As Miss Cellania pointed out yesterday, a 1995 episode of The Simpsons predicted that Lisa Simpson would get married on this day in 2010. So now that we're living in the future, let's see what movies can tell us to expect for the next forty years. Brian Wolly of Smithsonian guides us through the future, starting with five years from now:

2015: Released in 1989, Back to the Future Part II played with the space-time continuum as Marty McFly traveled forward to 2015, then back to 1955, then forward again to 1985. Its vision of the future, however, is a smorgasbord of whiz-bang inventions. In the fictional Hill Valley, California, of 2015, you can buy self-drying clothes, self-lacing shoes and drive a flying car. Books do not have dust jackets (but note: there still are books). In earlier drafts of the script, there was a plot line that involved a new form of credit card: your thumb. The most famous invention of 2015, though, is the “hoverboard,” a skateboard that levitates over the ground; at the time of the film’s release, many fans called the production studio asking where they could obtain one. Lastly, the Chicago Cubs finally end their century-plus quest to win the World Series in 2015.

A darker side of 2015 was predicted in Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop (1987). Detroit is in shambles, overtaken by crime and an evil corporation with plans to demolish the decrepit city center. Cops shot by nefarious crime bosses are resurrected as half-man, half-machine law-enforcement cyborgs. Though Detroit has had its share of troubles, will this be the future of policing? In the film’s two sequels that bring us to the close of the decade, the answer is “yes.”

Link via Digg | Photo by Flickr user Lee Jordan used under Creative Commons license

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ElliptiGo is a combination of a stationary elliptical trainer and a bicycle. It looks a bit unstable to me, but the official website says that it was successfully used on the grueling 129-mile Death Ride in California. What do you think -- is this a useful exercise tool?

via CrunchGear | Official Website

deviantART user ~estranged-illusions made this wedding cake modeled after the 1968 animated movie Yellow Submarine by The Beatles:

Vanilla strawberry cake with strawberry filling, white buttercream and marshmallow fondant. The figures are all colour flow, with the exception of the submarine topper with the bride and groom on top. I made the topper from Sculpey so that they would have a keepsake.

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He turned on a washing machine and then threw a large rock inside. He writes:

I still laugh at this one, the way it exploded,
I am in trouble for doing in a few plants...Oops.

via The Presurfer

Four people in a rowboat crossed the North Atlantic to the Isles of Scilly off the British coast. It took 43 days and broke a record that had stood for 114 years:

Twice the boat went over, both times leaving one of the crew in the ocean, although safety harnesses prevented them from becoming detached from the boat.

Just after the incident, they wrote in their diary: "We have just had a capsize and Livar was catapulted overboard (he is tied on as we all are) and had to swim back to the boat & is getting warm again in a sleeping bag..."

But the voyage also contained plenty of highlights, including rowing alongside a pod of dolphnis and an encounter with the QM2.

Link | Photo: onEdition

John Scannella and Jack Horner, researchers at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana, say that the triceratops is the same dinosaur as another one called the torosaurus. The skeletal remains of the three-horned animal are actually the undeveloped, juvenile form of the torosaurus:

Now Scannella and Horner say that triceratops is merely the juvenile form of torosaurus. As the animal aged, its horns changed shape and orientation and its frill became longer, thinner and less jagged. Finally it became fenestrated, producing the classic torosaurus form [...]

This extreme shape-shifting was possible because the bone tissue in the frill and horns stayed immature, spongy and riddled with blood vessels, never fully hardening into solid bone as happens in most animals during early adulthood. The only modern animal known to do anything similar is the cassowary, descended from the dinosaurs, which develops a large spongy crest when its skull is about 80 per cent fully grown.

The torosaurus will now be abolished as a separate species and remains from it reclassified as triceratops.

