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

[MIKA27]

The Olympics Are Broken And Boston Can't Fix Them

Last week, the United States Olympic Committee chose Boston as tribute to bid for the 2024 Olympics. Many Bostonians were not super happy about it, and it’s easy to see why. The prospect of footing the bill for a $US4.5 billion party excites very few cities these days. Boston winning the games could be a major loss for the city — and it definitely won’t fix the bigger problem with the Olympics.

As Boston debates the value of its potential candidacy, the legacy of the games is shifting. Over the past two decades, the Olympics — once a concept that could excite whole cities — has become a byword for an elaborate urban racket that can bankrupt cities and leave behind vast, decaying pieces of specialised infrastructure that spur little of the dreamy development that traditional thinking on mega-sporting events has always promised.

With the 2024 games still far off, it’s tough to say exactly how well Boston would deal. It has a wealth of existing venues, from Harvard Stadium to Gillette home field, that will help. And Mayor Marty Walsh has
assured the city that “I will never leave Boston with a large price tag of an unpaid debt,” a promise he says he’ll keep by privately financing the majority of the $US4.5 billion budget and using insurance as a failsafe. But there’s a major caveat to his claim: The fact that, as the Chicago Tribune pointed out, host cities are contractually required by the IOC to assume “unlimited financial liability” for the cost of the games — no matter what.

“Massachusetts residents really don’t like taxation without representation,” says Victor Matheson, a professor at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, who specialises in the economics of mega-events like the Olympics and World Cup.

When I spoke to Matheson, he noted that most of Boston’s existing professional sports venues were privately financed, which sets a good precedent. At the same time, he added, “if either Boston is now expected to come up with millions of dollars of general infrastructure improvements, or to be the kind of backstop for cost over runs, then all of a sudden you’re talking about Boston citizens being expected to pay the IOC’s bills.”

And being stuck with a bill they didn’t vote on, historically, has not pleased Bostonians.

Mayor Marty Walsh

Boston’s bid committee plans to stay in the black by using existing venues sprinkled throughout its many college and university campuses. But it will still be on the hook for two extremely expensive pieces of infrastructure: A stadium and an Olympic swimming venue. The city has said it plans to build a “temporary” stadium, one that can be disassembled and moved or downsized after the games are gone, “sustainably.”

But even that idea holds hidden costs. “It can easily be the case that building a temporary facility can be every bit as expensive as building it in the first place,” says Matheson. “Conversion can also be horrifically expensive.” Converting London’s former Olympic stadium into a home venue for West Ham, for example, has been an insanely slow and expensive process.

Boston’s plan to build a temporary stadium that can be taken apart and repurposed provides zero guarantee that it would actually be cheaper — it’s more like lip service to attractive ideas like sustainability and adaptive reuse.

The Authoritarian Games

It feels strange to call this the good news, but it is: Boston’s chances of winning the bid are probably slim for a number of reasons, including the fact that it’s wouldn’t be nearly as lucrative for the IOC versus other locations due to an American law that allows the US Olympic Committee to retain licensing rights over the Olympic name.

We’ll have to wait to see if the IOC is willing to forgo that revenue to bring the Olympics back to the US, but they have reason to consider it. Beyond America, more and more, countries are reassessing the value of hosting mega-events. And a new, troubling pattern is emerging.

Migrant workers near a hotel under construction in Zhangjiakou, which would be the site for Nordic events if Beijing hosts the 2022 Olympics.

“The IOC is terrified by what has gone on with the winter Olympics,” says Matheson, referring to the $US51 billion price tag of Sochi, which was more than the cost of every other winter Olympics in history combined. After the Sochi debacle, embarrassing news that every single potential host city for the 2022 Winter Olympics had dropped out of the running, mostly after the public had voted against the cost, with the exception of two non-democratic bidders: China and Kazakhstan.

Of course, Boston has infrastructure and existing venues; its estimated budget, while likely unrealistically low, will never boom anywhere near Sochi’s outrageous budget, most of which was probably stolen or lost to fraud. But $US4.5 billion is still a huge sum for any city, especially a democratically-governed one. Which is why so many cities have dropped out of the running after public votes, leaving dictatorships as the most viable candidates.

“It’s easy for China’s leaders to spend the money, and it’s easy for Kazakhstan to spend the money,” Matheson adds. “It’s increasingly difficult to get regular taxpayers who have a say to put out that sort of money.”

Migrant workers in Qatar

The Olympics and other mega-events are shifting towards becoming the realm of dictatorships that are willing to put up the money — and labour — to host them, far from the democratic ideals of the original Olympics. And the IOC is beginning to panic. “I think they’re terrified that you could be in a situation where the only countries you can host a big event are dictatorships and autocratic governments,” says Matheson.

So in December, the IOC announced a huge set of new rules designed to supposedly decrease the cost of bidding to host the games, by rewarding cities with sustainable bids and “green” proposals. The new regulations seem like a step in the right direction, but Matheson is careful to point out that the IOC still hasn’t actually put its money where its mouth is. To prove that it’s serious about fixing its broken system, he says, the IOC simply has to pick an austere bid rather than a pricey one. “All you need is a Barcelona to bid again, or an LA to bid again, and say ‘hey, we’re gonna use the Rose Bowl and the Coliseum. They will be 100 years old by the time we use them, but they’re good enough.’”

When the IOC picks a bid like that, it will show it’s serious about stopping the Olympic’s slow slide into the arms of authoritarian governments with unlimited budgets. But it hasn’t.

Meanwhile, by picking Boston as the U.S. bidder, the U.S. Olympic Committee has chosen a fairly rational plan that relies, in large part, on existing infrastructure. While LA probably would have been even more austere, Boston’s pitch relies on the fact that it has the infrastructure — who knew the Big Dig would ever be a selling point? — and the space to host the games without pulling a Sochi. Whether the IOC can identify the sense in that remains to be seen.

Can The Olympics Be Fixed?

The debate over the absurdity of the modern Olympics — and the World Cup, too — reached a boiling point over the last year: Sochi’s outrageous cost. Tokyo’s ongoing public outcry against a massive and unnecessary new Olympic stadium. Qatar’s appalling human rights abuses against the migrant workers building its many new stadiums.

Everything fantastic about the games — and there is a lot fantastic about them — has been overshadowed by the economic sham being sold to cities and citizens and workers around the world. And so some critics are arguing it’s time for a great culling; a total transformation of the way the Olympics are hosted.

In 2013, a public policy professor named John Rennie Short proposed that the IOC buy and transform an island into a permanent seat for the Olympics. “The poor get screwed to host the Olympic games, because they often get displaced,” Short told Nate Berg in Citylab. “Up to half a million people were displaced for the Beijing Olympics. Why do we keep doing that when we could find a place that doesn’t require any displacement?” Writing in Salon last year, Alex Pareene made a similar suggestion: “It makes absolutely no sense to build brand-new Olympic sporting venues in completely different places every four years,” he wrote. “Let’s just pick two host countries, have them build permanent venues, and let them host all the Olympics.”

Matheson brings up another alternative: Doubling up on hosting duties. So, if Boston won the right to host the 2024 summer games, it would also host the 2028 summer games. It would be a way to give cities “two bites of the apple,” he says, a double helping of the very fleeting economic development spurred by one three-week event. Still other critics argue that a small group of cities, already outfitted to host the games, should be on a rotating schedule.

But these are armchair theories — no one can fix the broken Olympics except the IOC. And the IOC is a hugely powerful corporation whose profit margins are increasing every year thanks to lucrative licensing and broadcast deals. It’s a very health business hidden behind a non-profit label that, ridiculously, is predicated on bringing “development” and promoting the Olympic spirit in a new city every two years while often wreaking havoc upon them. Until that business model stops being profitable, all of these arguments are just bad press.

For now, all we can hope for is that the IOC will pass over Boston for 2024 — or that, if it does get picked, the city will stand up to the demands of the committee. At the very least, it’s got a great history of telling empire to f**k off.

[MIKA27]

Artist Messes With Street Signs, Ticks Off Japanese Cops

For the past few years, French artist Clet Abraham has been putting up removable stickers on street signs through Europe. Since late last year, he’s been in Japan. And now, he’s allegedly in trouble with the law.

Abraham puts up his stickers during the night, creating street art that surprises people during the day. Some people think his work is cute. Others don’t. When asked a few years back by Flo’n The Go whether or not the stickers were illegal, he replied, “Yes, they are, but they don’t compromise the traffic sign’s function.”

Today, Japan’s FNN News is reporting that the French artist has admitted to putting up stickers in Osaka and Kyoto starting late last year at over 90 locations. The police are now investigating whether or not his actions are in violation of Japanese road traffic laws.

This wouldn’t be a first. Apparently, he’s also been fined in Europe for his street art.

[MIKA27]

Intel unveils button-sized Curie module to power future wearables

Last week, Intel unveiled Curie, a low-powered module no bigger than a button, as part of its vision to lead in the wearables field. Company CEO Brian Krzanich announced the module, which will be built on a tiny new chip called the Quark SE, during his keynote at CES in Las Vegas -- a year on from announcing the Intel Edison platform.

The module incorporates the low-power 32-bit Quark microcontroller, 384kB of flash memory, motion sensors, Bluetooth LE and battery-charging capabilities in order to power the very smallest of devices. Intel is hoping Curie will prove the flexible solution designers need to create wearables such as rings, pendants, bracelets, bags, fitness trackers and even buttons. It has been created with always-on applications in mind, so will be suitable for devices that relay notifications or constantly track a wearer's activity.

"You could think of it maybe as Edison for wearables. So whereas Edison really itself is targeted to a wide range of makers, this is really targeted at wearable applications," Intel VP and devices general manager Mike Bell told WIRED.co.uk in a briefing ahead of today's keynote.

Intel is keen to help developers bring products to market as quickly as possible and so will be providing a real-time, open-source software solution called Viper designed to provide people with the tools they will need to take advantage of the platform. "For this wearables market to take off, it's not just going to happen, we have really help push it, we have to make it easy," said Bell.

Intel believes that predictions there will be 50 billion wearable devices by 2020 will not happen without platforms like Curie. "That's not going to happen unless its approachable for people to build those devices," says Bell.

Last year Intel ran the Make it Wearable competition, challenging inventors to create wearable devices based on the Intel Edison platform. Bell says that the competition, set to run again in 2015, will take advantage of the new Curie module and Quark SE chip.

"I'm certainly planning that this will be available to the people this year to use in their products, because it really is perfect for wearables. What they did this year with Edison was phenomenal, but this year it will be even better because it's that much smaller and more power efficient."

Speaking of power efficiency, Curie will be able to run with a battery the size of a coin, but ultimately battery size and life is still the thing Bell believes is really holding wearables back. "The chip isn't the issue at this point," he says. "We need to find out how to break through with batteries, but I think some of that stuff's coming."

[MIKA27]

NEW DETAILS ON ASH vs EVIL DEAD SERIES:

A few new details have surfaced regarding the upcoming Sam Raimi andBruce Campbell horror series Ash Vs. Evil Dead, which fans are all pretty freakin' excited about! The episodes will be half an hour long, and in an interview with IGN, Starz head Chris Albrecht talked about the upcoming series.

“The half hour idea was their idea. And I can tell you it’s a chock-full half hour.”

Well, it's good to know that those 30 minutes are going to be packed full of all kinds of great stuff. When asked where the series will shoot, he said,

“We are shooting it in New Zealand. We’ll have to import some cars that drive left hand and import some signs because it kind of takes place in classic American towns or cities.”

I'm curious about the show taking place in classic American towns and cities. It sounds like there's going to be some traveling going on. In a previousinterview with EW, Campbell used The Walking Dead as a reference point and explained how it will be different.

"It’s about as big of a counterpart to Walking Dead as you could program because Walking Dead is unrelentingly grim and hugely popular. We’re going to give people a little of the old fashioned slapstick: horror and comedy. The beauty of Starz is there’s no content issues. Let’s face it: fans want the carnage and the mayhem. So we intend to give them quite the explosion of viscera. Most of it directed at me, unfortunately."

Campbell also talked about some of the other, younger characters that will be joining Ash on his adventure against the deadites, They haven't been cast yet, but he explained,

"One is a male-bonding situation, and the other is a father-figure deal, since Ash could have a daughter the same age as this character. Hopefully we’ll pull Ash out of his loner-veteran mode and get him back into being a human being again."

There has been speculation that the daughter could be the character Mia, who was played by Jane Levy in the Evil Dead remake. There's no confirmation of that, but I think it would be cool if that ended up being the case. As for when we will see the show premiere, Albrecht said,

“I think most likely it will be fourth quarter [of 2015]. End of third quarter, fourth quarter, something like that. We’ve got a lot of shows this year. We’re very, very excited.”

Groovy.

[MIKA27]

Danielle Fong wants to reinvent the power grid -- using air

Danielle Fong wants to reinvent the power grid -- using air. "We are burning through our carbon budget and temperatures are rising," says the 27-year-old founder of Berkeley-based LightSail Energy. Her solution -- power stored in compressed air tanks.

"Air is limitless, inexpensive and lasts a long time compared to batteries," says Fong. Such a device could be plugged into solar and wind farms, where it would hoard and dispatch energy when demand is higher. "The problem with renewables is their unreliability," she says. "They fluctuate with the weather and time of day." LightSail aims to smooth that out -- over the next two years, LightSail's Regenerative Air Energy Storage (RAES) units will be deployed at a half-megawatt scale in California, Hawaii, Canada and the Caribbean, before 20MW units are rolled out in 2017.

Fong, who went to Dalhousie University in Novia Scotia at the age of 12, had worked on nuclear fusion research during her PhD at Princeton, but felt it was moving too slowly. "Where is our energy going to come from? This is an enormously urgent challenge, and there are huge, missing technologies," she says. "It seemed all the money was in Silicon Valley, so I dropped out and moved there to pitch my idea," she says. It worked: so far she has raised $58 million (£36m) from investors including Vinod Khosla, Total Energy, Bill Gates and Peter Thiel.

The process uses electricity to mechanically compress air and store it in a tank. To get energy back, expand the compressed air, which drives a generator to produce AC power. "When you compress air, it gets so hot that you could not store it -- it's 2,000°C at 200 atmospheres," Fong explains. "So we cool it during compression by spraying water into the air and capturing the heat." The warm water is sprayed back in when the air is being expanded. This doubles the current efficiency of this process. "The energy space is a trillion-dollar industry in the making," she says. "So if you think you have an idea for an energy technology, please build it. It could really transform the world."

[MIKA27]

The New Cold War, And Australia's Role In It

Remember the Cold War? We basically spent half a century on the precipice of worldwide nuclear annihilation. Well, like it or not, the Cold War is back. In fact, it never really ended.

Russia is invading old Soviet countries. China has put a robot on the moon. North Korea is the prime suspect in an enormous theft of documents over an American movie that ridicules its leader. Space Espionage! Military provocation! It’s like the world’s most terrifying episode of That 70s Show.

That’s not news; the New Cold War even has its own Wikipedia page now. People are hosting international conferences with names “The Second Cold War: Heating Up?” But what’s interesting to me is how many parallels exist between the first Cold War and the one we’re in now.

In reality, that’s largely because the first Cold War never actually ended. It might have adopted some shiny new technologies, different borders, and a slightly different cast, but it’s definitely a show we’ve seen in some version before.

Below, a look at some of the similarities to Cold War I, and what that might mean for Cold War II. Best case scenario: We don’t blow up the entire world this time, either.

South Korean army K-55 self-propelled artillery vehicles during a military exercise on Sunday

We’re still fighting proxy wars (at least in words)

The common wisdom about the Cold War is that the United States and the Soviet Union never actually attacked each other. But that’s not exactly true. The first Cold War was all about proxy wars. Sometimes very hot proxy wars, like the ones in Korea and Vietnam. There were also countless smaller proxy wars in Hungary, the Philippines, Cuba and Ghana, just to name a few.

The US hasn’t officially gone after Russian interests directly, aside from some sanctions that were imposed after Putin took Crimea. But our allies certainly are making their displeasure known publicly. For example, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper told Putin at the G20: “I guess I’ll shake your hand, but I have only one thing to say to you: you need to get out of Ukraine.”

The new battle lines are being drawn, with countries like China, Syria, North Korea, and Iran aligning with Russia. Meanwhile countries like Australia, Japan, Germany, South Korea, Canada and the UK have aligned with the United States.

There’s been a real human cost as well; downing of a Malaysia Airlines jet over Ukraine this past July killed 298 people, showing how messy the New Cold War could become if things get hot again. And just last month Russia conducted a surprise military readiness drill, mobilising about 9,000 troops and over 600 vehicles. These weren’t some run of the mill exercises either. They came baring nukes.

South Korea has also ramped up its military strength in preparation, purchasing RQ-4 Global Hawk surveillance drones for $US657 million in December. And today the US and South Koreans are conducting anti-submarine warfare drills off South Korea’s coast.

So no, our New Cold War hasn’t yet turned very hot. But that could change pretty quickly. While the US and Russia will continue to throw their weight around with bluster, the best barometer for Cold War preparedness might be to watch the allies arm up.

Australian satellite images released by the Department of Defence on March 16, 2014 show suspected debris from the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner

Sputnik 2.0: Satellites, mysterious and otherwise

Remember that aeroplane that vanished without a trace back in March, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370? Nine months later, we still haven’t found the plane. But it did prove one thing about the New Cold Warriors: Its participants have plenty of all-seeing eyes in the sky.

It may seem incidental, but the MH370 tragedy gave New Cold War states on both sides a unique opportunity to show off a bit. For over two weeks, China repeatedly released images of debris in the ocean that turned out to be nothing. Australia followed suit, releasing satellite images of suspected plane debris way before it had been verified as anything related to the crash.

They never found that plane, but both countries (real economic up and comers in the New Cold War) did prove that they possessed sophisticated technology that could see random **** from space.

