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

[MIKA27]

When The Hell Are We Getting The Heavy Spacecraft Of Alex Ichim?

Romanian concept designer Alex Ichim is one of the long list of artists that make me jealous of the people who will be born five thousand years from now. I just want to get into a hangar and see one of the massive beasts he designs in real life.

Of course, maybe nobody will be born 5000 years from now and Earth would be a ball of rock and radioactive mud then, still rebooting after World War III or some giant asteroid hit. But since we don’t really know, at least we can dream.

Alex Ichim is a Romanian concept artist working for Gameloft from Bucharest.

[MIKA27]

This Guy's Transformers Costume Actually Transforms Into A Mini Car

I’m pretty sure any kid under the age of eight will believe that this street performer in a Transformers costume is a real-life Transformer. Heck, I have many wrinkles and awful decisions beyond being a kid and I still have a part of me that’s hoping this is a real Transformers who just wants to spread joy of the Transformer way.

The video was taken by Mohammad Tiba in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

[MIKA27]

NASA Captures Striking Photo Of Massive Storm Near Australia

Being on board the International Space Station would provide one with ample opportunities to snap some amazing shots of the small blue ball we call home. Did I say amazing? I meant terrifying. Take this rather swirly mess of clouds off the south-western coast of Australia.

Before you fly into a panic, tying down your dogs and what have you, this particular image isn’t exactly recent — it was captured on 29 March with a 14-24mm lens mounted on a Nikon D2Xs. As the photo’s description on Flickr explains, it was a pre-winter storm… and not the apocalypse in cyclone form.

I can’t see Australia myself in the photo, so we’ll just have to take NASA at its word that we’re underneath that, somewhere.

[MIKA27]

IBM Lab Accidentally Makes New Type Of Super-Strong, Recyclable Polymer

Strong, durable materials are hard to recycle — they’re designed to stand up to abuse. But research chemists at an IBM laboratory just published their discovery of a never-before-seen family of polymers that’s super strong, self-healing, lightweight, and easy to recycle. And it was discovered completely by accident.

Dr Jeannette Garcia was mixing up a standard recipe for a plastic polymer at an IBM lab when she inadvertently left out an ingredient. When she returned to the beaker later, the liquid mix had turned into a white plastic so strong, it couldn’t be removed with a grinder. Dr Garcia had to smash the beaker with a hammer to get the polymer out.

IBM says Dr Garcia’s plastic is the first distinctly new type of polymer created in decades — most of the new polymers created in recent years are simply variations on materials synthesized many years ago. The new family, code-named “Titan”, is a type of thermoset polymer, formed under heat to create a 3D network of bonds that’s as rigid as bone.

Unlike other types of thermoset polymers, however, IBM’s accidental discovery is utterly recyclable, a huge and unexpected benefit in a class of materials built to be ultra-tough. “Thermosets are designed to be exceptionally stable in terms of temperature and mechanical properties; they are not designed to be reversible,” said Dr Timothy Long, a chemistry professor at Virginia Tech. “To think about materials that have all of these properties, and which are also recyclable, is an advance.”

There’s still plenty of research to be done, and you won’t see Titan-based polymers in consumer products any time soon. But this accidental discovery shows that it’s possible to create strong, self-healing materials that are durable when needed, but can be broken down and recycled when the job is done. You just have to make some mistakes along the way.

[MIKA27]

The California Wildfires And Fire Tornadoes Look Like Hell On Earth

This footage captured by a Fox News video crew shows a firenado raging near Carlsbad. It’s absolutely terrifying but the video taken by some people driving through a road is even worse. It really feels like hell on Earth.

The firenado

http://youtu.be/yCqNnnogHaM

Road through hell

Here’s one taken right next to the road, which looks about to engulf everything nearby in flames. Forgive the vertical video since, like, they are driving by a fire:

For a moment all you can see is red and orange flames but as the car passes by, you see the smoke monster begin to take over. Terrifying. I hope everybody can stay safe.

[MIKA27]

This Diver Is Cradling A 12,000-Year-Old Skull In An Underwater Cave

Inside a cave so deep and dark it’s called Hoyo *****, or Spanish for “black hole”, divers are transporting a 12,000-year-old skull for 3D scanning. The skull belongs to one of the oldest and most complete skeletons ever found in the Americas. Lucky for us, the expedition was documented with an entire set of stunning photos.

The skeleton, belonging to a 15-year-old or 16-year-old girl whom scientists have named Naia, helps solve a long-running debate on what early Americans looked like. Naia’s narrow face and prominent forehead look nothing like Native Americas, but her DNA markers prove their related ancestry.

At the time of her death at the end of the ice age, the caves on the Yucatan peninsula were likely dry. Since then, rising sea levels have flooded the caves. Divers first discovered Naia’s bones, along with the bones of extinct animals like saber-toothed cats and giant ground sloths, in 2007. Her bones have since been moved after unauthorised divers entered the cave. And while we’ll never visit the cave, we can look at these extraordinary photos documenting underwater anthropology.

Diver Susan Bird working at the bottom of Hoyo *****, a large dome-shaped underwater cave on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. She carefully brushes the human skull found at the site while her team members take detailed photographs.

Divers Susan Bird and Alberto Nava search the walls of Hoyo *****.

Alberto Nava at 145-ft depth in Hoyo *****, inspecting a forelimb of an extinct Shasta ground sloth, one of two sloth species found in the cave. The Shasta ground sloth has not previously been found so far south in the Americas.

A broad view of Hoyo *****, shot from the floor near the south edge, showing the immensity of the chamber and the complexity of the boulder-strewn bottom. One access tunnel can be seen near the ceiling at top left. This photo was taken by the “painting with light” method on a 30 second exposure.

[MIKA27]

Making Time Go Faster for Aged Booze

Small distillers (and even big ones) would love to speed up the chemistry that happens inside a barrel, because as long as what they make is sitting in wood, it’s not making money. Technology that could shorten the time between distillation and bottling would be a massive boon to the industry.

A recent article about aging spirits from Punch Ten Speed Press’ lovely online drinks magazine-blog describes a super-science-y way to accelerate the aging of a spirit—which is to say, making it mature faster than it would just sitting in a big wooden barrel. Even today, big wooden barrels are the pinnacle of the technology.

The key to the story is a $5,000 gadget called the Sonicprep that can, apparently, force a distillate to mix with wood chips and extract their flavors in minutes instead of years. Here’s the high-stakes part of the story in case you don’t want to click:

Design-wise, the Sonicprep consists of a sound-insulated chamber with a door and a hole cut in the top, a wand-like “horn” that emits high-intensity sound waves and a control box and power source that connects the wand through a cord. According to David Pietranczyk, the Sonicprep’s wand can deliver pinpointed sound waves into a liquid at rates as high as 20,000 pulses per second. Pietranczyk—a chef working at PolyScience who’s tested the Sonicprep’s culinary applications—talked me through the phenomena at play. The device creates microscopic cavitation bubbles that disrupt and needle their way in between molecules, as well as “minute shockwaves that can rip apart solids.” Basically, the Sonicprep allows liquids to mingle with and pass through porous materials extremely effectively.

A New Orleans bartender named Max Messier mixes housemade distilled apple juice, made with a rotary evaporator, with wood chips and then cavitates the mixture into something almost but not entirely like Calvados.

The technology would appeal not just to modern-cuisine-chasing bartenders, but to distillers looking to cut costs. In addition to delaying a return on investment, time spent in the barrel costs money, in fact, because the distillers have to maintain their warehouses.

That’s why, for example, bourbon distillery Buffalo Trace built its “Warehouse X,” to test things like temperature increases—cycles of higher heat induce a distillate to infiltrate wood more frequently, which is why makers of American whiskey will tell you that it doesn’t need as much age on it as, say, single malt Scotch. And it’s also why a company called Terresentia runs a business with a proprietary filtering and ultrasonic process that, they say, adds the flavor of aging.

More usually, though, it’s why small distillers use small barrels. They get more distillate in contact with more wood in less time.

I visited a couple of barrel makers when I was reporting my book, including one called Kelvin Cooperage. It’s relatively small by the standards of, say, the robot-powered cooperage Diageo built in Scotland or even Independent Stave and the Brown-Foreman facilities here in the US, in Kentucky. Brown-Foreman builds on the other of a couple thousand barrels a day, mostly to feed the rapacious beast that is Jack Daniels; Independent Stave makes perhaps a million a year. “If we make 100 in a day, that’s a pretty good day,” says Paul McLaughlin, one of the brothers who runs Kelvin. “A lot of what we’re doing is for winemakers, taking a barrel and shaving it.” That “rejuvenates” the barrel, planes off a few millimeters from the inside to reveal new wood, ready for new wine. It’s a cheaper option for winemakers than the beautiful, furniture-finished, brand new American or French oak barrels with galvanized steel hoops.

Barrels waiting to be filled with wine at Tonnellerie Radoux in Napa.

(I asked Yuri DeLeon, a Napa-based account manager for Independent Stave, if the million-a-year number was accurate. He wouldn’t tell me, but he agreed that it was “a lot.”)

One of the rules for making bourbon is that the barrel has to be new, and made of oak. But the rules for a lot of other spirits ask for barrels that once contained something else—you get the flavor of the first fill as well as whatever you’re making. Bourbon barrels tend to be a little less pretty than wine barrels, too. The outsides aren’t sanded to a beautiful white. The hot-roll steel hoops get pitted with rust in the damp warehouse air, and the wood is kiln-dried instead of seasoned for two or three years outside, which means it never acquires the silver-black infection of fungus that eats away at the lignin, exposing the cellulose to the spirit as it ages and sparking all kinds of weird chemistry. Some of the tannins either get leached away or break down, softening flavor.

