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[MIKA27]

How One Man’s Aging Whisky In A Week, Not Years

The ageing process is an essential part of whisky-making. The charred oak barrel gives the liquor its caramel colour and imparts rich, subtle flavours. Problem is, this soaking step takes years to complete. But one enterprising distillery has figured out how to ripen sour mash in a fraction of the time.

Cleveland Whiskey is an upstart distillery located in, you guessed it, Cleveland, Ohio. Owner Tom Lix recognised the growing demand for whisky — as did Makers Mark — and realised that the conventional method of producing whisky simply wasn’t fast enough to meet that demand. But rather than water down an existing recipe, Lix invented a new method of making whisky.

“I took apart a couple of used barrels, and it didn’t seem like the whisky soaked very deep,” he told Forbes. “So I started experimenting with pressure to get the spirit to soak deeper into pore structure.”

The details behind Cleveland’s proprietary system are closely-guarded company secrets but, as Lix explained, the general process is similar to the vacuum marinators you see on late-night infomercials:

The spirit ages in a whisky barrel like normal for the first six months of its life. Then it is deposited in stainless steel tanks. Meanwhile, the barrel it aged in is cut up, processed, and put into the tank as well. Within the tank, the spirit is agitated, and undergoes a series of differences in pressure to squeeze in and out of the wood pores.

After a week in the tubs, the hyper-aged whisky is ready for bottling. Cleveland Whiskey hopes to produce 7000 cases this year and another 20,000 cases in 2014.

[MIKA27]

Why Humanitarian Disasters are good for Nature:

I stepped out into the sunlight, scarcely able to believe what I had seen or, rather, what I had not. I stared at the hills around me, contrasting them with the old photos of those same hills I had seen. Where dense forests now grew, forming a high, closed canopy — in the valleys, over the hills and up the mountain walls until they shrank, many thousands of feet above sea level, into a low scrub of pines, which diminished further to a natural treeline — there had been almost nothing. In the photos, taken on the western side of Slovenia during the First World War, the land was almost treeless.

So tall and impressive are the trees now and so thickly do they now cover the hills that when you see the old photos — taken, in ecological terms, such a short time ago — it is almost impossible to believe that you are looking at the same place. I have become so used to seeing the progress of destruction that scanning those images felt like watching a film played backwards.

Tomaz Hartmann had driven for almost an hour along a forest track through Kocevski Rog to bring us here.

The woods of beech and silver fir towered over us, in places almost touching across the road. Their roots sprawled over mossy boulders. They rolled down into limestone sinkholes: karstic craters. Karst topography — weathered limestone landscapes of chasms and caves, sinkholes, shafts and pavements — is named after this region of Slovenia, which is sometimes called the Kras or Karst plateau. The word means barren land. When Karst landscapes are grazed, they are rapidly denuded, but it was hard to connect the term with what I now saw.

Where the road clung to the edge of a hill, I could see for many miles across the Dinaric Mountains. The mountains rambled across the former Yugoslavia, fading into ever fainter susurrations of blue. The entire range was furred with forest. Where the road sank into a pass, the darkness closed around us. Through the trunks I could see the air thicken, shade upon shade of green. A few yards from the road, a fox sat watching us. Its copper fur glowed like a cinder in the shadows, which cooled to charcoal in the tips of its ears. It raised its black stockings and loped away into the depths. Woodpeckers swung along the track ahead of us.

The leaves of the beeches glittered in the silver light above our heads. The great firs grazed the sun, straight as lances. They looked as if they had been there forever.

‘All this," Tomaz told us, "Has grown since the 1930's"

He parked the car and we set off up a forest trail. Mushrooms nosed through the leaf litter beside the path. Saffron milk caps, orange and sickly green, curled up at the edges like Japanese ceramics. Dryad’s saddle, sulphur tuft and cauliflower fungus accreted around rotting stumps. Russulas — scarlet, mauve and gold — brightened the forest floor.

Tomaz led us up a limestone slope towards a stand of virgin forest, the ancient core of the great woods that had regenerated over the past century. As we climbed, we stepped into a ragged fringe of cloud. Sounds were muffled. The trees loomed darkly out of the fog. As we walked, Tomaž spoke about the dynamism of the forest system: how it never reached a point of stasis, but tumbled through a constant cycle of change. He had noticed some major shifts, and knew that, as the climate warmed, there would be plenty more. Though he described himself as both a forester and a conservationist, he had no wish to interrupt this cycle, or to seek to select and freeze a particular phase in the succession from one state to another. He sought only to protect the forests, as far as his job permitted, from destruction.

Ahead of us something dark and compact shot across the path in a blur and disappeared into the undergrowth: probably a young wild boar, Tomaz said. Then, though it was not clear where the transition had occurred, we found ourselves in the primeval core of the forest. The trees we had walked past until then were impressive, but these were built on a different scale. The beeches grew, unbranched — smooth pillars wrapped in elephant skin — for 100 feet until they blossomed, like giant gardenias, into a leafy plateau in the forest canopy. Silver firs pushed past them, the biggest topping out at almost 150 feet high. Only where they had fallen could you appreciate the scale of their trunks.

The forest had entered a cycle Tomaz had not seen before, in which many of the giants had perished. Some had died where they stood, and remained upright, reamed with beetle and woodpecker holes, sprouting hoof fungus and razor strop. They looked as if a whisper of wind could blow them down. Others now stretched across the rocks and craters, sometimes blocking our path, sometimes suspended above our heads. Among the trunks lying on the ground, some were so thick that I could scarcely see over them. Where they had fallen, thickets of saplings crowded into the light. Seeing the profusion of fungus and insect life the dead wood harboured, I was reminded of the old ecologists’ aphorism: there is more life in dead trees than there is in living trees. The tidy-minded forestry so many nations practise deprives many species of their habitats.

On a large rotten log that had lost its bark and was now furry with green algae, Tomaz showed us two sets of four white marks: deep parallel scratches where a bear had sharpened its claws. He told us that he had seen plenty of bears in the forest, but never a wolf or a lynx — though they are also abundant here. Just knowing that they were there enriched and electrified every moment he spent in the forest. I felt it too, like a third beat of the heart. The forest seemed to bristle with possibility. Here, to mangle W H Auden, nature’s jungle growths were unabated, her exorbitant monsters unabashed. But this great rewilding, Tomaž explained, had come at a price. It was the accidental result of a series of human tragedies.

