In a previous gadget report, I noted that the working parts of a computer mouse are tiny, and the bulk of the tool comes from having to fit our hands. So why not use that extra space for some other useful purpose?

The Vacuum Mouse from Thanko does just that. As a computer mouse, it’s a standard three-button tool. Flick a switch on the side and it turns into a vacuum cleaner! Suck up the Cheetos dust from your desktop while you’re waiting for a video to buffer or downloading a large file. I’d like to find out if it’s powerful enough to suck up the dust bunnies from the crevices in my keyboard. There’s a itty-bitty dust bin inside. How often you’ll have to open it depends on your desktop eating habits and how many cats claim your computer as their territory. The main drawback of this item is that it will not sort and stash your clutter. When that gadget is invented, I’ll be the first in line to buy it!

Dutch artist Desiree Palmen is no wallflower, but she knows a thing or two about blending into the background. That’s because her latest project is literally aimed at making people disappear — in plain sight. What we mean is this:

Countless painstaking hours go into hand-painting the cotton suits she creates, meticulously crafted to blend into their surroundings. She got the idea, she says, from an increasing paranoia about 24-7 “Big Brother”-style surveillance: “I wanted to make a suit for the non-criminal citizen whose house is being watched 24 hours by street surveillance cameras. I’m also responding to a wish to disappear.” (more…)

Today I’m unveiling an episodic trivia hunt that may or may not become a periodic feature, depending on how you all react to it. The hunt works like this: every day this week, I’ll be presenting a specific challenge. Your job: come up with the answers and hold onto them! Why? Because on Friday, you’ll need those answers to solve a short puzzle. The first person to email in the correct answers and successfully show how you arrived at them (thus the title: How Did You Know?) wins a choice of any t-shirt or book from our store.

Now, you’ll notice that comments have been turned off for the duration of the hunt. That’s because I don’t want you putting down half-answers, tipping off other readers. However, I definitely encourage you to work in teams. Email your friends, send around each daily challenge, conspire, work together, whatever it takes to make sure you’re armed with the right answers going into Friday’s puzzle!

Today, after the jump, I’ll be presenting five short soundbites. Your job, of course, is to Name Them Tunes! Most of the challenges in the hunt will test your ability to see the forest for the trees. Imagine an aperture, closing down, only allowing a bit of a song, a movie, a video, or part of an image to be seen or heard. That’s the idea behind How Did You Know?

Because comments have been disabled, if you have any questions or concerns, go ahead and write us at: TriviaHunt@Gmail.com

And now, without further ado… let the hunt begin!

(Each page has a soundbite for you to name. So be sure to click through them all.)
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Blind people do not have a better sense of hearing or smell than you do. But they learn to use those senses more efficiently.
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A real-life Indiana Jones believes he may have traced the Ark of the Covenant to Zimbabwe. But don’t expect it to still be there waiting for us.
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Retro Sabotage is a collection of classic arcade games with a twist. I would tell you what the twist is, but it’s different for each game!
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Top 10 Smart and Lazy Ways to Save Your Workday. It’s not about raising your productivity; it’s about not wasting your own time.
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How to Behave on an Internet Forum. This should be required viewing before anyone can log on to the net.
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The Science of Fairy Tales. Some of that magical stuff is actually possible -except for that “happily ever after” part.
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Hooked on Tonics: Snake Oils, Hangover Cures, and Other Questionable Medicine. When people are desperate for a cure, there’s always someone willing to take their money.

In case you missed a day, here’s last week in quizzes. If you’ve already taken them all and you’re really bored, see if you can better your score. Click on any banner to take that quiz.

With Leap Day coming up next Friday, I began to search my trivia mind for names of people that had been born on February 29. I recall a source saying Superman was born on that date, along with John Tesh. Oh, and “Froggy” from the Our Gang movie shorts. So I began to think about other unusual birthdates, and even examined my own. I realized that if I’d been born a week later, mine would be 4/5/67, which would’ve been cool because of the sequential numbers.

