Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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Mite Makes Fright

Microscope attachment to vacuum cleaner to view mite removal
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Did you know that 7000 dust mites can fit on one of your fingernails? That during its lifetime a mite can produce 300 eggs and 200 times its weight in refuse? That it turns out 40-100 feces pellets a day? If you are allergic or these Lilliputian litterers on your mattress and carpets concern you, this exclusive mouthpiece is your ticket to peace and serenity.

The vacuum cleaner mite mouthpiece searches, identifies and displays individual dust mites before, during and after you've sucked them into the cleaner. This is accomplished with stereomicroscopes with auto focus, powerful illumination, image recognition software, position fixing probe and a four-inch LCD on the hose.

Put joy back into your cleaning as you take pleasure scrutinizing color, 3D, stills of each ugly arachnid as it first registers fright, then clings frantically to the fibers and finally disappears from view.

FarmerJohn, Sep 13 2002

picture of a mite http://www.allergyb...tion-dust-mite.html
aren't they cute! [rbl, Sep 13 2002, last modified Oct 21 2004]

and the eyebrow cousins http://www.madison-avenue.com/nioxin7.htm
can you feel them crawling? [rbl, Sep 13 2002, last modified Oct 21 2004]

What a Story Lice Can Tell http://www.universi...er04/lice_story.htm
Some random publication. NY Times wants to charge you for it... [tiromancer, Dec 16 2004]

Louse evolution http://www.sciencen...s/20030823/fob7.asp
[bungston, Dec 16 2004]

[link]






       Not arachnids, surely. Not if you want to make money. [does 'Coleoptera' unspring your rhythms too much?]
General Washington, Sep 13 2002
  

       how is this going to add joy to my cleaning? guilt perhaps, joy no. One day the mother ship will come back and think WE are all just dust mites on the face of the planet. Hope they don't have one of these..
rbl, Sep 13 2002
  

       // Hope they don't have one of these.. //   

       We do.
8th of 7, Sep 13 2002
  

       I'm going to go change my bedding now...
RayfordSteele, Sep 13 2002
  

       General George: Dust mites aren't beetles of the coleotera order but like spiders belong to the arachnids.
FarmerJohn, Sep 13 2002
  

       Oh jolly well done, FJ, all the female HBers are now runing round screaming and looking to rent sterile rooms to sleep in .....
8th of 7, Sep 13 2002
  

       FarmerJohn, I bow to your tone of authority.
General Washington, Sep 13 2002
  

       shall we talk about the things that live in eyebrows? that should push them over the edge.
rbl, Sep 13 2002
  

       Croissant. Hyperallergenic little bastuhds kicked off my eczema this year for the first time in over a decade. I like spiders (spiders are our friends; spiders eat flies), but honestly, these things deserve to die.
Guy Fox, Sep 13 2002
  

       throw the runes for 8th. takes more than a creepy-crawly in the eyelash to get us screaming. gawd he is 50's
po, Sep 14 2002
  

       They were hosts to a mitey fine dinner.
ty6, Sep 15 2002
  

       This device would be fun around the house, but could also be used outside in leaf litter, lawn, mulch piles, and other such environments. It could be used for ecologic surveys of mites and other near-microscopic creature.
bungston, Dec 16 2004
  

       I agree, this would be a lot more fun outdoors than indoors.
phundug, Dec 16 2004
  

       " When humans lost their body hair, perhaps 1.8 million years ago, the Pediculus louse would presumably have been restricted to the head, leaving the rest of the body vacant.   

       This could have been the moment when the pubic louse began its long-term relationship with its human host. Dr. Stoneking believes that if he could establish when the pubic louse arrived, by assessing the amount of genetic variation in today's pubic louse population, he might be able to fix a minimum date for when people attained nakedness.   

       A perplexity that louse specialists have not yet resolved is that the pubic louse belongs to a different genus from Pediculus, being known to taxonomists as Phthirus pubis.   

       Bizarrely, its closest relative is Phthirus gorillae, the louse that infects the gorilla.   

       How it got to humans from gorillas, if that is indeed its origin, is a question that raises some dire possibilities."   

       source linked above. I'll delete this if anyone is offended, but it's really a journalistic triumph.
tiromancer, Dec 16 2004
  
      
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