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

[MIKA27]

Michelin's Airless Tire Might Actually Start Existing

We’ve been promised airless, puncture-proof tires for-bloody-ever by this point. But pump-haters, your time is arriving: starting next week, a factory in Piedmont, SC is going to start pumping them out.

Named the Tweel, Michelin’s invention in an all-in-one wheel and tire: deforming resin spokes provide the give that air would have previously, and an outer tread gives the same grip as rubber. The benefits are pretty obvious: no air means no pesky punctures, and the slight deformity means the wheel rolls over bumps more smoothly.

There’s still no general availability or pricing, but Michelin’s currently running a limited trial with skid steer loaders and tractors and opening an entire factory dedicated to producing the Tweel obviously means that it’s not a complete bust. Whether or not you’ll be decking your truck out with Tweels in the near future remains to be seen, though.

[MIKA27]

The Choose Your Own Adventure Books Were The First Interactive Games

Since 1975 the Choose Your Own Adventure books have given millions of kids the chance to determine their own destinies (at least in a literary sense). Sadly, the author and publisher of those books, R.A. Montgomery, died this week. But he leaves behind an incredible legacy in both publishing and, perhaps surprisingly, gaming as well.

According to the Choose Your Own Adventure site, Montgomery began his career in education, devising experiential games to teach maths to students with learning disabilities. This evolved into larger gaming projects: In the 1970s he was hired by the Edison Electrical Company to design a role-playing game that would help educate high students about the impending energy crisis.

In 1975, after volunteering for the Peace Corps, Montgomery founded a publishing house with his wife. One of the first authors to approach him was Ed Packard, who had an idea for a new kind of book which would allow readers to determine the fate of their characters. Early in the book the story began offering two (or more) diverging plotlines so the reader could “choose” by flipping to different pages to continue the narrative. He eventually brought the series to Bantam Books where he wrote about half of the 230 titles, which were eventually available in 40 languages. The series has sold over 250 million copies worldwide.

For a few years of my childhood, these were by far my favourite books. Maybe it’s because I really did feel like I was in control, that I could orchestrate the situation and have a completely different experience every time (although I remember one book where I always managed to die of dehydration no matter what). I also never wanted to leave a possible scenario behind. After I’d “play” a few times, I’d end up reading the book cover to cover, hoping to stumble upon any potential storylines I’d missed. These were examples of true interactive storytelling before video games became the cultural norm.

Here’s what I didn’t know when I was devouring piles of his books back when I was nine: Montgomery also was a pioneer in children’s gaming tech. He adapted two Choose Your Own Adventure titles for Atari in 1984, and went on to create CD-ROM games for Apple in 1990 (he was an early and enthusiastic Apple fan). It makes perfect sense: In many ways, the books were like the role-playing games Montgomery had designed. This was a way to bring that idea full circle when the technology emerged to make it all possible.

Farewell to R.A. Montgomery, the man behind so many great adventures. Who knew that some of the best moments of my childhood would be the result of his simple instruction to “turn to page 86…”

[MIKA27]

The Last Ditch Attempt To Prolong Philae's Life On A Comet

With Philae’s battery dying, the Rosetta mission’s ground controllers have decided to make one last go at it. The probe had ended up in the shadow of a cliff after a botched touchdown, unable to gather enough energy with its solar panels. Ground control is going to try rotating Philae so one of its larger panels catches the light.

Just now, the European Space Agency re-established communication with Philae 300 million miles away. The radio link had cut off as expected when the spacecraft Rosetta, which is orbiting the comet and relaying Philae’s signals back to Earth, passed below the horizon.

When we last left off, Philae was hard at work probing the comet, making the most of its waking hours. Contrary to previous reports of the lander possibly being on its side or even upside-down, the ESA figured out it actually had all three feet on the ground, so they went ahead with the plan to drill.

The first drill sample was destined for COSAC, the COmetary SAmpling and Composition experiment, which looks for the chirality or “handedness” of organic molecules on the comet, possibly matching them to Earth’s. Philae’s was drilling away when communications cut off, and ground control wasn’t sure if it was actually able to analyse its sample. It appears Philae did, and they’re downloading the data right now.

A number of other instruments have also been gathering data, including the thermal and mechanical properties of the comet as well as its elemental composition. The ESA said that they got 80 per cent of the scientific data they expected in the first sequence.

With all the data downloaded, ground control sent the command back to Philae to rotate itself 35 degrees. The move itself was successful, but it’s unclear how much of a difference illuminating the larger solar panel will make. Philae could also reawaken when the comet approaches the sun. The mission’s not over yet.

[MIKA27]

These Are Real Monsters Of War

These are real monsters of war. Members of 34 Regiment Squadron from RAF Leeming firing a .50 calibre heavy machine gun mounted on a Mastiff armoured vehicle, during a night time live firing exercise at Warcop Ranges in Cumbria, UK.

[MIKA27]

Why The LGM-135A Midgetman Was America's Shortest-Lived Mobile Nuke

The plan was simple: mount a nuclear ICBM atop a truck, then spread a bunch of them (and hundreds of decoys) out along Nevada and Utah to create a fully-mobile counterpoint to any Soviet first strike. So why did America’s Midgetman program never get off the ground?

All the nukes in America’s arsenal wouldn’t have done us a lick of good had the Soviets knocked them offline during a preemptive first strike. That’s why the US government went to such great pains defending the weapons — typically storing them in armoured subterranean silos. There were limitations to this plan, of course, as silos are only useful until they’re spotted. Once the enemy knows a silo’s location, it can easily be bombarded into oblivion. But should that silo be sitting on two axles, it can be moved from location to location as the situation dictates. So between 1986 and 1992, that’s exactly what the US Air Force tried to do — with spectacularly unsuccessful results.

The effort was essentially a response to the development of the Soviet S-24 and S-25 mobile ICBM launchers — the former ran on railroads, the latter on paved roads — which could easily be repositioned out of harm’s way in the event of attack. The US program originally aimed to make their stock of LGM-118 MX Peacekeeper and LGM-30 Minuteman ICBMs more mobile. However, the size of these weapons — each about 18m long, weighing 17,000kg, and containing up to 10 nuclear-tipped reentry vehicles — made transporting them across America’s highways nearly impossible.

As such, the Air Force went about developing a smaller version: the 4m, 14,000kg Small Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (SICBM) or MGM-135A Midgetman. It was small enough to travel on unmodified civilian roadways yet still powerful enough to ruin Moscow’s week from the other side of the Pacific. Each missile packed a 475 kt nuclear warhead and could travel up to 11,000km using internal GPS guidance.

The LGM-135As would be launched from the bed of a Hard Mobile Launcher (HML) vehicle. These trucks were “hardened” against a variety of attacks including nuclear, biological and chemical ones, and could be scrambled from any number of military bases spread through the American West at the first hint of an incoming Soviet threat. At one point the plan was to stick 200 of these things throughout Nevada and Utah, along with as many as 22 nearly-identical — but not nuclear — decoys constantly moving between as many as 4600 bases so as to fool Soviet intelligence. President Carter signed off on the initial $US95 billion (adjusted for inflation) plan in 1980, though earnest development didn’t really start until the end of President Reagan’s first term four years later.

But even in an era where money was no object so long as it hurt the Russians — a time where space-based anti-ICBM laser platforms seemed a perfectly reasonable idea — the Midgetman project was deemed too expensive to work. The trucks alone, for example, would have cost American taxpayers about $US50 billion in today’s money. The missiles themselves would likely have been even more, should the program have ever gotten out of the prototype stages. Alas, it did not.

The Midgetman did make a single successful test flight in 1991, launching from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and intercepting a target out at the Marshall Islands. But the fall of the Soviet Union later that year effectively eliminated any need for these weapon systems and, along with many other nuclear programs of the time, the Midgetman program was cancelled in 1992.

However, there is renewed interest in mobile ICBMs. A 2011 study suggested that both China and Russia had begun redeveloping their previously-scrapped SICBM platforms. That said, a recent RAND studycommissioned by the USAF itself found that the cost of developing new SICBM systems “will very likely cost almost two times — and perhaps even three times — more” that just using what we’ve already got — that’s about $US200 billion. And you thought the F-35 was a waste of money.

[MIKA27]

How To Store Nuclear Waste For 10,000 Years (And How Not To)

America has currently no plan for its nuclear waste. It did, however, at one point, have a supremely ambitious plan to bury it in a mountain for 10,000 years. From colour-changing radioactive cats to rotting kitty litter, this essay from Method Quarterly explores the mythical and the mundane problems of nuclear waste.

To tell the mythology of Yucca Mountain, we might as well start with the fees. In 1983, a small fee of just a tenth of a penny per kilowatt-hour began appearing on electricity bills in America. The money was meant for Yucca Mountain, a wrinkle of land on the edge of the Nevada Test Site that was being turned into a massive tomb for the atomic age. Here, waste from nuclear power plants and weapons would be stored for at least 10,000 years until radioactivity faded to safe levels. Governments could fail and civilizations could fall, but Yucca Mountain was supposed to remain.

In 2014, after the Department of Energy had amassed $US30 billion for the nuclear waste disposal fund, it quietly stopped collecting the fee. It stopped because a court told it to, because the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository did not exist. Five miles of tunnels — out of the intended 40 — had already been carved into the rock, but there was no radioactive waste stored there. After blowing past its planned opening date of January 31, 1998 by an embarrassing margin, the Obama administration in 2010 abandoned the languishing plans to build Yucca Mountain. Three-and-a-half years later, a court ruled the federal government couldn’t keep collecting fees for a site it had no intention of building.

That’s one way to see Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository’s continued nonexistence, as yet another political boondoggle: 30 billion dollars of taxpayer money collected to build a mythical mountain.

But Yucca Mountain is more than that. The ambition behind it far exceeds the two- or four- or even six-year terms of any politician. Here we were trying to build a structure that would last longer than the Great Pyramids of Egypt, longer than any man-made structure, longer than any language. When forced to adopt a long view of human existence — when looking back on today from 10,000 years into the future — it’s hard not to view Yucca Mountain in near-mythical terms. We can imagine future earthlings pondering it the way we ponder the Parthenon or Stonehenge today — massive structures imbued with an alien spirituality.

Ten thousand years may be the time scale of legends, but nuclear waste storage is a very real and practical problem for humans. It is a problem where incomprehensibly long time scales clash with human ones, where grand visions run up against forces utterly mundane and petty.

Inside Yucca Mountain

Radiation remains an almost spooky threat: an invisible, silent, and odorless danger. In contaminated sites, you see men draped in full-body suits divining for radiation with Geiger counters. To someone who did not know the purpose of this, they might resemble robed members of an atomic priesthood appealing to some invisible power.

At high enough levels, radiation sears through the body, damaging tissue in ways that are immediately obvious. At low but still dangerous levels, you can’t feel, hear, or see radiation passing through you, but it may knock loose a strand of DNA, creating a mutation that gets copied over and over in dividing cells until the day one of those cells becomes cancerous. It bides its time like a curse that can take years or decades to manifest.

In 1981, the Department of Energy convened a task force on how to communicate with the future.

The panel of consulted experts included engineers, but also an archeologist, a linguist, and an expert in nonverbal communication. Dubbed the Human Interference Task Force, they were tasked with figuring out how to keep future humans away from a deep geological repository of nuclear waste — like Yucca Mountain.

The repository would need some kind of physical marker that, foremost, could last 10,000 years, so the task force’s report considers the relative merits of different materials like metal, concrete, and plastic. Yet the marker would also need to repel rather than attract humans — setting it apart from Stonehenge, the Great Pyramids, or any other monument that has remained standing for thousands of years. To do that, the marker would need warnings. But how do you warn future humans whose cultures and languages will have evolved in unknown ways?

In addition to the physical marker, the task force recommends “oral transmission” to preserve their warning for future generations. Even as language itself mutates, the argument goes, the stories we tell endure. Imagine Homer’s epics or Beowulf, but on an even longer time scale. The report, in characteristically dry language, imagines that the future population around Yucca Mountain might tell stories that “include perpetuation of knowledge about a ‘special’ place.”

Thomas Sebeok, the linguist consulted by the Human Interference Task Force, goes into further detail in a separate report. He proposes seeding and nurturing a body of folklore around Yucca Mountain, and even inventing annual rituals where these stories could be retold. These folktales need not explain the science of radiation; they simply need to hint at a great danger.

“The actual ‘truth’ would be entrusted exclusively to — what we might call for dramatic emphasis — an ‘atomic priesthood,’” Sebeok writes. This group, he says, would need to include “a commission of knowledgeable physicists, experts in radiation sickness, anthropologists, linguists, psychologists, semioticians, and whatever additional expertise may be called for now and in the future.”

In the decades when Yucca Mountain was still under development, some of the most intense interest in the repository came from 800 miles up the West Coast in Hanford, Washington. The Hanford Nuclear Reservation produced nearly all of the plutonium that went into the U.S.’s nuclear arsenal during the Cold War. Then, it was decommissioned. Now, it is the site of the largest environmental cleanup project in the country.

