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

[MIKA27]

The Navy’s New Robot Looks and Swims Just Like a Shark

The American military does a lot of work in the field of biomimicry, stealing designs from nature for use in new technology. After all, if you’re going to design a robot, where better to draw inspiration than from billions of years of evolution? The latest result of these efforts is the GhostSwimmer: The Navy’s underwater drone designed to look and swim like a real fish, and a liability to spook the bejeezus out of any beach goer who’s familiar with Jaws.

The new gizmo, at five feet long and nearly 100 pounds, is about the size of an albacore tuna but looks more like a shark, at least from a distance. It’s part of an experiment to explore the possibilities of using biomimetic, unmanned, underwater vehicles, and the Navy announced it wrapped up testing of the design last week.

The robot uses its tail for propulsion and control, like a real fish. It can operate in water as shallow as 10 inches or dive down to 300 feet. It can be controlled remotely via a 500-foot tether, or swim independently, periodically returning to the surface to communicate. Complete with dorsal and pectoral fins, the robofish is stealthy too: It looks like a fish and moves like a fish, and, like other underwater vehicles, is difficult to spot even if you know to look for it.

Down the line, it could be used for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions, when it’s not assigned to more mundane tasks like inspecting the hulls of friendly ships. Animal lovers will be glad to hear that the GhostSwimmer could take the jobs of the bottlenose dolphins and California sea lions the Navy currently trains to spot underwater mines and recover equipment.

The GhostSwimmer joins the ranks of animal-based awesome/creepy robots like the “Cheetah” that can run at nearly 30 mph, the Stickybot that climbs like a gecko, and the cockroach-inspired iSprawl that can cover 7.5 feet per second. And it may get a baby brother: The Department of Homeland Security has been funding development of a similar, smaller robot called the BIOSwimmer.

True to military form, there’s a whole suite of acronyms to go along with the new toy: The UUV (unmanned underwater vehicle) has been in testing at the JEBLC-FS (Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story), and was developed by the CRIC (Chief of Naval Operations Rapid Innovation Cell) project, called Silent NEMO (actually, this one doesn’t seem to stand for anything). It was developed by the Advanced Systems Group at Boston Engineering, a Navy contractor that specializes in the development of robotics, unmanned systems and something called “special tactical equipment”. The company and Navy haven’t said much about when GhostSwimmer might be deployed or how much it would cost, but next time you’re at the beach and see a fin sticking out of the water, it might be a killer shark—or it might just be a Navy robot.

[MIKA27]

Preston student sleeps rough to repay homeless man Robbie's kindness

An art student from Lancashire has spent the night sleeping rough on the streets of Preston to raise money for a homeless man who came to her rescue.

The man, known only as Robbie, offered Dominique Harrison-Bentzen his last £3 for a taxi after she lost her bank card on a night out on 4 December.

The 22-year-old refused, but said she was so touched she started a campaign to raise money to help him get a flat.

She initially hoped to raise £500 but has since raised more than £20,000.

The University of Central Lancashire student asked people to each donate £3 and said she was "speechless" to have raised such a large amount, which she hopes "will change lives in Preston".

"I was never planning for this much money so I'm taking advice what to do," she told BBC Radio Lancashire. "But the priority is using £1,500 of it to help Robbie."

Miss Harrison-Bentzen spent the night on the city streets with people she had met through a social media page and said "friendships have been made".

"I couldn't ask for better people to do it with," she said.

"It's been difficult but there's not a chance I'd complain. It's opened my eyes to what the homeless go through every day."

[MIKA27]

Kazakhstan: Villagers use 'guard wolves' for protection

Villagers in Kazakhstan are increasingly turning to an unusual animal to guard their land - wolves, it's been reported.

"You can buy a wolf cub for just $500 (£320), they say, and hunters are adamant that if treated well the wild animal can be tamed," the KTK television channel reports. Nurseit Zhylkyshybay, from the south-eastern Almaty region, tells the channel he bought a wolf cub, Kurtka, from hunters three years ago, and the animal is perfectly happy wandering the yard of his house. "He's never muzzled, I rarely put him on a chain and do take him for regular walks around the village. Our family and neighbours aren't scared of him at all," Mr Zhylkyshybay insists. "If the wolf is well fed and cared for, he won't attack you, although he does eat a lot more than a dog."

But wolf expert Almas Zhaparov says the animals are "far too dangerous" to keep at home. "A wolf is like a ticking bomb, it can go off at any moment," he tells KTK. "If nothing is done, the fashion could spread to wealthy Kazakhs," who might try to keep wolves in the grounds of their houses, with possibly deadly consequences, he warns. Social media users are overwhelmingly apprehensive about the trend, although a few accuse the government of failing to cull wolves in the first place. "You can't blame villagers for using wolves to fend off wolves," says one person on the Nur news portal. Another user engages in a little black humour: "The sheep are in the pen, and the wolves have full bellies - but no one can find the shepherd."

Wolves might be playful, but one expert warns keeping them at home is potentially disastrous

[MIKA27]

Mystery Illness Puts Kazakhstan Villagers to Sleep for Days

Imagine living in a town where one out of six people sitting in a restaurant or theater suddenly fall asleep. Imagine these people cannot be woken up and stay in this sleep for up to six days. That’s what’s happening in Kalachi, Kazakhstan, where over 100 of the town’s 680 residents have fallen victim to a mysterious disease even the doctors are comparing to Washington Irving’s “Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”

Kalachi is a small village in northern Kazakhstan about 150 miles south of the Russian border. According to a recent documentary produced by RT (Russia Today), it has experienced at least four occurrences of this phenomenon over the past few years. Everyone in the village has a relative who has experienced it and many in Kalachi fear they will fall asleep and never wake up. There is a persistent rumor that an elderly man was buried alive before the epidemic was identified, an ironic tragedy in a town whose name comes from a word that means “white tomb.”

While adults seem to simply pass out suddenly and stay asleep for days, children also suffer from hallucinations, dizziness and memory loss. Doctors, virologists and radiologists have examined the victims for diseases that cause similar symptoms, but none has been isolated as the cause for what’s putting Kalachi to sleep. They’ve ruled out bacterial infections like encephalitis lethargica, parasitic infections and narcolepsy.

Tests performed on victims of the mysterious sleeping sickness have been extensive but in conclusive

Toxicologists hoped they could link the disease to gases from Krasnogorsk, a nearby nearly-abandoned Russian village that was a secret uranium mining town run directly by Moscow during the Soviet era. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), the tests were negative.

An abandoned uranium mine in Krasnogorsk

What is causing the mysterious sleeping sickness in Kalachi? One theory is that the occurrences seem to be linked to sudden rises in temperature, but that has not been substantiated. Another is mass hysteria, not a surprise with the economic and political situation in the area, but again unsubstantiated.

In the meantime, victims remember nothing when they wake up and those who stay awake still live in fear. Until a cause and cure is found, it’s too early for any Rip Van Winkle references.

[MIKA27]

Obama Realizes What 10 Presidents Didn’t: Isolating Cuba Doesn’t Work

After 18 months of secret talks, the president announces a diplomatic breakthrough that ends the last fight of the Cold War.

President Barack Obama made the dramatic announcement Wednesday that his administration is ending efforts to isolate Cuba that go back more than 50 years. While Congress will have to decide whether to end a formal economic embargo and a ban on casual tourism, senior administration officials said in a White House conference call that they would do everything within their power to end what Obama called a “failed policy.”

“Isolation has not worked,” said Obama from the White House.

Isolation has not helped to promote human rights in Cuba, it has not led to the downfall of the Castro government, and it is a policy carried out by the United States alone in the world. “I do not believe we can continue doing the same thing for five decades and expect a different result,” said Obama in a none too subtle allusion to a popular definition of insanity.

The initiative comes after 18 months of secret talks, with a major impetus provided by Pope Francis, who hosted the final discussions between Cuban and U.S. officials at the Vatican in the fall. (We should have known something was up when Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro shook hands at Nelson Mandela's funeral a year ago.)

