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

[MIKA27]

MOPHIE LIGHTNING POWER RESERVE

Mophie has introduced the updated version of their popular keychain-friendly power reserve. The new sleek and extremely small battery charger comes with an integrated lightning connector and features a compact and quick-charging 1350mAh-capacity battery giving you up to 50% extra battery charge. It also includes a LED power indicator, and a convenient key ring making it easy to carry.

[MIKA27]

TRIDENT ICENI

For too long, the quest for a fuel-efficient sports car has been largely dominated by one approach — plug-in or hybrid electric engines — and in that quest, not nearly enough attention has been paid to the obvious benefits of diesel power. The Trident Iceni represents a counter to that approach, sporting a 6.6-liter V8 engine capable of producing 395 horsepower and an incredible 700 pound-feet of torque. All that power and torque means it can hit 60mph in just 3.7 seconds, and a top speed of over 190mph, all while claiming a range of around 2,000 miles on a single fill-up. And with classic British sporting-inspired style (available in a convertible, fastback, and shooting brake body) it's really hard to go wrong with this one.

[MIKA27]

NOD

At this point you're used to gesture control on your devices — your smartphone, your tablet, the trackpad on your laptop — but true gesture-based communication with a device shouldn't rely on placing your hands on a surface. With Nod, gestures are freed from the confines of touch, letting you control just about any connected device by simply moving your hands in the air. By placing the ring on your finger, you can type without ever touching a keyboard, turn down the thermostat using your nest, even play a song on your phone without any physical contact. Made from jewelry-grade stainless steel, and available in a range of sizes to fit your finger, it uses Bluetooth connectivity to interact with a growing range of devices and technologies — you may never touch another device again.

[MIKA27]

URWERK UR-105M WATCH

Not every watch face needs to look exactly the same — hour, minute, and second hand rotating around a central axis, pointing to clear indices around the periphery — and the guys who brought us the Urwerk UR-105M Watch know that well. Instead of the traditional means of displaying time, this watch features three oscillating satellites that display a numeral indicating the hour, and passing by a minutes indicator at the base.

All other features have been moved away from the face, including a power reserve, maintenance indicator, and run timer. Built from a combination of titanium and steel, the watch features sapphire crystals, and is available in brushed steel or black-colored titanium.

[Fuzz]

But again, the debate over how — and especially if — we kill prisoners has been going on a long time. Lethal injection often works, but as Oklahoma’s made clear, it’s not fail proof. Then again, what is? (Spoiler: the guillotine )

C4 or Semtex would work really well. Slip them a rufie in their last meal, strap on some C4, haul them out to sea, then.... boom! No mess, no fuss.

MIKA: Now I'd like to know how they "Lifted"those blocks to build the Phyramids....

Telekinesis?

Popular belief is Lohner's rope roll. Basically, you anchor a point at the top, loop a rope over a revolving beam, and then walk down the slope whilst dragging the block up the slope.

[MIKA27]

Popular belief is Lohner's rope roll. Basically, you anchor a point at the top, loop a rope over a revolving beam, and then walk down the slope whilst dragging the block up the slope.

For 20 Tonne Blocks!?

[Fuzz]

Yep. Just need to overcome the friction force (eg use a sledge) and put enough humans on the other end of the rope. The original experiment managed to lift a 5 tonne block.

[polarbear]

For 20 Tonne Blocks!?

From Red Dwarf

Rimmer- "How can you not believe in Aliens!? Look at the Pyramids, how did they manage to move such massive pieces of stone without the aid of modern technology?"

Lister- "They had massive whips Rimmer! Massive massve whips!"

[MIKA27]

From Red Dwarf

Rimmer- "How can you not believe in Aliens!? Look at the Pyramids, how did they manage to move such massive pieces of stone without the aid of modern technology?"

Lister- "They had massive whips Rimmer! Massive massve whips!"

[MIKA27]

Monster Machines: The Antarctic Neutrino Camera Is About To Get Much Bigger

The University of Wisconsin’s IceCube neutrino detection system has been quietly operating amid Antarctica’s barren tundra for more than four years now. In that time, the fledgling detector has captured more than 100 cosmic neutrinos, many of which originated far outside our Milky Way galaxy. And if project leaders get their way, its imaging quality is about to improve by an order of magnitude.

