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

[MIKA27]

Fidel Castro Apparently Irked By Comrades’ Neglect

Cuba's 87-year-old ex-president acknowledged that he would have sent flowers for a deceased colleague, if only someone had told him about the funeral

Cuba’s ex-president Fidel Castro published a rare confession on the front page of a communist party daily Tuesday: His comrades are keeping him out of the loop.

CNN reports that Castro, 87, acknowledged that he missed the funeral of an old colleague, former volleyball coach Eugenio George, because no one had thought to tell him the news.

“Many comrades noticed the absence of a floral arrangement from us,” he wrote in Granma. “I always admired him but did not know of his passing until some hours later.”

The thinly-veiled rebuke comes as Castro’s role in state affairs quietly recedes from public view. Once famous for his four-hour-long speaking marathons and minute oversight of every facet of the economy, Castro relinquished power to his brother Raul Castro in 2008 after he was diagnosed for an undisclosed intestinal illness. He staged a brief return in 2012, writing hundreds of columns on issues ranging from international affairs to yoga, before retiring again from the public stage.

[MIKA27]

Moncton shootings: Manhunt as three police shot dead in Canada

A manhunt is under way in the Canadian city of Moncton, New Brunswick, after three officers were shot dead and two wounded.

Police said they were searching for Justin Bourque, 24, who was "armed and dangerous", and tweeted a picture of a suspect with weapons.

Officials have warned people to stay inside and lock their doors.

A police officer told the Associated Press news agency the search was concentrated around two streets.

The two wounded Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers were taken to hospital with non-life threatening injuries, a police spokesman said.

Police said they were still actively looking for the suspect. The picture tweeted showed a man in military camouflage carrying two rifles.

In a statement, New Brunswick Premier David Alward said he was "shocked and saddened".

"I would ask New Brunswickers, particularly in those areas identified by police, to follow the situation as it develops and to listen to the advice of police," he said.

A Moncton resident told broadcaster CTV that she and her husband heard four or five shots.

Heidi James said her husband looked outside the window and saw a "shot-out" vehicle and what looked like a body covered with a blanket.

Another witness told the Toronto Star he first heard gunfire around 08:00 local time (11:00 GMT).

Correspondents say such violence is rare in Canada, particularly on Canada's East Coast.

Police have blocked off parts of the city

A supermarket in Moncton shuts down early as the area goes into lockdown

[MIKA27]

Tokyo's 'oldest man' had been dead for 30 years

He was thought to be the oldest man in Tokyo - but when officials went to congratulate Sogen Kato on his 111th birthday, they uncovered mummified skeletal remains lying in his bed.

Mr Kato may have been dead for 30 years according to Japanese authorities.

They grew suspicious when they went to honour Mr Kato at his address in Adachi ward, but his granddaughter told them he "doesn't want to see anybody".

Police are now investigating the family on possible fraud charges.

'Living Buddha'

Welfare officials had tried to meet Mr Kato since early this year. But when they went to visit, family members repeatedly chased them away, according to Tomoko Iwamatsu, an Adachi ward official.

Authorities grew suspicious and sought an investigation by police, who forced their way into the house on Wednesday.

They discovered a mummified body, believed to be Kato, lying in his bed, wearing underwear and pyjamas, covered with a blanket.

Mr Kato's relatives told police that he had "confined himself in his room more than 30 years ago and became a living Buddha," according to a report by Jiji Press.

But the family had received 9.5 million yen ($109,000: £70,000) in widower's pension payments via Mr Kato's bank account since his wife died six years ago, and some of the money had recently been withdrawn.

The pension fund had long been unable to contact Mr Kato.

"His family must have known he has been dead all these years and acted as if nothing happened. It's so eerie," said Yutaka Muroi, a Tokyo metropolitan welfare official.

[MIKA27]

ENIGMA MACHINE

It isn’t everyday that an original World War II Enigma machine comes up for sale, most of the machines are now either in museums or private collections and owners are, understandably, exceedingly reticent to part with them.

The story behind the Enigma needs no introduction, the small mechanical devices were ingenious and it took the best minds in the Allied forces over a decade to crack the device’s codes. Men like Alan Turing spent years working on algorithms to decode Enigma messages, while they were at it they also created the concept of modern computing, algorithms and artificial intelligence.

With an estimated hammer price of somewhere in the $50,000 range, the Engima machine you see pictured above won’t be affordable for everyone, but for those with the funds it’d make a hell of an addition to the personal library.

Read more here via Bonhams.

[MIKA27]

If We Don’t Help the Honeybees, Maybe Venomous Spiders Will

Where would we be without honeybees? The thought is too scary to contemplate, and yet we must – every time we walk through a grocery store produce section, give flowers to a loved one or take a deep breath of spring air. Sorry, allergy sufferers, the battle for the bees is bigger than your bronchial tubes. It’s bigger than all of us humans since, the general scientific consensus is that our neonicotinoid pesticides are killing the bees and, outside of bans by the European Union and Eugene, Oregon, we’re not doing much to help. Fortunately, venomous spiders have the bees’ backs.

Researchers at Newcastle University in England used the venom from the Australian funnel web spider and a protein from a snowdrop plant to create a biopesticide that is effective and, most importantly, not harmful to adult bees nor their larvae. A report on their work has just been published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Bees were exposed to large doses of the spider venom biopesticide over a period of seven days and showed no signs of the confusion or loss of memory which are symptoms of exposure to neonicotinoid pesticides that have resulted in colony collapse. In addition, the venom-snowdrop mix is an oral pesticide, so it must be eaten rather than be absorbed through the insect’s exoskeleton like other toxins.

While the funnel web spider’s venom can be fatal to humans unless treated with anti-venom, the biopesticide is safe, not that the bees care at this point.

Unfortunately, this is only a partial solution. Professor Angharad Gatehouse, a supervisor on the project, stresses this in the report.

There isn’t going to be one silver bullet. What we need is an integrated pest management strategy and insect-specific pesticides will be just one part of that.

The funnel web spider has done its part. Now it’s time to do ours.

[MIKA27]

How Leather Is Slowly Killing The People And Places That Make It

Although we may consider ourselves intellectually and technologically superior to our cave-dwelling ancestors, we still adorn our bodies, transports and homes with the skin of conquered animals. But unlike the wholly organic methods used by our forebears, the modern leather industry is simultaneously killing the local environment and the people that work there with a toxic slurry of chemicals.

The current worldwide market for leather is booming: The 2137 square kilometres produced annually is worth more than $US77 billion, according to recent estimates published in the Scribes Guild Journal. Leather footwear is far and away the largest outlet for the stuff, valued at at $US47 billion — over 60 per cent of the world total trade in the 2009/10 period — while the next largest outlet, leather goods and products (including gloves) were worth about $US12.3 billion and constituted 15.9 per cent of the total world trade. Leather clothing, auto upholstery, home furnishings, and miscellaneous other uses rounded out the remaining outlets with between 8 and 14 per cent shares.

