So, here we have Dirk Benedict, who played Lt. Starbuck in the classic Battlestar Galactica, with Katee Sackhoff, who played Kara "Starbuck" Thrace in the modern Battlestar Galactica, in a Starbucks coffee shop. The mind reels.

Link | Photo: unknown

In the Star Trek universe, the Maquis was a military organization created by Federation colonists who ended up on the Cardassian side of the border when the United Federation of Planets and the Cardassian Union signed a peace treaty. SEAL Team Six of the US Navy is a different organization, although a German TV news crew confused the two:

Locher didn’t seem to notice (or care) that the skull in question was from a Klingon and included a bolted-on eyepatch. He and N24 also appear undeterred by the emblem’s inclusion of a phaser, 3 Klingon bat’leth swords and the word "Maquis."

Link via io9 | Image: TrekMovie

Consider this puzzle: how can you make a staircase out of a single sheet of plywood and have as little wood left over as possible? That was the task of Instructables user Pilgrim55. It looks like he has only four pieces of scrap.

Link via Make

A spaghetti Western version of Star Wars would be awesome. All that would be necessary is a few modifications to the script of A Fistful of Dollars.

via Look at This Frakking Geekster | Photo: Bonnie Burton

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Bush pilots in Alaska need to be able to land and take off in short distances. Many of them recently attended a competition focusing on this skill in the town of Knik River. Bobby Breeden, a student pilot, can do it in ten feet using a modified Piper Super Cub. Here's how:

The massive 35-inch tires are inflated to less than 3 psi to absorb the impact of landing on rocks and other debris. They also give the wing a high angle of attack to aid in decreasing the takeoff and landing distances. The engine has been stroked out an additional 15 cubic inches (375 total) and puts out around 210 horsepower. To help balance the heavier engine, the composite propeller weighs just 14 pounds. The result is helicopter-like performance.

“It’s just full power with the brakes locked and you get the tail up,” Breeden says, “you just rotate immediately as you release the brakes and it just lifts off the ground.”

Link | Photo: Jason Paur/Wired.com

Previously: Fighter Lands, Turns Around, and Takes Off in Under a Minute

redditor chr15to is a man (woman?) of true vision. His mind has given birth to this idea: the chainsaw katana. If we can put a man on the moon -- or built a chainsaw bayonet -- then surely this ambitious goal lies within humanity's grasp.

http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/h6i1y/ via Boing Boing

Artist Olly Moss, whose awesome work we've previously featured on Neatorama, showed an exhibition of silhouette images from pop culture. If you live in Los Angeles, you can view them at Gallery 1988 through May 20. How many at the link can you identify without consulting outside sources?

Link via NotCot | Photo: Bobby Solomon | Gallery Website

Engineering students at Harvard University have developed a cell phone app that, when paired with an ordinary metal detector, can be used effectively to detect land mines. Instead of just beeping when it passes over a metal object, these enhanced metal detectors present the shape of the object found below ground:

Land mines, with their circular construction and trigger pin, have an ovoid signature. The system designed by Jayatilaka and Gajos shows one red dot for every beep of the metal detector. With passes over a buried object, the picture shows an increasingly complete outline of the object’s shape, giving the de-miner an evermore detailed picture of what may be buried there.

“Using only audio signals is a huge source of inefficiency. The operator has to figure out whether it is harmful or not harmful. If they are not completely sure, they have to go down on their hands and knees and excavate every piece of metal as if it were a land mine,” explained Jayatilaka.

The students hope that their invention can be used by cash-strapped de-mining operations around the world.

Link via Popular Science | Photo: Justin Ide/Harvard University

One would think that a basic understanding of The Lord of the Rings would be taught in journalism school -- especially for future sports writers -- but such is apparently not the case. The New York Times corrected their statement that a bat was named after the sword used by Bilbo Baggins. Well, good for them owning up to such an embarrassingly obvious mistake.

Link via blastr

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Spock has a mustache and sideburns. This wonderfully bad fan film was made by Ray (who I gather is an expert on Betamax recordings) in 1971 for a TV production class at Ohio State University. He used a 1-inch open reel video tape and earned an A- for the project.

My vote goes to losing the mustache but keeping the sideburns. Sideburns are rarely a bad fashion choice.

via Fanboy

Who will win? My money's on Logan. Maybe if it was a T-Rex that had been crossed with a Great White Shark, that would be different. Click on the link to see the end of the fight, as depicted by Andrew Hou.

Link via The Mary Sue

Inevitably, you'll open your toolbox and find three Gungans but not a single Torx wrench.

At the link: Doctor Who, Back to the Future, and Jurassic Park.

Link | Cartoonist's Website

Enal lives in a stilted house in Wangi, Indonesia. His friend lives in a penned off area of the sea. Although this is a remarkable scene for us, it might not be for Enal's people, the Bajau Laut. These Malay marine nomads have a symbiotic relationship with the ocean which photographer James Morgan explored. He wrote:

Traditional Bajau cosmology - a syncretism of animism and Islam - reveals a complex relationship with the ocean, which for them is a multifarious and living entity. There are spirits in currents and tides, in coral reefs and mangroves.

Morgan snapped this amazing shot to become The Telegraph's 2010 Travel Photographer of the Year.

Link and Article via This Is Colossal | Photo: James Morgan

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Stupid, obstinate sculpture. Can't you see that the dog wants to play fetch? He's even presented you with a stick. Just pick it up and throw it already!

via Geekosystem

Bill Musselman lives in Kentucky on the Ohio River. When it recently flooded, he certainly wasn't going to let take away his prized 1992 Porsche American Roadster. So he and a friend lashed together three bladders designed to carry 7,500 pounds. It worked!

Built by AirDock, Smokey and Bill used 3 bladders that make up a system for supporting a boat up to 27-feet in length and 7500 lbs in weight. With the turbo bodied cabriolet weighing in at less than half that amount, the bladders worked perfectly. “Two of the three bladders were in the back where the engine weight is. It was very well balanced. It was surprising.” Each bladder has ropes that tie/lash them together and then there is a separate pump going to each section

Link via Jalopnik | Photo: Porsche Purist