On Tuesday, Obama and Raul Castro spoke on the telephone for the better part of an hour, going down the checklist of measures that had been agreed upon in the negotiations.

These included a swap of three Cuban spies imprisoned in the United States for the last 15 years in exchange for an unnamed “U.S. intelligence asset” who has spent the last two decades in Cuba’s prisons. The asset was said to have provided the vital information that led to the shutting down of three different Cuban spy operations in the United States, including one in the Defense Intelligence Agency.

The release of American contractor Alan Gross, imprisoned for the last five years, was presented by the administration as a humanitarian decision by Havana since he was not an intelligence agent—despite Cuban claims—and thus the U.S. government would not trade spies to gain his release. Clearly the liberation of Gross took place in the context of what might be called a “grand bargain.”

Other measures include the decision to reopen embassies, closed since 1961, and steps to remove Cuba from the State Department list of countries that support terrorism.

There will be a dramatic expansion of the kinds of licenses that will allow Americans to travel legally to Cuba, covering everything from journalism to humanitarian work and help to the private sector on the island. Even if “tourism” is still barred by law, it is difficult to imagine that anyone wanting to visit the island will not be able to find some category that allows that to happen. And visitors can bring up to $100 worth of Cuban cigars back to the U.S. with them.

To help with those purchases, U.S. financial institutions will be able to operate to some extent in Cuba, and, perhaps most importantly, U.S. credit cards and debit cards will start to function.

Obama is arguing that engagement is more likely to bring about change in Cuba than isolation ever did, and his new policy will try to target areas where change is needed and can be made, particularly with regard to human rights, private enterprise, and access to information. (In what may be a significant gesture, Cuba released 53 prisoners on a list provided by the Obama administration although, of course, this was presented as a sovereign decision by Havana.)

The Treasury and Commerce departments also intend to clear the way for the U.S. export to Cuba of goods that will help small private construction firms, entrepreneurs and small farmers. Telecommunications workers and investors clearly will find it easy to travel to Cuba, at least from the American side. A major part of the Obama initiative aims to get more and better Internet access for the Cuban people.

Not the least of the Obama administration’s motives is the sense that the American policy of isolating Cuba has, instead, isolated the United States. Not a single country in the world supported it, including and especially the other countries of the Americas, north and south.

Even in the darkest days of right-wing dictatorships in South America in the 1980s, even they thought it wiser to engage the Castro regime than to attack it so relentlessly and gratuitously that it had an excuse for all its own failings. More than 30 years ago, the Argentine ambassador to Havana, who served the generals in Buenos Aires, would tell visiting reporters, “the best way to make war on Castro is with peace.”

Obama couldn’t say that on Wednesday, of course.

[MIKA27]

How Crimea Crashed the Russian Economy

The crunch is coming for people on the street, and the Kremlin doesn’t have any good answers for them.

KAZAN, Russia—On Monday evening, shoppers at the Korston-Kazan Mall here in the capital of Tatarstan were mesmerized by news that the ruble has become just about the weakest currency in the world. At currency auctions, it traded at around 64.45 rubles to the dollar and 78.8 to the euro. Shoppers complained that was translating into almost instantaneous price hikes that have seen some goods go up by 20 to 50 percent in recent weeks. And things have gotten worse in the last 24 hours.

Does Moscow have a good way out of this crisis? Probably not.

People on fixed incomes and government pensions are the first to feel the pain. “Prices at my favorite Auchan hypermarket grow every day and my salary remains the same, so it means I grow poorer every day,” said bookkeeper Irina Smirnova as we talked at a checkout counter. She’d watched the numbers change: In the summer salmon was around 300 rubles per kilo at Auchan, now it is 600 rubles. Even local chickens were more expensive than in the summer, Smirnova and another woman at the counter complained. Just a few months ago, an average chicken cost 110 rubles per kilo and Monday it is 130 rubles. Tomorrow, who knows?

Those who want to reconstruct the Soviet Union not only outside of Russia’s present borders but also at home should realize that the major difference between those days and these is that, now, everything in Russia is tied to the values of Western currency, and inflation hits every pocket.

In a recent interview for Vedomosti newspaper, Vladimir Panyushin, an analyst at Sberbank CIB, said that the key element needed to “turn down the heat” would be currency interventions on the ruble. He was surprised that the central bank did not understand that. Then, on Tuesday afternoon, after the ruble had fallen again to a stunning 80 to the dollar, the head of the central bank, Elvira Nabiullina, made a statement: “We have to learn to live in a new zone and count more on our own sources of finance,” she said.

What?

Ordinary Russians should read Nabiullina’s statement as, “Get used to being at least twice as poor next year as you were before the annexation of Crimea,” says Vladimir Ryzhkov, a prominent Russian politician and professor at the National Research University Higher School of Economy. “Now Russia does not have enough dollars to pay back billions of corporate bank debts; the payment is due before the new year. In the coming year, prices will continue to grow: Most medicine, which is mostly imported, will grow twice as expensive, as well as all electronic equipment—fridges, iPhones, computers and so on,” Ryzhkov said.

Ryzhkov said that last March, before “The Center," as Russian authorities refer to President Vladimir Putin, decided to annex Crimea and support rebel movements in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, nobody in the Kremlin had a clear vision of the tough European Union and U.S. sanctions that could be imposed on the Russian economy as a result of the conflict. And nobody expected oil prices to plunge so quickly, either.

Earlier this year, it was well over $100 a barrel. Today, it’s lucky to hit $60. Russia depends on oil exports for almost 70 percent of its foreign-currency earnings and almost 50 percent of its annual budget.

Just last March, Russia was stable and rich, swimming in billions of oil dollars, but the Kremlin “wasted people’s oil cash on a useless war in Donbas,” the east of Ukraine, said Ryzhkov.

The fragile economy tied to oil prices now reacts like the needle on a polygraph, testing the truth, or not, of the Kremlin’s claims that everything will be fine.

In just a few hours on Tuesday, the dollar exchange rate collapsed from 64 to 80 rubles before climbing back to about 68. Moscow’s fancy boutiques closed down their doors, as managers were not sure what prices they should charge. Russia’s major gas company, Gazprom, employer of almost half a million people across the country, “started to think about reducing staff by 15-25 percent,” Interfax reported. Last time Gazprom reduced staff was during the crises of 2008.

The crisis of 2014-2015 looks like it’s going to be one to remember.

[MIKA27]

Prosecutors Have No Idea When 9/11 Mastermind’s Trial Will Start

Fourteen long years after the bombing of the Twin Towers, the legal proceedings for the men who allegedly plotted the attack drag on. And on. And on.

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE—Justice for the five men accused of conspiring to bring about the 9/11 attacks have been delayed another week by the cancelation of court proceedings—the latest road bump on a years-long process to bring the process to a conclusion.

This week’s setback is symbolic of a larger problem for families of 9/11 victims: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has acknowledged being the mastermind behind the 2001 attacks, still hasn’t been brought to trial. Instead, the military commission proceedings are bogged down in a pre-trial phase, as it has been for the past three years.

The military commission this week was to focus on the alleged FBI infiltration of one of the defense teams. But just before the proceedings were to start, a Department of Justice official asked for more time because he was apparently not prepared to argue the motion.

The proceedings were further set back by protests from some of the defendants, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, that they were being touched by female guards during cell extraction. The defendants argue that this is against their religion.

A year ago Gen. Mark Martins, the government prosecutor in the case, predicted that the trial would begin in January 2015. Just a month from that date, he now no longer believes that to be realistic, and will no longer estimate a timeline for the trial.

“We don’t have a date, and I’m not prepared to speculate,” Martins said. “Due process is not purely measured by time... following the law is a form of progress, and that’s what we’re doing, and that’s what we’re going to continue to do until the trial has reached its conclusion.”

