It’s tree-trimming…with a 12-bladed chainsaw…being flown from a helicopter. Not really a whole lot else to talk about…except how we all want to have a helicopter and a 12-bladed chainsaw to tidy up the yard.
Since mice aren’t really a nuisance to anyone…600 copies of a single mouse have been created from a single drop of the donor mouse’s blood.
Taking the blood from the tail of a donor mouse, a team of scientists in Japan isolated the white blood cells and used the nuclei for the cloning process.
The process, known as somatic cell nuclear transfer, involves transferring the nucleus from an adult body cell – such as a blood or skin cell – into an unfertilized egg that has had its nucleus removed.
The point of the experiments was to see if circulating blood cells could be used to create an easily available source of donor cells to create valuable strains of lab mice.
After 25 rounds and 600 clones? We’re pretty sure they can stop wondering if it would work.
[BBC News]
Instead of just plopping yourself down on the couch with a bag of Doritos, a couple of beers and and living vicariously through a couple of sword and sandal flicks like Troy and Gladiator, you could get yourself up off the couch and enroll in a gladiator school and show people you mean business.
This bike would’ve been pretty awesome…had they NOT MADE THE FREAKIN’ SEAT A TOILET!
No. Seriously. This bike looks like it could’ve rolled into an oil-punk gathering and been something to gawk about because of what it uses for fuel. But instead…someone decided that it would look better with a bar-joke of a seat mounted on it…Wait. Why stop there? Why not make a mini toilet and mount THAT right on the front of the bike as well?
If you can get past the fact that there are two toilets mounted on this trike, you’ll learn that this 250cc machine runs on gas produced from livestock waste even though if anyone ever saw you on this thing (like the young lady in the photo) they’re going to assume you’re ‘dropping’ the kids off at the pool’ while you’re on it…because IT HAS A TOILET FOR A SEAT.
Called the NEO, this thing took three years to develop. Three years of development ruined by someone’s idea to make the area where you sit a toilet.
According to an engineer:
“The waste and household water are converted to methane gas by fermenting, and the methane gas is converted to bio-gas by purifying.”
SO…while there’s no actual manure in the bike, once you tell people what it runs on they’re simply going to assume that YOU are the one providing the fuel…and that you might possibly be providing it while you’re out driving around on it.
Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD) is one of the many joys associated with getting older. New generations of AMD sufferers won’t have to worry about that in the rapidly approaching future.
DARPA has funded the development of contact lens that operates like a millimeter-thick telescope. Using something along the lines of magic, the wearer of the contact will be able to switch between normal vision and magnified vision with the help of liquid crystals and ridiculously small, precisely engineered mirrors.
Basically you’ll be wearing the mechanical focusing rings of a standard still-photo camera that’s been flattened incredibly thin while retaining its functionality.
It’ll still be a while before these things trickle down to the average consumer but if you were to ask some of the future consumers if it was worth the wait? Pretty sure the answer would be a “Yes”.
[Gizmodo]
Musicians are usually willing to jam with anyone that has some ability at playing an instrument. As we begin walking hand-in-hand with our quickly-becoming-commonplace robotic friends, it only seems natural that musicians and robots would start creating the modern equivalent of their own Wyld Stallyns.
Other bands, like Compressorheads, have tread this road long before Z Machine. It just seems that right now we’re all a little more comfortable with our new metal friends and Z Machine has hit the stage at the right moment because of the reaction that the band’s had overseas.
Z Machine performs a lot like an emo band who’s feet have been nailed to the floor in the video we’ve posted here. That looming alien thing in the background on the left seems to be on a union break.
Despite the feeling that this performance is like we’re watching the result of something that’s been a weekend project between the glee and choir clubs, this is a simple, innocent example of how welcoming a new generation is of their new robotic buddies.
The San Antonio Zoo in Texas has become the home to a tiny and oddly adorable two-headed turtle.
According to the zoo the little critter is doing really well, totally healthy and following its mother around just like its other little turtle siblings without any difficulty.
In fact the only complication that this mini-Godzilla-like turtle design seems to have is that some genius at the zoo named it Thelma and Louise.
[GIzmodo]
Watch as this door opens up and something spills straight out of this closet and into your nightmares.
This is Julius and yes…this thing DID learn to open even round doorknobs. So you’re really not safe anywhere.
Julius passed away in 2012 from an infection that her vet could not diagnose. While we’re saddened about that…we’re glad that Julius didn’t get the chance to visit Florida and teach the rampant pythons here this trick.
That would’ve finally dumped the Sunshine State into the hellmouth it currently sits on.
[IO9]
Something weird is going on concerning a 10-inch statue of Neb-Sanu that is on display at the Manchester Museum.
This small statue is turning around…by itself.
During the course of the day Neb-Sanu’s little statue decides it’s done being stared at by museum guests so quietly and very, very slowly it turns itself around to face the other way.
While many are saying that vibrations from museum guests are causing vibrations in the glass shelves that the statue sits on causing it to turn around, the museum staff is disagreeing with the idea.
“But it has been on those surfaces since we have had it and it has never moved before. And why would it go around in a perfect circle?”
Egyptologist Campbell Price who works at the museum has even weighed in with his somewhat eerie thoughts:
“I noticed one day that it had turned around. I thought it was strange because it is in a case and I am the only one who has a key. I put it back but then the next day it had moved again. We set up a time-lapse video and, although the naked eye can’t see it, you can clearly see it rotate on the film. The statuette is something that used to go in the tomb along with the mummy. Mourners would lay offerings at its feet. In Ancient Egypt they believed that if the mummy is destroyed then the statuette can act as an alternative vessel for the spirit. Maybe that is what is causing the movement.”
[IO9]
Pigeon racing is quickly becoming a hot place for a new generation of wealthy people in China to drop some cash. In fact it’s attracting drops of cash worth millions. One race can net the winning team’s owner upwards of $80,000. There’s even a black market for racing pigeons being fed by pigeon pirates. Who knew?
We were just informed that Mike Tyson apparently knew this’d be hot before all of us.
Because the daily commute in Russia isn’t already the equivalent of driving through a demolition derby on the way to work, several Czech scientists have come together with a Czech bicycle manufacturer to create the next hellish level of obstacles to just getting to the grocery store safely.
For obvious inner-child reasons, this team has created the crudest, loudest version of a flying bike they could piece together.
Ales Kobylik, an engineer involved on the project, stated: “Our main motivation in working on the project was neither profit nor commercial interest, but the fulfillment of our boyish dreams.”
All you Russian commuters can rest easy now.
[Walyou]
Akhibara, Japan is the place to go to get just about anything you want in life…even if that anything includes wanting a creepy doll-like clone of yourself.
Recently a company called “Clone Factory” opened which now allows you to not only have a 3D-printed doll-head of your own mug but your pets as well.
Using several DSLR cameras, Clone Factory captures your face from different angles, puts it all together in the computer, prints it and hands you a bill for $1,300 US bucks.
Clone Factory uses one of the most advanced 3D printers (made by ZCorp) on the market to print out these plastic little mini-selfs of its customers. Disney recently used these same printers during their annual Star Wars Weekends at Walt Disney World where guests could either have their likeness frozen in a slab of carbonite or put onto the body of a Stormtrooper (complete with detachable helmet).
Most of Clone Factory’s customers are actually women. Not only do the women seek to preserve how they look on special days like their weddings, they also have the exact outfits they’re wearing at the time as well as their hair and make-up recreated as well.
Which doesn’t make any of this any less creepy.
[DesignTaxi]
In a case of ‘this is why we can’t take you seriously’, an amateur photographer snapped a couple photos of something that’s currently got the UFO and ‘rod community’ (leave jokes below…we know they’re coming) buzzing. And by buzzing we mean they’re all getting excited by a picture of what’s probably a photo-bombing bug moving across the frame of 43-year-old Corrine Federer’s camera while she was shooting photos of a castle in Amsterdam.
Federer stated that, “It was a tubular-shaped object that had an S-shaped fin on it. If it had been any type of missile, it would’ve had mulptiple fins, but facing the same direction. We heard nothing. It was completely quiet out. The more I flipped through the frames, it was kind of creepy.”
Many people are speculating that it’s a photo of a missile test, airplane or weather balloon.
Federer believes that it could be something more…
“I don’t find it unreasonable that there’s another habitable planet somewhere that has started exploring space. Maybe they’re more advanced than we are and they’ve come by to see what’s going on here.”
While some of us are pointing and giggling at the alleged UFO, many are pointing with serious there’s-all-the-proof-you-need-faces.
[FOX News]
Since Russia is like the overseas equivalent of Florida, news that typically comes out of there is usually skewed toward the weird.
After finding blood splattered near the wheel well of an Airbus passenger plane, authorities moved on to their second what-the-hell discovery…a frozen 22-year-old dead man stuck in said wheel well. This same 22-year-old was not only dead, frozen and stuck in the wheel well of an Airbus…he’d been there for four days and logged at least seven trips before he was discovered!
Giorgio Abduladze’s t-shirt and shorts-clad body underwent an autopsy showing that he froze to death in flight. Crews don’t regularly access the area where Abduladze’s body was found but now everyone’s wondering what he was doing in there in the first place.
3D printng is the ‘it’ thing right now. It seems like nothing can’t be printed. We can print plastic toys, metal parts and even cell tissues using additive manufacturing. So what’s next?
Food…3D-printed food.
A Texas company is partnering with NASA to explore the idea of printing food during long, deep space missions. Systems and Materials Research and
Consultancy, a company in Austin, was recently awarded a Small Business Innovation Research Phase 1 contract concerning printing
food for astronauts. Currently astronauts eat foods that lose their micronutrients during the process they go through to become official space-food.
Eventually the prepackaged, off-the-shelf, single-servings the astronauts nom on now will make way for customizable recipes.
Anyone else excited to witness the first live-stream of a 3D-printed Thanksgiving dinner…in space? Us too.
[DesignBoom]
Brian, Justin and Bonnie discuss the brand new Kickstarter by Planetary Resources which seeks to put a publicly available telescope in space. And take selfies amongst the stars. Will Brian make the decision to allow commercial drones in our skies if it will bring him a piping hot pan pizza faster? Also, which 18-century American city was so rife with public sex and prostitution it was dubbed “Sin City” long before Vegas?
It’s all part of a new Weird Things podcast.
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Picks:
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Off Camera
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Supergods
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Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child