Oncle Sam popcorn machine pops one piece at a time

Oncle Sam is a popcorn machine art installation which focuses on popping corn one kernel at a time, allowing the user to partake of a tasty snack without consuming too many calories. This short promo video demonstrates Oncle Sam popping corn. Oncle Sam was created by Ecole cantonale d'art de Lausanne (ECAL) students Laurent Beirnaert, Pierre Bouvier, and Paul Tubiana for ECAL’s Low-Tech Factory exposition – the same project which was home...

Fingernail-sized radar chip could be used in future smartphones

Research based in Frankfurt, Germany, and funded by the European Union, has resulted in a new low-cost, fingernail-sized radar chip package that could be implemented in a variety of areas, including the automotive industry, robotics and smartphones. The chip package measures 8 x 8 mm (0.3 x 0.3 inches), operates at 120 GHz, and can calculate the distance of an object up to around 3 meters (10 feet) away, to an accuracy of within 1 mm. It can also...

Bookworm wrap-around chair beckons bibliophiles

The Bookworm from Dutch design firm Atelier 010 is a single piece of furniture that combines a chair and bookcase in one. But it does so in a truly unconventional way, wrapping the curved bookcase around into something akin to the shape of a heart. The chair is provided by the lowest curve, with the books literally surrounding the seated person. The final touch is a simple light fitting hanging down from the upper portion, providing the reader...

Bizarre facts

Blueberries are purple!   India has more honor roll students than America HAS students.  Strawberry is not an actual berry, but a banana is. By technical definition, a berry is a fleshy fruit produced from a single seed. The strawberry, however has its dry, yellow "seeds" on the outside (each of which is actually considered a separate fruit). True berries, such as blueberries and cranberries have seeds inside. However, the banana fruit is a berry for the same reason strawberries are not. There is a theory that strawberries were...

Oru "origami" kayak

Oru – a prototype touring kayak made from corrugated plastic, that can be folded up and carried like an art portfolio. Designer Anton Willis and his team have since launched a crowd-funding campaign that has already far exceeded its goal ... which means that the Oru should soon be available to buy.  the main body of the Oru is made up of a single prefolded piece of plastic. Once folded into shape, the boat is held together using attached...

Yes, you CAN tickle YOURSELF! The only place you can tickle yourself is the top of your mouth. TRY IT.

The sensation of tickling is important to have. It's similar to the feeling of having bugs or spiders crawling on you. The reaction you have to being tickled is important to keep those kind of animals from crawling on you. You tickle mostly because of surprise. Even if you know you're about to be tickled, you don't necessarily know where, so you react by being ticklish. When you try to tickle yourself, it usually doesn't work because your brain already...

Best Android apps of 2012

Google Chrome Google's heralded desktop browser made its mobile debut this year. It lives up to the hype. Speedy and simple, the free Chrome is miles ahead of the old stock Android browser. Play Store: Chrome (free) Google Drive More than just a Dropbox rival, Google Drive is a cloud locker and basic word processor rolled into one. Store up to 5 GB of files for free, and edit your docs on the go. If you're invested in...

There are people live under Las Vegas in an underground network of tunnels

The tunnels where designed as a city pluvial system. People have found shelter in the tunnels, and they have even gotten used to live in literally pitch black spaces. There are approximately 1,000 people living there and they are mainly people that have lost everything because of gambling, or homeless people. Some of them have even found their other halves and live down in the tunnels. Some of them have day jobs, decorate their place...

Rapper 50 Cent says he's never done drugs!

To say that rapper 50 Cent had a difficult childhood would be an understatement. Born as Curtis Jackson III, he grew up in an impoverished urban neighborhood in Queens, New York. He was raised without a father and his mother died when he was 8, after which he went to live with his grandparents and 8 aunts and uncles. At the age of 12, he began dealing narcotics as a way to raise money. However it never crossed his mind, even to this day, to take...

Google has developed a driverless car

This new technology sounds as if it is right out of a science fiction movie, and that’s because it’s not far off. Over the past several years Google engineers and scientists have been working tirelessly at Stanford Laboratories to develop a technology that will change the way we live in the upcoming decades: the Google Car. This car is completely driverless. It combines information from Goggle Street View with artificial intelligence...

Bionic eye gives sight to the blind

A company called Second Sight has received FDA approval to begin U.S. trials of a retinal implant system that gives blind people a limited degree of vision. The second incarnation of Second Sight's retinal prosthesis consists of five main parts: A digital camera that's built into a pair of glasses. It captures images in real time and sends images to a microchip. A video-processing microchip that's built into...

Google glasses confirms augmented reality glasses project, releases video demo

Google X (Google's futuristic technology development lab) has pulled back the curtain on Project Glass, its program to develop truly useful augmented reality "Google glasses." Project Glass aims to design and refine augmented reality technology to help a user explore and share their world armed with a wealth of relevant information - not at their fingertips, but rather at the end of their nose.  Instead of interrupting your activities to...

There's a town in Italy that doesn't get sunlight for 84 days a year. They've solved this problem with a giant mirror

Call it the reverse Montgomery Burns scheme. The little town of Viganella is located amidst the Italian side of the Alps. During the winter time, the shift in the sun's pattern makes it so that it never clears the 1600 feet tall mountain that's close to the town. This means that for 84 days, they do not get any sunlight. The townspeople end up suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder, a type of mild depression.  To solve this, the...

In the Titanic, the band actually did stay and play music as the ship went down. They all died

  You might've thought that the band playing music while the ship was going down was fake. A creative liberty director James Cameron took to enhance the drama in the scenes when people are in chaos trying to leave the ship.  In reality the band, stayed on and played calm, airy music to keep the passenger calm while they were boarding the life boats. They were not obligated to do so, as they were not technically part of the ship's crew. None...

A man survived being trapped under snow for 2 months by hibernating!

(not the real pic) A Swedish 44-year old man had a traffic accident near a little town just south of the Arctic Circle. As a result, he was trapped in his snow-covered car for 2 months! He was found by chance thanks to a passerby who ran into his car. He was taken to a hospital. The doctors explained that the man was lucky that the car experienced what they called a "natural igloo" effect, which protected him a bit from the temperatures that...

LightBeam makes any surface a projector display, and everyday objects a remote control

Pico projectors might be able to turn any old surface into a display - with varying results of course - but can they turn any old surface into in interactive display and everyday objects into a remote control? No? Well, with LightBeam they can. Developed by a team at Germany's Technische Universität Darmstadt, LightBeam pairs a pico projector with a depth-sensing camera to provide some Kinect style interactive control to projected presentations. The...

Privacy Pop bed tent provides some seclusion in shared boudoirs

Although we're social creatures, everyone needs a bit of privacy every now and then. This is particularly true in the bedroom, but whether it's sharing with siblings growing up or co-habitation with roommates at college, unfortunately not all have us can enjoy the luxury of our own sleeping space. While not quite in the same league as your own four walls, the Privacy Pop will provide some protection from prying eyes - but you'll still want to...

There’s a Simpson’s house in real life

There is a house in Clark County Nevada that is the exact replica of the house in “The Simpsons.” Built in 1997, it was the grand prize for a contest run by Pepsi and Fox. It cost $120,000. The winner could either to decide to occupy the house or take a $75,000 cash prize. The house exactly mirrored that in the show, down to every color! The winner of the contest decided not to live in the house, and it was remodeled and sold in 2007. (S...