Independent Stave is an exception here—in addition to the rough-hewn everyday barrels they also make a line aimed at, yes, craft distillers. They air-season the wood for a minimum of two years, and let buyers specify different levels of toast or char. You can buy American oak, French oak, or a hybrid, with American staves and French heads. And the barrels are sanded, and have galvanized hoops. “For the craft distiller we sand it a little better, make it a little nicer,” says DeLeon. After all, that barrel probably won’t be locked away in some dark, never-seen rickhouse. It’ll be on display in the distillery, right behind the still. It has to look good for the customer—and different kinds of barrels can extend a brand, because a distiller can throw the same product into a range of wood and release it under a bunch of different labels. Slick. “You don’t change your process at all,” DeLeon says. “You just change the oak.”

That’s not McLaughlin’s game, though. “The vast bulk of our production is still wine barrels,” he says. “Making new bourbon barrels, that needs to be what you do. It’s high volume and low margin. It’s a cheaper barrel.” Even Kelvin’s wine barrels specify which forest the oak was harvested in—Kentucky or Minnesota (because Minnesota is supposed to have tighter-grained wood, which equals more tannins). “We can do a traditional bend or a water bend in a tank of hot water, as opposed to just spraying it down. And we have like 12 different toast levels,” McLaughlin says. “And then if someone came to us and said, ‘hey, would you try this?’ we would.”

(Kelvin gets its staves from stave mills, second- and third-generation family run, just like Kelvin. They’re harvesting from private land here in the US, and if you ask them about the sustainability of the practices, they’ll say that there are more oak trees growing now in the US than any time in history. They don’t say anything about how old those oak trees are, or what the quality of the wood is. It comes in three grades: Veneer, which is the stuff you use to build furniture with; wine wood; and bourbon wood.)

(In fact, those differences between American barrels and the French style of wine barrel are what put winemakers off American oak for years—still do, in fact. It probably wasn’t the oak, but the manufacturing process, which was at first more like that of bourbon, with kiln-dried wood and a deep char on the interior. Coopers are a bit more sophisticated now.)

But that’s not the core of what Kelvin does. In fact, Kelvin plays a key role in the global spirit business. “The biggest part of our business is dealing in used whiskey barrels,” McLaughlin says. “We buy as many barrels as we can, grade them, repair them, and ship them out.” In other words, after Jim Beam, Makers Mark, Heaven Hill, and Wild Turkey dump their bourbons out of their barrels, they put the barrels on a truck and send them to Kelvin (or similar re-makers). Kelvin rehabs them and puts them into their own cargo containers, bound for Scotland, Ireland, China, the Caribbean, and elsewhere so distillers in those places can age their new-make spirit in ex-bourbon casks from America. “A distiller here wants to empty it, roll it onto a truck, and never think about it again,” McLaughlin says. And overseas, “they want to open the container doors and roll barrels into their filling line.”

It’s not a business McLaughlin expected to find himself in. His father became a cooper at 15 and started the business in Glasgow in 1963, making and rehabbing casks from the US. In 1991 he moved the business to Louisville—it made more sense to go to the source. Paul’s brother Ed actually did a coopering apprenticeship in Scotland; Paul, a big guy with dark curly hair and half a Scottish accent, became a lawyer. He was working in Orange County in California—living in Laugna Beach and working in Fashion Island, actually—when he realized that he hated it out there. Too crowded. “I decided that was enough of that,” he says. That was a decade ago. “It was a good move, and it beat billing hours.”

In practice, that means McLaughlin’s days are barrels barrels barrels. A barrelful of barrels. They are stacked everywhere at Kelvin—outside, pushed against every boundary of the property, stacked high, grey and black in the sun. In the warehouse they’re only allowed to go four high, but that’s still 20 feet. Everywhere they’re not looming, the space is taken up by barrel parts—palettes of staves ready to be milled, bent, and turned into barrels or stacked discs of wood, the heads of the cask. That bready-witch hazel smell suffuses the place. It’s pleasant enough, McLaughlin says, depending on what you were doing the night before.

The thing is, the used bourbon barrels arrive in pretty bad shape. “Every one in here has some different problem,” says McLaughlin, walking between two walls of barrels. “It’s the pressure and releasing. You’ll see quite often the staves are good but an end will blow out.” Or the bung stave will have cracks. “You can see that here,” he says, pointing at a barrel. I look more closely, and sure enough, there are cracks around the hole where the bung would go. “The only way to repair that is to take hoops off and cannibalize other barrels.

McLaughlin walks me through the labyrinth to the actual workshop floor. There’s a sound like a hammer on an anvil; one of the workers is using a mallet and a chisel to knock hoops off a damaged barrel. McLaughlin shouts above the noise. “We watch the width, and we can tell which cooperage a barrel was made in. We’ll find a barrel from that cooperage for the repair.”

Why? I yell back. You’re trying to match the width of the staves?

“It’s really height,” he says. “It’s miniscule, but it makes a difference.” Meanwhile, another worker is getting ready to pop the rivets out of the hoops. They’ll resize them later, so they’re tight. McLaughlin watches hoops come off another barrel—a few sharp strikes of the chisel and the hoop is loose, and then off, one after the other. “There’s a machine to do this, but this is quicker,” he says. Then he invites me to stick my head into the newly splayed open barrel. It’s black, wet, and smells like fruitcake. For a moment I consider licking the staves. Then the worker tips the barrel over, and the bottom head falls out. “See, he found another bad stave,” McLaughlin says. “That’s two he’ll replace.”

