Giant Freakin Robot

Today there will be a solar eclipse, with a path of totality spanning 108 miles wide, and a travel distance of around 9,000 miles to go in a span of just three hours. It will take place over the South Pacific Ocean, beginning at 3:35 p.m. EST. If you don’t live in Northern Australia or on a series of rafts in the surrounding ocean, don’t worry: not only can you watch the entire thing live on this new-fangled gizmo we call the Internet, you don’t even have to worry about making any special glasses for it. Though you can, if making glasses is your thing.

A live feed of the eclipse will be shown from the website of the Slooh Space Camera, from a land site near Caims, a city in Queensland, starting an hour ahead. Because the eclipse will coincide with their local sunrise, it should be visually intriguing. Slooh president Patrick Paolucci is “ecstatic to have a world-class team on-site in Caims bringing the power and beauty of this spectacular event live to our worldwide audience.” The man exudes optimism even through text quotes.

Tourism Tropical North Queensland will also be providing live views from Caims via another website found here, though don’t expect the kind of enthusiasm that Slooh is bringing.

Every year The Futurist, the official magazine of the World Future Society, puts together a list of their top 10 predictions for the future. These aren’t necessarily things they expect to see within the next calendar year, but they do envision them coming to fruition within the next decade.

This year’s list includes a nice collection of science-fiction-worthy ideas, including robots, computers getting too smart for their own good, and space travel. There are also more practical concepts, like the economic future, and ideas for clean energy.

In order to boost tourism, South Korea is poised to spend an insane-sounding $275 billion on a mega-city called 8City. The installment will include a laundry list of amenities, including casinos, luxury condominiums, fancy-ass hotels, a variety of shopping malls, a theme park with a water park, and a 50,000-seat concert hall. There will also be a “healing town,” a “hallyu town,” which will serve as a platform for Korean entertainment, and a Formula One racetrack. It’ll be like super-Vegas.

For a long time now, man has dreamed of ways mankind might blur the division between humanity and technology. After all, what is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein if not a tale of just that subject? With technology continuing to advance, this is no longer just the realm of fiction and speculation. Consider Nigel Ackland, a man who lost his right forearm and hand in an accident, and who has now replaced it with a robotic arm. An arm so delicate and precise, it can crack an egg or handwrite a letter. Watch the video demonstration below: