STUFF: News, Technology, the cool and the plain weird

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BRANDS TO KNOW: MB&F

MB&F calls itself “a human adventure” with just one goal: to create incredible horological machines. For nearly a decade, MB&F has gathered together the world’s most talented artisans, artists and professionals – all friends – each year to design a radical, masterful timepiece. By harnessing the passion and creativity of so many talented people, MB&F has become infinitely greater than the sum of its parts and produced some of the most amazing feats of mini-engineering the world has ever seen.

Origin of MB&F

The MB of MB&F is Maximilian Büsser, a lover of high-end horology who graduated in Lausanne with a Masters degree in Micro-Technology Engineering. He spent seven years in the senior management team of Jaeger-LeCoultre before going on to become managing director of Harry Winston Rare Timepieces in 1998. He logged another seven years with Harry Winston, then decided working for others wasn’t the way to fully explore his energy and creativity.

In 2005 Maximilian Büsser formed his creative ideal: MB&F. With his new company, Büsser finally had full creative liberty to indulge his passion for working with the world’s most talented independent horological professionals and pushing the limits of their trade. Together, MB and his friends form a sort of watchmaking utopia, dedicated solely to designing, developing and crafting small series of radical concept watches.

But don’t call them a watch brand. MB&F prefers to think of itself as an artistic and micro-engineering concept laboratory in which changing collectives of independent horological professionals are assembled each year to design and craft what they call ground-breaking “Horological Machines.”

What MB&F Are Known For

To put it simply, there’s just no one else like MB&F in the game. Their machines look like props from sci-fi films, or some kind of advanced technology that slipped into the present through a portal to the future. Calling them “conversation pieces” just doesn’t cut it. Sure, they tell the time, but their timekeeping capabilities take a backseat to innovation and design. MB&F’s creations are micro-mechanical sculptures. It’s a whimsical, gearhead take on modern horology.

Why MB&F Are Cool

MB&F machines look like they could have come straight out of a Jules Verne novel or your wildest steampunk fantasies. Just look at the deep-space inspired Starfleet Machine table clock. Or the tune-playing, space craft-resembling Musicmachine. Or the absolutely stunning Moonmachine, inspired by how science fiction buffs have imagined habitable domes on the moon. MB&F pieces fall into three categories: Horological Machines, Legacy Machines (which pay tribute to the watchmaking traditions of the 18th and 19th centuries by imagining the type of timepieces MB&F would have created had the company existed 100 years ago) and Performance Art Pieces. Some are more wearable than others, but all will take your breath away.

Where To Buy

Find a retailer at MBandF.com

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Chewbacca to return in Star Wars: Episode VII

Good news for wookiee fans this morning, with THR reporting that Chewbacca is set to appear in Star Wars: Episode VII.

THR reports that Peter Mayhew will reprise his role as Han Solo’s hirsute buddy and co-pilot, nearly forty years after he first donned the suit.

Presumably Chewie will be one of the “very familiar faces” promised by Disney CEO Bob Iger back in March, when he teased what we could expect from the film.

Hopefully the presence of both Mayhew and Harrison Ford will mean at least a couple of scenes of Han and Chewie reunited, and perhaps even piloting a ship together once more.

Directed by J.J. Abrams and co-starring Adam Driver, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill, Star Wars: Episode VII will open in the UK on 18 December 2015.

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MARTIN BRUNDLE’S EAGLE E-TYPE

For those of you who watch Formula 1, Martin Brundle needs no introduction. The former Formula 1 driver is now the lead commentator on Sky Sports, remarkably his commentating career began 17 years ago beside the legendary Murray Walker on ITV Sport in 1997.

Skip forward to 2014 and Brundle is now the only commentator any serious Formula 1 fan wants to listen to, an untold number of people outside of Britain (and the reach of Sky Sports) clamour to find any online stream they can of his coverage – only resorting to using their local commentators when absolutely necessary.

What many of Brundle’s current fans don’t know is that he entered Formula 1 as a driver in 1984 – the same year as Ayrton Senna. The two men had battled it out in Formula 3 during the 1983 season with Ayrton only winning the championship on the last few laps of the last race – Ayrton had great respect for Brundle, which itself is possibly the greatest nod of approval any racing driver from the era could possibly receive. Brundle would go on to win the 1988 World Sportscar Championship with a record points score before taking a swing at endurance racing and winning the 1990 24 Hours of Le Mans race for Jaguar.

When it comes to his own personal cars, Martin has owned a slew of classics that many would kill for, including 2 of my personal favourites – the Ferrari F355 and the E-Type Jaguar. In fact he’s owned 2 E-Types, a Series III V12 Roadster and a Series I Coupe. He impulse bought the Series III on sight, something that many of us would have done years ago if we had the money and the opportunity. Years later he decided that the convertible was a little too exposed – probably because he has one of the most famous faces in Britain, and so he approached the team at Eagle to build him a Series I Coupe.

As with all Eagle E-Types Brundle’s coupe would be a tweaked, improved car that would be more than capable of rubbing shoulders with modern sports couples – a feat many classic cars genuinely struggle with. The straight-6 was reworked to produce a little over 300hp at the rear wheels, it was fitted with a 5-speed transmission, modified suspension geometry, an entirely new interior and a modern air-conditioning system.

Impressively, Brundle uses either his E-Type, his BMW K1600GT or his helicopter to travel to the Formula 1 races in Europe – in fact, he’s now attended almost half the Grand Prix races that have ever taken place worldwide.

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A Great Story: Navigations: Laisvé

It is one of the great regrets of travel: You meet someone on a journey, come to know them intimately in just a few hours, then never see them again. You promise to keep in touch, but it seldom happens. When you return home, your own life takes over, and so does theirs, and the bond begins to fade.

