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

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REVAMPED MAX BILL CHRONOSCOPE BY JUNGHANS

Max Bill was a Swiss architect, artist, painter and designer that accumulated awards along with professions and hobbies. Originally a student of Bauhaus theory, Bill’s work in industrial design is “characterized by a clarity of design and precise proportions.” This isn’t Art History class, so we’ll get to the point. Junghans is Germany’s largest watch and clock manufacturer, and Bill began designing clocks and watches for them in the 1950s. The Max Bill Chronoscope for Junghans was originally designed in 1962 and has remained largely unchanged since then. For 2015, things are evolving a bit. Contrasting numerals on the watch face and the day addition to the day/date at 3 o’clock are the most noticeable changes, but there’s also a modified Valjoux 7750 movement and a larger 38mm case. Thankfully, the domed lens, slim case and slim leather strap have been left untouched, except for the color of the leather itself. [Purchase]

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NASA Warns That This Century Could See Crippling Droughts

This week, NASA published its most robust study of drought prediction — and the news isn’t good. Within the next century, the American southwest, and more regions across the world, could experience landscape-altering megadroughts due to rising carbon emissions and global warming.

Unlike other scenarios when “mega” is a prefix indicating something awesome, like a Mega Bowl or Megatron, this is definitely not the case here. NASA climate scientist Ben Cook explains bluntly why we should be very, very concerned.

“Recent droughts, like the ongoing drought in California and the southwest and historical droughts like the Dust Bowl in the 1930s, these are naturally occurring droughts that typically last several years or sometimes almost a decade. In our projections with climate change, what we’re seeing is that these droughts could last 20, 30, or even 40 years, even exceeding the duration of the long-term, intense megadroughts that characterised the really arid time period known as Medieval climate anomaly.”

So these possible water-deficient nightmares are redefining the historical meaning of the word “megadrought.”

So how far up **** creek are we? Well, even if we were able to stop greenhouse gases from increasing by 2050, we’d still be looking at 60 per cent likeliness of a megadrought. If we continue in our fossil fuel-burning ways, the odds increase to 80 per cent. NASA came up with these numbers by analysing a drought severity index from 1,000 years of tree-ring data and soil moisture data sets from over a dozen climate models, and arrived at carbon dioxide concentration anywhere between 1370 and 650 parts per million.

The effect would essentially be a double whammy of water scarcity. Rainfall would take a severe hit and increased temperatures mean more moisture would be sucked out of the soil.

We’ve known for a while now that California’s drought has been serious business. NASA reported in December that California had lost about 11 trillion gallons of water in the current drought, and in November the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change summed up its massive report with an equally grim conclusion — climate change is irreversible.

That team called on political leaders to completely eliminate fossil fuel dependency, or at the very least have ubiquitous carbon capture systems in place by 2100. Even if the world is able to meet that deadline (and that is a big “if”), it’s not going to help us much in the short term, so an intense megadrought seems unavoidable.

[MIKA27]

The Gorgeous Typeface That Drove Men Mad And Sparked A 100-Year Mystery

No one seemed to notice him: A dark figure who often came to stand at the edge of London’s Hammersmith Bridge under the cover of darkness in 1916. No one seemed to notice, either, that during his visits he was dropping something into the River Thames. Something heavy.

Over the course of more than a hundred of illicit nightly trips, this man was committing a crime. Against his partner, a man who owned half of what was being heaved into the Thames, and against himself, the force that had spurred its creation. This venerable figure, founder of the legendary Doves Press and the mastermind of its typeface Doves Type, was a man named T.J. Cobden Sanderson. And he was taking the metal type that he had painstakingly overseen and dumping thousands of pounds of it into the river.

Cobden Sanderson, you see, was scared. As a driving force in the Arts & Crafts movement in England, he championed traditional craftsmanship against the rising tides of industrialisation. He was a brilliant and creative luddite, and he was terrified that the typeface he had designed would be sold to a mechanised printing press after his death by his business partner, with whom he was feuding.

So, night after night, he was making it his business to “bequeath” it to the river, screwing his partner out of his half of their work and destroying a legendarily beautiful typeface forever. Or so it seemed.

Almost exactly a century later, this November, a cadre of ex-military divers who work for the Port of London Authority were gearing up to descend into the Thames to look for the small metal bits — perhaps hundreds of thousands of them — that Cobden Sanderson had thrown overboard so many years ago.

They were doing this at the behest and personal expense of Robert Green, a designer who has spent years researching and recreating the lost typeface, which is available on Typespec. As Green told me over the phone recently, the City of London had been hesitant about letting him pay its diving team to search for the lost type. “They were actually concerned that I was some crazy bloke looking for a needle in a haystack and throwing a couple grand away,” he laughs.