Satellites are as vital as ever. And even consumer-focused technologies that depend on satellites, like GPS and earth mapping software, have their origins in American intelligence and defence agencies. Google Earth, for example, was funded by the CIA from its earliest days.

Satellites were also an absolutely crucial element of the first Cold War. Back in 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, unofficially kicking off the second decade of the Cold War with a tiny beeping satellite. Americans were terrified that this new capability meant that the Soviets could soon see, hear, and bomb anywhere in US territory. Nowhere was safe. And instilling that feeling in the enemy was precisely the point of the first Cold War space race.

That’s not so different from mysterious Russian satellites and strange American space planes landing after two years in orbit, which keep that heightened tension alive. We are watching, and we are being watched.

A mock space shuttle is displayed in the lobby of the Mangyongdae Children’s Palace in Pyongyang, North Korea in 2013. The label on the space shuttle reads “Roundtrip path to space” and “youth” on the bottom

There’s a new space race. Kind of.

Just as New Cold War has entered the national lexicon, New Space Race has become an emerging term. The Americans are cutting their dependance on Russian rockets to get to the International Space Station, awarding contracts to American companies like Boeing and SpaceX.

NASA keeps talking about putting humans back on the moon. Russia wants cosmonauts there by the 2020s. NASA raises the ante by hyping manned Mars missions. And so on. But there are plenty of new actors in the Cold War II space race redux.

Take North Korea, as one example. Sure, its space agency logo is a direct rip-off of NASA. And when I posted about their space program readers thought it was an April Fool’s joke. But the country has real ambitions to make a name for itself in outer space. Or at least, a better one.

China even landed on the moon last year! Sure, the Jade Rabbit rover may not have been as impressive as the robots Americans are putting on Mars. But it’s a whole new world of space exploration, and the battle lines are being drawn up in the sky as much as they are here on Earth.

Ten booking photos for Russian spies provided by US Marshals in July 2010

Everybody’s deporting spies, but we can’t call them spies

Last month, the United States released Cuban spies captured in Florida in exchange for an American spy who has been held for almost twenty years. Another American, Alan Gross, was supposedly released incidentally; the US government claims he was just an innocent man trying to bring internet equipment to Cuba. The American media doesn’t want to call Gross a spy, but if the roles were reversed and he were a Cuban in the US, we’d call him exactly that.

And thus goes the tricky world of New Cold War espionage. Every news organisation has to dance around the language of their own country’s spies getting caught in the act. And normalised relations with Cuba are doing little more than bringing diplomacy to the level we have with nearly every other Cold War adversary like China and Russia.

Meanwhile, America is also deporting Russian spies, which makes Russia none too happy. don’t think we’re special; Germany and Sweden have noticed an uptick in covert intelligence gathering by Russian agents ever since the Ukrainian crisis began. Deportation is also far from a new thing; Back in 2010 a Russian spy ring was discovered in the United States, resulting in the deportation of eleven spies, who went on to receive top government honours when they returned to Russia.

Spy exchanges like this were a big deal during the first Cold War. And we couldn’t call them spies back then either. They were always innocent teachers or students just trying to learn about the Soviet Union.

The weird thing about spies is that they operate under a certain amount of complicity under the government that they’re spying on. Often times the country being spied on will opt not to reveal that they know about spies in order to simply assess what kind of access the spies can gain. Look for a lot more spies getting caught on both sides of the New Cold War in the coming decade.

Russian nationalists activists attack a *** rights campaigner at a park in Moscow on Saturday, May 25, 2013

The propaganda machine is fully functional

The Soviets had a saying during the first Cold War to refute any American claim to greater freedoms in the United States: “And you are lynching Negroes.”

It was a constant refrain in the Soviet popular press and on the street. Different variations of “and you are lynching negroes” spread throughout the Soviet Union. One way that American media combated this attack was by making Soviet agents in American movies always racist and anti-semitic.

What’s today’s version? Take your pick. But much of it still has to do with race relations in the United States. And, in the other direction, Russia’s brutal oppression of its *** community. But there are plenty of other fights being instigated by other players.

North Korea chided the US after a grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri failed to indict the police officer who shot and killed an unarmed black teenager. North Korea is even calling on the UN Security Council to investigate the CIA’s torture programs.

Americans, of course, can point to North Korea’s myriad human rights violations, Russia’s atrocious treatment of homosexuals, and China’s suppression of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong and elsewhere — though the Americans are certainly less apt to directly call out large trade partners like China. Which is again, why countries like Canada and Australia are such important proxies.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott publicly stated that he was going to “shirtfront” Vladimir Putin (a word in Australian Rules Football for a rough tackle) when he met him at the G20 in Australia. How did Putin respond? By bringing warships and parking them off the Australian coast. Needless to say, Abbott didn’t shirtfront Putin.

“Are we in the middle of a new Cold War? Indeed we are,” former head of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev told Time magazine recently. “It’s as if a time of great troubles has arrived. The world is roiling,” he would say later. He would know.

Perhaps our absolute best case scenario is that this war at least stays more cold than hot. If not, we’ll all be back hiding under our desks in no time — one button-push away from total annihilation.

[MIKA27]

Science Just Solved a 724-Year-Old Italian Warlord’s Murder Mystery

A study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science has finally solved the sudden and unexplained death of Cangrande I della Scala.

The Italian warlord (who was also a patron of famed poet Dante) was born in 1291, eventually becoming the most powerful ruler in the history of Verona when he took charge in 1311. In 1329, the victorious warrior was planning to take over yet another territory, the Treviso region, but following his success, he fell violently ill — some stories blame it on drinking toxic spring water.

On July 22, 1329, he died at the age of 38. Rumors quickly spread that the triumphant king had been poisoned.

Cangrande’s body was exhumed in 2004, 675 years after his death, and was found to be extremely well preserved. In fact, along with signs of arthritis, tuberculosis and possible cirrhosis, researchers also found regurgitated food in his throat and traces of fecal matter in his colon and rectum.

A: Stone lid of the sarcophagus. B: the body at the moment of opening. C: His clothing. D: the autopsy

Examining the human waste, scientists discovered a mix of chamomile, black mulberry and pollen spores of Digitalis. The first two are homeopathic treatments, but the later is actually a deadly plant most commonly known as foxglove.

Poisoning by foxglove is consistent with the fact that he was sick to his stomach before he died. “The gastrointestinal symptoms manifested by Cangrande in his last house of life are compatible with the early phase of Digitalis intoxication and the hypothesis of poisoning is mentioned by some local historical sources. The most likely hypothesis on the causes of death is that of a deliberate administration of a lethal amount of Digitalis,” the study says.

As for the question of whodunnit? The man was a brutal warrior and claimed regions left and right. Odds are he had a few frenemies.

After his death, one of his physicians was hanged by Cangrande’s successor and nephew, Mastino II, which adds suspicion to the entire affair.

However, the study has narrowed it down to two killers: “The principal suspects are the neighboring states, the Republic of Venice or Ducate of Milan, worried about the new regional power of Cangrande and Verona.” Mastino, who eventually became the ruler of Verona, also cannot be ruled out.

[MIKA27]

Papua New Guinea Has a Witch Hunt Problem

With the rare exception of anti-Harry Potter crusaders, fear of witchcraft isn’t exactly on the radar of most westerners. If you’re a farmer in California, you might even dabble in it to save your harvest from drought.

But on the island of New Guinea, the unexpected often turns up — and it can be deadly.

Dini near the grave of her son Bobby. After Bobby’s death Dini was accused of killing him using witchcraft and was brutally tortured by people from her village

Unlike the pro surfers that went hunting for untouched waves in West Papua and found a government-waged genocide instead, the growing crisis in Papua New Guinea centers on self-inflicted violent witch hunts within the nation’s rural citizenry.

Men and woman alike have fallen victim to these attacks, though women are the more common victims in one of the most violent places for females in the world. A Doctors Without Borders (MSF) report found that 67 percent of women in PNG said that they had been beaten by a spouse.

Anton Lutz, a Lutheran missionary working in PNG’s problematic highlands, claims that at least two dozen women have been killed in the past few years over accusations of witchcraft and evil sorcery. In the Simbu region alone, roughly 150 attacks take place annually, leaving up to a third of the region’s population displaced.

A Chimbu tribesman preparing for a celebration of death. This remote region of PNG is where many of these sorcery killings take place

For places that require a plane ride and several days of hiking to reach, addressing this small but pressing refugee crisis has proved nearly impossible.

Today’s problem dates back to 1971 when PNG codified belief in witchcraft into law, recognizing the “widespread belief throughout the country that there is such a thing as sorcery, and sorcerers have extra-ordinary powers that can be used sometimes for good purposes but more often bad ones,” exempting “innocent sorcery” for protection from the legal punishment for “forbidden sorcery.”

Hundreds of bystanders watch Helen Rumbali, a woman accused of witchcraft, being burned alive Feb. 6 in the Western Highlands provincial capital of Mount Hagen in Papua New Guinea

That law wasn’t overturned until May of 2013, when witch hunt killings were also made punishable by death. It was a step in the right direction, but it didn’t actually address the root causes of these attacks, which remain unaddressed.

Most of PNG’s population, some 80 percent, live outside of urban centers. But instead of seeing their acts as primitive savagery, they should instead be understood as a consequence of things that affect much of the rural developing world: a dire lack of access to education and healthcare.

In an interview with Vice, missionary Franco Zocca said, “When you say sorcery-related killings, people — 95 percent — think other people were killed by sorcerers. The mentality is always that nobody dies for nothing. There is always a who — either a spirit of somebody or a magician — behind the death.”

With poor education, many simply don’t understand the science behind medical issues that befall humans naturally. Blaming some vague evil concocted by other people, particularly those living on the fringes of their communities, then becomes the only viable explanation.

Rasta was accused of sorcery by her neighbors after the death of a local young man. She was set upon by a crowd at his funeral and beaten and strangled before she escaped. She lost her hand in the attack

What is worst about all of this is the simple fact that it could remedied with greater access to basic healthcare. Fewer people ailing and dying would mean less cause to blame witchcraft and sorcery.

Fixing these core issues would require that a portion of the wealth from the nation’s unprecedented mining boom be doled out to its impoverished rural residents. As we’ve seen in so much of the developing world, that just hasn’t been the case.

[MIKA27]

Officer Investigating Charlie Hebdo Attack Reportedly Kills Himself After Meeting Victim’s Family

According to France 3, Helric Fredou, a French police commissioner, killed himself just a few hours after meeting with the family of a victim of the Charlie Hebdo massacre.

Fredou, who was 45, was reportedly found by a colleague after shooting himself in his Limoges, France office last Wednesday night. According to the International Business Times, he used his own police-issue gun. No note has been found.

French media reports have described Fredou, the Deputy Director of the Regional Service Judicial Police in Limoges, as “overworked” and “depressed.”

“The Union of Commissioners of the National Police would like to present its most sincere condolences to the relatives of Helric,” the national police union said in a statement.

[MIKA27]

WTF: This Controversial Kids’ Song Features a Whole Lot of Dancing Genitals

“Snippity, snippity, snippity snop,” is what you’ll be singing for days after hitting play on this video. Guaranteed.

Made for a Swedish kids’ program the addicting tune called “Snoppen och snippen,” or the children’s terms for “penis and ******,” features translated lyrics like “Here comes the penis at full pace” and “the ****** is cool, you better believe it, even on an old lady. It just sits there so elegantly.”

Swedes have mixed feelings about the video. Some think the video’s vaginas with microphones, penises with hats, and even an old lady ****** with a cane are all perfect for teaching their kids about what’s natural. Others aren’t so charmed.

“How a clip like this got the green light is the most bizarre thing of the year — and the year is only Fourteen days old,” one person wrote on the show’s Facebook wall, sharing a meme that said “I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.”

Well, disappointed poster, all I can say is long live the snoppen and snippen if they can churn out tunes as good as this one.

[MIKA27]

Albuquerque Officers Charged With Murder for Shooting a Homeless Man

Two Albuquerque police officers have been charged with murder in the March killing of James Boyd, a homeless man who struggled with mental illness. The shooting gave rise to protests, some violent, around the city, and a federal investigation into the Albuquerque police found that the organization often used excessive force.

SWAT team member Dominique Perez and former Detective Keith Sandy will each face a single count of open murder in the death of 38-year-old James Boyd, Second District Attorney Kari Brandenburg said Monday. Open murder allows prosecutors to pursue either first-degree or second-degree murder charges.

After a three-hour standoff with Boyd, Perez and Sandy fatally shot the homeless camper, who was holding two knives, after he’d agreed to comply with police orders and leave the area. “Don’t change up the agreement,” he says in video of the incident, seen above and obtained from an officer’s helmet camera. “I’m going to try to walk with you.” Right after that, police launched a flash-bang grenade at Boyd, then opened fire.

“Please don’t hurt me anymore, I can’t move,” were his last words.

The Boyd shooting — and more than 40 other police shootings since 2010 — sparked a series of protests, including one that forced authorities to fire tear gas at violent demonstrators and another that shut down a City Council meeting.

Perez’s and Sandy’s indictments are a departure after grand juries declined to charge officers in the shooting death of an unarmed 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri, and the chokehold killing of another unarmed man in New York City.

Former Detective Sandy’s lawyer Sam Bregman described the charges as “unjustified,” arguing that his client did nothing wrong. “Keith, as a police officer, had not only the right, but the duty to defend a fellow officer from a mentally unstable, violent man wielding two knives,” Bregman said.

Luis Robles, an attorney for Perez, said, “Sadly, this day has come. Regardless, I am confident that the facts will vindicate Officer Perez’s actions in this case.”

The FBI is investigating the Boyd shooting, but U.S. authorities haven’t said whether the officers will face federal charges.

Albuquerque officials recently signed an agreement with the U.S. Justice Department to revamp its police agency after a harsh report over excessive force. Under the agreement, Albuquerque police must provide better training for officers and dismantle troubled units.

MIKA: Just a heads up on the video, whilst it's not graphic it can be confronting for some people so watch with caution. Very sad IMO.

[MIKA27]

Why Is It Called Area 51?

Despite the CIA’s release of previously classified documents in 2013 that acknowledged the existence of Area 51 as a top-secret US government research facility, many questions about the site remain unanswered. One of the most innocuous, but nonetheless puzzling, is its choice of name. Although theories abound, one plausible explanation is that the moniker derives from its designation as a nuclear weapons testing site.

Situated in the desert in southern Nevada, within the boundaries of the Nellis Air Force Range (NAFR) and just outside of the northeast corner of the Nevada Test Site (NTS), Area 51 and its neighbours, which also includes the Tonopah Test Range (TTR), have hosted some of the most significant weapons testing performed on the planet during the 20th century.

In addition to isolation, the 3.5 million acre region around and including Area 51 boasts other qualities that make it an excellent place to conduct secret tests and training. The dry climate provides superior flying conditions, the variety of terrain helps with gunnery practice, and several dry lake beds are available for emergency landings, including, notably, Groom Lake — situated just north of Area 51.[1]

Therefore, beginning in 1940, public land in the region was set aside and private land was condemned in order to establish the Las Vegas Bombing and Gunnery Range (LVBGR) (today, the NAFR and TTR), which was used throughout World War II “as an aerial gunnery range for Army Air Corps pilots.”[2]

As the Cold War began, there was a perceived need for the development and testing of nuclear weapons, and the barren and relatively uninhabited region surrounding Area 51 was identified as an ideal location; as such, a large swath of the southern portion of the LVBGR was set aside as the aforementioned NTS, for testing a variety of nuclear items. Despite the fact that Las Vegas is only 105km from its southeast edge, those involved in the site choice minimised any potential danger to the population, with Enrico Fermi opining “that people will receive perhaps a little more [ionising] radiation than medical authorities say is absolutely safe.”[3]

In any event, nuclear testing began at the NTS in its southeastern corner at a place known as Frenchman Flat (FF) on January 27, 1951. After the four remaining devices of the Ranger series were detonated (and studied), also at FF, the locations of nearly all further testing (with a handful of notable exceptions) at NTS were thereafter identified by their “area” numbers, beginning with the Buster-Jangle series in October-November 1951 in Area 7.[4] This was to ensure that it “allowed anyone ‘in the know’ to know where a test would be conducted . . . [and] the same system is still used today.”[5]

According to an official NTS guide, the test areas were assigned unique numbers as they were designated, and, as can be seen from a map of the NTS, early on the “area assignments were randomly made (to avoid a set pattern).”[6] Nonetheless, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) personnel who assigned the test areas took a rational approach and began with, essentially, numbers 1-30.

Note that not every numeral between 1 and 30 appears on the NTS map. Notably missing are 13, 21, 24 and 28; nonetheless, these numbers were apparently used to designate areas for atomic testing in the region — albeit outside of the set-aside NTS zone. For example, an “Area 13″ was designated just northeast of the NTS in the NAFR,[7] while “Area 24″ refers to the North Las Vegas Facility, a satellite site of the NTS managed by the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Nevada Site Office (NNSA).[8] “Area 28″ was originally designated in the southwestern part of the NTS in the vicinity of areas 25 and 27, into which it was absorbed.[9]

“Area 21″ is less easy to identify. Although there is a “Technical Area 21″ at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in north-central New Mexico. However, as that site has its own extensive numbering system, it is doubtful it is the missing NTS area.

Regardless, although the LANL areas may be unrelated, it is clear that NTS-related nuclear testing was done outside of its territorial boundaries, but included within its numbering system. For example, in “Area 13,” an experiment called Project 57, was run on April 24, 1957, to explore whether or not the explosive charge of a nuclear warhead could self-destruct the weapon without causing an atomic explosion.[10]

Likewise, four other extra-territorial experiments (Double Tracks and Clean Slate I, II and III) to observe “(nonnuclear) detonation of nuclear weapons” were performed on the TTR, at a site designated as “Area 52,” in May and June 1963.[11] Similarly, at “Area 58″ on October 26, 1963, near Fallon, Nevada (well outside of the NTS), the Shoal experiment involved the detonation of a 12-kiloton bomb 366m below the Earth’s surface, just to observe earthquake effects.[12]

While not conclusive, the fact that “areas” were designated well-into the ’50s supports the inference that “Area 51″ was a part of that pattern. Also compelling is the fact that Tonopah’s “Area 52″ is likely just as close to, yet also just outside of, the NTS.