As for processed leather exports, the Chinese and Indian industries are among the world leaders with 613 square kilometres and 186 square kilometres, respectively, in 2013. However, the dirt cheap labour rates (and generally nonexistent workplace or environmental safety regulations) prevalent throughout poorer nations in Southeast Asia have attracted a large amount of the work tanning leather and turning it into goods for Western markets.

Where Leather Comes From

The type of leather produced in a given region depends largely on the dominant source available. In the Americas, it’s cattle skin supplemented by goat, lamb, deer, ostrich, buffalo, and even yak.

More exotic leathers are also becoming more common. Kangaroo is often employed for bullwhips and motorcycle leathers, given its lightweight and abrasion-resistant nature. Snake, alligator and crocodile skins are all popular as well. Even stingray skin can be made into leather — and often is, in places like Thailand where stingrays are plentiful.

The Tanning Process

The tanning process is essentially one designed to mummify a hide and stabilise the resulting material so that it will not rot or harden into an unusable form. The process for doing so first involves preparing the hide — scraping it clean of meat, fat, and hair; and optionally applying debilitating lime pastes, bleaching, or pickling the skin as well.

You can tell the difference between a tanned hide and a rawhide based on their reactions to heat and water. Rawhide will harden in the heat and, when rewetted, putrefies. Tanned leather, on the other hand, remains flexible in heat and will not putrefy when wetted. There are a number of different tanning methods available, depending on what the final product’s attributes and uses will be. These methods include:

• Vegetable-tanned leather utilises tannins found in vegetables, tree bark, and other naturally plant-derived sources. These chemicals produce a soft brown leather that is ideal for leather carving and stamping but is very unstable in water. When bathed in hot water, vegetable-tanned leather will shrink and harden drastically, which is why it was once used as both an early form of plate armour as well as for book binding.
• Synthetic-tanned leather, on the other hand, uses aromatic polymers like Novolac, Neradol and Melamine. Invented during WWII, when vegetable tannins were being rationed as part of the war effort, it’s easy to spot this kind of leather by its creamy white colour.
• Alum-tanned leather and Rawhide are not generally considered “tanned materials” as they both turn putrid in water. Alum leather is produced using aluminium salts mixed with natural binding agents like flour or egg yolks. Far lighter colour shades are possible with Alum than vegetable tannins, though the resulting product will be far less supple. Rawhide is created by simply scraping the skin, soaking it in lime, and stretching it as it dries. The stiff, brittle result is often employed in drum heads, shoelaces and as doggie chew toys.
• Aldehyde-tanned leather is the primary alternative to the most popular form of tanning, which uses chromium, instead leveraging glutaraldehyde or oxazolidine. Like synthetic-tanned leathers, Aldehyde leather is white in colour. It is also very water absorbent, soft and can be machine washed, making them perfect for use in chamois.
• Chromium-tanned leather is the most popular form of producing leather these days, and one of the most noxious. It relies on a toxic slush of chromium salts and tanning liquor to produce a supple and often light blue coloured product. The prepared hides are first pickled in a vat of chromium until the material’s pH drops to 2.8 – 3.2, then they’re transferred to a secondary vat filled with tanning liquor which penetrates the leather. Once the liquor has been thoroughly and evenly absorbed, the pH of the vat is increased to between 3.8 and 4.2. This fixes the tanning material to the leather at a molecular level and helps reduce the amount of shrinkage experienced when the leather is submerged in warm water.

Once the tanning operation proper has been completed, the leather is allowed to dry. Then the “crusting” procedure begins. The leather may be thinned, retanned, and lubricated before being coloured, softened, and shaped.

Leather Is Killing the Environment

The tanning industry poses many dangers to both the environment and those that work within it. The primary environmental threat involves the dumping of solid and liquid waste that contains leftover chromium and other hazardous compounds. This is commonplace in regions without strong environmental protection standards, which also happen to be the primary regions where leather is tanned, such as China, India, and Bangladesh.

Even in fully modernized and carefully managed facilities, it is nearly impossible to reclaim all of the pollutants generated by the tanning process. As a rule of thumb, tanning one ton of hide typically results in 20 to 80 cubic meters of wastewater with Chromium concentrations around 250 mg/L and sulfide concentrations at roughly 500 mg/L, not to mention the offal effluence from the preparation phase and the pesticides often added to keep mould growth down during transport to the facility. Hell, 70 per cent of an untreated hide is eventually discarded as solid waste — the hair, fat, meat, sinew, all goes straight into the trash.

Sure, there are ways to mitigate these impacts. As the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation’s report Chrome Management in the Tanyard [PDF] points out, using industry-proven techniques such as direct recycling — which uses the same chromium bath for both the initial tanning and subsequent re-tanning stage — can reduce chromium levels in wastewater by 21 per cent. Additionally, by reclaiming chromium, either by rapidly precipitating it out of the acid bath using sodium hydroxide or sodium carbonate or slowly pulling it out with magnesium oxide, one can recapture at least 25 to 30 per cent of the bath’s chrome content. And, as a 2002 study performed in 540 Indian tanneries suggests, a mix of 70 per cent new chrome and 30 per cent recaptured chrome produces nearly identical results as using 100 per cent new chrome.

However, as the UNIDO study authors wrote, “even though the chrome pollution load can be decreased by 94 per cent on introducing advanced technologies, the minimum residual load 0.15 kg/t raw hide can still cause difficulties when using landfills and composting sludge from wastewater treatment on account of the regulations currently in force in some countries.” What’s more, all of these advanced recovery techniques cost heaps of money, effort, and time — but mostly money — to implement properly. And what don’t many developing nations have a lot of? Money for environmental protection, that’s right. So in regions where such regulations are relaxed or easily bypassed with some well-placed bribes, tanneries are still throwing the chrome out with the bathwater.

Wastewater pollution is primarily a byproduct of the initial preparation (or “beamhouse”) stage, wherein bits of flesh, hair, mould, poop, and other animal byproducts are mixed into wash water and discarded. Minute doses of chromium are needed by many plants and animals to regulate metabolic functions. However, in large doses, such as when chromium-laced waste is dumped into regional water systems, it can damage fish gills, incite respiratory problems, infections, infertility, and birth defects. It can also instigate a number of serious cancers in animals throughout the food chain.

It’s Also Killing Its Makers

Work within the tannery itself is fraught with dangers — often the result of inadequate or non-existent worker protections. These includes slips and falls on improperly drained floors; exposure to lime, tanning liquor, acids, bases, solvents, disinfectants, and other noxious chemicals; injury from heavy machinery or flaying knives; drowning, being boiled alive, or buried in lime, are all terrifyingly real hazards.

