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The Drone 3 is a proof-of-concept demonstration of a more ambitious plan. In an interesting strategy, the 1/3-size drone is being sold via Kickstarter in hopes of funding development of a full-size quadcopter hoverbike, designed for human riders. Think Return of the Jedi, forest moon of Endor, this sort of thing. Designers say the quadcopter approach, which uses four different overlapping fans, offers improved stability, maneuverability and payload capacity than competing two-fan hoverbike designs. In fact, the Malloy hoverbike is intended to share the skies with helicopters, planes and other aircraft. “This hoverbike is a helicopter — it takes off...

'I literally crossed my legs and tried to ignore the contractions. I willed the plane to hurry; I knew I couldn't hold on much longer'With more than six weeks until my due date, I felt perfectly happy about flying from Ghana to London – it didn't cross my mind that the baby could come early. I had been living in Ghana for two years, but I wanted to give birth in the UK to avoid any problems with the baby's British citizenship. I was booked into a hospital in the Scottish Borders. My husband, Duncan, would fly over to join...

The GOP just keeps getting weirder.

The owner of bikini coffee stands in Washington state banked more than $2 million in just three years because her baristas were also selling sex acts, according to local prosecutors. Snohomish County prosecutors charged Carmela Panico, a 52-year-old former nude dancer, with promoting prostitution and money laundering, alleging that she operated drive-thru brothels throughout the county north of Seattle, The Everett Herald reported Thursday (http://bit.ly/1lliY1P ). Her baristas made money mostly on tips, saying they could earn hundreds of thousands of dollars, authorities said. The women said they could make up to $14 for baring their breasts or genitals and...

Brief video at the link

Ending a half-century of geological speculation, scientists have finally seen the process that causes rocks to move atop Racetrack Playa, a desert lake bed in the mountains above Death Valley, California. Researchers watched a pond freeze atop the playa, then break apart into sheets of ice that — blown by wind — shoved rocks across the lake bed. Until now, no one has been able to explain why hundreds of rocks scoot unseen across the playa surface, creating trails behind them like children dragging sticks through the mud. “It’s a delight to be involved in sorting out this kind of...

Ronald Stan disappeared from his Ontario home in 1977. Police found him living in Oklahoma under the name Jeff Walton, where he eventually married Debra Proctor, both seen above. Through his entire life, Jeff Walton Jr. had no idea his father was keeping a secret. The 35-year-old learned from police earlier this month that his father, who he knew as Jeff Walton the first — a 69-year-old New Orleans Saints fan living in small-town Oklahoma — is not who his son thought him to be. The senior Walton was born Ronald Stan, a Canadian living in the former Township of...

Hello Kitty not a cat, has never been: Sanrio By Harumi Ozawa Aug. 29, 2014 - 11:00AM JST ( 45 ) Hello Kitty not a cat, has never been: Sanrio AFP TOKYO — Hello Kitty is not a cat, the company behind Japan’s global icon of cute insisted Thursday, despite an uproar from Internet users who spluttered: “But she’s got whiskers!” The moon-faced creation that adorns everything from pencil cases to pajamas the world over is, in fact, human. “Hello Kitty is a cheerful and happy little girl with a heart of gold,” brand owner Sanrio says on its website.

What do you do with a huge hot dog that is washed up on a Cook Inlet beach in Alaska? Light it on fire! That's what trekkers Graham Kraft, Andy Fischer, Eben Sargent, and Luc Mehl attempted. The giant foam hot dog in a bun that Luc Mehl and friends stumbled across this spring on the edge of Alaska nowhere left him haunted.

Members of the Islamic State and their sympathizers have also tweeted about their love for Disney movies and Robin Williams. The posts are part of a social media campaign meant to point out the humane side of the terrorist group that ruthlessly executed an American journalist earlier this week.Apparently the coldblooded terrorists who savagely beheaded a kidnapped American journalist have a sweet tooth. In an attempt to seem friendly and humane, Islamic State militants — the terrorist group that executed James Foley earlier this week — and their supporters have posted images of themselves holding jars of Nutella. The bizarre,...

This is the sickening moment a teenager plunges his pet dog head-first into freezing water in an "ice bucket challenge" stunt. The boy, believed to be from London, forcibly shoves the animal into the bucket in a cruel mutation of the charity fundraising trend. His actions have been condemned by animal rights campaigners who say it would have been caused "distress, if not harm" to the dog. Officers from the RSPCA said a "formal investigation" was being conducted into potential offences under the Animal Welfare Act. Footage of the incident emerged at the height of the craze - which has...

#Aries: “HOLD MY BEER. I'M GONNA TRY SOMETHING!” [usually followed by an ambulance trip] #Taurus: “Because I don’t want to.” #Gemini: “I love you. I hate you.” #Cancer: “Nobody understands me.” #Leo: “LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!” #Virgo: “Nevermind, I’ll do it myself.” #Libra: “But on the other hand...” #Scorpio: “No, I didn’t.” #Sagittarius: “DON’T WORRY, I GOT THIS!” #Capricorn: “There are two ways of doing things: my way and the wrong way.” #Aquarius: “I need my space.” #Pisces: “Stop it! JUST STOP IT!!” [because they tend to get drawn into other people's drama]

It's unclear how this about-to-open Nutelleria place plans to skirt the rapid-response team of hot-shot lawyers that's likely right now being deployed by Nutella manufacturer Ferrero, but if it does, expect choco-nut-spread breakfast pizzas and bacon-banana-Nutella waffle sandwiches in the near future at 82 5th Avenue in Park Slope (of course). The Pino Torinese-based company previously went after a dinky New England burrito chain for spreading the gospel of the spread and otherwise threatened to sue well-intentioned World Nutella Day creator Sara Rosso, so it's probably not going to be too excited to see its products all over the upstart...

Lazamataz's Hiss Torie Book so far: During Woe, Woe Too, the Not Seas rose to power and started the Third Rice. They singled out the Shoes and put them in Constant Tray Sun camps, which marked the beginning of the Hall of Cost. In may ways, the Die As Poorer of the Jews from Germany resembled the South African experience with App Heart Hate and the Ukrainian Hole o' Dough More. These and other Arm A'Gettin -like situations are things we can never forget. Help me write the rest of my Hiss Torie book!

It's a geological enigma that's had scientists speculating for half a century. But the mystery behind Death Valley's 'Wandering Stones' has finally been uncovered. It was previously unknown what caused the rocks to move across Racetrack Playa, a desert lake bed in the mountains above California's Death Valley, leaving their distinctive trails behind them. But researchers have witnessed a thin layer of water freezing over the lake, before breaking into sheets the thickness of a window pane and nudging the rocks as they were blown by the breeze. “It’s a delight to be involved in sorting out this kind of...

Remember that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where Professor Moriarty tried to escape from the holodeck? Well, the folks at Fermilab probably saw it, since they are currently launching a one year series of tests to find out if our entire universe is a hologram. Do we live in a 2D hologram? There’s no short answer, but physicists believe it may be possible. The holographic principle — a property of particle physics’ string theory — proposes that information about a region of space can be ascertained by the information on the surface that surrounds it — much...

Use the correct term, friends. Don't be like Shaney B. and call it "The Forbidden Snip." That would be wrong. Who comes up with these terms? You and I think of it (well, if we think of it at all, which I'd rather not) as sex-change surgery. But no! We have to be politically correct with everything now, so it's "gender reassignment" surgery. My highly insensitive producer, Shaney B., wants to call it "The Forbidden Snip," but of course that is extremely insensitive and wrong and should not be said, so I will not say "The Forbidden Snip" and you...

MOUNTAIN VIEW (KPIX 5) – Several people called the KPIX 5 newsroom after Sunday morning’s magnitude 6.0 earthquake in Napa, reporting mysterious flashes of light in the sky. Witnesses said the strange phenomenon looked like lightning. Similar flashes of light have been reported in earthquakes around the world, from Japan to Peru Friedemann Freund, a scientist with the SETI Institute in Mountain View, said the same thing happened during Sunday morning’s earthquake. And it wasn’t a transformer blowing up or UFOs. “What they are, are a consequence of the stresses building up deep below the earth, seven miles like in...

Hundreds of travelers on the road to Burning Man in their quest for oneness with nature and celebration of self-expression on a peaceful playa in northern Nevada's desert didn't expect to spend their first night in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart or Reno resort casino. But most were taking it in stride and were largely optimistic — as so-called "Burners" are apt to be — that the gates to the counterculture event would reopen Tuesday after rare rain showers in the Black Rock Desert turned the ancient lake bottom to a muddy quagmire the day before... ...Dozens of RVs...

If you say "I didn't do nothing man" enough times, the officer will typically think, "ya know, this man is so adamant that he's innocent, I believe him. I'll let him go." If you struggle hard enough with the police while they're trying to put cuffs on you, the officers will typically think, "this one has spirit; I'll let him go." The one with no shirt is the innocent man. Only innocent people run from the police. "I wuz scurred!" Even if the officer finds contraband on the subject, if he's black, the officer is in reality hassling him on...