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

Computer security expert Tadayoshi Kohno says that biotechnology that has a neural interface, such as advanced prosthetic limbs, may make the brain accessible to hackers in the future:

In some cases, patients might even want to hack into their own neural device. Unlike devices to control prosthetic limbs, which still use wires, many deep brain stimulators already rely on wireless signals. Hacking into these devices could enable patients to “self-prescribe” elevated moods or pain relief by increasing the activity of the brain’s reward centers.

Despite the risks, Kohno said, most new devices aren’t created with security in mind. Neural engineers carefully consider the safety and reliability of new equipment, and neuroethicists focus on whether a new device fits ethical guidelines. But until now, few groups have considered how neural devices might be hijacked to perform unintended actions. This is the first time an academic paper has addressed the topic of “neurosecurity,” a term the group coined to describe their field.

Link

[YouTube Link - via Kinda Unique]

Cuteness: this family of ducks is trying to climb an escalator ... the wrong way up!

Flickr user scrumptiousdelight created a throw pillow based upon the sarlacc monster from The Return of the Jedi. On this pillow, you will learn a new definition of comfort as you are slowly soothed for over a thousand years.

Link via GeekDad

James Rummel has pictures and descriptions of five handguns that were very innovative designs, but turned out to be useless in real life. These include the Henrion, Dassy & Heuschen twenty-shot revolver, manufactured in France between 1921 and 1928.

http://www.hellinahandbasket.net/2009/07/5-brilliant-innovative-handgun.htm