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

[MIKA27]

Amazing New Image Of The Earth And The Moon Taken Outside Lunar Orbit

China’s National Space Agency has released this stunning image of the Earth and the Moon from an extraordinary vantage point. Taken yesterday by their Chang’e 5 spacecraft on, the photo shows the far side of the moon with the Earth on the background.

The spacecraft will return to Earth on November 1.

[MIKA27]

Qantas Removing iMacs From Its Airport Lounges

Qantas’ airport lounges are set to go desktop-free for a spell, as the airline begins trialling the removal of iMacs to keep step with a laptop-loving, tablet-toting world.

According to a report by Australian Business Traveller, Qantas is pulling the desktops from the lounge on a trial basis.

In place of the desktops, Qantas will reportedly set up its printers to be accessible by both PC and Macs from the free in-lounge Wi-Fi networks, and will also offer iPads for travellers to borrow if they’ve come without one.

If it works, Qantas may pull iMacs from all of its lounges.

[MIKA27]

This Self-Stabilizing Boat’s Deck Is Always Flat, Even in Rough Waters

The skipper spotted a passenger ferry a few hundred yards ahead of us and decided we could catch up. He piled on the throttle, speeding through the San Francisco Bay. The afternoon wasn’t windy and the water was calm, so Steve Shonk, lead engineer and test boat captain for Velodyne Marine, was intent on finding waves where he could get them. The wake from the ferry was his best bet.

We were cruising through the Bay on Velodyne’s Martini 1.5, the second version of a new kind of boat: one with an active suspension to make going over waves feel like, well, nothing. It’s a breakthrough that could make ocean search and rescue missions, where speed is crucial, safer. It could appeal to luxury yacht owners and commercial fisherman. And it makes chasing ferries a lot more fun.

The system is the work of David Hall, the engineer who founded Velodyne Acoustics in 1983 and invented an accelerometer-based servo system to control the movement of the cones used in subwoofers. In 2005, Hall developed the Lidar (Light Detection and Ranging) system now used by Google’s self-driving cars to map the physical world. Not long after that, he moved on to the idea of the Martini: a boat that rides so smoothly, no wave will spill your cocktail.

The mechanics of the active suspension aren’t too complicated. Like a pontoon boat, the Martini sits on two long hulls shaped like skis. Those are connected to a platform at the front and back by metal arms. Each corner, where the arm meets the hull, has a linear accelerometer, a pneumatic airbag, and a DC servo motor. To match the movement of the ocean, detected by the accelerometer, the motor turns a ball screw that pushes or pulls the control arm, lowering and raising that end of the hull as necessary.

The result is a boat that works like an Olympic hurdler: The legs fly up and down to clear obstacles, the torso and head stay level. With each corner acting independently, the system can handle all kinds of motion: pitch (front to back), roll (side to side), and heave (when the whole boat goes up and down). And you don’t have to worry about upsetting the balance of the boat by walking around, either. The airbags change pressure to keep the platform level when people are cargo move around.

Hall launched and tested the Martini One, his proof of concept, in the spring and summer of 2012. The small boat looked like a ping pong table strapped onto a pair of canoes. It could handle only 3-foot waves, but it showed the basic idea worked. In October 2012, Velodyne launched the 35-foot Martini 1.5, which we are on. It’s a more capable iteration of the technology, but it’s still far from something anyone would buy. It also looks like a ping pong table on canoes, but everything’s a bit bigger, and there’s a little cabin on top. I’m glad it’s there, since the boat is made to handle 5.5-foot waves at 30 mph. At that speed, the wind makes being on deck unpleasant, no matter how level the boat.

Shonk says it’s too far from starting sales to discuss pricing, but there’s no reason any Martini boat should cost a huge amount. It’s the application of technology, not the hardware itself, that’s new. “There’s nothing really expensive about this system.”

The idea of keep ships stable at sea has been around for centuries, and systems that actively counteract movement popped up in the early 20th century. Fin stabilizers extend past the hull into the water, and turn to counteract motion, similar to ailerons on airplanes. The Velodyne system is a different approach, moving the passenger compartment of the ship above the water. And unlike stabilizing fins, Shonk says, the active suspension doesn’t make the ship less hydrodynamic.

When we caught up with the ferry, Shonk brought our speed back down to 30 mph and began cutting back and forth through the large boat’s wake. At high speeds, the boat turns by lowering one hull or the other, like a skier. Even as we slammed into waves head on, the platform stayed level. After a minute, I overrode my instinct to bend my knees to absorb the bouncing of the waves, and got comfortable. The Martini’s “knees” were doing all the work.

The full impact of the experience didn’t hit me until I got off the Martini 1.5 and into the Protector 28 chase boat. The 28 is designed to provide stability and shock absorption in rough seas, that’s why Velodyne uses it. But crashing through waves I barely felt aboard the Martini, I felt like a pair of dice in a Yahtzee cup. Getting off the Martini had the added bonus of seeing it at work from a better angle. Standing on the platform, you can tell the hulls are moving up and down, but it’s hard to appreciate their speed, matching each swell in real time.

That’s the experience Velodyne hopes to match next month, when it launches the Martini 2.0. This latest prototype is made to prove the suspension system can work on larger ships and at higher speeds. Thanks in part to bigger engines (520 horsepower instead of 250), it’s designed to tackle 7-foot waves at 50 mph.

The ability to travel at high speeds through rough water will have broad appeal, Shonk says. It could be used for Marine and Coast Guard transport, to cut down on the minor injuries that come with bouncing around in a boat. Whale watching, commercial fishing, and filming sporting events from the water could all be made safer and more pleasant. There’s a potential market for yacht tenders: The Martini boat could offer passengers a smooth ride out to yachts that can’t make it to the dock for whatever reason.

But before it can go to market, Velodyne has to mate its system to something that looks and feels like a regular boat. The 2.0 is a step in the transition. Its twin hulls will be connected by rigid box beams. They will still be able to move independently to counteract waves, but the design will work like a monohull. That will allow for a more standard cabin, useful for doing things other than proving the suspension technology works.

[MIKA27]

After 70 Years, a Forgotten Concept Car Is Finally Coming to Life

Joe Ida was a Tucker dealer for a total of one day in the late 1940s. He bought the dealership in Yonkers, New York, ready to sell the car that would set a new standard for driving in America. But before the tires of the Tucker 48 could even get close to the showroom floor, the company was in legal and financial ruin.

Joe’s Tucker dealership didn’t work out, but his son Bob and grandson Rob got into the auto game, running a business building custom cars. Now, Bob and Rob are taking a break from the Cadillacs and Oldsmobiles that are their usual fare, and building a Tucker from scratch in their Morganville, New Jersey shop. Not a Tucker 48 like the few sold in the postwar years—that would’ve been easy, and they’ve already done it. No, the two are making a full-scale version of the concept that evolved into the 48. That means starting from nothing more than a 1/4 scale model and a handful of drawings.

“We’re dealing with something that’s never been made, just starting from ideas and renderings,” says Rob.

If their final product is anything like the Torpedo was meant to be, it will be one funky car. The concept had a rear-mounted engine and just one front seat, plus two in the back. Bulbous fenders cover all four wheels, giving the 60-year-old design a futuristic look even today. It was the vision that led to the creation of the Tucker 48, perhaps the American auto industry’s most famous failure.

After the Allies had taken Europe back from the Nazis, Preston Tucker decided to found a company that would offer a futuristic vehicle, at a time when most brands were producing warmed-over pre-war models. Tucker secured the largest manufacturing plant in the US, a Chicago factory previously used to build B-29 bombers, and investors showed up. Folks like Joe Ida signed on to be dealers.

The Tucker 48 was a tech-heavy vehicle of tomorrow with features like a center headlight that turned with the front wheels, disc brakes, a laminate windshield designed to pop out in a crash, and a perimeter frame with an integrated roll-bar. There was also a crash compartment: If, as a passenger, you saw an imminent collision, you could shelter yourself on the floor below and be protected from impact. Okay, so not every idea was a winner.

The Idas had the original model of the Tucker Torpedo 3-D scanned to give them a working model for construction

Things looked good until steel shortages impeded production, and then the government came in. The Securities and Exchange Commission accused Preston Tucker and his executives of building a company to cheat investors, selling accessories and dealer franchises and for a car that didn’t yet exist. Tucker won the case in 1950, but the young brand’s reputation was mortally wounded by the investigation. Preston Tucker died six years later, and conspiracy theories of the Big Three–Ford, GM, and Chrysler—encouraging the government to squash its competition exist to this day. Only 51 Tucker 48s were built, all by hand, and these days they sell for millions when they go up for auction.

Today, Bob and his son Rob Ida, not content to build another 48, are in the process of a bigger challenge. They’re making the Tucker Torpedo, the concept predecessor to the 48, a car that only exists in drawings and a 1/4-scale model found ten years ago in a barn belonging to the car’s original designer, George Lawson.

Sean Tucker, an automotive engineer working at Mack Truck in Pennsylvania and Preston’s great-grandson, is lending a hand to design the steering wheel assembly. The team is following the original guidelines, all the way down to the engine. The original design called for an air-cooled motor, so the team is planning to use a late-90s Porsche 6-cylinder, “the last era of the air-cooled Porsches,” Rob says.

Rob and his father Bob brought in some new technology to help out. Using a 3-D scan of the 1/4-scale model of the the exterior, they CNC-machined wood components that have been assembled into the shape of a full-size Torpedo. That wooden model lets them hammer the metal panels into the proper shapes. “We shape each piece of metal using old-world techniques,” Rob says. “English wheel and hammers.”

While they assemble the body, finding the innards will involve the real hard work. “The challenge is engineering something that can function, but still look the way [the designer] said it would,” Rob says.

