A very creative father (and uncle) who goes by the name Griddlock Cosplay built an absolutely brilliant Mechwarrior costume that requires both a child and an adult in order to make it work. There is a fully functioning fan and Arduino controlled LED lights to make the costume more realistic. The front of the costume has a hinged doorway that lets a kid enter and sit at the controls, while the rest of the costume goes to the grownup.
Posted in Because I Can, Gadgets, Humor
https://youtu.be/bwKMUgURnlY
Posted in Because I Can, Music, The Little Screen (Television)
Dec251716:55:32
Chinese Mountain Cat (Felis bieti) must be one of the most poorly known cats in the world. With a very small known range on the northeastern Tibetan Plateau (Qinghai and northwest Sichuan), it is the only cat endemic to China and it was as recently as 2007 that it was first photographed in the wild (via a camera trap).
Chinese Mountain Cat is so poorly known that a young Chinese scientist who wanted to study it for his PhD was told by his supervisor that there simply wasn’t enough information to warrant a PhD and to focus on another mammal. In recent years there have been sporadic sightings in Rouergai (Sichuan Province) and near Yushu (Qinghai Province) but it remains one of the most mysterious felids on the planet.
Read the rest at BirdingBeijing
Posted in Because I Can, Critters
On this day in 1867, the U.S. formally takes possession of Alaska after purchasing the territory from Russia for $7.2 million, or less than two cents an acre. The Alaska purchase comprised 586,412 square miles, about twice the size of Texas
Posted in Events
NTSB board member Earl Weener claimed more than 1,000 people were at risk of serious injury or death after the Air Canada flight coming in to land came “within feet” of hitting four fully loaded planes that were lined up and waiting to take off on the taxiway.
Read the whole story on Jalopnik.
Posted in Because I Can, Events, Planes Trains and Automobiles
U.S. Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager becomes the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound.
Yeager, born in Myra, West Virginia, in 1923, was a combat fighter during World War II and flew 64 missions over Europe. He shot down 13 German planes and was himself shot down over France, but he escaped capture with the assistance of the French Underground. After the war, he was among several volunteers chosen to test-fly the experimental X-1 rocket plane, built by the Bell Aircraft Company to explore the possibility of supersonic flight.
For years, many aviators believed that man was not meant to fly faster than the speed of sound, theorizing that transonic drag rise would tear any aircraft apart. All that changed on October 14, 1947, when Yeager flew the X-1 over Rogers Dry Lake in Southern California. The X-1 was lifted to an altitude of 25,000 feet by a B-29 aircraft and then released through the bomb bay, rocketing to 40,000 feet and exceeding 662 miles per hour (the sound barrier at that altitude). The rocket plane, nicknamed “Glamorous Glennis,” was designed with thin, unswept wings and a streamlined fuselage modeled after a .50-caliber bullet.
Because of the secrecy of the project, Bell and Yeager’s achievement was not announced until June 1948. Yeager continued to serve as a test pilot, and in 1953 he flew 1,650 miles per hour in an X-1A rocket plane. He retired from the U.S. Air Force in 1975 with the rank of brigadier general.
Posted in On This Day, Planes Trains and Automobiles
The film was released in theaters October 14, 1954.
White Christmas is a 1954 movie starring Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye that featured the songs of Irving Berlin, including the titular White Christmas.
Posted in Because I Can, On This Day, The Little Screen (Television)
