Autopia forums user AkamaiDetailing's DeLorean is a thing of beauty. As long as it can still reach 88 MPH, it'll be just fine.

http://www.autopia.org/forum/click-brag/137826-mirror-finish-delorean.html -via Boing Boing

Kevin Mitnick, a computer security consultant and convicted hacker, worries that he might be kidnapped while traveling through more dangerous parts of Latin America. So he casually wears a bracelet of woven paracord. Hidden in the clasp is a key designed to open most handcuff designs.

Link -via Say Uncle | Photo: James Martin/CNET

If you want something done right, you're better off doing it yourself. In that spirit, Polish art student Andrzej Sobiepan decided that his work belonged in a museum, regardless of what museum officials wanted. So when a guard wasn't looking, he discreetly hung it on a wall:

Sobiepan, a Wroclaw Fine Arts Academy student whose last name means "his own master," said he was inspired by the elusive British graffiti artist known only as Banksy. His own painting is small, white and green, and partly uses swine leather to show a drooping acacia leaf.

On Dec. 10, Sobiepan put it up in a room with contemporary Polish art when a guard at the museum was looking the other way. Museum officials didn't notice the new painting for three days.

When museum staff discovered Sobiepan's work, they decided to keep it. But they moved it to the museum cafe. You can see a full-size photo of the painting at the link.

Link -via Stuff | Photo: AP/Bartlomiej Kudowicz

Max Zorn creates portraits consisting of backlit sheets of clear plastic with layers of brown masking tape carefully applied and trimmed with an X-Acto knife. He then hangs them on street lamps at night to place his scenes in their original dark, urban environments. Watch a time-lapse video of his creation process at the link.

Link | Artist's Website

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College Humor's parody hits the mark hard and often in this presentation of a 16-bit video game that never was. What combo do I have to hit to perform the Deus ex Machina move?

-via blastr | Previously: 11 Facts You Might Not Know about Battlestar Galactica

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Most of us experience the medieval epic poem "Beowulf" primarily in written form. But it was originally intended as an auditory experience, declaimed by skilled performers who transported their listeners into a world of heroes and monsters. Benjamin Bagby has made a career of presenting "Beowulf" in this manner, following the medieval traditions, while using a reproduction of an Anglo-Saxon harp. Here's a clip of him performing the opening lines to the poem.

Bagby's Website -via American Digest

Previously: Beowulf Socks Are Written in Anglo-Saxon

It's every pilot's worst nightmare, yet most flight schools spend only two days on the topic: flying sharks. The pilot of a passenger jet flying into Christchurch, New Zealand spotted a flying shark Air Swimmer toy moving through the air. At least, we're assuming -- perhaps unreasonably -- that it was just a toy. Anyway, the pilot radioed into local air traffic controllers to alert them:

The fish out of water was identified as a remote-controlled, helium-filled shark that has topped must-have present lists this Christmas.

The 1.44-metre-long Air Swimmer toy has a radio receiver attached to its underside and can be operated by remote control over a range of 15m.
Designer-developer William Mark Corporation warns that the shark is for "strictly indoor use only".

A spokeswoman for air traffic control company Airways, Monica Davis, said a pilot had reported the shark and its location about nine kilometres from the airport at 2pm on December 26.

Link -via Dave Barry

Etsy seller Pamela Joyce Tan-Javate has just what you need to keep warm in the sewer during winter. A true fan, she offers to make custom beanies to match the styles of different eras of the TMNT franchise.

Link -via Fashionably Geek

Think of them as snowy versions of the Weeping Angels. During the winter, you can find snow-covered trees in northern Japan. They are called juhyou and are known for a ghostly appearance.

Link -via Oddity Central | Photo: Casa di Cina

Felt knitting master D. Campbell MacKinlay reproduced a 1966 Jack Kirby cover right down to the details of the Comics Code logo. The best part is that Grimm's mitts project out of the surface.