[MIKA27]

Swim Through the Oceans at Your Desk With Google’s 360-Degree Seaview

Richard Vevers left the world of London advertising to go to Australia and chase his dream of making a career in underwater photography—a source of fascination for him since his teen years in landlocked Bromley, England. Now, he and his team at the Catlin Seaview Survey, thanks to a partnership with Google Street View, may have created the most viewed underwater imagery of all time.

“I saw that there were a lot of issues going on underwater that were out of sight and out of mind,” said Vevers. “I saw that as an advertising issue. Our solution was to reveal the ocean and let the conservation organizations do the rest.”

Philippe Cousteau (grandson of the famous underwater explorer Jaques-Yves Cousteau), who had joined the team to film a documentary, uses the Survey's support scooter near Wilson Island on the Great Barrier Reef. The huge Porites coral on the right is estimated to be over 500 years old.

Vevers and his team capture gorgeous, immersive, 360° images of all six major global coral regions to be used as baseline data to monitor their swift degradation. “We started off with coral reefs because we’ve lost 40 percent in last 30 years, and because of the effects of climate change, it’s not likely to slow down,” said Vevers. “This will give us an incredible, unprecedented baseline to measure change. These environments will be hit more and more by storms and bleaching events. It’s the recovery that is so critical.”

The team started with Australia, then moved on to the Caribbean, and this year will continue on in the Coral Triangle of Southeast Asia. Next year they will dive in the Indian Ocean, followed by the Red Sea, and finally the Pacific. The Catlin Seaview camera rig was modeled after the Streetview Trekker backpack-mounted camera pod and contains three Canon 5D cameras in a spherical waterproof housing, controlled by a Samsung tablet, and propelled by a Dive X underwater scooter. Seaview divers routinely cover 2 kilometers in a dive and generate 3,000 panoramic images in a day. Only a fraction of the best are uploaded to Google Street View, but all are processed into the Catlin Global Reef Record—an open source tool available to any marine manager or ocean researcher.

Underwater structures, whether natural or man-made, provide a place for corals to grow. This is the wreck of the Antilla, which was sunk in 1940 near Aruba. It now provides habitat for many fish and an anchor point for the soft corals that call the Caribbean home.

In his line of work, Vevers routinely finds himself in jaw-dropping marine environments. “You don’t know what’s around the next corner,” he said. “When you’re in remote places like the really far north part of the Great Barrier Reef—which takes two days of steaming just to get there—and you jump in the water, it’s truly wild. You get buzzed by baby sharks straight away, shooting up from the depths, and then there are magical encounters with manta rays that check themselves out in the dome of the camera.”

The Seaview Survey has also captured countless manmade wonders in the depths. The Underwater Museum of living sculptures off the coast of Cancun, Mexico, the Antilla Shipwreck off Aruba, and the Christ of the Abyss off Key Largo, Florida are all included in the Seaview collection.

A school of trevally swim over a carpet of healthy hard coral on Lady Elliot Island, at the southern edge of the Great Barrier Reef.

Vevers’ team is currently developing an autonomous underwater vehicle to be deployed by 2017 to cover even more of the ocean. “These AUVs can stick to a meter and a half above the seafloor and hover at one knot,” he said. “They could cover 12 kilometers in a day, which would scale the project significantly.” These craft would also be perfect for retracing previous paths to measure the impact of say, a large cyclone on a sensitive stretch of reef.

“This is science that has not been possible on this scale before—to measure impact and create new baselines with which to measure recovery,” said Vevers. “I think it’s safe to say that we’ve taken Street View to places they weren’t imagining when they named it.”

The Coral Sea is a wild and remote region situated northeast of Australia (beyond the Great Barrier Reef).

See if you can spot the three green turtles in this image, made during a pilot survey of Heron Island (at the southern edge of the Great Barrier Reef).

An eagle ray swims over the soft corals of Long Caye in Belize.

[MIKA27]

Nato reports rise in Russia military flights over Europe

Russia's Tu-95 Bear bomber, seen in this 2007 image escorted by an RAF F3 Tornado, has been upgraded since the Cold War

Nato has reported an "unusual" increase in Russian military aircraft conducting manoeuvres over European airspace over the last two days.

A Nato statement said four groups of aircraft, including Tu-95 Bear bombers and MiG-31 fighters, were tracked over seas and the Atlantic Ocean.

Fighter aircraft from Norway, Britain, Portugal, Germany and Turkey were scrambled in response.

Tensions between Russia and Nato states have soared over the Ukraine crisis.

The US and EU imposed sanctions on Russia after its annexation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula earlier this year.

Ties have been further strained as the West has accused Russia of supporting rebels in eastern Ukraine - a charge Russia has denied.

The Nato statement on Wednesday made no mention of Ukraine.

It said that the "sizeable" Russian flights were unusual for their scale, although no incidents had been reported.

The Russian aircraft flying over Europe are said to include types of MiG-31

The statement said Russian aircraft were detected flying over the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea, the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, prompting fighter jets from Nato member states to intercept and follow them.

Overall, Nato said it had intercepted Russian aircraft more than 100 times so far this year - three times more than it did last year.

"Scrambles and intercepts are standard procedure when an unknown aircraft approaches Nato airspace," the statement said.

However, it said, such flights pose a potential risk to civilian aviation because the Russian military often does not file flight plans or use on-board transponders.

"This means civilian air traffic control cannot detect these aircraft nor ensure there is no interference with civilian air traffic," the statement said.

[MIKA27]

Switzerland's shame: The children used as cheap farm labour

Thousands of people in Switzerland who were forced into child labour are demanding compensation for their stolen childhoods. Since the 1850s hundreds of thousands of Swiss children were taken from their parents and sent to farms to work - a practice that continued well into the 20th Century.

David Gogniat heard a loud knock on the door. There were two policemen.

"I heard them shouting and realised something was wrong. I looked out and saw that my mother had pushed the policemen down the stairs," he says.

"She then came back in and slammed the door. The next day three policemen came. One held my mother and the other took me with them."

At the age of eight, he was in effect kidnapped and taken away to a farm. To this day he has no idea why.

For the first years of his life, he and his older brother and sisters lived alone with their mother. They were poor, but his childhood was happy until one day in 1946, when he came home from school to find his siblings had disappeared.

A year later it was his turn.

He was taken to an old farmhouse and became the farmhand. He would wake before 06:00 and worked before and after school. His day finished after 22:00. This physically imposing man in his 70s looks vulnerable as he remembers the frequent violence from the foster father. "I would almost describe him as a tyrant... I was afraid of him. He had quite a temper and would hit me for the smallest thing," Gogniat says.

On one occasion, when he was older, he remembers he snapped, grabbed his foster father, pushed him against the wall and was about to hit him. The man threatened him: "If you hit me, I'll have you sent to an institution." David backed off.

His siblings were living with families in the nearby village, though he rarely saw them. He missed his mother desperately. They wrote and there were occasional visits. One day his mother made an audacious attempt to get her children back. She came up with an Italian couple in a Fiat Topolino and said she was taking his siblings for a walk. David wasn't there but it was the talk of the village when he came back that night. The police brought the children back three days later.

"The fact that my mother arranged to kidnap her own children and take them back home to Bern with her just goes to show how much she was struggling against the authorities," Gogniat says. On his mother's death he made a shocking discovery. He found papers which showed she had been paying money to the foster families for the upkeep of her four children, who had been forcibly taken away from her and were working as indentured labourers.

Gogniat, his brother and two sisters were "contract children" or verdingkinder as they are known in Switzerland. The practice of using children as cheap labour on farms and in homes began in the 1850s and it continued into the second half of the 20th Century. Historian Loretta Seglias says children were taken away for "economic reasons most of the time… up until World War Two Switzerland was not a wealthy country, and a lot of the people were poor". Agriculture was not mechanised and so farms needed child labour.

David Gogniat with his younger sister before they were taken away from their mother

If a child became orphaned, a parent was unmarried, there was fear of neglect, or you had the misfortune to be poor, the communities would intervene. Authorities tried to find the cheapest way to look after these children, so they took them out of their families and placed them in foster families.

"They wanted to take these children out of the poor family and put them somewhere else where they could learn how to work, as through work they could support themselves as adults," says Seglias.

Dealing with the poor in this way she says was social engineering. If a parent dared to object, they could face measures themselves. "They could be put in prison or an institution where you would be made to work, so you could always put pressure on the parents."

Mostly it was farms that children were sent to, but not always. Sarah (not her real name) had been in institutions from birth, but in 1972, at the age of nine, she was sent to a home in a village, where she was expected to clean the house. She did that before and after school, and at night cleaned offices in nearby villages for her foster mother. She was beaten regularly by the mother, she says, and from the age of 11 was sexually abused by the sons at night.

This is the first time she has spoken about her story and her hands shake as she remembers. "The worst thing is that one sister, their daughter, once caught one of those boys... while I was asleep and she told the woman... [who said] that it didn't matter, I was just a slag anyway," Sarah says. A teacher and the school doctor wrote to the authorities, to express concern about her, but nothing was done.

There was no official decision to end the use of contract children. Seglias says it just naturally started to die out in the 1960s and 70s. As farming became mechanised, the need for child labour vanished. But Switzerland was changing too. Women got the vote in 1971 and attitudes towards poverty and single mothers moved on.

I found an exceptionally late case in a remote part of Switzerland. In 1979, Christian's mother was struggling. Recently divorced from a violent husband she needed support.

Christian with his mother

The state intervened and took her seven and eight-year-old sons to a farm many hours away by car. Christian remembers getting out of the car and watching his mother and the woman from social services driving off.

"My brother and I stood in front of the house feeling very lost and didn't know what to do… it was a strange moment, a moment you never forget," he says.

On the first day they were given overalls and perfectly fitting rubber boots, "because before the placement the woman from social services had even asked what size shoes we wore… When I think back I do believe there was an awareness that my brother and I would be made to work there."

Christian says there was work before and after school, at weekends and all year round. He remembers one incident, at a silo where cut grass was kept to make into silage. "In winter it was pretty frozen and I had to hack quite hard with the pitchfork and I was put under pressure and then this accident happened and the fork went through my toe."

He says work accidents were never reported to his mother or social services. And if the boys didn't work hard enough there were repercussions. Food was withheld as a form of punishment.

"My brother and I just went hungry at the time. When I think back there were five years during which we constantly went hungry. That's why my brother and I used to steal food," Christian says. He remembers they stole chocolate from the village shop - though he now thinks the owners knew the boys were hungry and let them take the goodies. A former teacher of Christian's at the local school says with hindsight he looked malnourished.

But Christian remembers there were also more serious consequences if he didn't work hard enough, including violence. "We were pretty much being driven to work," he says. "There were many beatings, slaps in the face, pulling of hair, tugging of ears - there was also one incident involving something like a mock castration."

Christian has no doubt why he and his brother were placed with the farmer. "I believe it was about cheap labour... we were profitable," he says. "They expanded the farm... it was five years of hard work."

Historians estimate there were hundreds of thousands such children. For one year alone in the 1930s, records show 30,000 children were placed in foster families across Switzerland.

"It's hard to know precisely how many contract children there were as records were kept locally, and sometimes not at all," says Loretta Seglias. "Some children were also placed by private organisations, or their own families."

The extent to which these children were treated as commodities is demonstrated by the fact that there are cases even in the early 20th Century where they were herded into a village square and sold at public auction.

Seglias shows me some photographs. One child looks barely two - surely she couldn't be a contract child? "She could, she would be brushing floors bringing in the milk. Sometimes they came as babies on to the farms, and the bigger they grew the more work they would do," Seglias says.

In her studies, and speaking to former contract children she finds recurring themes. The lack of information comes up again and again.

"Children didn't know what was happening to them, why they were taken away, why they couldn't go home, see their parents, why they were being abused and no-one believed them," she says.

"The other thing is the lack of love. Being in a family where you are not part of the family, you are just there for working." And it left a devastating mark for the rest of the children's lives. Some have huge psychological problems, difficulties with getting involved with others and their own families. For others it was too much to bear. Some committed suicide after such a childhood.

Social workers did make visits. David Gogniat says his family had no telephone, so when a social worker called a house in the village to announce that she was coming, a white sheet was hung out of a window as a warning to the foster family. On the day of this annual visit David didn't have to work, and was allowed to have lunch with the family at the table. "That was the only time I was treated as a member of the family… She sat at the table with us and when she asked a question I was too scared to say anything, because I knew if I did the foster family would beat me."

David with his foster family and another unidentified boy

Sarah too remembers that visits were announced and that social workers were always welcomed with cake, biscuits and coffee. "I used to sit at the table too. It was always lovely, ironically speaking, but at least I knew I was being left in peace, that nothing was going to happen." She never spoke alone to a social worker during her stay with the family.

Christian doesn't remember seeing a social worker alone either. In his documents, social workers wrote that he was "happy". In one of the letters, a visit is announced, saying it doesn't matter if the children are at school. Christian shows me letters written by his mother, detailing her concern that they were being beaten, were malnourished, and doing agricultural labour. His mother organised a medical assessment, on one of his rare visits home, and the doctor's conclusion was that he was psychologically and physically exhausted. This triggered his removal from the farm in 1985, when he was 14. His older brother, left at the same time. They were then sent to a state-run institution.

An exhibition which opened five years ago, and is still running today at the Ballenburg open-air museum, awoke modern Switzerland with a shock to its dark past of child exploitation. The man behind it, Basil Rogger, says that from the 1920s on there was a constant flow of pamphlets, autobiographies, and newspaper articles about the plight of the contract children. Their history was not a secret. If you wanted to know about it you could.

By the time of the exhibition, a generation had passed since the practice had died out, and there was enough distance to cope with it. Crucially, he says, the state was prepared to address the issue. Contract children who thought their experiences were isolated realised they were not alone, and began to share their stories.

Visitors also began to ask questions within their own family - Rogger says when he met people weeks after the exhibition they would tell him someone in their family was a contract child. "So people became aware of the omnipresence of this system, because almost any Swiss person knows someone placed in a foster family."

In recent years there has been a process of national soul-searching. Last year an official apology was made to contract children, and other victims of the state's compulsory measures - people who had been forcibly sterilised, or unlawfully detained.

The Swiss Parliament, the Bundeshaus is buzzing. The campaigner Guido Fluri has just got the 100,000 signatures for a petition that could put the question of compensation to a national referendum. It's calling for a restitution package of about 500 million Swiss Francs (£327m) for the 10,000 contract children estimated to be alive today, as well as others wronged by the state's coercive measures. The petition was launched in April. Fluri says its success shows how strongly the Swiss people sympathise with the contract children.

He is in parliament lobbying politicians to win their support for the petition. He explains to parliamentarians the plight of survivors - "people who suffered for decades, who fought, who were never able to leave their trenches, who hid away, who were ashamed of their story… some of whom are living in neglect". It's not just money, he says. "What's important is to point the way towards acknowledging that huge suffering."

The Farmers Union agrees with the principle of compensation, but is adamant that farmers should not have to contribute. You have to understand the times in which these children were placed into foster care, says union president Markus Ritter. Councils and churches had no money. Farming families were asked to take children who had fallen on difficult times or had one parent so the farmers were fulfilling a social function. Does he acknowledge abuse occurred? "We received a lot of feedback from children who were treated really well… But we are also aware that some children were not treated properly."

Guido Fluri says this social re-examination is liberating for some former contract children. Many elderly people come on crutches and in wheelchairs to his office to discuss their stories with him. The other day he found a poem left on his desk. For others, public discussion is too much to bear, and Fluri has received death threats. "Many who have experienced such severe suffering feel that wounds are being reopened," he says. "You can understand. They are completely overwhelmed by the situation."

It's taken a long time for the drive for compensation to reach this point, and there could still be many years of parliamentary discussion more before it becomes a reality. Loretta Seglias says the issue of restitution is a complicated one in Switzerland. "There is this fear of having to pay compensation... Some will say who else will come forward?" The experience of war reparations has left a scar.

David Gogniat, who left his foster family when he was 16, is now 75. He runs a successful trucking business. He arrives with his wife at the Bern archive. Since July, former contract children have had the right to access their childhood files.

David started the search into his past two months ago. He waits nervously outside in the autumn sunshine.

"To me it feels as though there was some sort of an agreement between the farmers and child services to provide children as cheap labour," he says. But he only wants to know one thing: "Who was responsible for the fact we were taken away?"

He accepts that he may end up feeling disappointed, but he also thinks this could help him move on.

Once inside, he waits in a modern glass room. Yvonne Pfaffli, who has found his records, arrives with two files. I leave David in private to absorb it all. A while later, earlier than I expect, he emerges.

"Things came to light that I hadn't heard of or seen before, and I think I need to look at it again some other time," he says. Later, he tells me he learned something about his father, and some intriguing financial information - but he doesn't divulge details. He just seems relieved to have held the files of his childhood in his hands.

Over many more visits to the archive he will now try to piece together the mysteries of his past.

Many people have big gaps in their knowledge, says Pfaffli. They may remember being taken away in a black car, without ever having known why.

"They didn't know that it might be the result of something like their parents' divorce," she says. "These are very big questions, and many are nervous, and many are probably afraid to read those files because they don't know what to expect, but on the other hand they are hugely grateful that these files exist."

The documents have usually been written by social services staff and their perspective may be very different from the child's. There tends to be no mention of abuse.

Yvonne Pfaffli with files from the archive

Sarah, now 51, left her foster family at 15 for an apprenticeship and never went back. She too has her file, though she was shocked at some significant omissions. Letters from her school doctor and teacher expressing concern about the way she was treated are not there, she says. Neither is a letter from the local authority apologising for placing her with an inappropriate family, which she says she was only ever allowed to read and not keep. With the help of the Verdingkinder network she is trying to trace them.

"What's also missing is the bit explaining why I was placed in that family in the first place, who made the decision, how it even came to that, so my files are anything but complete," she says. "And that's a shame. All we want is our story, and then we can draw a line under it… I am by no means certain whether the authorities aren't just putting up a front when they say they're helping us. For me there is a question mark."

Christian got his files back in July. "It's very very important. It's my life. It's also important for coming to terms with it in a historical and scientific way," he says. He has many questions: why they were taken away, and why so far away from their mother? Did the authorities know about the work they were doing. Did they know about the polio-arthritis he began to suffer from while living with the foster family? He says the report from a psychologist that triggered his removal from the farm is missing. He is still studying the 700 pages.

He shows me letters from his mother documenting her concern about her sons' health and the fact that they were not allowed to go to secondary school.

There is a contract with the farmer showing his parents' contribution to the foster family of 900 Swiss Francs a month, later increased.

But some former contract children find that no files remain. "Either they have been destroyed a long time ago, or more recently," says historian Loretta Seglias. "Some get answers… others don't."

Two unidentified contract children

Christian's foster parents agree to meet me - and are open to meeting him. One early morning we make the journey to the countryside.

Before we get in the car, Christian tells me he doesn't expect an apology, but by talking about what happened, he thinks, maybe they will reflect on how they behaved. As we drive into the countryside the views are breathtaking. Christian looks out of the window. "I am feeling very complex emotions. The landscape that used to give comfort to me as a child is giving me comfort now, but I'm also a bit speechless. It's difficult... I am feeling nervous as I have no idea what will happen there."

As we enter the village, Christian points out the village shop where he used to steal chocolate as a child. It's had a makeover three decades on. He becomes palpably anxious as we approach the farm. He wants to be left at a nearby river while we conduct the interview.