Fifty-six million gallons of radioactive waste sit in 177 steel tanks buried underground. The waste ranges from soupy to sludgy, and it has the unfortunate habit of leaking out of the ageing tanks into the groundwater.

This wasn’t the plan, of course. The idea was to build a vitrification plant on site, where radioactive waste could be mixed with molten glass and poured into steel columns — making the impermeable nuclear coffins that would then be entombed in Yucca Mountain. But the cleanup at Hanford has been horribly mismanaged. The vitrification plant, due to open in 2011, is still half complete. Of course, even if we manage to safely solidify and seal the radioactive waste at Hanford, we still don’t have anywhere to put it.

Meanwhile, the radioactive waste keeps leaking.

Go back down the West Coast from Hanford, head inland for 200 miles, and you’ll hit Carlsbad, New Mexico, home to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), a nuclear waste repository in the deserts of the Southwest that was actually built.

Unlike Yucca Mountain, though, WIPP is only designed to handle low-level waste. While it can lock away the stuff that has come in contact with radioactive material, it can’t safely store the byproducts of nuclear reactors themselves. Gloves, tools, and other equipment used to handle plutonium and uranium are packed in drums, which are then stored in rooms tunneled into the natural salt deposit. Over time, the salt will ooze around the barrels, encasing the waste in a mineral tomb.

The problem of long-term waste storage at WIPP is real but still theoretical. It’s only when WIPP is shut down and sealed off that the plan to warn away future humans will be set in motion. For now, the tentative design is a series of 25 foot-tall granite monuments engraved with warnings in seven languages.

But, like Yucca Mountain, WIPP has been the subject of many more fantastical and evocative proposals. In 1991, it too convened a multidisciplinary panel to study the problem of communicating with the future. The resulting report laid out proposals that ranged from an architect’s “landscape of thorns” to a warning message that begins like this:

This place is a message…and part of a system of messages…pay attention to it!

Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.

This place is not a place of honour…no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here…nothing valued is here.

What is here is dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.

In February, a drum of radioactive waste at WIPP ruptured underground causing radioactive material to snake its way up a ventilation shaft and expose 21 workers on the surface 2,000 feet above the drum. WIPP has since shut down and may not reopen for years.

With Yucca Mountain gone, the Department of Energy had actually considered sending Hanford’s to-be-vitrified high-level waste down to WIPP. This plan clearly wasn’t going to happen either.

How can a drum just rupture? The official investigation points to a chemical reaction between nitric acid and trace metals in the drum. But this reaction only happens at high temperatures, which has cast suspicion on one other component in the drums: kitty litter.

Kitty litter is routinely used to help stabilise radioactive waste, but a contractor had recently switched from using a plastic-based litter to a wheat-based one. The rotting wheat may have created just enough heat to set off the chemical reaction that ruptured the drum.

In 1984, the German journal Zeitschrift für Semiotik (Journal of Semiotics) published a dozen responses from academics speculating on how to communicate across 10,000 years. The proposals range from the mundane to the bizarre and fantastical.

One respondent proposes making the storage barrels impossible to open without great technical skill. Another involves creating a series of warnings in concentric circles that would expand as languages evolve. Thomas Sebeok is in there, elaborating on his system of rituals around an atomic priesthood and their rituals. But a pair of semioticians, Françoise Bastide and Paolo Fabbri, take the germ of Sebeok’s idea for a nuclear folklore to a singularly strange conclusion.

Their solution is “ray cats,” creatures bred to change colour in the presence of radiation — like walking, purring, yarn-chasing Geiger counters. But this is just the first part of the proposal. Alongside the cats, Bastide and Fabbri propose that we invent a body of folklore, passed on through proverbs and myths to explain that when a cat changes colour, you better run.

Still more wonderful and unexpected is that someone has taken Bastide and Fabbri at their word and actually written a song about ray cats. The podcast 99% Invisible commissioned Berlin-based artist Chad Matheny, aka Emperor X, to compose a “10,000-Year Earworm to Discourage Settlement Near Nuclear Waste Repositories” for an episode on nuclear waste. The song, writes Matheny, had to be “so catchy and annoying that it might be handed down from generation to generation over a span of 10,000 years.”

Ray cats may not exist. A ten thousand year nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain may not exist. But a song about them does.

There are no fantastical creatures at Hanford, but there are rabbits and pigeons and swallows and tumbleweeds. The security buffer around the operating Hanford Nuclear Reservation has since been converted into a national monument untouched by agriculture and development. It’s a lovely place to go hiking.

But to Hanford’s Biological Control Program, the wildlife are potential “biological radiological vectors,” and therefore represent a huge nuisance. Rabbits, badgers, and gophers that somehow ingest leaked radioactive material can spread their radioactive poop across thousands of acres. The radioactive creatures have to be hunted down, and their poop safely cleaned up by people in suits. Even tiny termites and ants can unearth radioactive material.

And then there are tumbleweeds, whose taproots can reach 20 feet down to suck up buried radioactive waste. In the winter, those taproots wither, and it’s off the tumbleweeds go, tumbling miles away with the wind. In 2010, Hanford had to chase down 30 radioactive weeds.

Someday, our nuclear waste might actually be sealed off in a mountain capped with a giant monument warning future humans 10,000 years into the future. But for now, tumbleweeds — that casual symbol of tedium — keep tumbling away with our intractable nuclear waste.

[MIKA27]

Australian Electric Fence Could Safely Segregate Swimmers And Sharks

Shark netting strung up in coastal waters to protect swimmers from the ocean’s apex predators has not worked nearly as well as we had hoped. But where these knotted nylon lines have failed, one Australian company hopes an electric field will succeed.

For more than half a century, bathers and swimmers in the KwaZulu-Natal region along South Africa’s eastern coast have relied on stretches of netting to keep sharks at bay — unfortunately, these nets often strangle the very sharks they were meant to deter and post similar threats to any other marine animal to venture too closely. But that’s where a prototype system, dubbed the Shark POD, comes in.

Remember the Shark Shield from a few years back? These ankle-and surfboard-mounted devices emit a low level electrical impulse that deters sharks by wreaking havoc with their ampullae of Lorenzini (the gell-filled organ in shark noses that allows them to detect the minute electrical impulses generated by their prey’s nervous system). The genius of these devices was that they only affected sharks and rays and only very slightly.

A 2012 study off the coast of South Africa, where the world’s densest population of White Sharks congregate, found that the POD “significantly increased the mean minimum distance between the shark and the EFS [electric field source]” without causing any lasting harm or even discomfort to the animal. It didn’t necessarily prevent sharks from taking the experiment’s bait, but it did reduce the number of approaches by sharks and greatly increased the amount of time it took for them to eventually strike.

Now, that same technology is being scaled up to protect entire beaches — not just individual divers. The system is assembled by simply stringing a 100m cable between a series of risers affixed to the seabed and turning it on. A team from the KwaZulu-Natal Sharks Board (KZNSB) have begun installing one just off Glencairn beach where it will remain for until next April.

“If successful, it will provide the basis to develop a barrier system that can protect bathers without killing or harming sharks or any other marine animals,” the KwaZulu-Natal Sharks Board told the AFP. That includes humans too — even grabbing a handful of the electrified cable won’t produce more than a mild tingling sensation. Same goes for cetaceans like dolphins and whales.

It’s “a really good idea” Alison Kock, a biological scientist and research manager for Shark Spotters in Cape Town told the AFP. “It’s an exciting opportunity to look at new technology with the ultimate aim of replacing lethal control methods like shark nets and (baited) drum lines.”

[MIKA27]

Part Live, Part Virtual: This Massive Australian Military Exercise Simulates An Entire War

The military is often an early adopter when it comes to technology. If there’s any way for them to gain an advantage, it’s worth looking into — and we’re used to seeing some of its cool gadgets and flight sims.

What we hear less about are the departments of the Australian military dedicated to tying all of these things together, from the grunts to the brass — and the scope of their exercises is astonishing.

The Australian Defence Simulation and Training Centre (ADSTC) is responsible for putting together simulations that take into account all aspects of large-scale warfare. The simulations span land, sea, and air, and span both the real world and the virtual. They span the different defence services, different allied countries, and even include civil government departments. The simulations’ sheer scope is hard to get your head around.

It’s no wonder the most recent of these exercises, Vital Prospect, took 14 months to plan.

“By way of an analogy, you can imagine the complexity required to pull together or manage a major natural disaster — a bushfire, or floods, or a cyclone,” Colonel Terry McCullagh, ADSTC’s Director of Simulations Services told us.

Using a combination of technologies, though, the ADSTC has figured out how to punch well above its weight. Exercise Vital Prospect, which ran in May this year, simulated an attack on a fictional country in northern Australia. It was a collaboration involving 5 different nations, and over 100,000 simulated participants — yet it did so with only 1,200 live soldiers.

So how does it work?

“We often talk about three types of simulation,” says McCullagh. “We talk about live, virtual, and constructive. In live, we’re talking about soldiers who are instrumented. So they’ve got laser designators, attachments on the ends of their rifles, they’ve got receiver units and a harness on the equipment they carry. And the upshot of that is, you can fire a low-powered laser and the detectors on the harness emit that, and you can then identify that there has been some casualties.”

On a scale of even 800 soldiers, this means you can map out movements, using GPS and radio communications, and work out who has been killed in a red versus blue engagement. “It’s a bit like laser tag, but on a far more sophisticated level,” says McCullagh.

“When we talk about virtual, a flight simulator is a good example. What we’re doing is putting a bloke in a cockpit — it looks and feels like a normal cockpit, and he’s actually flying an air combat mission.

“Constructive is the last form we use, and we use a lot of that at the moment. When you’re commanding and controlling a lot of troops, a lot of that is just done off a computer screen. This allows you to create additional troops, constructively.

“The trick is, you can integrate everything from instrumented soldiers on the ground, who might be up in Townsville, to having have some virtual simulators from an air crew that might be at an air force base somewhere else in the country. All coming together with players being in Brisbane, and they’ve now got a far more complex environment in which they’re fighting. So in reality, instead of having 100,000 people out in the field, in this training event, you might actually only have 1,000.”

The constructive side is where the real innovation and scope lies. Not only is the ADSTC calling out a hypothetical ship on the horizon, it’s simulating that actor and all of its characteristics — including secretive characteristics, relative to Australia’s current radar technology — so all allied screens can see what they’re supposed to see. From a ship’s captain in Canada, to the helicopter pilot in the UK, to the squad in Queensland taking a hill, all are connected at the same time.

“The real technical complexity comes into designing the simulation system,” says Colonel Christopher Mills, Director of Joint and Combined Training at ADSTC. “Being able to link those multiple objectives, and being able to connect multiple systems into a communications architecture that enables us to stimulate our real world command and control applications, that sit on our real-world systems that we would use in our operations.”

According to Colonel Mills, the exercise even extends outside of the military sphere — as once the simulated combat is over, the ultimate goal is to smoothly hand over power to the legitimate (fictional) government.

Exercise Vital Prospect, for example, is not only a combat exercise. It’s a practice in cohesion and communication for different departments, and different allies, who don’t normally work together. And it’s proving to be one of the most cost-effective ways to train.

“By using primarily constructive simulations, we’ve made enormous savings,” says McCullagh. “Instead of having 100,000 people in the field, and — more than that, flying people from four other countries to Australia — we can actually all train in our home locations.

“And the cost of it for us was, instead of accommodating 100,000 people, it was 1,200. It really stretches your organisation to the limit so you can understand where those limits are.

“There are other benefits,” he continues. “When you’re putting 100,000 people together in a real environment, there are safety considerations. Sometimes things can go wrong. This is a much safer way to do training. The other great benefit is that this is a low impact on the environment. Imagine 100,000 people in Shoalwater Bay, in central Queensland — just the impact on the environment, the wear and tear on the roads, the sea and the air, is quite considerable. So we’ve made an enormous savings on that.”

These factors become even more important when considering the ADSTC’s most recent, and largest, undertaking. Exercise Talisman Sabre involves 30,000 live troops, though through constructive methods, will simulate five to 10 times that many. Taking 18 months to organise, it began with initial planning in October last year, and will occur in the real and simulated world in July next year.

With that sort of scope, it’s important to be as cost effective as possible — which is why the ADSTC records everything, and can replay the entire simulation, from the strategic level of blips on a map to the tactical level of taking a hill.

“That’s very useful when you’re debriefing after an activity,” says McCullagh. “You can pull up a big screen, show everyone where they’ve gone, how everything unfolded. We also record the radio communications, so we can layer that over the top, and say this is what everyone said, as they moved around to the left or right. And as a result of that, this is how the battle unfolded.

“We use it mainly for tactical level training, but it’s a very useful way to train and debrief soldiers, and to refine our procedures. But also playing around with a range of leading-edge virtual reality technology.”

Currently, other technologies are also being looked at — some we’re very familiar with, such as the Oculus Rift, Microsoft Kinect, and consumer wearables. Speaking to the ADSTC, it didn’t just seem like a matter of being open-minded about the technology itself — there was genuine excitement and eagerness about it, as well.

Our thanks to the ADSTC for making time to talk.