The IceCube neutrino detector has been in operation since 2010. It utilises kilometre-long strings of sensitive optical sensors buried in regular 125m intervals across the ice sheet to catch a glimpse of rarely interacting cosmic particles known as neutrinos. The individual sensors operate much like a digital camera’s pixels do, lighting up when exposed to incoming energy to create a composite view of the area’s neutrino strikes. Well, technically, the incoming neutrino interacts with the surrounding ice to produce a muon. As the muon travels through the ice, it generates a tiny shockwave within the frozen lattice and emits Cherenkov radiation, which one of the 5000 or so detectors actually senses.

“The more you have, the clearer the picture gets,” University of Wisconsin physicist Francis Halzen said as he argued for an expansion of the program at a recent workshop. “To see several neutrinos come from the same source, you are likely to need well above one thousand.”

Speaking of a clearer picture, the research team recently discovered that the ice sheet they’re operating on is optically more clear than they originally believed. This means that the current 125m spacing between strings could be effectively doubled to 250m, allowing the team to capture a larger image without much added expenditure. And, to compensate for the loss in sensor density, the team hopes to add as many as 120 new strings over the next six years, installing 20 of them annually with an updated version of their custom hot-water drill.

“We can do this for about the same amount of money we spent on the original array,” Halzen says. They just need to get the National Science Foundation, which helps fund the program, on board.

[MIKA27]

This R2-D2 Toy Is So Detailed That You Can Use It In The New Star Wars

The detail on this 1:6 scale R2-D2 figurine is pretty much insane, especially since this type of toys are mostly, if not completely, static. Not this one. Everything opens and lights up in this R2-D2. It’s pretty damn cool. Check out this video.

I wish it was fully motorised. In two years, perhaps.

[MIKA27]

Amateur Astronomers And NASA Capture Galaxy Eating Another Galaxy

Briefly: NASA has published this image showing the M51 spiral galaxy — located 30 million light years away from Earth — eating a tiny galaxy, which you can see on its upper left. It was obtained using data from the Chandra X-Ray space observatory and optical data from amateur telescopes on the ground.

[MIKA27]

SAROLEA SP7 ELECTRIC CARBON FIBER SUPERBIKE

With the Isle of Man TT Zero race set to kick off in just a few short weeks, a familiar name surfaces from the abyss as Sarolea debuts their all new SP7 carbon fiber constructed, electric motorcycle.

It’s been nearly five decades since we’ve seen a 2-wheeler produced by the Belgian company, but that’s all about to change in 2014. Before the hiatus, the brand had been manufacturing gasoline-powered motorcycles since the mid 1800s, and now they’re looking to get with the times. The SP7 superbike sports retro-inspired aesthetics with modern day technology. The 180 horsepower electric motor helps this carbon fiber rocket sprint to 60 miles per hour in just 2.8 seconds. Details on the battery pack are unknown at this time, and we’re not even sure if Sarolea has any plans to ever release this thing in a street-legal variant, but that doesn’t change the fact that we are excited to see this thing hit the track next month.

[MIKA27]

BAKER’S BARK CRAFT BEER SPICE RUB

True beer lovers don’t wait for the first sip at dinner to enjoy their favorite beverage, no sir—they work it into the meal. Baker’s Bark Craft Beer Spice Rub is ready to help you do just that.

As the coals are heating up, take a handful of this spicy spice and work it into your meat. The ingredients are plentiful, including Hungarian paprika, chiles, spices, dehydrated beer, craft beer, turbinado sugar, kosher salt, herbs, cayenne, and pepper. Handmade in the USA with all-natural ingredients, Baker’s Bark strikes us as a much better way of working craft beer into your food than say, dumping a pint of pale ale onto a beef patty. [Purchase]

[MIKA27]

LIX 3D PRINTING PEN

A new product is taking Kickstarter by storm, the Lix 3D Printing pen pushes your creativity to another level, it lets you write and draw in the air! The beautifully engineered and meticulously crafted pen works similarly to a 3D printer, it quickly melts and cools plastic "paint” to create rigid, freestanding structures

[MIKA27]

This Town Needs a Better Class of Racist

It's easy for polite American society to condemn Cliven Bundy and banish Donald Sterling while turning away from the elegant, monstrous racism that remains.

The question Cliven Bundy put to his audience last week—Was the black family better off as property?—is as immoral as it unoriginal. As both Adam Serwer and Jamelle Bouie point out, the roster of conservative theorists who imply that black people were better off being whipped, worked, and raped are legion. Their ranks include economists Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell, former congressman Allen West, sitting Representative Trent Franks, singer Ted Nugent, and presidential aspirants Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann.