I approach the picture-postcard farmhouse. After some time, the farmer and his wife emerge. They agree to talk but on the condition of anonymity. They deny all of Christian's allegations - describing them as "lies". They say he never worked before or after school… maybe during the holidays he swept the stables. And they insist they were never violent towards Christian or his brother.

"No. You shouldn't hit children," says the farmer. "On the contrary" says his wife "with hugs, we tried with love." I mention the mock-castration, "Ha, castrate!" the farmer shouts. "What else? Those are some memories he has!"

Farmhouses have been erected at the museum to show traditional rural life in Switzerland

It infuriates him when I say Christian said he felt as if he were a contract child. "No, he wasn't a contract child, he was no contract child, we had them as if they were our own children," says the farmer.

I ask how it feels three decades on to have these allegations made against them. "It's a saddening feeling, very sad," says the farmer. His wife adds: "I was so attached to those two."

But they refuse to see Christian. "We congratulate him on those lies he cooked up!" she says. The farmer adds: "I wouldn't even look at such a person with my backside."

Afterwards, I tell Christian there will be no meeting. "In some ways it makes me very, very sad because I was here, he had the opportunity to speak to me… I had prepared myself to talk to him and I would like to have confronted him with these questions in person and seen whether he would also have told me it was lies."

Christian walks back to the car, limping because of his arthritis. On the way back he is silent. Just before reaching home he tells me he has the same feeling of dread he used to have when going back to the farm. He seems fragile.

"I don't know where my journey will take me, I just know I want to fight for something that needs to be done," he says. "And I want to take responsibility not just for my brother and myself but for others in my generation as well."

Because it all happened so long ago, it is no longer possible for charges to be brought against the farmer, should the authorities have wanted to. Very few prosecutions have ever taken place against the foster parents of contract children, or the social workers who failed them.

Sarah's home is covered with pictures of her children and grandchildren. She has a happy marriage. Her family know nothing of her childhood. She keeps the file containing her records away from the house so there is no risk of it being discovered. She attends contract children support meetings in a different city so she won't be recognised.

"I don't want to stand in my children's way - I don't want them to be snubbed because of me because of my past," she says. "Contract children still haven't found their place in society, we're still considered to be on a lower level, or even in the basement. That's why I'd rather the neighbours didn't know."

David Gogniat used to be Bern president of the Hauliers Association, and some members found out recently that he had been a contract child. "It then turned out some people I had done business with had grown up just like me," he says. "They later founded a club and a few weeks ago they invited me to visit, so I am now a member."

His goal is to get compensation for former contract children. "I was lucky to be healthy so I was able to work and managed to make a life for myself," he says. "But many were not that fortunate."

Christian, now 42, is an artist. His home is decorated with his sculptures and pictures. His career choice is no coincidence. "My brother and I were never encouraged to put our feelings into words, to describe them, and of course to express them without fear," he says. "Somehow I felt in art I learned to talk about my inner thoughts, the images inside me and also about the external impressions and images, so this path was very, very important for me."

His relationship with his mother has been damaged. "These events have completely torn my family apart," he says. His mother agrees. "I would say we have grown apart, we don't really have much in common," she says. "It's very difficult, even now."

Christian says the experiences of his childhood have left huge scars.

"You understand you are different, but you don't want to be different, you'd somehow like to be normal, you'd like to pretend this had somehow never happened."

[MIKA27]

Farmer Claims Skull Found in Chained Box is From a Werewolf

A farmer in a small village in Macedonia is digging up a new part of his field when the plow hits an object. It’s a box that’s chained shut. Being brave and curious (and probably hoping it contained gold or something that might get him his own reality show), he opened the box and found a strange skull that looks to him to be from a werewolf or ‘Varkolak’ in the local language. Is it?

That the story a farmer named Trayche from Novo Selo Stipsko in Macedonia told Filip Ganov, a Bulgarian student who was in the village doing research on the Balkan Wars. The inside lid of the box contains lettering in Cryllic script which is common in Bulgarian and Macedonian languages. No translation was given of the lettering, which would have been helpful.

Lid of box showing Cryllic lettering.

Trayche wouldn’t part with his werewolf skull but he did let Ganov take pictures, which were presented to a wildlife expert in Bulgaria who speculated that it was indeed from a wolf but not necessarily a werewolf. Instead, he surmised the wolf was suffering from Paget’s disease, a genetic disorder (also common in humans) that can cause misshapen bones and enlarged skulls. Paget’s disease can be caused by canine distemper virus, a common virus in wolves and dogs.

The skull definitely looks both canine and human and a little baboonish, which would probably cause some consternation among Bulgarians and Macedonians raised on Eastern European folklore. The chain around the box is a good indication whoever buried it believed it was a creature they didn’t want roaming around again.

So, is Trayche’s skull-in-a-box from a werewolf? It’s definitely a creature that’s out of the norm. Only a DNA test will tell. Until then, Trayche probably keeps digging and hoping for a reality show.

[MIKA27]

Obama’s Love-Hate Relationship With Israel Explodes

A senior official calling Netanyahu “chickenshit” shows the ugly side of the president and his team when it comes to the Jewish state.

When it comes to Israel, President Obama has been Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. There is campaign Obama, who assures the Israelis he doesn’t bluff when it comes to stopping Iran’s nuclear program, lavishes the Jewish state with even more military assistance than his predecessor, and goes out of his way to let bygones be bygones.

Then there is the other Obama. This is the one that instructs his secretary of state to travel to the Middle East to propose a Gaza ceasefire that America’s allies in the region thinks rewards Hamas for starting a war this summer. It is the Obama who emerges in an incisive column published Tuesday by The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg.

The headline of course is that senior administration officials are privately calling Netanyahu “chickenshit.” He’s chickenshit because he won’t risk his own political coalition to stop the announcement of construction in East Jerusalem. But he’s also chickenshit because at the end of the day, Netanyahu heeded the warnings and requests of Obama and did not take military action against Iran. As one pro-Israel activist in Washington put it, “This is what Bibi gets for doing what Obama wanted?”

Netanyahu on Wednesday said “I am being attacked personally only because I am defending the state of Israel.”

As Goldberg spells out, “chickenshit” is only one of many adjectives Obama’s top advisers have used to characterize Netanyahu in private. He’s also described as “recalcitrant, myopic, reactionary, obtuse, blustering, pompous, and ‘Aspergery’.”

But chickenshit is the one that must sting Bibi the most. After all this is a man who has lived in the shadow of his older brother Yonatan, the only Israel commando killed in the raid that freed the hostages at the raid on Entebbe, Uganda. Inside Bibi’s own political party, Likud, his critics often paint him as too timid to take military action.

Of course the “chickenshit” comment is not the first time Israeli and U.S. officials have used the press to anonymously attack one another. Earlier this year, Israel’s defense minister, Moshe Ya’alon, was quoted in what he claimed was an off-the-record comment, that he wished Secretary of State John Kerry would win a Nobel Prize already so he could leave Israel alone. (The administration demanded he apologize.) When Ya’alon was in Washington last week, he was snubbed by the White House and the State Department, who refused to take a meeting with him. The snub was then leaked to the press.

These days Israeli officials are openly slamming the Palestinian leader who Kerry and Obama have said repeatedly represents Israel’s best chance for a two-state solution.

Speaking Sunday evening at Christians United for Israel—a week before the midterm elections—Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, said it was a disgrace to consider Mahmoud Abbas a man of peace, pointing out the Palestinian president’s university dissertation denying the Holocaust and how he “educates Palestinian children to hate Jews and wants a Palestinian state free of Jews.”

And that’s not even on the biggest source of tensions between Israel and the U.S. Now, on the eve of what may be a deal between Iran and the West that could allow Iran to keep its nuclear centrifuges in place, senior administration officials told Goldberg that Netanyahu is effectively boxed in. The military option Netanyahu (and Obama himself) has threatened against Iran if negotiations do not stop their quest for a nuclear weapon, is now effectively off the table.

“Comments like this go right to our fears about the Obama administration, which treats our friends like enemies and our enemies like friends,” Senator Mark Kirk, a Republican from Illinois, told The Daily Beast.

Even the National Jewish Democratic Council, an organization that has spent the Obama years defending the president, issued a press release expressing disappointment.

In Israel the reaction was even stronger. Naftali Bennet, Israel’s right-wing minister of the economy said the Goldberg column signaled that Obama intends to throw Israel under the bus in the Iran talks.

It was not supposed to be like this.

Nineteen months ago, Obama was the good guy. The Israeli embassy in Washington was so delighted with his first trip as president to Israel, that they produced a video borrowing Golden Girls theme song “Thank You for Being a Friend,” to tout the visit to Jerusalem. Back then the president and his top advisers were careful to emphasize Obama’s deep respect and admiration for the Jewish state.

Michael Oren, who was the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. and helped arrange Obama’s 2013 visit acknowledged that there were real policy differences between the Netanyahu and Obama governments. But he added:

“One would think between allies, those policy differences would not result in ad hominem attacks between democratically elected leaders. This is not good for the U.S.-Israel relationship. Our friendship is a litmus [test] for America’s relations with other countries in the world. And our common allies and enemies are watching.”

For its part, the White House is again in damage control. One spokesman for the National Security Council has been emailing reporters Wednesday to tell them that all was fine.

“We do not believe there is a crisis in the relationship,” Alistair Baskey said. “The relationship remains as strong as ever and the ties between our nations are unshakable. However, there are times when we disagree with actions of the Israeli government and we must raise our concerns, such as our concerns about Israel’s settlement policy. We raise these as a partner who is deeply concerned about Israel’s future and wants to see Israel living side by side in peace and security with its neighbors.”

David Rothkopf, CEO and editor of Foreign Policy magazine and the author of a new book about the Obama National Security Council, said the attacks have been par for the course for Obama’s foreign policy team.

“You have to question whether it’s a constructive policy to talk to reporters and use language like that about an ally, or frankly use language like that about anyone,” he said, adding that the sniping between Israel and the U.S. in recent months is a signal that at least for now the relationship is on ice.