The process of trying KSM and his alleged co-conspirators has been circuitous: After his capture in 2003, he was held and tortured by the CIA at overseas black sites, eventually arriving at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay in 2006. Then came an initial military commission process, after which the Obama administration attempted to transfer the 9/11 five for trial in New York City in 2009. Facing a political backlash, they reversed course in 2011 and announced that the military commission process would be restarted.

The recent release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s CIA “torture report” has led to questions about whether the 9/11 five’s trial process will be shortened or lengthened. KSM’s lawyer said it laid bare how much was left untold about his client’s story.

“I’m pleased that a lot more information than was available previously is now available, but also acutely aware about how much remains under wraps,” said David Nevin, the attorney for KSM.

Martins, the prosecutor, said he believes that the release of the Senate report will actually facilitate a faster trial process, telling reporters that its publication “surely accelerated the provision of specific material to the defense that would have otherwise occurred through the discovery process,” and made previously classified material available for public discussion.

The continuous delays have frustrated some families of 9/11 victims, some of whom believe that the whole process should be scrapped. The military commission’s trial phase has yet to start, and may not begin for years.

“The military commissions set up to handle the case of KSM [and the other four co-defendants] at Guantanamo has little precedent for handling such cases and should never have been the venue chosen,” said Rita Lasar, a member of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. Her brother perished in the North Tower of the World Trade Center in the 9/11 attacks. “The military commission should be abandoned and the five detainees should be tried in an Article 3 court, which our Constitution provides for right here in New York City, where most of the victims, including my brother, were killed.”

Gordon Haberman, whose daughter was killed on 9/11, said that while the proceedings appear to be “mired down,” he is ready to wait for the eventual outcome.

“While I also am frustrated by which seem to be interminable delays and wish I could hasten the proceedings forward, I realize that the defendants are guaranteed the right to a vigorous defense. This is the manner in which America conducts our system of justice,” Haberman said.

Nevin said that the delays have been in part caused by “preliminary skirmishing” over issues of discovery and detainee treatment. “Once we get to the point of being able to defend the case, then the thing can move forward,” he told the Beast.

The cancellation of this week’s proceedings also had a taxpayer cost. To facilitate the proceedings the government paid between $150,000 to $170,000 for a chartered flight between Andrews Air Force Base to Guantanamo Bay, a Pentagon spokesman said. Add to that the per diems paid for the 105 military commission personnel who attend the proceedings, which cost more than $16,000. This does not include the cost of housing press, NGOs and staff at Camp Justice, a number of expeditionary tents set up near the courtroom; nor the time and effort spent organizing the proceedings.

“I’m well aware of impatience and frustration. I’ve got to continue to do the job that I’m doing, and we will do it for as long as it takes,” said Martins, the government prosecutor. “There’s not a chance we’re going to lose interest in this, or this is going to go away until the law has been complied with.”

[MIKA27]

Cigar Dealers Light Up Over Cuba News

One of Cuba’s major exports is about to become a lot more popular.

In a move that could prove far more productive than secretly infiltrating Cuba’s underground hip-hop scene, President Obama announced on Wednesday a new era for U.S. and Cuban relations, that could include easing travel and banking restrictions as well as the possible lifting of the 50-year-old embargo.

The day also brings some historic cigar-related news.

American travelers will now be allowed to legally bring back $100 worth of tobacco and alcohol products for personal consumption, according to a senior administration official. (Perhaps the guards at the Guantanamo Bay detention facilities will finally be allowed to smoke cubans, too.)

http://youtu.be/Q7hZjNO3I-Q

Cuban cigars are world-renowned for their quality and craftsmanship, and Americans have loved this major Cuban export for decades. President John F. Kennedy ordered his press secretary to buy him as many H. Upmann Cuban cigars as he could before his administration’s total embargo was imposed. There’s been a Seinfeld episode about Kramer desperately hunting down Cuban cigars. Country singer Brad Paisley has a song about the cigars, and Jay Z was photographed chomping on a Cuban cigar during his and Beyoncé’s trip to the communist nation last year.

They’re so popular that in 2010, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency reported a dramatic spike in the number of Cuban cigars being illegally brought into the United States.

There are plenty of American businesses that have been waiting years for the embargo to lift, including Marcus Daniel Tobacconist in Naples, Fla., whose owner has been prepping his “Cuba Plan” in anticipation of such a policy shift.

There are plenty of American businesses that have been waiting years for the embargo to lift, including Marcus Daniel Tobacconist in Naples, Fla., whose owner has been prepping his “Cuba Plan” in anticipation of such a policy shift.

“I think I’m gonna send a box of Marcus Daniel A’s to both President Obama and President Castro for a job well done!” Marcus Daniel stated following Obama’s speech. (He was referring to his brand’s “presidential-size” cigars.) “A healing between the nations and the people is long overdue. From a humanitarian perspective, it’s hard for most people to wrap their heads around how hard life has been for Cubans.”

As for the U.S. government potentially lifting the embargo (it’s still in place pending congressional action), Daniel is keeping his fingers tightly crossed.

“I hope Congress gets busy quick,” he said. “It’ll be great for our economy, as well. Florida is right here! There’s a lot of work that needs to be done. Perhaps we’ll even be able to blend Cuban tobacco with Dominican tobacco. Or Nicaraguan tobacco.”

As you digest the news, here’s a documentary on the history of those famous Cuban cigars:

http://youtu.be/iLNW2s6XmlE

[polarbear]

How do you prove you've only got $100 worth of CCs?

Do you have to show receipts at customs?

[MIKA27]

DOVO SHAVETTE STRAIGHT RAZOR

Crafted from lightweight stainless steel, the Dovo Shavette Straight Razor gives you all the precision of a straight razor with all the convenience of a disposable. Thanks to a red plastic insert that holds one half of a platinum coated doubled edged blade, the Shavette never needs to be stropped or honed like a traditional straight razor, making it ideal for beginners or for those who don't want to take their daily razor on the road.

[MIKA27]

How We'd Feed Ourselves After The Apocalypse

What would we eat in the event of global catastrophe? Two researchers have come up with the answers and let’s just say that it involves plenty of bacterial slime and rats.

In a new book titled Feeding Everyone No Matter What, risk researchers have imagined eight scenarios where some calamity destroyed our ability to grow crops. The list includes sudden climate change, super-weeds, super-bacteria, super-pests, super-pathogens, super-volcano eruption, asteroid impact, and nuclear winter.

The authors of the book, Joshua Pearce at Michigan Technological University and David Denkenberger at the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute, were tired of people imagining apocalyptic scenarios without offering solutions for how we might plausibly feed ourselves after global devastation.

Too often futurists have simply wallowed in the apocalypse porn aspects of how many people might die or where we might live after a given disaster. But figuring out how we’d feed ourselves is obviously one of the most important elements of rebuilding society.

In the event of a super-volcano, asteroid impact or nuclear winter, the sun would be completely blocked out and it could be up to five years of darkness before we might start up agricultural systems again. A five-year supply of food would take up an enormous amount of space and cost about $US12,000 for a family of four, according to the researchers. So what will be our options?

“We came up with two primary classes of solutions,” Pearce said in a release. “We can convert existing fossil fuels to food by growing bacteria on top of it — then either eat the bacterial slime or feed it to rats and bugs and then eat them.”

Rats and bugs can also consume wood products, which would likely be plentiful in a disaster scenario. The researchers also included ideas about creating tea out of pine needles, which they insist would “provide a surprising amount of nutrition.”

If none of this sounds terribly delicious, their scenarios aren’t all bad. For instance, they imagine that we could still have things like soda and artificial meat products — food luxuries in a post-apocalyptic world.

“We could extract sugar from the bacterial slime and carbonate it for soda pop,” Pearce said. “We’d still have food scientists, too, who could make almost anything taste like bacon or tofurkey. It wouldn’t be so bad.”

The various thought experiments they pose actually leads one to wonder why we can’t properly feed every human on the planet today. The researchers insist that it’s technically feasible to feed everyone alive on the planet today, even without conventional agriculture.

