Why A Chicken Slushie Isn't Gross

Last week, I report on what chicken nuggets were really made of. I might have over done it just a little bit. The twisting pink mass that looks like frozen yogurt infected might look disgusting. It might be mechanically separated chicken, chicken nuggets in their primordial form. And it is perfectly okay to eat. The goop freaked readers out, not only because it looks weird, but because of the description that came along with it: Because it's crawling with bacteria, it will be washed with ammonia, soaked in it, actually. Then, because it tastes gross, it will be reflavored artificially. Then, because it is weirdly pink, it will be dyed with artificial color. Daniel Fletcher at the University of Connecticut is a food scientist who's been working...

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Random FBI Tracking GPS Found

Most people would freak out and call the police if they found a cylindrical shaped thing attached to an antenna underneath their car, this is exactly what happened to Yasir Afifi but he did not react like most people. When 20 year old Yasir went to go pick up his car from the mechanic he was informed that the mechanic found this cylindrical device stuck to the bottom of his car. Instead of asking the police to come and inspect it, he decided to take pictures of the device and then post his story on Reddit. While he was doing this he and his friends were deciding what to do with it such as sticking it one someone else's car or even selling it on craigslist! Soon after they started thinking about what to do when Afifi noticed two "sneaky looking"...

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Robotic Mannequin Mimics Your Shape, Showing How Online Purchases Will Fit

Today FastCo reports on a shape-shifting robotic mannequin that can conform to your specific body measurements to show you how an online clothing vendor’s wares will wear on your unique frame. Fits.me, an Estonian start-up, created the robot to solve the great clothing conundrum of online retail: customers want to shop for clothing online, but they also want to try on clothes to see how they fit before they purchase. This, Fits.me figure, is why two-thirds of all books are now sold online, but only eight percent of clothing is.Their robot can recreate more than 2,000 male body types, replicating an array of different body types. Rather than mimicking your beer belly in real time, the robot tries on a retailer’s clothing lines in every possible...

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Director James Cameron To Film Avatar Sequel and Claim X Prize At the Same Time

The Challenger Deep dive was one of the most extraordinary, in addition to little known, feats of human exploration in history, the voyage in a submarine to a place even more extreme than the surface of most planets. Twelve men have walked on the surface of the Moon and about 500 have travelled into space, but only Piccard and Walsh have visited the very deepest point of the ocean, which they reached on January 23, 1960. Now it has been announced that the multi-Oscar-winning film director James Cameron plans to add his name to the very exclusive club of those who have travelled to the bottom of the Challenger Deep, part of the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific, and the deepest known point in the world’s oceans. Attempting such a feat...

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Google TV

Most of us don’t have time in our busy schedule to watch TV on TV so we end up watching many of our favorite shows on the computer on sites like Netflix and Hulu. Google wants us to be able to watch and find all our shows on our TV rather than our small computers so they have released Google TV. What is Google TV and with big companies such as Sony, Logitech, Intel, Dish Network, and Best Buy is it worth it? Read further and find out! First of all Google TV is not a single thing like Apple TV is, it is more of a software that can be run on many devices. As of now, you can get Google TV two different ways, through a separate box (very much like the Apple TV) that connects to your existing TV or you can spend some money and buy one of Sony's...

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Fingerprint Wallet Only Opens For You

When I recently heard that seller of luxury men's goods, Alfred Dunhill, was selling a secure biometric wallet, I was intrigued. I mean who wouldn't want a carbon fiber billfold that only opened with your fingerprint, and alerted you when it lost Bluetooth contact with your cellphone? Cost to the consumer: $700. Sounded like a pretty good deal, at least until we were hepped to a little something called the iWallet. Apparently the same thing (sans the snooty English rebadge), this bad boy is available in a variety of colors, including a fiber glass ($400) or lightweight carbon fiber ($600) case -- and it's made in the U...

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Toasted-Skin-Syndrome

Most of us have our own laptops that we spend too much of our time on. If you're sitting in bed you probably have the laptop on your lap and most of us know that laptops can get pretty hot but don’t think too much about it. Now evidence says that we really need to stop doing this or else we may get Toasted-Skin-Syndrome. Recently in the November issue of Pediatrics, a couple of Swiss scientists came across a boy that had an odd web like pattern of discoloration all across his left thigh. After he thought about it, the boy realized that the left side of his laptop gets extremely hot when it's used. The web pattern is most likely caused by all the blood in the area slowing down. This is a fairly serious reaction that does not happen very often...

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Pacemakers Can Alert Doctors No Matter Where You Are

The Dutch research organization Imec has created a new way to monitor a patient's implanted sensors. Many patients have for example, a pacemaker implanted by a doctor so that it can be read by a special sensor at home or at the office. The drawback to this is that obviously you must use be at your home or wherever you happen to have the sensor. Imec has now created a little sensor that you wear around your neck that acts as a median between your phone and the sensor. The sensor will pick up the information from the implanted sensors and then in turn relay the info to your cell phone. The sensor gathers data every 100 milliseconds from the pacemaker and then sends it to the phone. From your phone it can be sent directly to your doctor. You can also set the app up to alert you or even text someone...

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Playbook vs. iPad

The newest contestant in the battle to become the best tablet is the BlackBerry Playbook. At the moment this market is dominated by the iPad which is made by Apple but will this by iPad killer?? Read and find out! The Playbook will have a 7 inch (1024 x 600) LCD multi-touchscreen. While it is smaller compared to the iPad's 9.7 inch (1024 x 768) screen the Playbook has a higher pixel density meaning pictures and videos will actually look better on the Playbook than the iPad. The larger screen size on the iPad obviously makes it the heavier than the Playbook which is only 0.9 pounds compared to the iPad which is about 1.5 pounds. The operating system on the Playbook is called the BlackBerry Tablet OS (very creative right?). It looks very nice...

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iPads Increase Sales of Wine

Some restaurants across the world are now using iPads to show their wine lists. I know dumb, waste of money, novelty. But then why are they selling more wine? In Atlanta's most famed steakhouse. Bone's, which has over,350 labels in their catalog, sold 11 percent more wine than in the three weeks previous to the iPad introduction. Like Bone's, many restaurants around the world are having the same experience. Everyone using iPad wine lists seem to be having big sales jumps. As Bone's owners and clients say, "It's not the novelty factor." The reason is easy: Reviews. Most people don't know most items in a restaurant wine list. They may know that certain region and certain winery and certain grape and certain year are considered...

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That's Not Ice Cream...

This is mechanically separated chicken. Chickens are turned into this goop so we can create delicious chicken nuggets and juicy chicken patties. It's obscenely gross and borderline alien but it's not going to stop me from eating nuggets. They're too good.The process works a little something like this: There's more: because it's crawling with bacteria, it will be washed with ammonia, soaked in it, actually. Then, because it tastes gross, it will be reflavored artificially. Then, because it is weirdly pink, it will be dyed with artificial color. Yeah, that's just disgusting. But I can't shake my roots. I'm a chicken nugget fan/fast food fan for life. Also does anyone else think it looks like strawberry ice cream? Mechanically separated meat...

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Mind-Controlling Battle Helmets

The DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has been trying to get inside the minds of soldiers for a while now, but a new ultrasound technology could let them get even further. Working under a DARPA grant, a researcher at Arizona State is developing an ultrasound technology that could be implanted in soldiers’ helmets, which would allow soldiers to manipulate their brain functions to boost alertness, relieve stress, or even reduce the effects of traumatic brain injury. Manipulating the brain to enhance a soldier’s capabilities and maintain mental acuity on the battlefield has long been a topic of interest for DARPA and various military research labs, but the technology to do so remains limited. Deep brain stimulation (DBS), for...

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Sprint, AT&T, Verizon...and Wal-Mart??

Apparently, Wal-Mart doesn’t think they sell enough things at the cheapest rate so they have decided to go into the cell phone market. Their plans are aimed towards the lower tier of income who still want unlimited talk and text but cannot afford such a plan on carriers like AT&T and Verizon. Wal-Mart seems to have done it because their unlimited talk and unlimited text plan is only $45 a month, and the best part? NO CONTRACT! Even the current budget cell carrier, T-mobile, has its price set at $60 for its unlimited talk and unlimited text plan without a contract. AT&T and Verizon are much, much more expensive at $70 and $90 respectively and they both require contracts! Your probably think "This is too good to be true!", well you're...

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High Emissions Low Emotion..wait, i mean High Emotion Low Emissions

Ferrari has decided that they are not content with being one of the best makers of supercars in all of history but now, it seems as though they are trying to make their cars greener little by little. In the new Ferrari California they have added a new system called HELE. HELE stands for High Emotion Low Emissions (I'm waiting for the day when some Ferrari spokesperson says that in the wrong order). The system tweaks a bunch of electronics such as a quick start/stop function, intelligent engine fan and fuel pump control, electronically controlled variable displacement air-conditioning technology and adaptive gear shifts.  The start/stop function seems to be the most interesting item here as it can restart the car in 230 milliseconds. This...

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Tablets + Cars = ?

Tablets are growing more and more popular nowadays, but they are still, FOR THE MOST PART (I don’t want any controversy here), a rich mans toy. They can cost as much as a laptop but are not versatile enough to replace one. This trend has apparently been noticed by a few of the higher end car makers, BMW and Peugeot. BMW was the first car maker to include full integration in their cars with Apple's iPod and it seems as they want to continue this with the very first car maker that can fully integrate iPads into their cars. BMW seems to enjoy telling everyone that they are the first at this but is it really something that they should be telling people? What do I think? NO! First of all the car that modeled the iPad integration was a convertible...

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Volvo's Pedestrian Avoidance Doesn't Work So Well...

So say you’re driving in a school zone (what’s with me and school zones?) and you start to doze off but little Sally is crossing the street. Volvo’s new pedestrian avoidance system will keep you from hitting little Sally. What the system is supposed to do is if your car senses a human in the way of its path, it's supposed to alert you, suggest you brake and generally help you avoid hitting someone. As you can see in the video below, there is a reason why car companies use dummies for crash testing. In Volvo’s defense, the system worked most of the time and this particular incident was blamed on the “improper placement of the dummy.” Below shows how the system should have worke...

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Working Tractor Beams, Not Just Sci Fi

The tractor beam in action suspends a small particle over an optics table. You know that one scene in Star Wars where the Millennium Falcon is captured in Death Star’s tractor beam and is pulled in. Sure you do. Anyways that’s still not possible. But if you needed to move a couple of small particles say five feet; you can now do that. Using only light, Australian researchers say they are able to move small particles almost five feet through the air. This is more than 100 times the distance achieved by existing optical “tweezers,” the researchers say. Unlike the tractor beams in Star Wars, these ones work by shining a hollow laser beam at an object and taking advantage of air-temperature differences to move it around. The air around...

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My First Little Battlemech

Dear Mom and Dad, please get this for my birthday. I mean what little kid hasn’t wanted to wreak havoc while riding in claw-equipped battlemech. Now their dreams can come true with the “Kid’s Walker”. New from Japan (of course it’s from Japan), is the “Kid’s Walker”. Created by Sakakirba Kikai, the same man who made the life size robot “Land Walker”, he plans to rent the walker out to kids. I imagine someone being real popular when they bring this thing to the local playground. Now if you really wanted to buy this mech it will run you about $21,000. I mean what could possibly go wrong if little Bobby had this Christmas morning. var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript...

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