Link -via Nerdcore | Crafter's Website

In 2006, a street artist who goes by the name Posterchild left signs in Toronto that would lead reasonably intelligent residents to conclude that the Batman had left Gotham City. I mean, if you saw a Batarang stuck into a telephone pole or a bat-marked bootprint on the wall, what would you think?

Link | Project Archive

There's a good reason why this Spitfire is painted pink. It helped its pilot hide in the clouds. Esther Inglis-Arkell explains how:

To make sure they were rarely seen from above, these planes were painted to fly just under cloud cover. Although the planes were ideally meant to fly at sunset and sunrise, when the clouds took on a pinkish hue and made the plane completely invisible against them, they were also useful during the day. Clouds are pinker than we give them credit for. We perceive them as white against the sky because the particles in the sky scatter blue light, sending some of it down towards us and letting us see the sky as blue. Clouds scatter every kind of light, and against the intense blue sky look whitish gray. But their color depends on what kind of light gets to them, and what they are floating next to.

Although we see the sky as a radiant blue, the particles are actually filtering out a lot of the blue light that gets down to the earth's surface. When the blue light is scattered, a good deal of it goes right back up into space, which is why the atmosphere of earth glows blue in some pictures. This filters out a good deal of the blue that gets to the clouds. The clouds scatter what they have, which is a spectrum of light with at least some of the blue filtered out, shifting the overall light ever so slightly towards red. Add to that the fact that the water droplets in clouds can diffract light at different angles, and the clouds are often rife with pastel shades of pink, orange, and green. They look white compared to a glowing blue sky, and a quick glance leaves people with the impression that they are white, but a long look should reveal this shifting, if minor, shades. A light pink plane is safer against them than anyone would expect.

There's a video at the link that demonstrates the effectiveness of this camouflage scheme.

Link | Photo: Airshow 1

It is not unknown in the annals of history for warring powers to continue to trade with each other, on a limited basis, during active hostilities. But journalist Adam Hochschild found a remarkable episode of it during World War I and wrote about it in his new book To End All Wars. Tyler Cowen, an economist, summarizes:

My favorite section details how the British responded when it turned out they had a drastic shortage of binoculars, which at that time were very important for fighting the war. They turned to the world’s leading manufacturer of “precision optics,” namely Germany. The German War Office immediately supplied 8,000 to 10,000 binoculars to Britain, directly intended and designed for military use. Further orders consisted of many thousands more and the Germans told the British to examine the equipment they had been capturing, to figure out which orders they wished to place.

The Germans in turn demanded rubber from the British, which was needed for their war effort. It was delivered to Germany at the Swiss border.

Cowen offers a few possible explanations for this transaction at the link.

Link | Amazon Link | Photo: Imperial War Museum

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This is the most fascinating video that you will see all day, and possibly all week. Two champion cyclists try to be the fastest at this thousand-meter race by moving the slowest. In fact, the two competitors go so slowly that at the 3:38 mark, both come to a complete halt. Why? Dan Lewis explains:

The tactical advantage should be clear — the racer in the rear can make a sudden move when the front racer isn’t looking, catching the front racer flatfooted and therefore unable to catch up. But this advantage is moot if a cyclist believes he can simply outrace his opponent over the 1,000 meter course. That’s where aerodynamics come in. Vehicles in motion create slipstreams behind them — basically, rifts in the air similar to what a ship creates in the water. Other vehicles close behind them travel within this slipstream and get a benefit from it: they “draft” and experience less drag, and therefore need to expend less energy in order to go the same speed.

In the case of match sprints, this gives the trailing cyclist an enormous advantage. If the lead racer pushes it from the start, he will end up with only a slight lead with 200 or so meters to go — but his opponent will have much fresher legs. So in order to combat this, we get this weird do-si-do — on bicycles.

Link

Guess what? I got a fever! And the only prescription.. is more drones! Thankfully, the US Navy has developed the Cicada Mark III disposable drone. Technicians have equipped the Tempest Unmanned Aerial Vehicle with two of them. They're about a foot long, but can fly up to eleven miles and land within fifteen feet of their targets.

Link -via Geekosystem | Photos: US Navy