Puppet Rodeo
(Atom Films Link)

Puppet Rodeo is a silly new short film by Kevin Maher about puppets riding dogs in a rodeo.

Via Urlesque

Researchers at Toyota and Tohuku University in northern Japan have announced progress in their efforts to extend the charge in the batteries of electric vehicles:

Existing lithium-ion batteries have a cathode that contains graphite and polycrystal lithium cobalt oxide with the graphite improving the performance of the cathode but also requiring space that could be theoretically used to store more lithium ions.

The researchers say it will take up to ten years to develop a cathode with no graphite and single crystals of lithium cobalt oxide but that the end result is a powerful battery for electric cars, which can store 10 times more electrical charge. As a result, electric cars could travel ten times farther than they can today.

Link

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