But…what happens to the cracked staves? “Barbecue places. Firewood. We try and sell them where we can,” McLaughlin says. “People use them for decoration in bars.

Sometimes the used barrels get completely disassembled. Kelvin packages them like puzzles, wrapped in plastic. These “knockdowns” are easier to ship—as long as the person at the other end has a big enough reassembly operation. “We get 210 standard barrels on a 40-foot shipping container,” McLaughlin says. Then he points at the palletized, disassembled barrels. “You can probably get 390 of those, if you ship heads and hoops as well.” Easy economics: Pay the same for the container, ship almost 200 more barrels. “We typically ship 10,000 at a time.”

That’s a tremendous volume, I say.

“People keep drinking,” McLaughlin answers.

But the real reason big barrels like the ones Independent Stave and Kelvin make haven’t been replaced yet is that the technological tricks and small barrels only replicate part of the chemistry of maturation. They accelerate extraction, which pulls tannins and pigments and sugars out of the wood. But they don’t accelerate oxidation—the attachment of oxygen atoms to the various molecules floating around in the solution—or esterification, the combination of acids and alcohols (usually) into molecules called esters. They can smell and taste pretty great, but it’s tough to speed up the process. Typically, extractives give you new-green, almost piney flavors as well as molecules like lactones (a kind of coconutty, fatty flavor), and oxidation and esterification mellow those out

So I’m a little bit suspicious of the use of a Sonicprep in pseudo-aging. Just as with a small barrel or a filtration process, what you get might taste good, and might look different (or even better) than a distillate fresh out of the still…but it won’t taste old.

Unless I’m missing something. Happy to hear otherwise.

[MIKA27]

Is it Black Shuck or Just Another Huge Hairy Hellish Hound?

You can’t tell from the box of bones if the creature they came from had shaggy “shucky” fur, flaming eyes or a knack for wringing necks – just that it was definitely big and canine. But was it Black Shuck, the legendary Hellhound of East Anglia?

Archeologists from DigVentures searching the grounds at Leiston Abbey in Suffolk, England, recently found a box containing the skeleton of what appears to be a 7 foot long dog that would have probably weighed over 200 pounds.

Leiston Abbey where the bones were found

The abbey is a few miles from the Holy Trinity Church in Blythburg where, on a stormy August 4th night in 1577, it’s said that the hellhound called Black Shuck tore open the door with eyes enflamed and killed a man and a boy by wringing their necks before running out just as the steeple collapsed.

For skeptics who need more than an account of the attack in the pamphlet “A Straunge And Terrible Wunder” by the Reverend Abraham Fleming (who would doubt the word of a reverend?) or the image of Black Shuck in Bungay’s coat of arms, there are scorch marks on the wooden door of the church said to have been made by the hot paws of the Hellhound.

Doors of the Holy Trinity Church in Blythburg said to have been scorched by Black Shuck

The bones were found near pottery fragments that date to the same 16th century time period. Carbon dating will be performed to obtain their exact age. So, has Dig Ventures found the legendary Black Shuck or an abbot’s big best friend? DigVentures managing director Lisa Westcott Wilkins is predictably evasive.

We’re still waiting for results from specialists but we believe the bones are from when the abbey was active – so they could be medieval. The dog is huge – about the size of a Great Dane – and was found near where the abbey’s kitchen would have been. It was quite a surprise. We’re all dog lovers and we have a site dog with us on our digs, so it was quite poignant. Even back then, pets were held in high regard.

In the meantime, no one in the area is opening cans of dog food or playing with squeaky toys.

[MIKA27]

The Mysterious Skeleton Lake of the Himalayas

Some historical mysteries have lain forgotten for centuries by man, buried by the sands, or snow, of time. Be it the remoteness of the location or the danger involved in reaching it, for whatever reason, these places have kept their mysteries to themselves over the ages, hidden in their dark corners of the world from the outside as time marches on. It is often pure accident that saves these historical oddities from eternal obscurity and dredges them into the light for us to finally take a look at

One such place lies high in the Himalaya Mountains of the Uttarakhand state of India; a small glacial lake called Roopkund. The lake is located in a remote area of craggy glaciers, rocky chasms, and snow blanketed mountains, at an altitude of 5,209 meters (16,499 feet).

Roopkund

Other than the stark remoteness of the barren, windswept locale, there is not much that is immediately peculiar or special about this lake. It is small, at only 2 meters deep, and typically remains completely frozen over throughout most of the year. One could typically go trekking past this lake and hardly even know it was there. Yet for one month a year, when the snow melts and the ice thaws, it becomes apparent why the lake has gained its other namesake “Skeleton Lake,” for one can peer into the clear water and find hundreds of skeletons peering back.

The ancient skeletons, which are over 1,200 years old and in varying stages of preservation, can be found scattered around the landscape and lurking at the bottom of the lake, visible through the frigid, crystal clear water. It is truly a haunting sight to hike among the majestic peaks and find oneself among this bleak grave of a lake and its numerous skeletons strewn about, like some open air, forgotten tomb.

Although whispered about in rumors from as early as the 19th century, the official discovery of this gruesome, skeleton filled lake in the middle of nowhere was made by chance in 1942 by a British game reserve ranger, who stumbled across it while conducting a survey. During that summer, the ranger came across the thawed lake and went to investigate it, only to make the horrifying discovery of over two hundred human skeletons lying at the bottom, floating through the water, and strewn about haphazardly among the rocky shores.

Roopkund during the summer.

The puzzling discovery of a skeleton filled lake nestled away in the Himalayas far from any human settlement immediately captured the public’s imagination. People scrambled to come up with theories as to how all of these enigmatic skeletal remains had ended up in such a cold, remote place and as to what their identities were.

One of the earliest ideas put forward was that the skeletons were the remains of missing Japanese soldiers from World War II who had died from the harsh conditions while trying to sneak across that route through the mountains. This theory was later discounted by an expedition sent by a British government spooked at the idea of a possible land invasion, as the bones were determined to be too old to date from that period, and had merely been well preserved by the frigid cold. Even so, it was still uncertain just exactly how old the bones were.

Another idea was that the skeletons were the lost remains of the doomed Kashmir warrior Zogawar Singh and his army, who had mysteriously disappeared without a trace while returning from Tibet. Still other theories suggested that it had been groups of religious zealots killed in some sort of ritual group suicide, the result of a battle, or groups of travelers who had succumbed to landslides, avalanches, or disease.

For decades, the skeleton lake of Roopkund baffled scientists and no one was able to shed any light on just what exactly had happened at this far flung icy lake. Many studies of the lake were conducted over the years, including one carried out by the Anthropological Survey of India in the 1950s, yet more questions remained than answers.

It wasn’t until 2004 that a major expedition was mounted by National Geographic to try and discover more through thorough DNA testing and scientific investigation. The investigation found that the skeletons, around three hundred of them in total, all dated to around 850 AD, suggesting they had all been from the same group and had all died at the same time. After death, the freezing water and dry, icy conditions had kept the bodies in a state of remarkable preservation for the next 1,200 years. Some grisly remains unearthed in the frozen ground were surprisingly well preserved. These bodies amazingly still had hair, flesh, jewelry, and leather clothing that were shockingly intact.

Furthermore, DNA testing determined that there were two distinct groups represented among the bones, one group of taller people who were all related, and another separate group of shorter local people who are speculated to have been porters or guides.

Examination of personal belongings and artifacts at the scene also seemed to suggest that these people had all been on some sort of pilgrimage.

In addition, the expedition found that the skulls all exhibited evidence of similar blunt trauma to the head, which showed that these mysterious people had met a rather violent demise. Closer forensic analysis of the skull fractures revealed that the injuries were caused by some sort of heavy, rounded object. Adding to this mystery was the fact that all of the remains only showed such traumatic injuries to the head and shoulders and nowhere else, as if they had been struck suddenly and violently from above.

These brutal findings all seemed to support some of the earlier theories of death by landslide or weapon, but after compiling all of the data and information they had gathered, researchers came to a rather bizarre conclusion as to how these people had died. It was theorized that the only way so many people could have died so suddenly from such similar injuries at the same time was that they had been caught in the open during a freak hailstorm of immense hailstones that came down with such ferocity that all three hundred pilgrims were pummeled to death. It was estimated by scientists that in order to cause the injuries observed in the skulls, the hail would have have been around the size of cricket balls, or around 9 inches in diameter. Some have disagreed with these findings, but the scientists have claimed that this is the only plausible, rational explanation.

In recent years, Roopkund, once so shrouded in mystery, has become rather well-known and is a fairly popular destination for trekkers, who brave a five day ascending trek to reach the icy lake and its grim denizens. Many of these people are thrill seekers there specifically to see the mysterious skeletons, looking for a peak at the macabre.

Trekkers making the journey to Roopkund.

It is said by officials that the increasing number of these trekkers is threatening the integrity of the site as a good number of the skeletons have gone missing, and it is believed that this is the result of curious people taking them home as grisly souvenirs.

Authorities have a difficult time policing and preserving the site from such thefts due to the inaccessibility of the lake.

Looking at the skeletons lost in this inhospitable landscape it is easy to find oneself imagining just what happened here all of those centuries ago. What were these people really doing so deep in the mountains all that time ago? Where were they headed? Did they really die of giant hail or is there a chance something else occurred? If the bones keep getting plucked away at the current rate it seems the mystery of the high altitude frozen lake of Roopkund, which has lasted tucked away here in the mountains for over a thousand years, may very well disappear with them forever.

[MIKA27]

This 'Abandoned Child' Prank Will Make You Laugh In Terror

If you saw an seemingly abandoned child crying by the side of the street, shivering in the cold - you'd go up to her, offer some comfort and find out what's wrong right?

But such well-meaning endeavours aren't always what they seem!

It's all part of an elaborate prank, designed to scare the living daylights out of innocent members of the public. And trust us, it works every time. From wayward teary girl, to a manic flesh eating zombie in under 5 seconds.

