Well, not all the time, since storms aren't exactly a daily occurrence in Dubai. In a way, though, that makes the sheer number of occasions this has been caught on film all the more impressive. Cue neck hair standing on end...now:

A proposal: When the hotel finally opens in January, this should be their advertising campaign. --Thanks, Cuyler!

Of course, you may not be able to play something as complex as the themes from your favorite video games, but you might be able to put together a little rendition of Chopsticks or Funkytown without having to worry about electrocuting yourself. Hit the link to give it a shot. [ArcAttack]

I really hope they have grounded plugs there. Head to The Big Picture for some really pretty shots of Mommy Earth's fireworks. [The Big Picture]

Liftoff of space shuttle Endeavour on the STS-127 mission has been rescheduled for Wednesday, July 15 at 6:03 p.m. EDT.

Monday's attempt was canceled due to poor weather conditions within the launch area at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Anvil clouds and storm cells containing lightning flared up toward the end of the countdown, violating stringent launch safety rules.

"Technically, we've been really clean the last two days with our vehicle," Launch Integration Manager Mike Moses said of Endeavour's launch attempts on Sunday and Monday. "It's just been the weather scenario that got us."

The outlook is better on Wednesday, with only a 40 percent chance of weather conditions prohibiting liftoff.

Hopefully, it will work out and a new Japanese module will arrive soon to the International Space Station. [NASA—Image by Gene Blevins/LA Daily News]

It's not the first time that this happens. Apparently iPods have a tendency to save people from lightning strikes. Like other times before, instead of killing her the bolt killed the audio player, which acted as an electricity conductor taking most of the damage for her. The British teenager was only burnt on her neck, chest, and leg. She is now being treated at Broomfield Hospital, in Chelmsford, wherever that is. Don't know, don't care, she's safe, I'm headed to Atlantic City. Bye. [The Press Association]

ArcAttack brings sexy technology back when he plays the Zelda Theme Song remixed with Justin Timberlake at Dragon*Con 2008. [ArcAttack via Vimeo via BoingBoingGadgets]

If there's something strange in your neighborhood, who ya gonna call? GHOSTBUSTERS! [myself248]

Probably one of the most recognized theme songs in the world—and a song that has probably been played on every single instrument imaginable—it would be a sin not to include a clip of Nintendo's Mario Bros being played on singing Tesla coils too. [megavoltmeister]

Watch as Patrick from ArcAttack dresses up in a suit of chain metal and conducts the Imperial March from a Tesla coil. [darkdream11]

Although it may be smaller than the others, this Soild State Tesla Coil playing the Tetris theme song doesn't fail to impress. [TeslaCommander]

Where in the universe is Dr. Who going to show up next? Probably at Chattacon 09 to watch ArcAttack play his theme song on a pair of Tesla coils. [joedog158]

It would be a fatality if you didn't think listening to the Mortal Kombat theme song through musical Tesla coils is cool. FINISH HIM! [moonstar5]

Inspect her gadget? No, Inspector Gadget—on an audio-modded mini tesla coil, that is. [Norwegenkai]

Ball lightning is incredibly rare and hasn't been replicated in a lab, but that didn't stop Dr. Paul Koloc from getting funding from the Missile Defense Agency to research the things. He tried to create "magnetoplasmoids" a foot in diameter, presumably to scare the crap out of people and then kill them.

Said magnetoplasmoids would be shot at speeds of up to 7440MPH from a weapon called the "Phased Hyper-Acceleration for Shock, EMP, and Radiation," or PHASER. Yep.

Unfortunately, while he could create lightning balls up to a foot in diameter, he couldn't keep them stable. But maybe someday he'll figure it out. And that day will be terrifying. [Danger Room]

A study by researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem found that in south west US states, lightning strikes near major roadways increased up to 25% during weekdays, coinciding with pollution increases. Look for next next next gen Prius's to have lightning rods on their rooftops. [New Scientist via BLDGBLOG , image from Garry''s]

The Price: $79 for 2G, $99 for 3G

The Verdict: We've seen plenty of case-like backup batteries for the iPhone 3G the past few months, but Fastmac's iV could be the best in its class due to all the its features.

Its 3100mAh battery can charge the phone about five times from 20% capacity to 80% capacity, and in absolute terms, it's the most amount of juice in any backup battery iPhone case out there now. The USB port, at the bottom, allows you to charge an extra device on the road (maybe your Bluetooth headset) at the same time as the iPhone.

The iV's flashlight is bright, as in you really shouldn't look at it straight on. It's not bright enough to illuminate an entire room, but you can definitely find your keys with it. And the fact that the bottom actually fits into iPod/iPhone docks is an added bonus.

Our biggest complaint is the iV's size. In order to house a battery, USB charging, a flashlight and also somewhat envelop the iPhone, Fastmac didn't have much room to condense it down. It's more than twice as thick as an iPhone, and is slightly taller. You probably don't want to leave this docked all the time, but only take it out for a refresh charge when your iPhone's battery is running low.

