Wait -- a toothed gear that has only one side? Is that even possible? Aaron Hoover, a robotics student at Berkeley, says that it is:

[...] I convinced myself that this mechanism is indeed possible and that with right tools, a functional prototype could be built. (The entire mechanism essentially boils down to an oddly configured set of planetary gears. One can think of the black portion in the image as the ring with a fixed zero input velocity. A single blue gear is a planet, and the white strip is the sun. Output can be taken either from the sun or the planets (with no regard for practicality!). In practice, however, it’s easiest to actuate the Möbius strip (the white portion). So, using a combination of the Scene Language for Dynamic Environments (SLIDE), developed here at Berkeley, Tcl, Python, and Solidworks, I was able to create models of the constituent components. The base was fabricated on a Stratasys fused deposition (FDM) machine and took approximately 86 hrs. to finish. The “spur” gears were molded in silicone rubber using a two-part mold printed on a 3D Systems wax deposition machine (ThermoJet). And the central Möbius strip was also molded using molds printed on the 3DS machine. The Möbius strip was molded as a single linear strip then twisted and the ends were rejoined in a “guiding” mold and additional rubber was poured into that mold to bond the two ends together and form a single continuous ring. The end result is a functional prototype, but rotating the middle ring without having the blue gears pop out is a little tricky.

http://robotics.eecs.berkeley.edu/~ahoover/Moebius.html via Make

Husky Jackal Theater of Nashville proposes to put on a stage production of Terminator 2, using a script composed entirely of lines borrowed from the collected works of William Shakespeare:

We adhered to strict guidelines regarding the usage of Shakespeare’s works. Each line and phrase is taken directly from folios printed by or before 1685, and many extended sections of dialogue are composed of individual lines from separate works. Only proper nouns and pronouns were subject to change, as dictated by the plot. In these instances, all proper nouns are supplanted only by other proper nouns, and all pronouns by other pronouns. In some cases, corresponding verb tenses are modified. These practices enabled us to accurately retell the story of Terminator 2: Judgment Day while remaining true to the words of Shakespeare in form (if less so in intent).

Link via Mary Sue | Image: Matter Anti-Matter

Previously: What if The Big Lebowski Had Been Written by William Shakespeare

Marcus Levine creates stunning portraits and nudes out of nails driven into boards. Each work takes about 3,500 nails, as well as a lot of time. Levine is a driven man and rarely takes a day off from creating art.

Link via Dude Craft | Artist's Website | Photo: My Modern Met

Previously: Andrew Myers' Screw Portraits

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In the 1950s, before the Muppets, Jim Henson produced these commercials for Wilkins Coffee. They are, uh, very blunt. To summarize, the message is "Buy our coffee, or we'll kill you." The brand appears to be defunct. Read more about Henson's early puppetry at Network Awesome. Link -via Boing Boing

As part of an advertising campaign for Hot Wheels, a construction crew in Bogotá, Colombia, installed a facade for a loop. From the side, it resembles the loop tracks that Mattel has sold for years. You'll have to, sadly, wait a little bit longer before experiencing a real one.

Link (Google Translate) via Not Cot

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Ban, a two-year old dog from Japan, survived three weeks at sea on a rooftop after the recent earthquake and tsunami. He was rescued from the Japanese Coast Guard and, as you can see in this video, reunited with his owner:

The 2-year-old dog, named Ban, greeted her owner "with joy, jumping and wagging her tail."

''We'll never let go of her,'' the owner was quoted as saying by a center official, according to Kyodo News, which portrays the reunion as more subdued, writing that the dog "happily wagged her tail when the owner appeared."

Link via Urlesque

We don't have flying cars, but otherwise, it can be hard for science fiction to keep up with the pace of modern technology. Evan Hoovler of blastr has a list of eight technological wonders from science fiction now present in real life, such as the PADD from Star Trek, now available as the iPad:

Like modern electronics, the P.A.D.D. had its own development throughout the series. The 24th-century model was almost solely used by touching a screen. Not bad, but we're sure the Enterprise captains would've probably liked some Freecell while drifting through empty space. How about one of millions of books? The iPad incorporates modern technology into this classic sci-fi design, moving us one step closer to achieving the ultimate dream (holodeck).

What else would you add to his list?

