We really need to stop teaching robots how to fight us. Side note: it has a “berserk” mode.

[Geekologie]

Something bad is coming (probably). Whether it is plague, zombies, alien invasion, doomsday comets, magnetic pole shifts, or just the general end of the world, and Larry Hall has the perfect opportunity ready for those who want to be prepared. He shelled out $250,000 for a decommissioned Atlas F Missile Base in Kansas and is now selling condos starting at $900,000. Hey, that price includes five years worth of food too. You better hurry up, three of the seven floors are already taken.

“I thought, wow, I can transform it into an ultrasafe, energy-efficient fortress,” Hall says. Then he figured that other people might also sleep better 200 feet underground within epoxy-hardened concrete walls. And with a custom retrofit featuring GE Monogram stainless-steel appliances and Kohler fixtures, they could also eat (and flush) in style. So Hall announced a “condo suite package”—starting at $900,000—that includes a five-year food supply (think hydroponics and aquaculture) and “simulated view windows” with light levels calibrated to the time of day to keep you from going crazy.

[Wired]

Ollie Frisk and  four of his friends were skiing in the backcountry at the Härjedalen ski resort, located in northern Sweden, when Ollie unknowingly skied over a bear den which collapsed and sent him sprawling into the bear that was living there. The bear woke up and mauled Ollie, but he survived to tell the tale.

“But Ollie didn’t die. Instead, he says, he quit struggling as he accepted the inevitability of his fate, and when he did so, the bear simply stopped attacking him. A few moments later she wandered out of the lair, where Ollie’s friends made loud noises to scare her away. They then helped Frisk from the den, and back down the hill to safety.”

[Gadling]

Post-Katrina, there is only one gang that rules the once-flooded streets of this suffering city. You can hear their affiliation calls bounce off the battered houses through all hours of the night:

Cluck. Cluck.

Chickens rule this town! Feral ones that don’t scare from humans no more. So far they haven’t become violent. So far.

[NOLA]

Imagine you were far away from home and you found a monster. Not a metaphor, but a genuine, grotesque oddity.

What would you do with it?

I have in my possession a copy of Modern Reports: Or Select Cases, Adjudged In The Courts Of King’s Bench, Chancery, Common Pleas And Exchequer. Volume The Third, printed in Dublin in the year 1794. Thanks to the magic of the internet, you can read along at home.  This volume includes:

“A Collection of several Special Cases adjudged in the Court of King Bench in the last Years of the Reign of Charles the Second in the Reign of King James the Second and in the first and second Years of King William and Queen Mary. Together with the Resolutions and Judgments thereupon.”

Don’t worry; this is not an English history lesson, all you need to know from this paragraph is that this book covers legals cases from roughly the 1680’s – 1691. While doing some research I came across Case 81: Sir Thomas Grantham’s Case.  But, before we get into the details of the case – who was Sir Thomas Grantham?

Sir Thomas Grantham was your typical bad-ass 17th century British naval commander. He was an English tobacco trader and naval officer, commander of the naval fleet of the British East India Company. In 1676 he helped put down Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia, and in 1684 he put down another insurrection in Bombay. He helped build forts and was made Admiral and knighted by King Charles II. Oh yeah, and he wrote a book about his adventures called An Historical Account of Some Memorable Actions, Particularly in Virginia; Also Against the Admiral of Algier, and in the East Indies: Perform’d for the Service of his Prince and Country. Also available due to the magic of the internet!

If an “s” looking like an “f” makes you want to punch something, here is the modern “translation”.

Sir Thomas Grantham’s Case
He bought a monster in the Indies, which was a man of that country, who had the perfect shape of a child growing out of his breast as an excrescency, all but the head. This man he brought hither, and exposed to the sight of the people for profit. The Indian turned Christian and was baptized, and was detained from his master.

The master brought a homine replegiando.

The sheriff returned, that he had replevied the body, but did not say, the body in which Sir Thomas claimed a property; where-upon he was ordered to amend his return.

And then the Court of Common Pleas bailed him

Enough history and legal jargon; what does this actually mean? Well apparently old Sir Thomas was travelling around the East Indies, trading and putting down rebellions, when he came across a man with a perfectly formed child’s body growing out of his chest – minus the head. I am having a hard time visualizing this. Did it have arms and legs? I am having strong Quato flashbacks right now. Sir Thomas decided to supplement his Admiral’s income and start his own private one-show circus around England.

Then one day, the man converted to christianity and was baptized, and Sir Thomas had him taken away. It doesn’t really say who took away the man, but I am thinking that there is a connection between the conversion and the taking. Not to be outdone, Grantham dropped a writ of de homine replegiando in the court. Homine replegiando is latin for “replevying of a man” and was used to regain possession of property, goods, or services wrongfully taken or detained; it was also regularly used to protect parental rights.  The sheriff replieved the man and then the Court of Common Pleas bailed him out from custody of the sheriff and returned him to Sir Thomas Grantham.

I should note that my knowledge of English common law is limited to what Google can tell me, so I may be interpreting this passage completely wrong. However, it seems to me that Sir Grantham got his “monster” back and I can only imagine that he continued his circus act around the country.

Make no mistake: this is an intricate, delicate work of art no matter if it’s a commercial or not. A Japanese telco built a massive wooden gravity marimba operated by a single ball through a gorgeous woodland area.