And while it should come as no surprise that there are no direct records of nuclear testing activities at the secretive Area 51, there is a notable entry on the National Resource Defence Council’s (NRDC) comprehensive list of nuclear tests (1945-1992), that may be relevant.[13] Note that this list provides the name of every “event” (e.g. Trinity, Fat Man or Shoal), as well as its date, location (usually detailed, such as “Alamogordo, NM” or “NTS (Area 3)”), the lab that ran the test (e.g. “LA” for Los Alamos), the device type (such as whether it was dropped from a tower or plane, or down a shaft), the height and depth of the burst, and its purpose (e.g. “WR” for “weapons related’).

Regarding the NTS-related tests, other than the Frenchman Flat (FF) experiments, only six were not identified on the list by an area number: the four performed at Area 52, which were designated “Bombing Range, NV,” the Shoal at Area 58, which was designated “Fallon, NV”, and a third, run on May 10, 1962.

This last was a shaft test performed on a weapons related device, attributed to the NTS, but with no “area” or other location designated; in addition, neither the lab that ran the test, nor the height or depth of the burst are recorded, and instead question marks (“?”) are inserted under those categories on the list.[14] Obviously this isn’t conclusive, and the name of the event is consistent with contemporaneous tests conducted by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), but it is curious. And, when combined with Area 51′s proximity to the NTS, the site’s history of extreme secrecy, its consecutive numbering with neighbouring test areas, and the fact that the experiment was conducted in the region one year prior to those performed at Area 52, together these factors present a circumstantial case that Area 51 was designated as part of the NTS numbering system.

[MIKA27]

This 7-Year-Old in China Is His Drunk Dad’s Designated Driver

While most kids his age are only starting to learn how to ride a bicycle, this seven-year-old boy in China is already driving a motored vehicle — and for all the wrong reasons.

According to the Daily Mail, after a heavy night of drinking, seven-year-old Jun Yu had to pick his drunk father up from a bar and drive him 15 miles back home. At the request of his mother.

Talk about responsible parenting childing.

And if you think these pictures are Photoshopped or Jun Yu is actually just a very small taxi driver, Yizhou police have confirmed that the photos of the boy that trended on Weibo (China’s own version of Twitter) are real.

“The child drove a total of 20 kilometers to bring his father home,” a police spokesman told Daily Mail. “His father was incapacitated after a night of drinking with friends at a bar near his place of work.”

And while he technically can’t legally drive until he’s 18, neighbors say this isn’t the first time that Jun Yu had to be his irresponsible dad’s designated driver.

It probably also won’t be the last. According to the World Health Organization, high-risk drinking behavior in China has reached epidemic proportions. A national survey found that 62.7 percent of men and 51 percent of women in China are excessive alcohol drinkers.

This sure is one way to avoid a DUI.

[MIKA27]

Cold War, Hot Jets Parts 1 & 2:

Source: Paul F via BBC

Part 1:

Darker Skies - As the Iron Curtain fell across Europe, the jet plane came to epitomise how the Cold War was fought. Britain’s V bombers, armed with devastating new weapons, were able to fly faster, higher and further. The V Bomber became the platform for delivering nuclear annihilation. Programme two tells the story of how these planes came to define Britain’s military planning and we reveal the bleak role the RAF pilots would have to play in the event of Nuclear War. But with the advent of surface to air missiles as nuclear delivery systems and satellites to provide detailed intelligence the role of jet aircraft in the Cold War diminished. As a technology however its importance continues to impact on life to this day with the growth of international jet air travel.

Part 2:

[MIKA27]

Watch A Trailer For Top Gear Season 22 Made Entirely Out Of LEGO Animation

You loved The LEGO Movie, so why not LEGO-ify more things? BBC’s motoring extravaganza, Top Gear decided that’s exactly what the trailer for the new season needed.

The trailer sees our trio of motoring misadventurers try to get themselves to the stage for the season premiere, despite the fact that Hammond gets stuck on bricks, James May can’t find his hair and The Stig’s body can’t be located. It’s pretty cute.

Top Gear will be streaming its season launch live on YouTube on 19 January

[MIKA27]

South Korea's Black Panther Battle Tank Shoots Parachute Bombs

When your neighbours are Kim Jung-un level crazy, you’d better make sure your defenses are bigger and badder than anything they can throw at you. Or at least just as crazy, like the K2 Black Panther’s parachute munitions.

It’s called the K2 “Black Panther.” This 50-tonne main battle tank (MBT) is the latest to join South Korea’s ground forces, and is widely hailed as one of the most advanced (and expensive) MBT’s ever produced. Produced by Korean automotive mega-corporation, the Hyundai Rotem Company, 400 or so Black Panthers are expected to replace the existing fleet of outdated M48 Patton tanks and complement the country’s existing force of K1 MBTs by 2017.

Each $US8.8 million machine is powered by a primary 1500 HP, 12-cylinder diesel engine and supplemented by an auxilliary power pack that runs off a gas turbine and produces 100W of power for running accessories when the main engine is off. It’s got room for a crew of three — the commander, gunner and driver — all of whom are protected by one of the most advanced active and passive armour suites on Earth. Similar to what protects the American M1A2 Abrams MBT, albeit a bit lighter, the K2′s deforming active armour is more than capable of enduring a shaped charge round fired from short distances. In fact, the K2 is reportedly able to take a direct shot from a 120mm round fired by the same smooth bore L55 that it uses itself. That is, you could have a pair of Black Panthers shoot each other in the face without knocking either out of the fight.

The K2′s main gun, the L55, is equipped with a 16-round auto-loading magazine which allows it to squeeze off up to 15 rounds a minute. With a total supply of 40 various rounds, the Black Panther can rain hellfire on an enemy position for nearly three minutes before needing a resupply. The tank is also equipped with a supplementary 12.7mm heavy machine gun and a slightly less terrifying 7.62mm machine gun as well as the standard assortment of electro-optical, IR and millimetre wave sensors to enable accurate targeting regardless of the prevailing battlefield conditions. Plus, its targeting system has a Lock-on mode that allows it to not only target moving ground units but low-flying helicopters as well.

The K2′s coolest weapon, however, has got to be its Korean Smart Top-Attack Munition (KSTAM). It’s fired from the main gun — not directly at the enemy but on a high parabolic arc instead — like a mortar. Once it has begun its decent, the munition will deploy a small parachute then activate a multi-band sensor suite (millimetre, IR, and radiometer) to identify, acquire, and engage enemy positions and armour, then fire a shaped penetrator round straight down on them. Since the lightest armour on a tank is typically its roof, the penetrator round can easily punch through with maximum effectiveness.

[MIKA27]

Four-Year-Old Kid Pulls Off A Killer Bruce Lee

You might like Bruce Lee. You might love him. But can you do this? Maybe you can! But could you when you were still in preschool? I know I couldn’t.

What’s cool is that the kid isn’t only doing a solid job of matching Lee’s moves from flicks like Game of Death, but the tyke is doing so with his back to the screen. Not bad for a four-year-old — or anyone, really, for that matter.

This clip has gone viral online, even appearing on Taiwanese television.

[MIKA27]

Why did my grandfather translate Mein Kampf?

Source: John Murphy BBC News

Whenever I tell anyone that my Irish grandfather translated Hitler's Mein Kampf, the first question tends to be, "Why did he do that?" Quickly followed by, "Was he a Nazi?"

Simply answered, No he wasn't a Nazi (more on that later) and why not translate it? He was a journalist and translator based in Berlin in the 1930s and that's how he earned his money. And surely it was important for people to know what Europe's "Great Dictator" (apologies to Charlie Chaplin) was about?

Certainly my grandfather and many other non-Nazis thought so at the time. Let's also not forget this was before Hitler became the most notorious figure of evil in history.

Hitler made a fortune from Mein Kampf. Not only did he excuse himself from paying tax, after he became Chancellor the German state bought millions of copies which were famously handed out to newly married couples. It's estimated that 12 million copies were sold in Germany alone.

The story of my grandfather's translation - the first unabridged version in English, which was eventually published in London in 1939 - is an intriguing one. It involves worries about copyright, sneaking back into Nazi Germany to rescue manuscripts and a Soviet spy.

My grandfather, Dr James Murphy, lived in Berlin from 1929, before the Nazis came to power. He set up a highbrow magazine called The International Forum which chiefly contained translations of interviews he'd done with eminent people, including Albert Einstein and Thomas Mann. However, as the Depression worsened, he was forced to move back to the UK.

Dr James Murphy, journalist, translator and polymath

While there he wrote a short book, Adolf Hitler: the Drama of his Career, which sought to explain why so many Germans were attracted to the Nazi cause.