Some years ago, while researching a family trip to St. Petersburg, Russia, I happened upon a story in City Paper, a Baltic-states online ’zine, about a new theme park in Lithuania called Stalin World. Surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers, with a replica of a human cattle car and a collection of hypertrophic Soviet-era statues, it was said to combine “the charms of Disneyland with the worst of the Soviet gulag prison camp.” I couldn’t imagine a more macabre, yet twistedly appropriate, post-20th-century tourist attraction. Reading the article, I flashed back to the five months I’d spent cycling across the USSR in 1989, and a man I’d met on that trip: Saulius Kunigenas.

I was part of a seven-person team—three Americans, four Russians (three women, four men). We rode from Vladivostok to Leningrad, sea to shining sea, 7,500 miles across the largest country on Earth. It was the hardest journey of my life—not physically but spiritually.

Two months into the trip, I met Saulius on the shores of Lake Baikal. I remember it was sleeting. We spotted a ribbon of smoke in the forest and veered off the road to a campfire, around which huddled six Lithuanian cyclists. We shook hands, and they shared their meager food and pushed our shivering bodies toward the warmth of the snapping birch fire. We were kin, members of the fellowship of the wheel.

Saulius was the smallest of the Lithuanians, a sinewy, birdlike man with a hawk nose and burning, white-blue eyes. He and I had an immediate, inexplicable connection. It was as if our friendship were already there, like a set table, just waiting for us to come from the far corners of the world, sit down, and renew a conversation we’d been having for years.

We talked of the surreal Soviet nation we were experiencing: villages where there was no food, but every man, woman, and child was drunk on rotgut; cities with monolithic concrete tenements, but only a dirt road leading into and out of town. Bread lines, vegetable lines, vodka lines, but no telephone lines, no newspapers, no magazines. The countless hagiographic statues of Saint Lenin. The Big Brother billboards extolling the virtues of Communism. The KGB trailing us in black Ladas. People so oppressed they’d lost their dignity.

That evening we all rode together for a stretch, and Saulius and I exchanged bicycles—me struggling along on his heavy, antique velocipede and him piloting my light, modern machine as if it were a glider. While I cranked to keep up with him, Saulius explained to me in broken English the real reason he had come to Siberia: to find the work camp where his wife, Palmira, had been interned as a child.

Deportations of Lithuanians began immediately after the Soviet Union occupied the country, in the summer of 1940. Between 1940 and 1953, Stalin sent some 350,000 Lithuanians to Siberia. Many never returned.

On May 22, 1948, the KGB set a one-day record in Lithuania, arresting 35,766 citizens—10,897 of them children—packing them into cattle cars, and shunting them off to work camps in Siberia. Palmira and her family were victims of this purge. Her grandfather was a small but successful farmer. He owned potato fields, beehives, and a few head of cattle—and was therefore a capitalist, a criminal. Palmira was three, her brother, Remigijus, two. Their father eluded capture, but Palmira and her mother, uncle, grandfather, and brother were deported to the shores of Lake Baikal.

Palmira’s father, living under an assumed name, managed to send them food, and they gardened with fervor, at night, on small secret plots. But they had to be careful. Were they found to be improving their lives above the lot of others, they would have been sent even deeper into Siberia.

Nine years later, on April 24, 1957, Palmira and her family were released and allowed to return home. Their stone farmhouse had been seized by the government and was now the residence of a Soviet oligarch, so they lived with friends in Kaunas, a small city in central Lithuania.

Riding beside me, Saulius relayed this story with quiet gravity. The next morning, we exchanged addresses, then he and the Lithuanians rode east along Lake Baikal and my team and I rode west.

It would take us three more months to reach Leningrad and become the first people to bicycle across the USSR. It was such a long journey it wasn’t a journey at all; it was just life. We rode and we ate and we slept, and then we got up and rode and ate and slept. Our bikes became our friends, and we gave them Russian names. Tom Freisem, the leader of the trip, named his Blagorodnaya Sobaka—“Noble Dog.” Torie Scott, the only American female, called hers Zavtra—“Tomorrow.” I named my bike Svabodny—“Free.”

By the time we dipped our front tires into the ice-cold Baltic, fall had come to Russia. It was snowing and we were so exhausted we could have slept for a year. Instead we threw a party, each of us inviting someone who had meant something special to us during our ride. I invited Saulius. We sang hard and drank hard and danced hard as if it were our last night on this earth. And in a way it was. It was the end of 1989, and the Soviet Union was imploding.

In the melancholy hours of the morning I gave Saulius my bicycle, Svabodny.

That was the last time I saw Saulius, but I wrote about him in a book about that trip, Off the Map. Now, remembering our friendship, I pulled it from the shelf and read the opening passage about Saulius:

Sometimes you meet someone you know.

You have spent nights together. You’ve camped together beneath the sky

and sung songs together and drunk beer in each other’s homes. You have

hugged and cried and laughed together. And you’ve never met.

There are few such people in the world, but they are the ones you will

always know and who will always know you. They are living in parts of the

world where you haven’t been. They are living lives you cannot know. They

have kitchens with bright windows you can’t imagine, where you had

coffee. These are the people you meet, and know, before you speak.

Sixteen years later, my words sounded presumptuous. How could I have felt that I really knew this man? We’d spent so little time together. Were we really that close, or was it just the circumstances?

My wife and I were leaving for St. Petersburg in two weeks on a pianist exchange program for our two daughters. On the off chance they could help, I dialed the University of Wyoming’s international-students department and asked if they knew of anyone in Laramie who spoke Lithuanian. They did: Rimvyda Dreher, a Lithuanian-American who worked as a business manager at the school. Lithuanian was her native tongue.

I explained the task to Rimvyda. I had only his name: Saulius Kunigenas. I didn’t know where he was or even if he was alive. She was eager to help—her father had been in the Lithuanian Resistance before escaping to the U.S. in 1951. Amazingly, after multiple online searches and a half-dozen dead-end phone calls, Rim found Saulius.

The connection was so staticky she could barely hear him, but she managed to catch an email address. Email didn’t exist when I first met Saulius. I wrote immediately and got a response from Laima Kunigenas, his daughter. I hadn’t even known he had a daughter. She was 24, spoke English, had worked in California, and had just finished her master’s in economics at Kaunas University of Technology. Laima wrote that of course her father remembered me.

