Here’s some brilliant turn of the century engineering for you:  I work in an old warehouse building next to a large steel door hanging from rollers.  If there’s a fire, the rope holding the door in place will burn through and the door will roll down the inclined track, shutting the entrance to the room and, theoretically, preventing the fire from spreading.  

Of course everyone inside (i.e. me) dies, but still, pretty clever.

A few weeks ago I went on an annual trip to Michigan with some old friends from high school.  Each year it offers all of us a chance to get together and act like idiots.  There is usually at least one trip to the Walmart in town where various shenanigan utensils are purchesed: bb guns, screen printing supplies, watermelons+Crisco, or in the case of last year, a model rocket kit.  After immediately losing the two actual model rockets, we began looking around for other things to strap rocket engines to.

Behold the launch and recovery of the RacketRocket: