Now this is something you don’t see every day, a B-17 heavy bomber making a landing at your local airport. This aircraft along with cars, trucks, tractors, steam engines, and helicopters visited the coast over the weekend for the annual Dream Machines rally. As happens on the coast, it was overcast, but it was fun.

The B-17 is called “Sentimental Journey” and is based in Arizona with the Commemorative Airforce. An aside, just one of these things is hugely noisy, I can’t imagine what it would have sounded like 60+ years ago for 1,000 airplane raids…

Scientists have had a string of remarkable successes lately, taking signals from the brains of monkeys and men, and using them to move mechanical arms.

Darpa, the Pentagon’s blue-sky research division, now wants to ratchet that work up about ten notches, by developing a “neurally controlled artificial limb that will restore full motor and sensory capability to upper extremity amputee patients. This revolutionary prosthesis will be controlled, feel, look and perform like the native limb.”

So, basically, what Luke Skywalker gets in Empire Strikes Back, after Darth chops off his hand. Except, researchers won’t have a long, long time to get this limb ready. Darpa wants the robo-arm stat — in four years or less.

Read more…

This is merely one of the hundreds of interesting mailboxes displayed at Sam’s Mailbox Pictures. If you’re into weird collections, this is a good place to visit…

You may notice that the look and feel of this blog changed today. The intent of the change is to make this site easier to read, navigate, load, and maintain. Don’t be shy about commenting, though constructive criticism is preferred!

Once again, Neal Stephenson proves prophetic. In the novel Snowcrash, there is a scene where a skateboarder plasters a pizza delivery vehicle with stickers saying things like “That was Stale” and “Smooth Move Exlax.” Now, in real life, we have I park like an idiot.com, a place to buy bumper stickers to affix to people who park badly…

Here are some examples: