- A house that changes shape to survive earthquakes: Architect Fernando Herrera has a solution to the problem of how to build houses that can survive California earthquakes. He’s proposing that we make houses out of flexible strands of material that can bend like muscles. When a quake hits, the house will move with the Earth and remain intact.
- Mad scientists create artificial jellyfish from rat hearts: Oh, and the scientists also want to release their zombie rat jelly out into the wild to see if it’s capable of gathering food on its own. They didn’t specify what kind of food, but based on absolutely nothing, these things will probably latch onto your eyeballs and suck them out of your skull next time you go swimming.
- Man makes $9, working bicycle out of cardbard: There are a number of interesting bike designs made from a variety of materials, but one factor always held true: they’re not generally made of cardboard. Well, designer Giora Kariv wasn’t having that, so he went ahead and built a bike out of cardboard for $9.
- Brutal Battle Royale TV show could be coming to the CW: The LA Times reports that the CW is in talks to acquire the rights to Takami’s novel, about a junior high class forced to battle to the death, which was famously adapted as the bloody 2000 film of the same name. The Hunger Games effectively killed the chances of a US Battle Royale film, but a television series would be a different, and potentially very popular, animal.
- Real-Time Language Translation With UK Developer’s Own Google-esque Augmented Reality Glasses: A UK developer who has been hacking together his own Project Glass has now expanded its functionality to make a real-time speech translator. Will Powell, a 2010 graduate of the University of Oxford, has spent his spare time coupling Vuzix video eyewear with a few Raspberry Pis and an iPhone and iPad to allow for one person speaking one language to talk to someone speaking a different language with tolerable delays between translations. provided by Microsoft’s Bing.