It’s not hard to imagine how crazy he must have seemed. A civilian offering to pay the city’s salvage divers to troll the depths of the muddy Thames, possibly for weeks, looking for tiny chunks of metal that were thrown there by a deranged designer more than a century ago? Yeah, that’s pretty crazy.

In the end, it only took them 20 minutes to find some.

Green has spent years pouring over Cobden Sanderson’s story, using what amounts to forensic psychology to understand the actions of a man who lived 100 years ago, studying how and where he would have dumped his illicit cargo. Green had narrowed it down to a small dip in the river, and it was there that the city’s divers uncovered most of their haul. “They were really into it,” Green remembers. “They wanted to find something, which they did.”

What they ended up uncovering over their two day dive was several hundred pieces of type, as documented by The Sunday Times’ Justin Quirk, who attended the dive. It was far from the full haul, either: Green points out the Hammersmith Bridge has been the target of two IRA bombings, one of which blew water 60 feet into the air after a suitcase packed with explosives was heaved into the river around the spot the type was dumped.

As a result, it’s possible some of the metal punches were blown to other locations — it’s also possible that they were embedded in concrete poured around the bridge as part of repairs.

Now would probably be a good time to explain exactly what “it” is. Today, typefaces — or fonts, as we usually call them these digital days — are essentially just little bits of binary on our computers. But the age of digital type is young, at only a few decades.

Cobden Sanderson and his partner, Emery Walker, founded the Doves Press in 1900. Walker was a businessman, with plenty of other concerns in the world, but Cobden Sanderson was a creative perfectionist — a man obsessed with authenticity and craft. Together, they commissioned a typeface called Doves Type, to be based on a 15th century Venetian type. That meant paying a “punchcutter” to create steel “punches” for each letter in the type — from which a matrix would be made by pressing a piece of copper into the metal punch. Then, the type itself could be cast from the copper matrix.

Their so-called Doves Type was created in 1899, and for the next ten years, the duo would use it to print indescribably beautiful books, bound by hand and designed with the perfect balance of craftsmanship and modern utility. As Green explained to me, Cobden Sanderson was kind of a snob — he only wanted to commit his designs to the finest literature, the “most beautiful words.” They printed Paradise lost. They printed the English Bible. Today, copies of these books are extremely rare, and they command thousands of dollars at auction.

But soon, the Doves Press was in trouble. According to TypeSpec’s own account of the partnership, Walker wanted to shut it down and divide the metal evidence — thousands of pounds of it — of Doves Type between himself and Cobden Sanderson, and for them to go their separate ways. Cobden Sanderson was horrified by the idea of letting his work go to someone who didn’t understand the value and meaning behind it — and slowly, over the course of the next few years, he formulated a plan.

“It took him a few years to actually decide to throw away the type — he ruminated for years about whether or not he should do it,” Green says. He wrote about the process in his lengthy journals (“he would have been a bit of an oversharer” today), leaving behind detailed accounts of his inner turmoil. Eventually, he decided he’s rather destroy Doves Type than see it made into a mechanical version of its former glory. “He revelled in it,” Green says. Cobden Sanderson said it himself: “If Emery Walked wants to find it, he’ll have to dive for it.”

Green has spent years researching the Doves Type — he even redrew it, after thousands of hours of painstaking research work, and published his revival in 2013 as a digital typeface that anyone can buy.

But about a year ago, he says, he started wondering if there wasn’t something to be salvaged from the river. “People kept saying nobody’s ever found it,” he says. “But nowhere could I find an account of anybody searching for it.”

Which brings us to a very good question: Why would anyone search for it? What made it so special, so worth saving?

The Doves Press was a unique entity, but in some ways it mirrored what’s happening in today’s design world. At the cusp of the modern age, Doves was founded to preserve a craft that went all the way back to Johannes Gutenberg. It was also destined to fail, to end up as a weird, historical eccentricity that died out just as the mechanised printing press sprang onto the scene. It valued one thing above all others: Doing things by hand, and doing them with utter devotion to the doing.

For Green, who has worked in the design world since he was young, the Arts & Crafts’ glorification of handicraft resonates even today. “The Industrial Revolution scared the crap out of them, and quite rightly,” he says of those turn-of-the-century designers, pointing out how digitisation has further devalued the skills of graphic designers today. “A whole swathe of the middle class is being knocked out,” he adds. “You look at what’s happened to graphic design now, it’s been completely devalued and demonetised. It’s very hard to earn a living as a graphic designer.”

