS.  For a while, it was okay, because Beta was technically fine and the video rental stores had both formats.  It wasn’t long, however, before those small video cassettes began to disappear from the rental store, then the blank tapes went away, and then Beta became a punch line.  Ha, ha.  Of course, we eventually capitulated and bought VHS, then DVD.  Not Blu-ray, though.  I get that Beta feeling about Blu-ray.  (A friend of mine had HD-DVD.  THAT’S a collector’s item)

What else is in my collection of Tech of the Living Dead?  I have a Zip drive, still functional (if, that is, you have a printer port on your computer and a cable to connect it), lightly used.  I have several Palm Treos, including the black-and-white job with the flip-up top.  My current cell phone runs Windows Mobile 6.1 (I’m stuck on Sprint and waiting for the iPhone or an acceptable Android to come along).  These things all work, but they’re as archaic as the Sega Genesis I still have in a box in the garage, waiting for me to suddenly have the craving to play Motley Crue pinball or Tony LaRussa Baseball.

What’s in your Dead Tech pile?  What white elephants are gathering dust in your closet (or are still in service, drawing derision from your friends, like my brick of a cell phone)?  Talk about ‘em in the comments.

Yes, a nation is issuing real, legal-tender Star Wars coins: Yoda, Luke, Darth Vader, Leia, Han Solo and more, all memorialized on coins from a real country of which you’ve probably never heard. The characters are on the back (and the Queen on the front) of coins issued by the island of Niue in the South Pacific, and they’ll have a face value of NZ$2 (US$1.65) but contain silver worth more than that in each coin, so it’ll cost you NZ$469 (US$388) for a set of four.  They’re intended to raise money for the cash-strapped island government, the last scheme of which was a Prince WIlliam and Kate stamp that had perforations down the middle, potentially splitting the happy couple and raising the ire of some folks.

If you need to see the Star Wars coins in person, go to the American Numismatics Association’s show in Chicago next week. They’ll be there.  And you can find out more here.

HT: Nerd Approved, Daily Telegraph