If you ever find yourself in need of a handheld weapon that shines a bright light into the eyes of your enemies and makes them puke—and you can’t find one at the local hardware store—this article is for you.
LOCKED AND LOADED
Background: Bruce Simpson is a consultant to companies that manufacture jet engines and the publisher of a popular technology Web site in Auckland, New Zealand. In 2003 he started writing about how easy it would be for a terrorist to build a cruise missile—one that can hit a target that’s hundreds or even thousands of miles away—from inexpensive parts bought over the Internet. When Simpson felt that this information wasn’t receiving enough attention from authorities, he decided to teach them a lesson.
Do It Yourself: Simpson started building a cruise missile in his garage. He tracked his progress via video, which he posted on his Web site. This time there was no shortage of attention—the project made headlines all over the world. Simpson claims that while he was building the missile, he got offers from buyers in Iran, Pakistan, and China to purchase the technology. In December 2003, when the missile was nearly complete, the New Zealand government ordered him to stop working on the project. Simpson said he had no plans to build more cruise missiles, but that he thought he’d “made his point.” He added that he’d given the missile to a friend “for safekeeping.”
Cost to Build: About $5,000.
Background: In 2007 Tao Xiangli, a 34-year-old electronics-store employee in Beijing, China, decided that he wanted to build a submarine.
Do It Yourself: On September 3, 2009, Tao, who has only a fifth-grade education, led a group of reporters to a reservoir outside of Beijing—and showed them his homemade submarine. The 20-foot-long submersible was made out of five oil drums connected end to end, with an entrance/exit turret, complete with a proper hatch on top, made from a partial drum rising from the submarine’s rear. The sub is powered by two electric motors connected to two propellers. A pressurized air system lets water in and forces it out of the bottom of the sub, allowing it to dive or rise to the surface, and it even has a periscope made from a digital camera. “I made it bit by bit,” Tao told the reporters, “purely out of my imagination.” To prove that it worked, he jumped into the sub, shut the hatch, and disappeared under the reservoir’s surface. Four and a half minutes later, the sub resurfaced, the hatch popped open, and out came Tao, flashing the “V for victory” sign. What are his plans for the sub? “I made it not for a patent,” he said, “but so that a talent scout can discover me.”
About 5.5 million American children are currently taking at least one psychiatric medication.
Cost to Build: About $4,400.
Background: In 2009 Justin Lee and Oliver Yeh, students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, decided to build a camera-equipped airship that could reach a high enough altitude to take photos of the Earth like spaceships do—showing the curvature of the planet, the thin layer of atmosphere, and the blackness of space above.
Do It Yourself: Lee and Yeh hooked up a styrofoam beer cooler to a helium weather balloon. Inside the cooler was a $30 digital camera (with the lens sticking out), set to take photos every five seconds. They also stuffed the cooler with a couple of Coleman disposable hand warmers to keep the camera batteries from freezing in the high altitude. And they added a GPS-equipped cell phone so that they could (hopefully) find the cooler when it fell back to Earth. On September 2, 2009, at 11:45 a.m., Lee and Yeh launched their camera. Five hours later, it was cruising at an altitude of 93,000 feet—almost 18 miles—when the balloon popped. The cooler fell for 40 minutes before it landed. The GPS system worked, and the duo found the cooler about 20 miles from the launch site. Soon after, their spectacular photos of the planet were shown on news programs all over the world. (If you want to see the photos and learn how to build your own space camera, do an Internet search for “Project Icarus.”)
Cost to Build: About $150.
Foul fowl: When presented with the opportunity, pigeons will eat human vomit.
Background: In 2007 Intelligent Optical Systems, a company in Torrance, California, was awarded an $800,000 contract by the Department of Homeland Security to develop an “LED Incapacitator,” or, as the company called it, a “Dazzler.” What’s that? It’s a nonlethal weapon that looks like a flashlight and emits rapidly changing wavelengths of very bright light, causing whoever it’s pointed at to experience headaches, nausea, and even vomiting. That same year, an electronics geek named “Lady Ada” attended a conference where she saw a demonstration of the Dazzler.
Do It Yourself: When Lady Ada got home, she did some research, found the patent for the Dazzler technology, figured out how it worked, and decided to make one herself. And she was pretty sure she could do it for less than $800,000. She could, and she did. We can’t explain how it works—it involves a lot of resistors and circuit boards and ohms and amps—but we can tell you that all of the complicated electronics in the “Bedazzler,” as Lady Ada calls it, are housed in an extra-large $40 flashlight from Sears. And, as she informs her readers: “This project does indeed cause nausea, dizziness, headache, flashblindness, eye pain and (occasional) vomiting. So don’t use it on your friends or pets.”
Cost to Build: About $250.
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A California teenager named Crystal Wiski bragged to Sacramento’s KCRA News that she sent and received nearly a third of a million text messages in April 2009 (303,398, to be exact). Crystal’s mom (who has an unlimited texting plan) told the news station that her daughter was still able to work 40 hours per week at her job and maintain straight A’s. An amazing feat, considering Crystal must have had to send and receive an average of 420 texts every hour of every day for the entire month. (No word on the length or brevity of the texts. We’re guessing a lot consisted of “lol” and “thx bff!”) Her explanation: “I’m popular. I can’t help it.”
In Hong Kong, a wife may legally kill her adulterous husband (but only with her bare hands).