Meeting of the Minds: Harbaugh Brothers to Face Off in Super Bowl XLVII

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(CNN) — One Harbaugh will win Super Bowl XLVII. Another will lose it.

That much is guaranteed, after the San Francisco 49ers coached by Jim Harbaugh and — a few hours later — the Baltimore Ravens led by his brother John Harbaugh beat their respective foes in conference championship games Sunday. Those wins mean the Harbaughs will be the first siblings to face-off on the sidelines of the NFL’s title contest and, in fact, for any major U.S. professional sports championship.

Both teams rallied from half-time deficits on the road to earn berths in the Super Bowl, which will be played February 3 in New Orleans.

Baltimore did it by reeling off 21 straight points, to overcome Tom Brady and the New England Patriots by a XX-XX score. It was sweet revenge for the Ravens, who lost last year’s AFC Championship — to the same Patriots foe, on the same Gillette Stadium field in Foxborogh, Massachusetts — in a nail-biter last year.

A few hours earlier, the 49ers rallied from a 17-0 hole to defeat the Atlanta Falcons, who had posted the best regular season record in the NFC.

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To Boldly Toe: ToPo Athletic Split Foot Trainers Are More Science Than Gimmick

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The man who tried to convince runners everywhere to liberate their toes in trainers that look silly is offering a new kind of digital separation. This time Tony Post, former boss of rubber-sole and barefoot-running firm, Vibram, is trading in five fingers for two toes.

His new range of ToPo Athletic trainers are less like gloves for feet and more like hooves, separating the big toe from the little ones with a rather unsightly slot. What does Post have against toe unity and what inspired his obsession?

Post first showed off an alternative approach to footwear when he ran the 1990 New York marathon wearing pair of leather dress shoes made by Rockport, where he was vice president. By then split-toe shoes were already a thing. In Japan, tabi socks and, later, jika-tabi shoes have been supported by everyone from Ninjas to builders for centuries.

Onitsuka, the Japanese trainer company now owned by running giants, Asics, made a modern tabi-inspired running shoe back in the 50s. They were worn by Shigeki Tanaka when the runner won the Boston Marathon in 1951, but then fell out of favour.

Nike, chief trainer pioneers, developed the cloven Air Rifts in the late 1990s but even its marketing might failed to elevate the shoes out of a niche. Vibram faced similar scepticism with its FiveFingers range but their modest success under Post helped create a minor boom in running barefoot or in minimal trainers.

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New Stealth Clothing Line Hides Wearer from Drones

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Surveillance cameras are ubiquitous, especially in the U.K.. and in the United States, Congress has already approved the use of drones for domestic surveillance. Then there’s the “Stingray” tool used by the FBI to track cell phones. It’s enough to make even those who’ve gotten nothing hide feel nervous.

New York-based artist Adam Harvey doesn’t like it one bit. So he’s taken it upon himself to design anti-surveillance clothing to foil government snoopers.

Harvey has been looking at the effects of such surveillance on culture for some time. Last year he designed a kind of face makeup called CVDazzle to avert face-recognition software.

In the spirit of fooling cameras – and messing with surveillance – Harvey has now come out in a set of hoodies and scarves that block thermal radiation from the infrared scanners drones use. Wearing the fabric would make that part of the body look black to a drone, so the image would appear like disembodied legs. He also designed a pouch for cell phones that shields them from trackers by blocking the radio signals the phone emits. For those airport X-ray machines, he has a shirt with a printed design that blocks the radiation from one’s heart.

The materials the clothes are made are specialized and expensive, so these aren’t the kinds of fashions that the local discount store will have – at least not yet. Harvey does plan to offer the clothes for sale, though.

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Florida Creep Pleads Guilty To Enema Tampering

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A Florida man faces upwards of 10 years in federal prison after pleading guilty this week to a revolting product tampering scheme in which he returned used enemas to the CVS pharmacy where he purchased the items.

Ronald Robinson, 35, entered his guilty plea to a single felony tampering charge during an appearance Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Jacksonville. A sentencing date has not been set for Robinson, who has been jailed since last year.

As detailed by prosecutors in a January 16 court filing, Robinson’s tampering occurred between April and June 2012 and involved his repeated purchase of enemas (six to a box) from a CVS in Jacksonville.

After using the enemas, Robinson (seen in the above mug shot) placed them back into their boxes, resealed the containers, and returned the products for refunds. The used enemas were then reshelved by CVS workers and later sold to other customers.

Robinson was collared after a CVS employee became suspicious about the frequency with which he was returning enema packages. On one occasion, Robinson told the worker that he had purchased the enemas for his mother, but “she no longer needed them,” according to a Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office report. When the worker examined the returned box, he “observed that all the enemas were used” and that the bottom of the package had been “re-glued…so that it appeared that it had not been opened.”

