Okay, “speed” might not be the optimum word. But this hover craft sure cuts a dashing Star Wars-ian figure. California firm Aerofex, may have very well revolutionized hover flight after designing a model that responds to natural balance instead of relying on computer navigation or flight software.

“Think of it as lowering the threshold of flight, down to the domain of ATV’s (all-terrain vehicles),” said Mark De Roche, an aerospace engineer and founder of Aerofex.

Such intuitive controls could allow physicians to fly future versions of the vehicle to visit rural patients in places without roads, or enable border patrol officers to go about their duties without pilot training.

Real. Life. Star. Wars. Speeder. Bike.

[Fox News]

It’s a skateboard that can roll down stairs. Royal College of Art graduate Po-Chih Lai adjusted the trucks so they adjust to the stress of the steps. But more importantly, is this how our favorite sassy droid gets out of a building in case the fire alarm goes off and the elevators are off limits?

Let’s just hope this video doesn’t make it to Skaro, or else we are all screwed.

[Gizmodo]

George Lucas wants to build a studio on some ranch property he owns. Sound familiar? It should, because he did it with Skywalker Ranch in the 1970s. Back then neighbors hemmed and hawed about how he would ruin property values by attracting tour buses and helicopters.

Nothing awful happened. Well, some things. Either way, peace was retained in the ‘hood and Ranch folk become happy members of the community.

His property at Grady Ranch however, won’t have the option to do the same. Neighbors have successfully soured the permit process enough for Lucas to pull his studio plan entirely.

Instead, he wants to build low-income housing. You know, like for Ewoks.

“The level of bitterness and anger expressed by the homeowners in Lucas Valley has convinced us that, even if we were to spend more time and acquire the necessary approvals, we would not be able to maintain a constructive relationship with our neighbors,” Lucasfilm said in its statement.

…It may seem as if the affordable housing project is a way for Lucas to stick it to his opposition, but Tom Peters, the CEO of the Marin County Foundation disagrees. “I know Lucas and checked with him on that point personally and directly. It was essential that I was convinced that it was not done out of spite. I would not have accepted the project if I thought it was,” he said.

Build or do not, there is no spite.

[CNN Money]

Can’t describe. Just watch. OMG.

A new brothel is set to open in 2012 offering patrons the ability to make deep contact with Science Fiction beauties. It is the brainchild of Dennis Hof, the owner of the Moonlite Bunny Ranch, most prominently featured in the HBO series Cathouse.

So as this institution is erected, I figured we’d pitch a few suggestions for some of the girls we feel would be very popular with future clientele. On a side note, they should seriously just build a monorail direct from CES to this place. It’s going to look like the road the Woodstock every night of the convention.

Meanwhile…

Mary the Three Breasted Mutant from Total Recall Whichever young lady decides to park herself in the make-up chair for a few hours in the morning to get this baby pasted on is going to be saying to themselves “I wish I had more hands… to hold all this money!” Bonus: This character is actually a hooker. From Mars.

Jar Jar Binks People work out hate in the strangest ways.

Loraine Baines Okay, it was kind of weird when she got all riled up flirting with her own son. But imagine, if that just happened to be you hit by Mr. Baine’s car and taken into Loraine’s room in 1959? Each costumer gets a free pair of underwear and the working girl promises to call you Calvin.

OR… for REALLY disturbed high rollers you execute the entire scene with their own mother. Then you can provide a childhood picture of the patron that slowly fades away.

Tribbles Why shouldn’t the yiffers get a little Sci Fi bang for their buck?

Orion Slave Girl This is the Big Mac of the SF sex trade. Iconic costume, fairly easy to execute and a character known not only for banging people but specifically banging Captain Kirk. Nobody minds Kirk’s sloppy seconds, if it was good enough for Picard it’s good enough for us! Aside from the various forms of Princess Leia, this is going to be your number one seller.

—

We are pretty sure that Hof’s establishments only offer female companionship however, if male talent is hired, we’d suggest the Doctor Manhattan special. It requires three blue dudes, two to service the customer and one to conduct a science experiment in the next room.