The results are as frightening as they are hilarious.

[MIKA27]

SUPERMARINE SPITFIRE BLUEPRINTS

The beautiful Supermarine Spitfire blueprints you see here are made using the old fashioned method - ammonia activated paper on a traditional Diazit blueprint machine. Each measures 36″ x 24″ and includes a wealth of information about the iconic aircraft on either side of some nicely detailed illustrations, making it the perfect wall-piece for a garage, shed, man’s room or livingroom if you can sell the idea to your other half.

The blueprints are shipped worldwide in a thick cardboard tube, so you won’t have any creases to contend with, and they cost a rather reasonable $18.99 USD a piece.

Grab yours here

[MIKA27]

Google Project Loon Spotted Over Australia

What better place to test your super-secret, experimental balloon-based internet project than in the largest island on Earth where you can float for miles above the landscape and have nobody see you? At least, that’s what Google thought: the web giant’s Project Loon aircraft have been spotted over New South Wales and Queensland this evening.

The find was nabbed by Buzz Moody who appears to have an enthusiasm for watching planes as they fly over our great nation.

One aircraft, however, looks different to all the others, floating around Northern NSW and into Queensland with no discernible callsign.

That’s because it’s a Google balloon.

At the time of publication, it’s floating at an altitude of over 700 feet (although other reports suggest it’s at 65,000) and doing circles over the East Coast. The transponder started just west of Goondiwindi in regional New South Wales, and has been floating ever since.

It’s understood that this isn’t a new balloon launched by Google Australia. Instead, we understand that it’s the same balloon launched by Google from New Zealand back in March that has been floating around the globe ever since. Google has confirmed it is a balloon from Project Loon.

Previously, a Loon balloon circled the Earth in 22 days, which is way faster than Mountain View boffins thought it could be done.

Project Loon is Google’s plan to give the world Wi-Fi by sending high-altitude balloons into the stratosphere loaded up with an antenna. It’s insanely futuristic, but from the looks of things tonight, the future is floating over our heads right now.

[MIKA27]

The Rafale Really Looks Like A Fighter From The Future In These Images

These images may or may not correspond to a refueling incident between a KC-135 Stratotanker and a French Air Force’s Rafale jet fighter, but I don’t really care because they are just an excuse to say that this is perhaps the coolest, most space-invaders-looking jet flying today.

A French fighter aircraft rolls left away from a KC-135 Stratotanker flown by the 351st Expeditionary Air Refueling Squadron during a March 17, 2013, mission. U.S. Air Force photo by Capt. Jason Smith.

This is how I will imagine the ship in Galaga from now on. You can download the high resolution images here.

[MIKA27]

Smart Targeting Rifle Destroys A Phone 1km Away

According to RatedRR, the “XS1 is the largest-calibre Precision Guided Firearm available today.” This video demonstrates how its automatic targeting system works over 1123 yards. That’s 1km. This is the kind of stuff we only imagined in science fiction movies only a few years ago.

The rifle’s automatic targeting system — Tag Track Xact — can hit targets 1200 yards away using algorithms that compensate for the wind speed. Once you put the reticle on the marked target, boom, the rifle fires on its own and hits it — all while streaming video of it all to Android and iOS phones, where it can be recorded. I cringe at the thought of thinking not if but when are we going to see the first recorded kill of a human being in some war or urban shooting scenario.

And yes, the video seems sponsored by HTC, who wants you to think about their phones the next time you think about buying a phone to destroy with your long range precision rifle.

[MIKA27]

Why Don't We All Have Cancer?

Our bodies aren’t perfect. Every time a cell reproduces, it makes about 120,000 mistakes in the replication of its DNA, introducing mutations that can lead to uncontrollable division. What we know as cancer. But, if this happens all the time, why don’t we all have cancer? Here’s the answer.

[MIKA27]

Scientists May Have Figured Out How To Turn Light Into Matter

Back in 1934, a team of physicists came up with an idea for how one might create matter from light. Put simply, just slam two photons into each other to get an electron and a positron, a.k.a. matter. And now, some 80 years later, a team of physicists have a plan to carry out the experiment in real life.

In a paper just published in Nature Photonics, Professor Steve Rose and his pals from the Department of Physics at Imperial College London devised a two-step process to turn light into matter. In the first step, the experiment uses a laser to speed up electrons to a little less than the speed of light, before firing them at a slab of gold to create a beam of photons. Next, the scientists would blast the inside of a gold can with a high-powered laser to create a thermal radiation field and light that’s similar to the light produced by stars. Combining the photon stream from the first step with the field from the second should send photons slamming into each other and yield electrons and positrons.

It’s just a theory for now, but it’s also a theory many physicists agree should work.

“What was so surprising to us was the discovery of how we can create matter directly from light using the technology that we have today in the UK,” Rose said in a release.

“As we are theorists we are now talking to others who can use our ideas to undertake this landmark experiment.” Oliver Pike who led the research said, “The race to carry out and complete the experiment is on!” And once achieved, it could lead to important new insights into how the universe — specifically, gigantic gamma ray burst explosions — operates.