A fair-minded reader will note that each of these conservatives is careful to not praise slavery and to note his or her disgust at the practice. This is neither distinction nor difference. Cliven Bundy's disquisition begins with a similar hedge: "We've progressed quite a bit from that day until now and we sure don't want to go back." With so little substantive difference between Bundy and other conservatives, it becomes tough to understand last week's backpedaling in any intellectually coherent way.

But style is the hero. Cliven Bundy is old, white, and male. He likes to wave an American flag while spurning the American government and pals around with the militia movement. He does not so much use the word "*****"—which would be bad enough—but "nigra," in the manner of villain from Mississippi Burning or A Time to Kill. In short, Cliven Bundy looks, and sounds, much like what white people take racism to be.

The problem with Cliven Bundy isn't that he is a racist but that he is an oafish racist. He invokes the crudest stereotypes, like cotton picking. This makes white people feel bad. The elegant racist knows how to injure non-white people while never summoning the specter of white guilt. Elegant racism requires plausible deniability, as when Reagan just happened to stumble into the Neshoba County fair and mention state's rights. Oafish racism leaves no escape hatch, as when Trent Lott praised Strom Thurmond's singularly segregationist candidacy.

Elegant racism is invisible, supple, and enduring. It disguises itself in the national vocabulary, avoids epithets and didacticism. Grace is the singular marker of elegant racism. One should never underestimate the touch needed to, say, injure the voting rights of black people without ever saying their names. Elegant racism lives at the border of white shame. Elegant racism was the poll tax. Elegant racism is voter-ID laws.

"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race," John Roberts elegantly wrote. Liberals have yet to come up with a credible retort. That is because the theories of John Roberts are prettier than the theories of most liberals. But more, it is because liberals do not understand that America has never discriminated on the basis of race (which does not exist) but on the basis of racism (which most certainly does.)

Ideologies of hatred have never required coherent definitions of the hated. Islamophobes kill Sikhs as easily as they kill Muslims. Stalin needed no consistent definition of "Kulaks" to launch a war of Dekulakization. "I decide who is a Jew," Karl Lueger said. Slaveholders decided who was a ****** and who wasn't. The decision was arbitrary. The effects are not. Ahistorical liberals—like most Americans—still believe that race invented racism, when in fact the reverse is true. The hallmark of elegant racism is the acceptance of mainstream consensus, and exploitation of all its intellectual fault lines.

Here is a lovely illustration of elegant racism:

This graph is from Robert J. Sampson's essential 2011 profile of Chicago, Great American City. Sampson's data depicts incarceration rates in the early to mid-'90s in Chicago among black (black dots) and white neighborhoods (white dots.) Increasingly, sociologists like Sampson are showing us how our brute and strained vocabulary fails to articulate the problem of racism. Conservatives and liberals frequently wonder how it could be that unequal outcomes endure for blacks and whites, even after controlling for income or "class." That is because conservatives and liberals underestimate the achievements of white supremacy and still believe that comparisons between a "black middle class" and a "white middle class" have actual meaning. In fact, black and white people—of any class—live in wholly different worlds.

A phrase like "mass incarceration" obviates the fact that "mass incarceration" is mostly localized in black neighborhoods. In Chicago during the '90s, there was no overlap between the incarceration rates of black and white neighborhoods. The most incarcerated white neighborhoods in Chicago are still better off than the least incarcerated black neighborhoods. The most incarcerated black neighborhood in Chicago is 40 times worse than the most incarcerated white neighborhood.

Perhaps black people are for reasons of culture or genetics 40 times more criminal than white people. Or perhaps there is something more elegant at work:

The Justice Department announced today the largest monetary payment ever obtained by the department in the settlement of a case alleging housing discrimination in the rental of apartments. Los Angeles apartment owner Donald T. Sterling has agreed to pay $2.725 million to settle allegations that he discriminated against African-Americans, Hispanics and families with children at apartment buildings he controls in Los Angeles.

Throughout the 20th century—and perhaps even in the 21st—there was no more practiced advocate of housing segregation than the city of Chicago. Its mayors and aldermen razed neighborhoods and segregated public housing. Its businessmen lobbied for racial zoning. Its realtors block-busted whole neighborhoods, flipping them from black to white and then pocketing the profit. Its white citizens embraced racial covenants—in the '50s, no city had more covenants in place than Chicago.

If you sought to advantage one group of Americans and disadvantage another, you could scarcely choose a more graceful method than housing discrimination. Housing determines access to transportation, green spaces, decent schools, decent food, decent jobs, and decent services. Housing affects your chances of being robbed and shot as well as your chances of being stopped and frisked. And housing discrimination is as quiet as it is deadly. It can be pursued through violence and terrorism, but it doesn't need it. Housing discrimination is hard to detect, hard to prove, and hard to prosecute. Even today most people believe that Chicago is the work of organic sorting, as opposed segregationist social engineering. Housing segregation is the weapon that mortally injures, but does not bruise. The historic fumbling of such a formidable weapon could only ever be accomplished by a graceless halfwit—such as the present owner of the Los Angeles Clippers.

As Bomani Jones noted back in 2006, Donald Sterling has long been a practitioner of racism and the NBA could not have cared less. Jones is rightfully apoplectic at the present response. That is because he understands that the NBA, its players and its fans, don't so much object to Donald Sterling's racism—they object to his want of elegance.

Like Cliven Bundy, Donald Sterling confirms our comfortable view of racists. Donald Sterling is a "bad person." He's mean to women. He carouses with prostitutes. He uses the word "******." He fits our idea of what an actual racist must look like: snarling, villainous, immoral, ignorant, gauche. The actual racism that Sterling long practiced, that this society has long practiced (and is still practicing) must attract significantly less note. That is because to see racism in all its elegance is to implicate not just its active practitioners, but to implicate ourselves.

How can it be that in a "black league," as Charles Barkley calls the NBA, an on-the-record structural racist like Donald Sterling was allowed to thrive? Everyone now wants to speak to Elgin Baylor. Where were all these people before? Where was Kevin Johnson? Where was the Los Angeles NAACP? When Donald Sterling was driving black tenants out of his buildings, where was David Stern?

Far better to implicate Donald Sterling and be done with the whole business. Far better to banish Cliven Bundy and table the uncomfortable reality of our political system. A racism that invites the bipartisan condemnation of Barack Obama and Mitch McConnell must necessarily be minor. A racism that invites the condemnation of Sean Hannity can't be much of a threat. But a racism, condemnable by all civilized people, must make itself manifest now and again so that we may celebrate how far we have come. Meanwhile racism, elegant, lovely, monstrous, carries on....

[MIKA27]

The Men Inside Of R2-D2 And C-3PO Actually Hated Each Other

In 1975, George Lucas was casting for his upcoming sci-fi film The Star Wars (name later changed to simply Star Wars). After a joint casting session with Brian De Palma, who was looking to hire actors for his new horror movie Carrie, Lucas was able to cast many of his principal actors. He decided on two young no-names, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill, as well as a friend from his previous film, American Graffiti, Harrison Ford, to portray the three main characters: Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker, and Han Solo.

But these were the easy casting choices, the characters for whom there weren’t any special physical traits needed. For two other main characters, R2-D2 and C-3P0, Lucas decided to go to London to see if he would have any luck finding actors who would fit the unique criteria of these roles.

Anthony Daniels had never been a science fiction fan. In fact, the only science fiction movie he had ever seen was Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. He was so dissatisfied that he walked out ten minutes into the movie and demanded his money back. As a classical actor in London, he was used to the stage, portraying a Shakespearean actor or a melodramatic English nobleman. His parents had wanted him to be a lawyer, but when Anthony told them about his desire to act, it created quite a rift in the Daniels family.

When the opportunity presented itself to audition in London for George Lucas to be in his upcoming space epic, The Star Wars, Daniels was not immediately on board. He didn’t know much about Lucas and he wanted to be a “serious actor.” But then Daniels was presented with the concept drawings by Ralph McQuarrie of his soon-to-be iconic robot, C-3PO. Strongly influenced by the Maschinenmensch from Fritz Lang’s classic sci-fi film Metropolis, Daniels was blown away by the emotion and controlled expression of the character. He “fell in love with the look of the character” and after reading the script, Daniels decided he must play C-3PO.

Convincing Lucas to hire him, though, was a challenge. Lucas originally believed that C-3PO should talk like a “sort of a used-car dealer, a fast-talking guy with an American accent.” Lucas soon realised that an English accent, like the one possessed by Daniels, accompanied C-3PO’s constant “eyebrow-raised” scepticism perfectly. Lucas had found the man inside of the gold robot that would help the Jedi save the Star Wars universe.

