Like Star Trek, only real. Physicist Richard Obousy speculates about a means of faster-than-light travel and dubs it 'warp drive'. The picture above is of the ship that he proposes be built to test his idea, which works like this:

The shape of the warpship was chosen to optimize the manipulation of surrounding dark energy, creating a spacetime bubble. How exactly the bubble would be created is still a mystery. But once the bubble gets created, spacetime at the front of the warpship would be compressed, and behind, it would expand. Inside the bubble, spacetime remains unchanged; therefore the warpship floats in the center of stationary space while the bubble moves through spacetime.

The bubble itself, containing the warpship, "drives the spacecraft forwards at arbitrarily high speeds," said Obousy. This means the warpship can travel faster than the speed of light.

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Computer security expert Tadayoshi Kohno says that biotechnology that has a neural interface, such as advanced prosthetic limbs, may make the brain accessible to hackers in the future:

In some cases, patients might even want to hack into their own neural device. Unlike devices to control prosthetic limbs, which still use wires, many deep brain stimulators already rely on wireless signals. Hacking into these devices could enable patients to “self-prescribe” elevated moods or pain relief by increasing the activity of the brain’s reward centers.

Despite the risks, Kohno said, most new devices aren’t created with security in mind. Neural engineers carefully consider the safety and reliability of new equipment, and neuroethicists focus on whether a new device fits ethical guidelines. But until now, few groups have considered how neural devices might be hijacked to perform unintended actions. This is the first time an academic paper has addressed the topic of “neurosecurity,” a term the group coined to describe their field.

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[YouTube Link - via Kinda Unique]

Cuteness: this family of ducks is trying to climb an escalator ... the wrong way up!

Flickr user scrumptiousdelight created a throw pillow based upon the sarlacc monster from The Return of the Jedi. On this pillow, you will learn a new definition of comfort as you are slowly soothed for over a thousand years.

Link via GeekDad

James Rummel has pictures and descriptions of five handguns that were very innovative designs, but turned out to be useless in real life. These include the Henrion, Dassy & Heuschen twenty-shot revolver, manufactured in France between 1921 and 1928.

http://www.hellinahandbasket.net/2009/07/5-brilliant-innovative-handgun.htm

Unlike at the Virginia DMV, where smiling is forbidden, employees at the Keihin Electric Express Railway in Japan are required to get their smiles computer-checked before clocking in for work:

The device analyzes the facial characteristics of a person, including eye movements, lip curves and wrinkles, and rates a smile on a scale between 0 and 100 percent using a camera and computer.

For those with low scores, advice like "You still look too serious," or "Lift up your mouth corners," will be displayed on the screen.

Some 530 employees of the Tokyo-based railway company will check their smiles with Smile Scan before starting work each day. They will print out and carry around an image of their best smile in an attempt to remember it.

Be happy! You have no other choice.

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The DM of the Rings is a webcomic by Shamus Young which imagines the characters of The Lord of the Rings movies as players in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign who consistently refuse to stay in-character.

Link via John Meunier

(YouTube Link)

Musician Michael Schmoyoho Gregory remixed a 1941 speech by Churchill with a techno beat. That is techno, right? I don't know anything about music, but I do know that this is awesome.

via Double Plus Undead

Cartoonist Neill Cameron is spending a month creating and presenting an A to Z list of things that are truly awesome, bringing together pop culture icons such as Hello Kitty, Optimus Prime, and Ironman.

Link via Popped Culture

Previously on Neatorama: The Periodic Table of Awesoments

io9 has pictures of 26 wedding cake toppers that geeks would enjoy, including Star Wars, Transformers, Stargate, Back to the Future, and zombie themes.

io9 uses the term "nerdiest", but I pefer to be addressed as "geek". The origin of the term -- someone who would bite off the heads of chickens at carnival sideshows -- seems a bit more fitting.

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Previously on Neatorama: Steampunk Robot and Other Weird Wedding Cake Toppers

Toy Movies

Atom.com: Funny Videos | Animation | TV & Movie Spoofs

(Atom Films Link)

Toy Movies is a short film by Dan Meth. It's a compilation of trailers for faux movies based on toys from the 1980s, including The Smurfs by Peter Jackson, ALF by John Carpenter, and Cabbage Patch Kids by David Cronenberg. Run time: 2 minutes.

Via Topless Robot

40 years ago yesterday the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio caught on fire.  Again.

The 1969 Cuyahoga River fire was one of the seminal events in American environmental history, yet the conventional narrative about the fire is all wrong — including the famous picture that Time magazine published erroneously. News photographers failed to arrive in time to catch pictures of the quick blaze. The picture Time published was actually from 1952.

Although this river was particularly infamous for its flammibility, river fires were fairly common in Industrial Age America.  Now the river is again healthy and "fish-friendly".

Link

(Video Link)

I love a politician who has a sense of humor and can poke fun at himself -- like Robert Reich, U.S. Secretary of Labor under the Clinton Administration.  Here he is on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien as a hard-boiled street cop eager to bite crime in the shins.

Via Bits & Pieces

Ryan Deal of Top Cultured has a list of last meals given to condemned criminals, both real and fictional.  Here are a few:

Adolf Eichmann: He declined a special meal, preferring a bottle of Carmel, a dry red Israeli wine. He drank about half of it.

John Wayne Gacy: A dozen deep-fried shrimps, a bucket of original recipe chicken from KFC, French fries, and a pound of strawberries.

Timothy McVeigh: Two pints of mint chocolate-chip ice cream.

 Marv in Sin City: A “pretty decent” steak and a beer.

What do you plan on asking for?

Link [Link pointed to original source at Wikipedia - by Alex 6/17/09] - via Urlesque

The blog Daily Routines culls news services and books for information about the daily routines of famous people, such as Mr. Rogers, John Grisham, Winston Churchill, and Earnest Hemingway. Here's a selection from the John Grisham piece, citing a San Francisco Chronicle article:

When he first started writing, Grisham says, he had "these little rituals that were silly and brutal but very important."

"The alarm clock would go off at 5, and I'd jump in the shower. My office was 5 minutes away. And I had to be at my desk, at my office, with the first cup of coffee, a legal pad and write the first word at 5:30, five days a week."

His goal: to write a page every day. Sometimes that would take 10 minutes, sometimes an hour; ofttimes he would write for two hours before he had to turn to his job as a lawyer, which he never especially enjoyed. In the Mississippi Legislature, there were "enormous amounts of wasted time" that would give him the opportunity to write.

Featured people are categorized in the right-hand sidebar by occupation and habits.

Link via TigerHawk

image by flickr user Tony Newell used under creative commons license