For the tech-head beer-drinker on your gift list (that’s me!) comes the Opena Case. It’s $40. And it’s Australian.

Look at that poster! At least FOUR riot-control bulldozers — with cow-catchers! — in this crazy future world. Didn’t they think we’d invent pepper spray?

Man, the far-future world of Soylent Green in just over a decade away. That’ll be an interesting viewing experience come 2022.

Poster, by the way, from the very excellent Film on Paper site. You should definitely check that out.

The video’s a little self-promotional, but it’s still pretty cool to see the hugeness of the Wuskwatim Generating Station as it’s being assembled in northern Manitoba.

The $1.3 billion dam will generate 200 MW when it’s complete, sometime next year.

Manitoba Hydro also has a convenient “How To Build A Generating Station” tour, in case you’ve got $1.3 billion of your own money burning a hole in your pocket.

And, I found this video, taking a look at some of the earlier stages of construction, if you’d like to see some of the exterior dam works.

Manitoba Hydro, for what it’s worth, provides my power, although I pay them for the privilege.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has a couple of educational videos up on YouTube called “Mars In A Minute” that teach you little tidbits about the Red Planet. There’s the one above, showing you how to get there, and sort of explaining why there’s a flurry of Mars launches right now, but there won’t be next year. There’s also another, asking is it really red?

I hope they do more — they’re just the kind of videos that are accessible and not condescending to kids in order to get them excited about space exploration.

Apparently, this is a real product, due to be launched in 2012. Judging from the awful facial expressions of cashiers struggling to replace rolls of thermal paper into their tills, this is a product that will be used through one, maybe two rolls, and then never used again.

Because, dear God, this is an aggravating product.

Are there still even CEOs so out-of-touch that they get their emails printed off and read to them? I can’t imagine anything less useful than a receipt-paper printout of day-old e-phemera like Twitter updates and Foursquare check-ins.

That little dude is going to look CREEEEEEEPY, too, when the red/pink smear that indicates an almost-done roll starts smearing down his face.

Despite this ad’s upbeat narrator, I sincerely doubt that my “Forever Lazy” will be the talk of my next tailgate — at least, not in a positive way, as they imply.

This is really interesting! Although the paper cutouts just look like really big versions of those snowflakes you used to make in Grade 3, when they’re spun ’round on a bicycle wheel, they turn into animations.

I believe that the effect is only possible through film, which makes it kind of extra-interesting. If you see this in real-life, the wheels would just blur around and around, but when the revolutions of the bike wheel are synchronized just so with the shutter speed of the camera, you get a simple animation effect.

Love it.

(By Katy Beveridge, via Boing Boing)

Amy found these! I had heard of them all before, but the animation and narration are excellently fun.

I’m neither a doctor nor a dyslexic, so can’t vouch for the claims in this video, but it strikes me as something that would work, based on my casual knowledge of the condition. Very interesting approach to it, that’s for sure — even if the font does look a little like Chiller.

Find out more at StudioStudio.

(Thanks, Matt!)

I love these pencils, hand-stamped with catch phrases from The Big Lebowski. But I love even more that there are multiple sets of pop-culture pencils at this Etsy store — including classic rap, The Goonies, mostly dead wrestlers and mid-century designers.

And I love ever MORE that you can order custom sets as well!

There’s a six-part show coming in February, but for now, feast your eyes on this trailer, and the start of a web promotional series.

Go to danger5.tv for more

I can’t beat the synopsis on MeFi:

When they were making The Karate Kid, they decided to shoot each scene’s rehearsal with budget cameras so the actors could watch themselves back afterwards. Now it’s been edited together so that it forms a version of the movie that looks like it was shot and made by eighth graders in their basement, including loads of unseen scenes.

(That green clears up after a couple of minutes.)

Part 2 is here, and it’s pretty easy to find the rest of the parts from there.

If you’re a little taken aback by the sheer consumer frenzy that is Christmas shopping, just think about all the “impossible” or “too expensive” things that you could do with that money — a total of about $45 billion this year — instead.

Thankfully, the people at Visual.ly have done all the thinking for you. Full infographic after the jump.

It’s a stunningly simple idea — obvious when you’ve seen it. And, in a variety of colours, it’ll set you back €15, plus shipping. That’s a mite too high for something that it readily available in its standard, fingertip burning form at Dollaramas around the country.

I wonder if you could just heat up a soldering iron and make your own, or something?

This is startlingly like the 3D projections in the original Star Wars trilogy. Early, sure, but I used monochrome monitors in high school, and I’m typing this on a 2×27″ dual monitor setup right now. Things improve.