Link

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If you'd like to hear stories about the dark side of humanity -- or just the stupid side -- talk to ER nurses. Oh, the tales that they can tell! Here's a comparatively mild example. Shawn needed to get a tiny hat to stay on his head. It was, of course, too small to stay on by itself. Did he acquire a larger hat? No. He used superglue to get the hat to stick. The next day, after the fancy dress party, he realized that he may have acted hastily and reported to the local hospital for assistance. This clip from a BBC Three program showed how the hospital staff tried to solve the problem. To Shawn's credit, he's a good sport about it.

via Ace of Spades HQ

What determined the length of the audio CD developed by Sony? It was based on the length of the longest recording of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Tyler Cowen quotes from Tim Büthe and Walter Mattli's book The New Global Rulers: The Privatization of Regulation in the World Economy:

Sony had initially preferred a smaller diameter, but soon after the beginning of the collaboration started to argue vehemently for a diameter of 120mm. Sony’s argument was simple and compelling: to maximize the consumer appear of a switch to the new technology, any major piece of music needed to fit on a single CD…Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony was quickly identified as the point of reference — according to some accounts, it was the favorite piece of Sony vice-president Norio Ohga’s wife. And thorough research identified the 1951 recording by the orchestra of the Bayreuther Festspiele under Wilhelm Furtwängler, at seventy-four minutes, as the slowest performance of the Ninth Symphony on record. And so, according to the official history, Sony and Philips top executives agreed in their May 1980 meeting that “a diameter of 12 centimeters was required for this playing time.”

Amazon Link via Marginal Revolution | Photo by Flickr user Leo-setä used under Creative Commons license

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YouTube user GatheringSticks is quite a garage machinist! He's built a functional single-shot 12 gauge shotgun from a pipe and a stapler. The firing pin is a sharpened drill bit and the shoulder rest is padded with a piece of a Croc.

via Everyday, No Days Off

In 2008, Sandra Critelli shot this excellent photo of Golden Rays off the Mexican coast:

She said: "It was an unreal image, very difficult to describe. The surface of the water was covered by warm and different shades of gold and looked like a bed of autumn leaves gently moved by the wind.

"It's hard to say exactly how many there were but in the range of a few thousand.

"We were surrounded by them without seeing the edge of the school and we could see many under the water surface too.

Golden Rays grow up to seven feet across and migrate within the Caribbean.

Photo Link and Article Link via reddit

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YouTube user thearchipelago went frog gigging and brought back these three whoppers. When he adds salt to the raw meat, they start twitching wildly. Why does this happen? Marshall Brain of How Stuff Works explains:

Because these are fresh frog legs, the cells inside them are all still intact. The biochemical machinery still functions. There is still a source of energy for the muscles in the form of unused ATP molecules stored in the cells. All that the muscles need is something to activate them and they can still contract and relax (until they run out of ATP or something else shuts down the biochemical machinery).

http://blogs.howstuffworks.com/2009/12/21/how-twitching-frog-legs-work-a-little-gross-yes-but-fascinating/ via Geekosystem

Australian Steve Clibborn had just about given up any hope that his champion horse Diamond Mojo would survive a bout of colic. As a last, desperate move, he resorted to old bush wisdom about feeding horses beer. It worked:

"I had pretty much kissed him goodbye," he said.

"I had spent 23 hours straight with him but nothing worked and then I remembered an old bush tale that said you could feed them beer.

"I don't know whether I really believed it or not but it was worth a shot and as soon as he had that beer, he burped and perked right up. So I gave him another couple."

Over the following days, Steve repeated the dose using Queensland's own XXXX lager until his prized endurance horse rediscovered his mojo.

That's the right approach: whiskey for my men and beer for my horses.

Link via Jammie Wearing Fool | Photo: Adam Head/Courier-Mail

This camper is built over a 1956 Cadillac Sedan de Ville. This is the first time that I've heard of such a vehicle, but apparently there were many of them made in years past. They're called, appropriately, "Caddy Shacks". eBay seller sportscarlacalifornia is offering this one for sale.

Link via Jalopnik

The wife of a prisoner in Spain sent fake but official-looking faxes to the jails in which her husband was being held. Both times, he was released:

In December, he was in a cell at Arganda del Rey courthouse awaiting trial when officers got a fax purportedly from a regional court. It was followed by a phone call purportedly from a court official, corroborating the release order.

Officers tried to verify the order, but their calls went unanswered. When a second call was received confirming Serna's release, he was freed to a waiting taxi.

Police said Serna used the same trick to escape from Valdemoro jail in October.

Link | Photo by Flickr user Collin Anderson used under Creative Commons license