Esther Schindler played D&D for years, and has discerned principles from those experiences that can be used in her working life:

5.  The best quests require a mixture of skills in the party. Find new friends and cultivate ancillary skills. That pesky little hobbit thief may eat you out of house and home, yet sometimes he comes in pretty handy. This is the point of all those tedious "diversity training" exercises from your HR department; perhaps the message would get across better if they talked about the apparently-weak wizard and the bard with those amazing negotiation skills.

Link via Geek Dad, who notes that July is Dungeon Master Appreciation Month

The desert rhubarb has a remarkable ability to move water in channels down its leaves in a way that lets water penetrate much deeper than other plants can:

Ecologists had been puzzling over the desert rhubarb for years: Instead of the tiny, spiky leaves found on most desert plants, this rare rhubarb boasts lush green leaves up to a meter wide. Now scientists from the University of Haifa-Oranim in Israel have discovered that ridges in the plant’s giant leaves actually collect water and channel it down to the plant’s root system, harvesting up to 16 times more water than any other plant in the region.

“It is the first example of a self-irrigating plant,” said plant biologist Gidi Ne’eman, a co-author on the paper published in March in Naturwissenschaften, a German journal of ecology. “This is the only case we know, but in other places in the world there might be additional plants that use the same adaptions.”

Link

Taser International has developed an extended-range taser. It is a 12-gauge shotgun that shoots a shocking cartridge over 100 feet:

The teases have revealed little actual info, but a Taser press release highlights that the X3 will be the "first multi-shot ECD (electronic control device) capable of simultaneously incapacitating multiple targets." That could put some real scatter in less-lethal shotgun action, but also raises potential safety and abuse questions.

For now, rest assured that the X3 probably won't go off accidentally. A YouTube video shows the device being subjected to electric shocks, and other tests have apparently involved the cartridge "doing 4 foot free-falls on concrete at 20 below," according to a tweet from X3.

http://www.popsci.com/gear-amp-gadgets/article/2009-07/taser-rolls-out-shocking-devices-shotty

In a busy life, it can be hard to find the time to peruse news sources for the latest things that journalists want us to be panicked about. That's why you can save time by using Doomwatch, which indexes terms used in the UK newspaper The Daily Mail and tells you what to freak out about. Content warning: strong language.

http://www.mydarkmaterials.co.uk/doom/ via The Presurfer

The Hot Dog Hideaway Kit: it's like Lincoln Logs, except that the pieces of made of meat, instead of wood:

What child doesn't imagine a house made of meat during the holidays? Our bestselling Hot Dog Hideaway kit comes with enough cured deli slices and kosher dogs (Over 10 pounds!) to make a veritable McMansion of meat! Just follow the included blueprints and use the pate spackle to join it together and smooth over the rough edges. Not only will you get the complete Hot Dog Hideaway, but also a set of meat landscaping materials to make pimento loaf trees and meatball bushes.

Link via The Presurfer

(YouTube Link)

This song performed by the Austin-based celtic band Brobdingnagian Bards describes the intoxicated adventures of Luke Skywalker. Here's a sample of the lyrics:

A long time ago, in a pub far away,
I sat on a barstool, just drinking away,
I couldn't hold it down, I guess I had too much
I felt a tremor in the force and then I lost my lunch
I woke up in a desert land, feeling hot and sick,
I saw a bearded man, he looked like some kind of hick,
He slowly waved his hand, and my pain was gone
He said let's go see Yoda, and I'll teach you this song.

So we got on a starship, and flew off into space
He said his name was Obi-Wan and there is no time to waste,
I have to get you trained before it is too late,
He said drink this bottle of whisky, and don't give in to hate.
My training went on, and I'd drank most of the bar
We stopped for supplies on the nearest Death Star
I learned to control my fear, and hold my alcohol
Soon I was able to stand even when Obi-Wan would fall.

video by YouTube user MJG74, via Topless Robot

The German-built Antares DLR-H2 is the world's first hydrogen fuel-cell aircraft.  It just made its first test flight.  It has a range of 750 km and can fly up to 170 kph.  Click the link for more pictures and a video (in German).

http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-space/article/2009-07/antares-dlr-h2-first-plane-run-exclusively-fuel-cell-power

Don't dispose of that liquid gold, there's money to be made from the hydrogen in it. Hydrogen can be an abundant source of energy, but it's hard to store inexpensively:

Gerardine Botte, an Ohio University professor, sees the liquid as a solution thanks to the particular composition of its major component, urea. Its make-up, a 2-to-1 ratio of hydrogen and nitrogen, is convenient because hydrogen can be extracted from nitrogen using much less electricity than that needed to, say, pull apart hydrogen and oxygen. (It’s a matter of 0.037 Volts versus 1.23 Volts, if you really need to know.)

Botte has recently come up with a nickel-based electrode that can do just that: dip the electrode into urine, apply electrical current, and voila, hydrogen is released. While the research is still in an initial phase, it’s possible that urine could power cars, homes, and various devices in as near of a future as six months from now.

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-07/power-pee

Have you ever found yourself driving your car and saying "Hey, I'd like to have a freshly-baked pizza right now, but I don't want to stop driving"? Well, you're in luck! You can plug this 12-volt pizza oven directly into your car's cigarette lighter.

Link via Geekologie

Prey Alone
(Video Link)

Prey Alone is a 2005 short film by Stephen St. Leger and James Mather. It's about a mysterious stranger who shoots and races his way out of a city, and the cop trying to stop him. Prey Alone is an amazing action film with great special effects. Run time: 15 minutes.

NASA's orbiting Chandra X-Ray Observatory snapped this shot of Stephan's Quintet, a group of five galaxies, four of which are currently in collision. Follow the link for a larger picture.

Link

Previously on Neatorama:
The Hand of God
Smiley Face Galaxy

Karmawish is a new social networking site that hooks you up with other people who need help. Helping them earns you karma points, which gives you access to help that you need from others as life trips you up.

Link via Urlesque

Graphene is a new material made of carbon sheets only one atom thick:

"It is the thinnest known material in the universe, and the strongest ever measured," Andre Geim , a physicist at the University of Manchester, England , wrote in the June 19 issue of the journal Science.

"A few grams could cover a football field," said Rod Ruoff , a graphene researcher at the University of Texas, Austin , in an e-mail. A gram is about 1/30th of an ounce.

Like diamond, graphene is pure carbon. It forms a six-sided mesh of atoms that, through an electron microscope, looks like a honeycomb or piece of chicken wire. Despite its strength, it's as flexible as plastic wrap and can be bent, folded or rolled up like a scroll.

It has applications including solar cells, computer chips, and whale tanks onboard stolen Klingon birds-of-prey.

Link via Geekologie

Students at the University of Quebec won a competition of human-powered submarines by basing their design on the body and movement of a penguin:

Team OMER, composed of students from the school's Ecole de Technologie Superieure in Montreal, drove two propellerless submarines to victory (winning $1,000 per race in the process) using thrust delivered from a pair of carbon fiber oars resembling the wings of the tuxedoed bird.

OMER 6, a one-person submarine, achieved a speed of 4.916 knots (5.65 miles per hour), beating the previous 4.642-knot (5.34-mile-per-hour) speed record for subs without a propeller. The two-person OMER 7 sub hit a top speed of 5.133 knots (5.90 miles per hour).

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=students-imitate-penguins-to-set-pe-2009-07-03

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.

Link