Thanks to everyone on Twitter who helped me with this list. I’ll see you all in Vegas!

Younglings and hardened Jedis alike will have a chance to hit the slopes Star Wars style when a new 2,000 acre SW-themed snowboard park opens. The park will specialize in teaching kids as young as three the essentials of boarding. And the Force. Probably more of the former than the latter.

“Our youth programs demonstrate that kids as young as three can start snowboarding if they are provided with qualified instruction that utilizes terrain-based features and equipment designed for beginners,” said Jeff Boliba, Burton’s Global Resort Director. “The Burton Star Wars Experience at Sierra will give ‘younglings’ this tailored experience so they can be successful at snowboarding at a super young age.”

We will hold off on booking our trip until we can take down an AT-AT Walker by snowboarding around their legs with a metal cable.

[Star Wars]

A rogue shopper assaulted several with a replica light saber on Wednesday at an Oregon Toys R Us.

After being chased into the parking lot and fending off responding officers with his trusty weapon, police decided to employ a taser. However, even that would not bring down the man…

“Officers arrived and attempted to take the suspect into custody, but he continued to swing the light saber and was yelling incoherent statements,” officers said in their report. One officer was able to hit the man with his Taser, but the suspect then broke the Taser wire with his light saber — at which point officers grabbed him and wrestled him to the ground.

The suspect is currently awaiting a mental health evaluation. And likely a stern rebuke from the Jedi council.

[LA Times]

Thanks to George McLoed on Google Plus.

It was announced last week that Think Geek would soon be selling branded breakfast Star Wars breakfast drinks including Dark Side Coffee, Hoth Cocoa and Dagobah Green Tea. But that’s not nearly the weirdest food tie in to the most iconic SciFi franchise of all time.

Yoda Approved Cup Of Noodles

Although not branded specifically, Yoda did hawk the classic boil n’ eat treat loved by stoners world wide in this commercial. What did you think he ate in exile for all those years? It wasn’t like there was a Chick-fil-a around the corner.

Carmel Corn Tubs

The force is with you. And so is that kernel in your teeth that you ate like five hours ago.

Tuna Fish Disco

We are pretty sure this isn’t officially sanctioned by Pope Lucas but it is too awesome not to post. We could have solved this whole galactic rebellion over a nice can of tuna. Disco style.

Jedi Masters pass down the secret knowledge of constructing “an elegant weapon for a more civilized age” to their young Padawan learners.  We are not fortunate enough or have the midiclorean count (ech,  think I gagged a little there) to deserve this important honor.  So let us try to figure out how this magnificent and terrifyingly dangerous weapon works on our own.  There are several characteristics that  that should give us clues.   For example,   they  have a round blade made of a luminous substance.  The blade would have to be able to cut through a human’s arm as if it was made of cake.  It grows gradually when turned on and it can deflect blaster shots and other lightsabers.    This should be enough.

Smoke and Mirrors

The most obvious and easy explanation is that a light saber is exactly what the name implies,  a laser sword.  A laser of  sufficient power would  cut, or rather burn, through flesh as easily as displayed.  But how is it that  it is of a limited size and how come the power does not run out.  Well this could be explained by a mirror at the end of the light “blade”  the mirror could be suspended in space by electric or magnetic (or both) fields and slowly adjusted out from the hilt.  This would make the whole blade a Laser cavity and would allow for a reasonable consumption of power as the laser light is not lost except when cutting.    Of course this explanation would not explain how you can fence with other lightsaber toting  bad guys.  The laser blades would just go through each other as easily as the blaster shot.  It would make for really short  fights .  Also the mirror could   be easy to remove or destroy.

Fan Favorite

In a recent TV show Dr. Michiu Kaku proposed that a light saber was actually a plasma torch with a titanium fan in the hilt and telescoping ceramic blade with teeny holes on it for the scorching plasma to come out.  Although this explanation covers all the basics it left me with a bad feeling about that.  With much respect to the closest thing to a Yoda around, allow me to disagree.   Plasma is OK, we like plasma; it burns like a mother.  The part that I do not like is the ceramic perforated blade.    It is clunky   it would mean that a guy with a better “space ceramic” would break your saber in two, to say nothing of a good vibroblade.  It would also make a horrible glass breaking sound as it does.  Also the fan,   dude,  fans are noisy and not in the good starwarsy  way.