My grandfather returned to Berlin in 1934, where he ridiculed the garbled translations of Nazi policy statements. He was especially critical of an abridged version of Mein Kampf - about a third of the length of the original two-volume work - which had been published in English in 1933. Towards the end of 1936, the Nazis asked James to start work on a full translation of Mein Kampf. It's not clear why. Perhaps Berlin's Propaganda Ministry wanted to have an English version which it could release when it felt the time was right.

But at some point during 1937 the Nazis changed their minds. The Propaganda Ministry sequestered all completed copies of the Murphy manuscript. He returned to England in September 1938, where he quickly found British publishers keen to print his full translation - but they were worried that the Nazi publishing house, Eher Verlag, hadn't given him the copyright. And anyway, he had left his completed work behind in Germany.

Just as he was about to set off for Berlin to sort all this out, he received a message through the German embassy in London, saying he wasn't welcome. James was distraught. A natural spendthrift, he'd run out of money, and had great hopes for the English publication. But at this point, his wife - my grandmother - said she would go.

"They won't notice me," she said, according to my father, Patrick Murphy.

"So she went back into Germany and made an appointment with a Nazi official we knew in the Propaganda Ministry, a man called Seyferth," my father says.

Unfortunately Mary Murphy had chosen a bad day, 10 November 1938 - the morning after Kristallnacht, when Jewish shops and businesses were attacked by Nazi thugs. Nevertheless, her meeting with Seyferth went ahead.

"You know a group of Americans is working on a translation right now, so you can't stop it coming out," she told him. "You know my husband has done an accurate and fair translation - an excellent translation… so why not hand over the manuscript?"

Seyferth refused. "I have a wife and two daughters. Do you want me put up against a brick wall and shot?" he said.

Then Mary remembered that she had previously handed a carbon copy of a first draft of her husband's translation to one of his secretaries, an English woman called Daphne French. She tracked her down in Berlin and, fortunately, Daphne still had the copy. Mary brought it back to London. With an American translation about to be published in the US, the race was on to get my grandfather's translation out as quickly as possible. In March 1939, Hurst and Blackett/Hutchinson published the first British unexpurgated version of Mein Kampf.

Hurst and Blackett's 1939 edition of Mein Kampf

By August 32,000 copies had been sold and they continued to be printed until the presses were destroyed - by a German air raid - in 1942. A new American version subsequently became the standard translation. One copyright expert, who has written about Mein Kampf, estimates that between 150,000 to 200,000 copies of the Murphy edition were eventually sold.

My grandfather, however, did not receive royalty payments. Hutchinson argued that he had already been paid by the German government and that the full copyright hadn't been secured, so they could still be sued by Eher Verlag. An official letter from Germany, which turned out to be a diatribe against James Murphy, made clear Berlin disapproved of his translation. But the Germans didn't take any action. Eher Verlag even requested complimentary copies and royalty payments. They didn't receive them.

The Murphy edition is now out of print but copies are scattered across the world and it can be found online.

The Wiener Library in London, which has a unique collection of material on the Holocaust and genocide, has a remarkable copy of Murphy's Mein Kampf in its vaults. Inside the flyleaf there's a photograph of Hitler, and a group of smiling people, in Berchtesgarden, in the Bavarian Alps. A note, written in pencil, explains that Hitler came into the village and signed copies of Mein Kampf. His signature is there, in pencil.

The book, bought in 1939 in the UK, was seemingly taken by British admirers as they visited the Fuehrer's Alpine retreat. The photograph has somewhat comical annotations in the form of three pencilled arrows. By the top arrow is the handwritten note, "M. Bormann?" The next one down simply says, "Hitler". And the last arrow, pointing to a young woman in a white dress in front of Hitler, says: "Karen".

An edition of Murphy's translation of Mein Kampf, signed by Hitler

"Karen must have been the owner of the book or related to the owner of the book," says Ben Barkow, the Director of the Wiener Library. "But it's always slightly chilling to hold the book in one's hand, knowing of course that he held it in his hand when he autographed it."

And if that wasn't strange enough, Barkow, then produces a Murphy edition which Hutchinson brought out in 18 weekly parts. Bright yellow and red, each part sold for sixpence. What's extraordinary, though, is what it says down one side of the cover: "Royalties on all sales will go to the British Red Cross Society." On the other side of the cover: "The blue-print of German imperialism. The most widely discussed book of the modern world."

Mein Kampf today

• As Hitler's official home was Munich, after his suicide, all royalties from his estate went to the state of Bavaria, which owns the copyright of Mein Kampf in Germany and has refused to allow publication
• The copyright expires at the end of 2015, and Bavaria says it will allow an annotated version of the text to be published
• Publication and ownership of the book is restricted or banned in some countries including Argentina, China, the Netherlands and Russia
• In other countries, such as India and Turkey, it remains popular - it's estimated that more than 15,000 copies are sold in the US every year

There's another intriguing twist to the story of the English translation. While my grandfather was working on it he employed the help of a German woman (recommended by a half-Jewish writer, who was also the Murphys' landlord). James referred to Greta Lorcke, as she was then, as one of the most intelligent people he'd ever met. But he had battles with her. While he wanted to produce an intelligible translation, in good English, Greta would on occasion alter the translations, to reflect some of Hitler's convoluted and vulgar language. "This annoyed him intensely," my father says. "He would alter it back again."

But there was something else about Greta that my grandfather didn't know at the time.

The serialised edition of Murphy's translation

During the War the Nazis discovered that Greta and her husband, Adam Kuckhoff, were members of a famous Soviet spy ring, known as the Red Orchestra (Rote Kapelle). Adam was executed. Greta had her sentence commuted to life imprisonment. She survived the war, and in her autobiography she describes her first meeting with James Murphy, who she refers to as Mr M.

"I was very impressed by Mr M as he came to meet me in the main lobby. He was a handsome man - 2m tall and carried his 100kg with regal dignity - a man who inspired confidence. The way he discussed his translation work, with which I was to assist him, made me believe he was no friend of National Socialism."

Greta had considerable doubts about translating Mein Kampf, as she explained to my father, years later.

"'Why should I help this man translate this awful book into English?' she wondered. But she consulted her Soviet contacts who explained that it was necessary to translate it into good English," my father says.

"They had heard from the Soviet Ambassador to London, Maisky, who knew Lloyd George quite well. Lloyd George had said to Maisky, 'I don't know why you tell me all these things are in Mein Kampf - I've read it and they aren't.' It turned out that what Lloyd George had read was [the] abridged version, which was only about a third of the length, and which had been controlled to a certain extent by the Nazis. Some of the worst things were taken out of it. So the Russians had said to Greta, 'You must help this man - get this into English!'"

Unfortunately I never met my grandfather. He died of a heart condition in 1946, just before his 66th birthday. This large Irishman from County Cork was a complicated and fascinating man. He was a true polymath, with a deep knowledge of literature, art and science; a journalist, a lecturer, a translator; an expert on Italian fascism and Nazi Germany.

He spoke French, Italian and German fluently. He harboured dreams of a United States of Europe - at peace. Ultimately, though, even if it wasn't his intention, he'll be best known as the man who translated Hitler's Mein Kampf.

[MIKA27]

Bradley Cooper Responds to Lefty, Anti-War Criticism of ‘American Sniper’

Some think that Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, subject of the new Clint Eastwood drama American Sniper, is a ‘hate-filled killer.’ His wife, and actor Bradley Cooper, respond.

Clint Eastwood’s latest film American Sniper is racking up a good deal of military support and Oscar buzz—and is also facing pushback from the usual outraged, anti-war suspects.

“I haven’t seen American Sniper, but correct me if I’m wrong: An occupier mows down faceless Iraqis but the real victim is his anguished soul,” tweeted author Max Blumenthal.

“The real American Sniper [Navy SEAL Chris Kyle] was a hate-filled killer. Why are simplistic patriots treating him as a hero?” Lindy West wrote at The Guardian.

“American Sniper perfectly epitomizes a certain kind of American horseshit,” Michael Atkinson opined at In These Times.

Much of this displeasure is based on resurfaced excerpts from Kyle’s memoir, on which the movie is based. Critics have flagged lines such as, “I couldn’t give a flying f**k about the Iraqis” and “If you see anyone from about sixteen to sixty-five and they’re male, shoot ’em. Kill every male you see.”

Kyle has of course been celebrated as a war hero, and declared the “most lethal” sniper in American military history. In Eastwood’s film, he is played by Oscar-nominated actor Bradley Cooper. And at the Washington, DC, premiere ofAmerican Sniper held at the Burke Theatre at the U.S. Navy Memorial on Tuesday night, he took the time to defend the fallen sniper.