Still, the most dangerous part of modern tanning is handling chromium. In humans, chromium causes a myriad of ailments depending on how it is absorbed.

When inhaled, chromium acts as a lung irritant and carcinogen, affecting the upper respiratory tract, obstructing airways, and increasing the chances of developing lung, nasal, or sinus cancer. Chromium normally is absorbed this way as fine particulate dust that is produced when both raw and tanned leathers are buffed, smoothed, and ground up. Chromium has been linked to increased rates of asthma, bronchitis, polyps of the upper respiratory tract, pharyngitis, and the enlargement of the hilar region and lymph nodes.

Additionally, the raw hides are also a breeding ground for anthrax, which can easily make the leap to humans by mixing with aerosolized pollution, though this has been virtually eliminated in the Western tanning industry now that hides are disinfected before being shipped for processing.

It doesn’t play well with your skin either. Once absorbed through unprotected handling, chromium can cause dry, cracked, and scaled skin; as well as erosive ulcerations that refuse to heal known “chrome holes.” And should one become sensitive to Chromium exposure, contact with it will result in swelling and inflammation known as allergic dermatitis.

And Then There’s the Cancer

Back in 1980, nobody outside of the tanning industry had any inkling that the work they were doing might be making them sick. In fact, a 1981 study by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) found no link between the tanning process and nasal cancer in tannery workers. However, over the next few years additional case reports and studies began uncovering a link not just to nasal cancer but bladder and testicular cancer as well, which was associated with the dyes or solvents employed in the finishing process. By the mid 1990s, a number of other forms, including lung and pancreatic cancer — both of which are way down the list of cancers you might survive — were associated with leather dust and tanning. By the start of this century, researchers had uncovered another link between Hexavalent Chromium or Cr(VI) compounds and increased risk of respiratory cancer.

Hexavalent Chromium is the +6 oxidation state of the element, a purely manufactured form of the ore that is not found in nature and inherently more unstable than the natural +3 oxidation state. Once common throughout the tanning industry, as well as the automotive industry, Cr(VI) has been labelled as a known human carcinogen by the EPA, the US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), the IARC, and the WHO, and has become strictly regulated — verging on outright banning. Germany, in fact, went ahead and actually banned the oxide’s use in leather goods, capping contamination at just 3 ppm, back in 2010.

And that’s a good thing too because, as a number of studies since the 1980s have suggested, Cr(VI) toxicity appears to be an additive process with more severe issues developing and worsening over years of exposure — the same as with lead exposure or cigarette smoking.

So What Do We Do?

The problem, as you may have gathered, isn’t in the tightly-regulated tanneries in first world-countries — it’s in the developing nations that perform the vast majority of the work.

Many regions are making efforts to clean up these polluting industries. However, progress is slow. Take Kanpur, India — the self-proclaimed “Leather City of World” — for example. This city once housed more than 10,000 tanneries which, in 2003, were dumping more than 22 tons of effluence into the Ganges river every day. The city took action in 2009, sealing 49 of the highest-polluting tanneries in town — out of a list of 404 heavy polluters.

And in impoverished nations like Bangladesh, where this industry generates $US600 million in exports each year, the health of workers and the environment are distant afterthoughts. 90 per cent of these exports are produced in the Hazaribagh neighbourhood of the capital city Dhaka. It was rated as one of the five most toxic, heavily-polluted sites on the entire planet last year by the Blacksmith Institute.

As a recent Ecologist post illustrates, the people of this neighbourhood are often as polluted as the waterways:

Venkatesh, 51, has worked in tanneries all his life, removing hairs from hides in lime pits. His dark-brown arms and hands are dotted with white scars because of a chemical-caused skin disease. ‘[During] the last four years I have worked no more than ten days per month. If I work more, the itching starts. It is unbearable. The doctor’s ointment doesn’t help much. But I need to work so my family can live,’ Venkatesh says. He earns the equivalent of £1.70 a day at the Saba Tannery and makes ends meet by buying groceries in the local government subsidised shop for poor families. ‘Now I always wear gloves, but the lime gets inside of them anyway’, he told The Ecologist.

Next to Nehru Road, the private clinic of Doctor G. Asokan is busy. 15 patients wait patiently in the waiting room, his garage, for their turn. ‘I have between six and eight patients a week from tanneries with skin diseases or asthma. Tanning can also cause allergies, bronchitia and pneumonia. I estimate 40 per cent of tannery workers have health problems because they are in direct contact with the chemicals,’ he says. We hear similar statements from other local doctors. So how widespread are such health problems in the Indian tanning industry? It is not easy to find statistics. Leather tanning is big business, powerful tanneries have much influence and sensitive research into health problems can cause problems for the industry.

A professor explains he had to cancel a research project into chrome as a cause of illness among tannery workers because of pressure from the industry. Another professor studying the impact of chrome on people and the environment cancels a meeting with us after speaking to the tanneries. ‘The biggest problem with the tanning industry are not the environmental issues anymore,’ says Dietrich Kebschull, the BSCI representative in India. ‘Here good progress has been made, especially with common effluent treatment plants. A problem that I still see is connected with health and safety in working conditions. Here the Indian and the Tamil Nadu Government prescribes that long boots and gloves, aprons and masks must be used by workers.’

“This is a product that is used worldwide for luxury goods, but for these workers who are making them, neither the owners nor the government are looking after our health and safety,” Abdul Malek, head of the local Tannery Workers Union, told the Ecologist.

Unfortunately, short of binding UN arbitration or a massive, international boycott against chromium-tanned leather, there doesn’t look to be much impetus for these practices to cease. As long as the first world continues to export these sorts of dangerous jobs to impoverished and easily-exploited developing nations, our desire for affordable plush leather will carry a steep price — paid in human suffering.

[MIKA27]

You Really Have To Be Crazy To Get In And Out Of This Lighthouse

You won’t believe what these keepers have to do to get in and out of this lighthouse in the middle of the sea. It is absolutely terrifying. Really, it defies belief. If you thought that your daily commute was hell, watch this video and be grateful.

The video is titled “La Jument” Lighthouse – keeper relief but that lighthouse it’s not the famous La Jument located off the coast of Brittany, France. I’ve tried to locate it with no success. Anyone knows about it?

Here’s a video of La Jument and other French lighthouses. Madness.

[Fuzz]

Thanks for reading!

I'm betting there are loads of people who do have the time

[MIKA27]

[Fuzz]

You Really Have To Be Crazy To Get In And Out Of This Lighthouse

The first vid is of Kéréon lighthouse situated in the Iroise Sea, built on the rock of Men Tensel. It is no longer manned (as of 2004) and is remotely controlled. The interior is pretty amazing.