“The end of the book poses questions that we need to look at quickly,” Pearce said. “We can feed everyone if we cooperate and do a little thinking ahead of time — not in the dark when everyone is screaming. Life could continue to go on normally. Just a little dimmer.”

Perhaps we could even put some of that cooperative effort and thinking into the food problems of today. Given the dire conditions so many people live in today, aliens visiting Earth would no doubt believe that some catastrophe had already hit.

You can watch video of researcher Joshua Pearce talking about the book below.

[MIKA27]

Qatar Pays Migrant Workers $1 An Hour To Be Fake Sports Fans

The life of most migrant workers in Qatar is bleak — so bleak, it’s a human rights violation. The latest report from Doha reveals a new twist in the sad story. When they’re not toiling away at building stadiums for the 2022 World Cup, many workers are being paid impossibly small wages to be fake sports fans. It doesn’t sound fun either.

Qatar’s ruling emir is obsessed with sports, and his people like to say they feel the same way. There’s obviously some sort of disconnect, though. As the nation invites more and more prestigious sporting events to its cities, its also having a hard time filling the stadiums so that the events appear successful. So what’s the natural thing to do? Pay the same migrant workers who are building the stadiums for the next big sporting event around $US1 an hour to sit in the stands and pretend to have fun.

An AP reporter recently rode a bus with African and Asian migrant workers from their dormitories in an industrial zone to a stadium, where they were paid to cheer at a volleyball game. He said the workers flocked to jump on the bus as it was still moving “like bees on honey.” Once at the stadium, the workers would “applaud to order, do the wave with no enthusiasm and even dress up in white robes and head-scarves as Qataris, to plump up ‘home’ crowds.” The volleyball league had no idea this was going on.

The funny thing is, there aren’t really any home crowds, and the Qataris who would normally go to these events are now shying away because of the migrant workers present. A government survey from January showed that the vast majority of Qataris didn’t attend any football games last year. Some two-thirds of that majority said “the spread of paid fans” was a “significant reason” not to attend.

The AP report is just the latest instalment of the ongoing saga of the newly ultra-wealthy country’s project to turn itself into a capital for sports and entertainment. The 2022 World Cup in Qatar has so far been marred by hundreds of worker deaths and condemned for how the survivors are forced to live. Most people would think that being paid to go cheer at a sporting event would be fun. But in this case, it just highlights how Qatar treats migrant workers as less-than-human.

[MIKA27]

GIFT GUIDE: THE 1%

You’re rich, they’re rich, holidays are a b**ch. When your stocking stuffers include diamonds and car keys, your other gifts have to match. Even if you aren’t in the 1%, it’s just fun to dream about getting these things. Hey, maybe if you ask Santa nicely and leave a s**t-ton of cookies you’ll have a shot.

Polite Table Tennis Co. Table

These aren’t those 2-in-1 ping pong tables that transform into an air hockey surface you find at Toys “R” Us, these are stunning tables for grown men. Handmade from fine wood and heavy steel, each is as much a showpiece as it is a legit game table. You need to contact the company for exact pricing, but the rustic tables start around $12k. $12,000+

Quadrofoil

For the eco-loving outdoorsman, the Quadrofoil would be a welcome plaything. It’s a zero emissions watercraft that can fly above waves to keep you dry. While it won’t ship until March, a picture should suffice for the time being since you just got them the coolest gift ever. $19,100

Titan Zeus 370” 4K TV

When a normal TV is not a good enough gift, the richest of the rich can turn to Zeus from Titan Screens. The world’s largest TV boasts stunning 4K, is built by hand, and is delivered in a custom Hummer. $1,600,000

Sennheiser HD 800 Headphones

When you want to give a pair of cans that outperform some Beats or flashy Urbanears, Sennhesier has you covered … for a price. The HD 800 headphones are hand-assembled in Germany with Sennheiser’s most advanced driver technology. They offer a natural listening experience with minimal resonance. Give the gift of brilliant audio. $1,500

24K Gold Extreme Mountain Bike

I can’t sit here and say I've ever want to take this thing on some trails, but I can tell you it’s the bike fit for a king. The Beverly Hills Edition mountain bike is handcrafted and overlaid with 24k gold. Wonderfully excessive and rather ugly in Gold. $495,000

Ulaelu Minimal Outdoor Kitchen

Forget a grill, this is an entire outdoor kitchen. The Ulaelu connects to your garden hose to provide a working sink, and couples that with a work area, a propane-powered cook station, and storage space. $4,650

Inheritance Collection Sofa

Furniture is an odd gift, but if you’ve got the cash and want to go that route, I can’t think of a more masculine sofa to give. The Inheritance Collection Sofa is constructed out of re-purposed WWII military fabric, smooth leather straps, steel, and custom webbing belts. It’s the opposite of the floral print one in your grandma’s house. $5,600

The Only Green – Mackenzie

You could get the golfer in your life a new club, boxes of range balls, or some new gloves, but none of those come close to the awesomeness of The Only Green. Handmade in the USA, The Only Green – Mackenzie can replicate almost any situation they could encounter on the course. With 16 break stations and up to 3 million different combos, it’s almost unfair to other golfers who can’t practice with it. $11,295

MB&F HM6 Space Pirate Watch

I guarantee they’ve never seen a watch like the HM6 before. The wildly original timepiece is composed of four capsules that surround one center power capsule, and it draws inspiration from a comic book spacecraft. It’s stunning, crazy, and perfect for the guy who already has a ton of Rolex watches. $230,000

Mr. Kennedy 24 Carat Gold Laces

Sure they already have an assistant to tie their laces for them, but those laces are garbage. For laces worthy of those Air Jordan 2 OG’s, get him these 24 Carat Gold Laces from Mr. Kennedy.$19,000

The Emperor 200 Computer Workstation

Want to do your work like you’re aboard a futuristic spaceship? The Emperor 200 is the workstation for you. Each is hand-built and features a touchscreen control center, air filtering system, light therapy, electric powered leather seat, LED screens, and some sci-fi style. $49,150

HP Sport Sub 2

That wealthy man on your list has probably been living far too long without his own submarine. Now, when buying a sub, you don’t want to go all Hunt For Red October on him, instead get something small and fun. Something like the HP Sport Sub 2. It won’t be delivered for a year, but you just bought them a 2-person sub, they can wait.$1,200,000

A Viking Ship

If they’re not interested in submerged water travel, consider getting them their own viking ship. Built by craftsmen in the ancient Nordic capital of Roskilde, these modern versions are inspired by the ships of yore. Since it’s built by the folks at The Viking Ship Museum, you can rest assured it’s going to be spot on, unlike all those fake viking ships out there. $41,000

[MIKA27]

THE SINGLE HAND WATCH INSPIRED BY SPORTS CAR TACHOMETERS

We honestly can’t think of anything that’s quite like the feeling you get when you push a precision engineering marvel on four wheels to red line. Riding with someone who does it professionally? The first beer with Dad? There’s nothing like dropping the hammer and finding out what your breaking point is–even if it comes before the car is ready to relent.

The people behind the Ferro Watch obviously understand the constant need to push the envelope, which is why they designed a watch inspired by the tachometer from a sports car. Each watch has a Ronda Swiss Quartz or Japanese Miyota Automatic movement, 316L stainless steel hardware, date indicator and genuine leather strap (brown or black).

Ferro uses a single red hand to display time (each small tick mark between hours represents 5 mins), and it pairs perfectly with European sports cars or public transportation. $102+ BUY

[MIKA27]

U.S. Should Make North Korea Pay for Sony Hack

Pyongyang has given the Obama administration no choice but to retaliate now by imposing sanctions or even an embargo.

The New York Times today reported that the American intelligence community has determined that the regime of Kim Jong-un was “centrally involved” in the unprecedented hacking campaign against Sony Pictures Entertainment. CNN reports that the Justice Department will announce, perhaps as early as tomorrow, that hackers working for North Korea were behind the attacks, apparently intended to stop the release of The Interview, the Seth Rogen-James Franco comedy about the assassination of the regime’s supremo.