Kenny Baker was sceptical when he was asked to come in to 20th Century Fox Studios to meet with a young director by the name of George Lucas. He had formed a comedy partnership with another actor, Jack Purvis, and the two were doing quite well together. Both Baker and Purvis were actors who had “short stature” and called themselves the “Mini Tones.” They had been together for over ten years and their careers were beginning to rise. They had just become regularly performers on the English variety show “Opportunity Knocks” with Hughie Green.

Starting out as a circus performer, Baker was excited that he was being appreciated for his acting and comedy chops, and not just his (lack of) height. So, when Baker walked into the audition, he was expecting to turn down the role. But George Lucas needed him to play the droid R2-D2. Standing as an adult at three foot, eight inches (1.12 meters), Baker was short enough to fit into the robot and strong enough to operate the heavy machinery that a child would have not been able to do. Despite spending all day looking at actors, Lucas had found no one who was like Baker. He was the smallest man to audition for the role.

Due to Baker’s initial hesitation, Lucas told him to name his price. So, Baker asked for £800 a week (about £4,880 today or $8800), or approximately the amount he would make performing with Purvis. Lucas quickly accepted. Needless to say, even to this day, Baker states that he regrets not asking for more money.

Both Daniels and Baker don’t have particularly fond memories of shooting Star Wars. Due to the clunky nature of their suits, they had a hard time reacting and interacting with their fellow actors on set. They had difficulty performing simple movements, like walking up stairs and even breathing correctly. Plus, it was unbearably hot in the suits, especially when they shot in North Africa and the temperature reached nearly 105 degrees Fahrenheit (40.55 degrees Celsius).

While both appreciate the money, fame, and fan devotion that has come with playing such iconic characters, it’s sometimes been tough to be Luke Skywalker’s favourite droids. Said Baker during an interview in the mid 2000′s, “there weren’t any highlights (being R2-D2); I was just there, in the droid. I can’t remember any highs or lows, it was just a job.”

In a 1995 interview, Daniels explained how it felt to have the suit put on him,

During the first few days, it would take half an hour just to line-up the three screws that kept the two parts of the head together. You can imagine what it felt, and sounded like, for me. It was just like being inside a Rubik’s cube with people on the outside arguing over the instructions.

Despite being the only two actors to appear in all six Star Wars films and forever tied together in pop culture lore, it has been well-documented that Daniels and Baker never really got along. In a 2009 interview, Baker said that he originally thought it was just him that Daniels didn’t like, but “he doesn’t get along with anyone.”

Plus, Baker said he once approached Daniels about touring as their characters to make money and “he looked down his nose at me like I was a piece of sh*t. He said: ‘I don’t do many of these conventions — go away little man.’ He really degraded me and made me feel small.”

While the film may show an unbreakable friendship, they hardly talked to each other during filming. Said Baker again, “We were both in our droids; there was no interconnection at all. We couldn’t hear or see each other.”

As Disney ramps up production on the next set of Star Wars films (the first one, episode seven, to come out in 2015), both Daniels and Baker have expressed interest in reprising their roles. In fact, at the New York Comic Con in October 2013, Daniels may have let it slip that he will be in the next Star Wars. When asked a question, he said he was one of the only two actors to be in all SEVEN films. He quickly corrected himself and said six.

[MIKA27]

Extremely Dangerous Lava Surf Photography Is Completely Worth The Risk

CJ Kale is reportedly the first person ever to photograph lava entering the ocean from the surf, swimming near the scalding water and avoiding lava bombs just a few from where he was standing. Needless to say, the risk of dying is huge but his photographs are awesome.

In 2011, he feel into a 20-foot lava tube while shooting the Kilauea Volcano and shattered his ankle. Here’s a video of him taking these photos in the water, a few feet from the lava.

Raised on the Waianae Coast in Hawaii, his interest in volcanoes and nature mixed with photography when he moved to the Big Island of Hawaii. “There is no other place in the world that you can photography within feet of where you stood the day before and capture such dramatically different images,” he told me in an email, “each volcano photo I capture is truly a unique moment in time never to be captured the same again.”

He now lives in Kailua Kona with his wife and two children and runs the Lava Light Gallery with his best friend and fellow photographer Nick Selway.