“My hope is that if someone is having a political conversation about whether we should or should not have been in Iraq, whether the war is worth fighting, whether we won, whether we didn’t, why are we still there, all those [issues], that really—I hope—is not one that they would use this movie as a tool for,” Cooper told The Daily Beast, when asked about those targeting Kyle’s temperament. “And for me, and for Clint, this movie was always a character study about what the plight is for a soldier. The guy that I got to know, through all the source material that I read and watched, and home videos—hours and hours—I never saw anything like that. But I can’t control how people are gonna use this movie as a tool, or what they pick and choose whatever they want. But it would be short-changing, I think. If it’s not this movie, I hope to god another movie will come out where it will shed light on the fact of what servicemen and women have to go through, and that we need to pay attention to our vets. It doesn’t go any farther than that. It’s not a political discussion about war, even…It’s a discussion about the reality. And the reality is that people are coming home, and we have to take care of them.”

Cooper then expressed hope that American Sniper not be viewed strictly as an Iraq War movie, but as a more “universal” examination of warriors and their family lives.

“I wouldn’t even put it [just] to Iraq,” Cooper continued. “That happens to be Chris’s story. Our whole idea was to do a character study about a soldier, and a soldier and a family, and what it’s like having to deal with the schizophrenic nature of having to jostle between a home life and being in theater. I think hopefully it could be a universal story.”

Also in attendance were members of Congress, the Bidens, and Taya Kyle, Chris’s widow.

“I haven’t noticed much of [the criticism], but I think that even Mother Teresa can be criticized by somebody, somewhere, doing it just wanting to spread their own hatred,” she told The Daily Beast. “But the people who knew Chris, and certainly the life that he lived, proved that it’s quite the opposite. He was not a hate-filled person. He was just a man doing his job. There were people who were going to kill his brothers or Iraqi civilians, and he had a choice to make. Either he lets that happen, or he takes on the price of taking somebody else out. I think if we all take it to a personal level and imagine what that must be like, like if you had your family standing there, and I was running at them, would you just let me do that, or would you try to stop me in any way you could? It’s actually a love thing, it’s not a hate thing.”

Whatever controversy there is surrounding the film, it has garnered its fair share of critical acclaim—including a positive review from the Vice President of the United States. While attending the DC premiere with his wife Dr. Jill Biden, Joe Biden tersely praised American Sniper: “It’s intense, man,” he said, before adding that veterans still need our help and deepest respect. In fact, the vice president enjoyed the film enough to be moved to tears during the film's final sequence, which includes scenes from Kyle's actual funeral.

[MIKA27]

Watch a Stolen Son Reunite With His Family 24 Years After Being Trafficked

http://youtu.be/kF6rYzUKkmE

Sun Bin was four years old when he was stolen from his family. He was with his father at a food market when he was snatched by a group of child traffickers.

Bin was eventually sold to a couple that was unable to have children of their own. His parents searched far and wide for him. His father told the Shanghaiist, “as long as we had a sign, we went.”

That was in 1991. Now, 24 years later, Bin has finally been reunited with the family he was taken from. His mother passed away in 2001, according to the Mirror, but before she died, she gave birth to his younger sister.

Bin says he always knew he’d been kidnapped, and even grew to love his new parents, but he began the search for his biological family as soon as he was old enough.

Unfortunately, Bin’s story isn’t the only one — and not all of these stories’ endings are happy. According to an article by The Atlantic, child trafficking for adoption, or baby buying, is a severe problem in China. Sadly, it’s a “taboo” subject, and the government hasn’t released any public statistics about the number of kids taken and sold into adoption, though they do admit that the problem exists.

The news is full of horrible news at most, but at least for Bin, he is back with his loved ones, and you can watch their powerful reunion in the video above.

[MIKA27]

CONCRETE BUNKER VACATION HOME BY B-ILD

The Belgian architecture studio B-ILD has finally given you the chance to spend the night in an underground concrete bunker. Located near Fort Vuren, in the Netherlands, this bunker has been transformed into a fully furnished vacation home.

Originally designed and built to withstand mortar fire, this place has been completely renovated to provide travelers with a unique overnight experience. The space has been defunct since the end of World War Two, and now spans nine square meters of living space. Seeing that the home’s ceiling is just two meters high, the design team had to create furniture that would work well within the small space. There’s a kitchen complete with plumbing, concrete walls found all throughout, and bunkbeds that line the wall of the living room, outfitted with storage space underneath. The furniture can all be tucked or slid away, and everything serves a double function to maximize the design. If you do want to spend some time outside, there’s a terrace built from wooden planks, perfect for stargazing after sundown.

[MIKA27]

The Alaskan Town Living Under One Roof

An impossibly long, single-lane tunnel is your only way into Whittier, and your only way out. Make it to the other end of the dimly lit tunnel, and you’ll find all the ingredients of a city. Except instead of a sprawling, urban centre, this town has been scaled to fit almost entirely into one lonely Alaskan tower.

The 4km long tunnel leading into Whittier is never that crowded — it physically can’t be. At about 5m wide, it can only accommodate traffic flowing in one direction at a time. What it empties out into is a smattering of buildings, few of which still serve their original purpose.

The two largest of those are the Buckner Building and the Begich Towers. Both were constructed in the wake of World War II along with the railroad leading in, a combined $US55 million build that gave the military a home base at the very farthest Cold War frontier. Buckner was abandoned just seven years after its completion; the military realised quickly that it didn’t have much use for such a far-flung outpost. Today, it exists as little more than ruin porn.

The Buckner building exterior. You can see the Begich Towers through the window on the lower right

Begich Towers (or BTI as it’s more commonly known) held on, though. More than that; it essentially became Whittier, housing 75 per cent of the town’s 200 residents and providing nearly all of its municipal essentials. The first floor alone provides most of your basic city functions. The police department behind one door, the post office behind another. Walk a bit further down the hall and you’ll find the city offices as well as the Kozy Korner, your local, neighbourhood supermarket.

A handful of other buildings dot the landscape. A large, military gymnasium now acts as boat storage. There’s an inn or two doubling (quadrupling?) as laundromat, bar, and restaurant. But the big, brightly coloured fortress below is Whittier’s centrepiece, because almost the entirety of Whittier calls it home.

To get a sense of daily Whittier life, we spoke with Jen Kinney, a writer and photographer who lived in Whittier for several years and became fascinated by a town whose peculiar physical structures have had such a profound effect on its social structures as well.

“This really was the most community-centred place I had ever lived in my life,” Kinney explained over the phone. “But at the same time, because you’re so close to everyone, sometimes you feel really claustrophobic. Other times you feel enormously grateful that they’re there. And still, other times, even when you’re surrounded by all your neighbours, you can feel completely and utterly isolated.”

It’s hard to imagine why anyone might want to stay in such claustrophobic, closed-in Alaskan quarters,which is part of what makes people so fascinated by Whittier in the first place. But take a closer look, and you’ll realise there’s nothing all that extraordinary about how many of Whittier’s residents ended up there. Or why they stayed.

Back to that tunnel. Computers dictate the timing of the car and railway schedule, but a human still has to be on call at all times. After all, in the case of an emergency, you don’t want to take any chances on what could literally be your only path to help.

Once a year, pedestrians are allowed to walk through Whittier Tunnel,

The abandoned Buckner building (left) and currently occupied Begich Towers (right)

The Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel (or as it’s more commonly known, Whittier Tunnel) was built in 1943 and was first designed with trains in mind. The tracks would carry supplies from the protected, deep-water base of Whittier and away into Bear Valley. Over 60 years later, the space carved through through Maynard Mountain is still the longest highway tunnel in North America.

Train exiting the tunnel on its way out of Whittier

Once the military pulled out and handed the little inlet over to civilians in the 1960s, though, the long, lonely entrance needed a makeover to match. A fresh coat of concrete brought the rails flush with the road, allowing cars and trains to commingle in peace. To help stave off the anticipated claustrophobia, so-called “safe houses” were thrown in at various intervals, so if disaster did strike, anyone unlucky enough to be caught mid-trip could bunker down somewhere (slightly) safer.

But caving-in isn’t the only worry in a tunnel of that size. The single entry and exit points mean all that exhaust doesn’t have a whole lot of places to go. Which is why actual jet engines at both ends constantly pump new air through the tunnel in the direction of traffic. That way, if anything in the tunnel ever were to ignite, the flames would get blown behind the cars on their way out — and not back into oncoming traffic.

Those are the worst-case scenarios, though. On a daily basis, concerns mostly centre around regulating the flow of traffic — which is a complicated enough task in its own right thanks to that lonely, single lane. Cars heading into Whittier get a chance to enter every half hour, while those exiting can enter the tunnel on the hour. The addition of the occasional train makes it a complicated little dance, one that’s been farmed out to an automated algorithm.

Still, a human does have to sit behind the six big screens for as long as the tunnel’s in use (depending slightly on the season, it closes each night at around 11pm and opens up again around 5.30am), watching the tunnel and intervening when necessary. Should an ambulance need to enter after tunnel hours, it takes the tunnel operator on call to open up those great, big tunnel doors.

That sparseness of infrastructure and general isolation is part of what drew Jen Kinney to the mountain-lined inlet years ago.