[MIKA27]

Medieval Kitchens Used A Specially Bred Dog To Turn Roasting Spits

Before the era of “set it and forget it” countertop rotisserie ovens, kitchen gadgets required a lot more manpower — and if not manpower, then dogpower. The turnspit, a breed of dog dating for medieval Britain, would run around and around on a wheel like a hamster in a cage, ensuring evenly roasted meat for hungry noblemen.

The dog wheel-spit turner came sometime in the 6th or 7th century, replacing what was probably an unfortunate kitchen boy hiding behind a bale of wet hay to avoid getting cooked. In medieval kitchens, you might find this wooden wheel mounted high on the wall, away from the heat. As the dog ran, a chain tugged on spit, turning it in tandem.

By the 16th century, Canis vertigus or the turnspit emerged as a distinct breed. Short and squat, it was a hardy working dog who could turn the spit for hours. But as mechanization came for the kitchen, the turnspit was no longer needed. The Abergavenny Museum in Wales has one of the last remaining turnspits — taxidermied, of course. This is Whiskey the turnspit dog.

“Turnspit dogs were viewed as kitchen utensils, as pieces of machinery rather than as dogs,” Jan Bondeson, author of Amazing Dogs, told NPR. And like machinery, they could be replaced by the newest, shiniest model. By 1900, kitchens had cheap spit-turning machines called clock jacks instead of dogs.

The closest modern incarnation of the dog wheels might be doggie treadmills, which exist, of course, for almost the opposite reason. Rotisserie ovens have come a long way in 500 years. So have dogs.

[MIKA27]

Led Zeppelin Is Getting Sued Over ‘Stairway to Heaven’

Fans have noted the similarity to Spirit's "Taurus" for decades

You may have never heard of the band Spirit, but Led Zeppelin has.

Not only did they play shows with Zeppelin in 1969, but Spirit has also now sued them for allegedly lifting what may be one of the most famous riffs in rock history — the opening notes of “Stairway to Heaven.”

“It’s been a long time coming,” attorney Francis Alexander Malofiy said in Bloomberg Businessweek. Malofiy is representing a trust for writer Randy California, the deceased Spirit guitarist who wrote “Taurus,” the instrumental track that appeared on the band’s eponymous 1968 debut album and from which the chord progression is allegedly lifted.

Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page allegedly wrote “Stairway to Heaven” in 1970, two years after “Taurus” was released and a year after the band shared stages at gigs across the U.S. in 1969. According to the band’s bass player, Spirit always included “Taurus” in their sets. “It was such a pretty moment,” said Mark Andes to Businessweek. “It would typically come after a big forceful number and always got a good response.”

In 1997, California went public with his claims about the origins of “Stairway to Heaven.” “I’d say it was a ripoff,” California said in Listener magazine. “And the guys made millions of bucks on it and never said ‘Thank you,’ never said, ‘Can we pay you some money for it?’ It’s kind of a sore point with me.” However, California and Spirit never sued, even though fans had noted the similarity between the songs for years. “Nobody had any money, and they thought the statute of limitations was done,” Mick Skidmore, who manages California’s trust, explained to Businessweek.

Now, as Led Zeppelin prepares to release remastered deluxe versions of their original albums, including “Stairway to Heaven,” California’s trust is finally springing to action with a copyright-infringement suit and an injunction that would block Led Zeppelin IV’s reissue.

“The idea behind this is to make sure that Randy California is given a writing credit on ‘Stairway to Heaven,’” Malofiy said. They are most likely seeking monetary reparations as well. Businessweek quotes an estimate that by 2008, “Stairway to Heaven” had earned at least $562 million.

Led Zeppelin and Warner Music had no comment on the story.

Take a listen and judge for yourself:

It sounds familiar, right?

http://youtu.be/BcL---4xQYA

MIKA: Undeniable....

[MIKA27]

Mallet-Wielding Killer Clown Scares The Hell Out of The Public

Let's face it, clowns are creepy at the best of times.

So you can imagine what happens when you give one a giant mallet and throw some homicidal rage into the mix.

You can't blame the public for screaming and running like the wind when faced with such a nightmarish scene. The creators of the prank ended up using 30 litres of fake blood, spending around 20 patience hours waiting for victims. But rest assured, it was all well and truly worth it, just to see their reactions.

And as for the mallet itself? It's not plastic either, weighing in at a hefty 16kg of pulverizing power.

But it wasn't all harmless fun, during the gas station scene a member of the public actually pulled out a knife to defend himself. If you look closely during the final 10 seconds of the shot, you'll see it in his hand.

Proof that even the best pranks, can always have dangerous consequences - not just for those who are the target.

[MIKA27]

French red faces over trains that are 'too wide'

The French train operator SNCF has discovered that 2,000 new trains it ordered at a cost of 15bn euros ($20.5bn; £12.1bn) are too wide for many regional platforms.

The BBC's Christian Fraser in Paris says that it is an embarrassing blunder that has so far cost the rail operator over 50m euros ($68.4m; £40.6m).

Our correspondent says that the cost is likely to rise even further.

Construction work has already started to reconfigure station platforms.