[MIKA27]

Tools of Tradecraft: Spy Gear From the CIA, Others

Kiss of Death

For the spy-op gone bad, or simply for any Natscha who found herself out to dinner with the date from hell, this Cold War-era KGB lipstick gun delivered the kiss of death with a single 4.5mm shot.

Button Cam

Ajax was the codename for this hidden coat camera issued by the KGB around 1970. The lens was embedded in the double-breasted jacket's right middle button.

To snap a surreptitious picture, the spy would squeeze a shutter cable hidden in the coat pocket, triggering the fake button to open for the lens. This was one of several models of buttonhole cameras widely used in the Soviet Union, Europe and North America.

Spy Umbrella

Perfect for a mad Mary Poppins or a gentleman assassin, this KGB-issued umbrella could retard rain or fire a poison pellet. A similar device was used to kill Bulgarian dissident writer Georgi Markov on the streets of London in 1978.

Markov was waiting for a bus to go to work when he felt a sting on the back of one leg and turned to see a man lifting an umbrella from the ground. He died three days later of poisoning from ricin. An autopsy uncovered a pellet the size of a pinhead embedded in his leg.

Seriously Savage Rectal Houdini Kit

It's a toss-up which would be worse, getting caught by the enemy or having the cap on this rectal escape kit pop off unexpectedly in a spy's caboose. The kit was issued by the CIA in the 1960s.

Cyanide Specs

Choosing death over torture, a captured spy in the 1970s could chew on the tip of these CIA-issued spectacles to get at a cyanide pellet hidden inside.

Cyanide Gas Gun

A gas gun similar to this one was used by KGB officer Bogdan Stashinsky to assassinate two Ukrainian dissidents — Lev Rebet and Stepan Bandera — in Germany in 1957 and 1959.

The gun, which Stashinsky concealed in a rolled-up newspaper, exploded hydrogen from a crushed cyanide capsule into the victim's face, causing him to go into cardiac arrest.

Stashinsky later defected to Germany and confessed to the crimes.

Shoe Bug

Spy games weren't just for the big superpowers. This shoe transmitter was used by the Romanian Secret Service, or Securitate, in the 1960s to 1970s to spy on American diplomats.

Diplomats, reluctant to purchase clothing locally, would have dapper shoes flown in. The spy agency would intercept the shoes at the post office and install a bug and transmitter in the heel to monitor the diplomat's conversations. The transmitter wouldn't be detected during an electronic sweep of the diplomat's office for bugs unless the diplomat was in the room at the time the sweep occurred.

**** Transmitter

This CIA **** transmitter, issued around 1970, was actually a homing beacon that transmitted a radio signal to pilots overhead to help direct them to bombing targets and reconnaissance sites.

Pipe Pistol (FOH Daily Bowl )

Issued by British Special Forces during World War II, this pipe could fire a small projectile designed to kill a person at close range. The weapon fired by twisting the bowl while holding the stem.

Steineck Watchcam

This Steineck watchcam, a product of post-World War II Germany, allowed an agent to snap pics while appearing to check the time — no easy feat since there was no viewfinder on the device. The film disk, about an inch across, could produce eight exposures.

Tree Stump Bug

In the early 1970s, U.S. intelligence agents concealed a bug in an artificial stump and planted it in a wooded area outside Moscow to eavesdrop on radar and communications signals of a Soviet missile system.

The intercepted signals were stored and then transmitted to a satellite passing overhead, then passed to a ground site in the United States. The top of the stump appeared to observers to be opaque, but was actually transparent so that sunlight could filter through and charge the device's solar batteries.

The KGB eventually discovered the bug.

Fountain Pen Camera

When even a pocket camera was too conspicuous, this fountain pen camera did the trick. Issued by the CIA in the late 1970s, this fountain pen was one of three different designs created to conceal a Tropel lens. The others included a key chain and a cigarette lighter.

Designed specifically for photographing documents, devices like this were used by Aleksandr Ogorodnik, codenamed Trigon, who was a senior Soviet diplomat recruited by the CIA in the 1970s. Ogorodnik passed on hundreds of classified documents to the U.S. before he was caught by the KGB. He committed suicide using a poison pill from the CIA before the KGB was able to force him to sign a confession.

Coin Cache

Issued by the KGB beginning in the 1950s, this hollow coin could conceal microfilm and microdots. It was opened by inserting a needle into a tiny hole in the front of the coin.

Coal Bomb and Camouflage Kit

This lump of coal, issued in the 1940s by the Office of Special Services, precursor to the CIA, concealed explosives that, when shoveled into a boiler fire, would explode.

The accompanying camouflage kit allowed an agent to paint the coal the same color as local coal in order to blend in.

Glove Pistol

Issued by the U.S. Navy during World War II, this pistol allowed an operative to take out the enemy without ever removing his gloves. To fire the pistol, the wearer simply pushed the plunger against the victim's body.

Canteen Bomb

This World War II-era canteen from U.S. Army intelligence concealed explosives that could be used by resistance groups to sabotage encampments behind enemy lines.

Pigeon Spy Cam

Cameras were used widely to photograph troops and fortifications for the first time in World War I, allowing spies to study enemy weapons and generate topographical maps.

But how to get a camera into enemy territory without endangering the life of a pilot? Enter patriotic pigeons outfitted with tiny cameras that could swoop over military sites and snap photographs without being noticed.

Cufflink Cache

Issued by the KGB in the 1950s, the hollowed base of these cufflinks could be used to smuggle microdot film across a border.

Fly Button Compass

This button compass, sewn onto the fly of a pair of pants, could help a spy navigate his way to a border. The face of the compass spun on a pin to indicate north (the two dots) or south (one dot).

[MIKA27]

'Ice cream' killer Carranza publishing memoirs

A Spanish-Mexican woman who chopped up her ex-husband and her lover and hid their remains in the cellar of her Vienna ice cream parlour is publishing her memoirs.

Estibaliz Carranza, 36, is serving a life sentence in a secure mental institution in Austria for the murders of her ex-husband, Holger Holz, and her lover, Manfred Hinterberger.

"I don't ask for understanding or for pardon," Carranza writes in her book, My Two Lives, The True Story of the Ice Lady, co-written with journalist Martina Prewein.

The case of the "ice cream murders" shocked Austria.

Carranza shot Holger Holz in the head in 2008 as he sat in front of a computer. Two years later she killed her lover, Manfred Hinterberger, as he slept.

The trial attracted huge media interest in Austria, with Carranza dubbed "the Ice Killer"

She decapitated and chopped up both bodies with a chainsaw. She cemented their heads and body parts into flower pots and plastic buckets which she then hid in the cellar of her ice cream parlour.

"I killed two men, whom I once loved," Carranza writes.

"There is no way of glossing this over," she says. "I robbed two mothers of their sons."

"I believed I had to serve men, no matter how they behaved towards me," she writes.

She said she had simply been unable to break up with her lover, Manfred Hinterberger.

"I couldn't say no. I couldn't do it, I couldn't get free of him."

She said she made them into "monsters and finally they made me a beast".

Her publisher, Bernhard Salomon, told the BBC that Carranza was not being paid for the book, which is published on Monday.

She "waived her right to a fee for the sake of the relatives", he said.

Pictures taken in September show Carranza attending a doctor's appointment under police escort

So far there has been no response from the victims' families.

The publishing company, Edition A, has released a short summary of the book, which begins with the moment Carranza discovers she is pregnant, by a third man, in 2011.

It describes how she hoped the two murders would never be discovered and how she was looking forward to a happy future.

A few days later, maintenance workers found the bones and body parts of her ex-husband and lover in the cellar of her ice cream parlour.

Carranza fled, taking a taxi to Udine in Italy, a 480km (300 mile) drive through the Alps.

Police arrested her in the lodgings of a street musician and she was extradited to Austria.

The book, the summary says, describes her relationships with her victims, as well as her marriage in prison to the father of her child.

During her trial in 2012, court psychiatrist Adelheid Kastner said there was a higher than average chance Carranza could kill again.

[MIKA27]

South Korean buys Napoleon's hat for 1.9m euros

A South Korean collector has paid 1.9m euros ($2.4m; £1.5m) at auction for a hat worn by French Emperor Napoleon.

The two-pointed hat, a style widely worn by military officers at the time, was apparently donned by Napoleon during the Battle of Marengo in 1800.

It was later offered as a gift to Napoleon's veterinarian.

The Monaco royal family put the hat on sale, along with hundreds of other items of Napoleon memorabilia, at the auction in Fontainebleau, near Paris.

The collection was put together by Prince Louis II of Monaco, the great-grandfather of current monarch Prince Albert.

The family are selling the pieces to fund a palace restoration.

The auction house listed the hat with an expected selling price of between 300,000 and 400,000 euros, but experts had predicted the bidding would go far higher.

The South Korean buyer eventually paid 1.5m euros, with added fees bringing the final price almost 1.9m euros.

The South Korean buyer paid much more than the expected price

The bicorne is one of only 19 of Napoleon's hats thought to still exist - the emperor is said to have worn some 120 similar hats during his career.

Although the two-pointed hat was a common feature of military uniform, Napoleon wore his sideways, apparently to make him more visible on the battlefield.

Napoleon declared himself emperor in 1804 and waged war with other European powers, conquering much of the continent, before his final defeat in 1815.

[MIKA27]

A 26-Year-Old Woman Is ISIS’s Last American Hostage

The extremists didn’t show her off in their latest snuff film. And her family doesn’t want her name released. But what is known about ISIS’s remaining U.S. captive is heartbreaking.

With ISIS’s brutal murder of Peter Kassig, a 26-year-old American aid worker who dedicated his life to the plight of Syrian refugees, the militant group has one more U.S. citizen remaining in its clutches, according to current and former U.S. officials, as well as individuals involved in efforts to free the Americans.

The hostage is the only American woman held by the militant group. She is the same age as Kassig, and like him was kidnapped while trying to help people whose lives have been upended by the long Syrian civil war. She was particularly moved to help children who have been orphaned and separated from their families. The woman was taken in August 2013, along with a group of other aid workers who have reportedly been released.

U.S. officials and the woman’s family have requested that her name not be made public, fearing that further attention will put her in greater jeopardy. No news organization has published her name. But the general circumstances of her capture and captivity have been known and widely reported for more than a year now.

ISIS’s intentions for its remaining American prisoner are unclear. But current and former U.S. officials told The Daily Beast that it was notable she doesn’t appear at the end of a video, released Sunday, that shows the aftermath of Kassig’s beheading. That breaks with ISIS’s pattern of showing the next hostage it intends to kill.

ISIS has killed Muslim women, as well as children. But it has never murdered a female Western hostage on camera. Doing so would mark a radical departure even for a group that has relied on bloody propaganda to lure foreign fighters to its ranks.

A former U.S. counterterrorism official said that before ISIS decides what to do with its remaining American hostage, it will consider carefully the public reaction it could spark. “Before they’re doing anything, they want to have a really good feel for how it will play,” the former official said.

ISIS has reportedly demanded more than $6 million for the remaining American hostage’s freedom, a figure in keeping with the impossibly high ransoms it has placed on other U.S. citizens it has held. The Obama administration has a firm policy of not paying ransom for hostages and has even advised the families of Americans held in Syria that they could be criminally prosecuted if they paid for their loved ones’ release. (ISIS has freed European citizens, however, from countries where ransoms aren’t illegal.)

The fact that ISIS requests any ransom for its American prisoners and makes it too high for most people to pay indicates that the group isn’t really serious about freeing the Americans, according to current and former U.S. officials and hostage negotiation experts. Instead, the hostages are being used as props in ISIS’s global propaganda campaign, which is largely aimed at recruiting new followers. Viewed through that lens, ISIS’s American and British captives (the U.K. likewise has an official ban on ransoms) have been more useful to the group for its videos than in raising money, even though ransoms are an important source of ISIS’s income.

The latest ISIS video showing Kassig’s death had been expected ever since he was first shown on camera in early October, in another beheading video, and identified as the militant group’s next victim. But this new film differs in key respects from its predecessors, and it may offer new insights into ISIS’s propaganda strategy—and its weaknesses.

The latest video is uncharacteristically long, clocking in at more than 16 minutes, as opposed to the earlier two- to three-minute films showing hostages being murdered. The new video is filled with breathless celebration of the rise of the so-called Islamic State and an exhortation to its followers to join in armed struggle against the “crusader” forces of the United States and the United Kingdom. Indeed, it seems rather desperate in its chest-thumping. It’s also remarkably more brutal—though not to American hostages. A parade of knife-wielding ISIS fighters behead 18 captives, described as Syrian military officers and pilots, in a ghoulish display filled with slow-motion effects and ominous music. It’s by far the most grisly depiction of beheadings ever shown by ISIS.

Kassig is shown only near the end of the video, already beheaded. Unlike other hostages who have read (presumably coerced) statements denouncing the U.S.-led airstrikes, Kassig is never shown speaking. His killer alludes to the fact that he had “little to say” and that other American captives killed before him had already spoken out against the Obama administration. Several current and former U.S. officials speculated that Kassig, who converted to Islam while in captivity and adopted the name Abdul Rahman, might have defied his captors by refusing to read their script or even have insisted on reciting passages from the Quran. “I suspect that Pete knew this was coming and that he refused to talk,” said one individual who has been involved with efforts to free American hostages.