Some 150 years ago, just 30 per cent of the Kočevje region was covered by trees; now, 95 per cent of it is forested. Much of the forest was preserved by the princes of Auersperg as hunting estates. So obsessed by hunting were they, as princes often seem to be, that they and the other great lords of the Habsburg monarchy in Slovenia and Croatia drew up an official declaration of friendship with the bear, signed and stamped with their great seals, in which they agreed to sustain its numbers so that they could continue to pursue it. The role the bears played in this negotiation is unrecorded.

The revolutions of 1848 brought feudalism to an end in central Europe. Local farmers lost their rights to graze common land, but acquired their own private plots. At around the same time, imports of cheap wool from New Zealand began undermining the European industry. By the end of the 19th century, many peasant farmers had sold their land and either moved to the cities or emigrated to America. The Depression of the 1930s further extended the woods — to around 50 per cent of Kočevje — as more people departed. But the greatest expansion of the forest took place as a result of what happened in the following decade.

Most of the population of south-western Slovenia — around 33,000 people — was ethnic German. They kept sheep and goats in the hills and ran much of the trade in the towns. Under King Aleksandr’s autocracy in the ten years before the Second World War, the Germans of Yugoslavia, around half a million in total, suffered discrimination and exclusion. In response, many of them joined German nationalist movements, some of which allied themselves to the Nazis. By 1941, when Hitler’s army invaded Yugoslavia, more than 60 per cent of its ethnic Germans had joined an organisation called the Kulturbund, which became absorbed into Himmler’s euphemistically titledVolksdeutsche Mittelstelle, or Ethnic Germans’ Welfare Office.

Hitler ceded south-western Slovenia to Italy, and the Nazis forcibly relocated many of the Yugoslav Germans to the Third Reich, to preserve their ‘ethnic purity’ and protect them from attacks by partisans. Some of the Germans of Kocevje were transferred to eastern Slovenia, some removed to other lands under German rule.

So feracious is the vegetation of the Amazon that it would have obliterated all visible traces of the civilisations built by its people within a few years of their dissolution

Almost a million people died in the Yugoslavian civil strife triggered by the Nazi invasion. Some of these great crimes were committed by the Prinz Eugen Division of the SS, among whose members were Yugoslavian ethnic Germans. They massacred Jews, partisans and Communists, as well as people believed to sympathise with them.

After the Axis forces were routed, Tito’s communist government found it convenient to blame ethnic Germans for many of the horrors committed by other people. This was, it seems, easier than facing the truth: that atrocities were committed by Croats, Serbs, Bosnians, Albanians, Hungarians, Nazis, communists, monarchists, Orthodox Christians, Catholics and Muslims. Almost all the Yugoslavian Germans who did not flee the country with the Axis armies were either expelled by Tito’s government or interned, often in forced labour camps. Some were taken by the Soviet Union’s Red Army to camps in Ukraine. Within a few years of the end of the war in Yugoslavia, Slovenia's ethnic German population had dropped by some 98 per cent.

Many other collaborators were also killed. The six battalions of the Slovenian Home Guard fled with the retreating German troops to Austria in May 1945. They were forcibly repatriated by the British. Driving with Tomaz through the forests of Kocevski Rog, we had seen beside the road great trunks carved, like totem poles, into the tortured figures of Christian martyrs. They marked the sinkholes beside which some thousands of the collaborators were lined up and machine-gunned. The partisans then used explosives to make the craters collapse, burying the corpses.

The barren lands of Kocevje, whose population had been relocated and dispersed first by the Nazis, then by the Red Army and the communist government, were never recolonised. When the farms were abandoned and the pastures no longer grazed by sheep and goats, the seeds that rained into them from the neighbouring woods were allowed to sprout once more. Thus the land has been repopulated by trees.

Ancient Maya temple ruins in Uxmal, Yucatan, Mexico

In the Americas — North, Meso and South — the first Europeans to arrive in the 15th and 16th centuries reported dense settlement and large-scale farming. Some of them were simply not believed. Spaniards such as the explorer Francisco de Orellana and the missionary Brother Gaspar de Carvajal, who travelled the length of the Amazon river in 1542, claimed that they had seen walled cities in which many thousands of people lived, raised highways and extensive farming along its banks. When later expeditions visited the river, they found no trace of them, just dense forest to the water’s edge and small scattered bands of hunter-gatherers.

Orellana and Carvajal’s reports were dismissed as the ravings of fantasists, seeking to boost commercial interest in the lands they had explored.

It was not until the late 20th century that investigations by archaeologists such as Anna Roosevelt at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Michael Heckenberger at the University of Florida suggested that Orellana and Carvajal’s accounts were probably accurate. In parts of the Americas previously believed to have been scarcely inhabited, Heckenberger and his colleagues found evidence of garden cities surrounded by major earthworks and wooden palisades, built on grids and transected by broad avenues.

In some places they unearthed causeways, bridges and canals. The towns were connected to their satellite villages by road networks that were planned and extensive. These were advanced agricultural civilisations, maintaining fish farms as well as arable fields and orchards. As in Slovenia, what appeared to be primordial forest had grown over the traces of a vanished population.

It appears that European diseases such as smallpox, measles, diphtheria, the common cold were brought to the Caribbean coast of South America by explorers and early colonists and then passed down indigenous trade routes into the heart of the continent, where they raged through densely peopled settlements before any Europeans reached them. So feracious is the vegetation of the Amazon that it would have obliterated all visible traces of the civilisations built by its people within a few years of their dissolution.

The great Varzea (floodplain) forests, whose monstrous trees inspired such wonder among 18th and 19th century expeditions, were probably not the primordial ecosystems the explorers imagined them to be.

The short summers and long cold winters, the ice fairs on the Thames and the deep cold depicted by Pieter Breugel might have been caused partly as a result of the extermination of the Native Americans

Gruesome events — some accidental, others deliberately genocidal — wiped out the great majority of the hemisphere’s people and the rich and remarkable societies that they’d created. In many parts of the Americas, the only humans who remained were — like the survivors in a post-holocaust novel — hunter-gatherers. Some belonged to tribes that had long practised that art, others were forced to re-acquire lost skills as a result of civilisational collapse. Imported disease made cities lethal: only dispersed populations had a chance of avoiding epidemics. Dispersal into small bands of hunter-gatherers made economic complexity impossible. The forests blotted out memories of what had gone before. Humanity’s loss was nature’s gain.

The impacts of the American genocides might have been felt throughout the northern hemisphere. Dennis Bird and Richard Nevle, earth scientists at Stanford University, have speculated that the recovering forests drew so much carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere — about 10 parts per million — that they could have helped to trigger the cooling between the 16th and 19th centuries known as the Little Ice Age. The short summers and long cold winters, the ice fairs on the Thames and the deep cold depicted by Pieter Breugel might have been caused partly as a result of the extermination of the Native Americans.