The work will allow new trains room to pass through. But officials say that there are still 1,000 platforms to be adjusted.

The error seems to have happened because the national rail operator RFF gave the wrong dimensions to train company SNCF.

Our correspondent says that they measured platforms built less than 30 years ago, overlooking the fact that many of France's regional platforms were built more than 50 years ago when trains were a little slimmer.

The platform edges are too close to the tracks in some stations which means the trains cannot get in, officials say.

A spokesman for the RFF confirmed they had "discovered the problem a bit late".

Transport Minister Frederic Cuvillier blamed an "absurd rail system" for the problems.

"When you separate the rail operator from the train company," he said, "this is what happens."

[MIKA27]

SHWOOD TITANIUM SUNGLASSES COLLECTION

The Portland based designers at Shwood have been wowing us for years with their innovative and stylish eyewear designs. After setting themselves apart years ago with wooden shades, the brand looks to once again grab some attention with the release of their Shwood Fifty/Fifty Titanium Sunglasses Collection.

With summer season nearly upon us, Shwood couldn’t have thought up a better time to unveil these beauties. As part of the Spring/Summer 2014 collection, these sunglasses feature lightweight titanium constructed frames mated to their domestic walnut hardwood temples, and finished off with a set of Carl Zeiss lenses (each set of frames is prescription ready as well). There are three different styles to choose from, all of which will be available just in time for the summer months. [Purchase]

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Dracula’s Castle For Sale – Let the Buyer Be Scared?

Looking for a new residence or a summer vacation home that’s guaranteed to keep relatives from ever visiting? Then you may be interested in this sweet little house in Romania that’s a steal at $80 million, mostly because one of its previous residents was Count Dracula.

The original wooden Bran Castle was built in 1212 by Teutonic Knights on the border between Transylvania and Wallachia, a location picked because of its spectacular views … mostly of invaders. The view didn’t help stop it from being destroyed by the Mongols in 1242. Louis I of Hungary gave the Saxons of Kronstadt permission to build a stone castle on the same spot in 1377 and the town of Bran eventually grew around it. Because of its location, the castle was a strategic military defense post against the Ottoman Empire and other enemies until the 1750s.

The Dracula connection comes in two parts. Vlad Ţepeş, better known as Prince Vlad the Impaler, was most likely just an involuntary resident of the castle, being imprisoned there for two months in the mid 15th century. The aptly-nicknamed and excessively cruel Vlad was also known as Dracula, providing the second Bran Castle connection. Bram Stoker used the name for his famous novel, but never actually visited the castle or Transylvania for than matter, doing all of his research at the library.

The castle became the residence of Romania’s royal family in 1920, was seized by the communist government in 1948 and eventually returned to the royal family and its current owners, Archduke Dominic von Habsburg and his sisters Maria Magdalena and Elizabeth.

The sale is being handled by the New York-based law firm Herzfeld and Rubin and it’s hoped that the new owner will continue to maintain it as one of the area’s top Dracula tourist attractions with 560,000 annual visitors. The Romanian government has offered $80 million even though it knows the castle needs new bathrooms and other remodeling.

It might be wise for the buyers to do the remodeling themselves to get comfortable handling hammers and wooden stakes.

[MIKA27]

iSTICK

At Last! meet iStick, the world´s first USB drive with lightning connector. iStick is taking Kickstarter by storm, the little USB flash drive has a built-in Lightning connector, enabling users to quickly and safely move data between their computers, iPhones, iPads and iPod touches without the annoying need for iTunes or the Internet… The sleek device is available in several colors and and storage capacities, including 8GB, 16GB, 32GB, 64GB and 128GB.

[MIKA27]

Steam's In-Home Game Streaming Is Now Available To Everyone

If you have a powerful gaming PC hidden away in one corner of your house, but want to knock out a quick game of Crysis or Dark Souls II on your laptop or home-theatre PC, you’re officially in luck. Valve has made its In-Home Streaming service available to any Steam customer.

Steam In-Home Streaming is a simple enough concept — when you have two computers sitting on the same network, log into Steam on both computers, and they’re automagically linked; after that, you can remotely install, launch and play games from your laptop (or any remote PC on that network) as if you were sitting in front of your gutsy gaming rig.

All the processing is done on the more powerful PC, and not only Windows PCs are supported — since you can run Steam on a Mac OS X PC, for example, you can stream games from your Windows gaming machine to your svelte MacBook Air. It’s highly dependent on the quality of your home network, so don’t expect dodgy 802.11g Wi-Fi to work, but if you have a solid wired network or some high-speed 802.11ac, you should be set.

I’m keen to give In-Home Streaming a try; my gaming PC is more than powerful enough to keep up with today’s blockbuster games, but more often than not I’m camped out in front of the TV instead. It’d be nice to play a game or two without being bothered by installing games and updating drivers.

[MIKA27]

First Glimpe Of One Of The Sets And Creatures From Star Wars VII

Video: This video released today shows J.J. Abrams — director of Star Wars Episode VII — on the set in Abu Dhabi where he has just announced a competition in unison with UNICEF. The prize is only the chance to travel to London and appear in the new film!