Why would the White House delay an announcement? The administration, The Times reports, “was still debating whether to publicly accuse North Korea of what amounts to a cyberterrorism campaign.” The concern is that a public accusation would result in an escalation.

North Korea, however, will escalate no matter what. If the administration tries to avoid a confrontation, Pyongyang’s leaders will of course be emboldened. They undoubtedly are pleased that they were able to get Sony today to announce the indefinite delay of the opening of the film after theater chains, intimidated by yesterday’s threats of 9/11-type attacks, refused to show it.

Yet from Kim’s perspective, the regime has no choice but to continue the intimidation of Sony. Pyongyang, for instance, is much more concerned about the release of the film in other formats. Most North Koreans will never make it to a theater. They may, however, get to see DVDs. South Korean activists are already planning to loft them over the Demilitarized Zone in balloons.

Moreover, Pyongyang knows that it is only a matter of time before smugglers, motivated by nothing more than profit, will bring DVDs into the North across the Chinese border. For a regime that depends in large part on the image of invulnerability, the celluloid killing of its leader is itself a mortal threat.

Yet there is another reason why the U.S. must act now.

North Korea is not just about North Korea. Pyongyang hackers, according to numerous reports, used Chinese IP addresses for their attacks on Sony.

That should be no surprise because sources state that a North Korean cyber outfit, designated Unit 121, is based primarily in Shenyang, a city in northeast China. The unit is used to attack foreign networks, and either it or a sister organization was involved in the Sony hack. Moreover, some North Korean hackers were trained in Russia and China, according to some sources, and in 2012 Pyongyang and Tehran agreed to cooperate in cyberspace.

Moreover, for America there is a fundamental imperative to act. Washington cannot let others—whether in Pyongyang or Beijing or Moscow, or Tehran—decide what Americans read or watch.

[MIKA27]

Paramount Cancels Team America Screenings Because Everyone's A Coward

In the wake of Sony Pictures cancelling its release of The Interview, some theatres with actual balls opted to show Team America: World Police as a protest. No such luck. In a truly staggering act of cowardice, Paramount appears to be telling theatres to shut it all down. What the heck!

This insane cancellation ostensibly comes from the same insane security concerns Sony Pictures folded to when it cancelled The Interview. Namely, the threat of full-on terrorist attacks at theatres by the Guardians of Peace, a organisation that so far has shown prowess only in hacking Sony’s internal network and bragging about it anonymously on Pastebin.

Terrorist threats are no laughing matter, of course, but the Department of Homeland Security has found no credible threat, and evidence that the Guardians of Peace have any sort of manpower that could do anything within the boundaries of the United States (much less at thousands of locations simultaneously) is practically non-existent. This sort of panicked cowardice would be absurd if it wasn’t so damn sad.

We’ve reached out to the theatres involved to find out if Paramount is citing an additional, specific threat against Team America: World Police screenings, or if the company is simply just assuming that theatre-threatening boogeymen wouldn’t be huge fans of this film either. We’ve also reached out to Paramount, because what the hell.

Meanwhile, evidence is mounting that perhaps North Korea itself is behind the Sony hacks and that the U.S. might officially point the finger later today. Although that doesn’t lend much more credence to threats of terrorism, considering the North Korea is pretty well known for spouting empty nonsense and launching missiles that can barely make it off the launchpad. There’s nothing more embarrassing than bowing to that.

In the meantime, who’s up for some Red Dawn? (The original, not the remake of course! )

[MIKA27]

Rare World War I Propaganda Shows The Biomech Soldier Of 100 Years Ago

One hundred years ago, at the beginning of the 20th century, the first golden age of advertising met humanity’s deadliest conflict: the First World War. The emerging art of graphic design, aided by the invention of lithography and later chromolithography, was suddenly used for propaganda — and the results were terrific: a bold, optimistic, merry and extremely fictive vision of a gory war that killed millions.

The National Széchényi Library (OSZK) in Budapest, Hungary, has a huge and wonderfully rich international collection of paper ephemera from these bloodstained years. These propaganda posters, postcards, photographs were unseen since the end of the war, until now: A small part of OSZK’s collection was published recently in a book titled Picture the Great War, curated, written, and edited by the researchers of the OSZK: Anikó Katona and Anita Szarka.

What we see in these colourful images is the beautiful beginning of a new age of technology: machine guns, tanks, aeroplanes, poisonous gases, and a multitude of tools developed to kill. As the book says:

The new war situation brought posters to the limelight. This genre, after all, counted as the most modern and effective means of mass communication at the time, only later conceding that position to the radio, and then to television and the internet. Poster propaganda was born in the West Europe of the 1870s. It first flourished during the Art Nouveau period, at the turn of the last century. By the 1910s, it had also gained ground in Hungary as well as practically all other parts of the world. From the outset, posters were designed by creative artists, who saw the excellent opportunity it offered for publicity and earnings. The graphic artists working in the genre increasingly specialised; courses, societies, and periodicals were launched, many poster exhibitions took place. The posters newly appearing in the streets kept the public busy. By the early 1910s, politics had recognised the potential of the medium, which had formerly been a commercial tool in the first place. Left-wing groups would turn to posters from the beginning of the 20th century in order to gain publicity for their struggle for workers’ rights, inviting people to mass assemblies and demonstrations.

The poster art of World War I gave rise to radically new types within the genre. New themes were advertised: recruitment (in countries with voluntary military service), fund-raising in the form of war loans, standards concerning the way people lived (e.g. savings), or social solidarity in the form of various charity events. The manifold tasks all pointed to one ultimate aim: to sustain society’s support for the war. With the hostilities dragging on, this proved an ever greater challenge in all participant countries.

[...] They also represented phenomena concomitant with the war: everyday life on the front and in the hinterland — mostly in idyllic settings. Life on the battlefield was presented as an exciting, masculine adventure. Soldiers were depicted during pleasant and calm activities such as cooking, eating and drinking, coffee-time, reading, or social games. The depiction of armed clashes was much less usual.

As time was passing, the severe social problems caused by the war came more and more to the foreground. A greater number of posters advertised charity events and fund-raising for the benefit of widowed, orphaned, or disabled people, often depicting those suffering such afflictions. In the final years of the war, reflecting the common sentiment, a desire for peace would dominate the posters in all parts of the world. Doves, women waiting for their husbands to come home, and images of restarting work and development were among the advertisements that attempted to raise one last wave of enthusiasm.

The following set of images from the vaults of OSZK, republished here with permission, show a series of impressive artworks from the ruined streets of Europe — plus a few rare pieces from the United States as well.

Great Britain as a knight in shiny armour

The famous ‘Take Up the Sword of Justice’ poster from the United States. Created by Sir Bernard Partridge shortly after the sinking of the Lusitania.

Through Darkness to Light. Through Fighting to Triumph.

Peaceful French soldiers

Recruiting poster from England.

Eat less.

Enlist today if you don’t want to share the fate of Belgium

Save food for your fighting soldiers

The trench is such a peaceful place: resting Hungarian soldiers reading the newspaper, called ‘The Evening’

Meet the Hungarian biomechanical hussar. This is one of the most powerful propaganda posters ever: with prosthetic arm our disabled soldier can live a full life again

Exhibition of war photography

Exhibition of war planes at Budapest, Hungary

Half man, half robot

Captured British tank on exhibition

Propaganda poster by the United War Work Campaign

Weapons for Liberty, poster for the third liberty loan campaign by the boy scouts of America

The ships are coming — propaganda poster from the United States

Buy Bonds!

Cinematic scene from the war industry

[MIKA27]

A Tank Cut In Half Is A Pretty Damn Cool Thing

There’s never enough things cut in half. My favourite books when I was a kid were cutaway books. Everything in the world should be cut in half and put on display. Like this Leopard I tank, the democratic heir to the Panzer and Tiger tanks that made the Wehrmacht famous and the first line of defence against the Soviets.