“It’s a sign that both have given up,” he said. “The relationship is irredeemable.”

[MIKA27]

Mexico’s First Lady of Murder Is on the Lam

In a city where murderers tortured and killed with seeming impunity, Maria de los Angeles Pineda Villa was ‘the key operator’—and allegedly sealed the fate of 43 student teachers.

Tuesday saw Mexican security forces digging near a garbage dump, excavating yet another unmarked grave with the hope of finally finding 43 student teachers who went missing after a protest last month amid reports of a massacre carried out by the local police.

And the hunt was continuing for the most wanted woman in Mexico, the woman said to have given the Iguala police chief a fateful order when she mistakenly imagined the students might disrupt a party she was throwing in honor of herself.

Picture of Jose Luis Abarca (L), his wife Maria de Los Angeles Pineda Villa ©, and Felipe Flores Velazquez, secretary of public security of Iguala, showed during a press conference of Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam at the Attorney General building in Mexico City on Oct. 22, 2014.

“Teach them a lesson.”

The order purportedly came from Maria de los Angeles Pineda Villa, wife of the mayor of Iguala and by numerous accounts the person really in charge.

“The key operator,” Sidronio Casarrubias Salgado of the Guerreros Unidos gang recently said of her status in the town’s underworld.

The purpose of the party was to celebrate Pineda’s many good works as the head of the town’s social-welfare agency and to kick off her campaign to succeed her husband, Mayor José Luis Abarca Velazquez.

On her Facebook page, the town’s real boss had already chronicled her efforts to provide new wheelchairs to the elderly, hearing aids to those who needed them, and assistance for handicapped children.

“The beautiful smiles to me are given away every day,” she wrote in Spanish below a photo of herself with a grinning special-needs youngster. “This is an incentive to continue running in the interest of society.”

And yes, Pineda had honored diligent teachers and top students.

“Many congratulations to all those masters and teachers,” she wrote. “We have all learned something good from them.”

Photos show her also holding the flag of the Red Cross and standing before five shiny new patrol cars she had secured for the local cops.

“In order to reinforce and ensure safety in the municipality,” she wrote.

What she did not report on Facebook was that she allegedly funneled more than $40,000 a month in bribes to the town cops and that she has extensive ties via her brothers to the Guerreros Unidos gang and to the Sinaloa cartel.

One thing the Iguala police are said to have ensured was that a good-size crowd gathered by 6 p.m. on Sept. 26 in the town’s Plaza of the Three Guarantees. The plaza is named after the Army of Three Guarantees that achieved the break with Spain, pledging to keep Mexico independent, unified, and loyal to the Catholic Church. Pineda stepped before the assemblage in a pink dress, holding a microphone and gazing upon them as if the fourth guarantee were fealty to her.

Pineda was just about to deliver her big speech extolling herself, to be followed by a big dance, when she was told that some outsiders were approaching. She apparently assumed they were protesters like the activists who had visited the town the year before.

In fact, the outsiders were student teachers who are said to have first gone to a nearby town, hoping to commandeer some buses in advance of a trip to Mexico City at the start of October for the annual remembrance honoring the hundreds of students massacred there in 1968.

After being thwarted in the other town, the student teachers had come to Iguala, and they had managed to secure a number of buses for the few days before the remembrance. They were rumbling past the square on their way back to their college when Pineda is said to have given her order.

By one account, the student teachers were on the road out of Iguala when their way was blocked by a pickup truck. Some of them are said to have gotten out and were pushing it aside when the police appeared, perhaps in those new patrol cars, directed by a special radio code used to signify that the order came from the mayor and his wife, “A-5.”

A female police officer is said to have shot a student in the head, and there was more gunfire in which a half-dozen innocents were killed. The police reportedly took the student teachers into custody and drove them away as instructed by the chief hitman of Guerreros Unidos, who is nicknamed Chucky.

The first flurry of gunshots did not disturb Pineda’s speech, which she seemed to consider a big success. She and her husband danced to the band in the plaza as the students were being tortured and shot in a remote place outside of town. Some are said to have been burned alive.

Too much of it seems to have been a replay on a larger scale of an incident back in May 2013. The trouble then had begun when some visiting activists had gotten into a verbal altercation with Pineda’s husband at a public forum. The husband had responded as if he were not only the mayor but the boss.

“Stop ******* around with me. I have people who work for me who can take care of this,” Mayor Abarca supposedly said.

The activist, an agronomist named Arturo Hernandez Cordona, is said to have replied. “What do you mean, ‘Take care of this’? That sounds like a threat to me.”

As later reported by the blog Borderland Beat, Hernandez and seven of his comrades were leaving town the following afternoon when their vehicle was stopped by men with guns. The men shot Hernandez in the right leg while pulling them all from the car. The activists were then blindfolded and driven to a field. The blindfolds were pulled away.

“We were looking at 10 men with rifles, and then the beating began,” the survivor would later testify.

Two of the gunmen dug a pit. A car pulled up and three men with beers climbed out, Abarca among them. The survivor could not quite identify the woman who remained shadowed in the car, though it is widely assumed that it was the actual boss, Pineda.

As the survivor tells it, Abarca approached Hernandez.

“You ****ed with me, so I will have the pleasure of killing you,” Abarca supposedly told him.

Abarca allegedly battered Hernandez, who was then dumped in the pit. Abarca blasted him in the face and the chest with a shotgun.

One of the other activists attempted to escape and was gunned down. Abarca and his pals drove off, along with the woman.

At the moment when the remaining gunmen were distracted by a cellphone call, the five survivors bolted into the darkness. One was killed. Four managed to escape.

In the months that followed, those who demanded the Mexican federal government take action against the killers included the local head of the Catholic Church, Bishop Raul Vera Lopez. He practices a faith such as Mexico would do well guaranteeing, as evidenced when he caused a stir by baptizing the child of married lesbians.

“If I find the natural daughter of one of two women, how can I deny her baptism?” the bishop had said. “If the parents seek it, it’s because there is a Christian faith.”

He had added, “The church needs to come to them not with condemnation but with dialogue. We cannot cancel out a person’s richness just because of his or her sexual preference. That is sick, that is heartless, that is lacking common sense.”

The same spiritual sense prompted the bishop to seek justice for the slain activists. He traveled to Washington, D.C., and testified about the case before the Commission on Human Rights. He was no doubt including Iguala’s mayor when he condemned officials who “function as enemies to those who demand their rights.”

“Public servants?” the bishop asked. “Rather, butchers have come into power.”

In May, the head of Guerreros Unidos, Mario Casarrubias Salgado, aka the Beautiful Toad, was arrested. The Mexican government announced it had decapitated the organization that supplied much of the heroin to Chicago. His brother Sidronio immediately took over, and the Windy City reported no shortage of smack.

As for the killing of the activists, the only response from the Mexican authorities was to contend that the mayor had constitutional immunity from prosecution. The message for the murderers was that they could torture and kill with seeming impunity.

And that appears to have been their operating assumption when the 43 student teachers went missing. But the killers clearly failed to anticipate the uproar that would follow.

Even a government that has turned two blind eyes can hear the clamoring of tens of thousands of demonstrators. The authorities began to make arrests, including 22 cops who were apparently so corrupt that the cartel sought to have them freed by displaying a message known as a “narcomata.” It read:

“Release the 22 policemen. Or else we will reveal the names of all the politicians who work for us. The war is just beginning.”

But the government itself was not done. The new head of Guerreros Unidos was grabbed, and he reportedly told the authorities that Pineda was the one who gave the orders in town, including the order to teach the students a lesson.

A warrant was issued for her arrest along with her husband, who lost his immunity as he was now forced from office. Both fled, leaving their home with its razor-wire fence and windowless concrete façade, as well as their ranch and the 50-store shopping center they built, complete with food court. They were declared fugitives.

As of Tuesday night, the digging continued at the latest unmarked grave, previous digs having unearthed dozens of other murder victims but not the student teachers.

And Mexican’s most wanted woman was still at large. Her Facebook page remains up, and one lesson for all of us is that evil is at its starkest when it seeks to hide behind good deeds.

[MIKA27]

This New Clip From Avengers: Age Of Ultron Is So Awesome

One of the best parts of The Avengers was when heroes like Captain America, Thor and Iron Man all faced off against each other. Because all of The Avengers are now friends in the Age Of Ultron sequel, they had to find another way to face off: by seeing who could lift Thor’s hammer at a superhero party!

Tony Stark gives it a go, before bringing in the Iron Man gauntlet. Rhodey lends a hand too. Cap also tries his hand at it.

That’s before Ultron busts in with one of his melted robot drones and spoils the party.

[MIKA27]

HEXO PLUS

Hexo + is a drone that autonomously follows and films above the user, simply use the included app to adjust the desired settings, set the distance between you and the drone, choose the height, and the angle, front, side or back. Then let your Hexo + follow and film you in action! The intelligent flying camera continuously repositions itself tracking your exact trajectory and filming your every move. It even takes off and lands automatically! The aerial camera is perfect for when shooting in remote places such as mountains, in the snow, and in all sorts of unpredictable situations.

[MIKA27]

WANT SUPREME MOUNTAIN LUXURY? CHOPPER UP TO TANTALUS HUT

Tantalus Hut has no power or running water. Propane tanks power both lanterns and stoves, and guests take care of “business” in an outhouse (just far enough away that the smell doesn’t linger). But if that doesn’t grab you, it should also be noted that most people arrive here via helicopter.

This self-service hut rests at 3,850 ft elevation, situated in the Tantalus Mountain Range of British Columbia, some 40 miles northwest of Vancouver. It was built in the early 1960s by the ACC (Alpine Club of Canada) as a base camp for local climbers seeking recreation — a purpose it still serves today. Because of heavy snowfall in this region, the hut is only open from late May through early October, typically closing its doors during Canada’s Thanksgiving; during the summer, moderate precipitation is still the norm and rain gear is appropriate to pack alongside a warm blanket to safeguard against chilly nights.

