The American Consumer Institute posted a thoughtful, objective look at the public opinion versus the facts regarding pricing and helpfulness of the two biggest major brick-and-mortar electronics retailers left, Best Buy and Walmart. Unfortunately they neglected to note that both are a total wash if you compare to pretty much any online retailer, and neither Best Buy nor Walmart are exactly renowned for good customer service. The facts were nicely summed up by our own Wilson Rothman:

This is retarded beyond retarded.

How much would you rather pay for a Blu-ray player, $700 or $1000?

Who is the better head of state, Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini?

What would you rather eat, poop or a totally black banana?

W

For the record, I prefer a black banana (they're okay in smoothies!). [The American Consumer]

Brad Pitt's charitable foundation created an environmentally friendly floating house designed to be practical, safe and aesthetically consistent in New Orleans neighborhoods. In periods of intense flooding, the concrete-covered polystyrene house breaks away from its moorings and floats, anchored with two 12-foot guideposts. It's made from all green materials and actually looks like a real house, which is commendable. Hopefully New Orleans won't have a call for any floating houses anytime soon, but just in case, thanks, Brad! [Inhabitant]

The Nobel Prize in Physics was just awarded to three pioneers that actually made stuff we all use everyday: Fiber optics, which power, you know, the entire internet, and CCDs, which allow us to post dumb pictures to said internet. Physicists Charles Kao, Willard Boyle and George Smith all shared the 2009 prize, which totals $1.4 million. Almost enough to make me wish I wasn't such a horrible student in physics. Almost. [Huffington Post, image from The Guardian]

The NPD group, which extensive online research tells me has nothing to do with Canada's NDP, found that back-to-school notebook sales are just about as strong as they were last year, which makes them as close to "recession-proof" as anything in the tech sector is likely to be. Unfortunately, sort of, the average amount spent on these laptops shot down from $804 in 2008 to $624 this year, mostly due to the skyrocketing popularity of netbooks. Still, good news for tech makers. [Electronista]

In America, Brad Pitt's cool enough to dump gorgeous stars like Jennifer Aniston and walk away to a small pile of babies. In Japan, he's just sumo champion Musashimaru's butler.

But we must admit, Pitt does a pretty good job as a butler. If the whole movie star thing doesn't work out, we could use someone to hold our cellphone while cradling us tenderly. [via MobileCrunch]

It's one thing to make robots or aliens or whatever look "real," but it's something entirely different to completely generate an actors face and place it on another actors body and have it look completely seamless. This video, which shows some behind-the-scenes footage of how they took Brad Pitt's face and placed it, aged up, on a smaller actor's body. While Iron Man might seem like the natural choice for Best Visual Effects at the Oscars, Benjamin Button is the film that used the most impressive effects. I'll take realism over flashiness any day of the week. [Rope of Silicon via io9]

The ad, for Softbank's winter line, is a remake of the 1953 French film Les Vacances de Monseieur Hulot. Pitt looks over some fruit, helps push a stalled car, nearly gets run over by bikers and then snaps some nudie pics with his cellphone. Sacré bleu, Pitt-san! [ via Defamer]