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I Want To Live In This Cool Spaceship From Star Citizen

This is the Anvil Industries’ Carrack, a 123m ship and a maximum crew of five. It is not real, but it feels real because every detail in its interior has been designed as if it were a real vessel. It’s one of the ships fromChris Roberts’ Star Citizenpersistent alternative universe, where I’m sure I will get lost forever.

Roberts has enlisted people who are building these machines and world as if they were real things. People like Gurmukh Bhasin, a former architectural designer and the creator of the Carrack. The level of detail is impressive, and that is what will make Star Citizen feel like a real place, ready to be populated by people using Oculus VR gear.

Gurmukh Bhasin is a Los Angeles-based architectural designer who has been working since May 2014 as a 3D concept artist on Star Citizen for Cloud Imperium Games.

You can follow him on his website, Twitter, Behance and Facebook. You can buy this ship here.

[MIKA27]

Star Wars Themed Christmas Light Show Is So Excessive And So Amazing

So you know when you strung up three reels of Christmas lights and a flashing reindeer, and thought you’d won decorations for 2014? Forget it. Forget it all. A music teacher from California has lit up his entire property, added a 5m guitar, and set the entire thing to a Star Wars mashup.

The five-minute lightshow — which, by the way, would put most professional stage crews to shame with its precision and choreography — involves about 100,000 lights and 12,500 lighting channels, according to the creator. Revel in the magic, and just be glad you don’t live next door.

[MIKA27]

These Dreamers Are Actually Making Progress Building Elon’s Hyperloop

When Elon Musk unveiled his idea for the Hyperloop in August of 2013, no one seemed sure what the next step would be. The Tesla Motors and SpaceX CEO dropped a 57-page alpha white paper on us, noting he didn’t really have the time to build a revolutionary transit system that would shoot pods full of people around the country in above-ground tubes at 800 mph.

Fortunately for futurists and people who enjoy picking apart complicated plans, an El Segundo, California-based startup has taken Musk up on his challenge to develop and build the Hyperloop. JumpStartFund combines elements of crowdfunding and crowd-sourcing—bringing money and ideas in from all over the place—to take ambitious ideas and move them toward reality.

When Musk proposed his idea, JumpStartFund was fresh off its beta launch, and taking on the Hyperloop seemed like the perfect way to test the company’s approach (and drum up headlines), says CEO Dirk Ahlborn. So they reached out to SpaceX, proposed the project on their online platform, and created a subsidiary company to get to work: Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, Inc.

The incorporated entity has a fancy name and all, but it’s less a standard company than a group of about 100 engineers all over the country who spend their free time spitballing ideas in exchange for stock options. That said, this isn’t a Subreddit trying to solve the Boston Marathon bombing. These gals and guys applied for the right to work on the project (another 100 or so were rejected) and nearly all of them have day jobs at companies like Boeing, NASA, Yahoo!, Airbus, SpaceX, and Salesforce. They’re smart. And they’re organized.

The Hyperloop team isn’t tied to the San Francisco to Los Angeles route proposed by Elon Musk.

The team is split into working groups, based on their interests and skills, that cover various aspects of the massive project, including route planning, capsule design, and cost analysis. They work mostly over email, with weekly discussions of their progress. Hierarchy is minimal, but leaders have naturally emerged, says Ahlborn. And if a decision needs to be made, as CEO, he makes the call.

A lot of the work is being done by 25 UCLA students. The school’s SUPRASTUDIO design and architecture program partnered with JumpStartFund, and now the students are working on all the design solutions the new transit system would require.

Ahlborn doesn’t expect to have the technical feasibility study finished until mid-2015, but he decided to show off what his team has done so far to coincide with the midterm break of the design group at UCLA. So far, the team has made progress in three main areas: the capsules, the stations, and the route.

Here’s what we know so far about the Hyperloop JumpStartFund wants to build.

The Route

The group working on finding a suitable route used algorithms that account for things like existing buildings, roads, and geography, and optimize the path for speed and comfort. That means keeping the line as straight as possible. Like in a plane, high speeds alone don’t lead to nausea, but if you start turning, you feel the g-forces. The route won’t be completely smooth, Ahlborn says, but contrary to the claim of one transportation blogger, “I don’t think it’s a barf ride.”

Musk’s proposed Hyperloop route running from San Francisco to Los Angeles came under a lot of criticism: What about earthquakes? Right of way? Crossing the San Francisco Bay? How will you avoid the political struggles that have made the region’s in-development high-speed rail system something of a punch line? Ahlborn has the answer: Pick a different route. Los Angeles to Las Vegas is being considered, as are other parts of the US and the world. “We would love to see LA to San Francisco, but our primary goal is to build the Hyperloop.” Yes, there are political hurdles. But not everywhere. Not in Dubai.

The UCLA students working on potential routes imagine networks criss-crossing the country, as well as Europe and Asia. This is where things get fanciful: we’re at least 10 years away from a commercially viable Hyperloop, and the idea of a national network is hard to imagine. They tacked on the idea of a “Mini Hyperloop,” which would offer shorter routes into and around cities.

The team envisions a Hyperloop network that covers most of the nation

The Capsules

The team had to make a few changes to the capsules Musk proposed. The Tesla CEO suggested doors that would open upward, but Ahlborn says that’s hard to do, since the low-pressure environment of the tube requires fairly heavy doors. So the team decided on what it calls a “bubble strategy.” There’s the swanky capsule, the one with fancy doors and windows, that pulls into the station. It’s the “bubble.” Passengers get in, and that capsule enters an outer shell as it’s loaded into the tube. The outer shell is built to handle the ride, and has the air compressor and other needed bits.

Don’t expect the Hyperloop to end the struggle between the bourgeoisie and proletariat: in addition to capsules made for freight, there will be economy class, and a roomier business class.

The Hyperloop wouldn’t be free of class struggle: There will be a business class for those willing to pay more for extra space.

The Stations

As the UCLA students imagine it, a passenger would arrive at a station and drop her luggage off with a Kiva robot.

She would pass through security on what seems to be a moving sidewalk going under a metal detector, an idea that sounds tricky when you consider how often people in airports forget to take coins or various terrifying objects out of their pockets. But once through, she would be able to kill time in the lobby doing some shopping, grabbing a bite, using the bathroom, or renting a tablet for the trip. Then she heads to her platform, gets in her assigned seat, and is whisked away.

The Hyperloop would be made of two stacked tubes, in which the capsules travel in opposite directions. When a capsule reaches a station, the bubble slides out sideways and onto the platform, and the passengers unload. Then the capsule is moved to the opposite tube and ready to get going again.

What Remains to Be Done

So JumpStartFund and the UCLA students have made good progress, but there’s a lot to figure out before anyone gets to tackle the really fun parts like testing, permitting, and construction. Ahlborn says the questions of how to build the low-pressure tube and the pylons that support it have mostly been solved, and creating the capsules shouldn’t be too tricky. The hard part is moving the capsules within the tube, and seeing how fast they can go. To eliminate friction in the tube, Musk proposed using a compressor to create a pocket of air under the capsule. That’s the cheapest approach, Ahlborn says, but it has its drawbacks. His team is looking at the possibility of using magnetic levitation and other alternatives. “We want to find the best possible way to make this work.”

“I have almost no doubt that once we are finished, once we know how we are going to build and it makes economical sense, that we will get the funds,” Ahlborn says, and Musk’s cost estimate of $6-10 billion for a 400-mile stretch of Hyperloop is on point, based on the team’s work.

Considering the nonsense that’s getting venture capital these days, that’s not a crazy thing to say, though it will require unusually patient investors. Ahlborn expects to start building the first in a series of prototypes sometime in 2015. A final product “can be built within the decade,” Ahlborn says. “That’s for sure.”

At some point, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies will likely have to shift from this work-when-you-can-but-don’t-expect-money model to something a bit more conventional with, you know, employees. But for now, it’s a fitting approach: Bring in as many minds as possible to sort through the myriad questions an idea this ambitious presents. This is why Ahlborn’s excited about the Hyperloop: It’s a huge undertaking. That’s why people like Elon Musk, he says: The dude wants to die on Mars and he’s actually moving toward the awesome, if macabre, goal. “Other people work on their next app.”