In the Soca valley, in north-western Slovenia, Jernej Stritih, a clever, laconic head of department in the Slovenian government, with a thick beard and a splendid moustache, whom we had befriended in Ljubljana, took us to a restaurant ran by a friend in the front room of his farmhouse. The proprietor owned a small herd of sheep, which were kept for show and to make cheese to sell to tourists. We had seen them on display that morning in the Trenta Fair, massive beasts weighed down by trailing yellow coats. They had won first prize, and now a large gilt cup stood on a table, glimmering in the low brown light, while our host, in a leather waistcoat and bushy side-whiskers, drank and talked with his friends. From time to time he would stop talking and, almost as if he were unaware that he was doing so, bend down to play the dulcimer on the table before him, while the other men continued their conversation.

As we ate, Jernej explained that our host was one of the last shepherds in the region. Because there was no longer any arable production in the valley, the few remaining sheep could stay in the lowlands and were never led into the mountains. Here, by contrast to Kočevje, there had been no mass dispossession of local people. A different social tragedy had been engineered. In the 1950s, he told us, Marshall Tito had banned the goat. The ostensible purpose was to protect the environment, but doubtless he also sought to drag the peasantry out of what Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels called its ‘rural idiocy’ and press it into the urban proletariat. (The peasants of eastern Europe had perversely failed to fulfil the Communist Manifesto’s prediction that they would ‘decay and finally disappear in the face of modern industry’). Without goats, which browsed back the scrub, the pastures became unsuitable for sheep.

The rewilding of the western side of Slovenia, the rapid regrowth of forests there and the recovery of its populations of bears, wolves, lynx, wild boar, ibex, martens, giant owls and other remarkable creatures, took place at the expense of its human population. This is not to suggest that it continues to generate social tragedy. On the contrary, this region has become a lucrative destination for high-end tourism, which supports what was, when we visited, a buoyant local economy.

The forests and their wildlife, the mountains, repopulated by ibex and chamois, the caves with their endemic species of blind salamander, known to locals as the human fish on account of its smooth pink skin, the rivers with their steady flow and excellent whitewater rafting, the extraordinary beauty of this regenerated land, draw people from the rest of Slovenia and from all over Europe and beyond. Talking to many Slovenians, it became clear that the integrity of the natural environment was now a source of national pride.

None of this, however, is to deny a disquieting truth. Slovenia is just one example of a global phenomenon: most of the rewilding that has taken place on Earth so far has happened as a result of humanitarian disasters.

This is an adapted and reprinted extract from Feral: Searching for enchantment on the frontiers of rewilding (Penguin), by George Monbiot. Copyright © George Monbiot, 2013.

[MIKA27]

A Classic Fiat 500 Had To Die So You Can Keep Your Drinks Cool

Although it was reborn back in 2007 as a similarly compact model, the original Fiat 500 showed the world, not just Europe, that you didn’t need a giant land yacht of a vehicle to be comfortable. So it’s a little sad to see that Smeg is working with Fiat to hack apart these iconic rides, and turn their front ends into mini fridges.

Under the Smeg 500′s hood you’ll find an instrument panel styled like the original Fiat 500′s which is used to adjust the temperature, and with a hundred liter capacity you can store everything from drinks to frozen foods inside. Pricing hasn’t been announced just yet, but when it’s available in June in three different colours you can probably expect it to cost a small fortune, and not just because air conditioning comes standard.

[MIKA27]

Goji: Here’s Your Semi-Perfect Camera-Equipped Smart Lock

Smart Locks are now a thing. Believe it or not. UniKey arguably kicked off the whole craze last year when it appeared on the TV show Shark Tank, then Lockitron got some buzz and just last week August launched its smart lock. This week its a camera-equipped smart lock from Goji that comes with 24/7 customer service.

The company is launching an Indiegogo campaign today with a $US120,000 goal and December rollout. Goji’s $US278 take is a little different than the rest but ultimately the same. Like UniKey, Goji replaces your entire locking solution, but Goji adds a front-facing component that looks exactly like a Nest thermometer coupled with a Lockitron. The lock communicates with your iPhone or Android device over Bluetooth SMART (read: 4.0, low energy) and links up to your Wi-Fi network giving users remote access. That internet connectivity also allows Goji to snap, upload and push a photo to your phone of anyone who has permission to enter through a Goji-equipped door. But if your network goes down, you lose any feature reliant upon that connection.

Each Goji system ships with two programmable key fobs in case someone doesn’t have a smartphone and four admin accounts that can issue digital keys. It should be noted that each key fob can be programmed for multiple locks, not just one lock. And like the August and Lockitron, Goji says its using 128-bit AES encryption that’s baked into Bluetooth SMART.

Goji’s interior module is the “heart” of the system, CEO and founder Gabriel Bestard-Ribas recently told me in a phone interview. It’s the literal brains of the operation housing the motorised mechanism, the batteries and an antennae that knows when you’re inside, which is something of a mystery for both August and Lockitron. The outward facing piece of Goji’s system has two antennas that work in unison with the interior piece to know when someone with credentialled access is outside or inside, supposedly eliminating any false unlocks. The digitised display also greets guests by name and keeps a log of everyone that’s come and gone, which you can view in the app.

Included in that $US278 package is 24/7 customer service — something others don’t — that doesn’t cost any extra. But if you lose your phone and don’t have a physical key, you have to call Goji who will then send out a locksmith to let you back in. Here’s the other thing though, if you decide to blacklist someone’s key, they could still get in. In the unlikely event that your Wi-Fi network goes down and your lock is unable to update its list of blacklisted keys, and the device whose digital key you’ve rejected is offline or in aeroplane mode, said key could still gain access having never hit Goji’s server, thus having its permissions rejected. Otherwise, you’d have to call Goji and have it send someone out to manually update the lock. It might seem like an unlikely scenario but it could happen. People are crazy. I’m just saying that it could happen, not that it will.

In all fairness, each smart lock alternative comes with its pros and cons and Goji’s camera feature might interest you, but I’m not 100 per cent comfortable announcing to the world that I have a newfangled “smart” lock with its outside module and higher price tag. But it’s still early days for smart locks and a lot can change between now and the time these devices ship. At least I hope so.

[CanuckSARTech]

[MIKA27]

[MIKA27]

Blu-ray Disc That Lasts 1000 Years Guarantees Caddyshack Lives On

They last a lot longer than the tape-based storage of yesteryear, but optical discs, particularly the type you burn at home, aren’t guaranteed to survive even a decade. So if you want to pass on that wedding video/holiday photos/copy of Caddyshack to your great-great grandkids, you’ll want to opt for Millenniata’s new 25GB Blu-ray compatible M-DISCs which are guaranteed to last at least 1000 years.