Kassig’s parents had made his conversion to Islam, which they described as genuine and profound, a central pillar of their highly public efforts to free him. The Kassigs, of Indiana, had given television interviews about their son, made YouTube videos pleading with ISIS for his release, and held prayer vigils with members of the American Muslim community. At every turn, they described their son as a faithful follower who had dedicated his life to easing the suffering of innocents.

In a statement Sunday, Kassig’s parents said their son was “fed by a strong desire to use his life to save the lives of others” and that he “was drawn to the camps that are filled with displaced families and to understaffed hospitals inside Syria. We know he found his home amongst the Syrian people, and he hurt when they were hurting.”

President Obama, also in a statement, called Kassig by his chosen Muslim name and contrasted his charity and self-sacrifice with the “darkness” of ISIS. Secretary of State John Kerry called Kassig “a young American who personified the values of altruism and compassion which are the very essence of his adopted religion of Islam.”

ISIS’s long-winded video recites chapter and verse the historic roots of the group, from its early days in Iraq fighting U.S. forces in 2004, and seeks to position the rise of ISIS as an inevitable development in a grand battle against the “crusaders.” The video also argues that ISIS is collecting followers across the Middle East, even as far east as China.

ISIS has a reason to buck up its forces and make itself seem invincible: U.S. airstrikes against the group are starting to yield some results. On Saturday, Iraqi ground forces, supported by American aircraft, took back an important oil refinery in Baiji, about 130 miles north of Baghdad, that ISIS had seized. (Illicit oil revenues have been a major source of the group’s funding.) And the U.S. has been closing in on ISIS’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, though efforts to kill him and his followers have been frustrated by ISIS’s use of encryption to shield its communications from American surveillance efforts.

Still, the video is a reminder of how feckless U.S. efforts to free American hostages have become. Insiders have said the process has been marred by bureaucratic turf wars and a refusal by the United States to negotiate with ISIS, which has freed European hostages in exchange for ransom.

The State Department and the White House have been opposed to paying ransoms, but the FBI and the Justice Department have taken a more nuanced position, according to people involved in the efforts. In particular, the FBI told the parents of James Foley, the first American whom ISIS killed on camera, that they could “walk us right up to that point” of paying a ransom but not be directly involved in exchanging funds, Diane Foley, James’s mother, told The Daily Beast last month.

The FBI has facilitated the payment of a ransom for American hostages before, most notably in 2002, for the release of two Christian missionaries, Martin and Gracia Burnham, who were held by an al Qaeda affiliate in the Philippines. A former U.S. official said the FBI took steps to obscure its role and that the terrorists never knew the U.S. government was involved in the ransom effort.

More recently, a ransom allegedly was paid to free American journalist Peter Theo Curtis in August from al-Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s branch in Syria, according to two sources with direct knowledge of Curtis’s case. Suspicion has focused on the government of Qatar, which has strong ties to Nusra, as the source of the money.

A spokesperson for the State Department has denied that the United States paid a ransom, and administration officials told the Qataris they shouldn’t pay one, either. According to individuals familiar with the matter, Nusra may have hoped that by negotiating for Curtis’s release, it would demonstrate to the United States that it wasn’t as extreme as ISIS and could engage in a reasonable dialogue.

Those hopes might be dashed, however, by U.S. airstrikes in Syria, which have hit Nusra positions, provoking the group’s wrath. Prior to the bombing campaign, which began in September, U.S. intelligence officials warned not to hit the Nusra group, which occasionally has fought alongside U.S.-backed rebels in Syria. Now Nusra is forging an alliance with ISIS, an outcome that had once been considered unthinkable because of a deep schism between ISIS and al Qaeda over the future of the Islamist movement.

How that might impact the Westerners still held in Syria is unknown. The 26 year-old aid worker being held by ISIS isn't the only one. Freelance journalist Austian Tice was abducted in Syria more than two years ago. The Obama administration has claimed that Tice was held by the Syrian government. But this claim has never been verified and who is holding him now is unclear.

[MIKA27]

Beijing's New Stealth Jet: Made in China

The Chinese military has a new stealth jet, but what messages are they sending as it is prepared for active service?

ZHUHAI, China—The toys coming out of China nowadays are amazing.

Laymen build aircraft and submarines in their spare time, and take their creations on trial submersions that earn them fifteen minutes of fame on CCTV and Weibo. They’re bold, they’re scrappy, and they’re certainly impressive. But in the past week, the southeastern port city of Zhuhai saw a different kind of flight. Fighter jets howled and scraped the skies overhead as crowds adored a docked GJ-1 drone that is normally flown remotely by officers of the People’s Liberation Army. Xiaomi smartphones and Samsung Galaxy tablets captured photos of the warplanes in action before the shots were uploaded to Weibo. Few cared about the grounded luxury jets that offered all manner of in-flight comforts—those were meant for the princelings. The crowd was there to see something new, the star of the show: the Shenyang J-31 stealth fighter flown by elite pilots of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force.

The new stealth fighter is special. It’s a fifth-generation aircraft, meaning it’s as advanced as it can be as of 2014. The J in its name actually stands for Jian—annihilate, eliminate.

Consider China’s rise in the past few decades. An infinite number of pixels have been used to chart the rapid economic growth of the People’s Republic as it played the role of global manufacturer, but very few inches of column space have pointed out that China’s engineers started from scratch. To appropriate contemporary nomenclature, they had to work with shanzhai conditions, but managed to build dams, roads, factories both at home and abroad. Even with the occasional assistance from the USSR, Chinese engineers were largely self-reliant, and careful strategic planning by the central government paired with the massive pool of manpower was what pulled the nation out of a rut. Once the foreign currency started to flow in during the 1980s and 1990s, one of the state’s actions was to push for the development of a robust, cutting-edge aerospace industry, primarily focusing on military applications. Every year, they use the space in Zhuhai to give the public a peek of what they’ve been up to.

It might be a coincidence that the crown jewel of the PLA Air Force had its public debut when world leaders gathered in Beijing for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. But as Chinese President Xi Jinping took the stage in Beijing to offer the vision of a China-driven “Asia-Pacific Dream,” you can be sure that the central government was sending another message in Zhuhai: This is what we can do now, so we’re claiming our airspace and reclaiming the sea.

That China has domestic stealth fighters is impressive, even though some of its aircraft were likely based on stolen designs of American warplanes. China’s ability to design, build, test, and put into service the J-31 would be illustrious if Chinese aerospace engineers, in fact, did design and build it; but they didn’t, at least not fully. The plane’s design probably wasn’t indigenous, and China still lacks the capability to build its engines. Those in the J-31 are built by Russia, which spent a century perfecting the required technology. No matter how China attempts to make technological leaps, via hacking or other means, stealth engine design is something that they haven’t been able to conquer.

Nonetheless, a battle-ready J-31 could still be a cash cow, and a good way for China to make friends. Two years ago, when a model was showcased at Zhuhai’s air show, Xu Bangnian, an instructor at China’s Air Force Academy, said, “Even if the PLA Navy and Air Force don’t need the J-31, it can still be a popular item on the military aircraft market, because it will be the only low-cost stealth fighter on the market. For nations with smaller defense budgets, this plane is a major attraction.”

Xu was likely referring to Pakistan, which has a history of purchasing aircraft and other military equipment from China, and even jointly developed the JF-17, a lightweight combat aircraft that first saw use in an anti-terrorist operation in South Waziristan. As The National put it when covering Dubai’s air show last year, “China has so far been the strength for the Pakistan defense industry. It continues its support in the modernization plans of Pakistan’s armed forces.”

At home, or perhaps just off its shores, China has its own uses for the J-31. The People’s Republic is currently in territorial disputes with Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, and Malaysia. Conflict surrounding islands claimed by both China and Japan—Diaoyu to the Chinese, Senkaku to the Japanese—frequently leads to scrambled fighter jets. At a time when over half of Chinese believe that military conflict with Japan is nearing, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe are taking small but important steps to cool down the conflict over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands and the two nations’ bloody history.

Even though China is still years behind the US and Russia in terms of aerospace engineering, should the US be worried about the coming years of technological development for the Chinese military? Are the US and China partners or competitors?

The answer is a bit of both. In June, China participated in the world’s largest naval exercises, which were hosted by Washington. Subsequently, China joined the US and Australia for joint military exercises in October. At the same time, the 2014 National Intelligence Strategy, which is issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, states that “China has an interest in a stable East Asia,” which coincides with American interests, but it “remains opaque about its strategic intentions and is of concern due to its military modernization.”

The J-31 is just one manifestation of China’s ambitions. The People’s Republic is already an economic powerhouse, so it is increasing its geopolitical reach by extending its influence in Africa, as well as East and Southeast Asia. The Chinese government says it doesn’t meddle in the affairs of other nations, but when it sells weapons—warplanes, small arms, missiles—to Pakistan, South Sudan, Iran, and many others, they are doing exactly that. The Obama administration’s as yet ineffectual “Pacific pivot” has only spurred the Chinese desire to develop new military technology, and has given rhetorical fuel to the more bellicose faction within the People’s Liberation Army to justify massive resources poured into the development of new firepower.

It’s impossible to gauge essential qualities that determine the success of a fighter jet, like pilot training and deployment capabilities from air shows. But since China’s J-31 and America’s F-35 are the only stealth jets that can be carrier-based, there is a sense of prestige in Zhuhai. Pride shone through the eyes of the air show’s visitors and children toted models of the PLA’s aircraft. As five female pilots of the PLA Air Force took to the sky, a little girl in the crowd said, “That’s what I want to be when I grow up.”

[MIKA27]

Sherlock Holmes Vs. Jack the Ripper

One was the best detective of his day. The other was a serial killer who was never caught. So why didn’t Holmes catch the Ripper? Only don’t say ‘because Holmes wasn’t a real person.’

LONDON — If Sherlock Holmes was such a smart detective, why was he not put on the case of Jack the Ripper? It’s a reasonable question. After all, Sherlock made his first appearance in 1887 and the Ripper’s killing rampage took place between August and November 1888. With all other sleuths failing to catch the beast, why not call in the world’s greatest forensic mind?

Of course, you could protest that Sherlock did not really exist and the Ripper did. But Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the mind behind Sherlock, was real enough and he—like his creation—inhabited the feverish world of late Victorian London. He would have followed the series of eviscerating murders in the sulfurous alleys of East London as they were reported in the press.

This thought began to trouble me as I immersed myself in the truly Holmesian world created at the Museum of London, at a show called “Sherlock Holmes, The Man Who Never Lived and Who Will Never Die.” To be honest, the visit did not begin well. The entrance to the show is a wall lined with books that conceals a secret door. It took several attempts for me to find the door and gain admission—a performance regarded with some contempt by the people behind me.

Holmes addicts had arrived at the show from all over the world. Language was no barrier; just about every tongue on the planet was babbling away, caught up in the elaborate mystique of a cult. There were learned discussions about the domestic arrangements at 221b Baker Street, surely the oddest of bachelor pads, with its armory of weapons—various makes of revolver, walking sticks concealing swords, and a dopehead’s full paraphernalia of pipes (Holmes’s preferred trips were morphine and cocaine)—and wardrobe of tweed capes and deerstalker hats.

However, the most striking thing about the show is its evocation of a character that Conan Doyle described but did not invent and yet is indispensable to his yarns: London. Holmes inhabited a posh part of central London, Marylebone. Terraced townhouses had basements and attics large enough for live-in domestic staff—and also large enough to be divided into the kind of generously sized flats replete with a housekeeper that Conan Doyle allotted to Holmes and where he was attended by his sidekick, Dr. John Watson.

Baker Street was far enough north from the Thames to be clear of the worst of the foul odors and vapors of a river that had become a vast waste pipe for the first world city. With Britain at the peak of its imperial and industrial power, London was layered with the detritus of more than a century of commercial development, most of it concentrated around the docks of East London. Here was the other extreme of the polarized society in which Holmes dwelt, a maze of alleys, narrow streets, and waterfront dives—the habitat of the Ripper.

The Museum of London deploys its visual resources to recreate both worlds—the affluence of Baker Street and the squalor of East London. There are the illustrations that went with the Holmes stories, contemporary photographs, paintings, and some flickering footage from very early documentary film. Caught in these frames is a capital city of dense, manic energy, the streets gridlocked with hansom cabs and horse-drawn omnibuses.

Often present, enrobing many of the street scenes, is the indigenous special effect that all London writers enlisted for their darker tales. Here is Dickens, in Bleak House: “…smoke lowering down from chimney pots making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow flakes—gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun.”

Or later, from Oscar Wilde: “Those wonderful brown fogs that come creeping down our streets, blurring the gas-lamps and changing the houses into monstrous shadows.”