[MIKA27]

Scientists Map Seaside Terrain at Titan’s North Pole

SAN FRANCISCO—Saturn’s moon Titan is a wet world, the only other place in the solar system that we know has flowing liquid on its surface. The colorful geomorphic map (above left) combines radar and topographic data of Titan’s north pole to show different features around a large sea called Ligeia Mare. The map, presented Dec. 15 here at the American Geophysical Union meeting, defines four different major regions according to colors: orange, dark green, and yellow for plains, pale green for small depressions, blue for seas, and pink for ridge and valley networks. Radar imagery of the same area is seen on the right.

Titan is a cold place, with surface temperatures averaging -300 degrees Fahrenheit. Its lakes and rivers and seas carry not water, which would be frozen hard as a rock on the surface, but liquid hydrocarbons like methane and ethane. Most of this liquid pools at the moon’s north pole, where enormous seas known as mare dominate the landscape. In contrast, the south pole is a relatively dry place, with a few small lakes and many giant basins, likely the remnants of ancient Titanean seas. Scientists think that long term cycles analogous to Earth’s Milankovitch cycles—where changes in our planet’s axial tilt have caused glaciers to advance and retreat—move large amounts of liquid from pole to pole roughly every 50,000 years.

Geologists like to know the features on a planet’s surface because it tells them something about its history and composition. Both poles show highland regions cut through with river channels that drain into wide basins. If you were standing at Titan’s poles, the view might look something like the U.S. Southwest, with rivers winding around steep-sided mesas and vast plains. At the north pole, there is evidence that catastrophic floods occurred when lakes broke their shorelines and spilled out into the plains. In the drier south pole, mountain ranges are more prevalent as well as long valley networks.

The data for this map comes from NASA’s Cassini mission, which has been flying around the ringed giant and its moons since 2004. During close flybys, Cassini shoots Titan with radar and analyzes the returning beams to figure out surface features. But radar data can’t tell researchers what the different terrains of Titan are made of. Water ice is likely to be the bulk of the material, which gets broken down into smaller particles that are the equivalent of earthly gravel and sand. But because scientists don’t know exactly how such materials erode and evaporate, much of Titan’s geologic history remains a mystery. Perhaps one day NASA will send a mission to the icy moon that can sample its surface and help identify its exact composition.

[MIKA27]

The Russians fighting a 'holy war' in Ukraine

Since the start of the conflict in eastern Ukraine eight months ago, the Kremlin has denied any direct involvement, including sending Russian troops. But there are Russian fighters on the ground who are proud to announce their presence - and to discuss their ideas of "holy war".

Even when the morning sun catches the gold domes of its Orthodox churches, the Ukrainian city of Donetsk, stronghold of the pro-Russian rebels, doesn't look much like Jerusalem. Trolley-buses trundle through the dirty snow, past belching chimneys and the slag-heaps from the coal-mines on the edge of town.

But through the smoke and grime, Pavel Rasta sees a sacred city - and he's fighting for it, Kalashnikov in hand, just like the Crusaders fought for the heart of Christendom centuries ago. He may be a financial manager - most recently working in a funeral parlour - who's never held a gun before in his life, but he sees himself as the modern version of a medieval knight, dedicated to chivalrous ideas of Christian purity and defending the defenceless.

And the defenceless, for him, are the citizens of eastern Ukraine, mainly Russian-speaking, who are under attack, as he sees it, by a ruthless Ukrainian government intent on wiping them out culturally, or even physically.

Pavel used Rasta as his name for blogging, before it became his nom de guerre

Pavel, from the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don - a tall man in his late 30s with a fashionably trimmed beard and a bookish air - is just one of hundreds, perhaps as many as 1,000, Russian volunteers fighting in Ukraine.

“What's happening here is a holy war of the Russian people for its own future, for its own ideals”

Pavel Rasta

The conflict around the self-proclaimed separatist republics of Donetsk and Luhansk has now dragged on for eight months - with at least 4,600 killed, even by the most conservative, UN, estimate. Despite Kremlin denials, evidence from intelligence sources, and Russian human rights groups, suggests thousands of regular Russian troops have also been fighting there, alongside a larger number of local rebels. But men like Pavel say they aren't there under orders, or for money, but only for an idea, the idea of restoring a Russian empire. It would be Orthodox, like the empire of the tsars, including Ukraine and Belarus.

"Why do I say Donetsk is Jerusalem? Because what's happening here is a holy war of the Russian people for its own future, for its own ideals, for its children and its great country that 25 years ago was divided into pieces," Pavel says.

We're sitting on his narrow, squeaky bed in a barracks in Donetsk, our conversation interrupted periodically by the boom of shelling and the crackle of gunfire. Like the other Russians here, he says he's paid for much of his equipment and travel arrangements himself. Some kit and food comes from donations channelled through Russian nationalist organisations, while their weapons - in this unit, mostly rifles - are from the rebel military authorities, originally captured from Ukrainian forces or supplied by Russia.

They're a mixed bunch: some are retired professional soldiers hardened by Russia's wars against the Chechen rebels, some former policemen - and possibly, secret service agents - who later went into business, some youngsters who've never even served in the army. And their cultural reference-points are bewilderingly eclectic. The image of Orthodox Crusaders sits uneasily with the emblem of the brigade they serve in - a skull-and-crossbones - and their motto: "The more enemies - the more honour."

Some are clearly driven partly by an existentialist quest to give meaning to their lives - it's no surprise to find Pavel's most recent reading is Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. But what seems to unite most of them is a belief that they're in Ukraine not to support a rebellion against the legitimate government there, but rather to defend Russia itself against sinister Western forces that want its total destruction.

"The Ukrainian authorities aren't responsible for starting this war," says a young volunteer from the outskirts of Moscow who wants to be known only by his military nickname Chernomor (Black Sea). "It's Britain, Europe and the West." He's a trained lawyer who served in the Interior Ministry forces, partly in Chechnya, and now he's left his new wife and baby son to fight, he says, for "freedom". That means freedom, in the first instance, for the Russian nation. Pavel is more apocalyptic. "Our efforts are saving the Russian state," he says. "Because if the war for Donetsk is lost, it will immediately cross the border and begin in Russia. Rostov, Moscow, Vladivostok will be in flames."

To many outsiders this looks like paranoia. But the idea that Russia - and the wider Orthodox, Slav world - are surrounded by steadily encroaching enemies has been a powerful current in Russian thought for at least 200 years. And the tradition of volunteers travelling to defend it also goes back a long way. In the late Nineteenth Century there were many real-life equivalents of Count Vronsky, the lover of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, who signs up after her suicide to protect fellow Slavs against the Turks in Serbia, and dies in the struggle. In the 1990s Russian volunteers - including some now fighting in Ukraine - took the same road, joining the Orthodox Serbs against the Catholic Croats and Bosnian Muslims in the Yugoslav wars.

Pavel Rasta on patrol with other members of his unit

How do Russia's rulers regard such volunteers? Certainly, there's a complex interplay between nationalist groups and the authorities. The nationalists share the Kremlin's distaste for Western liberal values and its love of strong central authority. But many are ultimately monarchists who dream of turning the clock back to before the 1917 revolution. "God, Tsar, Nation" is their slogan - and a president who was once an agent of the hated Communist secret police is distinctly second-best. Putin has borrowed some of their religious imagery: in his annual address to the Russian parliament, which I see him deliver on a fuzzy TV in Pavel's barracks, he too uses the Jerusalem comparison. But he's not talking about Donetsk, only about Crimea, annexed by Russia earlier this year. In this speech, he stresses Ukraine's right to determine its own path - unlike Pavel, who says simply that there should be no Ukrainian state.