The M-DISCs — which burn data onto a more permanent layer made of metals and metalloids instead of organic light-sensitive dyes — have existed as standard DVDs for a few years now. But that provides just a paltry 4.7GB of storage capacity. The new Blu-ray version of course boosts that to 25GB, and although the discs need to be created on an M-DISC compatible burner (many are these days) they can still be played back on a regular Blu-ray player. So it’s got that goin’ for it, which is nice.

Available in August there’s no pricing info on the Blu-ray version of the M-DISCs just yet, but a 10-pack of the DVD versions are about $30, and you can expect the higher capacity versions to be a bit more expensive. But when you break down the per year cost in terms of survival, this is the deal of the century — err millennium.

[MIKA27]

The Final Man Of Steel Trailer Is Pretty Epic

http://youtu.be/dwYatpwrs8s

Warner Bros’ latest attempt at resurrecting the Superman franchise, Man of Steel, will be released on June 27. Today, the last official trailer has made its way to the internet. You should watch it.

It’s sponsored by Nokia and has more new footage of Zach Snyder’s hopefully-not-an-abomination-like-the-last-one, including what looks like Krypton and a giant Nokia phone that probably doesn’t even exist in real life. That aside, it’s a pretty epic trailer.

[MIKA27]

Monster Machines: The Most Terrifying Cherry Blossom To Ever Take Flight

By 1945, Allied forces were knocking on Japan’s front door. As the Empire’s military grew increasingly desperate, it began to focus on eliminating the Allies’ willingness to fight — by intentionally crashing manned aircraft in kamikaze attacks. And for pilots aboard one breed of these notorious flying coffin, the MXY-7 Navy Suicide Attacker Ohka, death wasn’t the last resort, it was the only one.

Conceived by Ensign Mitsuo Ohta of the 405th Kokutai and developed at the University of Tokyo’s Aeronautical Research Institute, the MXY-7 Navy Suicide Attacker Ohka (“Cherry Blossom”) wasn’t so much an aeroplane as 1200kg bomb with wings and a cockpit. These single-seat suicide machines measured 20 feet long with a nearly 5m wingspan and weighed just 2000kg when loaded. They were constructed of wood over an aluminium frame. A trio of Type 4 Mark 1 Model 20 rocket motors, each blowing 80kg/m of thrust could speed a pilot to his demise at up to 927km/h, but only for about 37km.

With such a short range, the Ohkas had to be ferried to their final destination underneath lumbering Mitsubishi G4M2e “Betty” Model 24J bombers. The pilot would ride along with the bomber crew to the drop sight, load into his Ohka, have the cockpit locked from the outside, and then release through the bomb bay. The missile would glide toward a US capital ship — carriers, destroyers — before igniting the solid-fuel rockets, dropping into a nearly 965km/h dive, and aim for a hit. Faced with the prospect of an enemy willing to die so easily, the Allied forces would then lose their will to fight, and slow their ever-advancing march on the Japanese home islands. At least that’s how it was supposed to work.

See, capital ships aren’t just floating willy-nilly in the middle of the ocean, waiting to have someone sink it with an aeroplane. These are the US Navy’s most valuable and necessary warships and, as such, are surrounded by a perimeter of slightly smaller, heavily armed warships. Getting a slow-moving bomber within 37km of this Allied hornet’s nest proved quite difficult.

The introduction of Cherry Blossoms in the Pacific Theater in 1945 was met with minimal success. Their initial assault on Task Group 58.1 in March of that year saw Allied F-16s engage the fleet of Betty bombers more than 113km from their target — though that didn’t stop the bombers from launching their explosive human cargo regardless. During the few short months the Ohkas saw action before the war ended that September, these manned missiles sank or damaged a total of seven US warships and not a single capital ship. Today, the pilots that gave their lives for their country, members of the Jinrai Butai – Thunder Gods Corps, are honoured in memorials across Japan.

[Fuzz]

Monster Machines: The Most Terrifying Cherry Blossom To Ever Take Flight

The introduction of Cherry Blossoms in the Pacific Theater in 1945 was met with minimal success. Their initial assault on Task Group 58.1 in March of that year saw Allied F-16s engage the fleet of Betty bombers more than 113km from their target — though that didn’t stop the bombers from launching their explosive human cargo regardless. During the few short months the Ohkas saw action before the war ended that September, these manned missiles sank or damaged a total of seven US warships and not a single capital ship. Today, the pilots that gave their lives for their country, members of the Jinrai Butai – Thunder Gods Corps, are honoured in memorials across Japan.

F-16s? I'm surprised the Allies couldn't win the war in the Pacific a lot sooner if they had a bunch of F-16 Falcons.

[MIKA27]

Renowned Foodie Mike Tyson Discusses Human Flesh Preferences in UFC TV Interview

Fuel TV’s Ariel Helwani caught up with Mike Tyson earlier this week, and asked the high-on-life-and-perhaps-other-things former heavyweight champ a series of questions about his thoughts on the baddest man on the planet (“It’s up in the air”), who would win a UFC match between Dana White and Vince McMahon (Vince), and, around the two-minute mark, how Evander Holyfield’s ear tasted:

http://youtu.be/X_hZwQQM6Bo

“It tasted like s—, it didn’t taste well at all,” said the star of Mike Tyson Mysteries, an upcoming Adult Swim cartoon in which the boxer-turned-comedian and a talking pigeon team up to solve crimes. “I discussed that with Evander … he promotes hot sauce now, and if I had that hot sauce, the ear probably would have tasted a lot better.”

That’s a handy culinary tip: when you dine on raw human flesh, properly season.

[MIKA27]

On the Inside: Venezuela’s Most Dangerous Prison

The following photographs were taken at the Vista Hermosa prison in Ciudad Bolivar, Venezuela in March and April 2013.

His name is Wilmer Brizuela, Wilmito to his friends, but to the inmates of Vista Hermosa, he is simply the Pran, the unquestioned leader of one of Venezuela’s notorious prisons. Outside its walls, the Venezuelan national guard patrols; inside, the inmates live and die in a world of their own making. Brizuela has occasionally allowed reporters to visit for a few hours, but earlier this year, he gave photojournalist Sebastián Liste and me exclusive, full access to the prison for more than a week, revealing an improvised society that mirrors the one outside.