The surrounding area is home to trails with captivating lookouts a short morning’s hike away. For those keen on serious mountaineering, however, nearby peaks include Dione (8,500 ft), Alpha (7,562 ft), and Serratus (7,632 ft), makeshift routes to which have been overgrown with shrubbery and blueberry bushes due to infrequency of use. Back at the hut, two rowboats and locally crafted canoes are also available to paddle around the aptly named Lake Lovely Water. A pleasant morning on the dock with a fishing rod and a leisurely cup of coffee is just another of the many reasons to visit.

By backcountry standards, the Tantalus Hut is as swanky as an upscale hotel in Soho. Luxuries include 18 foam mattresses, stored in the upstairs sleeping loft, accessible by ladder; cabinets full of flatware, tableware and cookware; a wood-burning cast iron heating system; and board games galore. With two long tables, the central dining room is spacious enough to accommodate parties or heated games of Trivial Pursuit.

Priced modestly at $25 ($15 for ACC members) a night, it’s also not hard to book: interested parties should contact Ron Royston, who has been the hut custodian since the early ’80s. Get settled in and you might begin to realize, as many do, that it’s essentially the idyllic blueprint of a childhood dream treehouse, planted firmly amid one of the most visually dramatic places on earth. That’s far from a bad thing.

[MIKA27]

THE GOONIES PLAYING CARDS

Poker night need a pick-me-up? We’ve found just the thing to deliver a massive injection of nostalgia. The Goonies Playing Cards feature all of the essential characters from the beloved 1985 adventure-comedy film on the picture cards, guaranteeing a sizable dose of the warm and fuzzies when you see them.

There’s Mikey, Mouth, Chunk, One-eyed Willie, and more, all superbly illustrated by Kickstarter sensation, Nat Iwata. A “magic finish” means smooth-handling and longer lasting cards, and that’ll come in handy when your friends start pawing at them. And in more Goonies news, as recently as April of this year, director Richard Donner said a sequel to the cult classic is in the works, with hopefully all of the original stars coming back to reprise their roles. Stay tuned… [Purchase]

[MIKA27]

MORTLACH 25 YEARS OLD SCOTCH WHISKEY

The Mortlach Distillery in Scotland has been around since the early 1800's, but might not be familiar since they are coming to the US for the first time this year. Their 25 Years Old Whiskey leads the charge with a rich, slightly sweet, incredibly smooth scotch. It's a fantastic dram for luxury whiskey connoisseurs and a bold announcement that the Mortlach brand has hit US shores, and is here to stay.

[MIKA27]

ALASKAN SMOKED PORTER BEER

Smoked beers, known as Rauchbier in Germany were almost non-existent in the United States until 1988, when Alaskan Brewing set the standard with their Alaskan Smoked Porter. Since then, it's received over 30 National and International awards, and is one of the most decorated beers in the history of the Great American Beer Festival. The dark, robust porter is a perfect pairing with smoked salmon, cheese, or just to warm up a bit on a cold night.

[MIKA27]

Say Hello To America's Newest Attack Sub

After five years of construction, the newest submarine in the US fleet is ready to set sail. But this Virginia-class sub is not like the others — it’s far more deadly and way less expensive to operate.

The USS North Dakota, which was officially commissioned on October 25th at Naval Submarine Base New London, is the first of eight Block III Virginia-class subs. That is, this is the third design iteration of the Virginia-class submarine platform. The North Dakota maintains the same dimensions as earlier iterations — it’s 115m long with a 11m beam and 10m draft — and like other Virginias, it can dive to more than 240m at 25 knots. What’s more, it won’t need to refuel until 2047, thanks to its nuclear reactor.

The North Dakota differs from its predecessors in both its sensory and armament payloads. The spherical sonar array that the US Navy has used in pretty much every one of its subs since the 1960s has been replaced with a modern, horse-shoe-shaped Large Aperture Bow (LAB) sonar array. The new sub also incorporates a pair of Vertical Launch System (VLS) tubes, each packing six missiles; technology borrowed from our Ohio-class subs.

These design changes are meant to improve the submarine’s performance and keep the US Navy one stroke ahead of other submersible superpowers. The USS North Dakota is equally well-suited for littoral and deep water operations, regardless of the mission. In fact, the new sub has been cleared for seven core mission types: hunting other subs, hunting surface ships, delivering special ops troops, both strike and irregular warfare, ISR collection and de-mining operations.

“From the Arabian Sea to the Polar Ice cap, North Dakota will operate undetected in the harshest environments on the planet as her crew protects the freedom of the seas and the interests of the United States,” Vice Admiral Michael Connor, Commander, Submarine Forces said during the commissioning ceremony. “Leaders around the world around the world continue to ask for more American submarine presence, because they realise that there are some very important things that must be done that only submarines can do.”

The North Dakota and its 134-sailor compliment are expected to be hiding under the high seas by year’s end.

[MIKA27]

Guy Pretends To Be Serial Killer, Terrorises GTA Online Players

If you start hearing a little kid singing disturbing renditions of nursery songs in your Grand Theft Auto Online sessions, you better start running.

Someone who goes by the name of MrKreepyKoala has spent the last few months appearing in the multiplayer version of Los Santos and tormenting other would-be criminals by stalking and killing them. Even when his victims know what he’s doing — like becoming intangible by going into Passive Mode — he still manages to freak them all the way out.

This is trolling at its finest, especially because there’s no mean-spirited insults being flung around. Let’s hope the never-talking, leather-masked psycho makes the jump to the next-gen versions of GTA V.

MIKA: Hilarious!!

[MIKA27]

The Leonardo hidden from Hitler in case it gave him magic powers

One of the world's most famous self-portraits is going on rare public display in the northern Italian city of Turin. Very little is known about the 500-year-old, fragile, fading red chalk drawing of Leonardo da Vinci but some believe it has mystical powers.

There is a myth in Turin that the gaze of Leonardo da Vinci in this self-portrait is so intense that those who observe it are imbued with great strength.

Some say it was this magical power, not the cultural and economic value of the drawing, that led to it being secretly moved from Turin and taken to Rome during World War Two - heaven forbid it should ever fall into Hitler's hands and give him more power.

Whatever the reason, this was the only work from the entire collection of precious drawings and manuscripts to be removed from the Royal Library in Turin at the time.

The library's current director, Giovanni Saccani, says nobody even knows exactly where it was hidden. "To prevent the Nazis from taking it, an intelligence operation saw it transported in absolute anonymity to Rome."

Under such difficult circumstances, preservation was not properly considered, "nor did they have the same knowledge and techniques back then," says Saccani. "Naturally, this did not do its condition any good."

Inside the Royal Library a pristine red carpet lines the stairs - we follow the steps down to a secure underground vault with reinforced doors.

This purpose built caveau has been the home of Leonard's Self-Portrait, and thousands of other priceless drawings and manuscripts, since 1998. The picture's treatment today could not contrast more strikingly with the neglect it suffered during the first half of the 20th Century.

The lighting is exclusively fibre optic - no natural light can enter this room - and the temperature is kept at a constant 20 degrees Celsius, the humidity at 55 per cent. The display cases are made of a type of glass which Saccani describes as "anti-everything", and the whole area is fitted with alarms and security cameras.

Using a special preservation torch, Saccani shines some light onto the drawing's surface to demonstrate the extent of the damage known as foxing, when small reddish-brown spots or marks appear on ancient paper.

"This case is particularly bad," he sighs - 200 years ago the foxing was less obvious. "On the bottom left of the drawing there was a red chalk inscription in Latin which said Leonardus Vincius, which has now completely disappeared."

Since the damage is so extensive and the paper so fragile, restoration would be extremely complex. Exhaustive analysis and discussion by world experts in restoration has led to "the decision to maintain the status quo," says Saccani.

And since coming to the caveau in 1998, the condition of the drawing has not deteriorated any further.

Leonardo's Codex on the Flight of Birds is also on display at the exhibition

"This comforts us because we know we are getting it right now. You have to remember it's a good 500 years old. The pictures we drew at school probably don't exist anymore and this was a drawing done on ordinary paper, so I think it's pretty extraordinary that we can still display such a masterpiece today."

Equally extraordinary is the story of how this self-portrait ended up in Turin. It was part of a vast collection purchased in 1839 by King Carlo Alberto of Savoy. A passionate collector, he bought it from Giovanni Volpato, an art dealer and curator who had travelled extensively throughout Europe. How he came upon Leonardo's drawings is a mystery but it is known that he asked the king for the sum of 70,000 Piedmontese lire for the collection.

"A doctor earned 1,000 lire a year at the time so it was an astronomical figure," smiles Saccani. "The king managed to get him down to 50,000 but it still took him eight years to pay for it in instalments."

But Saccani says Volpato was not the ruthless businessman he might sound.

"Volpato's aim wasn't simply financial because, in exchange for agreeing to give the king a discount, he asked to be allowed to become the unpaid curator of drawings in the Royal Library."

And since then Turin has remained the home of the red chalk Self-Portrait.

Is it really a self-portrait?

Generally dated around 1515, some experts believe the picture corresponds more with Leonardo's style in the 1490s, yet the subject of the drawing is an old man.

"He wasn't terribly keen on the idea of self-portraiture full stop," says James Hall, author of The Self-Portrait: a Cultural History - he doesn't believe the portrait was drawn by Leonardo. "He didn't much like the idea that the art work should be a portrayal of the artist. He wanted the art work to represent an ideal."

Hall thinks this drawing has become famous at least partly because of the sheer lack of self-portraits by Leonardo. "People have latched onto this like the philosopher's stone and clung to it."