Finally the blades would leave a trail of  burning plasma and although really cool looking in a very trippy way, it would not match what we see on the screen. Sorry Kaku, these are not the sabers we are looking for, move along.

It’s All About Magnets, Baby!

So Star Wars is not set in the future but the long ago past in a galaxy far far away.  However, the galactic Republic civilization was very darned  advanced as galactic civilizations go.  Without getting into all the crystal and focusing ring lore of the BioWare games, we can imagine that civilization can build things that we can  but make them very light and portable.  With that in mind, I propose that the light sabers are really portable electromagnetic containment fusion plasma devices.

In many present day thermonuclear Fusion experiments large magnetic and electric fields  are used to make Magnetic Bottles.  Within these invisible vessels  hot plasma is contained and heated.  I can imagine that the hilt of Luke Skywalker’s weapon is just that: a magnetic field generator that extends out of the hilt creating a containment field where a very hot fusionable gas plasma can reside.   When the saber is turned on the field extends slowly as stored  power is used to erect it.  You can imagine superconducting coils within the hilt emitter that give the correct shape to the magnetic bottle.  This would explain why the blade shape is cylindrical and symmetric. Once the field is ready, radio frequency exited gas can be introduced within the growing space in the force field.  As futuristic as this sounds, we do this in labs every day with very large machines. The whole thing would be very efficient too, and once the field is erected  little power is needed to maintain it. Besides, a very small amount of  gas could be allowed to undergo fusion, powering the device in accordance to E=mc2. Different gas at different temperatures would account for the varying colors just like Stellar Spectra.  Luke’s original blade, if you were wandering, was a nice 8,600K Atomic Hydrogen with just a pinch of gaseous Iron, just right for baby blue.

The coolest part about this is that you could fence easily because your opponent would also have a plasma filled electromagnetic field as a blade and so it would be like trying to get magnets of similar polarity to touch.  Also the hot plasma could be tuned to absorb or reflect the incoming laser light or particle weapon discharge.

In the end, however, it all comes to personal preference.  If you would like to go around the galaxy with a flashlight on steroids or with a flaming tube of space porcelain china as a weapon, be my guest.  I’m sure that some of the denisens of the galaxy might be impressed. Jawas, they like junk.  

I for one, would really like to stick with the portable thermonuclear powered fusion plasma device while gallivanting through the cosmos. Maybe its just me, but hey, who doesn’t need a bit more power in their “more elegant weapon”  anyway?

Want to find out more about thermonuclear fusion?  Check this out.

Ladies and gentlemen… please make your introductions to a new species of fruit bat found near Papua New Guinea. He also looks like Yoda.

On a clerical note, this was sent to me within an hour by both of my Weird Things podcast co-hosts Andrew Mayne and Brian Brushwood. For the record, Andrew was first.

[Daily Mail]

ESPN put together a well-done summary of how Admiral Ackbar of Star Wars fame almost came to replace the long-deposed Colonel Reb as mascot for The University of Mississippi.

As some of you know both I and Justin Robert Young attended the amazing Dragon*Con in Atlanta, GA this past weekend. EVERY type of fandom is represented at this mega-convention, and cosplay is the main event. I spent approximately 60 billion hours walking the floor just taking it all in while trying to avoid drunk people piking on the floor, and what follows are the five most creative Dragon*Con costumes I saw.

In a letter to CNN Lucasfilm indicates that Wicked Lasers has provided sufficient evidence that they are not intentionally marketing their new (awesome) laser as a light saber. That means Lucasfilm Legal is powering down their Death Star and will allow the fledging beam mongers to go about selling their wares.

Awesome.

[The Force.net]

Darth Vader robbed a bank in Long Island.

Don’t you know it’s hard out here for a Sith?

Hustle & Force.

Point Bespin.

I’ll stop now. Thanks to Weird Things friends Katy and Lawrence for making sure this came our way.

[Daily Mail]