Brizuela, who is serving sentences of 10 years for kidnapping and 16 years for murder, believes that his rule over the 1,400 inmates of Vista Hermosa (Beautiful View) in the southern state of Bolívar is more humane than that of the Venezuelan prison authorities, who have been widely criticized by human-rights groups for the overcrowding, poor living conditions and corruption in the country’s prisons. Gang violence is rampant; last year 591 inmates were killed, according to the Venezuelan Observatory of Prisons, a watchdog group. Under strongman Hugo Chávez, advocates and journalists who reported on abuses in Venezuela’s prisons faced intimidation and threats of violence; conditions have not improved since Chávez’s death.

Vista Hermosa is emblematic of these problems. Built in the 1950s to house 650 inmates, it now houses more than twice that number. As the population grew, clashes between prisoners and guards became common. Rather than improve conditions, prison authorities have allowed them to descend into near chaos. Since Brizuela, a champion boxer, and his gang took control of Vista Hermosa by force in 2005, drug use and violence are still widespread but tightly controlled. “So far we have achieved peace and a minimum of decent human living standards,” Brizuela says.

Entering Vista Hermosa during visiting hours feels a bit like stepping into the streets of a bustling slum. There are open-air vendors selling DVDs, medicine and snacks amid the unbearable heat and thumping techno music. There are plazas for dancing and a more formal ballroom for parties. In these areas, visiting women and children walk freely, the iron bars have been removed and the walls are freshly painted. The prison, like any society, has distinct subcultures. There are Christian evangelists, called varones, who live, pray and sing together and work hard to keep their spaces clean. *** inmates have their own quarters, where they can live without fear of harassment.

Vista Hermosa feels like an extreme version of Venezuela itself, in microcosm. Along with the families and celebrations, there is violence and despair. Dozens of addicts, their bodies withered by crack and other drugs, smoke and sleep in rows of hammocks or on piles of trash. Men serving time for sex crimes live in an area far removed from the other inmates. And this society of prisoners has a prison of its own the zone known as La Guerrilla, where gandules, the renegade inmates who have violated Vista Hermosa’s unwritten code, are kept under armed guard. Their inmate-jailers make surveillance rounds night and day armed with pistols, high-caliber revolvers and automatic rifles.

Prisons like Vista Hermosa, which Brizuela says generates about $3 million a year in profit from illegal activities and weekly taxes paid to the Pran by the inmates, could not function without the complicity of corrupt officials who allow drugs and weapons inside.

Even the Pran fears them. As Brizuela puts it, “The arms are for protecting us from the national

guard.”

A general view of the Vista Hermosa prison. On the left is a mural with the chief of the prison, inmate Wilmer Brizuela.

Prisoners preparing pipes used to smoke crack cocaine.

Homemade crack pipes made from objects including soda cans, bones and wood.

A member of the carro, the group of inmates who control the prison, during a routine patrol.

Wilmer "Wilmito" Brizuela teaches another inmate how to box in the prison's gym.

Family visitors during a celebration in the prison. In September 2008, family overnights were instituted as part of the Prison Humanization Plan, which sought to reduce conflict in the prisons and restore inmates' rights.

Bruzuela's daughter celebrates her 15th birthday in the prison.

All inmates and their families were invited to the party, which had over 2,000 guests.

Inmates gather on the sports fields to sing and rap.

A child flies a kite in front of a security post of the Bolivarian National Guard, the official agency responsible for ensuring the security of the Venezuelan prisons.

The wife of a prisoner in his room during a weekend visit.

Inmates sleeping on the rooftop of the prison. The Vista Hermosa prison was built for 650 inmates, but currently holds more than 1400.

Inmates are free to practice their religion in prison. Most prisons have a chapel, and evangelical Christianity has an important role in the criminal population.

A small cell houses two brothers, with beds, a roof, air conditioning and a television. Such amenities are made available because they have made payments to the leaders of the prison, about $10 each

A 9mm pistol and an iPhone 5 that belong to one of the inmates on a couch in the living room of one of the leaders of the prison.

Music can be heard on evenings and weekends in any corner of the prison. Hip-hop and reggae are the most popular genres.

Inmates are forced to sleep on any available space in the prison due to overcrowding.

Portrait of an inmate with scars and tattoos from years in confinement.

Prisoners smoke crack cocaine.

Inmates dance with girls during a weekend visit. In the background, an armed member of the carro keeps watch.

With his two sons, a prisoner grills meat to sell to other inmates and their visitors. Since the inmates have taken control of the prison, they have the freedom to run their our businesses

Members of the carro run a routine check in the prison.

Inmates in La Guerrilla.

Prisoners make a blood strike on the roof to demand their transport to the capital city, Caracas

*** inmates run the prison laundry and are otherwise confined to their quarters, but don’t fear harassment. Ezekiel, alias Maritza, hopes to be a model one day

[CanuckSARTech]

Wow. Those are amazingly beautifully well-done pictures. Portrays the subject material very well.

[MIKA27]

Does a shadowy clique of VIPs, politicians and billionaires (meeting today in Watford) secretly run the world?

Even though it’s the birthplace of a Spice Girl, a former Gladiators champion and the Tory chairman Grant Shapps, nothing can have prepared Watford for the circus descending on it today.

For the line-up of famous guests checking into the five-star Grove Hotel on the town’s outskirts is even more star-spangled than when Russell Brand celebrated his stag party there with the likes of Noel Gallagher and David Walliams.

Those ferried in via fleets of limousines and helicopters include billionaires, bank bosses, defence chiefs, oil barons, politicians, royals and statesmen. For the next four days, these 138 very important people will discuss our futures over the finest food, wine and flattery — interspersed, no doubt, with the odd game of golf or a massage at the hotel spa.

For this is the unlikely home for the annual gathering of the mysterious, highly-secretive and very self-congratulatory Bilderberg group — long seen by conspiracy theorists as a malevolent cabal that actually rules the world, a suspicion sparked not least by its refusal until recently to confirm its own existence.

In truth, one has to question whether a clandestine global government is really going to set up shop in Watford, for all the town’s undoubted charms.

But there is no doubt the roll-call of those attending the world’s top networking event from 21 countries is impressive — although it is noticeable that only 14 are women.

Guests include Chancellor George Osborne and his Labour shadow Ed Balls; Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands; Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund; Jose Manuel Barroso, head of the European Commission; Henry Kissinger, the veteran U.S. politician; and David Petraeus, the former general and CIA director.

They will be joined by politicians such as Lord Mandelson and former Tory foreign secretary Lord Carrington, both regular participants, along with about 60 chairmen and chief executives from major companies such as BP, Goldman Sachs and Shell.