Holmes’s amanuensis, Dr. Watson, noted the contrasts of summer and winter as observed from 221b Baker Street: “It was a blazing hot day in August. Baker Street was like an oven, and the glare of the sunlight upon the yellow brickwork of the houses across the road was painful to the eye. It was hard to believe that these were the same walls which loomed so gloomily through the fogs of winter.”

In August, 1889, Conan Doyle met Wilde for the first time at a dinner given at one of the most fashionable hotels of the time, the Langham, by J.M. Stoddart, the editor of Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine. This dinner not only acquainted two mutually respectful writers, but Stoddart also commissioned a Holmes novel, The Sign of Four, from Conan Doyle that helped to create an insatiable demand that the author was powerless to halt. By 1893, when he was turning out a complete Holmes story every month for The Strand magazine, he tried to kill off Holmes in the famous combat with his nemesis, Moriarty, at the Reichenbach Falls but reincarnated him in 1902, in The Hound of the Baskervilles, and ended up writing 56 Holmes short stories and four novels.

It’s hard to believe that Conan Doyle and Wilde did not discuss the most sensational murder case of their day, the outrageously savage killings perpetrated by the Ripper less than a year earlier. Ripper theories, fanned by journalists who make today’s hackers seem models of propriety, were fueling gossip from the lowest pubs to the most decorous salons, where there were rumors that the psychopath was a member of the royal family. And the Ripper industry was already born. Doing a roaring business in Whitechapel High Street, close by the Ripper’s chosen turf, there was a waxworks displaying grotesque models of the victims.

How would the mastermind of criminal investigation, the true precursor of today’s CSI shows, have approached the Ripper case?

I fancy he would have said it was not the murders themselves that were the riddle but why they stopped. The usually accepted number of victims is five, although two more murders are sometimes attributed to the Ripper, Mary Anne Nichols on August 3 and Mary Kelly on November 9.

Did they end because the beast had been sated? Did they end because in killing prostitutes he was making a point about the desperation and hopelessness of these women? At that time Whitechapel had at least 1,400 prostitutes and more than 80 brothels, but, the knifing of women was rare, with only 11 in the whole of England the previous year.

Did the Ripper quit because he feared that he was close to being caught? He wasn’t. The cops were as incompetent as they often appear to be in the Holmes stories. Later heads of Scotland Yard admitted that the Ripper should have been caught. Was he dead, by his own hand or others? Or—as some still believe—were the murders an accidental conjunction of separate killers and not of anyone called Jack?

Holmes’s mental powers were ideal for a case like this. He could read far more into a letter than its message. He would have given careful scrutiny, for example, to the note that arrived at the Central News Agency on September 27, addressed to “Dear Boss” and signed “Jack the Ripper,” the note that first sent the story viral.

Or, for sure, Holmes would have been eager to examine a letter received on October 16 containing what is believed to have been half a kidney of one of the victims. After all, Holmes could break a case simply on the basis of how a package was addressed, as he did in The Adventure of the Cardboard Box, in which the package contained two severed ears. The address was printed “in rather straggling characters. Done with a broad pointed pen, probably a J, and with very inferior ink.”

Give the great sleuth a few clues like that, and presto! He’s on to the killer.

Conan Doyle’s apparent contempt for the forensic skills of Scotland Yard at the time is embodied in his invention, Inspector Lestrade—“wiry, dapper and ferret-like.” Ferret is a carefully chosen comparison, implying diligence but absolutely no imagination. Lestrade’s role is to seek Holmes’s help and then resent the efficacy of his method. Conan Doyle’s deployment of the dim-witted Lestrade was made in the wake of the Yard’s futile pursuit of the Ripper, and it’s almost like a disguised editorial on the failings of the police. And since it’s Conan Doyle’s imagination that brings credibility to Holmes’s laser-like powers of observation, we should wonder why the author didn’t take the tour of Ripper crime scenes himself and talk to the many (and conflicting) witnesses.

Had he done so, we might just have been spared the Groundhog Day sensation of reliving the Ripper case every year as a “breakthrough” theory proposes a new perpetrator. Patricia Cornwell’s own lavishly funded research turns up the artist Walter Sickert as the prime suspect, only to be followed by the Ripper-industry promoter Russell Edwards with his choice of the Polish barber Aaron Kosminski, both of them employing mitochondrial DNA and both adamant they have the right man. I fancy Holmes would have destroyed those theories with nothing more than his intuition.

If you do want to drink deep of the London of the Ripper and Holmes, go to Louis’ London Walks for handy pocket-sized guides on both. But since Holmes is an invention, along with his haunts and habitat, there really is no shred of authenticity to cling to, just a make-believe tour of pubs and tourist traps.

With the Ripper it’s different. Whitechapel and the rest of the Ripper topography retain the identifiable streets and alleys of the late 19th century and have historical merit that can help you rise above morbid CSI curiosity. Successive waves of immigrants have come and gone, from Huguenot silk weavers in the 17th century to Eastern European Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries to Indians and Bangladeshis now. Synagogues became mosques, the mosques are surrounded by some of the best Asian food in London.

For the most part, the fogs have gone. These days they are occasional meteorological irruptions, white river mists, not dense and toxic industrial pea-soupers. This makes the guide to the Jack the Ripper Walk seem rather dated. It warns: “We do not advise you to take this walk after dark.” These days the only danger to night walking in Spitalfields, a neighborhood including three Ripper murder scenes, is that you might find it hard to escape the carousing of bankers burning their bonuses in the glitzy clubs and restaurants.

It was on the fringe of Spitalfields, in Hanbury Street, that on September 8, 1888, a prostitute called Annie Chapman was literally torn apart by the Ripper’s knife and left in a backyard. The night before she had been seen leaving her house with a client and standing on a corner talking to him. Witnesses said he was “wearing a black coat and a deerstalker hat.”

Ahah! So that explains everything. Elementary, my dear Watson.

[MIKA27]

BOSE SOUNDLINK COLOR BLUETOOTH SPEAKER

Bose has certainly carved out an image for itself as a manufacturer of high quality audio products, but when it comes to style and hipness, your Aunt Linda probably gives them a run for their money.

The new SoundLink Color bluetooth speaker aims to liven things up a bit with a few different colors to choose from and a very doable price tag. It features a range of about 30 feet, voice prompts to guide you through Bluetooth pairing, up to eight hours of music running off the rechargeable lithium-ion battery, and “well-balanced, full-range Bose sound.” It remembers the eight most recent devices you’ve used, so reconnecting is a breeze, and it has an auxiliary input and Micro USB port. At $130, this could be a nice stocking stuffer for the casual music fan. [Purchase]

[MIKA27]

Why We Say 'O'Clock'

The practice of saying “o’clock” is simply a remnant of simpler times when clocks weren’t very prevalent and people told time by a variety of means, depending on where they were and what references were available.

Generally, of course, the Sun was used as a reference point, with solar time being slightly different than clock time. Clocks divide the time evenly, whereas, by solar time, hour lengths vary somewhat based on a variety of factors, like what season it is.

Thus, to distinguish the fact that one was referencing a clock’s time, rather than something like a sundial, as early as the fourteenth century one would say something like, “It is six of the clock,” which later got slurred down to “six o’clock” sometime around the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. In those centuries, it was also somewhat common to just drop the “o’” altogether and just say something like “six clock.”

Using the form of “o’clock” particularly increased in popularity around the eighteenth century when it became common to do a similar slurring in the names of many things such as “Will-o’-the wisp” from “Will of the wisp” (stemming from a legend of an evil blacksmith named Will Smith, with “wisp” meaning “torch”) and “Jack-o’-lantern” from “Jack of the lantern” (which originally just meant “man of the lantern” with “Jack,” at the time, being the generic “any man” name. Later, either this or the Irish legend of “Stingy Jack” got this name transferred to referring to carved pumpkins with lit candles inside).

While today with clocks being ubiquitous and few people, if anybody, telling direct time by the Sun, it isn’t necessary in most cases to specify we are referencing time from clocks, but the practice of saying “o’clock” has stuck around anyway.

Bonus Fact:

• The word “clock” is thought to have originally derived from the Medieval Latin “clocca,” meaning “bell,” referencing the ringing of the bells on early town clocks, which would let everyone in a community know what time it was.
• Contrary to popular belief, the clock tower in London commonly called “Big Ben” is not named “Big Ben.” Rather, it is named “Elizabeth Tower,” after Queen Elizabeth II; named such during her Diamond Jubilee (the 2012 60th anniversary of her accession to the throne). Before that, it was just called “Clock Tower.” So why is it so often called “Big Ben”? That is due to the great bell inside the tower that chimes the hour out and goes by that name. Over time this has morphed into many calling the clock tower itself that even today, despite the recent, very public, name change.
• The Tower of the Winds in Athens, which lies right under the Acropolis, is thought to be the first clock tower in history, constructed sometime between the 2nd century BC to 50 BC. It contained eight sundials and a water clock, along with a wind vane.
• If you’ve ever wondered what a.m. and p.m. stand for, wonder no more: a.m. stands for “ante meridiem,” which is Latin for “before midday”; p.m. stands for “post meridiem,” which is Latin for “after midday.”
• The International Space Station orbits about 354 kilometers (220 miles) above the Earth and travels at approximately 27,700 km/hr (17,211 mph), so it takes about 92 minutes to circle the Earth once. For this reason, every 45 minutes the astronauts on-board see a sunrise or a sunset, with a total of 15 — 16 of each every 24 hours.

[MIKA27]

Can China tackle soaring cancer rates?

It's ten o'clock in the morning at the largest cancer hospital in Asia, a sprawling complex of buildings in Tianjin, a polluted city on China's eastern coast.

Dr Zhang Jing is already scrubbing up for her fourth operation of the day. She has the tired resignation of someone who knows she's in for a long shift at work.

Ten years ago, surgeons here removed tumours once or twice daily. Now they perform at least seven operations every shift.

The cancer hospital recently doubled in size but is still struggling to cope with demand.

"Even if we diagnose 50 patients every day, we cannot keep up," Dr Zhang says. "No matter where you go in this hospital, you will never find an empty bed."

Cancer rates may be falling in many Western countries but they are steadily rising in China.

Blame the effects of pollution and unhealthy habits on the country's aging citizens.

In the lobby of the Tianjin Cancer Hospital, the tension is palpable. Patients and their families jostle with one another in line as they push to make appointments.

It is a situation that is echoed in busy cancer hospitals across the country.

'Leading cause of death'

China has approximately 20%of the world's population, but it has 22% of new cancer cases and 27% of the world's cancer deaths.

Cancer is now the leading cause of death in China but the health ministry seems ill-equipped to deal with the problem.

There are no obvious national campaigns to educate citizens on the avoidable causes of cancer, like smoking.

The country's National Cancer Centre, which was supposed to open in 2012, doesn't even have a website.

Reliable cancer statistics are also hard to find.

In 2008, the Chinese Academy of Medical Science launched the China Cancer Registration Project, with 219 registration spots across China documenting cancer data. However, it has yielded little new information.

The project's last report was released in 2013, using data from 2010. To date, China lacks a single database tracking national cancer rates.

Cancer screening programs are virtually non-existent. The country's fragile healthcare system also means that many aren't diagnosed until it is too late.

There have been no obvious campaigns to warn against smoking and other cancer-causing habits

Liver cancer is a particular problem among Chinese men, many of whom carry the hepatitis B virus.

Around 130 million people in China are believed to be carrying the hepatitis B virus and 30 million have developed a chronic hepatitis B virus.

This is a serious problem because, without regular health checks, the virus can easily morph into liver cancer. China now accounts for half of the world's cases of the disease.

In a single morning, one of the hospital's most respected doctors, Song Jing, meets 10 new patients. All of them are found to have late stage liver cancer.

When asked if it is stressful telling so many people a day that they have less than a year to live, Dr Song nodded.

"Yes, it is. For terminal patients, there's little we can do," he said.

China's major cities are plagued by increasingly dangerous levels of air pollution

But even patients with a good chance of recovering are afraid to mention the illness by name.

In a hospital tower devoted to breast cancer treatment, one patient - Wang Hui - admits that even there, the word "cancer" is rarely spoken out loud.

"Chinese people think that cancer is a terrible thing. Once you have it, you won't last long," she says.

Ms Wang normally commands attention in her job as a Chinese opera singer. But her cancer diagnosis has forced her into hiding. Very few know that she is sick.

Breast cancer has become increasingly common in China and is now the number one killer of Chinese women.

But like many other women, Ms Wang suffers in near-silence. Only her daughter and older sister stand next to her hospital bed, working as her faithful attendants.

"I didn't tell my colleagues or relatives because I didn't want them to worry," she says. "But when I came to the hospital, I saw so many people here with the same illness and I felt better."

Wang Hui and millions of others in China affected by cancer are beginning to accept a hard truth. This country is facing an epidemic, one that increasingly can't be hidden or ignored.