So are the volunteers loose cannons who could potentially embarrass the Kremlin? Or are they simply useful tools of a policy that can be officially denied? In April a force led by Russian volunteers under the shadowy former intelligence agent Igor Strelkov - another monarchist - seized the strategic town of Slavyansk, north of Donetsk, effectively sparking the war. In recent interviews, Strelkov has said he takes full responsibility on himself. But he's now back in Moscow. And other Russian citizens who played a prominent role in the formation of the separatist republics have also now left Ukraine, at least partly it seems under pressure from Moscow. Their role there no longer suited the Kremlin's purpose.

Igor Strelkov (left) and Alexander Borodai (right) have both gone back to Russia - one served as defence minister, the other as prime minister of the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic

Moscow could easily - if it chose - prevent rank-and-file volunteers like Pavel travelling to Ukraine. But for now it chooses not to hinder them. It interferes neither with the nationalist websites that recruit volunteers, or with their paramilitary training camps - like one I visited on the outskirts of St Petersburg which trains them in the handling of firearms, survival techniques, battlefield first-aid and basic discipline. Perhaps, secretly, it even encourages such activities.

What's certainly true is that with their ideological zeal, the volunteers are playing their part in prolonging the war - and they believe it will rumble on for a long time. I ask Pavel, over supper, whether his friends don't think he's crazy - doesn't he ever feel like giving up and going home? "I will," he says with a grim smirk, "but only when the job's done." And that, in his fantasy, means fighting all the way to the westernmost boundaries of Ukraine - creating a new Russian empire.

[MIKA27]

'Ice pancakes' found floating on the River Dee

"Ice pancakes" the size of dinner plates have been found floating on the River Dee in Scotland.

The strange discovery was made by members of The River Dee Trust at a place called the Lummels Pool, at Birse, in Aberdeenshire.

River Dee Team biologist Jamie Urquhart said it was thought foam floating about on the water started to freeze and bump together, forming the discs.

The phenomenon can be found in rivers and in the open sea.

Mr Urquhart, who found and photographed the "pancakes", said: "What we think happened is this - foam floating about on the water started to freeze, probably at night.

"Bits of frozen foam got pushed around in the eddy, and in the ensuing collisions became roughly circular."

Mr Urquhart added: "The air temperature rising - being colder at night due to the clear-sky conditions but warmer in the day - means the discs may have grown at night, collecting new foam.

"Then during the day, when the discs softened in the sun, softening particularly around the edges, the collisions raised up the rims.

"The next night, further growth followed by a new rim the next day with a greater size."

BBC Scotland news website reader Nick Lindsay got in touch to say he had spotted the same "quite bizarre, but lovely features" on the River Brora in the Highlands five years ago.

[MIKA27]

Winners of the 2014 National Geographic Photo Contest

National Geographic Magazine just announce the winners of this year's photo contest. The Grand Prize Winner, Brian Yen, will receive $10,000 and a trip to National Geographic headquarters to participate in its annual photography seminar. Gathered below are the winning images from the People, Nature, and Places categories, as well as honorable mentions, with captions written by the individual photographers.

Grand Prize Winner. "A Node Glows in the Dark" In the last ten years, mobile data, smartphones and social networks have forever changed our existence. Although this woman stood at the center of a jam-packed train, the warm glow from her phone told the strangers around her that she wasn't really there. She managed to slip away from "here" for a short moment; she's a node flickering on the social web, roaming the Earth, free as a butterfly. Photographed in Hong Kong.

2 Honorable Mention, Nature. "Shoulder Creek" A wild short eared owl completes a shoulder check in case something was missed. Northern harriers were also hunting in the field and these raptors will often steal a kill from the owls. Photographed in Boundary Bay, BC, Canada.

3 Honorable Mention, People. "Tea Time in the Hut" Little discussion with a doll in a plastic box, not inherently beautiful. But with this slice of light, it looks like a bubble invented to dream in an imaginative world. Photographed in Paris.

4 Winner, Nature. "The Great Migration" Jump of the wildebeest at the Mara river. Photographed in the North Serengeti, Tanzania.

5 Honorable Mention, People. "Biltigiri" The chef of Ramnami people in Chhattisgarh, India. Ramnami tattoo the name of the lord "Ram" on their body. Their entire focus is on the name of Ram, the name of God that is most dear to them. The Ramnami Samaj is a sect of harijan (Untouchable) Ram. Formed in the 1890s, the sect has become a dominant force in the religious life of the area. The tattoo is the result of their devotion and also, a gift and an acknowledgement from Ram.

6 Honorable Mention, Places. "The Storm" During a photo session with my nephew, the storm came and I caught this beautiful moment. Photographed in Kocaeli, Turkey.

7 Honorable Mention, Nature. "Dragon" Ice art on a window in Tabasalu, Estonia.

8 Honorable Mention, People. "Children in the darkness" Disabled children living in Syria war. Photographed in Termanin, Syria.

9 Honorable Mention, Nature. "Muscle Power" This playful fight amongst two young sub-adult tigers was indeed a brilliant life time opportunity, that lasted exactly 4-5 seconds. The cubs were sitting in the grass as dusk approached when suddenly one of them sneaked up behind the other and what happened next is captured in this image. This playful fight amongst the siblings is what prepares them for their survival in the wild. The sheer power of the Tiger is beautifully captured in this image and portrays the sheer muscle power that these magnificent cats possess. May 5th, 2014, Bandhavgarh National Park, Madhya Pradesh, India.

10 Honorable Mention, Places. "Tokyo - Shinagawa Station" I was up at an ungodly hour to make it to the Tsukiji Fish Market, in Tokyo. With so many amazing things to see in the city, I had hardly slept, and managed to get off at the wrong station. Wave after wave of people kept coming through the station passageway. I spied a coffee shop with a vantage point and managed to snap a free shots, camera resting on the ledge. After the caffeine kicked in, I was ready to brave the river of people.

11 Honorable Mention, People. "Dead Sea Mudbathing" Seekers of eternal youth coat themselves in mineral-rich mud, at the Dead Sea in Israel.

12 Honorable Mention, Places. "Destroyed Homs" Birds fly over the destroyed houses in Khalidiya district in Homs, Syria. In the vast stillness of the destroyed city center of Homs, there are large areas where nothing moves. Then, suddenly, wind blows a ripped awning, or birds fly overhead

13 Honorable Mention, Nature. "Stag Deer Bellowing" Stag Deer Bellowing in Richmond Park, London.

14 Honorable Mention, People. "My brothers and I" Our road trip down to Miami traversed this outlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway. We rested on this ridge overlooking the mountains. Though we argued consistently throughout the journey, here we were reminded of our brotherhood.

15 Winner, Places. "Bathing in Budapest" The Thermal Spa in Budapest is one of the favorite activities of the Hungarian especially in winter. We were fortunate to gain special access to shoot in the Thermal Spa thanks to our tour guide, Gabor. I love how the mist caused by the great difference in temperature between the the hot spa water and the atmosphere. It makes the entire spa experience more surreal and mystical.

16 Honorable Mention, Nature. "Zebras and the rim of the Crater" Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania, is the world's largest inactive volcanic caldera. It is a collapsed volcano that harbors a range of African wildlife that live in relatively close proximity and competition of each other. Zebras are amongst the most common animals in the crater along with wildebeest, gazelles, hyenas, and lions. On a clear day, a 360 degree view of the crater rim can be seen whilst being inside.

17 Honorable Mention, People. "Waiting" He was waiting on the bed, lost in thoughts, while his wife was preparing the bread to be blessed for the orthodox Eucharist. Photographed in the village of Sarbi, Maramure (Romania).

18 Honorable Mention, Nature. On a windy day right after a Cyclone passed the far northern Great Barrier Reef I took some friends out to the reef. Never before I saw that many glass fish on this particular coral 'bommie' . Just when I set up my camera, this Napoleon Wrasse swam right through the school of fish building a living frame.

19 Honorable Mention, People. "Temper" A young girl throws a temper tantrum in a Bangkok shopping mall. June, 2014.