The bosses of Amazon and Google have been invited, despite intense public anger over their corporate tax avoidance. There will also be three senior executives from HSBC, which only six months ago was hit with a massive fine after allegations of money-laundering for terror groups and drug lords.

For all the mystique surrounding the event, one of those who attended last year’s conclave in the U.S. town of Chantilly, Virginia, was perfectly happy to prick the bubble of secrecy and pomposity.

‘Of course I was delighted to be asked,’ said the source. ‘But you turn up to find a lot of people who are quite self-important, speaking in platitudes. There is a tidal wave of inanity washing over you from start to finish.’

The chosen ones: Guests include Chancellor George Osborne and his Labour shadow Ed Balls; Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands, Christine Lagarde, Jose Manuel Barroso, Henry Kissinger and David Petraeus

He said he struggled to remember anything of substance from the event beyond watching Kissinger in action, though he said the informal chats over meals were often interesting.

The Watford meeting is the 61st since the group began life ‘to foster dialogue between Europe and America’ at the Hotel de Bilderberg near Arnhem, Holland, in 1954.

It was launched by a Polish exile and leading advocate of European union named Joseph Retinger, who was alarmed by the spread of communism and soaring anti-Americanism.

He was backed by the Dutch royal family and key U.S. officials.

Guests are seated in alphabetical order, which is reversed each year — although it is unclear how the hotel rooms are allocated.

Who, for instance, will get the Grove’s £1,050-a-night presidential suite — beloved by Kylie Minogue — and who will be consigned to the cheapest west wing rooms?

One thing sets it apart from the plethora of other similar talking shops such as the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland: its mafia-like code of silence.

Guests are ordered to come on their own, minutes do not recall the names of speakers, and participants are warned never to discuss anything with outsiders if they want to be invited again. Even the word ‘Bilderberg’ must not be mentioned.

Such is the secrecy that when Tony Blair was asked in Parliament, shortly after becoming prime minister, if he or any of his ministers had ever attended Bilderberg group meetings, he emphatically denied it.

Later it emerged he had been in 1993, plucked as one of the rising political stars invited each year.

His denial only serves to add to the mystique, though he did confess to a recent interviewer: ‘Yeah, it’s a really useful group actually.’

This lack of transparency — which is supposed to encourage open debate during the meeting — has led to dozens of daft conspiracy theories. Online forums buzz about the group’s supposed desire to unleash a new world order with perpetual war, and ‘non-conformists targeted for extermination’.

Osama bin Laden, Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh and London nail-bomber David Copeland all believed that Bilderberg runs the world, while the group variously stands accused of being a Zionist plot, hiding the cure for cancer and ousting Margaret Thatcher from power.

One Greek bishop even said Bilderberg represented an attempt to set up a: ‘cruel world dictatorship under the headship of Lucifer’.

The reality is rather less diabolical, despite there being an undoubted capitalist, corporatist and EU bias which reflects the origins of the organisation.

One ex-president admitted that the group helped lay the groundwork for creating the euro, which in some people’s eyes is proof enough that dark forces are at work; sure enough, that arch europhile Ken Clarke is among those on the steering committee.

This year’s guests will debate 12 ‘megatrends’, including the politics of the EU, Western economic growth and cyberwarfare. There are also sessions on ‘Africa’s challenges’ and the Middle East, despite the lack of representatives from these regions.

Those who have attended say it is full of people who previously held powerful jobs discussing world events as if they were still key players. Perhaps this explains why Shirley Williams will be in Watford this year.

‘It is all very enjoyable and pleasant,’ one said. ‘But really it was all these people reassuring each other they were still important and stroking each other’s egos.’

Among the few to have broken the code of silence was Denis Healey, the former Labour chancellor and one of the founding fathers of Bilderberg, who revealed how a fiery David Owen speech at one meeting helped swing international support for sanctions against Argentina after the Falklands invasion.

Healey admitted that attendance at one of the group’s get-togethers could boost a political career, and he told the author Jon Ronson, who was investigating it, that it was not ‘wholly unfair’ to say it sought more united global governance.

‘Those of us in Bilderberg felt we couldn’t go on fighting one another for nothing and killing people and rendering millions homeless. So we felt that a single community throughout the world would be a good thing,’ he said.

‘Bilderberg is a way of bringing together politicians, industrialists, financiers and journalists.

‘Politics should involve people who are not politicians.’

It is, of course, profoundly undemocratic to have a highly-secretive forum for politicians and a few self-selecting friends in business.

But Healey insisted to Ronson: ‘We aren’t secret, we’re private.’ So that’s all right then.

Since the organisers are so uncommunicative — although they have at least begun revealing who joins their jamborees — it is unclear how they alighted on Watford. But it has caused excitement locally, with the costly hotel gym closed to members and the local rugby club rented out to police officers who have been bussed in to protect the event’s participants.

Fear of protests by those who take exception to the group’s secrecy has caused problems for guests.

‘I’m honoured to have been asked to go,’ Sherard Cowper-Coles, former British ambassador to Afghanistan, said yesterday. ‘But it’s crazy. They wouldn’t tell us where we were going to stay until a couple of weeks beforehand.’

The Grove — which claims to be where a young Queen Victoria started the fashion for weekend breaks — is no stranger to secrecy, having been the clandestine wartime headquarters for much of Britain’s railway system.

Yet one of those who has attended several recent Bilderberg meetings said he rather wished the conspiracy theorists were right.

‘If only there was a global government and someone was in charge,’ he said. ‘The trouble is when you go to these events you realise no one is running anything — and that’s why the world is in such a mess.’

[MIKA27]

Beer Brewed with Actual Beard Hair Exists

Beard Beer, sounds like a bro’s choice of brew right? Maybe, if you’re into beer literally brewed from beard yeast.

Created by Rogue Ales, Brewmaster John Maier came up with the idea on a whim. Just for funsies one day, Maier extracted yeast from his very own beard to produce a sweet, distinct ale, or “Beard Beer.”

Available to order online, the product description helps to clarify any misconceptions, just in case you thought things were getting a little too hairy.

It’s here! Our latest brew dedicated to Beards, Beard Beer is brewed with a yeast created from Brewmaster John Maier’s Beard. No Need to freak out, Brewers have used wild yeasts in beer making for centuries. John has had the same Old Growth Beard since 1983 and for over 15,000 brews, so it is no great surprise that a natural yeast ideal for brewing was discovered in his beard.

What does Beard Beer taste like? Try it, we think you’ll be surprised…

I’m not too sure I’m into those kinds of surprises.