[paulF]

Impressive 1980s Photo Of Old Jet Fighters Flying Over Giza's Pyramids

I’m completely nerd-gasming out over this image of old jet fighters flying over the pyramids of Giza during operation Bright Star in 1983. If I’m not mistaken, I see from left to right, top to bottom: F-4 Phantom, Mirage (III?), MiG-19, F-16 Fighting Falcon, F-14 Tomcat, A-6 Intruder, MiG-21, and A-7 Corsair. Paul F and others, correct me if I'm wrong

Amazing Photo! Reminds me of an old PC game i used to play called Jane's IAF israeli Air Force! Good old gaming days!!! And correct on all counts

[MIKA27]

Amazing Photo! Reminds me of an old PC game i used to play called Jane's IAF israeli Air Force! Good old gaming days!!! And correct on all counts

"Good old gaming days.." I still game my friend

Havent seen a good flight sim though of late, something with some aerial combat.

[MIKA27]

The 110-Year-Old Light Bulb That Has Never Been Turned Off

The oldest lightbulb in continuous use was installed before the Wright Brothers took flight, is 110 years old, and is still as beautiful as the day she was born. In fact, it’s likely the oldest electrical device in continuous use period. Take a moment and consider just how much the world has changed around this one, singular device.

It was a hot summer evening in Livermore, California in 1901 and the band concert across the street was just about to conclude, but the fire captain had an announcement. The Fire Department Hose Cart House on L Street had just installed a new modern technological marvel, one of the first electric carbon lightbulbs in town and invited anyone curious to stop by and witness this new invention. This was the “Improved Incandescent Lamp” was the lightbulb of choice and it was an incredible design. In many cities the Fire Departments were motivating people to consider using this relatively new invention for safety. And of course this came by years of heartbreaking experience.

A lost era when companies had so much pride about who they were, where they were and what they built.

Genius Inventor

This amazing light bulb was invented by Adolphe A. Chaillet and manufactured by the Shelby Electric Company. The beautiful handblown glass bulb with a uniquely shaped carbon filament beamed a consistent ~10 watts (perhaps more). This light bulb has been turned on ever since, over 40,150 days. The only rest she took was for about 7 days during a renovation and the random power outages over the decades. She always woke up.

You can check in on how she is doing, still proudly casting her light and reporting for duty for the last 110 years at this live webcam.

Bad For Business

Known as the Centennial Light, the Livermore Fire department is really quite proud of the bulb and the built to last American engineering and manufacturing that went into it. Sadly Adolphe’s superior lightbulb design and the Shelby Electric Company did not survive for a number of reasons.

One of the many reasons tweets would not work in 1901.

Some suggest that it was a plan of planned obsolescence that was taking over the industry that finally drew the end of Adolphe’s design. Some may suggest that the Shelby technology did not survive because in some way it was inefficient or high wattage or bright light was not possible. This is not the case at all. When the Shelby bulb was installed in 1901 it was brighter than a standard Edison bulb. Shelby also had bulbs of up to 60 watts in 1901 with colour tonality of light orange to almost bright white this was far better than any other product.

Shelby was sold in a roll-up of a vast majority of Lightbulb companies in the United States. The National Electric Lamp Association a division of the General Electric Company purchased the Shelby Electric Company and with-in a year stopped all production on Adolphe A. Chaillet amazing design.

Still Here

The many advancements Adolphe made are lost to the sands of time. The exact processes may not have been saved, his knowledge is gone. Although there were three tantalising patents issued in his life, they do not explain how he made his amazing carbon filament. What Adolphe really created was almost erased from popular history.

Yet this 110 year old light bulb is proof of what one person can achieve. It’s very existence proudly states, I am still here. It is proof that there is far more to all technologies than we can ever imagine. It is proof that true history matters. If only to pay tribute to the genius that got us so very far.

This proud 110 year old girl elegantly reminds us of all of the past, present and future Adolphe A. Chaillet’s of the world.

My deepest wish is that this light never goes out and can be contemplated perhaps a thousand years from now. May she serve as a living reminder of how we can make even the most simple useful things heroically beautiful.

The world has changed and still she glows

[MIKA27]

Watch Ken Block Tear Up The Streets Of Los Angeles In An All-Wheel Drive, 845hp Ford Mustang

It’s here. Gymkhana Seven is finally here, and it sees Ken Block smoke up the streets of Los Angeles in one of the most beastly and unique Ford Mustangs ever made.

The official title is Wild In The Streets Of Los Angeles, and it’s a symphony of noise.

Block normally uses his custom-built Ford Fiesta performance car to lay waste to his tyres along with the laws of gravity, but this time his ride is different. It’s still built by Ford, but it’s a weaponised 1965 Mustang instead.

It’s packing 845 horsepower, and Ford adds that it’s the only all-wheel drive performance Mustang ever built. And boy, does Block ride those 800+ horses hard.

In the film he not only bends space and time around his car to pull off impossible turns, slides and donuts, but also takes you on a pseudo-tour of Los Angeles and its sights. From the LA River, through to Chinatown, right up to the Hollywood sign with all the freeways in-between.

Take a few minutes out of your morning and bathe in the automotive carnage.

[MIKA27]

Charles Manson 'marriage': US murderer 'granted licence'

Manson's death sentence for the 1969 murders was later commuted after California banned the death penalty

American mass murderer Charles Manson, 80, has reportedly been granted a licence to marry a 26-year-old woman who has been visiting him in prison.

The marriage licence was issued 10 days ago for Manson and Afton Elaine Burton, the Associated Press reports.

Ms Burton moved to Corcoran, California, nine years ago in order to be nearer Manson's prison, it adds.

Manson is serving a life sentence for the murders of seven people and one unborn child in Los Angeles in 1969.

Their victims included pregnant actress Sharon Tate, wife of film director Roman Polanski.

Ms Burton, who calls herself Star, told AP that she and Manson would marry next month. The licence is reportedly valid for 90 days.

"Y'all can know that it's true... It's going to happen," she told the agency.

"I love him," she added.

The cult leader and his followers, known as the Manson Family, stabbed and shot seven people in Los Angeles over two nights in August 1969 in an attempt to start a race war.

Manson and three women accomplices were sentenced to death for the killings, but that was commuted in 1972 when California temporarily outlawed the death penalty.

In 2012, Manson was refused parole by a Californian prison panel - it was the 12th time he had made a bid for freedom.

He is not eligible to apply for parole again until 2027.

[Fuzz]

Amazing Photo! Reminds me of an old PC game i used to play called Jane's IAF israeli Air Force! Good old gaming days!!! And correct on all counts

"Good old gaming days.." I still game my friend

Havent seen a good flight sim though of late, something with some aerial combat.

Love mil flight sims. Used to play Falcon AT (then later Falcon 3.0)back in the good old days. Hook up two 286 PCs and play head to head battles!

[MIKA27]

Six ways Knight Rider predicted the future

There can perhaps be no greater honour for sci-fi writers than to create worlds that they eventually see come true.

For Knight Rider creator Glen Larson, who has died aged 77, he will have at least seen some, if sadly not all, of his imaginations become reality.

The show's tagline, uttered over that irresistible theme tune, declares the show "a shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man who does not exist".

Like David Hasselhoff's Michael Knight character, much of the technology found under the bonnet of Knight Industries Two Thousand - Knight's car, known simply as Kitt - didn't exist.

At least, not in 1982.

Here are some of the most memorable - many of which are found in many cars on the road today.

Self-driving/Auto collision avoidance

Many companies have now incorporated sophisticated collision detection into their vehicles

Michael Knight normally had a lot on his plate, and so it was generally useful to be able to palm off some simple tasks - like driving - to Kitt.

To prevent the obvious pitfall of crashing into things, Kitt would deploy auto collision avoidance technology. The car would scan what was happening around it to make sure it reacted quickly.

Twenty years later, auto collision detection technology is a widely implemented safety feature. The European Commission has said that by 2015, all new commercial vehicles should be fitted with devices that could, they hope, dramatically decrease the number of fatalities on European roads.

Ford, GM, Toyota and many others are funding huge swathes of research and development in the area.

When to see it: Episode 108, Trust Doesn't Rust

Anamorphic equaliser

The anamorphic equaliser was able to see with X-ray vision

Perhaps Kitt's most distinctive feature was the red bar of light that would ebb and flow on the front of the car.

Aside from merely looking good, it was actually carrying out an important function - the anamorphic equaliser was described by the programme-makers as a series of "electronic eyes".

It allowed Kitt, and therefore Knight, to see in X-ray vision or infra-red.

Unfortunately, the bar was also thought to be Kitt's weakest point, its Achilles heel, because it was not protected by the car's bulletproof armour.

In this regard, modern day technology hasn't quite reached the heights of Kitt - yet.

The likes of Mercedes Benz have fitted some of their higher-end vehicles with technology that allows the driver to see better in the dark (other than, obviously, turning on lights). Using infra-red, the road ahead is "lit up" in a way that is invisible to humans, but can be interpreted by a computer to give better visibility.

Other systems use thermal radiation given off by animals and humans to allow a different way to "see" in the dark.

When to see it: Throughout the series

Homing device

Google says it expects its self-drive cars to be on the road "within a year"

If Knight was struggling, and needed Kitt, he could summon the car via a homing beacon hidden in a gold pendant he kept around his neck. Kitt would roar into life and come and rescue him.

Today, Google's vision of a future of driverless cars has a similar feature. Instead of a gold pendant, the car is summoned via a person's smartphone.

And Google's cars won't exactly rush to your side - with a top speed, for the time being, of 25mph. Much more sensible, but far less cool.

When to see it: Episode 218, A Good Knight's Work

Medical scanner

Sensors in Ford's car seat can monitor the rider's heart rate

It's no good Kitt being highly advanced if the man it's supposed to protect is, well, dead. And so one of the first futuristic features we're shown on Knight Rider is Kitt's ability to detect Knight's vital signs.

The car can tell if someone riding in it is "injured, poisoned, undergoing stress or other emotional behaviour". How did it get this information? Why through the seat of course!

Step forward Ford, with its ECG Heart Rate Monitoring Seat. Six embedded sensors are able to monitor vital signs and detect whether a driver is, for example, having a heart attack.

If a problem is detected, the chair could activate the car's other safety features - like collision avoidance - to bring the vehicle to a slow stop.

When Kitt was given an upgrade for a new series in 2008, it was even able to administer help by pumping out extra oxygen.

When to see it: Episode 1, Knight of the Phoenix

Electronic jammer

It may look a bit low-tech now - but within Kitt's dashboard was an electronic jammer

Sadly, in the real world, technology isn't always used for the most exciting purpose.

Take jamming, for example. With Kitt, Knight used various forms of electromagnetic or microwave jamming to create serious mischief - moving objects, hacking cash machines to spit out money, and taking control of nearby cars.

In the real world, however, jamming is more likely to be used by truckers to hide what they're up to.

GPS jamming is an increasing concern for traffic authorities the world over - companies use GPS to keep track of where their vehicles are.

Drivers, not fond of the monitoring, and sometimes prone to a spot of moonlighting, have been known to use the £30-a-pop jammers to spoof the system. Not to be recommended (it's illegal, and potentially very dangerous).

When to see it: Episode 109, Inside Out

Hydrogen hybrid

Before the best-selling Toyota Prius, there was... Kitt!

Kitt may have been a loud hulk of a machine - but it was at least environmentally-friendly.

And what powered Knight's brutal turbo engines? Hydrogen, the zero-emission fuel of choice for today's most popular clean cars.

But it didn't just rely on Hydrogen. The car's sophisticated (it's a secret, apparently) engine was able to use a mixture of fuels, including petrol. A hybrid, if you will - just like the Toyota Prius, the car that has become the biggest-selling hybrid globally.

Kitt's fuel efficiency was said to be in the region of 65 miles (100km) per gallon.

When to see it: Throughout the series

Thanks, but no thanks...

Not all the innovations in Kitt have found their way to real-life, and nor would you want them too.

In one episode, Kitt is able to assess the body shape of Bonnie, one of the main female characters, who was wearing overalls.

While in episode 15, we see Knight print out the information he needed, straight from the dashboard.

You'd think, these days, he'd just have it on his phone.

[MIKA27]

The Uncatchable: Greece's most wanted man who gives to the poor

He's spent decades dodging the law. He's escaped from jail twice by helicopter. He's given millions to the poor. This is the story of how Greece’s most wanted man became a folk hero.

The robberies started again on a Wednesday.

A masked man drove a stolen van through the quiet streets of Aspra Spitia in central Greece, a clutter of white buildings with black, square windows, like a game of dominoes tumbling into the Gulf of Corinth.

Parking outside a branch of the National Bank, he forced his way inside carrying an AK-47 rifle. He ordered staff to open the ATM, and snatched 150,000 euros. Then he took 100,000 euros from the cash boxes, and in moments he was gone.

It was February 2010, and the Greek economy was in crisis caused, many believed, by greed and corruption in the banks. One man was making them pay.

In October, it is alleged he robbed two banks in the same day. In Eginio, near Thessaloniki, a robber smashed through the windows of the National Bank, then did the same at the Agricultural Bank just 100 yards down the street, escaping with 240,000 euros.

And because no-one was harmed - unusual in Greek robberies - local authorities drew a conclusion:

"It is highly likely this is the activity of Vassilis Paleokostas.”

