Karl's Weird News

Pictured: The world’s smallest working train model that’s tinier than a fingernail:

Measuring a tiny eighth of an inch by quarter of an inch, this carefully crafted piece of engineering is the world’s smallest working train model.

The five-carriage train, which is 35,200 times smaller than a real train, nips around an oval route even taking in a ride through a tunnel on its three-quarter inch track.

Created by New Jersey train enthusiast David Smith, the miniscule model was built using nothing more fancy than a craft knife and a steady hand.

Catapult hurls obsolete projectiles:

Four Minnesota friends fashioned a medieval catapult to fling a variety of objects — such as wheelchairs and obsolete appliances — into the sky, they said.

The men, all in their 30s, built a trebuchet — a catapult originally designed in the Middle Ages to hurl objects at castle walls — the St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press reported Sunday.

The trebuchet was built by Kurt Modert, of Hugo; Roger Bacon, of White Bear Lake; Ryan Krueger, of Maple Grove; and David Proehl, of New Hope — all municipalities in Minnesota — the newspaper said.

They’re catapulting items like defective bowling balls for now but they plan eventually to launch a clothes dryer, the newspaper said.

Controversial Doll Lets Little Girls Pretend to Breast-Feed

A controversial new doll is leaving some parents wishing for the good old Cabbage Patch days. A Spanish toymaker known as Berjuan has developed a breast-feeding doll that comes with a special halter top its young “mothers” wear as they pretend to breast-feed their “babies.”

The halter top has daisies that cover the little girls’ nipples and come undone just as easily as the flaps of a nursing bra would. The doll — called Bebe Gloton, which translates as “gluttonous baby” — makes sucking noises as it “feeds.”

From humble tool to global icon:

In Switzerland, there is a saying that every good Swiss citizen has one in his or her pocket. It is an object that is recognised all over the world, and it is globally popular.

But the Swiss army knife had humble beginnings, and, at the start, it wasn’t even red.

In the late 19th Century, the Swiss army issued its soldiers with a gun which required a special screwdriver to dismantle and clean it.  At the same time, tinned food was becoming common in army rations. Swiss generals decided to issue each soldier with a standard knife. It was a life-saver for Swiss knife makers, who were, at the time, struggling to compete with cheaper German imports.

“My great-grandfather started a small business in 1884, 125 years ago,” explains Carl Elsener, head of the Swiss knife manufacturer Victorinox. “He was making knives for farmers, for in the kitchen and so on, and then he heard that the Swiss army wanted a knife for every Swiss soldier.”

Carl Elsener senior seized that opportunity with both hands, and designed a knife that the army loved. “It was a very simple thing,” explains his great-grandson. “It had a black handle, one big blade, a tin opener and a screwdriver.”

Now, to mark the 125th anniversary, that first knife is on display at an exhibition at the Forum for Swiss History, together with hundreds of other Swiss army knives. “The thing about the army knife is that it really has become a kind of global cult object,” says Pia Schubiger, curator of the museum. “Everyone seems to have one, lots of people even have collections of them, and we wanted to explore this phenomenon.”

World’s Largest Model Rocket to Lift Off Saturday 

On Saturday, April 25, the Saturn V, the rocket that sent men to the moon 40 years ago, will once again lift off from U.S. soil and soar over the Atlantic.

Only this time, it won’t be quite real. Rather, what’s going up will be the largest model rocket ever built — a one-tenth scale, 36-foot-tall, fully working replica of the Saturn V.

Its nine rocket engines will provide 8,000 pounds of thrust to lift it between 3,000 and 4,000 feet above its launching point in Price, Md.

Once it reaches its zenith, it’ll separate into three sections, each of which will parachute back to the ground.

Personal Submarines – Non-Military Submarines for Backyard Diving

The urge to own and operate your personal submarine has long been a nearly impossible dream. For a century, subs have found widespread use as research and military platforms, but a market for leisure craft has remained elusive. Lately these watercraft have found a niche as playthings for the wealthy: A mega­yacht without a submarine is like an RV without a Weber grill. Russian oil billionaire Roman Abramovich has a two-man sub aboard his 377-ft yacht Pelorus, while Paul Allen’s 413-ft $450 million Octopus sports a 10-passenger model. Of course, with the worldwide supply of such billionaires a bit depressed at the moment, most personal-sub makers are hoping simply to hold on until the next economic upturn. If the high-end market can survive, technology and design developments might make these vehicles available to a lower tax bracket.

Rocket man flies on jet-powered wings

Some people go fishing on their day off. Yves Rossy likes to jump out of a small plane with a pair of jet-powered wings and perform figure eights above the Swiss Alps.

Rossy, 48, made his first public flight with his self-made flying contraption in front of the world press Wednesday, after five years of training and many more years of dreaming.

“This flight was absolutely excellent,” the former fighter pilot and extreme sports enthusiast said after touching down on an airfield near the eastern shore of Lake Geneva.

Bulgaria’s WWII tanks to go under hammer

Bulgaria is to auction off World War II Panzer tanks thought to be worth millions of dollars, the country’s defence ministry said Thursday.

“People from all over the world, from America to Jordan, have declared an interest in these rare German tanks,” the deputy director of Sofia’s military history museum, Blagoy Milenov, told a press conference.

Six Panzer IV tanks will go under the hammer on March 19 “to gauge their value,” with another 41 going on the market in May, according to Emil Petrov, a defence ministry heritage official.

A Russian collector has already offered five million leva (2.5 million euros, 3.6 million dollars) to buy one such model held by the museum, Milenov has said.

Gary Gygax, ‘Father of D&D,’ Dies at 69

Gary Gygax, one of the co-creators of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, died Tuesday morning at his home in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, according to Stephen Chenault, CEO of Troll Lord Games.

Gygax designed the original D&D game with Dave Arneson in 1974, and went on to create the Dangerous Journeys and Lejendary Adventure RPGs, as well as a number of board games. He also wrote several fantasy novels.

“I don’t think I’ve really grokked it yet,” said Mike Mearls, the lead developer of the upcoming 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons. “He was like the cool uncle that every gamer had. He shaped an entire generation of gamers.”

New Book Shows How to Build Lego Guns, Catapults

Legos — they’re not just for good kids anymore.

A book written by two former employees of the Danish plastic-brick giant is burning up the Amazon.com sales charts — and raising eyebrows on the other side of the Atlantic.

“Forbidden LEGO: Build the Models Your Parents Warned You Against” was published in August by No Starch Press, a small independent publishing house based in San Francisco.

Its authors, Ulrik Pilegaard and Mike Dooley, both worked at the Lego Mindstorms robotics division before leaving to join an independent robotics firm.

“You’ll learn to create working models that LEGO would never endorse,” the book’s page on the publisher’s Web site promises. “Try your hand at a toy gun that shoots LEGO plates, a candy catapult, a high voltage LEGO vehicle, a continuous-fire ping-pong ball launcher, and other useless but incredibly fun inventions.”

So you wanna be a pro video game player?

Victory smells like Red Bull. Maybe it’s body spray. The hall is alive with the sound of small arms fire: popping pistols, thumping shotguns, staccato assault rifles. The crack ‘n’ whistle of sniper rounds; the sudden, terrible boom of exploding frag grenades. There are breathless ooohs! and frustrated groans and the urgent, irritating bleeps of depleting deflector shields, squawking reminders that you are absolutely, positively about to die, or worse yet, get pwned — that is, blasted and humiliated — by some 14-year-old kid wearing a Pokemon Breeders T-shirt.

Giant Lego man found in Dutch sea

A giant, smiling Lego man was fished out of the sea in the Dutch resort of Zandvoort on Tuesday.

Workers at a drinks stall rescued the 2.5-meter (8-foot) tall model with a yellow head and blue torso.

“We saw something bobbing about in the sea and we decided to take it out of the water,” said a stall worker. “It was a life-sized Lego toy.”

Jet Pack – 2 New Rocket Belts On Sale

To some extent, everyone’s in the market for a jet pack. But since Bell Labs built the first rocket belt (the correct, if less exciting, name) in 1953, potential buyers have been stymied by two problems: Rocket belts aren’t for sale, and even prototypes run on modern-day fuel (as opposed to whatever the Jetsons use) — which means rocket belts can weigh upwards of 100 pounds, with only enough fuel to stay aloft for under a minute. Now, a pair of companies have solved one of these problems — rocket belts are for sale.

Mexican start-up Tecnologia Aeroespacial Mexicana (TAM) offers its custom-built TAM Rocket Belt for $250,000, which includes flight and maintenance training. On a full tank of hydrogen peroxide the belt weighs 124 to 139 pounds (the bigger the pilot, the bigger the belt), and provides 30 seconds of flight. TAM’s sole competitor is Jetpack Inter­national, a Colorado-based company that sells what it calls “the world’s longest-flying jet pack.” Technically speaking, it’s true — the hydrogen-peroxide-burning Jet Pack H202 can stay in the air for 33 seconds, 3 seconds longer than TAM’s model. The H202 weighs 139 pounds, and is competitively priced at $155,000, flight classes and all.

Rubik’s “speed cubers” earning celebrity status

There’s an old game in town that is creating a new class of celebrities: “speed cubers” who can solve the Rubik’s Cube puzzle blindfolded, one-handed or even with their feet.

Tyson Mao, perhaps the biggest name in speed cubing, taught actor Will Smith how to solve the brightly colored cube for the film “The Pursuit of Happyness.” Shotaro Makisumi is a math prodigy so dexterous he can juggle seven balls at once. And Leyan Lo, a senior at California Institute of Technology, was featured on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.”

“Those three guys are among the biggest names in the business,” said Chris Hardwick, 23, who lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. He holds the record for speed solving the Rubik’s Revenge Cube and the Professor’s Cube, two advanced models, while blindfolded.

New toys read brain waves

A convincing twin of Darth Vader stalks the beige cubicles of a Silicon Valley office, complete with ominous black mask, cape and light saber.

But this is no chintzy Halloween costume. It’s a prototype, years in the making, of a toy that incorporates brain wave-reading technology.

Behind the mask is a sensor that touches the user’s forehead and reads the brain’s electrical signals, then sends them to a wireless receiver inside the saber, which lights up when the user is concentrating. The player maintains focus by channeling thoughts on any fixed mental image, or thinking specifically about keeping the light sword on. When the mind wanders, the wand goes dark.

Wireless Power Chargers About to Hit Market

Cords and cables have been a reality for consumer devices since the advent of home electronics.

That reality may be changing very soon, however, as a number of companies continue to make inroads into eliminating the wires that keep our gadgets tethered to a wall — and to one another.

Powercast, a new Pennsylvania-based startup, says its solution for wireless power harvesting is not only reliable, FCC-approved, and safe, but is also ready to debut in millions of small devices by the end of 2008, according to John Shearer, Powercast’s founder and chief executive.

The technology? Radio waves, the same technology driving cellular phones and your FM dial.

Whether it’s the promise of short-range wireless technologies like ultra wideband (UWB), wireless USB, and the wireless high-definition interface (WHDI) that transmit data from one device to another, or methods for supplying those devices with power, such as induction — or now, radio frequency (RF) — the future home looks to be increasingly cordless.

Will “Flying Squirrel” Suit Let Skydivers Jump Without Chutes?:

It sounds crazy, and it probably is: Skydive from 15,000 feet (4,600 meters) and land safely—without a parachute—wearing a getup that resembles a flying squirrel costume (wallpaper: flying squirrel).

“It’s pretty much considered impossible,” said Maria von Egidy, a designer with Jii-Wings in Cape Town, South Africa.

Von Egidy isn’t interested in trying the stunt herself. But she aims to design the first wingsuit that will help pull it off.

Scuba-Doo – The Underwater Moped

This has got to be the laziest way to SCUBA dive, the Scuba-Doo (where are you!). It looks like a cross between a moped and yellow submarine and promises to give people the thrills of SCUBA diving without the inconvenience of wearing a mask and having to swim.

Comfy cushion doubles as flatulence filter

Flatulence — it may cause uncontrollable giggling among kids, but for the rest us, it’s no laughing matter. Now two entrepreneurs have come the rescue with a seat cushion that also silences the sound and stanches the stink of breaking wind.

The GasBGon, conceived by husband-and-wife team Jim and Sharron Huza — he’s an air-quality and filtration engineer and she studied nursing — is designed to “clear the air, not the room” according the product’s Web site.

For sale – world’s smallest country

A FORMER World War II fort in the North Sea, which was settled 40 years ago and declared a state with its own self-proclaimed royal family, is up for sale. The tiny Principality of Sealand, which began life as Roughs Tower in 1941, is a 550 sq m steel platform perched on two concrete towers 11km off the coast of Harwich, eastern England.

It’s Alive!:

WHEN I FIRST MEET PLEO, the tiny dinosaur is curled up on a kitchen table, its long tail and big head pulled inward. It’s snoring quietly, emitting a strangely soothing sound, almost like the amplified purring of a guinea pig. I’m tempted to reach out and touch it – but it looks so peaceful, I can’t bring myself to disturb it.  Then I realize what I’m doing: I’m worrying about waking up a robot.

Amazing £40,000 ‘dolphin boat’ which can leap out of the water

It looks like something from a James Bond film. Shaped exactly like a dolphin, this boat is the latest toy for millionaire adrenaline junkies. The Seabreacher can jump 10 feet in the air and even perform acrobatic tricks. Created by two water sport fanatics, New Zealander Rob Innes, 33, and Californian Dan Piazza, the Seabreacher is made of out of fibre glass, stainless steel and aluminium and uses the discarded canopies of US fighter jets. The two-seater craft can submerge 2 ft underwater for around 20 seconds at a time creating the dolphin-like dive effect.