Thus was born this Weekend Genius Challenge. Find a famous person, living or dead, whose birthdate is numerically unusual. 5/5/55 would be an example (all fives), as would 2/4/68 (all even numbers) or 1/6/1666. I’ll leave it to you to determine what makes the date unique. Post the person’s name and birthdate it in the comments below, and we’ll pick one of them at random to win a T-shirt of your choice from the mental_floss store. (Yes, we’ll check to make sure the date is correct.) Why a random pick? I’m taking Leap Day off. Hey, it only comes around every four years!

If you’re lucky, this Leap Day will be the last one you’ll ever have to live with an incomplete wardrobe. Wouldn’t you look great in one of these?

Science Fairs were the bane of my existence. At my Catholic school, the priest even once said during Mass, “… and the parents did a great job on their kid’s science fair projects this year.” Zing! Anyway, if you’re looking to relive aspects of your childhood, this link to ridiculously funny science fair experiements made me laugh out loud and forget the pain. (Via GorillaMask.net)

My boss is obsessed with IKEA and can spend hours there looking for just the right cabinet for our office space. Reader Edward has sent in this link about a man’s experience living in IKEA. The video shorts are hilarious, especially the “Ikea word scrambles.” What store have you dreamed of making your abode?

We sometimes live and die by our faithful animated heroes in video games. I’ll even take it further and admit I used to have a crush on Link. But not all are fictitious friends are lovable - here’s a list of the 15 most annoying characters in video games.

Anyone who’s worked in an office or lived in a condo/co-op knows the plague of passive-aggressive notes and memos that occasionally paper one’s desk or community bulletin board. PassiveAggressiveNotes makes it an art. Here’s a great example of a particularly persnickety postscript.
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For WGC #20, we asked readers to come up with a factual end to the phrase: “Ronald Reagan was the most recent president…” We offered a free T-shirt to the most interesting true entry, as well as to the one that matched the factoid we’d been holding in reserve.

The votes were close, but the winner was Mike G., who reminded us that:

Ronald Reagan was the most recent president to have a child to pose in Playboy.

(And yes, I know many of you are holding out hope for the Bush twins.)

A few came close, but nobody matched the fact we had in store, which was:

Ronald Reagan was the most recent president born with a surname that did NOT start with the letter B.

Since Reagan, we’ve had George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton (who was born with the last name Blythe), and George W. Bush. But since all of the B-named candidates in the current race (including Joe Biden) have dropped out, this won’t be true much longer.

Thanks to everyone who participated. A new Weekend Genius Challenge will appear later today!

In 1958, Project Orion was formed at General Atomics (a defense contractor), seeking to design spacecraft powered by nuclear pulses — in other words, bombs. The project designed incredibly large vessels, with theoretical sizes ranging up to 400 meters in diameter and weighing 8,000,000 tons. The ships were intended to travel to Saturn and Venus carrying large crews — but the project ended in the early 1960’s without building a full-scale vehicle.

The project involved, among others, physicist Freeman Dyson. Nearly forty years after the project was canceled, you can listen to Dyson’s son George describe Project Orion in a TED talk from 2002. He includes a variety of insider info, and it’s fascinating stuff (if you can get past his somewhat haphazard delivery):

George Dyson went on to write Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship. You can also learn more about Project Orion on Wikipedia, or at this fan page.

Due to the ubiquity of advertisements, consumers have become accustomed to them and are able to tune them out. To combat this “problem,” advertisers are coming up with continually more creative ways to get their messages across. The new and unique methods some firms have devised are surely memorable. Of course, if they become as commonplace as scented perfume ads or product placement in TV shows and movies, they too will cease to be memorable.

The 10 most memorable new methods of advertising are…

1. Escalator: Rediffusion DY&R in Mumbai, India, chose to advertise Juice Salon on an escalator. On the bottom of the escalator is an image of a man’s head; on each step, a hairstyle. As the steps slide into the bottom of the escalator, the man’s hairstyle changes.

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