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Static Electricity May Be Key to Predicting Earthquakes

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A rise in static electricity below the ground could be a reliable indicator that an earthquake is imminent, say scientists who are now launching an experiment to predict quakes well in time to save thousands of lives.

Tom Bleier, a satellite engineer with QuakeFinder, has spent millions of dollars putting specialist measuring equipment – magnetometers – along fault lines in California, Peru, Taiwan, and Greece, the ‘Daily Mail’ reported.

The instruments are sensitive enough to detect magnetic pulses from electrical discharges up to 16 kilometres away, which could give people enough time to get to safety before a quake strikes. Scientists’ theory is that, when an earthquake looms, activity below ground goes through a ‘strange change’, producing intense electrical currents.

“These currents are huge,” Bleier said at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco. “They’re on the order of 100,000 amperes for a magnitude 6 earthquake and a million amperes for a magnitude 7. It’s almost like lightning, underground,” Bleier added.

“In a typical day along the San Andreas fault, you might see ten pulses per day. The fault is always moving, grinding, snapping, and crackling,” he told National Geographic News. Before a large earthquake, that background level of static-electricity discharges should rise sharply, Bleier said.

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Video: Deaf Bulldog Dancing to the Vibrations of his Master’s Blues Guitar

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Just because you’re deaf doesn’t mean you can’t have soul.

Which is what Jamynne Bowle’s English bulldog demonstrates when the deaf pooch feels the blues in this adorable viral video.

Bowle’s footage shows her dog rocking back and forth in time to the twelve-bar blues a friend chugs out on their acoustic guitar.

See video below:

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3D Systems’ Outsized Machine Does Multicolor Prints as Big as Your Head

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3D Systems, the industrial 3-D printing giant, is expanding its desktop line of printers with the oversized, multicolor-printing CubeX printers.

The printers, announced today at CES, promise an oversized print platform that can output objects up to 10.8″ x 10.45″ x 9.5″, more than twice the build volume of printers from other manufacturers such as the Makerbot Replicator 2. The line offers from one to three print heads to allow for colorful printouts, although information about the ability to blend the filaments into additional colors was not released.

CubeX appears to be based on 3D Systems’ 3DTouch series of printers, but with various upgrades. In addition to a modified chassis and larger print area, previously only available on the single- and double-head 3DTouch printer, the new machines also use the proprietary smart cartridges 3D Systems uses with entry-level Cube printers, rather than the more common standard spools of filament. These spools trade accessibility for a moisture-inhibiting system that is said to increase shelf life.

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College Students More Narcissistic Than Ever?

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The average college student thinks he possesses above average intelligence, drive, and leadership qualities, according to a new study that shows narcissism among young people is at a 50-year high.

The American Freshman Survey, which is published yearly by the Higher Education Research Institution at UCLA, depicts an upward trend in the self-confidence levels of college students since 1966. Over 70 percent of freshman responded that they are more driven than their peers, while over 60 percent thought they were more intelligent and made better leaders than the average student.

But students’ views of themselves are at odds with the facts, according Dr. Jean Twenge, a psychologist and author of the book “Generation Me.”

“Our culture now emphasizes feeling good almost as much as actual success,” she wrote in an email to The Daily Caller News Foundation.

In recent years, respondents showed increasing confidence in their writing abilities. Yet objective measures show that freshmen scored better in writing in the 1960s, when their self-confidence was much lower.

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Drunk Passenger Taped to Seat, Gagged by Flight Crew

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A boozed-up traveler on a Kennedy Airport-bound flight was turned into a tape mummy yesterday by fellow passengers who gagged him and bound him to his seat when they got fed up with his drunken shenanigans.

The passenger, who was on a trip from Iceland, “drank all of his duty-free liquor on the flight,” tried to “choke the woman next to him” and was “screaming the plane was going to crash,” according to passenger Andy Ellwood, who snapped the man’s photo and posted it to his blog.

The meltdown — in which the man also spat on several passengers — began when there were about two hours left on the flight, according to Icelandic news outlet Mbl.is.

He was arrested at JFK after spending the flight’s last two hours with his mouth covered, hands tied behind his back and torso bound to his chair with tape. The man’s name has not been released.

Bizarrely, federal prosecutors declined to prosecute the menace because passengers wouldn’t come forward to detail the man’s threatening behavior to authorities, a source told The Post.

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Video: Life-Size Flying RC Superman Startles Southern California Beach Goers

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A life-size model Superman has been flying up and down southern California’s coast line, startling beach goers.


The nearly-adult sized custom-made Superman looks surprisingly lifelike as it flies a through the air.

It is apparently a remote controlled-craft that has ingeniously hidden a propeller somewhere in the model.

To keep it aloft and rigid, it was likely handcrafted from ultralight materials.

At the end of the video, the model rockets nearly straight up.

Take a look at the fascinating video: