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LA spending $1 billion on jetpacks? Er, no

Fox News is sometimes criticized for floating wayward ideas.

This criticism is unfair and unbalanced. The station understands its viewers better than any other and offers them a fine and subtle mixture of both fear and reassurance.

However, perhaps Fox News' "Fox and Friends" allowed its enthusiasm this week to fly a little too high. For the station reported that the city of LA had invested $1 billion in a jetpack called the Martin. The suggestion was that LA's police, paramedics, and fire department were in grave need of such a flying gizmo. This is entirely understandable, given LA's quite hopeless traffic situation.

Though "Fox and Friends" co-host Brian Kilmeade did offer words of caution: "You gotta make up some rules because you're going to have jetpacks flying into choppers," I have to report that the Fox report is rather untrue.

For LAPD chief Charlie Beck told the Los Angeles Times: "We certainly haven't bought any jetpacks. We haven't bought [squad] cars for two years."

While trying to muzzle my disappointment with the LAPD for such obvious technological myopia, I am grateful to Gawker for attempting to discover where Fox News might have done its flying sourcing.… Read more

Look, an iPhone charged by an umbilical cord

iPhone cables are nice enough. But they don't challenge the limits of one's design imagination. Yes, they're simple and white. But they don't make squeaking noises. And they don't really resemble umbilical cords. Not unless you are under the influence of highly influential chemicals.

Let us all be grateful, then, for Japanese artist Mio I-Zawa.

Not content with creating a mechanical tumor (every family should have one), I-Zawa decided to push the boundaries of iPhone cable design.

He is clearly an artist whose mind and physique are made for pushing. For he got it into … Read more

The bike with a flamethrower and ejector seat

There are two kinds of cyclists.

The good cyclists obey the basic rules of the road and don't take up half of it as they chat to their accountant friend from the cycling club. The bad ones ignore stop signs, ride straight through red lights, and delight in banging on the roof of your car with one hand while giving you the finger with the other, as if their blind arrogance was somehow all your fault.

According to the Telegraph, the U.K. insurer, ETA, which also seems to enjoy the brand name ilovemybike.co.uk, decided to talk … Read more

Sci-fi wars? Pilots say UFOs knocked out nukes

There are those who fear that aliens are bellicose beings, ready to swallow us whole and spit us out towards the moon.

Stephen Hawking appears to be in this pessimistic camp.

However, testimony offered by seven former U.S. Air Force pilots Monday makes me feel giddy with anticipation at contact with beings from afar. For it seems they might be the sort who put the fist into pacifist.

The pilots declared that they had either seen UFOs personally descend on nuclear establishments, or had received related reports from their colleagues.

According to CNN, Robert Hastings, a UFO researcher, declared: &… Read more

Teller accused of texting robber during bank heist

Technology is such an enabler. Even when it comes, allegedly, to robbing a bank.

For police in Arlington, Texas, believe they have rumbled an inside job of a bank robbery by stumbling on the cell phone of one of the bank's tellers.

Recently, there was a serious robbery at the Texas Credit Union in Arlington. It happened after closing time, when the robber allegedly emerged from the bathroom in order to relieve the bank of $183,000.

According to NBC Dallas Fort Worth, police happened upon the alleged robber Tyce Von Franklin shortly after the heist, when he was … Read more

Hunters shoot down Google cables

To some Americans, guns don't exist in order to kill other people, they exist as an expression of freedom.

Nothing explains this better than the news that hunters in Oregon have been using Google for target practice. Let me be clear, I have no firm knowledge that they know their targets belong to those heady liberals from the Bay Area. However, who could not conjecture whether the reported shooting of Google's fiber across this fair state may have something to do with political freedom?

According to IT News, Google has been driven underground by the highly accurate shooting … Read more

Hawking spurns God: Universe just happened

In the '80s, you were really no one unless you read Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time."

Not that it was an easy read. The most efficient option for getting a handle on it, I found, was to ask someone what was in it. As I understood it then, Hawking believed that there might somewhere, out there, be a God. You know, one of those all-powerful beings that we can never hope to quite understand.

In a new book called "The Grand Design", however, co-written with Leonard Mlodinow, Hawking seems to explicitly reject the … Read more

Lohan lawyer's amazing, amusing attack on E*Trade

Court papers are serious documents. They present serious arguments about serious issues that often have serious consequences.

However, I have just pored through a new 27-page submission by Lindsay Lohan's legal representative, Stephanie Ovadia, and I found myself moved. In many ways beyond the serious.

Should you have missed Lohan's reason for this particular court battle, she is alleging that a Super Bowl ad for E*Trade mocked her persona because it included a character (a baby, surprisingly enough) who was a milkaholic (as well as a boy-stealer) and happened to be called Lindsay.

E*Trade has moved … Read more

Camera on self-timer captures bag theft

If you're ever looking for a photographer, you could do worse than getting the Myers family to take your shots.

Somehow, they have a talent for capturing the moment--even if it's the theft of their own bag.

You see, they were standing outside the Capitol building in Madison, Wis., and decided to set their Canon G7 on self-timer, in order to snap a spontaneous family portrait.

Daddy Myers took the story to Gizmodo.

Having set the timer to 10 seconds and lined up the family as best he could, Meyers managed to get a shot that pleased him. … Read more

Woman claims fastest texter in the world title

As technology becomes more sophisticated, the world's texters can send their important messages and extremely personal photos at an ever-quicker pace.

Still, one British woman, 27-year-old insurance company worker Melissa Thompson, seems never to have thought it possible that she would become the Usain Bolt of SMS.

The UK Press Association reported over the weekend that Thompson was shopping with her boyfriend when she came upon a Samsung roadshow. Perhaps it came upon her because, before she knew it, she was encouraged to try to break the world record for speedy texting.

In order to win this title, her … Read more