“He says for you to come to Lithuania. Bring your bicycle. He will be waiting for you.”

A month later I was on the night train south from St. Petersburg to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, then west to Kaunas, Saulius’s hometown. As I rumbled through flat pine forests in a sleeper, watching the sun sink at midnight then bounce annoyingly back up at 2 A.M., the enterprise suddenly seemed mad.

Would we even recognize each other after so long? And if we did, what would it be like to see each other again? I remembered an agile, athletic man, but what is memory? Mostly what you want to remember, heedless of reality. I’d imagined that perhaps Saulius and I could bicycle across Lithuania, a country the size of West Virginia on the Baltic Sea. But was he even still cycling? So much happens in 16 years. Unnervingly, it occurred to me that I actually knew very little about Saulius. I never knew how old he was or what his profession was. We’d just clicked on an emotional level. Our shared landscape had been the brutal, irrational Soviet empire, but now the USSR was dead.

Saulius spotted me, and I him, the moment I stepped off the train. He ran to me, gripping my hand and hugging me at the same time. He looked just as he had a decade and a half ago—Roman nose, deeply tanned, the wiry body of a Tour de France rider. In the strength of his handshake alone, I knew that our friendship was still alive. We threw my collapsible bicycle into the backseat of his car and drove to his home.

The awkwardness I’d feared lasted only moments, then we were excitedly shooting questions back and forth, trying to catch up on each other’s lives. He was 55 now, had survived stomach cancer, and was still cycling hard, having logged more than 125,000 miles. He and Palmira had traveled through Australia, Brazil, Iceland, and much of Western Europe. He was delighted to learn that I too was still cycling, and surprised to discover that I was a journalist, had a wife and two daughters, and had also traveled extensively.

“Everything!” Saulius said happily, practically shouting. “Everything different now.”

Even with the rise of computers and the Internet, even with 9/11, Afghanistan, and two Gulf wars, in the past two decades life for ordinary Americans has hardly changed at all, compared with life in Lithuania.

The solemn intensity Saulius had exhibited when I met him in Siberia had been transformed into the energy of hope. Pre-independence, he’d worked in a Russian construction firm as a poorly paid mechanical engineer. Post-independence, he went back to school, got an M.B.A., became a general contractor, and began building small, efficient custom homes in Kaunas. After five years he and Palmira had saved enough to leave their dismal Soviet block apartment and build their own house next to a forest on the outskirts of the city.

As we pulled up to his modest brick home, cherry trees and a barbecue grill in the backyard, I couldn’t help but wonder whether he’d kept Svabodny. Back in 1989, along with the bike, I’d given Saulius a crate of spare parts, so he could have kept it rolling indefinitely—but perhaps it didn’t mean to him what it had meant to me.

Yet there it was, hanging in the garage, perfectly maintained.

“No bike like this in all Lithuania before independence,” said Saulius, explaining that he used to ride Svabodny through Kaunas to show people what was happening beyond the Iron Curtain. After independence, Saulius rode right across the borders, touring through Finland and Germany and all the Baltic states. “I ride and ride. It’s a special bike—your gift to me.”

He reached for Svabodny, I assembled my folding bike, and we went for a ride. It felt natural to be on bikes together, cruising the streets of Kaunas.

That night, in a kitchen with bright windows, I met his wife, Palmira, a retired professor of textiles, and his daughter, Laima, a fledgling economist. Over after-dinner coffee, conversation inevitably fell to geopolitics.

“The only way to enslave a country,” said Palmira in German, “is to cut off the head. Stalin understood this; that’s why he deported the teachers, the engineers, the government officials, the officers, the successful farmers, the businessmen—all of us.”

More than 20 million people died in the gulag. The post-Stalin decades were less violent, but the intellectual foot-binding continued. In 1986, Gorbachev began the process of liberalization that quickly gave 18 Soviet states their freedom. The new constitution of the Republic of Lithuania, a parliamentary democracy, was ratified by referendum in 1992.

“But that is all past,” Palmira said, smiling at Laima, who will never be sent to Siberia. “Tomorrow you shall see Lithuania today.”

The next morning, just as I’d imagined, Saulius and I rode off on what he dubbed the Democratic Tour of Lithuania. We planned to pedal from Kaunas to the sea and back, a 400-mile loop, camping wherever we found ourselves at the end of the day and living off local markets. From the start, there was an ease to the trip that made me feel as though we’d been touring together since childhood.

That first day we slid west along the Nemunas River, Saulius showing off the medieval castles and Gothic cathedrals that overlook the sleepy green waterway.

“Lithuania was independent country for 500 years,” he stated proudly from the top of one castle turret.

Under the reign of the Grand Duke Algirdas (1345–1377), the borders of Lithuania had extended from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. The geographical center of Europe lies in Lithuania, and it has always been a Western-leaning country. Unlike Russia, Lithuania fully embraced the Renaissance. The first book written in Lithuanian was published in 1547, and Vilnius University was founded in 1579.

That night we pitched our tent in a cow pasture. In the morning, we cycled along narrow, tree-lined roads, through brilliant yellow fields of rapeseed, all the way to the coast. A motorboat, owned by a father and son who had started a ferry business after independence, took us out to the Curonian Spit, a 61-mile arm of sand dotted with summer communities. We beach-camped on the Baltic, sand in our gears, the sound of the waves in our ears.

Day three we winged north along the spit from the seaside resort town of Nida (loaded with thick-calved Germans), through the port city of Klaipeda, and on to Palanga (loaded with pale-skinned Finns). The tourism industry was clearly buoyant as a beach ball.

In the years since independence, Lithuanians, industrious and entrepreneurial, have made their country the most successful former Soviet republic. Privatization of once nationalized companies is almost complete. Business is thriving, banking to bioengineering; exports are robust; and in 2004 Lithuania was accepted into the European Union.