Despite the $99 price, we still think this is the best all-around charger pack for the iPhone. If you're running out of juice often from a lot of usage, or if you just forget to charge your phone every night, the iV could be a fantastic crutch. [FastMac]

The Price: $150 after the standard rebate and two-year contract

The Verdict: The Behold fills the hole in T-Mobile's lineup for a not-quite-smart feature phone: It does a lot of the stuff a smartphone will do, like web browsing and email, just you know, not quite as capably as a real smartphone, or even as well as its cousin, the Instinct (even before it got better with its most recent round of updates). The web browser is bleh for anything but mobile sites since T-Mobile does you the favor of translating pages, which tends to butcher more complicated ones, and the email client won't do standard IMAP or POP. The IM client is slow, though not terrible, but either way, you can't really install your own apps to rectify the situation.

So what's good? The touchscreen is one more of the responsive ones that Samsung has put out, a hair better than the Instinct, and the keyboard layout is pretty good too, though I wish the space bar was bigger. The TouchWiz UI is attractive and easy to use, even if it's only skin deep—once you go past the widget-y "desktop," you're dumped into a more generic, though not exactly ugly, cellphone UI.

The 5MP camera, though not miraculous, is better than most of the ones in these kinds of phones by a long shot, with satisfactory noise levels and a decent suite of basic photo editing that'll let you adjust fundamentals like contrast and color, crop or add crazy effects. I wish the flash were a little stronger and the autofocus were a little faster, though.

Overall, it's what you'd expect out of a feature phone—it'll do a lot of things, just none of them amazingly. If you're a T-Mobile customer, for the money, I'd go with a G1—it lacks polish in some places, and the hardware isn't nearly as tight as the Behold's, but you'll get more out of it.

The Price: $699 for 2TB, $999 for 4TB (tested)

Verdict It's a cubular vault of 4TB of basically enterprise-class networked storage that sits on your desk and feels like it could stop a round from the world's deadliest carbine—what's not to like?

It's basically impossible to test actual drive reliability in the short span of review time (though everyone has their own opinion about which companies they love or loathe), so really what it comes down to here is ease of installation—which WD is touting heavily, so you won't need an IT geek—and features.

Western Digital's software walks you through most of the setup, though I still had to manually map the network drives in Vista, and Bonjour didn't automatically pick it up on my roommate's Mac. More frustrating is that despite having a gigabit router and using gigabit cables, I did not see gigabit speeds out of the box—or at all, with transfer speeds hovering around 10.5MB/s writing and 12MB/s pulling data. The default RAID5 configuration in the 4TB model (which balances redundancy against eating whole hard drives, leaving you with 2.66TB actually free) is noted for its relatively poor write performance compared to RAID1, and you'd be better off performance-wise with the latter if you're planning on doing a lot of write-intensive stuff, but that still doesn't explain the gap here.

It also comes with their automatic backup and remote access programs, Anywhere Backup and Mionet, though they annoyingly only give you three licenses for the latter, so if you've got four computers you want to continuously back up, you'll have to get another license. But whatever, the best feature is the built-in iTunes music server, which worked flawlessly. Dump a whole bunch of music into the shared music folder and it automatically shows up as a networked source in iTunes and showed up like magic on my PC and roommate's Mac.

Another (small) aggravation is that it's not hot swappable, so if you want to pop out one of the drives and maybe drop in a 1.5TB drive, you have to power the whole thing down. But I can almost forgive that since three USB ports let you plug other external drives into the box to expand storage even further.

While it's definitely overkill for average home usage, if you're that serious about centralized storage (like if you're if prosumer photographer) or you know, actually running a small business, despite its handful of flaws, if you've got the cash, it's definitely worth looking at. [Western Digital]

The Price: $289

The Verdict: Probably the best lamp we've ever used. The light is a bright white, which is both inviting and soothing. The upper "room light" is bright enough to illuminate an average living room—no small feat for a desk lamp—so it's definitely more than enough for bedrooms and offices. The lower task light is plenty bright enough for any detail work you want to get done, from studying to hacking your PSP. The extra outlet on its base is plenty useful for any other devices you need to plug in, and the base itself is HEAVY. No mere stiff breeze would knock this over; it requires a stiff shove from a man who could do with skipping a meal.