[MIKA27]

Dubai Has The World's Fastest Police Car

When you’re patrolling around the streets of Dubai, you need a car that stands out amongst Ferraris and Lamborghinis and Rolls Royces. Even though it’s a few years old now, the Dubai police’s new Bugatti Veyron can still lay claim to the title of world’s fastest police car.

The police of Dubai actually have access to a huge range of luxury supercars, like a 700hp tuned Mercedes G-Wagen, and a Ferrari FF and Lamborghini Aventador. I guess that’s what happens when you have billions of dollars of oil wealth to spend.

Vocativ‘s look at the Dubai police force’s collection of world-beating supercars, focusing on the new addition of the Bugatti Veyron, is a great way to spend five minutes of your day. There’s one small problem — the new Veyron actually isn’t the 267mph-capable Super Sport, but only the 253mph-rated regular car. Still pretty quick.

[MIKA27]

How A 35cm Hole Created A 400m Deep Saltwater Lake

Lake Peigneur is located in Louisiana near the Gulf of Mexico. Before 1980, it was an approximately 10-foot (3m) deep fresh water lake with an island in the middle. Next to it, and partially under it, Diamond Crystal Salt Company maintained a salt mine, with salt being mined near the lake since 1919.

Around large underground salt domes, you can often find oil. As explained by one Dr. Whitney J. Autin, “…salt moves upwards and it pierces through surrounding strata… and this piercing produces faults and folds within the surrounding sediments producing an ideal mechanism to trap oil.”

As such, Texaco was doing some drilling in the lake. On November 20, 1980, crews on the oil rig in the lake ran into a problem. At just over 1200 feet (365m), their drill seized up. Not a major problem normally, they worked to get it loose. In the process, they heard several loud pops then the oil rig tilted like it was going to collapse. The men got off the rig and to shore as quickly as possible. Not a moment too soon. Just 19 minutes after their drill had seized up, they watched from the shore as the huge platform (45m tall) overturn and sunk into the 3m deep lake…

Next, the astounded drillers watched as a whirlpool slowly formed, soon reaching a quarter mile wide and centered over the site of the oil drilling. Whoopsadoodle.

At the same time the oil workers were watching their $US5 million drilling rig disappear into the lake, workers in the salt mines below the lake noticed something was wrong as well; a stream of water was found flowing along the floor of the mine shaft at about the 396m level of the mine, which went down to about 457m at its deepest. As water wasn’t supposed to be in the mine, the evacuation alarm was raised. Foreman Randy LaSalle then drove a cart around to the regions of the mine where the alarm signal could not be seen, making sure everyone knew about the evacuation. By the time those from the deepest areas of the mine made it to the elevator, they encountered knee-deep water. Despite the fact that the mine was rapidly filling with water and the exit elevator could only take up eight people at a time, all 55 miners were evacuated successfully.

It wasn’t clear to the miners what had happened at the time, but from the evidence at hand, the theory is that the drilling crew miscalculated their location and instead of being several hundred feet from the salt mine, they had instead been directly over a portion of it and penetrated the salt dome. The initial hole resulting from this mistake was only 14 inches wide, but water spraying in at extremely high pressure quickly widened the hole. The water also dissolved the salt pillars that supported the ceiling of the mine, causing the shafts to collapse.

The widening of the hole and the collapse of the mine gave strength to the whirlpool on the surface of the lake, which caused major damage. Docks, another drilling platform, a 70 acre island in the middle of the lake, eleven barges, vehicles, trees and a parking lot near the lake were all sucked into the mine below. The pull of the whirlpool was so strong that it reversed the flow of the 19km long Delcambre Canal that drained the lake into the Gulf of Mexico.

Three hours after the first signs of trouble, the three to four billion gallons of water that had made up the lake were almost all gone, having dropped into the mine below, leaving a gaping crater. The backward-flowing canal formed a 48m waterfall that gradually refilled the lake, this time with salt water from the Gulf.

The 3m deep freshwater lake was now a saltwater one, approximately 400m deep in a good sized portion of it.

Amazingly, there were no deaths or serious human injuries as a result of the disaster, though the ecosystem of the lake was forever changed. Further, three dogs died in the event. Many lawsuits were filed, all settled out-of-court, costing Texaco about $US45 million in damages, with about $US32 million of that going to Diamond Crystal.

Bonus Fact:

Another bizarre lake disaster of the 1980s occurred on August 21, 1986 when Lake Nyos in Cameroon suddenly emitted approximately 100,000 — 300,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide which asphyxiated 1700 people and 3500 animals in nearby towns. How did this happen? A vein of magma lies beneath Lake Nyos. Carbon dioxide leaks from the lava into the water resulting in the lower, cooler levels of the lake water ultimately becoming supersaturated. The lake normally remains stable this way, but a tipping point was reached on 21 August 1986 and the CO2 erupted from the lake, in something called a limnic eruption. To prevent a recurrence, tubes have been installed that siphon water from the bottom layers of the lake to the top, allowing carbon dioxide to be vented continually over time, rather than building up.

[MIKA27]

This Is Why The World Cup Is The Greatest Sports Competition On Earth

This might be just an ad, but it’s electrifying. It truly shows what the World Cup is all about, what it means to everyone involved, from the players to the last fan. It’s almost a mystical experience. Supernatural. Unexplainable. And the best thing is that it’s just about to start. Enjoy!

[MIKA27]

This Is Britain's Ultra-Secret Middle East Spy Base

It’s emerged that Britain has an ultra-secret spy base in the Middle East which taps undersea cables running through the region. The Register reports that the base and its operations are”above-top-secret” and, despite being leaked by Edward Snowden, have until now remained under wraps.

Apparently some media organisations have been subject to government pressure not to print the details, but The Register, well, ignored that.

The spy base is apparently part of a programme called CIRCUIT and is sometimes referred to as Overseas Processing Centre 1 (OPC-1). Located at Seeb, which lies on the northern coast of Oman, it taps undersea cables which pass through the Strait of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf. There are other sites in Oman too,explains The Register, called TIMPANI, GUITAR and CLARINET.

TIMPANI apparently monitors Iraqi communications while CLARINET listens in on Yemen.

All of this information is reported to have been “classified 3 levels above Top Secret.” Not any more.

[MIKA27]

Virtually Tour The Path Of Everest's Deadliest Climbing Accident

After climbing past the area where the tragedy occurred, the route travels several thousand feet higher, rewarding with a panoramic view from the top that’s just incredible.

Especially after this most recent, deadliest incident, the call for people to stop climbing Everest — or to drastically limit the numbers of climbers — has been renewed. While I don’t think this site in particular will be a replacement for hardcore climbers who want to actually summit the peak, there’s something to be said for eventually developing a VR experience that would someday be robust enough to replace the climb — complete with oxygen depletion and maybe even some mild frostbite. At the very least, it might take some of the less experienced climbers off the mountain, potentially saving their lives as well as the lives of the Sherpas paid to accompany them.