Our fourth day out, we circled back inland, visiting the farmhouse of family friends who had also been sent to Siberia in the late forties. When I asked Saulius if any of his family had been deported, he said, “No. My uncle was shot.”

After World War II, during the early years of Soviet control, an armed underground resistance formed in Lithuania. Eventually numbering 100,000 partisans, the movement fought a guerrilla war against Soviet occupation until 1953, when it was finally crushed. Saulius’s uncle had joined the resistance in 1948, at the age of 24, was caught by the KGB, and executed in the forest.

That afternoon, Saulius guided me to another remote farm he felt I must see: the gardens of sculptor Vilius Orvidas (1952–1992), a deeply religious, mystical man who devoted his life to opposing the occupation. His farm was a strange labyrinth of gargantuan logs and monumental religious and Communist sculptures, the antithesis of the Stalin World theme park. On one heavy slab of black granite, Orvidas had depicted the USSR as a giant spider, its hairy legs reaching into Europe, Asia, and Siberia. Across the top of the rock was inscribed COMMUNISM IS THE SORROW OF THE WORLD.

On the last day, looping back into Kaunas, we rode together without talking, mile after mile. We were in unison, and words were redundant. Just riding together again, after so many years, was enough.

Outside of Kaunas, Saulius took me by the fortresslike home of a mafia boss, explaining that prostitution, corruption, and drug use have increased in Lithuania in the past decade.

“It is one small bad side of capitalism,” Saulius said exuberantly. “But at least we have independence!”

The night before I left Lithuania, Saulius and I stayed up talking. I invited him to the U.S., to my home in Wyoming. I told him about Yellowstone and Devils Tower, the mountains and the deserts.

“Finally,” Saulius said softly, “I can come.”

After we went to bed, I sneaked into Saulius’s garage and took down Svabodny. With yellow, green, and red paint—the colors of Lithuania’s flag—I painted a new name along the top tube: LAISVÉ . . . “Freedom” in Lithuanian.

I wish this story ended here.

The next morning, Saulius had a stroke. I found him in the garage lying on the concrete below Laisvé. I cradled him until the ambulance came. Palmira would not let me stay. I had a plane ticket back to the U.S., and she insisted I return home to my own family. Saulius is in rehab now, and it is uncertain whether he will bike again.

Even deep friendships are fragile. Someone you met on a journey years ago is out there. The friendship is not lost, only dormant, waiting for the spark of contact.

Go. Find that person.

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N.Y.P.D. and F.D.N.Y. Get in Massive Brawl at Charity Hockey Game

A Sunday hockey game between New York’s police and fire departments devolved into a bench-clearing brawl last Sunday at Nassau Coliseum in Long Island. The annual N.Y.P.D., F.D.N.Y. game—which raises money for the Children's Benefit Fund and the New York Police and Fire Widows, among other causes—was tied at three to three in the second period when the fisticuffs started. The N.Y.P.D. went on to win eight to five, snapping a five-year winning streak on the part of the firefighters.

The New York Post reports that, although many cops and firefighters were left with “black eyes and bruises,” no serious injuries were observed. One cop told the Post he’d never seen anything like Sunday’s fight in the two decades he’d been attending the game. Video of the embarrassing developments is available below.

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New 'Battlestar Galactica' movie will completely reimagine the sci-fi tale

Universal is preparing to start work on a Battlestar Galactica movie. Variety says the studio is planning to completely reimagine the sci-fi story — in which space-bound humans fend off the attacks of nefarious cybernetic Cylons as they try to find a new home — just five years after the four-season Syfy TV show drew to a close. The planned film would mark the second time Battlestar Galactica has been rebooted after the original show aired in 1978.

Jack Paglen, the writer of the upcoming Transcendence, has agreed to pen the reboot's screenplay. Paglen is a hot property for studios wanting to create sci-fi at the moment: he's also slated to write Ridley Scott's Prometheus sequel. Glen Larson, who worked on the 1970s TV series, will produce the film, but there's no confirmation yet on who'll take on the role of director. Bryan Singer was originally attached to a Battlestar Galactica movie project in 2011, but the production was put on hold in 2013 after the director committed to working on new X-Men movies. Having agreed to direct 2016's X-Men: Apocalypse, Singer is unlikely to have time to work on developing a new Battlestar.

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A Friendly Reminder To Be Nice To Others

Man, the internet! Sometimes it seems like people are cold-hearted jerks. They don’t care about anyone but themselves.

Here’s a Thai Life Insurance ad reminding us that it’s good to be nice to others — whether that’s offline or on.

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AUDI QUATTRO – THE OFFICIAL STORY

“Audi Quattro – The Official Story” is a look back at the history of Audi’s vitally important all-wheel drive system as documented by Audi themselves. As such it offers previously unseen footage from the very earliest days of Audi’s involvement in motorsports through to their dominant years in international rally competition.

If you have even a passing interest in motor racing, automotive engineering or fast moving things, this film is essential viewing. In fact, you might want to go get yourself a nice German pilsner before hitting the play button.

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CONSOLIDATED PBY CATALINA WALLPAPER

The Consolidated PBY Catalina is an unusually named aircraft with a unusual set of abilities, it was designed in 1935 to fill an order for the US Navy who were seeking a flying boat for use in the Pacific – it was a surprisingly prophetic order and the Catalina would see intensive use throughout the Pacific (and Mediterranean) throughout the Second World War.

The plane became known as a lifesaver in the Pacific where it would be used to pickup downed aircrews floating in the sea – often hundreds of miles from the nearest ship – which would have been a death sentence without an amphibious aircraft. The US Navy didn’t decommission its last Consolidated PBY Catalina until the 1980s and many of the planes are still flying today as aerial firefighters – an extraordinarily long life for any aircraft.

Click here to read more about the Consolidated PBY Catalina Wallpaper via the talented historians on Wikipedia.

Click either image to load the full-sized version in a new browser window.

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PIPE UTILITY ROLL BY BRADLEY MOUNTAIN

The humble pipe has seen a return to favour of late, cigars are wonderful but they often require a commitment of time with some taking well over an hour to get through. A pipe can be filled with varying amounts of tobacco allowing users the chance to choose how much time they want to smoke for, it can also be filled with different types of tobacco – allowing you to match the flavour of your tipple.

The Pipe Utility Roll by Bradley Mountain is made from oiled leather and heavy weight black waxed canvas, it has 3 pockets to hold your lighter, pick, reamer and tamper as well as your tobacco pouch and pipe.

Grab yours here

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CONTATEMPO SCUDERIA DASHBOARD COLLECTION

The Contatempo Scuderia Dashboard Collection is a series of Swiss watches designed to evoke the spirit of the original analog dashboard gauges from the golden era of motorsport. Each timepiece has a Val Suisse 3H automatic movement, a stainless steel case, an enamel dial, a sapphire crystal face and a crown positioned at the 6 o’clock position – a homage to the location of the kilometre reset button on vintage rally stage timers.

With pricing on the collection spanning $1,495 to $1,595 these are amongst the most affordable boutique Swiss-powered mechanical watches you’ll find anywhere – the vintage motorsport design influence is an added bonus.

Click here to visit Contatempo Scuderia.

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EJECTOR SEAT MAN CHAIR

There are few things more James Bond-villainy than a properly intimidating chair, and this one has all the hallmarks of a classic. Made from an original Martin-Baker ejector seat, it was hand-built by the talented team at Hangar 54. They used an original WWII fighter pilot’s jacket for the upholstery and created a solid base from an exhaust manifold – anyone who’s ever attempted to bend and weld exhaust pipe will be immediately impressed at this.

The finished chair is now available from Hangar 54, along with a huge range of other jaw-dropping aerospace furniture. If you’ve been looking for the perfect seat from which to yell orders at your henchmen, this one might just be for you.

Grab yours here

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Monster Machines: How Armour Is Evolving To Beat Tank-Smashing RPGs

Like the AK-47, the Soviet RPG-7 rocket propelled grenade has become one of the most widely-distributed infantry weapons on Earth, used by everyone from E8 nations to guerrilla insurgency groups in every major conflict since Vietnam. But their ubiquitousness nature has kicked off a global race focused on how to beat them.

First developed by the Soviet Union shortly after WWII, the original RPG-2 was Russia’s answer to the American bazooka and German Panzerfaust. Its successor, the RPG-7, retains much of the same functionality — a handheld, unguided, rocket-propelled grenade launcher designed to kill or disable armoured units (tanks, APCs, etc) and fortified positions. For a weapon measuring just over a yard long with a 40mm bore and weighing about 7kg, the RPG-7 packs one hell of a wallop.

Its rounds measure 40mm – 105mm in diameter and weigh 2kg to 5kg, depending on the type of charge — HEAT for anti-armour, fragmentation for anti-personnel, or a tandem charge for defeating reactive armour. Using a gunpowder propellent, the round travels up to 295m/s and is accurate to up to 500 m (max range 920 m) thanks to a set of air-deployed stabilising fins.

Tandem charges — in which a weaker initial charge explodes first to create a channel for the secondary HEAT explosive to penetrate the target’s reactive armour — have proven exceptionally effective against armoured units. They can burn through up to 500 mm of steel armour. And it’s these rounds that have set off an arms race between opposing armour and RPG technologies.

The first defensive advancement debuted at the tail end of WWII, when armoured units began sporting wire mesh skirt armour (aka cage, slat, bar, or standoff armour). This densely-slatted secondary protection sits in front of the tank’s primary skin, trapping the RPG round between a pair of bars far enough away that the initial shaped charge cannot damage the armour, while short circuiting the piezoelectric precursor to either prevent the HEAT charge from detonating or at least denying the charge’s molten jet a route into the tank’s interior.

Essentially, since the tandem charge is only effective if it actually hits the target, cage armour is designed to catch the incoming RPG round before it does. Originally, this rigid slatted metal grid fitted around key sections of the vehicle was made from heavy steel or aluminium, weighing about 20-30 kg/sqm. However modern day composite variants, such as Chobham armour — or BAE’s LROD system employed by the Buffalo MPV — offer superior protection compared to steel cages yet weigh less than aluminium.

That said, slat armour is far from foolproof. Instead it offers what’s known as statistical protection; that is, while the system doesn’t offer a complete defence against RPGs, it does lower the probability that a tandem-charge shot will be successful by 50 to 70 per cent, depending on where and how the RPG connects. If a second shot happens to strike the same spot, you’re in trouble.

But even with cage armour’s shortcomings, the weight savings and improved defensive capabilities that it provides far outweigh its potential failure risks. As such, cage armour is extensively employed in armoured divisions the world over, from the IDF’s Caterpillar D9R armoured bulldozer to the General Dynamics Stryker and M113 APC to Russian T-62 and American M1 Abrams tanks.

But RPG manufacturers haven’t waived the white flag just yet. “RPG manufacturers are applying protective layers at the base of the cone, thus avoiding potential short-circuits caused by deformation”, an unnamed armour expert told Defence-Update. “In fact, as it will hit at an angle, the behind armour effect could be increased, as the spall is distributed at a larger lethal cone, hitting more of the vehicle occupants.”

Armour designers, however, are already hard at work building lighter, sturdier, and more secure defensive systems to counter this increased RPG threat. The game of oneupmanship between RPG and armour designers doesn’t look to be ending anytime soon.

[MIKA27]

A Simple Silicone Sleeve Turns Your iPhone Into A Game Boy

The touchscreen generation might not know any better, but those of us who grew up with Game Boys know that physical control pads and buttons will always trump on-screen alternatives. Entire this slide-on silicone sleeve, called the G-PAD, that turns your smartphone into an even better handheld gaming machine.

Created by Aws Jan who’s currently trying to raise $US16,000 on Indiegogo to put it into production, the G-PAD is designed to work with an iOS Game Boy emulator called GBA4iOS that doesn’t require iPhone users to Jailbreak or hack their hardware to install.

The sleeve slides up and onto an iPhone so that it perfectly covers the emulator’s on-screen controls. And thanks to the use of a capacitive material on the inside, pressing the sleeve’s buttons in turns presses the emulator’s on-screen buttons. There’s no additional software needed, no Bluetooth connectivity, and if other gaming apps let you completely customise the on-screen controls, there’s a chance they will work with the G-PAD too.

It seems like a simple and clever way to improve gaming on the iPhone, especially compared to the recent onslaught of bulky controller accessories hitting the market. But only if it reaches its funding goal and successfully goes into production. Early believers can reserve a G-PAD with a donation of just $US13. But if you’d rather save your money until you’re eventually guaranteed to get one, it will cost you $US33 instead — still far cheaper than finding a used Game Boy online.

[MIKA27]

A Weird Black Ring Appeared In The Sky In England And Then Disappeared

This is bizarre. A 16-year-old girl saw a giant black ring in the sky above England and captured it on video. After three minutes of floating around like a cloud, the black ring disappeared completely. So far, experts have no idea what it was.

The black ring appeared over Leamington Spa, Warwickshire in England and the weather experts are saying it doesn’t have anything to do with the weather while the firefighters are saying there were no fires around the time of the sighting so, well, yeah. Everyone is confused.

Georgina Heap, the 16-year-old girl who recorded the video of the ring, told the Mirror:

I looked up at it and thought ‘what the hell?’, it was amazing. It was just floating there like a cloud and then it disappeared. It wasn’t birds either.

The most logical explanation is that it’s some sort of smoke ring (though who knows where it would come from). Or maybe it’s a bunch of bees in a suicidal ritual. Or something out of Rust Cohle’s imagination. No one knows.

[MIKA27]

Australian Police Can Catch You Using A Mobile Phone While Driving From Almost A Kilometre Away

Victorian Police now have new cameras. Shiny new cameras. Scary new cameras. These new cameras can see you doing something wrong before you even know a Police car is watching you. It can see you doing stuff like using your mobile phone while driving, for example, from a distance of 700 metres.

In a new blitz against “distracted driving”, Victorian Police will deploy new camera technology in the state to target stuff like using your phone while driving and not wearing your seatbelt.

The new cameras are set to be rotated around 2000 different mobile camera sites in Victoria over the next two weeks. That’s not to say there are 2000 of these cameras, it is to say you’ll never know where they’ll be. Which is kind of the point.

[MIKA27]

Google Buys Drone Company, And That's Not Creepy At All

The Wall Street Journal has just confirmed that Google will be purchasing Titan Aerospace, the same high-altitude drone startup that Facebook had been in talks with earlier this year. While we can’t be sure yet what Google plans to do with its new high-flying toys, it’s hard not to worry that, in addition to connecting the world over, this means a lot more potential information at Google’s fingertips.

Google has said that their new drone team will get to business with the already established Project Loon, which plans to shoot high-altitude balloons off into the stratosphere to cover the world in a blanket of Wi-Fi. According to the Wall Street Journal, there’s also potential for Titan to work with “another early-stage Google project that is developing an airborne wind turbine that it hopes will generate energy more efficiently.”

But then comes the creepy part; Titan’s drones will run around collecting “real-time, high-resolution images of the Earth” in addition to supporting voice and data services. Which means major boons to its Google Maps division’s already staggering wealth of information.

[MIKA27]

British Scientists Say They Have Created Artificial Blood For Humans

Somebody ring the bell at the blood factory, because it’s almost time to get those assembly lines running. Almost. A team of British scientists say they have created red blood cells suitable for transfusion into humans, a breakthrough that could change the lives of millions — if it works.

The announcement comes from Marc Turner, a Wellcome Trust-funded researcher from the University of Edinburgh who’s been working with cells that have been taken from humans, rewound into stem cells, and then grown into Type O- red blood cells. (Type O- is the rare, universal blood type.) “Although similar research has been conducted elsewhere, this is the first time anybody has manufactured blood to the appropriate quality and safety standards for transfusion into a human being,” Turner told The Telegraph.

In fact, Turner himself has done a lot of that similar research. Back in 2011, Turner announced a method using bone marrow stem cells, but the finished product wasn’t quite yet ready for trial. And last year, a scientist from Transylvania (of all places) invented a type of artificial blood that worked in mice but, again, wasn’t quite ready to be tested in humans. However, if he sticks to his plan to complete at trial by 2016 or early 2017, Turner will be the first to make transfusions in human beings. From there, we’ll actually be able to mass manufacture blood in factories and improve a lot of lives in the process.

So you’ve got our attention, Marc “The Bloodmaker” Turner. Now let’s see this blood in action.

[MIKA27]

Berlin Is Threatened From Below By Its Rising Water Table

While the American West stumbles forward into an already dangerous drought — and it’s barely even summer — Berliners are simply not using enough water. This means that the city’s water table is now on the rise, and it’s beginning to threaten the city’s buildings from below. Some basements have already been affected.

As The Economist explains, “Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the groundwater level has risen by over half a meter.” This is because, amongst other reasons, former East Berliners, price-shocked by the market rate for water and looking to save their money, and former West Berliners, motivated to conserve resources in the name of environment stewardship, both cut back quite drastically on their daily usage. Indeed, contemporary Berliners are now using only two-thirds of what they should be.

Why does this matter? After all, it sounds like a win-win for conservation. But the backstory here is somewhat incredible.

It turns out, The Economist adds, that this silently rising underground flood “now threatens much of the Berlin that tourists see. When Potsdamer Platz, formerly in the Wall’s death strip, was remade into its present, modern form, garages had to be built behind dams to keep out the water. The State Opera at Unter den Linden, facing the square where the Nazis burned books in 1933, is temporarily closed for renovation for similar reasons. The Bundesrat, the upper house of parliament, has had to pump water out of its basement at huge cost.”

As the water continues to rise, the city has found itself with a subterranean problem on its hands.

As it happens, in fact, I was a backpacker in Berlin way back in the winter of 1998/1999, when the huge platform over what is now the new Potsdamer Platz was still under construction. I remember walking around the massive construction site there, amongst the rebar and piles of building materials, and being able to look down to see workers SCUBA-diving in the very center of the city: a huge open pit with oxygen-tanked construction workers swimming below the surface of Berlin as if some new ocean had appeared, washing and surging against the foundations of buildings.

But it turns out this is now somewhat literally the case: there really is an underground lake on the rise, albeit in the form of the region’s natural water table, and it is beginning to interfere with the world of architecture perhaps foolishly constructed above it. What’s so interesting is that, in parts of the city such as Potsdamer Platz, Berlin is already engineered as a kind of hydrological bulwark against these encroaching waters, but perhaps the rest of the city will have to follow suit in the decades ahead.

Imagine the dream-like insanity of a city that needs to turn itself into something like a vertical dam to survive: re-engineering itself not to keep the ocean out, but fortifying itself from below to prevent a lake from rising up onto the sidewalks and streets. It’s as if the fate of Berlin now is to turn itself into a fleet of inland ships, a grounded armada awaiting its moment at sea.

[MIKA27]

Linking The World's Highest Cities With The Longest Urban Cable Car

La Paz is situated at a whopping 3,650 meters above sea level in Bolivia. El Alto, the country’s second biggest metropolis, is located 500 meters above that. Now a new cable car system linking the world’s highest cities made its public debut, allowing tens of thousands of commuters to bypass congested roadways for a sleek ride in the sky.

Mi Teleférico‘s shiny red cabins will eventually run on three lines — just the first one opened this week — with the people-moving power of 18,000 passengers an hour across an 11-kilometer stretch; that’s nearly 7 miles, which will apparently make this the longest urban cable-car system on earth (there are others that are longer, but they’re not smack-dab in the middle of two civic centres).

Taking to the air could cut travel times in half while reducing the number of cars on the road, and a ride is expected to cost 3.50 Bolivanos to the current 2.50 for bus fare.

Assuming everything goes smoothly, this seems like a pretty ingenious solution to the tricky problem of building smart transportation infrastructure over what is essentially the sheer side of a steep mountain. The effect on the skyline looks minimal, and I imagine that sitting back to take in a panoramic view as opposed to hustling on the ground would make the whole process much, much more enjoyable — not to mention more efficient.

Plus, there’s already a precedent for this kind of lift in South America. Colombia’s Metrocable extends out to Medellín’s less-accessible suburbs, and Rio has installed gondolas that tower over the Complexo do Alemão and Morro da Providência favelas — which have been relatively well-received, but are not without controversy.

Mi Teleférico opens to the public in May, and it will likely take time to gauge its impact on the area, but hopefully it eases some of the strain on those who traverse the heights daily.

[MIKA27]

This Guy's Job Pays Him $94,000 To Have As Much Fun In Australia As Possible

Stuck in your cubicle? Dreading work for the week? Wish you could go out, have fun, spend money, not work and still get paid? Then you (and every other person in this world) want to trade places with Andrew Smith. His job is Chief Funster for New South Wales. As in his job is to have fun. Seriously.

Smith, who’s from California, won a contest for the position and the role requires him to have 802,000 moments of fun in six months (that’s one for every square kilometre in NSW). So far, he’s done more than 480,000. Express.co.uk says that includes:

Skydiving, driving with Top Gear star The Stig, hanging out with skateboard legend Tony Hawk and abseiling down the spectacular Blue Mountains in Australia…

…187 high fives on the Sydney Harbor; mingling with 18,000 Elvii (the plural of Elvis) at the Parkes Elvis Festival; slipping down a 91-meter-long typhoon waterslide; and being chased by a massive pig at the Tamworth Country Music Festival.

He started his fun journey in December and it runs through June. Once he finishes, he’ll score nearly six figures for having a fun time in a country that loves having fun. There’s more things on his schedule like climbing the Sydney Harbor Bridge and swimming with dolphins and so forth. You know, the usual work responsibilities. Check out some of his exploits below.

[MIKA27]

The Black Box Flight Recorder: An Australian Invention That Nearly Didn’t Happen

The search operation for missing flight MH370 continues to hear signals that could be from the plane’s black box recorders. It’s only when those recorders are recovered that investigators will be able to find out what happened to the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 and the 239 passengers and crew. But how did flight recorders come about in the first place? While they were invented in Australia, their adoption by the air industry was far from smooth or straightforward.

Here the story is told by Bill Schofield (co-author of this article) who worked for a time with David Warren, the inventor of the black box.

Why are our planes crashing?

The most curious aspect of the development of the black box flight recorder was the widespread resistance to its adoption, as it encapsulated the most fundamental tenet of scientific inquiry – gathering reliable data to draw conclusions.

It arose out of boredom during a meeting in the 1950s in Canberra. Experts from the Aeronautical Research Laboratory (ARL; now part of the Defence Science and Technology Organisation or DSTO) were trying to find why the new British aircraft – the Comets – were crashing.

David Warren was a chemist employed to conduct research on fuels for the new gas turbines that were entering aeronautical service at that time. He’d been asked to calculate what the effect would be if the fuel tanks on the Comets were blowing up.

His answer was that it would not explain the damage of a recovered crashed Comet. While other experts speculated on possible causes during he had an obvious (in hindsight) thought – what they needed was data.

So he went back to his lab and wrote a very short tech memo on the need to record data in aircraft that would assist crash investigation. For the technology of the day, recording all aircraft flight data was impossibility.

Dr Warren thought that the Comet pilots would have known what was wrong with their aircraft, which is why black boxes include a cockpit voice recorder.

It was eventually determined that the Comets crashed due to a fatigue crack at a square window corner, near the radio direction-finding aerial situated in the roof. The crack would have catastrophically torn, an event the pilot would have not likely sees.