The lamp comes with a 3-year fixture warranty and a 2-year bulb warranty. For $289, it's not a cheap lamp, but it's a quality lamp. If we had unlimited money, all our lamps would be Berkeley Lamps. Science + Lamps = Good. [Berkeley Lamp]

Update: A reader says this is from the BBC documentary The Power of the Planet – Atmosphere. [Today's Big Thing]

The vast majority of scientists will agree that the electromagnetic fields given off by small gadgets are far too weak to attract lightning strikes. Plus, there has been a marked increase amount of thunderstorms experienced across Russia this year—so there is definitely a reason to chalk this up to coincidence more than anything else. That is, until you see this. [CNN]

It makes sense for the shift, what with Taser not exactly getting great press for its shocking weapons and IEDs being a pretty big problem for troops in Iraq. And by aiming at the base of the windshield of a car, it can short it out without frying it, stalling it but not rendering it undrivable, which would be a big plus for stopping vehicles at checkpoints without completely destroying them. And they should be ready in 5-6 years, which is a pretty quick turnaround for new weapons. Between these and lasers, we're going to be fighting comic book wars in no time flat. [Danger Room]

Our wallets are far too bruised after Valentine's Day to actually buy a Lichtenberg figure, but as they look so cool, we'll give this a try. We totally understand that this sounds like a project your third grade science teacher may have tried to get you to pull off, but it's cool if you aren't forced to do it for homework—hurrah! Hit the link for the video, and be sure to let us know how you get on. [Popsci]

The Price: $9.99

The Catch: It's probably the shortest adapter out now (bottom), being neither twisty like the Griffin and Helium Digital, or really long like Belkin's (top). In fact, it's pretty much the only adapter that's not bendable.

The Verdict: if you're looking for an adapter that's as small as possible by sacrificing the bend-ability of Belkin's adapter (it makes the Smartphone Experts' adapter easier to break), this is for you. Sound quality on par as Belkin's when tested in our iPod docks and car adapters, and the short length makes it fit nicely into our pants pockets. It's fantastic if you want something to sit on your car's tape adapter all the time, if you're looking for something to go walking or jogging with, the rigidness of this adapter poses a risk for breakage. Be aware of that when purchasing.

[Smartphone Experts]

The Verdict: Mediocre speeds (~6MB/s), quirky drive formatting, limited sharing options, and the mandatory use of their drive mounting utility means this is more suitable as a network drive to share smaller chunks of data rather than a device to use for moving around big files.

The Catch:

Only one computer can be in write mode, and it needs to be formatted as FAT32 for Macs and PCs to both be able to access it, which takes a big chunk out of your performance.

The Performance: Filling up that 750GB (about 699GB when formatted) when sending data at 6MB/s means you're going to be sitting there for quite a while. You mount the drive like a normal drive on your Windows and Mac using their drive utility application, which is usable but not great. Unfortunately you can only have one computer mounting the drive as read/write, and the other 19 have to mount as read-only.

Formatting the NAS was a pain as well. Vista could only format the drive as NTFS, and not FAT32, so I couldn't use it as a shared drive between Mac and Windows. After some back and forth with tech support, we finally installed a newer driver and got Vista to format FAT32—which turned out to be not a great idea, because FAT32 on large-sized drives is much slower compared to NTFS.

The NAS also occasionally randomly disconnects, and you'll have to reboot both the NAS and your computer in order to get them both to reconnect. Not something anyone really wants to do.

The Price: $119 for 80GB all the way up to $329 for 750GB

The Recommendation: Slow performance thanks to the non-Gigabit Ethernet means you don't want to use this as storage you access often (get another internal drive or a USB drive), but if you have a repository of music or files a lot of people need to access, this could be for you.

[Newertech]

The Verdict: Sturdy build (slip-proof surface) and lots of charging tips allows you not to have to sacrifice quality for convenience. Oh, and it's reasonably priced too, which makes this a definite buy if you've got multiple gadgets to charge.

The Catch:

You still have to buy individual charging tips, which are sold separately. It's also somewhat bulky, but considering that it's four chargers in one, it's quite reasonable.

The Performance: It charged our phones and MP3 players in just about the same time as it would take with a standard charger. Most devices fit neatly onto the slip-proof tray, but large devices such as Nintendo DS Lite may require some arrangement.

The Price: $49.95 for the base unit, $5.95 for each charger tip.

The Recommendation: If you have a lot of stuff to charge (phones, MP3 players, DS Lite, whatever), get one of these. At $49 + $24 (for four tips), you'll save lots of space and have a nice station for all your electronics to boot. It doesn't charge quite as many devices at once as the Chargepod charge station, but each tip only costs $5.95 instead of $9.95.

[Gomadic]

The Verdict: Decent call quality, thin but solid build, nice red and black finish, but the half-QWERTY SureType is a bit tough to use.

The Catch:

Instead of a standard dialpad like regular phones, the Blast has a SureType two-letters-per-key typing scheme. It's a bitch to use at first, but gets slightly better after you get used to it. Whether you're willing to put in the effort is up to you.

The Performance: Calling and basic functions are there, but the menus don't look that great. It may be faster than T9 once you get used to the keyboard.

The Price: $99

The Recommendation: There aren't all that many other choices on T-Mobile, so if you're looking for a slider and you like texting (and don't mind putting some effort into learning the Suretype system), this could be the one for you. Plus, it's nice looking and thin.

[T-Mobile]