Just to clarify, this isn’t a “shake due to settling” situation, and the brew doesn’t have any wild hairs floating around in it. Whew, that makes it all better, right?

MIKA:

[MIKA27]

New Mars Rock Mystery: What Has Curiosity Discovered Now?

NASA’s Curiosity rover is still uncovering new headscratchers for its science team as it finishes up exploration at its second drill site, nicknamed Cumberland. Figuring out the composition of a dark rocky exposure the rover recently photographed will be one of its last tasks before heading on to the base of its eventual target, Mount Sharp.

“It’s a nice mystery,” said Joy Crisp, deputy project scientist for the mission, during a NASA press briefing about Curiosity’s most recent findings on June 5. The unknown rock, located at an area nicknamed Point Lake, has an odd “Swiss cheese texture” and appears more resistant to erosion than surrounding materials.

The science team thinks the outcrop is either volcanic or sedimentary. It could be the result of a lava flow, with holes left behind by gas bubbles, called vesicles. If it’s sedimentary rock, the holes may have been left behind by a softer mineral that was etched out by wind, or caused by gases that were present in the rock when it formed. Curiosity is set to drive up to the rock and inspect it closely.

The rover will complete two more tasks at Cumberland: examining an area known as Shaler, an exposure likely representing a stream deposit, and measuring the hydrogen abundances in different rocks to determine their water content. Shaler is a 15-meter-wide exposure that preserves underwater dunes from the bottom of a Martian river billions of years ago. Closer inspection can tell scientists how fast and deep the flowing water might have been. Using its DAN instrument, Curiosity will record the presence of hydrated minerals in different rock layers, to show how water content changed over time.

But the team is eager to get driving and arrive at Mount Sharp, which researchers hope will reveal the rich history of Mars and how it changed from a warm, wet world to a cold and dry one. Researchers will meet in coming weeks to plan out their route and hope to do great science in the 8 kilometers between their present location and the mountain’s base.

Scientists will use satellite data to “create menu of possible stopping points,” said Jim Erikson, lead project manager, during the conference. Engineers are also looking forward to having the rover get some views where they can spot the discarded machinery that helped bring Curiosity to the surface.

Curiosity is expected to take at minimum eight to 10 months to reach Mount Sharp, though the science team said they might make further stops along the way if they see something interesting. The rover has already tested out all of its tools and techniques, including two successful attempts at drilling, and engineers have learned a great deal about how its systems work. For instance, the second drilling operation took only one-quarter the time of the first and further experience will help explore faster.

[MIKA27]

Kiefer Sutherland Will Play Snake in Metal Gear Solid V

Actor Kiefer Sutherland (24) will portray Snake, the hero of Konami’s upcoming Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, the company said on Thursday in a pre-recorded video presentation prior to the E3 Expo.

“This time, with Metal Gear Solid V, the themes are a little different from previous games in the series,” said series creator Hideo Kojima in the video. “We’re taking on some very heavy subjects such as race and revenge. I wanted Snake to have a more subdued performance, expressed through subtle facial movements and tone of voice rather than words.”

“Furthermore,” Kojima said, “the game takes place in 1984, when Snake is 49 years old. Therefore, we needed someone who could genuinely convey the facial and vocal qualities of a man in his late 40′s.”

In addition to voicing Snake, Sutherland also participated in facial capture sessions for the game’s animation. He replaces David Hayter, a voice actor who has provided the instantly recognizable voice of Snake since the first Metal Gear Solid game in 1998.

“The game will probably still be excellent,” said Hayter on Twitter. “Like New Coke!”

[CanuckSARTech]

Wow. I'm excited to hear of the new MGS game (and which platform will it be available on? And what kind of release date delays? LOL).

But, I don't think that's cool at all that David Hayter isn't being used. If he's available (and presumably he'd be cheaper than Keifer Sutherland to use), then I don't get them replacing him, unless it's an animosity thing.

[MIKA27]

A Retro-Futuristic Watch Torn From The Pages Of Science Fiction

Supposedly inspired and named after the space station featured in the Star Trek series Deep Space Nine, Vianney Halter’s Deep Space Tourbillon watch took several years to design and build. But from the looks of it, that number could be closer to half a decade since the watch looks like it was based on designs from the science fiction of yesteryear.

The watch’s most striking feature is a spinning triple axis tourbillon that almost appears to float beneath a bulbous crystal dome as if it was set adrift in space. But it’s securely tied into the Deep Space Tourbillon, powering the arching hour and minute hands that curve up from the side of its face.

Watch enthusiasts with a penchant for sci-fi better be ready to pay up though. The Deep Space Tourbillon comes with a $192,000 price tag, and it’s apparently already been sold to a collector in China. Guess you’ll just have to wait for the Voyager edition.

[MIKA27]

Apple Is Making Badass New Mac Pros

During E3 keynote today, we got our first look at what Apple is thinking in terms of the future of Mac Pros. Everyone who said the Mac Pro is dead can just shut up. Here comes a new freaking generation of high-performance computing from Apple, and we couldn’t be more excited.

The new Mac Pro will support up to 12-core configurations. They’ve got the fastest ECC memory the company has ever put into its computers, which is clocked at 1866MHz DDR 3.

For I/O, the new Mac Pros will support (of course) FireWire, and the brand new Thunderbolt 2 standard.

There will also be AMD FirePro graphics capable of running up 4K out of all of its ports — up to three UltraHD displays simultaneously. These are full-on professional machines for current pro users. Apple’s demoing Pixar animation this week, running on these machines. Doesn’t get more taxing than Pixar.

And, of course, if you’re looking at this thing, you can tell it looks different than the old aluminium boxes we’re used to looking at. It kinda looks like a giant trash can! But the new circular design means the new beasts are one-eighth the volume of the last iterations, while still allowing easy access to the guts for breezy-fast hardware upgrades.

Further details are scarce, but we do know two things: they’re made in the US, and they will be available later this year.

Hell yes.

[MIKA27]

Mars Rover: There Was Drinkable Water On Mars

Opportunity, aka The Little Rover That Could, is still making important discoveries 10 years into its Martian jaunt. After the devastating loss of twin rover Spirit in 2011, Opportunity rallied and kept trekking, only to recently discover a fascinating rock near Endurance Crater.

One of the oldest rocks ever analysed, the specimen shows that drinkable water once existed on Mars. Opportunity identified a type of clay mineral on the rock that is only formed in neutral water, like the water found on Earth. Steve Squyres, the principle Opportunity researcher, noted that Opportunity has found other liquids that could chemically be described as water in the past, but these samples were all closer to sulphuric acid. Curiosity recently found similar evidence of neutral water at Gale Crater. Squyres said:

It is really striking to me, how similar the stories are for the rocks at Gale and Endeavour crater.

