Hasta La Gadget!

In the Star Wars space opera, most of us would be able to tell right from the get go just who are the bad guys, and which are the good guys who are all out to save the galaxy from the firm grip of a crazed Emperor Palpatine. Well, those who need to eke out a living have signed up with various Stormtrooper divisions, simply because the Rebel Alliance are unable to pay that well, not to mention they do not have the latest hardware to play around with. Still, this does not mean all under the Galactic Empire are evil, some of them have a heart so much so that they keep pet birds in their homes. If you are part of such a crowd, why not do so with the £24.99 Star Wars Death Star Birdhouse to stay in vogue?

Of course, the Rebel Alliance might not look on to this particular birdhouse design too kindly, especially when it has been used to blow up an entire planet in the past, so any representation of this particular symbol should not be used despite the fact that it houses a life (or more!) within. At the very least, this is the deadliest birdhouse in the galaxy, no? Made out of high quality ceramic, there are no exposed thermal exhaust ports that could compromise its structural integrity. Watch out for dropping “torpedoes” from above now!
[ Star Wars Death Star Birdhouse shows you’re all heart copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Morning light shines softly through a large glass window as a travel-weary Michio Kaku gamely musters a smile. Just a few hours removed from a cross-country flight from the East Coast, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that this physicist is plain tired. Then the camera starts rolling. In an instant, Kaku looks rejuvenated as he plays to his audience and waxes poetic about his favorite subject — science.

In the world occupied by nerds and techno geeks, theoretical physicist and futurist Kaku is akin to a rock star. Chalk it up to a flowing mane of pepper-gray locks and the fact he co-created string field theory (which tries to unravel the inner workings of the universe). These days, Kaku can mostly be found teaching at City College of New York where he holds the Henry Semat Chair and Professorship in theoretical physics. When he isn’t teaching, Kaku still spends most of his extra time talking science, whether it be through his radio programs, best-selling books such as Physics of the Future or appearances on shows like The Colbert Report, where he recently enlightened Stephen Colbert about the dangers of sending Bruce Willis into space to blow up a deadly asteroid. As fun as it is for Kaku to talk physics, however, he also considers it a matter of survival

Filed under: Misc, Science

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We’ve seen birdhouses that look like R2-D2 and C-3PO, but if your feathered friends lean towards the Dark Side – and are suckers for official Star Wars merch – forget about the droid nests and get this instead. It’s an officially licensed Death Star ceramic bird nest. Now that’s what I’m Tarkin about.

It doesn’t have a superlaser, but at least it doesn’t have vulnerable reactor cores either.

You can order the Death Star birdhouse from the Fowndry for about $39 (USD).

[via Bit Rebels]

The Death Star may be well on its way to Kickstarter success, with £224,596 pledged out of total £20,000,000 goal, but its construction won’t go unopposed. Rebel forces have rallied to crowdfund a means to oppose Imperial tyranny, in the form of an X-Wing fighter and a pilot trained to use it to take down any moon-sized space stations that may end up floating around in the void.

The project’s creators are seeking $11,000,000 in funds to finance the development of a single X-Wing, and to train a pilot to use the fighter to deliver its deadly payload. Let me take this opportunity to volunteer myself to wear the orange jumpsuit, since I’ve logged countless hours on the X-Wing and TIE Fighter simulators that LucasArts wisely issued back in the 90s in anticipation of this exact scenario.

If somehow I’m not picked to be the first X-Wing pilot, then at least I hope to be considered for the entire X-Wing squadron that project creators Simon Kwan and Ed Dean hope to put together if they can manage to hit their stretch goal of $4,458,672,683. For backup, should the project achieve 13 million Galactic Standard Credits, the team will also fund and build the creation of a Corelleian YT-1300 freighter, which certainly came in handy when the Rebels took down the second death start in our distant past during that far-flung galactic struggle we all know so well from the re-enacted documentaries created by George Lucas.

While it’s likely true that the galaxy needs an X-Wing or two, I’m a little skeptical about this project’s ability to achieve its goals, for one reason: the conversion rate for Galactic Standard Credits is all wrong. The GSC was estimated to be worth around 0.62 USD back in May 2012, which means that that 13 million stretch goal would translate to around 8.6 million USD – under the total funding amount required to make the project successful in the first place.

That’s just crazy, and it definitely doesn’t give me any confidence in the ability this project’s creators to get the job done. If you can’t handle basic galactic currency conversion, how do you expect to manage planetary defence? There’s a lot of math involved.

We’re not sure what is the Internet’s obsession with getting a Death Star built as they petitioned for the U.S. government to build it, only to be met with rejection weeks later. You would think that would be the end of the story and Star Wars nerds around the world would return to their forums to choice to complain about The Phantom Menace for the millionth time. But it turns out it didn’t end there as a Kickstarter project has been started to help build a Death Star.

The Kickstarter Open Source Death Star campaign has a $30 million dollar funding goal, which will be used to help create “more detailed plans” than the current design team has come up with as well as purchasing “enough chicken wire to protect reactor exhaust ports.” The project also mentions a Stretch Goal of $850 quintillion dollars would be needed in order to use the funded plans to actually build a full-scale Death Star.

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