“In terms of how it functions as an ecosystem, Whittier is such an interesting case because it’s so unique,” Kinney explained to us. “For example, think about emergency medical services in the context of a town with a tunnel; it takes all these extra considerations. Someone has to always be on call all night in case an ambulance needs to get through. A volunteer EMT service has to be accessible at all times.

“Everybody has to play a role. The town just wouldn’t function if at least half of the people weren’t willing to step in and be an EMT or even just cook for your neighbours when they’re sick — everybody functions as part of a larger organism.”

Whittier in winter (above) and resident in Buckner building (below)

In a town of Whittier’s size, it really does take everyone to keep the town functioning. A few residents work on the railroad, some monitor the tunnel, but for the most part, people are employed by the City of Whittier itself. Whether it’s snow clearance, building maintenance, city functions, or the school, for those who stay year-round, Whittier itself is their livelihood.

Because the town is so small, everyone has to play a vital role to keep this self-contained organism alive. Without the the high school teacher, without the volunteer EMTs, — even without the guys sitting at the bar, drinking from 9am to closing — Whittier’s social and physical infrastructure just wouldn’t quite work.

View of Whittier from the Buckner building

The tourists, and seasonal workers who visit Whittier in the summer to work on the dock and at the cannery make sense. They’re there for work or just passing through. But what about those who claim Whittier as their sole, year-round residence? According to Kinney, the longer she stayed amongst the town’s relatively few walls, the more difficult it became to make any generalisations about what it was that drew her neighbours to Whittier in the first place.

“For one person,” Kinney explained, “living in Whittier was idyllic because they were really social and were constantly able to be around people. And for others, it was really idyllic because they were able to be completely isolated all the time. But as for why people are there and how they ended up there, the range of stories was really staggering.”

For the majority of people, though, Whittier is a transitional town. They will come, stay for a year, and never live in Whittier again. Or they will come as a tourist on a summertime cruise. Or to traverse the abandoned Buckner building. But it’s the ones who stay the winter that make up its core.

Whittier resident

Kinney recounted to us how one woman found herself in Whittier because her mother, a one-time heavy drinker and partier, traveled to Alaska in the ’70s, found a job in there, fell in love, and turned her life around. After mending her relationship with her daughter, the daughter came to visit for two months that eventually turned into 35 years and four generations, all in Whittier.

Another resident sought out Whittier explicitly as a safe haven from her abusive ex-husband. There, she was able to tell the train conductors not to let him through the tunnel. For her, Whittier meant a safer life.

What makes Whittier so fascinating to the outside isn’t just that this wildly diverse group of people happened upon Whittier, but that they happened upon Whittier together.

“You have this sort of forced camaraderie where, superficially, these people might not necessarily have anything in common,” Kinney elaborated. “In the summer, we would have these bonfires, and everybody would come. The age range might be between 17 and 55, because you can’t have much social distinction in a place with so few people….

“I’d lived in New York City, so I was used to being totally surrounded by people all the time; that wasn’t what phased me. What was so weird was knowing the person on the other side of every wall. In most cases, I knew exactly who lived next door on my left, on my right, above, and below.”

When you do start to feel closed in, Whittier certainly doesn’t make it easy to escape. Want to hop in your car to go catch a movie in Anchorage an hour away? Better hope you’re back before the tunnel lets the last cars through for the night. Otherwise, you’re going to be sleeping in your yours. Even if you just feel a sudden impulse, a need, to go somewhere, anywhere but where you are, if you miss your tunnel window by just a minute, you’re going to have to wait for an hour before it switches directions again and you can actually exit the town.

Gary at the Kozy Korner store in Begich Towers

Indoor playground via at the schoo

But what is it that really ends up making people stay in the long run? According to Kinney, a lot of it’s pure inertia.

“I wanted people’s stories to have some dramatic and then I realised that I loved it here, but it was usually more banal than that. Think about why any of us live anywhere — it’s partially chance, partially desire, and partially inertia. Once you’re somewhere, it’s just easier to stay there. So whatever I was searching for, for some mystical explanation as to why people love this place, often it just came down to loyalty. People are loyal to places they have been and the people they know.”

In the end, what keeps people in Whittier isn’t all that different from what keeps any of us in our hometowns. It just so happens that, in Whittier’s case, that hometown is also just one gigantic home.

[MIKA27]

These Interstellar Cannons Actually Hunt Exoplanets

The ESO’s new exoplanet-hunting telescopes on Paranal looks absolutely stunning in this long-exposure night-time shot. It shows the Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) telescopes during testing.

The moon appears as the brightest streak among the star trails, the VISTA and VLT domes can also be seen on the horizon. The ESO explains in more detail what you’re looking at:

The NGTS is located at the European Southern Observatory’s Paranal Observatory in northern Chile. This project will search for transiting exoplanets — planets that pass in front of their parent star and hence produce a slight dimming of the star’s light that can be detected by sensitive instruments. The telescopes will focus on discovering Neptune-sized and smaller planets, with diameters between two and eight times that of Earth.

[MIKA27]

Dying Light Is Supposed To Be A Big Game

Dying Light is supposed to be a big game. But just how big? This new PlayStation Access video shows what it will be like to walk from one end of the map all the way to the other. Needless to say, there are plenty of zombies in-between.

We’ll have more on Dying Light closer to release, once we actually get our hands on the thing. Oh, and I’ll be reviewing it in case you were wondering. Stay tuned!

[MIKA27]

Nostalgic Photos of SF Show the City Before Gentrification

Mercantile Building, Mission and 3rd Streets, 1980

The identity of the San Francisco Bay Area is so inextricably tied to the attitudes, economics and innovations of Silicon Valley that it’s difficult to imagine what the city looked like before the techies took over. The beautiful, beguiling images of Janet Delaney’s South of Market provide a colorful, nostalgic glimpse of the San Francisco a generation ago.

Pat serving coffee at the Gordon Cafe in the Budget Hotel, 7th at Mission Street, 1980

Delaney moved to the city in July 1978 to attend the San Francisco Art Institute. She settled in the neighborhood South of Market—or SoMa, as it is known locally. The photographer gravitated to the area because it “emulated”—or at least resembled—Soho and was a cheap place to live. She felt at home living and working among the blue collar community and the dirty but necessary services—printers, auto repair shops, vehicle depots and the like—that keep a city humming.

“South of Market had a culture I wanted. I lived there side-by-side with a lot of different people,” Delaney said. “I wanted to ground myself. I made a concerted effort to get into the homes of my neighbors.”

Janet Delaney in her darkroom, 62 Langton Street, 1981

But the photographer’s eclectic, working-class neighborhood was on the verge of profound change. In the early ’70s, The Board of Supervisors of the city and county of San Francisco—led by Dianne Feinstein— and the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association pushed for comprehensive redevelopment of SoMa. A “world-class” convention center would anchor the project.

Office workers on lunch break near the site of the new convention center, Minna at 4th Street, 1980

The redevelopment started in the late 1970s, radically altering the look and feel of the area. Delaney, staring up at the surrounding neighborhood from the bottom of a construction site, realized she was uniquely positioned to document the change.

“The city was transforming itself and money was the engine,” she said. “I was rabidly opposed to the full-fledged development that was pushing people out of the city. I still feel strongly that we need to control growth in ways.”

Johnny Ryan, Blacksmith, Klockar's Blacksmith & Metal Works, 443 Folsom Street, 1980

The gentrification of the area started in earnest with the Moscone Center, which opened in 1981. Named for George Moscone, the San Francisco mayor who was assassinated in 1978, the sprawling complex has hosted no end of tech conventions, including the Macworld Expo, Oracle OpenWorld and Microsoft Build. (It is ironic that Moscone opposed initial proposals for the convention center.)

Delaney began photographing the community living in the shadow of this growing commerce, capturing the masons, blacksmiths, artists and others who called South of Market home. She wandered the streets with her large format camera, slowly and deliberately documenting a community that has all but vanished. She focused on the spirit of the people who lived there, capturing small moments in their daily lives: a boy lifting weights on the sidewalk, the employees of an all-woman auto shop, three guys just killing time on the corner.

View of the Financial District from south of Market Street, 1983

“I sought community and intimacy with the unexpected—things the suburbs are uniquely positioned not to strive for,” Delaney said.

Delaney interviewed many of the people she photographed, recording their stories of love and loss for a city that was pushing them aside. It became a long-form project that grew to some 150 images and texts documenting what was lost in what could be considered San Francisco’s first wave of gentrification.

Thirty years later, her photos are especially poignant. A photo book of the series quickly sold out following its release in 2013, and there are plans to reprint it in 2015. South of Market will also be shown at the de Young Museum in San Francisco beginning Saturday, January 17 – July 19.

Delaney lives across the Bay in Berkeley now, but finds herself once again drawn to SoMa as it undergoes yet more change. The tech boom has made it one of the hottest areas in the city, home to companies like Twitter, Uber, Square and AirBnB, among others. Delaney has found it difficult to wander the streets like she used to. The landscape has been drawn and quartered, gated and ordered. But she’s not deterred.

“In order to discuss the past I need to look at the present,” she said.

Hamburger Mary's, 1582 Folsom, at 12th Street, 1980