Although this is barely within our news coverage area, we thought bringing you footage of this amazing machete slingshot/rifle hybrid would prove that this beautiful dream is indeed science fact.

Favorite moments in video:

• The sound of an oncoming car while our host is explaining his contraption. If you’re just randomly driving down the road and see this giant bald dude wielding such an insane weapon, what is your first thought? I’m glad I updated my will? What is Uncle Fester doing with a knife gun? I always knew this is how I would go?

• The startling accuracy of the weapon. Granted, we don’t know how many takes this took to edit down to the handful of successful attempts but still…

• He’s shooting a box for a home treadmill. A nation of overweight YouTubers express a tsunami of catharsis.

• He follows up a video of the most badass DIY weapon in a decade with a video spotlighting two tiny hand slingshots. As the old adage on genre writing goes, your monster movie is over when the gigantic bald dude stops firing machetes into a treadmill box with pants peeing velocity.

Only two elements that could have made it better:

• Slow motion

• Death metal

[BoingBoing]

That is all.

[Adventure Journal]

Students at the University of Toronto have built the first succesful human-powered Ornithopter (a machine that generates lift through the flapping of its wings). Dubber ‘The Snowbird,” the flying machine achieved. The flight lasted a scant 19.3 seconds, but it is still longer than any other attempt. You can find more info about the project here.

A POV trip for a engineer working on a 1,768 foot high transmission tower.

Thanks to Weird Things reader Alan for passing this along.

William Allen Barnes is a man on a mission. His journey to find and track the creature known as Bigfoot (although he is loathe to use that particular term) began on a fateful night camping in California.

But his story, begins with the best lede we’ve ever read while editing this site:

On a warm summer night in 1997, local Bigfoot researcher and part-time gold-mining enthusiast William Allen Barnes was plunged headlong into the world of cryptozoology.

His story is well worth reading. Including this incredible line:

“After it left, the adrenaline hit me and I just sat there and shook,” Barnes said. “I got up the next morning and left. It took me four years to go back out there into the canyon by myself, and my gun got bigger every year.”

A part-time gold-mining enthusiast rolling through the Cali campgrounds strapped like Duke Nukem? Hail to the king.

[The Union]

Pretty hardcore. Granted, the publisher of this site, Andrew Mayne has been known to gargle the stuff but this is awesome just the same.

Get way more detail on why this works at the man’s blog, including one of the most bad assed pictures you will see today.

Thank to Weird Things reader Mitzula for the tip.

[Pop Sci]

The dream is real! Marty McFly’s self-lacing shoes could become science fact as Nike filed a patent for the tech in 2009.

[Nice Kicks]

The FDA has given a biotech tech firm the A-OK to start embryonic stem cell therapy trails. First up? An Iraq war vet who was paralyzed from the chest down in 2005.

Yesterday it was announced that Iraq War veteran and Marine Matt Cole, paralyzed from the chest down since a 2005 insurgent attack in Iraq, has enrolled as the first patient in the first FDA clinical trial of adult stem cells used to treat spinal cord injuries.

The procedure involves removing a couple of thousand adult stem cells from Cole’s bone marrow, multiplying them in the lab and injecting them into his spinal cord. That should happen later this month. Nine other patients have also been enrolled for this phase of the trial, which is being undertaken by TCA Cellular Therapy in Covington, La.

Is that super serum enough for you? Me too.

Now who wants to send Matt a shield… just in case.

[Business Wire via Pop Sci]

My feeble brain can’t process how this could be used, but I’m pretty sure it’s awesome.

“It’s kind of surprising that we’ve been using lasers for 50 years or so, and only now somebody noticed something pretty fundamental,” says Marin Solja?i?, a physicist at MIT who was not involved in the work.

Instead of amplifying light into coherent pulses, as a laser does, an antilaser absorbs light beams zapped into it. It can be “tuned” to work at specific wavelengths of light, allowing researchers to turn a dial and cause the device to start and then stop absorbing light.

“By just tinkering with the phases of the beams, magically it turns ‘black’ in this narrow wavelength range,” says team member A. Douglas Stone, a physicist at Yale University. “It’s an amazing trick.”

The option remains on the table to create a dual laser/anti-laser combo. Which is pretty much the coolest thing we’ve heard of today.

[Wired]

Not only will Austrian stuntman Felix Baumgartner attempt to redefine the official limitations of which height a human can fall from without dying immediately he also hopes to break the sound barrier on the way down.

Starting in the stratosphere at 120,000 feet above the ground, Baumgartner will leap from a capsule suspended by a helium balloon near the boundary of space.

Sponsored by the energy drink company Red Bull, Baumgartner’s mission — called Red Bull Stratos — seeks to extend the “safety zone” of human atmospheric bailout last set in 1960 by diver Joe Kittinger. This limit defines the uppermost altitude a human being can safely jump from.

Awesome. Also, he’s already leapt off the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro. Double complete rainbow.

[Space]

Here is one paragraph for you to read:

“Accordingly, our own Universe may be the interior of a black hole existing in another universe.” So concludes Nikodem Poplawski at Indiana University in a remarkable paper about the nature of space and the origin of time.

If that doesn’t make you want to read the rest of this post, you’re a real silly goose.

[Technology Review]

Shooting a diamond bullet at anything might be the most Bowie badass thing ever conceived of, but if, as Chinese scientists are now theorizing it can also create nuclear power then we have a new favorite source of alternative energy.

[Popular Science]

A Japanese coal city abandoned in 1974 has been officially off-limits for anyone looking to explore the slowly decaying buildings that once was home to thousands. That did not stop this brave explorer and his trusty guide who not only infiltrated the infamous Battleship Island but took some super insane pictures while there.

[Gakuranman]

Last week we reported on how the FAA is clearing the way for Terrafugia’s new flying car. Now, thanks to the power of the Youtubes, we have video of this wondrous flying machine. It’s sleek as a thoroughbred, it’s seats are a feather bed, but I think I’ll let the 40 people who have already put down a $10,000 deposit test it for a while to make sure it doesn’t go ‘Bang-Bang.’

Japanese monitor maker Eizo released a pin-up calendar of provocative x-ray images. The company says they used computer graphics instead of real models.

Earlier this week Weird Things hipped you to a new jet pack that is set to go on sale. Now we are proud to inform you that the dream we’ve all had since seeing our first episode of The Jetsons is set to take flight.

The FAA has created an exception to help Terrafugia’s ‘flying car’ get off the ground. The company was having trouble making the prototype vehicle safe while staying within the weight limits for for a Light Sports Aircraft. This means it will most likely be available for consumers by late 2011. Expect new laws to ban texting-while-flying by 2012.

Drivers/Pilots can travel up to 450 miles in the air and enjoy 30 miles per gallon on the ground. No word on pricing, but you should probably start arranging that third mortgage right now to beat the rush.