Link via Super Punch | Photo by Flickr user etee used under Creative Commons license

Researchers at Columbia University have regrown the destroyed joints of rabbits by shaping a scaffolding that encourages bones to heal in particular forms:

In research published this week in The Lancet, the researchers demonstrate that the technology--a joint-shaped scaffold infused with a growth factor protein--works in rabbits. About a month after the implant, the animals began using their injured forelimbs again, and at two months the animals moved almost as well as similarly aged healthy rabbits. The study is the first to show that an entire joint can be repaired while being used.[...]

In the study, the researchers first imaged the damaged forelimb joint and then created a three-dimensional picture of it, explains Mao, a professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia University Medical Center. They used a bioprinter to "print out" a precisely accurate, three-dimensional copy of the joint, but criss-crossed it with tiny interconnecting microchannels to serve as a scaffold for new bone and cartilage growth. The surgical implantation was the same used to insert titanium implants in people, Mao says.

The top three images on the left show the process working, and the bottom picture shows natural cartilage.

Link via DVICE | Photo: Jeremy Mao

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This police officer in Malmö, Sweden, has become an internet sensation. He seems to think that he's a good dancer. Do you agree?

via Urlesque

A male zebra and female donkey at the Chestatee Wildlife Preserve in Dahlonega, GA, producing a rare "zedonk" foal a week ago:

C.W. Wathen, the preserve's founder and general manager, said the foal has a zebra's instincts. Wathen said she sits up instead of lying on her side, as if she's staying alert for predators.

Donkeys and zebras don't usually mate, but zedonks turn up occasionally.

Link via Geekologie | Photo: AP

Artist Franceska McCullough makes toothpick sculptures that are inspired by geometric forms and astrophysical patterns. Pictured above is "Ganymede and Callisto Pod", in reference to the two largest moons of Jupiter:

This is Ganymede Callisto Pod - or more directly the orbital pattern of the two largest moons of Jupiter. I chose Ganymede and Callisto because they are the two ice covered potentials to life, they are simply beautiful in the photo's I've seen and their orbital dance is exquisite. If you are ever close enough to my sculpture that you can see inside to the core then you will see the orbital pattern very clearly.

Link via Make | Photo: Franceska McCullough, used with permission.

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Here's actor Ron Livingston from Office Space re-enacting the famous Keyboard Cat video. His imitation of the cat's motions is perfect.

via The Presurfer

"Locksport" is an emerging form of competitive lockpicking. Participants strive to open locks that they've never seen before as quickly as they can:

Locksport fans compete in several formats, including head-to-head contests that determine the fastest lock picker. In the so-called Locksport Wizard, each contestant is given a burlap sack containing an identical set of locks and is required to blindly pick them using only tools they have put in the sack.

In other challenges, participants have to pick their way out of handcuffs before attempting to defeat a set of locks. There also are competitions to disassemble locks and reassemble them properly.

Some police officers are concerned that criminals could use these events to learn lockpicking skills, but enthusiasts say that criminals are unlikely to invest the time necessary to develop them.

Link via Make | Photo by Flickr user robertdx used under Creative Commons license

Amanda Greene of Woman's Day found fifteen odd perks offered to guests for free at different hotels. At the Heatherman Hotel in Kirkland, WA, for example, guests receive a mattress menu:

The boutique property lets you "order" your mattress off their Art of Sleep menu. Choose from European featherbeds, European pillow-tops and Tempur-Pedic mattresses. And you're not the only one who gets the royal treatment: The hotel also offers an Art of Sleep for Paws menu, featuring pillow-top beds, heated beds and organic bumper beds for dogs.

http://www.womansday.com/Articles/Family-Lifestyle/Travel/15-Fabulous-and-Free-Hotel-Perks.html via The Presurfer | Photo: Robert Pisano

Photographer Sergey Larenkov takes photos from the same perspectives of historical photos and juxtaposes them. Pictured above is modern Berlin with the Soviet Army marching through it. You can view more examples at the link.

Link via Geekosystem

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Did you do anything productive over the past month? I ask because YouTube user JoshuasCorner blew up 5 watermelons with powerful electrical discharges. How many did you explode?

via DVICE