Hasta La Gadget!

After all these years, who’d have thought that kids got it right all along? The part about wanting to eat dirt and mud pies, that is, because there’s a French restaurant called Ne Quittez Pas in Tokyo’s Gotanda district that is actually offering a dirt-filled full-course menu. And by dirt, we mean actual black, powdery, dirt-y (but not necessarily dirty?) soil.

Food infused with dirt doesn’t sound very appealing to me. In fact, I think I might choke on it given the consistency and quality of dirt. But they don’t ‘cook’ their food with normal dirt that you have in your backyard. No, the dirt they use is ‘high-quality black soil’ that comes from Kanuma, Tochigi Prefecture.

The soil is “strictly tested for safety and purity” to make sure that the dirt soup, dirt risotto, and salad with dirt dressing that you’re about to choke feast on will satisfy your every craving. Either that, or it will probably ruin your appetite.

Of all the dirt-infused items on the menu, I think I’d be least excited for dessert – dirt ice cream. Yuck.

[via RocketNews24 via Foodbeast]

During the Civil War, the Confederate Army launched what has been dubbed the world’s first successful attack submarine. The submarine was called the H.L. Hunley and successfully sank the USS Housatonic in February of 1864. Shortly after the submarine signaled a successful mission, it disappeared never to be seen again.

Exactly what happened to the submarine has been a mystery for over 100 years. The submarine was discovered off South Carolina’s Charleston Harbor in 1995, and then raised to the surface in 2000. Researchers have been studying the submarine and believe that they may have found evidence of exactly how the submarine was able to attack and sink the Union Navy ship.

Recent research has shown that the design of the submarine’s torpedo, which held 135 pounds of gunpowder, wasn’t intended to come off a 16-foot spear as previously believed. Previously it was believed that the torpedo was placed against the hull of the ship and then detonated remotely. Now the researchers believe that the submarine was no more than 20 feet from the torpedo when it detonated. The researchers believe that the concussion from the explosion could have injured the crew or perhaps damaged the submarine leading to the death of all onboard.

[via USA Today]

For a long time, laser weapons were the stuff of science fiction, but researchers have able to create viable laser weaponry over the last several years. Boeing and the U.S. Air Force flew the Airborne Laser Testbed for a long time before scrapping the project last year. That massive laser was in the nose of the Boeing 747, was used to destroy missiles in flight, and could be an offensive weapon. DARPA has now announced that it wants to put significantly smaller laser weapons into turrets on jet fighter aircraft next year.

DARPA wants these weapons to be used in defensive situations to destroy incoming missiles. DARPA is working on two weapon systems including the High Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System (HELLADS), and Aero-Adaptive/Aero-Optic Beam Control (ABC).

The HELLADS would be a 150-kilowatt laser approximately 10 times smaller and lighter than current airborne laser systems. The project aims to create a laser weighing under 5 kg per kilowatt that could fit into a total space of only 3 m³. The ABC is a weapon that could be mounted on aircraft to shoot down incoming missiles behind an aircraft. It would use technology to allow it to maintain effectiveness while shooting through the turbulent air behind an aircraft in flight.

And if you think that the illustration above seems far-fetched, think again. It’s the rendering that DARPA themselves has been circulating for HELLADS.

[Military Aerospace via Gizmodo via Dvice]

Most men I know don’t smell like bacon, baseball gloves, top soil, or urinal cakes, but maybe it’s because the men I know take baths regularly and practice good hygiene. At least, I’d like to think so.

Nonetheless, it’s still funny to see ManHands’ line of man-branded soap featuring all sorts of weird and unusual scents like the ones I mentioned, plus more like muscle rub, bonfire, red wine, cash, and brewed coffee.

The product page boasts that the soaps will make any man ‘smell like a man’ and ‘smell the way they need to smell.’ That’s pretty ironic, considering the fact that all 19 scents being offered smell, well, pretty disgusting to me. At least, I’d imagine they would, given the actual things they based on aren’t exactly stuff any girl (or guy) would want to sniff on a regular basis.

They are: bacon, baseball glove, beer, bonfire, brewed coffee, buttered popcorn, cannabis, cash, cedar log cabin, democrat(?), fresh cut grass, margarita, muscle rub, nag champa incense, obsession cologne, red wine, republican, top soil – and, saving the best for last – urinal mint.

Each 3-ounce bar of ManHands soap is priced at $6.95.

It’s about time someone went ahead and created a modeling agency for unusual looking or not-so-very appealing people. In other words, I guess you could consider them physically ugly on some levels.

No, in case you’re wondering, I’m not kidding, because the Ugly Models Agency is very real and is actually representing a number of very ugly unusual-looking people.

Beauty is subjective and oftentimes, it’s judged only skin-deep. While the people on this agency’s roster aren’t too pretty on the outside (and how can they be, with the poses and expressions they’re comically wearing on their faces?), I think it’s worth saying that they’re most probably very nice and very beautiful people on the inside.

Even if they might not have the most conventionally appealing looks, at least we all know they have a good sense of humor. If they didn’t, I doubt they’d actually go and get themselves represented by said agency in the first place.

The Ugly Modeling Agency specializes in casting unusual looks for TV, movies, print, video and other media, and has been featured on National Geographic’s show Taboo.

[via Oddity Central via Laughing Squid]