[Everest Journal]

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Wearable Submarine to Hunt for Rad Computer

If you had a revolutionary diving suit that could turn you into a submarine capable of diving to a depth of 300 meters and staying there for five hours, would you rather hunt for a 2000-year-old computer or slush through New York City’s sewer system? I thought so.

The Exosuit is a $1.5 million robotic diving suit designed and built by the marine robotic firm Nuytco Research in North Vancouver, Canada, and sold to the civil engineering company J. F. White, which used it to dive to the bottom of New York City’s water treatment plants. Boring!

Fortunately, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts is testing this magnificent suit in salt water for a dive in September to an ancient Roman shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera in the Aegean Sea where the world’s oldest computer – the Antikythera mechanism – was discovered in 1900 and recovered in 1901. It’s believed that a second of these 2,000-year-old computers used by the Greeks for predicting astronomical positions and eclipses may still be down there.

The aluminum alloy Exosuit has articulated joints, giving divers free movement of their arms and legs. An umbilical cable from a mother ship supplies power for diving and ascension thrusters and removes exhaled carbon dioxide from the diver’s air, which allows the diver to stay underwater for 50 hours and ascend immediately without getting decompression sickness, aka “the bends.” Together with the claw-like graspers, LED lights and outboard cameras, the Exosuit is a versatile cross between an underwater robot and a submarine.

http://youtu.be/Qh8ePGy8diY

The Exosuit is needed for this recovery because the Antikythera wreck is at a depth of 120 meters and the ancient relics are fragile.

The Greek sponge fishermen who originally found it could stay down for only five minutes and Jacques Cousteau, who explored it in 1976, feared his vacuum recovery system would cause too much damage.

Before heading to Greece in September, the suit will be tested in July off the coast of Rhode Island by a team from the American Museum of Natural History looking for bioluminescent organisms.

[MIKA27]

Sleep's memory role discovered

The mechanism by which a good night's sleep improves learning and memory has been discovered by scientists.

The team in China and the US used advanced microscopy to witness new connections between brain cells - synapses - forming during sleep.

Their study, published in the journal Science, showed even intense training could not make up for lost sleep.

Experts said it was an elegant and significant study, which uncovered the mechanisms of memory.

It is well known that sleep plays an important role in memory and learning. But what actually happens inside the brain has been a source of considerable debate.

Researchers at New York University School of Medicine and Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School trained mice in a new skill - walking on top of a rotating rod.

They then looked inside the living brain with a microscope to see what happened when the animals were either sleeping or sleep deprived.

Their study showed that sleeping mice formed significantly more new connections between neurons - they were learning more.

A connection between two brain cells

And by disrupting specific phases of sleep, the research group showed deep or slow-wave sleep was necessary for memory formation.

During this stage, the brain was "replaying" the activity from earlier in the day.

Prof Wen-Biao Gan, from New York University, told the BBC: "Finding out sleep promotes new connections between neurons is new, nobody knew this before.

"We thought sleep helped, but it could have been other causes, and we show it really helps to make connections and that in sleep the brain is not quiet, it is replaying what happened during the day and it seems quite important for making the connections."

Analysis

This is just the latest piece of science to highlight the importance of sleep.

A new reason for sleep was discovered last year when experiments showed the brain used sleep to wash away waste toxins built up during a hard day's thinking.

However, there are concerns that people are not getting enough sleep.

As part of the BBC's Day of the Body Clock, Prof Russell Foster argued that society had become "supremely arrogant" in ignoring the importance of sleep, leading to "serious health problems".

These include:

• cancer
• heart disease
• type-2 diabetes
• infections
• obesity

The reward for more sleep, Prof Foster argues, is we would all be "better human beings."

Further tests showed how significant sleep was.

Mice doing up to an hour's training followed by sleep were compared with mice training intensively for three hours but then sleep deprived.

The difference was still stark, with the sleepers performing better and the brain forming more new connections.

Prof Gan added: "One of the implications is for kids studying, if you want to remember something for long periods you need these connections.

"So it is probably better to study and have good sleep rather than keep studying."

Commenting on the findings, Dr Raphaelle Winsky-Sommerer, from the University of Surrey, told the BBC: "This is very impressive, carefully crafted and using a combination of exquisite techniques to identify the underlying mechanisms of memory.

"They provide the cellular mechanism of how sleep contributes to dealing with experiences during the day.

"Basically it tells you sleep promotes new synaptic connections, so preserve your sleep."

[MIKA27]

The Profound Contradiction of Saving Private Ryan

When it was released 16 years ago, I didn't get it.

I knew Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan was supposed to be a masterpiece. The best-known film critics in the country said so. Janet Maslin, for example, hailed it as "the finest war movie of our time." The film and its director both won Golden Globes, Spielberg received an Academy Award for directing, and more than 60 critics named Saving Private Ryan the best picture of the year.

The most serious students of the Second World War shared the enthusiasm for the film. Historian Stephen Ambrose, author of D-Day and Citizen Soldiers, thought it "the finest World War II movie ever made." The Secretary of the Army presented the filmmaker with the military's highest civilian decoration, the Distinguished Civilian Service Award. The New York Times even devoted a respectful editorial to "Spielberg's War."

And I knew that almost everybody else agreed with them. Along with 6.5 million other Americans, I saw Saving Private Ryan its opening weekend back in 1998, joining a mostly elderly crowd of the "Greatest" generation at a suburban multiplex. Moved to tears by the powerful film, the audience gave it an ovation as the final credits rolled. But as my wife and I filed out of the theater, I wondered what they were applauding, exactly, this darkened room full of veterans and their spouses.

Like everyone else in the theater, I spent most of three hours wincing involuntarily in my seat, shocked by the unrelenting mayhem of a daylight amphibious assault across a barren killing field, sickened by the sudden hash that light artillery can make of human bodies, groaning at the grotesque wounds and the grisly mutilations of whimpering casualties, and—in the end—twitching at even the slightest clatter of mechanized warfare.

Like everyone else, I wondered at the courage or desperation or whatever it was that drove American soldiers across a French beach, codenamed Omaha, under the withering spray of German machine-gun rounds from hilltop fortifications and the flesh-shredding explosions of 105mm howitzer shells lobbed by inland artillery.

And like everyone else, I had to agree that it was brilliant filmmaking—except for the beginning and the end. Spielberg actually opens and closes the film twice, employing two pairs of images to bracket the war movie everyone praised. The first and last thing we see pulsing across the entire screen is a faded, translucent American flag. Can we understand the flag as anything but an announcement of the subject of his epic: patriotism? The fluttering flag, denatured of its color and perhaps of its vitality, is the image with which the film begins and ends. But Spielberg wraps not only the war in the flag but also the cloyingly sentimental frame story of an elderly veteran, followed by his wife, son, and grandchildren, on his pilgrimage to the vast cemetery overlooking the Normandy beachhead, now marked by row after row of simple Christian and Jewish headstones.