In a crime spree spanning three decades, the man known to many as the Greek Robin Hood has taken millions from state-owned banks and kidnapped industrialists, while liberally distributing cash to the needy.

Though he differs from some other famous bandits - Ned Kelly, say, or Billy the Kid - by claiming to have hurt no-one during his exploits, he remains one of Europe’s most wanted men.

One of his former cellmates, Polykarpos Georgiadis recalls:

"Criminals ****** purses from old ladies. Vassilis was on a different level: he is a socially accepted bandit and a hero.”

But just like the original Robin Hood, Vassilis Paleokostas is despised by the authorities he plagues. They portray him as a violent terrorist and Greek journalists have strangely shied away from telling his incredible story.

Boy from the mountain

Born in 1966, Paleokostas grew up in the village of Moschofyto, a remote cluster of shacks on a snow-capped mountain in central Greece.

There he watched his father yelling at goats and grew up idolising his older brother, Nikos. The villagers were known locally as “the heroes” explains Father Panayiotis, the local priest, not only for surviving the brutal conditions of the mountains, but for doing so without shoes.

“Vassilis may have been a thief, but never a criminal,” Panayiotis says. In these parts, bandits like Vassilis - who stole to feed his loved ones - are not always looked down upon.

When the snow grew too deep, Nikos would carry Vassilis on his shoulders three miles to the nearest school. There, the priest would thaw the frozen boy in front of the stove before any learning could begin.

In 1979, the family moved to the nearby town of Trikala. Nikos, 19, had left home to find work on the ships, and Vassilis, just 13, struggled to fill his brother’s shoes. His father, Leonidas Paleokostas, remembers:

"He stood on a production line at a cheese factory for two years. He was the quiet one, very introverted.”

Vassilis Paleokostas' father, Leonidas, 2014

Through the factory window Vassilis saw the Greek economy swelling and the rich getting ever richer, as the country moved closer to joining the European Union.

One afternoon, he walked out of the cheese factory and never returned. “Vassilis suffered his bosses’ capitalist exploitation, working as a wage slave in a factory,” says his friend, Georgiadis. “So he turned against those bosses.”

“As a mountain boy, he had no skills other than stealing to make his living,” says Father Panayiotis, with characteristic generosity towards his former pupil. Between 1979 and 1986, Vassilis and his older brother, Nikos - who didn’t spend long at sea - were allegedly responsible for 27 robberies, mostly the theft of video recorders.

Vassilis, new to electricity, became hooked on action movies, often staying up all night, gripped by Rocky’s fights, Schwarzenegger’s muscles, and Clint Eastwood’s escape from Alcatraz.

Around this time, the young robber met a kindred spirit, who would turn into a major influence. “Vassilis was just a petty thief,” says Dimitrios Gravanis, the town’s chief plainclothes policeman, “until he met Costas Samaras, a.k.a. The Artist.”

Older and more sophisticated than the Paleokostas boys, Samaras was an aspiring criminal mastermind who had studied at design school and would plan elaborate robberies in a sketchbook.

Together the Paleokostas brothers and the Artist graduated to robbing jewellery stores and banks.

Gravanis recalls their first heist as a trio:

"Vassilis climbed to the top of a hill and fired a rifle to get the cops’ attention. But they’d placed a huge industrial oven in front of their door.”

It took the cops vital minutes to break out of their own police station, and by the time they did the Artist and Nikos were already holding up the local jeweller.

"When we finally got to our cars, they had left spikes in the road that punctured our tyres. From that moment it became my ambition to see those boys in jail.”

The moustachioed detective was a thinker who preferred to solve crimes using his brain than by beating confessions from suspects. “I lost a lot of sleep over the Paleokostas brothers,” he recalls. “I would work long nights on the case, and when I got home at 07:30, my wife was just going to work.”

But Paleokostas was impossible to catch, for one reason - he spread his cash among the poor. Gravanis explains:

Dimitrios Gravanis, former Trikala detective, 2014

"He would say to a farmer, ‘Kill a pig for me to eat,’ and instead of paying 10 drachmas, he would leave 1,000.”

And so the 1980s flew by in a blur of bank raids and capers, with Vassilis distributing the proceeds to anyone who sheltered him. “Vassilis was just a kid, keen to impress his brother, Nikos, and always desperate to be a part of a real robbery,” says Gravanis.

Massive inflation in Greece saw the price of a beer quadruple between 1985 and 1992. The public grew more distrustful of government, and critical of corruption inside the state-run banks. This swelled the numbers of those prepared to cheer on the roguish Paleokostas brothers.

An era of cat and mouse between the cops and the robbers began.

In April 1990, Paleokostas was arrested while attempting to rescue his brother from prison in Larissa by driving a stolen tank through the wall. He was imprisoned, but not for long.

In January 1991, as US President George Bush began Operation Desert Storm with air strikes against Iraq, he was busy escaping from Chalkida jail, using bed sheets to climb over the wall. But despite the riches they accrued, Vassilis preferred to live like a peasant, only spending what he needed.

He scorned flashy cars, except for getaways. One of the few expensive possessions he treasured was a mysterious golden crucifix that swung from his neck. It would later become the key to at least one successful escape.

"If you steal something small you are a petty thief, but if you steal millions you are a gentleman of society.” Greek Proverb

The game changer

Scene of the 1992 bank raid in Kalambaka

In June 1992, the robbers planned a heist more daring than any they had carried out before, from the hills of Meteora, a rocky outcrop studded with monasteries overlooking the terracotta rooftops of Kalambaka.

The area, inhabited continuously for 50,000 years, has traditionally been a sanctuary for hermits, bandits and fugitives like Paleokostas and his gang.

It’s a small town - the bank is just 500 yards from the local police station - but the robbers seem to have enjoyed the idea of making the cops look foolish. As Nikos peered through his binoculars, the Artist sketched the town square on a scrap of paper.

Vassilis shouted “Listia!” - Greek for “stickup” - as the three men strolled into the bank dressed in suits and sunglasses and cradling automatic weapons.

As the Artist blockaded the cops’ path with a stolen truck, a cashier pressed the silent alarm before opening the safe at gunpoint.

The Greek economy was flush, its banks loaded with borrowed cash. Inside the safe was more than they could have expected. Much more. Vassilis praised God and began filling his duffel bag.

Then came the sirens. As the group roared away in a stolen Audi towards the mountains of their childhood, the police were hot on their tails.

Vassilis tossed handfuls of cash from the window. There was chaos in the streets as clouds of bills rained down on the townspeople. In just three minutes, 125 million drachmas, worth £360,000 at the time, had been stolen from under the nose of the authorities.

It remains the biggest robbery of cash from a bank in Greek history, and maybe the only one that was shared with passers-by.

“They stole a local guy’s Nissan to get around the mountains,” recalls Gravanis. But Paleokostas returned it to the owner - with 150,000 drachmas (£430) under the carpet. “Unbelievably, the car had been polished for him,” says the detective.

Village folk in the area still remember Paleokostas fondly. “He never said very much,” an elderly lady in a coffee shop recalls. “But he always had a mischievous smile.”

The gang’s activities prompted banks to increase security, and credit cards were beginning to replace cash, making the Kalambaka haul unlikely to be repeated. Maybe for this reason, Paleokostas gave up robbing banks for a while.

One story is that he started up his own cheese factory in Bulgaria, another that he opened some shops in the Netherlands. What we know for sure is that some time later he turned his hand to kidnapping rich industrialists and holding them to ransom.

A narrow street in Kalambaka

On Friday 15 December 1995 at 08:15, billionaire factory owner Alexander Haitoglou left his sprawling villa in Thessaloniki and began the short drive to his factory, where workers manufactured halva, a traditional Greek dessert made of crushed sesame seeds and honey.

Haitoglou’s car was forced off the road, and he was hustled into a high-powered Jeep by the Paleokostas brothers. Vassilis demanded more than 260 million drachma (worth £714,000 at the time, and some £1.2m in today's money) for his release. The tycoon later admitted:

"It was a well-thought-out kidnapping. My kidnappers’ behaviour was not bad at all. I was not scared for myself. Actually, I enjoyed some wide-ranging discussions with the kidnappers."

After his safe return, a newspaper headline screamed: THEY ATE A 260 MILLION HALVA!

The Greek police responded by placing an incredible bounty of 250 million drachmas on Paleokostas's head, calling the kidnappers “ruthless professionals, practising organised crime on a scale unprecedented in our country”.

But he reportedly maintained his Robin Hood routine, distributing some of the ransom among local farmers and the homeless. “He gave 100,000 drachmas to some orphan girls who needed to marry,” his father says.

In Greek villages in those days a woman couldn't get married without a dowry, and in some villages that remains true today. But, as usual, Paleokostas was handing out more cash than necessary, if his father’s claim is correct - 100,000 drachmas was a huge amount.

Paleokostas spent more than three years evading authorities, living as a fugitive high in the hills. Occasionally, in disguise, he would go for a joyride. Gravanis, the former detective, recalls:

"We finally caught Vassilis after he crashed his car. He was high, smoking something, and he caused an accident.”

Onlookers rushed to call an ambulance, but the robber pleaded:

"Don’t tell them who I am. I’m Vassilis Paleokostas!”

On 20 December 1999, the emergency call centre told cops:

"We’ve got a man here who must have a head injury - he thinks he’s the most wanted man in Greece.”

Life inside

Close up view of Korydallos Prison, 2014

Corfu prison resembles a villain’s lair from the movies, a bleak stone pile perched on a cliff high above the Ionian Sea.

The food was slop, the cold stone cells overcrowded, and as soon as he arrived, Vassilis Paleokostas was reminded of the shame of his barefoot upbringing.

“I need to organise shoes for my comrades,” he told a visiting preacher, who helped him find hundreds of pairs for the shoeless prisoners.

But his time in Corfu wasn’t all good deeds. In May 2003, prison guards found a detailed plan of the jail in his cell and immediately transferred him to the maximum-security Korydallos prison near Athens.

One of Europe’s most notorious jails, Korydallos is home to murderers, war criminals and terrorists.

A little more than six years into his 25-year sentence for kidnapping and bank robbery, Paleokostas was locked up with Alket Rizai, a desperate Albanian hitman, and the two became unlikely friends. “It took 20 days to plan our escape,” Rizai told me over the phone from a jail in the city of Patras.

“Vassilis was hell-bent on getting out,” says a man known as The Warden, a tough Greek prison boss with a formidable reputation:

"For instance, I found out the gold crucifix on his necklace could unscrew handcuffs. And one day I discovered a file hidden inside packets of his spaghetti.”

Albanian criminal Alket Rizai

Instead of confiscating the file, the Warden let Paleokostas saw away at his bars for months, and took pleasure in secretly checking on his progress.

“Put away your weapons,” he told his guards, when Paleokostas finally cut through. “I want to finish this like men.” When Paleokostas tiptoed around the corner of the yard, the Warden was waiting. They traded blows under the floodlights, until the prisoner was defeated. The Warden explains:

"He used poverty as an excuse to become a criminal. He started to believe this Robin Hood myth.”

By 4 June 2006, Paleokostas had already crossed off 2,358 days in his diary since the day he was jailed. At 18:15, near Athens, a commercial helicopter pilot named Karikis was boarding his white AS355N Eurocopter.

The former military pilot flew pleasure trips over Attica for the Greek rental firm, Airlift, but five minutes after take-off one of his two passengers pressed a handgun into his neck.

The sight-seeing trip was over, the man explained. He was Nikos Paleokostas, he said. And he was going to rescue his brother.

Within 10 minutes the chopper was in sight of Korydallos prison, and reducing its speed to 70 mph. “We considered hiring a pilot, but a scared pilot is better,” says Rizai - a scared pilot is prepared to take more risks.

The guards, assuming a prison authority was arriving for a spot inspection, straightened their uniforms. As the chopper touched down in the exercise yard outside Wing E, the downwash from its rotors created a thick brown dust storm.

The pilot screamed:

"They’ve got grenades! They’ve got explosives!”

Over the high-pitched roar of the turbine, a guard yelled: “Breakout! Breakout!” The escape was on.

Moments after Vassilis Paleokostas and Rizai ran to the chopper, it lifted off. The guards pointed their guns in the air but knew better than to shoot.

The prison is located on a residential street lined with orange trees, and children were kicking a ball against the prison walls. Rizai explains:

"The ultimate aim in a jailbreak is to leave nice and pretty, and to say, ‘Cheers’ and ‘Bravo’ as you leave!”

At Skisto, north of Athens, the helicopter touched down in a quiet cemetery. “We made it,” exclaimed Vassilis, embracing his brother.

He gave the panicked pilot a string of worry beads to calm his nerves and booted away the kickstand of a stolen motorcycle. Rizai did the same. With a turn of the wrist, two bikes roared to life, and Paleokostas and Rizai were on their way north, on the long road to freedom. They were still wearing their prison clothes.

On a Sunday evening, Trikala police station was always empty. But that night Dimitrios Gravanis was toiling away on a big case. When the station’s telex machine whirred to life, Gravanis tore off the report.

