SpaceX launches does a new rocket test that reminds Justin of a CGI future where humans roam the stars. A new digital scam is fleecing business men our of scads of cash, Justin and Andrew discuss the future of such villainy. Are we climbing out of the uncanny valley? There is life on Mars, and we will Kickstarter ourselves there. What does this mean for our favorite Sci Fi shows and movies?
It’s all part of a new Weird Things podcast.
Support the show by purchasing Andrew’s BRAND NEW BOOK Knight School just click on the image below.
Yesterday at the SXSW keynote, SpaceX’s Elon Musk showed the first footage of their most recent test of their reusable rocket system. In what has to be a new record of some kind, the Grasshopper, a rocket 10 stories tall, flew 268 feet in the air and then landed back down on the pad without incident.
Next Grasshopper rocket test is called the Johnny Cash Hover Slam (yeah baby!). Might be our first smoking crater…
Even Elon Musk was publicly unsure of the success of the test, suggesting on Twitter this might leave a ‘crater’. The name, “Johnny Cash Hover Slam”, doesn’t inspire confidence in a happy landing. Watch the video accompanied by Cash’s Ring of Fire and remind yourself of the scale of what you’re watching. 268 feet is tall enough to clear the crown of the Statue of Liberty. It’s also probably the heaviest object in the world to ever VTOL.
What’s next for the Grasshopper program and their goal of rapidly reusable rockets? At SXSW, Musk said they’d like to go hypersonic before the end of the year. Any song suggestions for that one?
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Quadcopters are the new must-have toys of the tech-headed kids. They’re showing up everywhere and there are thousands of them out ‘in the wild’.
For those frightened that these things will eventually be controlled by SkyNet, this latest advancement in their abilities is only going to reinforce that paranoia.
For the rest of us who believe our robot friends would never hurt us based on a set of laws thrust into existence by an author of science fiction novels? This is pretty awesome to watch.
For a more detailed description of how exactly this whole process works, you can check out RoboHub for a more educational explanation than anything you’re ever going to find here.
Those that just want to be amazed at a serious demonstration of how organized, responsive, agile….
Know what? Forget we ever called those people paranoid.
Fans of The Walking Dead know that if you cover yourself in the leftovers of friends, neighbors and family, zombies will just stroll right on by you…until it begins to rain and things go to hell real fast.
Wouldn’t it be awesome if someone would just come up with a scented…oh wait…it’s happened..
Demeter Fragrances has added two new perfumes to their line-up:
‘Zombie for Him’ and ‘Zombie for Her’.
Now there’s no need to don protective wear and hack away for hours when only a butter knife is available in order to smother yourself with the innards of a hapless stranger…or a not quite zombie-apocalypse-prepped friend.
‘Zombie for Him’ is described thusly:
Think forest floor. Zombie for Him is a combination of dried leaves, mushrooms, mildew, moss and earth. A definite must-have for any Man’s scent collection.
‘Zombie for Her’ is:
A slightly lighter version of the Men’s fragrance with a touch of Dregs from the bottom of the wine barrel for that feminine touch.
Now you can protect anyone in an instant by just spritzing them and blending in socially amongst the walking dead…
For a LOT of the more nerdy kids out there, we’re placing bets that many of you pretended you had the ability to throw fireballs, move objects by waving your hands and occasionally even tried in vain to channel the Force.
That was all fun, lots of pretending and wishful thinking…wasn’t it?
Not any more.
Thalmic Labs, the creators of Myo is a company that, with the help of a special armband, could make a lot of those things a reality.
‘As a company, we’re interested in how we can use technology to enhance our abilities as humans – in short, giving us superpowers,’ Stephen Lake, co-founder and CEO of Thalmic Labs said.
Using gesture control, Myo is an armband that registers the electrical activity in your muscle movements that will produce a signal that’s interpreted and sent wirelessly to your phone, television, kitchen or even your personal drone instantly.
At that price why waste time running around in a swamp with an 800 year-old, green, raisin-skinned, wizard clinging to your back and nagging at you or visiting some weird old desert hermit when you can just drop a little cash and skip the middleman?
Let’s just hope people remember to remove it when they’re doing…uh…private stuff involving a lot of gesturing.
We’re pretty sure that this thing can’t help us ‘unsee’ things yet.
Last time we checked Brazil seemed like a place where men really wouldn’t be hard up to find a female companion.
We were wrong. Very, very wrong.
How wrong? Just…just keep reading.
There’s a bidding war going on in Brazil right now over a woman. For some she’s the perfect woman. For most of us she’s just plain weird and the ridiculous bidding war over her is even weirder.
Her name is Valentina.
Valentina is, disturbingly enough, the most desirable woman in Brazil right now and the man with the most padded wallet will get the chance to deflower her.
The current going price for Valentina’s virginity right now? $105,000 and climbing.
Wondering what her parents and family might be thinking of all of this craziness? Doesn’t matter.
Valentina isn’t real. She’s a life-like sex doll created by the acme of all sex-doll companies, Real Doll. The company has recently opened a manufacturing plant in Brazil and Valentina is the first doll created there. Now her ‘virginity’ is on the auction block.
The winner of the auction will also receive all-expenses-paid travel to and from São Paulo, a free night’s stay in the Presidential Suite of a fancy hotel, and a complimentary candlelight dinner with French Champagne to share with Valentina.
They’ll even throw in some sexy lingerie as Valentina’s gift to you, and a digital camera “to shoot and then show your friends.”