But others are less sceptical. "I'm quite happy to believe it is a self-portrait but I think it's for each person to decide when they see the real object," says Liz Rideal, the author of two books on self-portraits and a lecturer at the National Portrait Gallery in London and Slade School of Fine Art.

She says most people want to believe it is a genuine Leonardo "because he has this superman status… I think we are in awe of genius and therefore, if this is the self-portrait of a genius, then we want to see what he looked like."

As director of the Royal Library, Giovanni Saccani is in no doubt: "It is a self-portrait… anyone who finds themselves standing in front of this drawing is struck dumb. The first thing they say when they recover is 'this is giving me the shivers'. The expressive power of this face is absolutely connected to an emotion and an ability that only Leonardo could possess."

Leonardo's Self-Portrait is considered so valuable that it is subject to a state decree of immovability.

It can only be moved with ministerial permission. In 2011 it was taken to the Reggia di Venaria Reale just outside Turin for an exhibition marking the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy.

"Transportation involved a special 'clima box' able to maintain the same air conditioning systems present here in the caveau," says Saccani. "This 'clima box' was then put inside a case, which was in turn placed in an outer casing, all of which was able to avoid vibration." The package was then driven with an armed escort and constantly monitored using remote technology.

An extraordinarily complex, delicate and expensive undertaking, unlikely to be repeated very often in the future.

Leonardo's Portrait of a Girl is on display as part of the King's Treasures exhibition

Over the coming weeks, 50 people will be allowed into the Royal Library's caveau every hour from 09:00 to 18:00 to see the self-portrait - the temperature of the vault has been lowered slightly to compensate for the body heat that people will give off.

Although there are more than 80 masterpieces on display in the King's Treasures exhibition - including further works by Leonardo, Raphael, Rembrandt, Perugino and Van Dyck - for most visitors, the highlight will be the rare chance to behold the face of the great Renaissance polymath.

And they might also bear one final myth in mind - it is said that just before taking an exam, students would do their last-minute revision in the Royal Library above the vault. Legend has it that studying near Leonardo's genius can somehow rub off.

[MIKA27]

Anzacs' sacrifice remembered 100 years on in Albany

One hundred years on, the Anzac (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) legend is as strong as ever in the national consciousness but it is in one of Australia's most remote towns that the country's formal commemoration of its entry into World War One will begin.

The tiny whaling town of Albany, tucked in behind a series of harbours and headlands on the southern coast of Western Australia, would have been the last sight of "home" for many of the young men sailing off to war.

Beyond the protected waters of King George Sound lay Southern Ocean swells, sudden squalls and dangerous winds that roared up from the South Pole.

An armada of ships few of the town's inhabitants would have witnessed before was bound for a European war. But most of the 30,000 soldiers and thousands of horses on board would end up on the blood-soaked beaches of Gallipoli.

It was on 1 November 1914 that Australian and New Zealand troops sailed for Turkey and other battlefields in World War One.

News of the departure of a convoy of Australian, New Zealand and Japanese battle cruisers and warships protecting 38 troopships did not reach the rest of Australia for another three weeks.

Princess Royal Harbour, Albany, is where many Australian soldiers left, never to return

But surviving reports from that day describe a spectacle, with young soldiers cheering and counter-cheering between the vessels and, according to New Zealand War Historian Fred Waite, Maori war cries matched by shouts of the Australian coo-ee.

One hundred years on, Australia is commemorating the convoy's departure with a re-enactment on Saturday in Albany's King George Sound. Five Royal Australian Navy warships, two from New Zealand and JDS Kirisame from Japan will take part.

The Federal and West Australian governments, in conjunction with the Returned Services League (RSL) West Australian Branch and the City of Albany, have organised a programme of events and initiatives to mark the national launch of the Anzac Centenary.

In 1914 the sea off Albany was crowded with ships taking troops to war

Years in the planning, the four-day programme includes a troop march, a commemorative service that will be attended by Prime Minister Tony Abbott and New Zealand Prime Minister John Key, a community concert and an open day for naval ships. A new Anzac museum, the National Anzac Centre, will also be opened, with an interactive display that tells the stories of 32 soldiers.

More than 100 soldiers from Western Australia's 13th Brigade will be there and an AP3-C Orion and Hawk 177 Royal Australian Air Force air craft will fly to Albany.

The event is one of a long line of Australian World War One commemorations that will culminate in April next year at Gallipoli. Only about 8,000 members of the public will be there for that Anzac Day Dawn Service but travel agencies estimate thousands more have booked to travel to Turkey at the same time.

World War One and, in particular, Gallipoli loom large in the Australian consciousness. The number of people visiting the Gallipoli battlefield for the Dawn Service has been increasing in recent years, with some historians suggesting it is part of Australia's and New Zealand's on-going search for distinct national identities.

Many of those who left from Albany (seen here) later died at Gallipoli in a bloody campaign

A postcard from the time shows Blackboy Hill where troops were trained before departure

So many people visit Gallipoli that a bigger commemorative site for the annual Dawn Service was built in 1999. In 2005, when new road-widening and building was carried out, natural erosion of the beaches' steep banks accelerated. Significant sites of battle action disappeared, including trench remains at Lone Pine and Quinn's Post.

A Senate inquiry into the issue said the development had "damaged permanently" Anzac's military heritage. Australians had to be reminded that Gallipoli was Turkish, not Australian territory.

This weekend's event is expected to attract more than 75,000 people to Albany, tripling the local population, according to Tourism WA. It estimates 25,900 privately owned or rented vehicles will travel to the town and accommodation is already booked out.

The new National Anzac Centre, Albany, will be a showpiece for the Anzac Centenary

The new National Anzac Centre has a range of interactive displays

Albany Mayor Dennis Wellington said the idea for the event originated with the local branch of the RSL, went to a committee in Canberra and then "snowballed from there".

"Three levels of government have had to work together, which was an interesting exercise," he says.

It's the biggest event ever staged in the town, which boasts a long association with the Anzac tradition. Albany claims to have held the first Dawn Service a few years after the end of the war.

The departure of so many men to war, a third of whom never returned, has long been a part of the town's story, said the mayor.

"It is something we have lived with for a long time and I believe the Anzac story is becoming the biggest of Australia's stories.

"We are very proud of our involvement."

[MIKA27]

The Purest Halloween Music Ever Written

Halloween deserves music fit for jangling bones and moldering souls. Halloween deserves Camille Saint-Saëns’s 1874 classical masterpiece, Danse Macabre.

Halloween music has gone much the way of the holiday over the decades: accumulating camp and kitsch, confectionary fun, friendly monster-on-monster romping, and a sort of innocence that has made the season more about good times than chilling your soul.

Most everybody knows Bobby “Boris” Pickett’s “Monster Mash,” with its Karloffian lead vocal and Dracula impersonation that, to modern ears, is as much Count Chocula as Bela Lugosi. The 1950s from which “Mash” sprung un-crypted loads of similar novelty cuts to soundtrack Halloween parties, middle-school dances, and senior-center mixers.

It’s easy to love all of that stuff, given that it’s sweet as Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. But there’s something to be said for less palatable fare. Halloween deserves something more nastily pagan, evoking noisome crypts and jangling bones and moldering souls. Which is why, at least once a death-season, I return to Camille Saint-Saëns’s Danse Macabre, a work of full-on eldritch perfection.

There’s a good chance you’ve heard Danse Macabre pretty regularly throughout the background of your life, even without ever realizing it. It features in that Jameson commercial where there’s a whiskey-thieving hawk who gets barbecued up at the end in the streets of Dublin by Johnny Jameson himself. Saint-Saëns was never one of the classical heavies like Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, or Handel, but he was a formidable prodigy, an organ master, and a variegated composer probably best known, now, for The Carnival of the Animals. That’s essentially his Peter and the Wolf number—as much, if not more, for children—and a work he refused to have published in full in his lifetime, thinking it would cause people to stop taking him seriously as a composer for adults.

In general, there’s something about organ music that induces terror. Maybe it’s the austere settings of the church where the instrment normally resides. Also the tonal range, sheer volume, echo-friendly notes, and rib-tingling power factor in, too. It’s as if the organ represents the sounds inside of us made externally audible. Your fears, doubts, paranoias, given sonic voice. Reverberating, swirling. For proof check out any garden-variety horror film from mid-century, or something so organ-dominated like 1962’s Carnival of Souls.

Saint-Saëns wrote Danse Macabre, which is technically a tone poem—a form he rarely worked in—140 years ago, in 1874. There is no organ, but that aforesaid swirling, night-cycling sensibility is there, like we’re shifting through one shade of dark to another and back again, an endless nightmare loop. When the Beatles didn’t have a drummer, they said the rhythm was in the guitars, and one could very well claim that with Danse Macabre, the organ, so to speak, was in the strings.

Halloween wasn’t much of anything in this country 100 years ago, so it’s pretty new as we think of it with the costuming and the trick-or-treating. The European tradition, from which Saint-Saëns’s wrote, was the tradition of scaring the absolute bejeezus out of you. Consider the premise of Danse Macabre, which means, if you haven’t guess it yet, “dance of death.” The Reaper rouses himself out of bed at midnight on Halloween, summons the skeletons from the grave, and they all boogie down to dawn.

Even long before Saint-Saëns’s tone poem came along, woodcuts were common throughout Europe at Halloweentime featuring a plowman walking to the field to resume his endless toil, and the Reaper sidling up next to him and saying something like, “hey, this burden, this hard life, it can all be over just like that, come over here with me by this hayrick and have a rest.” That’s where this music springs from, and that’s no Ben Cooper costume conceit.

Saint-Saëns signals the arrival of midnight with a harp picking out 12 notes. A violin begins a wicked canter, a flute instigates a second theme, and these themes, distributed over the other instruments of the orchestra, dance with each other with grim inevitability, what you might fancy the rhythm of a ghost story. A quote from the Dies Irae (the scary bit in requiems) is flown in, and when the two themes mesh, at the piece’s loudest, most rhythmically intense point, it’s like, “do your thing, sun, get back up in that sky, and end this horror.”

