End-of-day Geek Candy: James Bond Multi-Tool Collar Stays

For today's "EOD Geek Candy", I am digging into the James Bond basket. What I found was a way to utilize your dress shirt to conceal your secret multi-tools. With these stays, you will have a screwdriver, bottle opener, thread cutter/wire stripper, and an effective prison shiv. The other nice thing is that these are titanium, which means they are lightweight. At only $30 for a pair, or $50 for 2 pairs, it is a Geek/Nerds dream come true. Now, I'm not sure how these will float going through the airport scanners, but since they are titanium I bet you can squeak by. Besides...they are only Collar Stays ;)

[via OhGizmo!]

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Comic Book Soldering for Beginners

Have you been wondering how to solder? Has it kept you up late at night? Well, now there is something for you soldering for beginners. I know...you are thinking, wow this is an exciting topic. I thought it was cool, since I am an electronic fan. I studied it in high school, and take pride in repairing iPods, iPhones, Wii's, etc. The one thing I need to work on is my soldering.

I wasn't sure how to go through improving my skills. Then, the "Soldering is Easy" comic book came along, and I was sold. You know something is easy when there is a "Dummies" book, or they make the topic into a comic book. I wonder when the comic book movie is coming out in theaters.

[via MightyOhm]

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Heat Fatigue May Not Be Real

A study was done with cyclists, I won't go into the not-so-comfortable details, to determine if heat fatigue is all in our heads. The cyclists performed better at a cooler temperature. When they were deceived into thinking it was cooler then it actually was, they performed much better then the cooler temperature. So, what is the moral of the story?? Lie to yourself about the temperature, and you will be fine.

[via WIRED]

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Increasing Fuel Efficiency Through Design: Plastic Brown

How can you increase fuel efficiency and reduce expenses?? Try using plastic on your vehicles. That is just what UPS has done. By using ABS plastic, instead of aluminum, they will be able to reduce the weight of the vehicle by 1,000 pounds. UPS estimates that this will increase fuel efficiency by 40% and save over 84 million gallons of fuel each year. Now if we could only make all of our car out of plastic. It would be like driving around in Fisher Price and Little Tikes vehicle.

[via Gizmodo]

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How Does U.S. Education Stack Up Against the World

How does the U.S. stack up against 11 other countries? Here is an infographic that breaks it down for us. It lists the annual spending, literacy rates, school life expectancy, math test scores, and science test scores.

It is great to see all of the spending on education, but VERY disappointing to see the low rankings in math and science test scores.

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