Now, traditional methods — like letterpress printing — are wildly popular once more among contemporary designers. “People are turning back to craft to earn a living,” says Green, a bit like Cobden Sanderson and his contemporaries did. Not only because it gives their work authenticity, he says, but also: “because it’s fun.”

It’s strange to imagine that a designer who was born more than a century after Cobden Sanderson has been the one to rebuild his ruined life’s work.

In an odd way, he’s also healing the rift between Cobden Sanderson and his partner, Emery Walker. Rather than sell the metal punches he lifted from the Thames, Green is keeping half and giving half to Walker’s family, which maintains his former home as a museum to his work. 100 years ago, Cobden Sanderson had said that Walker would “have to dive for it” if he wanted his half of the business. Oddly enough, he’s getting half after all — with Green acting as his generous, devoted proxy diver.

Today, anyone can download and buy a recreation of Cobden Sanderson’s Doves Type online. “He probably would have been horrified,” Green laughs. But then again, he doesn’t see his Doves Type as an exact recreation of the original. It’s more like an echo or a simulacrum — it has a life of its own.

It’s a story that, in a weird way, ties together the most important and controversial ideas in the last century of design. Cobden Sanderson was reacting — criminally! — to the threat of his profession being made irrelevant by the machine age. Today, designers are still struggling to find meaning and reconcile their work with a kind of machine logic born by technologies that Cobden Sanderson couldn’t have even imagined.

100 years later, the fears of a man obsessed with craft still resonate with us. But then again, without computers — a product of the machines he demonised — Doves Type would still be an obscurity. Today, it’s a living, breathing thing, an amalgam of the technologies and machines that drove its creators apart forever.

[MIKA27]

Researcher Announces A Tattoo Removal Cream Is In The Works

The thing about tattoos is they’re inked on your skin for life, unless you want to undergo an expensive, time-consuming and potentially scarring laser-removal process. But now, a tattoo-removal cream could be the destroyer of a thousand unwanted lower-back butterflies and a saving grace for their owners.

Alex Falkenham, a pathology researcher at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, is developing a cream that would reduce the tattoo-removal process to nothing more difficult than moisturising. He’s still fiddling with the formula, so it’s not prepped for commercial release yet, but it sounds promising. Unlike lasers, it only attacks the cells filled with ink, which will minimise inflammation:

Falkenham’s topical cream works by targeting the macrophages that have remained at the site of the tattoo. New macrophages move in to consume the previously pigment-filled macrophages and then migrate to the lymph nodes, eventually taking all the dye with them.

Falkenham is still testing the cream on tattooed pigs, not humans, so he’s not sure how long it will take to remove tattoos completely. But I’m hoping that if I get a tattoo now, by the time my fickle heart rejects it, the cream will be available. The estimated cost per 10cm by 10cm application is 4.5 (Canadian!) cents, so even if it takes a month of daily treatments, it will still likely be way cheaper than other removal options.

Now, if you’re desperate to remove a tattoo but can’t wait until Falkenham starts actually selling his ointment, you’re probably better off splurging on a laser treatment instead of going for the current crop of so-called removal creams on the market. None have been approved by the FDA, and the Mayo Clinic warns that they may help fade or lighten the ink, but they are not proven to truly remove tattoos, and they could give you a nasty rash.

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Prisoner Got 37 Years In Solitary For Facebook Posts, What The Hell

In South Carolina’s prisons, an inmate who secretly writes Facebook posts about missing his family can be punished the same way as one who rapes a cellmate. Hundreds of inmates are being handed down indefensibly harsh punishments for using social media, including one man, Tyheem Henry, who was sentenced to over 37 years in solitary confinement for writing 38 Facebook posts.

In addition to almost four decades of solitary confinement, Henry lost 74 years of canteen, phone and visiting privileges. His case is extreme, but he’s not the only one: The Electronic Frontier Foundationdiscovered over 400 cases over the past three years where inmates were disciplined for social networking as Level 1 violations, the same as rioting, homicide, hostage-taking, and a host of much more violent and serious transgressions. More than 40 prisoners got over two years in the hole. What the hell?

The EFF looked into the reasoning behind the long sentences:

The sentences are so long because SCDC issues a separate Level 1 violation for each day that an inmate accesses a social network. An inmate who posts five status updates over five days, would receive five separate Level 1 violations, while an inmate who posted 100 updates in one day would receive only one.

In other words, if a South Carolina inmate caused a riot, took three hostages, murdered them, stole their clothes, and then escaped, he could still wind up with fewer Level 1 offenses than an inmate who updated Facebook every day for two weeks.