Nearly every commentator criticized this prologue and epilogue. Janet Maslin conceded that these scenes are among the film's "few false notes." Others derided this opening and closing as "maudlin," "completely unnecessary," and "a burst of schmaltzy ritual." In fact, most writers simply ignored the prologue. Anthony Lane, for example, writing in The New Yorker, described the first half-hour of the film as "the most telling battle scenes ever made" without bothering to note that one must first wade through five minutes of schmaltz to get to Omaha Beach. (Later in his essay, Mr. Lane did make quite clear that he had no patience for Spielberg's "sappy epilogue.")

So this is what I didn't get. The opening and the closing of any work should be the two moments of greatest emphasis (as Spielberg's English-teacher hero, Captain John Miller, would no doubt have taught his high-school students back home in Addley, Pennsylvania). How could such a formidable filmmaker have botched the beginning and the end of his film?

But now, looking back as the 70th anniversary of D-Day approaches, I've begun to doubt that the opening and the closing of Saving Private Ryan are missteps. In fact, I've come to think that, even if maudlin, they are the whole point of the war story they introduce and conclude.

What is that story? Surviving the bloodbath of Omaha Beach, a handpicked squad of Rangers are sent to extricate a paratrooper, James Ryan, from the intense fighting behind enemy lines because his three brothers have been killed in combat. Despite the efforts of his subordinates to dissuade him from authorizing the mission, General George C. Marshall determines to save Ryan's mother from a fourth telegram of condolence, quoting as his rationale, at times from memory, a worn letter to a Mrs. Lydia Bixby:

Executive Mansion

Washington, Nov. 21, 1864

To Mrs. Bixby, Boston, Mass.

Dear Madam,

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Yours very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln

Lincoln, unlike Marshall, does not hint that her grief deserves greater respect than that of any other mother deprived by the war of a son, nor that he would risk, even after Gettysburg, a single other soldier to preserve her from such loss. His eloquent letter expresses sentiment, not sentimentality. Spielberg's Marshall, on the other hand, seems unable to distinguish between sentimentality and morality.

In fact, Lincoln had been misinformed. Mrs. Bixby had protested the enlistment of her sons, and while two were killed in combat, another returned safely home after an exchange of prisoners of war. The final two sons deserted, one even fleeing the country. And, as M. Lincoln Schuster points out in A Treasury of the World's Great Letters, the widely circulated letter was denounced by Lincoln's opponents as "cheap and ostentatious." One paper even questioned Lincoln's right to pen such words while his own two sons, one still a child but the other 21, were "kept at home in luxury, far from the dangers of the field."

These details—absent, of course, from the film—are not merely curious footnotes. The great bulk of dialogue in Saving Private Ryan not directly connected to the prosecution of battles is dedicated to an ongoing debate about the morality of the squad's mission. No one makes a case that their mission is heroic. It is idiocy and, as far as the soldiers are concerned, immoral idiocy. What of the grief of their mothers, they wonder. The true story behind the eloquent words and heroic sentiments with which General Marshall sends these soldiers to their deaths makes clear that Lincoln's letter is empty, as it turns out, of everything except rhetoric. But soldiers don't need a history lesson to recognize the emptiness of rhetoric when they are about to become its victims. The morality of risking eight men to save one is an equation that makes no sense to a soldier.

Over and over again, the fundamental theorem of war—that one is sacrificed to save many—is examined. When the squad encounters a downed pilot whose troop transport crashed, killing 22 men, because his plane had been made unflyable by the steel plates added to its belly to protect from ground fire a brigadier general on board, everyone understands that to risk the safety of many to protect one (even if he is a general) is wrong and, in war, always dangerous.

Approaching the climactic battle, Spielberg billets his soldiers in an abandoned church. While his men talk about their own mothers, Captain Miller defends the loss of 94 soldiers, one by one, under his command. Reminiscent of Shakespeare's disguised Henry V debating with English yeomen anxiously awaiting dawn at Agincourt a commander's responsibility for the death of his men in battle, Miller justifies his actions to his sergeant (and, obviously, to himself) by insisting upon the 10 or even 20 times more men he has saved by sacrificing one man. That's what allows him to choose the mission over the man, he explains. But this time, the sergeant responds, the mission is the man. Spielberg could not be more explicit in condemning the effort to save Private Ryan as immoral, at least in terms of the morality of the battlefield.

Henry V is a useful comparison in another regard, as well. The most stirring of battle eve addresses, Henry's St. Crispin's Day speech rallies "we happy few" on to victory against overwhelming odds with images of glory, honor, and patriotic fervor. Despite the flapping flag and swelling music as the credits roll, Spielberg puts in the mouth of his commander, Captain Miller, no praise of homeland, no defense of democracy, no attack on fascism in rallying his troops. Instead, their commander simply says he just wants to go home to his wife. As his men have made clear repeatedly, as far as they are concerned, Private Ryan can go to hell. But if going to hell to save Ryan earns Miller the right to go back to his wife, then he'll go to hell. And hell, a French village named Ramelle, is exactly where he finds the boy, guarding the last remaining bridge across the River Styx, a little stream the French call the Merderet.

The absence of patriotic principles in his defense of the mission becomes quite striking when one compares Miller's speech about the war and his wife to another Civil War letter. A week before his death at the first battle of Bull Run, Major Sullivan Ballou of the Second Rhode Island addressed these words to his wife: "I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American Civilization now leans on the triumph of the Government, and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and sufferings of the Revolution. And I am willing—perfectly willing—to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this Government, and to pay that debt." Major Ballou goes on to affirm, "Sarah my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me unresistibly on with all these chains to the battle field."

No less in love with his wife than Miller seems to be, the Union officer finds the words to assert his devotion to the flag under which he fights. However, in nearly three hours, apart from the letter by Lincoln that General Marshall reads and the one that he himself writes to Ryan's mother, Saving Private Ryan offers not a single word about love of country. Generals may still talk like their Civil War counterparts, but soldiers in the field have ceased to cloak their duty in such sentiments.

The Germans depicted are just as bewildered, terrified, and anxious to return to their families as the Americans. Of course, there is no shortage of cruelty and brutality. Nazis move through battle-scarred streets indifferently finishing off wounded Americans, but, early in the film, we have witnessed callous GIs mowing down surrendering Germans with a laugh. And the transformation of a cowardly American interpreter who coldly butchers a captured German he earlier has argued to spare is one of the most troubling moments in the film. Spielberg never suggests that we are any better than our enemy or, to put it more generously, that they are any worse than we are. On the contrary, he seems to be at pains to show the equality of men under any flag when the shooting begins. So this is not a patriotic film; if anything, it argues that patriotism is beside the point in modern warfare. Even the mission itself has no heroic or patriotic aim; there is no hill to be taken, no redoubt to be stormed. Its goal, according to Captain Miller, is public relations.

