This video shows a sport native to the British Royal Navy. It's in memory of a particular incident during the Second Boer War in which sailors quickly brought a gun from their ship to an inland battlefield over rough terrain. Since that time, teams of Royal Navy sailors have competed against each other by symbolically re-enacting this event. As you can see from the above video from 1997, this involves moving field guns over walls, disassembling them, swinging them across a gap with ropes, reassembling them, and then firing three rounds. And that's just stage 1.
Researches at the Imperial College in London have developed a reusable fabric that can be taken off and re-worn:
The spray consists of short fibres that are mixed into a solvent, allowing it to be sprayed from a can or high-pressure spray gun. The fibres are mixed with polymers that bind them together to form a fabric. The texture of the fabric can be varied by using wool, linen or acrylic fibres.
The fabric, which dries when it meets the skin, is very cold when it is sprayed on, a limitation that may frustrate hopes for spray-on trousers and other garments.
The researchers hope that the technology can be adapted to create spray-on bandages, among other applications. You can view a video of the creation process at the link.
Link via Popular Science | Screenshot of New Scientist video via Popular Science
Actress Alyssa Milano is raising money for an orphanage in Haiti by offering to follow on Twitter the highest bidder in an auction:
Alyssa Milano will follow you on Twitter for a minimum of 90 days, will retweet one of your tweets and will send out a tweet including your @twitterhandle.
It will be at the celebrity’s discretion to continue following the winner beyond 90 days.
A man in the Kansas City area was attacked with a knife and frying pan. He responded by swinging a banjo at his attacker's head:
Police say the Monday banjo blow to the head stopped the assailant, who was treated for a cut and taken to jail.[...]
The two 21-year-old friends were drinking and arguing about a band when Hilton grabbed the kitchen weapons and attacked, police said.
The victim happened to have banjo in hand and used it in self defense, they said.
http://www.kansascity.com/2010/09/14/2222279_overland-park-man-uses-banjo-in.html via MArooned | Photo (unrelated) via Flickr user mahalie used under Creative Commons license
Detailed studies of traffic flow allow cities to adjust the timing of changes on traffic signal lights. But according to a trio of researchers in Germany, Switzerland, and the United States, it may be better to simply allow individual lights to switch as local demand changes:
If each traffic light responds to its immediate demands, then all the lights will just react to the traffic coming from nearby intersections, which defeats the purpose of a smart network.
The solution is a decentralized approach that lets the traffic lights work together by figuring out how changes at each individual intersection would affect the entire system. Instead of being stymied by natural fluctuations in traffic, the system takes advantage of them, using random gaps to help improve traffic flow. Traffic lights could request green time only when there is a definite demand for them, the researchers write. This acyclic approach could eliminate the particularly annoying problem of sitting at a red light while there’s no traffic.
http://www.popsci.com/cars/article/2010-09/giving-traffic-lights-mind-their-own-can-reduce-congestion-study-says | Previously: Is a Progress Bar on a Traffic Light a Good Idea? | Photo by Flickr user grendelkhan used under Creative Commons license
Artist Matthew Mazzotta conceived of Project Park Spark: a program that gathers dog feces, generates methane from them, and powers lights using that methane. The system is set up in a park in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Dog owners collect their dog waste in a special biodegradable bag and throw it into the digester – an air-tight cylindrical container, where the dog faeces are broken down by anaerobic bacteria. A byproduct from that process is methane which can then be released through a valve and burnt as fuel. In this case it is being used to power an old-fashioned gas-burning lamppost in a park.
Link | Photo by Flickr user Evil Erin used under Creative Commons license
Buying wine in bottles and boxes is so old-fashioned. In select supermarkets in France, customers can now fill up containers with gas station-style pumps:
Bring your own resealable bottles, Poland Spring containers, jerrycans, whatever. Or you can get one at the store. Select your grade (red, white, or rosé). Pump. Print receipt.
Astrid Terzian introduced this concept that hearkens back to a bygone era when wine would arrive in Paris shops in tonneaux and consumers would bring their own flagons to fill. But today, Terzian says, she started this scheme in fall 2008 to fill a niche, tapping into two key themes, environmental awareness and the economy.
Quirk Books is the publisher of offbeat titles like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. Their new book by Kevin David Anderson and Sam Stall imagines a zombie outbreak in the midst of a Star Trek convention. The above video is a trailer for that book.
A Slovenian television newsreader accidentally revealed that he wasn't wearing pants during the broadcast. This is evident in the video clip when, at the end of the show, he rolls his chair away from the desk.
Adidas, which recently produced a Wookie jacket, plans to sell limited edition Stormtrooper varsity jackets with matching high top shoes. As the Geekologie Writer points out, it's a pity that it doesn't come with a class ring.
Instructables user rpaxon made a bedding set that makes a bed look like a Nintendo console. He's made it for his brother, who's wanted one since the sixth grade. You can view more photos at the link.
At a parade in Halifax in July, 2009, Canadian troops drove into town in a Willys jeep. They stopped, stripped it apart, put it back together again, and drove away in three minutes.
The blog Cool Tools recently held a contest that invited people to design their own tools. Steve Hoefer submitted these arm-mounted work lights:
Enter the Hand Lights, a pretty simple and cheap DIY project that puts adjustable lights on your forearms to light whatever is in your hands. They have the advantage over head mounted lights because they always put the light where you're working. They also provide better light since it comes from multiple directions (if you wear two) to provide both more illumination and a better sense of depth.
I use these all the time, everything from sculpting and crafting projects (the light on my sewing machine is dismal, these help make up for it) to provide extra lights while soldering, cleaning out the attic, working on the car, and late night reading. Adding a binder clip and a magnet they can be stuck just about anywhere.
A few months ago, we featured Hoefer's gadget that allows a person to play rock-paper-scissors alone.
Artist Jason Freeny takes popular characters and imagines their internal anatomy. We've previously looked at a computer rendering of the bones, organs, and circulatory system of the Gingerbread Man. Lately, Freeny's been creating sculptures from Finding Nemo and Toy Story.
http://web.mac.com/moistproduction/flash/index.html via Geekologie (who provided the screenshot)
