Truth in labeling -- this t-shirt tells readers exactly what chemical elements they can expect to find inside.

Link via Kinda Unique

As a kid, I couldn't hack at my friends with a real sword, so we used cardboard tubes to fence. Who knew that it was an actual sport? The Cardboard Tube Fighting League has competitions all over the world where people come together to play and show off their homemade cardboard armor.

Official Website of the San Francisco Branch

Link via The Presurfer

WebUrbanist has pictures of 61 clever, elegant, or funny wine labels, such the Barossa Grenache pictured above. Perfect for Valentine's Day!

Link via The Presurfer

(YouTube Link)

This faux trailer presents Super Mario Bros. as the classic war movie The Inglorious Bastards (or possibly the new Quentin Tarantino remake). It's called The Inglorious Plumbers and was produced by Nick Murphy.

Via Popped Culture

All of the original information for this gadget is in Japanese, so I can only offer CrunchGear's translation and the better-than-nothing Google Translator. It shoots 200 rubber bands in 10 seconds and takes 10 minutes to load. Apparently in Japan, shooting rubber bands is a competitive sport.

Link (where there's a video)

Granted, it's not as useful as the USB missile launcher, but this 150x microscope could come in handy around the office. It's currently available only in Japan, so you may have to content yourself with the missile launcher for now.

Link

Previously on Neatorama: The 10 Weirdest USB-Powered Devices

The Steam Boat Willy, a hovercraft powered only by pedal power, was built by Chris Roper and his friends at a University of London flight club.  Weighing in at only 56 pounds, its lift fan can produce 17 cubic feet per second, giving it the capacity to move about even when powered by non-athletic people.

Link via DVICE (where there's a video)

The Panzerbike is a German-built motorcycle with the engine of a T-55 tank inside. That's a diesel V12 with 620 HP. The bike is 19 feet long, 9 feet wide, and weighs nearly 5 tons. Actually, it's more like a tractor than a motorcycle, since the sidecar is built-in and it takes two people to steer. Still, Tilo Niebel and his friends at the Harzer Bike company created quite an impressive piece of machinery.

YouTube Video of the Panzerbike

Link via Ride Fast & Shoot Straight

It's like a bear skin rug, but with a human. Artist Chrissy Conant made this self-portrait:

"Chrissy Skin Rug” represents my relationship to my parents. The rug is a silicone rubber cast of my bare skin. I position myself as a human rug on a wooden floor with an open mouth and eyes that gaze suggestively upward. Parental influences from childhood continue to suppress me, long after I have grown up and they have gone.

Official Website

Link via Foolish Gadgets

Four statisticians at the University of Ottawa and Carleton University have published an article in the peer-reviewed journal Infectious Disease Modelling Research Progress on the subject of zombie epidemiology. It's entitled "When Zombies Attack!: Mathematical Modelling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection." It's a very math-heavy article, but their conclusion is straight-forward and dire:

An outbreak of zombies infecting humans is likely to be disastrous, unless extremely aggressive tactics are employed against the undead. While aggressive quarantine may eradicate the infection, this is unlikely to happen in practice. A cure would only result in some humans surviving the outbreak, although they will still coexist with zombies. Only sufficiently frequent attacks, with increasing force, will result in eradication, assuming the available resources can be mustered in time.

Well, that was fairly obvious. But now there's hard science to back up common sense, and the academic community is starting to take the undead threat seriously.

Link via io9

Image by flickr user ingridjee used under creative commons license

(YouTube Link)

Urlesque has compiled videos of unique accordion cover songs, including variations on the works of Britney Spears, Duran Duran, and Black Sabbath. Here's a video of YouTube user mattdallow playing "Paint It Black" by the Rolling Stones.

Link

(YouTube Link)

Esslam Zahra of Egypt mounted a retractable fifth wheel on the back of his car, set at a right angle to the other four wheels, in order to pivot into tight parking spots.

Via The Presurfer

"Man With No Shadow" is a life-sized art installation by Makoto Tojiki.  It consists of LED lights at the ends of wires of different lengths suspended from the ceiling. It made its debut this April in Milan at the international design festival Salon Satellite.

Artist's Website

Link via GearFuse

Hello from Earth! is a program by COSMOS, an Australian science magazine. Using the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex, it will transmit Internet user-submitted messages to Gliese 581d, a potentially Earth-like planet approximately 20 light years away. You have until August 24th to submit your 160-character message. Registration is required.

What message would you send to this distant planet?

http://www.hellofromearth.net/gliese581d/home/index.htm via Geekologie

A recent study published in the journal Current Biology suggests that facial expressions may be culturally-bound, rather than universal:

University of Glasgow researchers enlisted 13 Western Caucasians and 13 East Asians. They had everyone examine pictures of expressive faces that were labeled according to a recognized western system called the Facial Action Coding System. The faces were purported to be happy, sad, surprised, fearful, disgusted, angry or neutral, and the participants categorized them as such. Turns out the East Asians were less likely to categorize the faces by Western standards.

By tracking the subject’s eye movements, researchers concluded that Westerners look at whole faces. But Easterners kept their focus mainly on the eye region. So while Westerners may use their whole faces to show that they’re elated, Easterners may express that feeling mainly around their eyes. Which means that facial expressions are not a universal language. That’s a fact that international travelers are sooner or later forced to face.

Link

Image by flickr user Psalinas used under creative commons license