He looked out of his window, and laughed. The statement from the Ministry of Public Order read: “We believed we were very close to Nikos Paleokostas. But it seems that, actually, he was closer to us.”

Inspiration behind bars

It is a four-hour drive south from Trikala to Korydallos prison. Whizzing through the streets of Athens in 2014, the country’s economic problems are not visible to the eye.

In the centre, Syntagma Square is bustling with iPhone users and McFrappe drinkers. But at night, some Athenians are forced to burn wood for fuel, sending a poisonous smog high above the Parthenon.

The air inside Korydallos prison is even thicker, full of cigarette smoke, bleach and anxiety. The prisoners in the sick bay have been on hunger strike. Officials warn that Greece’s overstretched prisons could explode in violence at any time.

“It's a system that is collapsing,” admits Spyros Karakitsos, head of the Greek Federation of Prison Employees.

I'm told I am the first journalist to be allowed inside and I have been warned that I am an attractive hostage target.

The Warden’s office is deep inside the psychiatric ward of the jail, and the walls are painted a sickly yellow. Framed slogans in Greek read: “You don’t have to be mad to work here, but it helps.”

The Warden pulls in a “witness” for our interview. He introduces a smart gentleman with tidy salt-and-pepper hair, dressed in grey Nike tracksuit bottoms and a blue jacket, who plays with worry beads as we talk.

“I’ve had all the robbers of the Plain [of Attica] in here, even Costas Samaras, the Artist,” the Warden boasts. He sighs:

"The Artist was very clever. I remember once he made some wooden pistols in woodwork class, to try to escape. They were so real, you could load them!”

By my side, the gentleman stops clacking his worry beads and mumbles something to the warden. The Warden continues:

"Batteries. The Artist took the plastic covers off two batteries, and loaded them in the chambers. When poked in a guard’s face, they would look just like two bullets!”

The Warden explains that he was off-duty at the time of the helicopter escape, and that the Artist was most likely the inspiration behind the plot. He shared Paleokostas’s obsession with videos, collecting in his cell a complete encyclopedia of prison films from Escape to Victory to The Shawshank Redemption.

I ask about the Artist’s involvement in the planning of the helicopter plot, for it seems like something ripped straight from his sketchbook. The Warden leans back on his chair, laces his fingers behind his head, and looks very pleased with himself:

"You can ask him yourself. The Artist is sitting right next to you.”

By my side, Robin Hood’s partner in crime smiles politely and grants a rare interview.

When asked if Paleokostas really is a Robin Hood character, the Artist is unequivocal: “Yes, he and his brother would stop the car and hand robbery money to immigrants in the street. As we were driving the getaway car [from Kalambaka], we heard on the radio that we left 90 million behind!” he recalls. “Vassilis joked, ‘Shall we go back?’”

He speaks proudly of his former protege.

"I was his mentor. I taught him how to drive a car, ride a bike, shoot a gun... and rob a bank.”

“And what inspired your crime spree?”

“Movies.”

Before I am escorted out of the jail, the Artist shakes my hand and boasts of his forthcoming exhibition of paintings.

“Check me out on Facebook!” he says, cheerily.

On the run

After the prison escape in 2006, Alket Rizai and Nikos Paleokostas were quickly captured, but Vassilis vowed to continue his crime spree.

On 9 June 2008, he kidnapped George Mylonas, a billionaire aluminium magnate who had outraged the nation’s poor by claiming that “workers need to tighten their belts”.

But Mylonas said of his captors: “They were polite, and they treated me well.” Paleokostas even bought him a morning newspaper every day and cheerily asked him, “What’s going on, Georgi?” - before letting him drive home in a stolen BMW.

The reported ransom was 12 million euros.

George Mylonas's kidnapping, 2008

Eventually, Greek authorities traced Paleokostas back to the house where Mylonas had been held. There, on 2 August 2008, as the fugitive was pouring a cup of moonshine and settling down to watch a DVD, a SWAT team smashed through the door.

Police found a DVD copy of Ransom, and the Al Pacino movie Heat - about two veteran bank robbers evading the cops.

He had been on the run just 791 days when he was captured, and the police were jubilant.

“The relatively rapid capture of Vassilis Paleokostas, one of Greece's most notorious criminals, is a much needed boost to the morale and public image of the Greek police,” read an official wire sent from the US Consul in Thessaloniki to the Secretary of State in Washington, later made public by Wikileaks.

Malcolm Brabant, then the BBC’s Greece correspondent reported:

"For the first time in nearly two decades, the Greek police have obtained the last laugh in their long-running battle of wits with the notorious Paleokostas brothers.”

It is not known how Paleokostas spent those ransom millions, but at his pretrial hearing in Athens in January 2009, on new charges of kidnapping and robbery, a mob gathered outside the court.

Vassilis Paleokostas back in custody in 2008

Farmers, peasants and anarchists alike, all chanted:

"Death to pigs! Freedom to Paleokostas!”

A group of young women invaded the courtroom, acting like a “fan club” of “teenage girls close to their musical idol”, in the words of the tabloid weekly, Espresso.

Around the same time, Alket Rizai’s glamorous girlfriend, Soula Mitropia, also became a courtroom sensation.

As Rizai returned to court to be sentenced to 25 years, she theatrically sobbed and threw her arms around him. And when no-one was watching, she slipped a mysterious watch into his pocket.

The judge sent Paleokostas back to his old cell at Korydallos, along with Alket Rizai, to await his verdict. The bandit, defeated, told the court:

"I played and lost. The police are victorious.”

On the streets of Athens, anarchists mourned the end of his remarkable winning streak.

In Greek drama there is a device known as peripeteia, when the plot takes an abrupt turn, and a character’s circumstances suddenly change. Aristotle wrote that it was one of the most powerful moments of the play.

And what happened on 22 February 2009 would make Vassilis Paleokostas infamous around the world.

It would lead to the creation of a Facebook fan page with 50,000 members, and inspire a folk song:

"Vassilis is untouchable and in his methods of escape undefeatable Vassilis, you are uncatchable.”

Second flight

To the guards watching on security cameras, the morning looked like any other.

Paleokostas pumped a little iron in the prison gym, and jogged around the exercise yard, while Rizai picked winners on the Propo betting game. Rizai recalls:

"I’m the kind of person who has intuition. I feel things, when there’s something good that’s about to happen, I can feel it.”

Cartoon of Paleokostas's escape

At 15:00 Mitropia telephoned him on the mobile-phone wristwatch she had slipped into his pocket in court.

It was time.

The emergency siren at Korydallos prison wailed like a sad violin as the guards ordered the convicts in from the yard. It was 15:45 on the day before Paleokostas’s trial was due to start.

High above them, a guard on a lookout tower sensed the unmistakable hum of rotor blades. When a chopper descended over the third wing, the guard grabbed his automatic weapon and sounded the alarm.

This was not a drill. And this time they would shoot to kill.

The helicopter was a hijacked rental from the company Interjet, famous for promising its customers “clever escapes”. A glamorous “Mrs Alexandrova” had boarded the AS355N chopper at Athens’ airport. Pulling a hand grenade from her handbag, she told the pilot:

"We’re going to pick up the kids. Korydallos prison, or you die.”

Brandishing a machine gun as the helicopter hovered over the prison, she threw a rope ladder down to Rizai and Paleokostas. That woman, it’s alleged, was Mitropia.

A desperate guard lunged for the escaping inmates, but the Albanian pulled out a kebab skewer and warned him: “Step back or I’ll stick you!”

“Let’s go!” Paleokostas yelled, and the pilot pulled the lever for maximum power and rose into the air. Below them the prison sounded like a soccer crowd, convicts cheering and shouting.

But as soon as the helicopter door closed, three guards grabbed their MP5 submachine guns and opened fire, unleashing 30-round clips into the belly of the aircraft.

One bullet found the gas tank, and another severed a fuel line. Aviation fuel sprayed into the cockpit as the pilot whispered a prayer.

Police find the escape helicopter, 2009

Simultaneously, a woman in a nearby apartment used a video camera to record a Greek YouTube hit.

“Again, we made it,” exulted Paleokostas. “And even though they shot at us, we did not shoot anyone.” But the fuel needle was falling, forcing the helicopter to make an emergency landing.

Back in Trikala, Detective Gravanis read the news of a second escape on the police telex system. “I couldn’t help but laugh,” he says.

Television soap operas across Greece were interrupted with news of the escape. For the second time, a nation was gripped by the adventures of Vassilis Paleokostas.

Paleokostas, Rizai and Mitropia went on the run together.

One night, in a village near Koziakas, outside Trikala, a stranger knocked on the door of an impoverished family. The father had serious health problems, and was too poor to pay for treatment.

An envelope was tossed into the house containing 10,000 euros, and the man vanished into the night.

But the police were closing in. Paleokostas complained in a letter sent to the media:

"There were thousands of policemen wherever I turned my eye, not to mention the undercover ones.”

“Dozens of headhunters that prowl the mountains… armed to the teeth with survivor-style weaponry, and a menacing, numb look in their eyes.”

According to intelligence, the fugitive had developed “a weakness” for the Volkswagen Touareg for its off-road abilities, and stole them frequently, traversing highways and mountains with ease.

On his stereo, he liked to hear finger-picking Greek guitar music, as he outran the cops and continued his crime spree.

Hunt for a fugitive

For the past 20 years the CIA has operated a secret anti-terror squad in Athens. They are known as The Invisibles, a crack team of 15 Greek and American intelligence officers tasked with smoking out terrorists and “special case criminals”.

In 2009, Vassilis Paleokostas became their number one target.

From a fake business address near the five-star Divani Caravel Hotel in central Athens, the Invisibles helped the Greek police close the net, with American cash footing the bill. His days were surely numbered.

On 31 March 2009, at 14:03, there was a highly unusual bank robbery in Trikala, Paleokostas’s home town. Three robbers - two men and one woman - burst into the Alpha Bank. Armed with pistols and a short-barrelled shotgun, the robbers wore tights over their faces and motorcycle helmets as they yelled: "Robbery! All hands up!"

The unlikely trio held up seven employees and 15 customers, emptying the safe of 250,000 euros, before fleeing on three stolen motorbikes.

In a news report headlined “Robbery… with perfume!” one Greek newspaper reported that police were considering the robbers to be “the fugitive Vassilis Paleokostas, Alket Rizai and their female accomplice, a ‘blonde Lara Croft’.”

Shortly afterwards, Rizai and his girlfriend were arrested. Mitropia was convicted of hijacking the helicopter, and accused of being the mysterious blonde with the machine gun in the helicopter – though she still fiercely denies it was her.

Yet Paleokostas continues to evade the Invisibles. Epic manhunts have seen heavily armed cops scour the countryside with heat-seeking helicopters, flying over the mountains where Vassilis rustled cattle as a child, and where families of peasants still eke out an existence from the rocky soil.

Five years since his dramatic escape, Vassilis Paleokostas, now 48, remains on the run, and the bank heists persist.

Only once has his hiding place been compromised - when he tried to rent movies from a local video store.

On 14 April 2009 at 20:00, a team of 15 undercover police in three unmarked cars chased him along the coastal road of Alepohori in southern Greece.

Cornering the fugitive, they pointed their automatic weapons at him and prepared to shoot. “So I let it rip,” wrote Paleokostas in his open letter to the media:

"I sped down an alley to escape, and bullets were dancing inside my car’s cabin. These guys opened fire and shot more than 150 bullets in 15 seconds.”

"How do you find a fingerprint on a bomb that destroyed a man, and blew down walls?”

Since the financial crisis in 2010, and the riots, hardship and unemployment that have followed, the ranks of anarchists and militant anti-capitalists have swelled. Exarcheia is their stronghold, and pro-Paleokostas posters and graffiti on its walls emphasise the local support for his raids on the banks.

The bandit has become a symbol of a troubled time, like John Dillinger during America’s Great Depression, or Jesse James during the outbreak of the US Civil War in 1861.

Late last year, police believed they had Paleokostas cornered again inside a farm in the mountain regions of Kozani, some way north of Trikala.

After a full-scale search of the property, all that was found were banknotes with serial numbers matching his ransoms and bank robberies, suggesting that he is very much at large today, doling out gifts to farmers.

Rumours in the villages say Paleokostas has a foreign girlfriend, and a newborn baby boy. Everyone in Greece has a theory about where he lives today, and, like a Greek Elvis, there are regular “sightings”.

Many Greeks believe the outlaw is protected by monks, living in the mountain monasteries that sit like fairytale castles on those snow-capped peaks.

In October 2010, during the last robbery spree, a man resembling Paleokostas was spotted on surveillance cameras at a petrol station. If it was him, it would appear that he’d had plastic surgery.

Is this Vassilis Paleokostas?

Wigs and makeup found in one hideout suggest Vassilis could even transform himself into a woman, at a pinch.

The press have recently started calling him The Phantom, while locals just call him King of the Mountains.

The petrol station footage was shown to me in a cafe in Trikala by Dimitrios Gravanis, the retired detective. He told me:

"I will never stop looking for Vassilis. It’s not a matter of if he strikes again, it’s when.”