Lawnmowers, with their spinning, ground level blades, are most dangerous to small animals, young children, and feet. Recently, one Mowing Menace trapped a 4-year-old girl's foot under its blades of doom, causing enough damage to require amputation. In fact, she was one of 77,000 people who go to the hospital every year, victims of mowing-related violence.

Clearly, in the epic battle of Man vs. Machine, mowers don't intend to play fair.

A mower in Oregon flipped its rider down an embankment and into a ditch before rolling itself onto some blackberry bushes above the trapped man. The lawn mower's heat actually set the blackberry bushes on fire, and when they gave way, the mower itself tumbled 15-20 feet to rest on top of its owner, trapping him in the ditch. Though the victim wasn't severely burned, the crushing weight of his mower caused enough unspecified injuries to necessitate a helicopter airlift to a nearby hospital.

Another one, at a park in Indiana, was being peacefully driven around the perimeter of a lake when it snagged a wire, flipped and slowly dragged its helpless rider into the water like a conniving, hungry alligator. Though the tractor technically did not devour the 59-year-old John McComas, it did pin him in the shallows of the lake, rendering him unable to move. Thankfully, he managed to keep his head above water and shouted for help, and was rescued soon enough to escape with only mild injuries.

A lawnmower in Florida apparently took offense to its owner doing a little repair work on it, and so shot a spark onto the owner's nearby boat. The spark ignited gas fumes and the boat promptly burst into flames, sending up huge plumes of smoke and the risk of serious fire in the "tinderbox conditions" of that stretch of the Atlantic coastline. The town's fire commissioner, Fred Link, explained with laughable naivete, "It was accidentally started." Sure, Fred, that's what they want you to think.

Lawnmowers don't just act alone, though. They are capable of teaming up with other terrors to dish out even more devastation. In Texas, the mere sound of a lawn mower was enough to enrage a nearby swarm of killer Africanized bees. That's right, Africanized bees, the ones the hysterical news media alerted your attention to back in 1999. The killer bees, responding to the mower's calls, attacked nearby residents, stinging two bystanders and two firemen. None were seriously injured, and another fireman said he "barely managed to avoid being stung," a quote he probably wishes had not appeared in his local paper. The bees were exterminated, but the mower lived to fight another day.

But just like in Battlestar Galactica, some of these appliances have decided to side with humans—defending them instead of terrorizing them. In Croatia, an innocent man was mowing his lawn when suddenly, his mower detonated a live hand grenade, sacrificing its own self in the process. The man escaped uninjured, but still confused as to what a live grenade was doing in his garden.

This digitl reenactment drives home just how quickly the events transpired, and how quickly the crew managed to respond. Another point raised by this video, though not as much as I would have liked: while the success of this landing largely came down do raw flight skill, piloting a jet like this is as much akin to running a computer terminal as it is to flying a fighter jet.

If the simulator camera had pulled back a little more, the sheer complexity of the Airbus A320's control panels would have been apparent. It was an acute sense of space and fantastic piloting abilities that brought the passengers down safely, yes, but also a magisterial command of the plane's many subsystems, including the vital fuselage sealing mechanism (apparently not). To drive home just how flawless this landing was, the BBC also includes footage of what can happen when a plane is landed on water incorrectly (Hint: death). [BBC via Neatorama]

Kind of surreal to know you're going to slide into another car and there's nothing you can do about it except yell like a baby. I kind of feel responsible, though, because he usually listens to classical music on his iPod and I got tired of it and so I jacked mine in and put on some Van Halen. What you listen to definitely affects how you drive and I also blame the music as much as I blame the fact that he's too old to be driving as fast as he was. I'd show you the photos, but I think my dad would rather I deleted them all.

Here are some of my favorite posts from yesterday:
• Netflix HD Impressions, On Xbox 360
• Why It's Safer Than Ever To Buy First-Generation Hardware
• MacBook vs MacBook Pro: Hardcore Graphics Death Match
• Microsoft Secondlight

Its 135-degree field of view camera gets hung on your windscreen, with all the accelerometry going on inside the 4.5 x 3 x 0.8-inch black box itself. Honda hopes this system will turn you into a safer driver, though we imagine it might also make insurance claims a little more straightforward. You can also switch on recording just for the hell of it, and amuse your friends with a show later: "Hey, check out that braking after I missed the red light." Available in Japan for ¥54,600 (around $500), and, sadly, only if you have an Honda car or your name is Jenny or Debra.

Hey, it's Friday. [Honda via Gizmodo Japan]