It's the least you could do, given that you didn't help with the turkey at all.

Faraday cages are not anyone's idea of bleeding-edge tech--they were invented in 1836. But as we all brace ourselves for Thanksgiving family dinners rendered even more awkward by buzzing iPhones and texting teenagers, the signal-blocking "phonekerchief" may be a tech accessory whose time has come.

The idea is simple, according to designer Ingrid Zweifel: the phonekerchief weaves ultrafine metal threads into a normal hankie to create a "soft Faraday cage" around your Crackberry or iTeat, snuffing out its wireless connection and letting everyone at the table know you care more about enjoying their company than checking in to Grandma's house on Foursquare.

Couldn't you just nag everyone to turn their phones off? Yes. But that doesn't make quite the same discreet-yet-formal statement for a special occasion with family, does it? Imagine a whole table set with fine silverware atop primly folded phonekerchiefs at every place setting. Why, it'd be a scene right out of Norman Rockwell, if social-norm-stunting internet pucks were commonplace in his day.

In any case, "Fun With Faraday Cages" has become a regular geek cottage industry, so it's nice to see someone using them for the powers of good (ie, politeness at the table), rather than yet another rendition of the Dr. Who theme song played on Tesla coils.

Read more at myphoneisoff.com

Just because they snuff out gunshots doesn't mean they'll work on your partner's snoring.

Remember that scene in Black Hawk Down where a soldier literally goes deaf because his buddy is shooting a giant machine gun right next to his head? The movie played it for laughs, but military hearing loss is no joke. According to high-end audio company Etymotic Research, "an alarmingly high percentage of deployed soldiers" sustain permanent hearing loss and tinnitus.

Earplugs are the obvious solution, but you can't exactly stay frosty on patrol when you've got foam jammed in your ears blocking everything out. Etymotic's EB15 BlastPLG earplugs attempt to square the circle by electronically attentuating sudden blast sounds while letting normal decibel levels through -- or even enhancing them.

The $450 price tag makes sense when you consider that the EB15 is a state of the art hearing aid and earplug at the same time. "Adaptive attentuation" circuitry detects incoming impulse noise like gunfire and RPG explosions and electronically morphs into a 15-dB earplug before your eardrum takes a beating. It does the same thing if ambient noise rises to a damaging level for a sustained amount of time. Otherwise, the EB15 lets the user hear well enough to detect sounds normally and pinpoint their locations, or even boost the signal for enhanced situational awareness.

Specs showing the EB15's ability to adaptively attentuate harmful sounds.

Etymotic's BlastPLG earplugs won an Innovation award at the upcoming 2011 Consumer Electronics Show. No word yet on whether they work well against snoring spouses or shrieking toddlers.

Read more at Etymotic Research

It's not a new kind of Super Soaker, it's a military-grade antenna.

The average U.S. Navy vessel has 80 different antennae bristling out of it like a spiny beetle. But it's often hard to find adequate space for all of them without interference, and their height can expose the ship to radar detection. What if they could be replaced using something a ship always has plenty of: seawater?

Daniel Tam, an engineer at Spawar Systems Center (sort of a DARPA for the Navy), exploited the magnetic induction properties of salt water to create an electrolytic fluid antenna which can broadcast and receive VHF and UHF signals.

The design is simple: just shoot a thin stream of seawater through an electromagnetic coil called a current probe, and presto -- instant radio communication. A jet 6 feet tall will operate on VHF, and 2 feet gets you UHF. Current probes can be easily stacked and installed anywhere on the deck, because the water-streams can simply be turned off when they're not in use.

The tech makes sense on land, as well -- especially for restoring emergency communications in a crisis area whose power grid has been knocked out. Dump rock salt into a bucket of fresh water, foot-pump it through some plastic pipe with small solar- or generator-powered current probe, and flood victims or emergency-response personnel could be on the air much faster.

The fluid antenna's range has been successfully tested at 30 miles, and the Navy is seeking commercial partners for the patent-pending technology. Expect neo-survivalist types to start stockpiling these babies faster than you can say "peak oil".

[Read more at SSC Pacific]