Daniel Deutsch, a former employee of Lucasfilm, built a fiberglass and aluminum replica of the Star Wars Landspeeder in his garage. With an electric drive system, it can hit a top speed of 25 mph, and can go for a few miles with one charge. Even at that slow of a pace, we bet Mark Hamill would still take it around the block. It joins Deutsch’s collection of other clever stuff, such as the R2-D2 ...

tags: landspeeder, mark hamill, lucasfilm, top speed, fiberglass, aluminum, star wars, pace, electric drive system

reddit_url='http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/multimedia/2008/08/gallery_bell_labs'; reddit_title='Once Mighty Bell Labs Leaves Behind Transistor, Laser, 6 Nobels'; reddit_css='http://www.wired.com/css/redditsocial.css' digg_url = 'http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/multimedia/2008/08/gallery_bell_labs'; digg_title = 'Once Mighty Bell Labs Leaves Behind Transistor, Laser, 6 Nobels'; digg_bgcolor = 'transparent'; ...

tags: fundamental physics research, nobel prizes in physics, high speed electronics, wave nature of matter, science discoveries, alcatel lucent, gallery bell, international glory, software fields, digg, nobels, nature of matter, clinton davisson, bell labs, priya, transistor, payback, nanotechnology, lucent, parent company

The choice of Durbin, of Illinois, as the man to introduce Obama is clearly intended as a bookend to the journey that began at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Four years ago in Boston, I introduced a friend—an Illinois state senator most people had never heard of—with a name most people couldn't pronounce. Thirty minutes later, Barack Obama's keynote address had changed politics in America—touching the hearts and inspiring the dreams of a nation. Nice bookend. But, ...

tags: illinois state senator, keynote address, bookend, politics in america, richard durbin, barack obama, acceptance speech, democratic national convention, 2004 democratic national convention, reminder, hearts, journey, dreams, boston

He's about to speak, after an introductory video. I'll update as often as possible with my thoughts, but comment away. This will become the Obama speech thread.

tags: obama speech, barack obama