Towlebooth

Next time you're in Vegas, go where the real men play: Tim Arnold's Pinball Hall of Fame.

Structure fires are never a good thing, but that doesn't mean they can't be damned impressive. Last Sunday, this railroad trestle in Texas caught fire, and when authorities decided it'd be too dangerous to fight, they just let it burn. The result is a spectacular show of what have to be some of the most dangerous dominoes in the world.

The unintentional fire-show ultimately cost about $10 million in damages, and while the resulting footage probably isn't worth quite that much, it's something to see. Especially the way the rails themselves fall like puny little wires. Fortunately the fire was contained to just the bridge, and no one was injured in the process. And as far as disasters go, this is a fun one to watch, relatively guilt-free. [KWTX via Reddit]

When the Moore tornado struck Oklahoma two days ago, Youtuber Charles Gafford filmed this footage of the 1.3 mile wide monster from inside a storm shelter. I’m just glad this kind of catastrophe never occured where I live.

[Via iO9]

Compared to electric gadgetry, something like a trumpet is a pretty simple contraption, but the way it actually works is super clever when you see it in action. The principle is very straight-forward, but the construction of the actual pieces that re-route your hot air are damn cool to see at work.

Now does anyone have a cross-sectional GIF of how an embouchure works, because I still can't figure that one out.

Get an even better look at “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” coming to ABC Tuesdays at 8:00 p.m. ET this fall!

Clark Gregg reprises his role of Agent Phil Coulson from Marvel’s feature films as he assembles a small, highly select group of Agents from the worldwide law-enforcement organization known as S.H.I.E.L.D. Together they investigate the new, the strange, and the unknown across the globe, protecting the ordinary from the extraordinary. Coulson’s team consists of Agent Grant Ward (Brett Dalton), highly trained in combat and espionage, Agent Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen) expert pilot and martial artist, Agent Leo Fitz (Iain De Caestecker); brilliant engineer and Agent Jemma Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) genius bio-chemist. Joining them on their journey into mystery is new recruit and computer hacker Skye (Chloe Bennet).

[MARVEL]

If you concentrate enough, you can make the direction of the train change with your mind!

[Via CB]

It isn't a first look, exactly, but Disney has announced its new Star Wars cartoon, which will be called Rebels. Here's everything we (now) know:

Read more...

Over 10 days in November 1983, the U.S. and the Soviet Union nearly started a nuclear war. Now newly declassified documents reveal just how close we reached a mutual destruction -- because of an exercise.

For today’s edition of Deal of the Day, Amazon offers over 1600 blu-ray movies for under $10, which include titles such Star Trek (2009), the original Evil Dead, Serenity, The Goonies, and many, many more.

[Blu-ray Movies Under $10]

[Via MUO | Source: Probably Cyanide and Hapiness]

Two videos, one goal: Listing everything that’s wrong with Star Trek 2009.

Honest Trailers – Star Trek (2009)

Everything Wrong With Star Trek (2009) In 5 Minutes Or Less

[Screen Junkies | CinemaSins]

If you love mad science, you are about to be ecstatic. In these amazing historic images of laboratories — many over a century old — you can see the crazy, brilliant scientific instruments of another age.

Read more...

Imagine if PBS created its own Avengers by teaming up superheroes from our childhood. I'm not talking about Iron Man or Thor but Carl Sagan, Mister Rogers and Bill Nye. Real superheroes. This fantastic short imagines the trio teaming up with Bob Ross to form the PBS Avengers who want to save us from brain shrinking reality TV and watch the world... learn.

Produced by Cinesaurus, PBS: The Movie is a wonderful parody of The Avengers that really speaks to how important Sagan, Rogers, Ross and Nye once were to us. They helped kids learn! They helped kids wonder! They helped kids dream of becoming scientists and astronauts and good people.

Today? The Kardashians and Honey Boo Boo characters of reality TV are destroying their progress by shrinking our brains to raisins. The PBS Avengers need to stop them. I would watch the heck out of this movie. [GrittyReboots via BoingBoing]

Tomorrow night's episode of The Simpsons will open with a tasty tribute to Breaking Bad. Of course, it's Marge's baked goods that are the true addictive substance here. And for a change, the key couch doesn't belong to the Simpson family.

Read more...

Watch the new trailer for Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim right now — and be transformed into the sandbox-squatting younger version of yourself.

Read more...

Ever wonder how the time travel theories in one movie line up with every other movie about time travel? Here's a pretty great flowchart that susses out exactly which type of of temporal chaos a movie wreaks. Although even with this thing, I still don't know what the heck was going on in Twelve Monkeys. [Mr. Dalliard via ILoveCharts via LaughingSquid]

If your daily commute has become mundane and boring, you can easily spice things up with this clever hack that makes it feel like you've just jacked someone's ride. All you need is an old screwdriver—the more worn it is the more convincing the effect will be—and a car key you're willing to hack to bits.

Basic metal-working skills probably aren't going to hurt here, and will ensure your screwdriver key doesn't immediately fall apart the first time you use it. Be warned, though, as the creator of this hack points out, the handle hanging off your key adds a lot of weight and leverage that could probably screw your ignition if bumped. And if your car's key uses a chip, this hack unfortunately isn't for you.

[Haha Bird via Notcot]

Nielsen, the company that determines whether or not your beloved television shows even matter, has been perching dangerously on the verge of irrelevancy for years—but all that's about to change. After sitting idly by as internet viewership skyrocketed, Nielsen has finally decided to start taking note of the unhealthy amounts of time we spend curled up under the loving glow of a laptop screen.

Going solely off today's Nielsen data, you'd conclude that shows like Community, Breaking Bad, and Mad Men can barely rouse up lukewarm indifference, much less coveted advertising dollars. But as we all know, these shows have massive, sometimes frighteningly dedicated fan bases, and this largely in thanks to online viewership.

Admittedly, Nielsen hasn't been totally blind to this new internet fad, it did announce just a few months ago plans to include streaming figures in its ratings, even if that only just scratches the surface of the internet's viewing base. And last December it announced something entirely separate from its traditional ratings called the "Nielsen Twitter TV Rating," which is essentially just a way for Nielsen to associate itself with Twitter and seem hip with the kids.

Now, though, broadcast and cable networks such as NBC, Fox, ABC, Univision, Discovery, and A+E are enrolled in a "Nielsen Digital Program Ratings" pilot program, with a larger commercial rollout soon to follow.

There's a reason it's taken this long, though, as internet viewing does come with its own host of problems. Unlike TV viewing, there's no way to track how long someone might be watching a particular show, which is a major consideration for advertisers and, consequently, whether or not your show gets axed. Still, this is a major step in the right direction, and you can finally rest easy knowing that those countless, immobile hours spent with your laptop glued to your face weren't for naught. [Wall Street Journal]

Image: Shutterstock/R.Ashrafov

This one is for all the beer geeks out there! I’d partly define myself as an explorer/egalitarian hybrid, but what about you guys? Let us know in the comments section below!

[Source: College Humor | Via LS]

The post What Kind of Beer Drinker are You? [Flowchart] appeared first on Geeks are Sexy Technology News.

The Force is fast in this video!

Previously on [GAS] by 1A4STUDIO:

-The Matrix in 60 Seconds
-Back to the Future I in 60 seconds

[1A4STUDIO | Via]

[Source: DORKLY]

These are my new favorite things.

Apparently, Vinnie’s Pizzeria has a Tumblr devoted to their pop culture menus! (The Fred Sa-Vegg! Don Caper! AAAHH!!! Real Meunsters!)

[SpecialBored.Tumblr / Via The Mary Sue]

Erick MD and Rose Ivy – known as the ER Collective – were inspired by “BioShock Infinite” to cosplay (spectacularly!) as Booker and Elizabeth.