Not only is this a bidding war for an inanimate woman’s viginity…it also seems like an opportunity to see who the richest, most desperate Brazillian man is who’s got such bad game that he’s willing to shell out a small fortune for a woman who won’t say no to even his worst pitch.
Anyone who’s been following the evolution of Boston Dynamics has been creeped out at one point by their BigDog robot. BigDog is a quadraped robot that has learned a lot of tricks since it was a terrifying little puppy of a machine. It balances itself even when an engineer makes an attempt at cow-tipping it, it ambles over the most diverse terrain ever laid out in front of a robot, follows humans like an obedient pack-mule and even understands what humans are saying to it.
Each stage in BigDog’s learning process has brought with it a level of creepiness.
But BigDog’s newest trick just put the nail in the coffin of humankind’s demise.
BigDog now throws things.
And what it’s throwing isn’t a spitball. It’s not a paper airplane. It’s not throwing Mardi Gras beads. It’s not a fun frisbee.
Nope. Not anything even remotely associated with enjoyable OR fun…
It’s throwing cinder blocks.
30 pound, concrete cinder blocks…
And it’s throwing them easier and more accurately than you could ever hope to throw one.
Which once again goes to prove that we shouldn’t be worried about the robots taking over in the future…
We should be worried about our own fellow humans helping them.
Original three reunited again for this very special episode of the podcast! Andrew introduces a birthday question in honor of Justin’s 30th Name Day. A space pioneer wants to make a fly by around Mars but the price may be too high for some prospective adventurers. Or too low. Or too stank.
ALSO! Get the first two chapters of Andrew’s new book Knight School read to you by Justin… for free!
It’s all part of a new Weird Things podcast.
Support the show by purchasing Andrew’s BRAND NEW BOOK Knight School just click on the image below.
Just now hitting the internet are videos of a ‘cigar ufo’ doing a drive-by of a volcano in Mexico. In October of 2012 a more daring group of what’s probably the alien equivalent of a tour bus decided to just fly into a volcano so its occupants could probably Instagram much cooler pics than the other tour groups who were just safely cruising by.
In another step toward getting our food like the Jetsons, Fanta has created a print ad to describe, in a lot of adjectives, what their orange-flavored soda tastes like…
Then they offer you a chance to taste it.
And not by giving you a redeemable coupon for a cold, delicious orange-flavored drink from the store…
Nope…we’re in the ‘future’ now, kids.
Fanta is asking people to actually eat the print ad which has been created solely for that purpose.
If you live in Sweden, you can quit wondering and put your money where your wondering is.
In order to raise awareness for the plight of the homeless population in the city of Gothenburg, an interactive agency has set up 10 locations that you can actually book for a stay. These 10 locations are the real deal and by booking one you’ll be giving the money to a charity to help the people actually living in those conditions.
You can even gift a night stay to a friend…or potential ex-friend.
Russia is a unique place. They drive a little differently there, meteors land there and now they’ve decided to tackle robotics…in the form a creepy walking robot disguised as a cute (but threateningly non-cute and blankly-staring) ostrich-walker.
Like the love-child of an AT-ST from the Star Wars universe and the little robots from the classic sci-fi film Silent Running, this attempt at making roaming ‘bots cute just ends up making it all that much creepier.
Why an ostrich? Only the group of four Russians calling themselves the Konstantin Ivanov could answer that question.
Using parts you might find at home and your local Radio Shack, the team set out to contstruct a walking robot on an extremely limited budget as a way of showing what they might be capable of if someone actually opened their wallet for Team Ivanov.
Total cost of Ostrich Mech? $1,500…
Expressions of horror from anyone who sees this thing marching toward them on the street?
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Justin and Andrew are again two against the world. We discuss the Russian meteor and why it explains how terrible Russia’s music taste is. SpaceX is hinting at a new test launch that could leave a smoking crater in the ground. A law is passed leading to a culinary freedom that might turn your stomach AND FINALLY Florida Python Hunt Results!
It’s all part of a new Weird Things podcast.
Support the show by purchasing Andrew’s BRAND NEW BOOK Hollywood Pharaohs just click on the image below.
Like found footage from an unannounced JJ Abrams flick, video is slamming YouTube from all over Russia about a large meteor that hit the atmosphere.
Details are still coming in about the event and we’ll have a fuller piece about it later.
For now? Grab some popcorn and enjoy a teaser for what the end of the world could look like.
The most amazing video that hit the internet almost immediately is from a driver’s dash-cam as the event takes place (for all of you who have NOT seen videos showing why Russian drivers need dash-cams? You’re depriving yourself)!
Next up? The sound of the sonic boom reaching the street. There have been reports of multiple injuries from exploding glass and falling objects…it’s like an ‘air-quake’!
And as people begin turning their cameras to the sky, the whole JJ Abrams-esque thing begins to manifest as everyone stands around staring at this terrifyingly strange and probably overwhelming event.
We’ll post more later as Russia calms the hell down.
Justin and Andrew are riding as a power duo in this episode of the Weird Things podcast. Who is going to be the next Pope? We thumb through many surprising possibilities including a few super spies who would take the head Vatican role on His Majesty In Heaven’s Secret Service. A space death missile will narrowly miss us, but what would happen if it didn’t? And why shouldn’t we be shooting at it?
It’s all part of a new Weird Things podcast.
Support the show by purchasing Andrew’s BRAND NEW BOOK Hollywood Pharaohs just click on the image below.