His non-fiery nature photos are beautiful too:

CJ Kale has been featured in new articles worldwide such as Natures best, National Geographic, Professional Photography Monthly, Surfer Magazine, UK Daily Mail, New York times, BBC, Ocean views, and One World One Ocean, and has won numerous awards and has even had his work displayed in the Smithsonian.

[MIKA27]

Monster Machines: The Carl-Gustaf Looks Like A Bazooka But Shoots Like A Rifle

Sometimes, small arms fire just doesn’t cut it. So when special forces teams around the world need more long-range, tank-stopping punch than a conventional bazooka or panzerschreck can deliver, they give Carl a call.

The M3 Carl Gustaf Multi-Role Anti-Armour Anti-Personnel Weapon System (MAAWS) is a shoulder fired, recoilless rifle — yes it’s a rifle — originally devised by Swedish defence engineers back in 1948. It features a breech-mounted Venturi recoil damper, dual pistol grips and iron sights that can be augmented with telescopic image-enhancing scopes. Normally, the weapon is operated by a two man team — one carrying and firing the device, while the other carries ammo and handles reloads — but it can be used solo if the need for serious badassery arises.

While the M3 Carl-Gustaf looks quite a bit like its bazooka, PIAT, and panzerschreck counterparts, it offers a number of unique design variations. For one, it fires just like an big-old rifle. Its 84mm bore is rifled, which spin stabilises its rounds (rather than relying on pop-out fins) and allows for more propellant to be used. This in turn greatly extends the M3′s targeting range. Rounds also fly significantly faster — about 290m/s for the M3 compared to 105m/s or less for similar weapons — though even this speed is generally too pokey to be of much use against long-range moving targets. Also, unlike the single-serving AT4 anti-tank system, the M3 can be reused.

“It operates just like a rifle,” Bhuvanesh Thoguluva, chief of the Vehicle Protection, Rockets & Shoulder Fired Weapons Branch of the Munitions Systems and Technical Directorate at Picatinny Arsenal, said in a press release. “After firing, the assistant gunner reloads it, and it can be fired again. On a disposable weapon you will find a maximum effective range of approximately 300m, whereas with the Gustaf you are talking about possibly up to 1700m. That’s a huge difference.”

The modern M3 version weighs just under 10kg, 5kg less than the original M2 iteration, thanks to the liberal usage of carbon fibre and aluminium throughout the weapon body. It can fire up to six rounds a minute using a two-man team.

The M3′s ease of use, durability, and the destructive power of its 6-pound multi-function warheads have made it a the most popular choice for squad-level anti-tank operations among many West European armies. It has also been extensively used by US Special Forces (Army Special Forces, 75th Ranger Regiment, Navy SEALS, Delta Force, DEVGRU and MARSOC) since being introduced in 1991.

These weapons made an immediate impact upon being deployed to Afghanistan, just as they had when they were first introduced in the Falklands. With RPG and SAW nests capable of striking up to 900m away, the M3′s 1000 yard-plus effective range (double that of, say, the AT4, M141, or M72 LAW) proved vital for mounting counter offensives. And, from the looks of things in the Eastern Bloc and Middle East, the Carl-Gustaf will continue to see action for the foreseeable future.

[MIKA27]

Who Invented The Elevator?

The history of the elevator, if you define it as a platform that can move people and objects up and down, is actually a rather long one. Rudimentary elevators are known to have been in use in ancient Rome as far back as 336 BC, with the first reference of one built by the talented Archimedes.

These early elevators were open cars rather than enclosed ones, and consisted of a platform with hoists that would enable the car to move vertically. The hoists were typically worked manually, either by people or animals, though sometimes water wheels were used. Romans continued to use these simple elevators for many years, usually to move water, building materials, or other heavy items from one place to another.

As for the dedicated passenger elevator, this was created in the 18th century, with one of the first used by King Louis XV in 1743. He had an elevator constructed at Versailles that would carry him from his apartments on the first floor to his mistress’ apartments on the second floor. This elevator wasn’t much more technologically advanced than those used in Rome. To make it work, men stationed in a chimney pulled on the ropes. They called it a “flying chair.”

It wasn’t until the 1800s that elevator technology really started to advance. For starters, elevators no longer needed to be worked manually. In 1823, two British architects — Burton and Hormer — built a steam-powered “ascending room” to take tourists up to a platform for a view of London. Several years later, their invention was expanded upon by architects Frost and Stutt who added a belt and counter-weight to the steam power.