[Via Fashionably Geek]

At Calgary Comic Expo on April 27th 2013, a mother asked Wil Wheaton to give a very special message to her daughter about why it’s awesome to be a nerd, and for fortunately for us, she filmed the whole thing to share with the world.

[Jennifer Black]

During NASA's Apollo 10 moon mission in 1969, not quite everything went to plan. But we're not talking Apollo 13-style disasters here—instead, we're talking about some toilet-based issues.

Clearly the astronauts in question—Thomas P. Stafford, John W. Young and Eugene A. Cernan—hadn't quite gotten to grips with how to go to the toilet in space, as these NASA transcripts from the mission reveal. Tales of floating turds, sticky poop and inventive use of napkins is rather... eye opening.

You can read the full mission transcripts here. Or just spend the next few minutes inventing jokes about encounters of the turd kind. Your call. [Reddit via Laughing Squid]

Excellent news! The BBC's television adaptation of Susanna Clarke's 2004 novelJonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, about magic during the Napoelonic Wars, is going ahead. And it's set to air in 2014!

Read more...

Next week, I'll be speaking at the SkepTech Conference, a new gathering put together by University of Minnesota students. The lineup features some great folks from the science and skeptic communities, including bloggers PZ Myers and Hemant Mehta, and Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal cartoonist Zach Weinersmith. Registration is free. Come check it out!

Hallucinations. Fatigue. Sleep deprivation. Madness. Victor Sandberg saw it all during his record-breaking Missile Command run. 

The NASA session at G.D.C., We Are The Space Invaders, came at the end of a long day. Everyone looked exhausted, the woman sitting next to me had her shoes off, and more than a few chairs were free. You could almost here a collective sigh as the two presenters, Victor Luo and Jeff Norris of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, showed us vintage clips of Spacewar! and established the predictable mantra that games and space are intimately entwined.

Yet, it ended with a standing ovation, a communal sense of amazement, and a pledge that NASA engineers are working towards a holodeck (Yep, like from Star Trek) that will let players control robotic avatars in space. Seriously! 

- - -

The National Space Agency has clandestinely been snatching up game developers and hosting gaming events like space-themed game jams for a while now, but there has been little signal of their machinations. It turns out their software engineers have been up to much more than designing the rather uninteresting Mars Rover Landing, which simulates and promoted the Curiosity drop. They have been experimenting with Kinects, Wiimotes, data gloves, and so forth. Luo demonstrated how he could easily control with a motion camera a robot called Athlete, reaching with his hands to manipulate its claw-like appendages.

It’s a lofty and incredible mission, but walking out of there, I got the feeling that everyone in the room believed it. 

We’re talking about game devices and game interfaces for controlling giant “crazy, six-limbed spider robots” that hover in zero gravity, and what more or less amounts to Dance Central for gyrating ultra-sophisticated shuttle pilots that look like androids, (or members of Blue Man Group). As public interest in space exploration has been on the wane, the session was obviously intended to inspire and excite those in attendance about space. And it worked. It gave me chills when Norris closed with the line “humanity’s destiny is space,” (although that could have something to do with the fact that I needed to pee and had had nothing to eat.)

The highlight of the hour, or rather the coolest thing, (and I’m aware that “cool” isn’t a descriptor I’ve used in relation to space since field trips to the space center in Huntsville in intermediate school), was a live demonstration of Luo maneuvering from over an internet connection a large and potentially dangerous hovercraft. This arachnid of a ship literally weighed a ton and was thankfully located safely back at the space lab, and we could watch the interaction via webcam. Because the beast has six legs, the most convenient way to control it, they said, was with a data glove that Luo wore on his hand, each of his fingers synched to a leg. He wiggled his pointer, and, after they worked out the kinks, the robot followed his command. Truly a sight of spectacle. 

As for the holodeck, NASA aren’t there yet, but they hope that one day all of us earthlings will be able to stand in front of a screen and control our own killer robot in space. It’s a lofty and incredible mission, but walking out of there, I got the feeling that everyone in the room believed it.