Recorders need to survive the crash

In the early 1950s none of the recording tapes would survive a burning plane crash, but at a trade fair Dr Warren saw the first of the wire voice recorders. The Miniphon wire recorder was the basis of Dr Warren’s first elemental recorder – now in the DSTO library at Port Melbourne (pictured, top).

He found that capturing clear records of cockpit conversation from microphones in the instrument panel and overhead was anything but easy but over time, he developed usable techniques.

Working with instrument colleagues at ARL they found a way of putting flight data as well as voice recording on the wire. This led to the construction of a much improved version in the late 1950s which was very advanced for its time.

The preproduction model (left) with the original experimental prototype (right).

Dr Warren showed remarkable tenacity in the black box development; he was a chemist engaged to and under continual pressure to focus on fuels and pass his black box invention over to the instrumentation section.

While others could develop the box it was Dr Warren who tried to get it adopted – and against unbelievable resistance. In an official letter from the Air Force rejecting the suggestion of putting boxes on RAAF planes it was stated that Dr Warren’s voice recorder would yield “more expletives than explanations”.

After the fatal crash of a Fokker Friendship approaching Mackay airport in Queensland in 1960, Justice Spicer, chairing the Board of Inquiry, stated that black boxes should be installed in commercial aircraft.

But the Australian Department of Civil Aviation purchased a US system instead of Dr Warren’s.

The US system proved useless in a subsequent air crash investigation. A commercial opinion of the day said the worldwide market would be as little as six boxes per year as they would only be installed on experimental aircraft during proving flights.

The Defence Department declined to patent the device as it saw little commercial justification for the cost of A£2000.

A chance meeting

The whole flight recorder project had languished until 1958 when Laurie Coombes, then director of the ARL, wished to fill a gap in the schedule of a visiting UK official Sir Robert Hardingham, the Secretary of the British Air Registration Board. Coombes introduced him to Dr Warren who talked about the black box, and not fuels research.

Sir Robert thought it was an excellent idea and Dr Warren was soon flying to the UK to present it to the Royal Aeronautical Establishment and a few UK commercial instrument makers.

He came home through the US visiting a number of aeronautical establishments and commercial companies – none of which were at all interested. The first black boxes were initially produced in the UK with acknowledgement of its Australian origins but these acknowledgements soon disappeared.

A lost invention

In 1965, cockpit voice recorders were mandated in all commercial aircraft built in the US and the western world followed.

The IP rights of Australia to the invention were, by this time, compromised, but in recognition of the background IP the Department of Defence was paid UK£1,000.

David Warren with a later version of his famous black box flight recorder.

I joined ARL in 1965 when the work on the black box was winding down but Dr Warren often talked to me at length about the history of the black box.

He wasn’t angry that he’d not been taken seriously by the powers-that-be, but more upset that Australia missed out in exploiting an invention which is, today, in hundreds of thousands of aircraft.

After the black box he started work in the early 1960s on fuel cells – the type now being installed in submarines. Again, though the powers-that-be could not at that time see any application for fuel cells so he was moved on again and started analysing the Earth’s need for energy and the likely sources of such energy.

His public lectures were well attended and would be highly relevant today. He was a free spirit with an unusual vision. He died in July 2010, at the age of 85.

[MIKA27]

Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth Takes Mankind Onto New Worlds

Why didn’t anyone think of this earlier? Winning in Sid Meier’s: Civilization often meant racing to complete the space tree, but what would happen to your civ once you made it into the stars? Wonder no longer. The newest game in Sid Meier’s world-building sim is Civilization: Beyond Earth, and it looks epic.

While the trailer itself doesn’t show any gameplay, it’s still a gorgeous and exciting concept to take the age-old Civilization game off Earth and into the universe. It’s almost a spiritual successor to Sid Meier’s other space game, Alpha Centauri from 1999.

Getting rid of the Earth template means you can build just about anything in terms of buildings and your tech tree. Imagine if the game was part FTL and part Civilisation: flying around the galaxy en route to your planet while trying to fend off other life forms? Imagine being able to consult a Mass Effect-style planet map, choosing which planets to colonise based on their resources and positioning?

The game is being developed by Firaxis and will be out in Australia’s spring (between September and November)

[MIKA27]

The Beautiful Paintings Of Jeremy Mann

Gallery: The always excellent Colossal puts the focus on Jeremy Mann and his new wonderful cityscapes, large format master-works of light and colour that contrast with his gritty brush strokes and markings. I really love his work. Above, New York’s Time Square. Below, Union Square and many others.

I love his figure paintings too:

Jeremy Mann is a painter based in San Francisco, California. You can follow his work in his blog.

[MIKA27]

The Plan To Turn Jellyfish Into Nappies And Paper Towels

Of the many problems on Earth, here are two: there are too many jellyfish in the seas, and there are too many nappies in our landfills. An Israeli nanotech start-up called Cine’al says it has found the answer to both in Hydromash, a super-absorbent material made from the bodies of jellyfish. But why stop at nappies? Cine’al says jellyfish tampons, paper towels and medical sponges could all be part of our absorbent future.

The recent jellyfish invasion of our seas has been a perplexing but destructive mystery. Their soft, slippery masses drift into desalination plants and the cooling systems of nuclear power plants, shutting down multimillion dollar facilities. En masse, they have also terrorised fish farms, beaches and boats. There isn’t much we as humans can do with jellyfish, other than eat them. They’re a delicacy in Asian countries, but jellyfish are out-reproducing our appetites.

Researchers at Tele Aviv University, however, thought jellyfish could perhaps be the source for highly absorbent and biodegradable material. Their bodies are 90 per cent water, yet they don’t disintegrate or dissolve in the sea. That’s the original idea behind Hydromash, which Cine’al claims is many times more absorbent than paper towels, and which is derived from jellyfish bodies plus nanoparticles for antibacterial properties.

The resulting material breaks down in 30 days, while current nappies which stick around for decades. It’s also not much more expensive than the synthetic super-absorbing polymers in current use, which means there could be a super-absorbent silver lining to the jellyfish invasion, after all.