3D printed house to emerge:

A Dutch architecture firm plans on using a D-Shape 3D printer to output a house in the shape of a Mobius strip, a project they estimate will take 18 months:

Dutch architecture studio Universe Architecture is planning to construct a house with a 3D printer for the first time.

The Landscape House will be printed in sections using the giant D-Shape printer, which can produce sections of up to 6 x 9 metres using a mixture of sand and a binding agent.

Architect Janjaap Ruijssenaars of Universe Architecture will collaborate with Italian inventor Enrico Dini, who developed the D-Shape printer, to build the house, which has a looping form based on a Möbius strip.

Dutch architects to use 3D printer to print a house

(via Beyond the Beyond)

[Hot damn. -egg]

TARDIS dress is bigger on the inside:

Jere7my sez, “This lovely young woman brought the house down at Arisia this year with her stunning “TARDIS Princess” dress. A “door” on the skirt opened to show the TARDIS control room, giving it the illusion of being “bigger on the inside”… I believe the creator/model is Sasha Trabane.”

TARDIS dress.

(Thanks, Jere7my!)

[GAAAAAAAAAH. -egg]
Parasitic wasp sanitizes its victims from the inside out: So, the downside is that you are being eaten alive, from the inside out, by a wasp larva. On the plus side, though, at least it has the courtesy to disinfect you as it goes along. At Nature News you can watch a baby cockroach wasp burrows around through the insides of an American cockroach, leaving a trail of clear, liquid anti-microbials in its wake.

Parrot drives robotic bird buggy:

University of Florida grad student Andrew Gray built the Bird Buggy for his parrot to drive around the house. “When it’s time to put the bird away, Bird Buggy is able to dock itself to a base station utilizing a web camera,” Gray says. (Thanks, Sean Ness!)

An epidemiology alphabet:

The only alphabet guaranteed to make you want to wash your hands. Made by one, Jennifer Gardy.

In related news, this video taught me that the parasite giardia is sometimes called “beaver fever”. Why? Because one of its major reservoirs — species that can comfortably host a parasite and pass it on to others — is, yes, the beaver.

Now here’s the part you probably don’t want to hear. Giardia is transmitted via what’s known as the “fecal-oral route”.

Now, nobody intentionally goes out and eats beaver shit. (One hopes. But this is the internet.) But beavers do shit in the woods. Near woodland streams. Which means that unwary hikers and backpackers can end up ingesting giardia when they drink from what appears to be crystal-clear waters.

Via the Worms and Germs blog

[Damn, this is so badass. -egg]

Augmented Reality Welding Mask:

This welding mask uses HDR video to ensure you see just how sloppy that weld was.

The creators of the MannVis augmented reality welding helmet have come up with a set of complex algorithms which allow real-time processing of HDR videos at 120 frames per second — in stereoscopic 3D, no less. The process creates an effective contrast ratio of 100,000,000:1 which is far beyond natural human capability. This incredible contrast ratio is used in an augmented reality view to show the welder inhuman detail as they weld.

The MannVis Augmented Reality Welding Helmet

(Thanks, John Courte!)

HOWTO make your own automated compressed earth brick making machine:

Tristan from Open Source Ecology sez, “This comprehensive, user friendly video shows you how to assembly the Liberator CEB Press; the worlds first open source, automated compressed earth brick making machine. Made from $4000 worth of parts, this machine sets a new standard in affordability, allowing users to build almost any type of brick structure out of dirt.”

The OSE Wiki page has full instructions for building your own:

CEB Press

(Thanks, Tristan!)

“As the broken city thinks big and radically about its…:

“As the broken city thinks big and radically about its future, a developer is stepping forward with a revolutionary idea: Sell the city’s Belle Isle park for $1 billion to private investors who will transform it into a free-market utopia. The 982-acre island would then be developed into a U.S. commonwealth or city-state of 35,000 people with its own laws, customs and currency.”
Developer pitches $1B commonwealth for Belle Isle | The Detroit News | detroitnews.com, via Will W.

Excellent drive-thru “invisible driver” prank, caught on video:

Self-described “Magician Prankster!” Magic Of Rahat produced this clever video demonstrating an effective “invisible driver” prank to play on hapless fast food attendants. (thanks, Joe Sabia!)