Why then does the film begin and end with Spielberg's flag-waving and a tearful old grandfather mourning at the graves of fallen comrades? Are they merely hedges against the insidious argument of the film that even our last "good" war was as meaningless in its brutality and empty in its heroism as the conflict in Vietnam? Though Saving Private Ryan amply documents the extraordinary courage of men under fire and suggests the tide of grief their families endured, it never addresses the point of their heroism. How can it honor the horrendous sacrifices our parents and grandparents made when the film seems to demonstrate that neither glory, morality, patriotism, nor any clear meaning attended the slaughter of millions?

Spielberg, aware of this contradiction, told a 1998 gathering of entertainment writers in Los Angeles that the movie is really about how two opposing things can both be true. The mission can't be justified on moral or patriotic grounds, and yet the toughest soldier in the squad, Sergeant Horvath, says saving Private Ryan might be the one decent thing they "were able to pull out of this whole godawful, shitty mess."

This is not the only contradiction in the director's historical works. If one considers Spielberg's efforts in the 1990s to turn from the hugely successful entertainments that made his reputation to cinematic examinations of the most profound moral issues of the modern age, apparently inexplicable decisions on the part of the filmmaker seem to contradict the very arguments of those films, too.

How can one explain Spielberg's choice, in his film on the Holocaust, to make its hero a German profiteer and, in his film on slavery, to make its hero a white leader of a slave economy? Of course, a Jewish clerk in Schindler's List prods his German employer to outwit the Final Solution and an enslaved African in Amistad goads a white former president of the United States to outmaneuver the very legal system (dedicated, as it was, to the preservation of slavery) that his oath of office had sworn him to uphold and defend. But the director leaves no doubt as to which character is the central focus of the narrative conflict: Since monstrous systems of exploitation constrain both Jew and African from independent action, only the beneficiaries of those inhumane systems are capable of change and, thus, able to serve as the protagonists of these dramas. Though we may assume these two films are about suffering—and presented with the vivid depiction of cruelty a camera can offer, an audience may find it difficult to look beyond such graphic images of misery to another, subtler subject—Schindler's List and Amistad are, in fact, about guilt and responsibility. They are not, as many imagine, noble memorials to the millions of victims of the Holocaust and slavery; rather, they are agonized meditations on all of those somehow implicated in those vast human tragedies.

A similar, though much more complex, contradiction beats at the very heart of Saving Private Ryan and accounts for the dissonance noted by virtually every critic between the body of the film and its opening and closing. How can the sentimental tableau of a weeping old man, his wife, his son, his daughter-in-law, and his grandchildren possibly serve as a fit conclusion to so savage and unsentimental a film?

Spielberg himself offered a clue when, continuing his conversation with those entertainment writers in Los Angeles, he described his father's own war stories: "I was supposed to wave the flag and be patriotic and say that without his efforts I wouldn't have the freedoms I had or even the freedom to have the bicycle I was riding." Only later did the director realize that it wasn't "a bunch of bunk he was telling me." John Miller, the high-school teacher from Pennsylvania, teaches Jimmy Ryan the same lesson.

Private Ryan, a dazed kid surrounded by the bodies of men who were absurdly ordered to their deaths to save him, is given the equally absurd command by the dying hero, Captain Miller, to "earn this" and must now bear the terrible, impossible order until his own death.

But don't we all struggle under Ryan's moral burden? And how can Ryan, or for that matter any of us, ever pay such a debt—and to whom? Spielberg had already once suggested the answer to that profound question. In the epilogue to Schindler's List, contemporary descendants of the Jews saved by Oskar Schindler process past his grave. Again at the end of Saving Private Ryan, as a grandfather and his son and grandchildren pay homage to those whose deaths we have just witnessed, the living are called not merely to bear witness to the achievement of fallen heroes; the living are, in fact, the achievement itself. Like Private Ryan, we cannot help but ask what we've done to deserve such sacrifice by others and beg their forgiveness for what we have cost them. And like James Ryan, all we can do to justify that sacrifice is to live our lives as well as we are able.

This is not to suggest Spielberg has made a perfect film. There is a difference between virtuosity and genius, between a tour de force and a masterpiece. Saving Private Ryan is flawed, in part because it loses its nerve. Those surviving veterans who actually leapt into the reddened surf of Omaha Beach have attested to the accuracy of the film's depiction of modern war and, particularly, of the Normandy Invasion; for that artistic accomplishment, the director deserves all the accolades heaped upon him. On the other hand, the flag-waving patriotism it pretends at in its first and last shots is as transparent as the faded flag Spielberg waves across the screen.

But the prologue and epilogue, even if they are embarrassingly sentimental in their presentation and do pander, perhaps, to their audience, pose what remains a fundamental question after the blood-drenched 20th century: What is our responsibility to those who have gone before us? Like Schindler's List and Amistad, Saving Private Ryan is not about those who suffered; it is about those who have been spared suffering. Spielberg's subject, in the end, is not the courage of the soldiers who fought at Normandy; his subject is the debt owed them by their children and their children's children. As we approach the 70th anniversary of the largest amphibious assault in history, we should remember that Mrs. Ryan's son was not the only child those brave men saved.

[MIKA27]

When Kids In Third World Countries Read First World Problems

We're probably all guilty of it, caught up in our own world and distracted by the most trivial things that we forget how easy we have it in the developed world.

When you turn the tap on, whatever time of the day is it, clean and safe drinking water comes out. But those in impoverished nations around the world, access to something as basic as drinking water is a daily commute and struggle.

In extreme cases, they're forced to drink dirty and bacteria ridden muddy water instead leading to all kinds to infections, illnesses and diseases spreading in their community.

But instead of tackling these issues that negatively impact the world's most disadvantaged, we're obsessed with moaning about all manner of irrelevent topics instead.

So rather than complaining about struggling with the decision on what type of food to eat, enduring the perils of munching crisps whilst sitting on your ass or ordering too much Starbucks, remember, those "first world problems" aren't problems at all.

Find out how you can make the lives of less fortunate a hell of a lot easier, but heading over to Water Is Life and donating what you can to make a genuine difference.

You'll be helping solve the worlds real problems, one step at a time.

MIKA: So true...

[MIKA27]

Kevin Spacey reprimands theatre-goer over mobile phone

Actor Kevin Spacey castigated a theatre-goer whose mobile phone went off during the opening night of his one-man show.

