porsedal

Rob Spence, a filmmaker from Canada, had his eye wounded in a shooting accident as a child. Presumably furious at its weak character and lazy work ethic, Spence asked doctors to just completely remove it a few years ago, and now he’s getting it replaced with a small camera (of the type normally used for colonoscopies,) a battery, and a wireless transmitter - effectively turning him into a human documentarian capable of recording, broadcasting, and relaying literally everything he sees, as he sees it.
Clearly this is an advantage over other, larger, more expensive filmmaking crews, as it not only gives Scott a completely secret way to record, but makes him basically the world’s smallest, cheapest studio. But god, consider what he’s sacrificed to get here! Not only has he been shot in the eye, but he’s demanded that said eye be removed, years later, and then replaced with something that normally goes up your butt. The man’s got a butt-eye for christ’s sake! Van Gogh may have cut off his ear, but until he replaces it with a dick, Rob Spence wins for craziest gesture in the name of art, hands down.

Some of us, as children, saw Spider-man’s amazing agility and web-swinging prowess and were immediately struck with jealous awe. The desperation even had some of us - who shall remain unnamed and are in no way me - microwaving spiders in an attempt to harness their radioactive bite (all right, so some of us were a little more retarded than others.) Not like Liming Dai, and Zhong Lin Wing, two professors at the universities of Dayton and Georgia Tech, respectively, who invented a material with ten times better proportional sticktion (I swear to god that’s also a word) than a Gecko’s foot.

The true awesomeness of the material, however, is that the nanotube spatulae (basically microscopic hairs) design also allows the material to pull free with a well-placed tug, letting you adhere to virtually any surface as well as quickly remove from that surface for redeployment. Or, as your childhood selves would understand it: Holy Shit! We get to swing on webs now!
So on the upside: Childhood dreams realized! Let’s get to work on making Transformer Best Friends a reality and we’re all set. On the downside? Prepare for a massive Darwinian strike aimed solely at the ADD infested nerd-children of America. Their awkward, flailing flips and mid-air somersaults shall bring a reaping as terrible to endure as it is hilarious to see.

Super Sight

Scientists are getting damn close to inventing a true invisibility cloak. Previous efforts, like the one pictured before - while still scarily advanced - are nonetheless always slightly inaccurate, because they rely on a camera/projector technique. Recently, a paper published in the March 2009 issue of SIAM Review collected all that we currently know about the method of invisibility, and it turns out it’s a lot.

We can not only render things invisible in theory by bending light waves around an object, but have even progressed so far as to be developing the metamaterials needed to bring the theory to life.
So, while it’s incredibly close but currently theoretical in the private sector, who’s to say that better-funded government scientists don’t already have a secret working prototype? How would you know, after all? They could be there right now…they could be….right…BEHIND YOU! Nah, I’m just kidding. Why would they be behind you? They’re invisible, after all. They’re probably right in front of you. Or in your bathroom, depending on their inherent creepiness and the severity of their pervert-mustache.

D3O (d-3-o) is an exciting new development in bulletproofing material and not, as it sounds, a generic brand version of a Star Wars robot. Or rather, it’s an impact proof material which, in conjunction with already existing bulletproof materials, could provide true invulnerability to most gunshot wounds. As it stands now, you can survive many gunshot wounds with traditional Kevlar, but are likely to feel pretty poor afterwords, as the distributed force causes fleshwounds, broken bones and large concentric bruises - like getting your ass beat by the atmosphere. Oftentimes the impact from surviving a gunshot will temporarily knock the victim unconscious as well, leaving them vulnerable with a guy that has already made his feelings clear through the administration of bullets.
But D3O is set to stop that: It works kind of like cornstarch -iIt starts off as gel, but gets proportionally harder when more force is exerted on it (the dick joke here is just too easy, I have my standards.) When soft, the substance allows for greater flexure, but when rigid can reduce the strength of a bullet impact by more than half. And that’s what she said (I hate myself.)

The UK Ministry of Defense has already commissioned body and head armor using the new substance, obviously seeing the potential for better protection… or just because it looks really, really fun to grab. We’re talking bubble-wrap levels of tactile stimulation here, people.

Leg amputees, if not wheelchair-bound, are often left struggling with awkward prosthetics, canes, and crutches. But now, with the aid of newly developed super-legs, even double amputees can run every bit as well as some of the world’s fastest sprinters. This all began in the 2000 paralympics (which I promise is a real thing and not just me being a bastard about wordplay) with a South African man named Oscar Pistorius who became the first amputee to complete the 200-meter dash in under 22 seconds, beating the previous world record, held by one Brian Frasure.

But there is some controversy over the legs’ use. While they only put out a 95% return of force as compared to the normal human legs’ 200% return, the running prosthetics also give the user a springing gait and increased stride distance, which could lend them an unfair advantage as well as a jaunty disposition. Considering that this story took place in the ancient days of the year of our lord, 2000, and the fact that the legs have since gone through countless permutations by a myriad of companies, many designs endow abilities well beyond typical human capacity. But there is a great tragedy being overlooked in this story: Brian Frasure, the previous world record holder, actually helped design these prosthetic carbon-fiber feet, and he was the one who gave them to Pistorius…who promptly proceeded to wipe Frasure from the record books with them.
The poor bastard. He’s probably working on a time machine right now, to prevent himself from ever building these legs. If so, knowing his track record, he will most likely be thwarted when somebody inevitably uses that time machine to steal his plans and then invent it before him. He will die as he lived, crippled (by irony.)

By far one of the most prolific serial killers of all time, the “Monster of the Andes” butchered enough people to fill a small town. After killing around 100 tribal women in Peru in the 1970s, he was apprehended by tribal forces that were just about ready to execute him when they were convinced by an American missionary that was staying with them at the time to take him to the police force instead. Unfortunately, the police then just let him go, after which Lopez travelled to Ecuador, where he proceeded to kill about 3-4 girls a week, claiming that girls in Ecuador were “more gentle and trusting, more innocent”. This carried on until he was caught in 1980, but police were still unsure as to his guilt, but a flash flood uncovered a mass grave that had hidden many of his victims, which then led to his arrest. However, the Ecuador government then released him in 1998, deporting him to Columbia. Lopez allegedly said that he was being released for “good behavior”.

Originally confessing to thousands of murders with his accomplice, Ottis Toole, police then subsequently attributed roughly 213 murder cases to his name (although only 4 were ever solidly proven to have been committed by him, one of which included his own abusive mother), thanks to the information they garnered from Lucas. He was apprehended in 1983 and was then sentenced to death, but bizarrely enough, his sentence was commuted to life in prison by the then-Governor George W. Bush. Out of 153 death penalty cases to be reviewed, Bush decided that this was the only case he’d intervene on. Many people believe that Lucas had simply been toying with the police, testing them, maybe hoping to embarrass them somehow, just to see how far he could go. Lucas died of natural causes in 2001, aged 64, taking the true number of how many crimes he committed to the grave with him.

His regime spanned 15 years, starting in 1928, Ludke was caught near the end of World War II by Nazi police, after they allegedly discovered him committing necrophilia on the corpse of one of his recently-deceased victims. He subsequently confessed to a number of crimes and was declared insane, being sent to a hospital in Vienna where he was subjected to medical experiments which resulted in his death by lethal injection in 1944. Even after his sterilization due to having been previously caught molesting a young woman, he continued to assault and then murder a number of other women, often by stabbing and strangulation.

A notorious Ukrainian serial murderer, as well as being a chronic bed-wetter suffering from impotence, Chikatilo earned himself such titles as “The Ripper of Rostov”, “The Rostov Ripper” and the “Butcher of Rostov”, after the area in which the murders were committed. A sexual deviant, Chikatilo was only able to achieve orgasm by stabbing and slashing his victims, rather than outwardly raping them. Active from the late 1970s, all the way through to the very early 1990s, he was apprehended and interrogated by police and sentenced to death, a sentence which was carried out in 1994 by a gunshot to the head. He was 57 at the time.

An American, starting around the late 1960s to early 1970s and the continuing on for as many as 7-8 years, Stano picked up a number of hitch-hikers and young women, murdering them via shooting, stabbing or strangulation. Apprehended in 1980, he was sentenced to life in prison until his execution by the electric chair in Florida, 1998.

South Africa’s most infamous serial killer and perpetrator of what were known as the “ABC Murders” due to the fact that started, continued and finished in towns named Atteridgeville, Boksburg and Cleveland. He would lead his victims out into deserted fields under false pretences, where he would then overpower, rape and murder them. After his capture in 1995 and then conviction in 1997, he was sentenced to 2,410 years, with the possibility of parole in 930 years. In the year 2000, it was reported that Sithole had contracted AIDS whilst in prison.

Ridgeway would later become known as the “Green River Killer” (due to his propensity for dumping bodies in the Green River in Washington) for his killing spree during the 1980s which would result in him becoming one of the most prolific serial murderers in American history. He would abduct runaways or prostitutes and murder them after sexually assaulting them. Ridgeway was convicted in 2001 for murders that he had committed 20 years previously and this was down to a breakthrough in DNA evidence linking him to his victims. Ridgeway would later go on to say that murdering young women was his “career”.

Also known as the “Killer Clown” due to the fact that Gacy would throw parties at which he would don a clown suit and make-up, acting under the guise of “Pogo the Clown”. Gacy was convicted of the rape and murder of some 33 young men during the years of 1972 and 1978, most of which he buried underneath his own home. He was executed in 1994, by lethal injection. Gacy managed to shock everyone when his crimes were uncovered, as he was a popular political and local figure at the time, living a seemingly normal life. Supposedly, his last words were “kiss my ass”. The photo of Gacy here is of him with First Lady Rosalynn Carter, which proved to be somewhat embarrassing for the Secret Service when his crimes were uncovered.