In Henry’s case, a right-wing blog called Charleston Thug Life had pointed out his Facebook posts prior to his punishment; perhaps the pressure to crack down on Henry’s illicit posts contributed to his nearly four-decade isolation punishment. After documenting Henry’s habit of illegally posting to Facebook, Charleston Thug Life posted an update celebrating how South Carolina prison system now takes the blog’s recommendations of who to investigate:

Since October of 2013 we have worked well with the assigned liaison at SCDC. When we find an inmate using a contraband cell phone and using social media we still document the available evidence. We also immediately notify SCDC of what we have found.

Whatever constitutes a proportional response, this is the opposite of that. This is madness. Solitary confinement is so psychologically degrading it can irrevocably kill a person’s will to live. The UN considers it torture.

In some cases, isolating a violent prisoner is necessary. But prisons should be working to minimise how many inmates are locked in solitary by pursuing more rehabilitative and less psychologically traumatising confinements for non-violent violations. What’s going on in South Carolina is an obscene example of maximising opportunities to psychologically break inmates for frivolous crimes.

Doling out decades-long trips to the hole is an unconscionable and wholly inappropriate response to inmates using social media.

Henry he went to prison in the first place for a good reason. He nearly beat a man to death. His original punishment of 15 years in prison was appropriate for his conviction of “Assault and Battery of a High and Aggravated Nature”. But giving him 37 years in solitary for making whiny Facebook posts is a gross distortion of justice that degrades the integrity of the penal system.

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Facial Recognition Software Could Have Discovered A Rare Anne Boleyn Portrait

When Anne Boleyn was executed in 1536, images of the beheaded queen were destroyed leaving only one certain depiction of her in existence. Now, facial recognition software may have discovered another contemporary portrait of Boleyn.

The only uncontested portrait of her is atop a battered lead disc, known as the Moost Happi medal, sitting in the British Museum in London. But now, reports The Guardian, researchers in California have used facial recognition to compare the face on the Moost Happi medal with other painting — and have found a close match with a portrait held at the Bradford Art Galleries and Museums. This image shows a women wearing jewellery that’s long been thought to belong to Boleyn, though some scholar claim that it is worn by Jane Seymour, the third wife of King Henry VIII, in the picture.

The software uses anatomical measurements — the width of noses, distance between the eyes, straightness of eyebrows and so on — to recognise similarities and differences between paintings. Presented with a new image, it will provide a probability that it’s a likeness of a person who’s been depicted in other portraits. It can never be perfect — because artist styles differ and there aren’t as many paintings as there are, say, Facebook pictures — but it can still performs a reasonable job.

Now, presenting his work at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in San Jose, academic Roy-Chowdhury has described how the program’s been trained using the Moost Happi medal image. In the process, it showed that the portrait held at the Bradford Art Galleries and Museums is a likely painting of the queen. Roy-Chowdhury has also explained that the software has found what may be the earliest portrait of the astronomer Galileo Galilei.

Likely, the software will also have kick-started debates among art historian the world over, too.

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2016 INDIAN DARK HORSE MOTORCYCLE

Hoping to open the floodgates for a younger male audience, Indian has re-worked its entry-level offering as they debut the 2016 Indian Dark Horse Motorcycle.

It’s everything you know and love from the company’s Chief Classic touring motorcycle, but without some of the unnecessary bells and whistles. Not only do these extras help Indian lower the MSRP, it also helps the bike shed some weight. While it’s not light by any stretch of the imagination, the 2-wheeler has dropped 27 pounds from the 2015 Chief model, tipping the scale at 751 pounds.

This beauty is still packing the Thunder Stroke V-twin engine paired with a six-speed transmission, providing the ultimate driving experience on the open road. The entire bike has been given the blacked-out color treatment and features a single-passenger vinyl seat, remote keychain ignition, cruise control and ABS brakes. The Dark Horse starts at $16,999. [Purchase]

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STASH IPHONE 6 CASE

There’s tons of iPhone 6 cases out there, but many of them fall squarely into the gaudy, gimmicky, blingy kind of style. That’s great for teens, young women, and aspiring rappers, but you might need something more statesman-like. Check out the Stash case by Los Angeles-based This is Ground.

Available for iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, the Stash manages to neatly walk the line between stylish wallet and protective phone case, as there’s plenty of room for cash, credit cards, business cards, and restaurant receipts that will certainly linger longer in there than they deserve to. The Stash case is made with high quality leather, or vegans can opt for a waxed canvas option. [Purchase]

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OLD CAVIAR WAREHOUSE TURNED INTO NEW YORK CITY LOFT

If there’s any city that you might expect to find an old caviar and soap warehouse turned into a dazzling modern-day loft, it’s New York. But that still doesn’t lessen the beauty with which this apartment is now adorned.