Soon enough, hydraulic systems began to be created as well, using water pressure to raise and lower the elevator car. However, this wasn’t practical in some cases — pits had to be dug below the elevator shaft to enable the piston to pull back. The higher the elevator went, the deeper the pit had to be. Thus, this wasn’t a viable option for taller buildings in big cities.

So despite the hydraulic systems being somewhat safer than steam-powered/cabled elevators, the steam powered ones with cables and counterweights, stuck around. They had just one major drawback: the cables could snap, and sometimes did, which sent the elevator plummeting to the bottom of the shaft, killing passengers and damaging building materials or other items being transported. Needless to say, no one was jumping to get on these dangerous elevators and so passenger elevators up to this point were largely a novelty.

The man who solved the elevator safety problem, making skyscrapers possible, was Elisha Otis, who is generally known as the inventor of the modern elevator. In 1852, Otis came up with a design that had a safety “brake.” In the event that the cables broke, a wooden frame at the top of the elevator car would snap out and hit the walls of the shaft, stopping the elevator in its tracks.

Otis himself demonstrated the device, which he called a “safety hoist,” at the New York World’s Fair in 1854, when he went up in a make-shift elevator himself and had the ropes cut. Rather than plummeting to his death as the audience thought might happen, his safety hoist snapped out, catching the elevator within seconds. Needless to say, the crowd was impressed.

Otis went on to found his own elevator company, which installed the first public elevator in a New York building in 1874. The Otis Elevator Company is still known today as the world’s largest elevator manufacturer.

While the cable elevator design has remained, many additional improvements have been made, the most obvious of which is that elevators now run on electricity rather than steam power, a change that came about starting in the 1880s. The electric elevator was patented by Alexander Miles in 1887, though one had been built by the German inventor Werner von Siemens in 1880.

Otis’ safety hoist wasn’t the end of safety innovation, either. These days, it’s virtually impossible for an elevator to plummet and kill passengers. There are now multiple steel cables to hold the elevator’s weight, plus a number of different braking systems to stop an elevator from falling if the cables somehow snap. If, despite all these safety measures, the elevator does fall, there are shock absorbers at the bottom of the shaft, making it unlikely death will occur and reducing the possibility of serious injury.

Bonus Facts:

• Elisha Otis is not considered to be the inventor of the modern elevator by everyone. Another man, Otis Tufts, patented an elevator design that had doors that opened and closed automatically and benches inside. However, Tufts’ design did away with the typical cable system because of the safety issues, and instead used an impractical, expensive system of threading the elevator car up a giant screw. Obviously, this would be prohibitively expensive in tall buildings. Elisha Otis’ design was much simpler (and closer to modern designs), easier to use, and less expensive to make, which is why he generally gets the credit and not Tufts. That said, the “Vertical Screw Railway” was installed in a few buildings in New York and Philadelphia.
• The first elevator shaft was put in a building before Elisha Otis designed his safe, steam powered elevator. This was done in 1853 at the Cooper Union Foundation building in New York. Peter Cooper felt that elevators would be perfected and made safe at some point in the near future, so included it in the design of the building. It took a couple decades, but an elevator was eventually installed in the shaft by Elisha Otis’ company.
• Elisha Otis was born into a farming family in 1811, but he spent a lot of time at the blacksmith’s as a child, fascinated by tools and making things. He created a number of inventions to help out around the farm, including a pulley and lift system. At one point, he also worked in a bed-making factory and built a machine that increased production rates significantly.
• Otis’ daring elevator safety demonstration at the World Fair was hyped up by Phineas Barnum, who is also responsible for making phrases like “jump on the bandwagon” popular.
• Otis Tufts also invented the steam-powered printing press and steam-powered pile driver.

[MIKA27]

Perth's Billion-Dollar Opera House Looks Like A Rack Of Lamb

The Sydney Opera House is as iconic as buildings get, making it just as good a source of inspiration as any. One designer wants to impart the same uniqueness to his own design for a similar structure in Perth, but with an added sense of being “sculpturally inside music”. Here is the result, though images of delicious, rosemary-dressed meat come to mind more than treble clefs.

The cost of the fictional building has been calculated at $1.2 billion and as interesting as it may look, Western Australia premier Colin Barnett has stated that it probably won’t see funding from the state, according to a story by the ABC’s Emma Wynne.