Though the desert conditions on Mars have made other Martian water acidic, the findings contribute to theories that Mars may once have been habitable. Nice hustle, Opportunity. Way to be.

[MIKA27]

How Fallout From Nuke Tests Just Proved That Brain Cells Regenerate

Before the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963 barred all aboveground, sea and orbital nuclear weapons testing, the world’s nations were popping off nukes like champagne bottles on New Year’s. Surprisingly, that sprinkling of high-energy particles was actually quite beneficial, to science at least, as it’s just helped solve a long-standing dispute in human physiology — can the brain regrow neurons? Short answer: sort of.

Nuclear tests didn’t just give Nevada its iridescent glow. At the heart of these explosions, where temperatures top that of the surface of the sun, numerous isotopes were generated and released — like carbon-14, a relatively-benign isotope often used in

archeological carbon dating techniques. This is important because biological systems, from algae on up to humans, consume and incorporate environmental carbon during cell division (including bits of atmospheric C14 from the tests). Now, since the human brain supposedly stops developing around age two, the amount of C14 incorporated into neural DNA should be roughly constant across all regions of the brain. It’s not.

In a recent study published in Cell today, a team at the Karolinska Institute led by Jonas Frisén examined 120 cadaver brains and sampled C14 concentrations in its various regions, using the C14 as an indicator of cellular age, and modelled the results. They found that concentrations varied greatly, especially within the hippocampus. This suggests that the lower-concentration cells were formed after the 1963 testing halt.

In fact, only a tiny portion of the hippocampus known as the dentate gyrus exhibited new cellular growth after the age of two. These cells replaced 700 of themselves (roughly 1.5 per cent of the region) annually, though they live three years less than other neurons. No regrowth was discovered elsewhere in the organ.

Why just this one minuscule lump of flesh renews itself and not the rest of the brain remains a mystery. However, unlocking that secret could provide a quantum leap in the search for curing alzheimer’s, dementia, and a host of other degenerative neural diseases.

[MIKA27]

Tour D-Day Normandy’s Surreal Destruction In These Rare Colour Photos

Yesterday marked the 69th anniversary of D-day, the largest amphibious invasion in history and the beginning of the end for the Axis Powers. After 160,000 US, British and Canadian troops stormed the beaches of Normandy and secured a foothold for the Allies, war photographer Frank Scherschel surveyed the French town’s nearly complete destruction.

Only a dwindling number of veterans witnesses the attack, but these unusual colour photos bring us a bit closer to the action.

[MIKA27]

17 Of The Oldest Man-Made Structures On Earth

Of the original Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, only one wonder still exists today: the crumbling, gorgeous Great Pyramids of Giza. But there are plenty of other ancient structures that deserve our attention too, from a 2000-year-old church to an almost 3000-year-old Buddhist temple that’s made out of timber. Even more remarkable? Most of these building are still in use. Check out 17 of these tributes to human engineering, below.

The Santa Sophia (also known as Hagia Sophia) in Istanbul, Turkey has been church, mosque and museum since it was completed in 537 AD.

The Pantheon in Rome was built as a temple by Hadrian in 117 AD, and has been in continuous use throughout its history. It is one of the best-preserved of all Roman buildings, now a museum and Roman Catholic church.

The church Santa Sabina in Rome, built in 422 AD, hasn’t been changed since it was built, and is still in use by the Catholic Church.

Rome’s Mausoleum of Hadrian, usually known as Castel Sant’Angelo was completed in 139 AD and converted to a fortress around 400 AD. It’s still a fortress (and a museum) today.

The Colosseum once regularly hosted 50,000 Romans, eager to witness the blood and violence of the legendary gladiators. Because of its ruined state, these days it can only hold a few hundred people on temporary plastic seats for (horribly overpriced) cultural events. Larger concerts and Roman Catholic events are also held outside, using the Colosseum as a dramatic backdrop.

The Theatre of Marcellus once was Rome’s largest open-air theatre — built in the last years of the Republic. The building has undergone several modifications over its history, and today, the upper portion serves as apartments.

Ponte Fabricio, in Rome, was built in 62 BC. The bridge is almost unchanged, and still serves thousands of Romans today.

This is the Caravan Bridge over the river Meles in Izmir, Turkey. It was built around 850 BC, which makes it more than 2860 years old — qualifying as the oldest functioning bridge in the world.

Likewise, the Church of the Nativity (565 AD, Bethlehem, West Bank, Israel) is one of the oldest church buildings in the world — today, it still hosts multiple church services every day.

The Proserpina Dam (Merida, Spain) dates from the first or second century AD, and once fed the Roman aqueduct taking water to a nearby city. This ancient Roman gravity dam is still used by local farmers to irrigate crops.

Most of the thousand-year-old temples in Angkor, Cambodia, still serve religious function among the locals.

The Nanchan Temple is a Buddhist temple near the town of Doucun on Wutaishan, in Shanxi Province, China. It was built in 782 AD, and its Great Buddha Hall is currently China’s oldest preserved timber building in existence.

The Basilica of Constantine at Trier, Germany is a Roman palace and basilica that was built at the beginning of the 4th century. Today it’s used as church by a congregation within the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland.

The Acoma Pueblo, also known as “Sky City”, is a Native American pueblo located west of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Acoma tribal traditions estimate that they have lived in the village for more than 2000 years.

The Mosque of Uqba (670 AD) aka the Great Mosque of Kairouan, Tunisia, is one of the oldest mosques in the world.

The ancient Stonehenge is still a place of religious significance for Neopagan and New Age believers, and particularly for the Neo-druids.

The Tower of Hercules is an ancient Roman lighthouse near A Coruña, Galicia, in north-western Spain. The structure is almost 1900 years old and still in use today.

[MIKA27]

The Most Terrifying Anti Drink-Driving Stunt You’ll Ever See

Sometimes, the best way to drive a point home is pure, abject terror. And that’s the approach Leo Burnett London used in this ad that shows a rather extreme way to discourage drinking and driving.

Unsuspecting bathroom patrons at a British pub were shocked to see the face of a woman come smashing through the mirror — complete with blood — as if she’d just gone through the windshield of a car on the other side of the wall. In reality, it was just a mannequin, and the victims of this PSA were most likely actors, but the effect is no less unsettling. To the point where I’m pretty sure I’d never leave my house again had I experienced this. Mission accomplished.

MIKA: Absolutely brilliant! What would they do though if someone literally had a heart attack from being scared to death!?