The moral of the story? The woods are so boring you get ideas like this. Thanks to @Sandtiger on Twitter.

[YouTube]

Researchers mounted the Maritime Laser Demonstrator, a solid-state laser, aboard the USS Paul Foster, a decommissioned destroyer. Off the central California coast near San Nicholas Island on Wednesday, the laser fired a 15-kilowatt beam at an inflatable motorboat a mile away as both ships moved through the sea. As the above video shows, there was a flash on the boat’s outboard engines, igniting both of them in seconds, and leaving the ship dead in the choppy waters.

Note that this was only 15 kilowatts on their way to 100+ kilowatts needed for burning missiles from the sky.

[Wired]

Back in 2008 a stick-figure creature got busted creeping around Fresno backyards and was dubbed The Nightcrawler. Recently, new footage near Fresno shows two creatures that are very similar. Check out the videos below. The kind of look like marionettes, which is actually even more disturbing to me than unknown creatures.  What do you guys think?

Another video with more information:

[Phantoms and Monsters]

Physicists have just announced the discovery of something that falls outside the current understanding of particle physics. While zipping particles through Fermilab’s Tevatron collider they noticed that things were getting weird. While creating subatomic particles as a byproduct of these collisions, they can determine the various particles created in these collisions by looking at the energy of the jets. They can also use the Standard Model to predict the expected values created in these events, unless things get weird, and as stated before, things got weird.

“According to project spokesperson Giovanni Punzi, there were around 253 more electrons and muons created than expected compared to a background of about 10,000 such particles. Such jets could be created by a previously unknown particle about 160 times the mass of a proton, although we stress that’s only one possibility.”

So what are the other possibilities, if it isn’t a new previously unknown particle?

1. Fluke

2. Mistake

3. New, unknown feature of the Standard Model

4. A new fundamental force.

[io9]

It is very likely a combination of pre-2012 posturing by the White House and a fiscal hardline amongst the Republican party could cause our United States government to shut down this weekend. This is disappointing and annoying.

The silver lining? Conspiracy theorists can start spinning into overdrive. Break out the tin foil hats, check on your emergency seed garden and text your militia buddys. Here is a smattering of our favorites:

• China has ordered the shut down. They will use their opportunity to call in the debt we owe them and invade US soil [GodLikeProductions]

• Shut down means that non-essential entities like the EPA would cease opporation. That would mean radiation monitoring from Japan would be affected giving the Government leeway to fudge results [ConspiracyCom]

• Shutdown will only be avoided with assistance from Obama-friendly alien P’lod [Weekly World News]

The amazing music video for Alex Metric & Steve Angelo’s new tune Open Your Eyes finds us visiting a man who looks not unlike a young Rocky Balboa working over bums in the Philly underground boxing scene. However, instead of Apollo Creed looking for a new opponent, we find a fearsome boxing mech who has a habit of murdering his sparring partners while his sadistic creator laughs maniacally at the bloodshed.

Our rocky character is played by the hilarious Peter Serafinowicz from Shaun Of The Dead as well as the insanely funny UK TV sensations Look Around You and Spaced.

The song is ‘salright but the video is must see. SPOILER ALERT: not unlike the end of the Rocky, this story finds Balboa’s opponent wishing for no rematch, however, in this version our villain takes decisive action to reach his goal.

Thanks to Minion5051 for the tip via Twitter.

[YouTube]

Are computer viruses trying to take us over? Are they just the devolution of some kind of alien technology that’s trying to communicate with us through insipid mischief? Or are they evil alien viruses and trying to distract us from the impending invasion?

I don’t know necessarily about all these alien viruses I keep hearing about but if you have just regular earth viruses then you need ESET Antivirus and ESET are the world leaders in Anti-Threat technology.

There’s only one place you need to go to get it: http://www.willtech.com.au/delivers/Protection

And who know? Maybe they will just save us from all those alien viruses..

Before the big SpaceX announcement, the boys debate their relative excitement levels while Brian levies accusations of bigotry against NASA. Andrew questions the merit of a claim that the Chupacabra was inspired by the alien in Species and posits his own theory. Justin reads a listener scenario that eventually forces Hitler to try and kiss one of his high command right on the lips.

Your honors, it’s time for a new Weird Things Podcast!

Support the show by purchasing Andrew’s new SciFi book The Grendel’s Shadow for only .99 at Amazon.com by clicking the image below!

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Picks:

Brian-

• Maps & A Mirror by Orson Scott Card

Justin-

• The Grendel’s Shadow by Andrew Mayne

Andrew-

• Source Code directed by Duncan Jones

Elon Musk’s Space X promised a big announcement today and it was the unveiling of the Falcon Heavy. The short list of features: it can put 100,000 – 120,000 lbs. in orbit, has the thrust capacity of 15 Boeing 747s combined, is 30% the cost of previous rockets of this size, meets NASA requirements for human transport, can do the a trip to the ISS, moon or Mars(!!!) and back AND is ready to launch by the end of 2012.

Musk:

“Falcon Heavy would be capable of launching people as soon as we’ve proven it out with a few launches,” Musk said. “It opens up a wide range of possibilities, such as a mission to the moon or conceivably even Mars,” he said.

“First launch from our Cape Canaveral launch complex is planned for late 2013 or 2014,” Musk said.

M-A-R-S. Mars.

[Fox News]