Great jumping candle-beards, sensei!

Potentially the greatest game of all time has been fashioned from the mangled corpses of the animated undead, and stitched together with twine of ninja and threads of pirate. It’s an unholy assemblage that cries out for the sweet flesh of the living!

“Yarrrrgh!” it cries.

“Seishou!” you’ll respond.

In news that is infinetly more readable and just barely as important as the Scuderi Engine, Muskedunder Interactive has unveiled its flagship game:

Ninja Loves Pirate.

There’s very little to say about the game except just what it is: an old-school 2D sidescroller in which players command both ninjas and pirates to fight hordes of zombies and robots.

Go here and click Downloads to play the demo.

And take that steering wheel out of your pants.

I’ve mentioned on more than one occasion that I’m perpetually interested in alternative fuels and hybrid/ultra-efficient engine technologies. More than any other practical technology, the combustion engine literally drives our world, and improvements in efficiency are absolutely crucial to the future of automotive and industrial applications.

Traditional combustion engines as we know them are inefficient - grossly inefficient compared to other methods of generating power.

Today’s dealership-floor, piston-driven gasoline engine can waste somewhere close to 50% of the fuel it ingests fighting the intake atmospheric vacuum depression caused by the injector manifold butterfly-valve (or carburetor in non-fuel-injected engines). That accounts for half the pollution generated by nearly every combustion engine in use right now.

Also, the contemporary engine cannot balance optimum specifications for multiple qualifiers into one efficient unit. It can’t be light, generate minimal noise and vibrations, have a peak torque curve at low RPM and yet maintain substantial torque over a wide power band…all while producing low emissions and being adaptable to multiple fuel types.

There are more reasons, but I didn’t set out to bore you with that crap. I just wanted to introduce you to a remarkable alternative engine design. It’s the Scuderi Split-Cycle Engine.

The Scuderi isn’t the only alternative combustion engine design out there. Not by any stretch. But it is the only engine design to finally take an ages-old concept - the split-cylinder tandem engine - and make it work. I mean, really work.

Scuderi’s design divides the four stages of combustion (intake, compression, power, exhaust) into two chambers separated by a pressurized air tank.

Basically, the first cylinder performs the intake and then compresses the fuel-air mixture into the air tank. Then the second cylinder draws in the mix just after top dead-center - right at combustion - to create the power and exhaust cycles.

Normally, all this takes place in a single cylinder with the help of multiple valves. Splitting it up creates a considerably more efficient combustion cycle with far less wasted fuel, and in turn, considerably lower emissions.

The whole idea of an engine that starts the power stroke after the piston head reaches top dead-center is totally contrary to the maxims of engine efficiency. Since Henry Ford, engineers have known that if you start combustion as the piston is on its down stroke, at high RPMs the piston wil outrun the combustion. That problem has never been overcome until the Scuderi.

The addition of high pressure compressed air solves the top dead-center problem by generating so much more power at combustion that the piston can’t outrun it.

Anyhow, the Scuderi Group has a great little video explaining how the engine works. In fact, you probably didn’t read this and are already watching it.

Actually, you probably didn’t read this, then you clicked the video, realized it didn’t have any Japanese guys getting wailed in the package, and skipped this whole post altogether.

We don’t have flying cars. I cannot use a teleporter to get to work on time. Robots haven’t conquered the Earth. And when I come in from the rain, there is no automated voice telling me, “Your jacket is now dry.”

The future is largely a disappointment.

Or at least, it was largely a disappointment until I read this: Philips has built and is selling 3D televisions.

You say, “Dude! I’m not wearing some ridiculous glasses so I can watch 3D TV in my living room. That’s late 70’s-style, nerd.”

And I say, “Keep your glasses in your time capsule, doubting Thomas. This TV doesn’t need glasses. It relies on being able to trick your brain and your eyes at the same time to make you think those snakes are jumping off the plane right into your living room.”

Seriously.

Check this out from Wired:

A new line of 3-D televisions by Philips uses the familiar trick of sending slightly different images to the left and right eyes — mimicking our stereoscopic view of the real world. But where old-fashioned 3-D movies rely on the special glasses to block images meant for the other eye, Philips’ WOWvx technology places tiny lenses over each of the millions of red, green and blue sub pixels that make up an LCD or plasma screen. The lenses cause each sub pixel to project light at one of nine angles fanning out in front of the display.

A processor in the TV generates nine slightly different views corresponding to the different angles. From almost any location, a viewer catches a different image in each eye.

Providing so many views is key to the dramatic results. Sharp Electronics makes an LCD display that projects just two views, requiring an audience to sit perfectly still in front of the screen. With the Philips technology, viewers can move around without losing much of the effect — one set of left/right views slips into another, with just a slight double-vision effect in the transitions.

The TV can also display standard two-dimensional images, close to HD quality.

See. I told you so.

Read the whole article here. And get ready to buy your flying car.

Scientists are bored.

They’re bored and tired of looking at the same nine planets we’ve been looking at for centuries. They know that the job of science is to press ever forward - to constantly invent new reasons to contradict the scientists of the past.

Science is what scientists decide it is when they’re bored.

And now scientists have decided that our solar system needs more planets. An international symposium tribunal of telescope-peering magistrates has redefined the defintion of the word planet. Seriously. Because this has been the most important scientific debate in the history of thinking.

After two - read that, two - years of “intense astronomical debate,” science is fresh and new and “teachable” once more.

Prepare thyself for the new and improved, superhot, most up-to-date-est definition of the word planet you’re going to see in your lifetime. Science sayeth:

Planets are round. And they orbit a star.

Congratulations, science! The universe is infinitely more understandable now. And your new definition couldn’t be more comprehensive. Scientist Richard Binzel, an MIT astronomer, agrees:

We now have a new way to put the solar system together. We think this definition is reasonable.

So kids, get crunk to learn the new 12 to 53-member solar system map! My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas = old and busted. Teh new hotness is: My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nine Cold Pizzas Under A Winter Sky For The Birthday Excitement You Enjoyed In Your Pants Before The Delivery of Annual Gift Man Abracadabra!

Ha ha! Science is important!