The design itself is the work of one Shane O’Riley, who reportedly took half-a-decade to put it together. The intended location is Elizabeth Quay, where there’s “a parcel of land earmarked” for cultural development.

The ABC article goes on to quote Riley explaining that far from resembling a lack of lamb — or an echidna — the structure is meant to be a metaphor for music:

The design, Mr O’Riley said, was intended to be a metaphor for “what it feels like to be sculpturally inside music, without the experience of the sound”.

“The living embodiment is you being inside a musical instrument, a sculpture, something that is dynamic and inspirational,” he said.

You can see more images of the design over at Unique8 Design Studios.

[MIKA27]

New Call Of Duty Stars Kevin Spacey Doing His House Of Cards Routine

It was bound to happen: After so many scenes with House of Cards’ Frank Underwood releasing tension by killing strangers in Call of Duty, it’s only logical that Kevin Spacey appears in the new Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. Here’s the trailer, with him in top Frank form.

[MIKA27]

This Hubless Bicycle Folds To The Size Of An Umbrella

Folding bicycles are wonderful, but by and large they have to strike a compromise: large wheels and limited portability, or small pack-size but with tiny little wheels. This slightly strange hubless bike promises a solution to that problem.

The Sada Bike promises standard bicycles dimensions — it uses 26-inch wheels — but its hubless design means that, as the frame folds away, it comes apart from the wheels to maximise portability.Gianluca Sada, it’s designer, explains:

The wheels have no spokes, the system folds with a single movement, the packaging container can also be used as a backpack… It uses a system anchoring the wheels using smaller wheels held by a small frame and a specific quick clamping device. They allow you to fold the bike quickly and easily, using its special package like a trendy backpack.

It certainly lives up to its claims in terms of folding — check out the frame once collapsed in the image below. Obviously you have to move the wheels too, but they’re probably not particularly cumbersome given they have no hubs or spokes. They might even make a good impromptu hula hoop.

But there’s one downside we can see from the off. Bicycle wheels typically get their strength from the tension in the spokes; removing them means that the strength has to be put into the rim instead. That’s fine, but it adds masses of weight to the outside of the wheel — and that, if you remember your physics classes from high school, is a problem. Rotating weight is where you notice it most, because you have to get the mass spinning.

Sada doesn’t really seem to address this problem — but then, perhaps given that it’s a city bike, it’s not a big a deal breaker as it could be. At any rate, the bicycle is still a prototype seeking funding, so we should perhaps hold off real criticism until we can try the finished product.

[MIKA27]

Watch The ISS's View Of Earth Live, Right Here, Right Now

NASA just switched on the High Definition Earth Viewing experiment, a live stream view of earth beamed directly from the International Space Station. See the view, hear the crew’s radio communications — it’s almost like being on board!

The experiment, which starts today and runs through October of 2015, will help determine how earth-facing cameras survive in the high-radiation environment outside the ISS. If it looks dark right now, that’s either because the cameras have briefly lost contact, or the station’s on the dark side of our planet. Hop over to ISS Tracker for real-time updates to see exactly where the station is positioned over earth.

[Habana Mike]

Watch the Godfather of Air Racing Fly Through a 70-Foot-Wide Canal

The Corinth Canal in Greece is 4 miles long and only 70 feet wide, and Peter Besenyei just became the first man to fly a plane right through the middle. And then he did a few barrel rolls for good measure.

The canal was built in the late 1800s to connect the Gulf of Corinth with the Saronic Gulf in the Aegean Sea. It cut through the Peloponnesian peninsula, making the tip an island. But because of financial problems, its narrow passage, and a bad habit of dropping rocks onto the heads of merchant ships, it never gained much traction as a shipping canal. But it is good for something.

Enter Besenyei. Known as the godfather of the Red Bull Air Race, the test pilot was instrumental in helping develop the insane, high-speed race series in 2001, laying out the regulations and selecting the first batch of pilots that would compete 80 feet above the ground at 200 mph.

For his flight through the canal, Besenyei used the same Zivko Edge 540 single-prop used in the air races, with a 300 horsepower engine, a 24-foot wingspan, and its ability to rocket to 4,000 feet in less than a minute. It’s also supremely agile, perfect for maneuvering through pillions and, now, running through an abandoned canal.

That's a helluva a pilot with cast iron balls I'd say. Thanks for posting it!