The Oscar winner is performing legal drama Clarence Darrow as he marks the end of his 10 years as artistic director at London's Old Vic.

During a scene in which Darrow, a civil rights lawyer, delivers a courtroom speech, a phone began to ring.

Spacey turned to the audience and said: "If you don't answer that, I will!"

The audience applauded Spacey, who remained in character during the interruption.

The House of Cards actor is stepping down from his role at the Old Vic in 2015 to be replaced by Matthew Warchus, the director of Matilda.

In David Rintels' Clarence Darrow, Spacey has returned to a character he has previously played on stage, as well as in a film adaptation for PBS television. But this is his first turn in a one-man play.

'Often spellbinding'

His performance at the Old Vic has earned glowing reviews, with The Guardian saying Spacey gives a "big, barnstorming performance as the famed American lawyer".

Michael Billington's review added: "It is a mighty performance that brings out Darrow's bravura humanitarianism and it leaves one hoping that, even after Spacey hands over the Old Vic to Matthew Warchus next year, it will not be his farewell to the London stage."

In his four star review, The Telegraph's Charles Spencer said that "Spacey prowls around the stage like a battered old prize fighter, constantly on the move as he buttonholes members of the audience, and radiates a charisma and dramatic attack that is often spellbinding".

He added: "Thea Sharrock's production... rarely loosens its dramatic grip, but it is the power and palpable humanity of Spacey's performance that makes this evening so special."

The Mail's Quentin Letts also gave it a four star review and lamented Spacey's departure from The Old Vic.

"The London stage has been fortunate to have him and this cracking performance, despite a so-so play, sees him at the top of his art. Exit Kevin the king," he wrote.

MIKA: First world problem right there....

[MIKA27]

Harvard University book bound in human skin

A book owned by Harvard University has been been bound in human skin, scientists believe.

Des destinees de l'ame (Destinies of the Soul) has been housed at Houghton Library since the 1930s.

Writer Arsene Houssaye is said to have given the book to his friend, Dr Ludovic Bouland, in the mid-1880s.

Dr Bouland then reportedly bound the book with skin from the body of an unclaimed female mental patient who had died of natural causes.

"The analytical data, taken together with the provenance of Des destinees de l'ame, make it very unlikely that the source could be other than human," Bill Lane, the director of the Harvard Mass Spectrometry and Proteomics Resource Laboratory, told the Houghton Library Blog.

The practice of binding books in human skin - termed anthropodermic bibliopegy - has been reported since as early as the 16th Century.

Numerous 19th Century accounts exist of the bodies of executed criminals being donated to science, their skins later given to bookbinders.

Located within Des destinees de l'ame is a note written by Dr Bouland, stating no ornament had been stamped on the cover to "preserve its elegance".

"I had kept this piece of human skin taken from the back of a woman," he wrote. "A book about the human soul deserved to have a human covering."

The book, said to be a meditation on the soul and life after death, is believed to be the only one bound in human skin at Harvard.

Comparable tests undertaken on books at the university's law and medical school libraries revealed books bound in sheepskin.

[MIKA27]

Fox behind Leeds footwear theft crimewave

A fox is stealing dozens of shoes in a Leeds suburb and dumping them outside a woman's house.

The problem has become so bad that Elaine Hewitt has been forced to put a shoe rack outside her home in Horsforth so neighbours can reclaim their missing footwear.

Ms Hewitt said the vulpine crimewave began a few months ago when she found a single shoe in her back garden.

The fox is now leaving a shoe a day, ranging from sandals to work boots.

Ms Hewitt, who has seen the fox carrying shoes, said the animal favoured leather footwear and the shoes are not chewed or damaged.

She believed it was stealing gardening shoes left outside people's homes.

"First of all we just collected them thinking they were too good to throw in the bin," she said.

"When the pile grew we did a little notice.

"We had a few phone calls from that and were able to give back and match up a couple of pairs.

"Then I decided the fox was a further afield than just around our immediate vicinity which is when I decided to put the table out on the street.

"The number of vehicles and passers-by who stopped to ask about it, to look and also to take their shoes back was absolutely astounding."

The fox appears to be the mother of five cubs and Ms Hewitt said she hoped the younger members of the family would not be taught about the shoe stealing habit.

[MIKA27]

FACUNDO EXQUISITO RUM

When it comes to rum, there isn't a brand as well known as Bacardi, so when they decided to release a special line of aged sipping rums, it rose to the top of our want list.

Exquisito is one of the best in the collection and is a blend of rums aged between 7 and 23 years and finished for at least a month in sherry casks. The blend of ages provides an ideal balance and the finish gives Exquisito a mellow profile, perfect for a sweet sip served neat or with a little ice.

[MIKA27]

Volkswagen's Brilliant Ad To Make You Stop Texting While Driving

http://youtu.be/JHixeIr_6BM

No matter how many times you hear it, people are still using their smartphones behind the wheel and killing themselves in the process. It’s tragic and it has to stop. Volkswagen feels the same way, and scared the crap out of a whole cinema full of people to make the point.

The con was simple: get a whole bunch of people into a movie theatre and get their mobile numbers on the way in (that’s the only way it could have pulled this off).

Before the movie, play first-person footage of someone taking off, driving down a straight road. The tunes are playing, the wind is cool through the window, and everyone is enraptured to see what happens next.

All of a sudden, everyone in the cinema gets a text message. They take their eyes off the action with the car to read their phone, and that’s when the accident happens. Those checking their phones didn’t even see it coming, and that’s the point.

So don’t use your phone while you drive. Please.

[MIKA27]

A Wearable SIM Could Let You Use One Number With Any Device

Japanese carrier Docomo has announced an interesting concept design that could change the way we use mobile devices: a wearable that takes the SIM out of your phone and puts it onto your wrist to create an authentication device for all your hardware.

It’s calling it the Portable SIM, and it takes the SIM card usually found within your smartphone and puts it into a Bluetooth- and NFC-equipped wearable. The prototype allows the device — a card or smartwatch-style bracelet — to be waved over any tablet or smartphone to allow it connect and login to phone networks.

The idea is to make it easy to allow multiple devices to use the same SIM card, regardless of OS. Alongside the SIM, the devices can carry logins for shopping sites and social networks to be used in much the same way. In terms of security, Docomo suggests that the ascribed SIM’s phone number be locked once the Bluetooth link between device and Portable SIM is broken.

The prototype is currently a credit-card shaped device about the size of a Wi-Fi hotspot, although it’s thought that it should be able to fit into a wearable like a small smartwatch. It’s also worth noting that this is very much a concept, and currently doesn’t work with any commercially available hardware.

But the overall idea is neat: once phone and data contract, and complete freedom to pick up and use any device that comes to hand. Reckon that would be useful for you?