Relief comes with an oboe signaling the cock’s cry, and everyone, presumably, gets back into their graves, dance over. But this is the real Halloween cask-strength stuff, and a reminder, of sorts, as well. Sure, everyone gets a birthday, and then you dance through life the best you can—but everyone gets a death day, too. How do you like bobbing for them apples?

Happy Halloween FOH!

[MIKA27]

The Crazies: Madness and Mayhem

When you think of George A. Romero, several things immediately, and inevitably, spring to mind: death, chaos, a deadly virus, societal collapse, people running for their lives, and – last, but most assuredly not least – zombies. Well, in Romero’s 1973 film,The Crazies, you have all of those ingredients, except for one: the shambling dead.

A Romero film, but one specifically without walking corpses: can it be true? Yes, it is true. But, instead of the dead, the cast of The Crazies are forced to do battle with something just as fearsome; hordes of living people who have been driven to homicidal levels of madness after being exposed to a military-created biological weapon.

Like most of Romero’s zombie movies, The Crazies – also released under the far less fearsome title of Code Name: Trixie – makes the viewer ponder deeply on how fragile society really is, and the speed with which it can fragment and collapse when death, disaster and terror become overwhelming. It’s also a film from which the production teams of the likes of 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later likely took a great deal of inspiration.

Evans City, Pennsylvania is where all of the carnage and homicidal behavior occurs. As it does so, we follow the plight of a trio of people trying to comprehend, and survive, the anarchy exploding all around them. They are David and Judy – a fireman and a nurse who also happen to be boyfriend and girlfriend – and Clank, also a fireman.

When violent behavior quickly turns Evans City into a living hell, a large military contingent quickly arrives to take control of the alarming situation. Each and every one of them is decked out in protective gear of the type generally seen in chemical- and biological-warfare outbreaks, and are led by Major Ryder.

Taking control basically means killing anyone and everyone who is living – whether they are infected or not. So, and as is often the case when Romero is behind the lens, the stars of The Crazies are not just in danger of losing their lives to those with the virus, but to their uninfected fellow people too.

No, I’m good. I’m calm. Really.

As the film progresses, the death rate rises, the deranged infected become even more deranged, two of the stars fail to survive the onslaught, and the military starts to lose control of the situation. Zombie fans that have not seen The Crazies will be satisfied by its bleak ending.

As the Army is forced to retreat from what is now, for all intents and purposes, a city transformed into an outdoors asylum, word reaches Major Ryder that another city is showing signs of infection. The end is becoming ever more nigh.

The Crazies was not a big hit with cinema-goers in 1973 or, indeed, ever since. In fact, it wasn’t even a small hit. In short, it bombed, big time, which is a pity. It has, however, and quite rightly, become a cult-classic among those that have a love for the crazed, the infected, and Romero.

It also inspired a remake, in 2010, starring Timothy Olyphant of such movies as Hitman and Live Free or Die Hard. The budget was a big one, and the profits were impressive. Audience reactions, however, were mixed.

Even though Romero himself acted as the executive producer and the co-writer on the new incarnation, many preferred the 1973 original to the special-effects-driven version of nearly forty years later. In short, not everyone was, ahem, crazy about bringing back The Crazies.

[MIKA27]

Let’s Free Stacey Addison, The Oregon Woman Jailed at the Ends of the Earth

She hasn’t even been questioned, and a Nobel laureate is trying to help, but this Oregon woman is being sucked deeper and deeper into Timor-Leste’s prisons.

Here’s something to do today. Let’s help Stacey Addison get out of jail at the ends of the earth.

Specifically, Addison, from Oregon, is in prison in Timor-Leste, which used to be known as East Timor until, after much suffering, it gained its independence from Indonesia a dozen years ago.

Addison hasn’t been tried for anything. She hasn’t been charged with anything. Actually, she hasn’t even been questioned about anything. She has no criminal record in the United States or anywhere else.

Addison’s problem (we can hardly call it a crime) is that she loves to travel. She got the bug when she took a sophomore year abroad in Spain. She went backpacking around Europe and North Africa, and ever since then, as she studied veterinary medicine at the University of California Davis, and then practiced as a large-animal vet in Portland, whenever she had free time she’d try to discover some new corner of the world.

But Addison wanted more. She was 39 and unattached, no kids and no responsibilities. “You know, you meet people who’ve been traveling for a year,” she told me, “and you wish you could do it.” And finally she decided she would. She sold off a lot of her possessions, planned out a budget, including money for “reentry” when she got back, and set off around the world. She traveled in local buses, stayed in hostels and cheap hotels. She worked with wildlife as a volunteer in Peru and the Galapagos; she worked with elephants in Thailand, at a zoo in Australia.

Now, maybe you have done a little low-budget traveling, and you know there are certain things you probably shouldn’t do, and you know that, well, you did them.

So it was with Addison.

She was traveling around Indonesia, far from Jakarta, far from Bali, at the far eastern end of the archipelago, when her visa was about to expire. To get it renewed, she had to leave Indonesia, which meant crossing into Timor-Leste.

At the border, there were cars waiting to take people to the capital, Dili. One of the drivers said he’d charge Addison $10. She said okay. She and another passenger, a man she’d never met, got in.

On the way to town, the other passenger said he wanted to pick something up at the DHL office: a box of pipes and tubes.

Obviously the Timorese police knew more about that package than the car’s driver or Stacey, because as soon as the passenger picked it up, the cops swooped in and arrested everybody.

That was on September 5.

Addison spent four nights in jail, she told me on FaceTime during a period when she was out on her own recognizance. She could have told tales of horror, of course. Many Americans jailed in foreign countries regale journalists with their own versions of “Midnight Express.” But not Addison. She wasn’t strip-searched. She wasn’t roughed up. The first night, there were 13 women in her cell. Some were there for prostitution. Some were there for driving motorcycles without licenses. Then one night she was all by herself, and two nights with just a couple of other people.

“It was a very, very bad experience,” Addison told me, but mainly because “there was a lot of uncertainty about what was going to happen.”

There still is. Addison was allowed out of jail, finally, but her passport was held pending an investigation—even though nobody questioned her. The man who picked up the package, which supposedly had 1.6 kilos of methamphetamine hidden in a metal hose, has testified he was just paid to get it and had never met Addison before.

The United States Embassy in Dili has been consistently supportive, which is an indication there’s no evidence or even suspicion that Addison was involved with drug trafficking. “Dr. Addison has shown strength and resiliency during an extremely difficult time,” an embassy spokesperson tells me.

Nobel Peace Prize Winner José Ramos-Horta, one of the founding fathers of Timor-Leste and the country’s first president, has written to Addison’s mother in Oregon, Bernadette Kero, to reassure her that the justice system will deal fairly with her daughter. Ramos-Horta also recommended the lawyer, Paulo Remedios, who is handling Addison’s case, and one of Ramos-Horta’s colleagues contacted me about it.

But, still, week after week, Addison lived in a Dili hostel waiting for the rusty wheels of Timorese justice to set her free. Finally, last week, she decided to travel around a little more of Timor-Leste, and when she got back to the capital on Wednesday she went to court with Remedios to check on the status of her case. Their expectation was that her petition to have her passport returned might be honored.

Instead, the court said the prosecution had appealed the original decision to release her on her own recognizance. She was arrested immediately, transferred to a prison for administrative processing, then transferred again to the women’s prison at Gleno, where she is right now.

Under Timor-Leste’s legal system she could spend many more months there pending the investigation that seems uninterested in what she has to say or what she did not do.

What can we do? This will give you a taste of the frustrations Addison is facing. Before she was re-arrested she was asking people to email the Minister of Justice in Timor-Leste, but when she visited the offices there, “in a crushing blow to morale I found that no one actually checks the email address listed on the Government of Timor Leste website or was able to give me an alternate contact.” She suggested emailing her directly so she could print the letters, but of course that’s not going to work now that she’s in prison.

So, for starters, one easy step: Like the Help Stacey Facebook page. Her mother, Bernadette Kero, and others will be posting more information there. Share that site. Share this article. And let’s see if we can’t help Timor-Leste, a country that has been through a lot of bad times, end the pointless misery of this one American woman whose only crime is wanderlust.

Oh, and by the way, Addison’s mother tells me Stacey’s 41st birthday is November 5. With luck, maybe she’ll be out in time to celebrate.

[MIKA27]

Michael Jordan: Obama Is ‘Sh*tty’ Golfer

As if six NBA championships and legendary gambling benders weren’t proof enough of Michael Jordan’s competitiveness, he said he wouldn’t golf with President Obama because POTUS isn’t good enough. Asked who would be on his dream foursome, Jordan first said: “I never played with Obama but I would.” A moment later, he changed his mind. “He’s a hack, I’d be all day playing with him.” You really want to say that about the leader of the Free World? “I never said he wasn’t a great politician, I’m saying he’s a shitty golfer.”

[MIKA27]

BOSCO VERTICALE: VERTICAL GARDEN APARTMENTS IN MILAN, ITALY

Pretty cool concept being executed here in the historic Porta Nuova District in Milan, Italy. It’s called Bosco Verticale (means “vertical forest”), and it’s a new residential complex that takes the whole sustainable housing thing to a new level—literally.

Italian architect Stefano Boeri designed the two towers (365 feet and 260 feet tall, respectively) that hold 113 apartments, but the big feature here is the abundant vegetation integrated into its buildings. You’re looking at some 780 planted trees and countless numbers of plants, altogether yielding about 1,000 different species on the property. Each apartment has its own private garden, which not only looks great, but also filters sunlight and cuts down on noise and air pollution. The greens are watered through a self-replenishing irrigation process, and photovoltaic panels on the roof convert sunlight to electricity.