Ok it’s not an actual meteorological report, (although with our weird weather lately who knows?) but it’s a childhood classic coming to theaters later this year.

My all time favorite book as a kid was “Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs” by Judi and Ron Barrett . When I was little my family would go up to Maine. We’d go to the local library and my mother would check it out for me. I must have checked that book out 100s of times over the course of a few summers. Something about the images of food raining from the sky, blizzards of cream cheese and jelly sandwiches, pancakes crushing buildings and many more - well it all seemed so fun and I just loved it to death.

(Watch the Trailer and more after the Jump.) [Read more →]

Next time you go to squish that spider in your room, remember this - that spider may have super powers.

20 years ago David Manteca was in a motorcycle accident which took the use of both legs away from him. Confined to a wheelchair since then, 8 months ago a Brown Recluse Spider bit him and sent him to the hospital. While there a nurse noticed his leg spasms and now BAM he can walk. Crazy right?

I’ve done some investigating of my own and Manteca doesn’t appear to live near any biological research labs, waste dumps, or in a nuclear power plants. So what could possibly account for his sudden recovery? Well unless he’s been faking it for the last 20 years, just to prevent his wife from asking him to take out the trash (which is a possibility, us guys HATE that) I think it is obviously the Spider-god “Anansi” DUHH.

Manteca says that he “can’t wait to walk his daughters down the isle” That’s sooo selfish. When a spider gives you abilities be they super or not you have to use them to fight crime or your Uncle Ben will get shot. Its the Rules!  I’m sure once that happens he will be swinging from roof tops in pajamas and fighting crime. Until then I guess that mechanical 6 armed man running amuck downtown will just be the polices’ problem.

This is completely unbelievable, in every sense. First, that it could happen, and second, that the boy is going to be okay.

Whilst playing during the Holi festival, a six-year-old Indian boy fell on a 6ft rod. Not quite sure how he fell, but the rod went straight through either side of his stomach, in the direction that would make it very difficult to walk through doorways.

Doctors on the scene gave him some necessary first aid (don’t know what that means, but it probably involved saying “oh S*&$” in Hindi a couple of times) and then he was transferred to the Rajendra Institute of Medical Science (soon to receive a lot more funding due to their new “We Perform Miracles” add campaign)

There, doctors spent four hours removing the rod, to quote the BBC article:

The doctors said he had lost a lot of blood and suffered liver and stomach injuries but “nothing major” [Read more →]

There was an actual study that measured the level of disgust one registered when tasting something bitter and when faced with the morally acerbic. They found that the 2 sitiations registered an equal amount of grossicity.
[Read more →]

Weta, the company that created armies of plastic-rubber beings for the Lord of the Rings movie recently made a woman into a mermaid.

Nadya Vessey (now the second most famous Nadya of 2009) who had to have both her legs amputated before she was 16 asked the ingenious design team to give her a tail.

Two years, a bunch of 3D modeling, some poly carbonate things later – voila, she can glide through the water just like a real mermaid (well, if mermaids were real).

So cool!

Anyone who has spent time with the LOTR DVD extras will recognize the quasi famous people in the video

Apparently an asteroid nearly blew us all to hell and back. But thanks to the hard work of Morgan Freeman and Bruce Willis we were all prepared and the asteroid just PUNKED OUT and flew on by.

“The asteroid named 2009 DD45 was about 48,800 miles from Earth. That is just twice the height of some telecommunications satellites and about a fifth of the distance to the Moon.

The space ball measured between 69 feet and 154 feet in diameter. The Planetary Society said that made it the same size as an asteroid that exploded over Siberia in 1908 and leveled more than 800 square miles of forest.“

See…

AND WHAT?? AND WHAT!! [Read more →]

The father-son company, Human Car, have invented a car even more eco-friendly than the hybrid or whatever that hydrogen fuel-cell is.

According to this article from Wired the Imagine car is something straight out of The Flintstones (click to watch the intro). Only instead of Fred and Barney pedaling, it uses arm power (along with a little battery support). So, take one part modern Stone-Age family, one part early rail car, mix in some batteries and some recumbent features and you get the Imagine!

Hopefully cruising into a college campus near you, the Imagine is so green that it doesn’t even use ethanol – it uses calories! So, it’s clean and it fights obesity (which based on the season premiere of The Office is apparently an epidemic of huge proportions).

How do most people try to win $25,000? They play the lotto. William Yuan, however, uses his super-smart 12-year old brain to invent stuff. Stuff that I can’t understand.

He created a 3D solar cell. Not exactly your typical, “exploding volcano” science fair project. The end result - the invention might improve cell efficiency.

In his own words:

“Current solar cells are flat and can only absorb visible light,” he said. “I came up with an innovative solar cell that absorbs both visible and UV light. My project focused on finding the optimum solar cell to further increase the light absorption and efficiency and design a nanotube for light-electricity conversion efficiency.”

Nanotube? Wow. The use of the word nano that isn’t attached to a “ipod” confuses me. Good thing the award he won is usually given out to people at the graduate level (a level I have not reached). Bravo, William Yuan!

(Getting Paid to Do Nothing, or – A Whole New Meaning to Word “Staycation”)

In May, a new batch of test-subjects got ready for the NASA bed-rest experiment. The space agency pays participants $12,000 to stay in bed for 90 days. Seriously, the get paid to do nothing, although they are allowed to roll over and play cards. The goal is to better understand the effects of zero-gravity on the body, since astronauts suffer severe bone loss whilst in space.

Who signs up for this you might ask? People who don’t mind (possibly) parting with a small percentage of their bone? People who used to work for Bear Sterns, Lehman, etc etc? People who are curious about bed pans? Or, (more obviously) people who really like to play video games? Turns out, all sorts - people who need the money, need a vacation, or who want to change careers, some people even want to help the space program so much that they keep their jobs and work from bed.

The program keeps them in bed, with their body raised at a 6˚angle. Everything they do, and I mean everything, has to be done from that position, although, some of the subjects do get taken out for cool, “astronaut, space-type” exercise. So far, exercise seems to be the answer to reducing bone-loss - damn isn’t it always!

From my perspective - NASA conducted this phase of the experiment at entirely the wrong time. Not only were the test subjects deprived of a summer (I would gladly stay in bed during the winter), but they were also subject to one of the great inhumanities: summer broadcast TV repeats!!

So, besides helping astronauts - how is this good news? Well, what they learn might help fight osteoporosis! Enjoy that with your cup of milk and side of cheese.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/09/16/nasa.bone.loss/index.html?iref=newssearch