Digital Camera Binoculars From Thanko Are Perfect For "Ornithologists"

I think we've just stumbled across the answer to that age-old question, "what to buy the man who has everything." Thanko's digital camera binoculars!It's essentially an 8MP camera integrated into a set of binoculars, with two different digital zooms: 4x for the camera, and 8x for the binoculars. It may not be the first camera-binoculars, but for the price the 8MP image sensor is the best in its range. There's even a pop-up 1.5-inch TFT LCD screen, SD/MMC card slot and USB port. Video resolution is a measly 320 x 240 at 30fps, but considering this is a FRICKIN' CAMERA-ON-A-BINOCULAR I don't think we're too worried.

F-18 Coming Out of Hyperspace

Apparently, the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornets of the Royal Australian Air Force have teleporting powers. That, or the Australians have discovered a way to magically create combat jets out of vapor.

Click to see the high definition image above.

Or maybe they are just vapor trails forming on the aircraft's wings, as the RAAF pilots maneuver at low altitude.

The Spyder III, the World's Most Powerful Portable Laser, Is a Real Life Lightsaber

Built with the blue-laser diode of a dismantled Casio Green Slim projector, the $200 Spyder III is the world's most powerful portable laser. It can permanently blind you and set your skin—or anything else, really—on fire almost instantly.

"With greater power comes the need for greater responsibility." That's actually what Wicked Lasers, the mad geniuses behind the Spyder III, wrote to us in an email describing this terrifying piece of technology. They wanted to make one thing very clear: this is not merely a laser pointer, and it's certainly not a toy. What it is, really, is a weapon.

The diodes in Casio's new mercury-free Green Slim projectors apparently allow for unprecedentedly powerful portable lasers, and Wicked Lasers has gleefully harvested them for the 1 Watt Spyder III. Comparing it to the $2000 Sonar, the company's reigning portable laser powerhouse, Wicked Lasers explains that the blue Spyder III laser is 2000 times brighter to the human eye, and, at $200, 1/10th the price.

Wicked Lasers is throwing in a free pair of safety glasses with the purchase of a Spyder III, which might make wielding one marginally safer, but just writing this post has left me terrified enough to stay as far away from these things as possible. For a few weeks, anyway, until our review unit gets here.

Just Chillin' In My Gigantic Packing Tape Spider Web

What's the coolest thing you can do with 117,000 feet of packing tape? If you said anything besides building a humongous, self-supporting spider web inside a historic Viennese stock exchange, then you are oh so very wrong. Let's explore!

I have never been more envious of Fast Company, who was on-site when this awesome project was constructed:

There are a lot of situations in which being a fly on the wall would be cool, but at the DMY Berlin Design Fair (also home of that funky smoke machine), being a fly caught in the spider's web is even cooler.

June 2, 1954: Airplane Takes Off, Lands Vertically

1954: A Convair XFY-1 Pogo aircraft makes a vertical takeoff and landing. It's a milestone in the checkered history of VTOL aircraft.

Using designs captured from the Germans, the Navy and the newly formed Air Force crafted two design studies in 1947 for creating a fixed-wing vertical-takeoff-and-landing, or VTOL, aircraft. The goal of the project was to build a fighter that could protect convoys but not require a large landing area.

Lockheed and Convair both won contracts in May 1951 to build prototypes of the aircraft, which resembled squat fighter planes standing on their tails. That earned the nickname (or epithet?) "Tail Sitter."

The prototype point-defense interceptor didn't need a runway, but that was about the only thing in its favor. It used huge counter-rotating propellors on its nose to lift off like a helicopter - a very heavy helicopter.

After liftoff, it simply turned its nose horizontal and flew like, well a clumsy prop plane with big propellers. Landing was a matter of reversing the process and shizzing back into its helicopter mode to set down on its ample tail assembly.

The Navy gave Convair the only engine rated for vertical takeoffs and landings, allowing its aircraft - the XFY-1 Pogo - to actually make several vertical ascents and multiple transitions to horizontal flight. Did we say clumsy? This bird was a bear to fly.

The Air Force's version, the Lockheed XFV-1, used a less-powerful engine and never made a vertical takeoff. it was eventually fitted with conventional landing gear and made 32 horizontal flights.

Despite a lot of media hoopla, the VTOL had a very short moment in the sun. The Pentagon cast its lot instead with fast horizontal jets and powerful helicopters. Subsequent military experience with tilt-rotor aircraft has been less than happy.

The Gates of Hell Just Opened In Guatemala

"This can't be real" was my first thought. Then I checked the source: The Guatemalan government. This sinkhole appeared last sunday in a street intersection of Ciudad de Guatemala. Just looking at the photo gives me vertigo.

Click on the images to see the high resolution version.

A sinkhole is a natural depression caused by the removal of underground soil by water. Usually, it happens when the substrate is formed by limestone, carbonate rock, salt beds or any other rock that is easily eroded by water streams. The process could be slow, but sometimes the land just cracks open without notice. In this case, it happened suddenly, swallowing an entire house. The cause: Massive underground water torrents created by tropical storm Agatha."This can't be real" was my first thought. Then I checked the source: The Guatemalan government. This sinkhole appeared last sunday in a street intersection of Ciudad de Guatemala. Just looking at the photo gives me vertigo.

Click on the images to see the high resolution version.

A sinkhole is a natural depression caused by the removal of underground soil by water. Usually, it happens when the substrate is formed by limestone, carbonate rock, salt beds or any other rock that is easily eroded by water streams. The process could be slow, but sometimes the land just cracks open without notice. In this case, it happened suddenly, swallowing an entire house. The cause: Massive underground water torrents created by tropical storm Agatha. Judging by the picture above, it seems like at least the last part is true.