Designed by architect Andrew Franz, this 1884 six-story building in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood still has its brick walls and 16-foot-high beamed ceilings, but now it also has new steel, glass, tile, and lacquer sections, along with a relocated mezzanine featuring a sunken interior court with a retractable glass roof that transitions to a green roof garden up above. Energy-efficient mechanical systems and appliances are used throughout the space, with plenty of locally sourced products in the mix as well, and the new roof terrace uses reclaimed bluestone pavers and native plant species that barely need any water to thrive.

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LSTN TROUBADOUR HEADPHONES

Great sound, a sophisticated look, and the support of a great cause. You get all that and more with the Troubadour Headphones from LSTN. Each pair is made using reclaimed, authentic wood casing, with your choice of zebra, ebony, beech wood, or cherry wood finishes. Throw in great looking triangular shaped plush earcups, an in-line microphone, and a metal adjustable band and you'd think sound might be an afterthought — but instead you get a fully balanced and distortion free listening experience.

Each pair of handcrafted headphones is as unique as the cause it helps to support, as LSTN helps restore hearing to people around the world that would otherwise live in silence, a gift given to over 20,000 people so far with a contribution to the Starkey Hearing Foundation for each pair sold.

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LG URBANE SMART WATCH

You wouldn't know the LG Urbane Smart Watch was "smart" at a glance — and that's a good thing. It's built around a 1.3-inch full circle Plastic OLED display, is powered by Android Wear, and features all the sensors you'd expect, including a gyro, an accelerometer, a compass, a barometer, and a heart rate sensor. When combined with the stainless steel case and natural leather strap, the ambient always-on mode makes it look far more like a traditional timepiece than its smart counterparts. Available with a polished silver or gold finish.

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Three Generations Of US Air Force Power In One Photo

A United States Air Force (USAF) B-2A Spirit stealth bomber (background) comes into land following a mission during Exercise RED FLAG 15-1, with a USAF F-22A Raptor (foreground left) and F-15E Strike Eagle (foreground right) on the flightline at Nellis Air Force Base.

There are three amazing pieces of military technology on display here. One is the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit stealth bomber, one of the USA’s few strategic bombers capable of carrying and deploying thermonuclear weapons. The second is the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor stealth fighter, widely considered one of the most powerful and advanced air superiority weapons platforms on the planet. The third is the venerable McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle, an incredibly long-lived fighter model and a mainstay of awesome video games since time immemorial.

This image actually comes to us from the Australian Defence Image Library, captured by Leading Aircraftman (LAC) Michael Green on assignment as part of the RAAF team sent to the USA to participate inExercise RED FLAG 15-1.

RED FLAG 15-1 involved members of the RAAF, USAF and the United Kingdom’s RAF training in simulation and real-world tests.

We took along two our of Air Force’s C-130J Hercules transports, as well as an AP-3C Orion — an important part of Australia’s border-surveillance Operation RESOLUTE.

The photo’s caption reads:

From 27 January to 13 February 2015, the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) will participate in Exercise RED FLAG 15-1 at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. Hosted by the United States Air Force (USAF), Exercise RED FLAG 15-1 will involve participants from the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. Utilising the Nevada Test and Training Range, participants will be exposed to one of the world’s most advanced airborne training environments, and work together to overcome simulated threats in the air, from the ground, and in cyberspace. A total of 150 RAAF personnel will participate in Exercise RED FLAG 15-1, along with two C-130J Hercules transport aircraft and an AP-3C Orion surveillance aircraft.

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How Asteroid Mining Could Pay For Our First Space Colony

Many of us dream of living on other planets, but are two things we’ll need before it can actually happen: money and raw materials. Now some companies say they have a solution to this problem. They will mine asteroids for valuable metal ores, and for basic resources like water that we’ll need once we’re far from Earth.

Lucky for us, the cosmos is packed with the raw materials we need and crave. Scattered across our galaxy are trillions upon trillions of space rocks, filled with the water, precious metals and other raw materials we’ll need to fuel our cosmic diaspora.

Mining asteroids is not just a dream — several enterprising companies are already getting the jump on it. Still, the technological barriers are immense, and we’re just beginning to come to grips with the social and political implications of a space-based civilisation. Here’s what we already know — and need to know — about the industry that could make it happen.

A Solar System of Riches

Over four billion years ago, the planets and moons of our solar system began to coalesce from primordial dust. So, too, did the asteroids. While we’ve known about space rocks for over two centuries, the vast majority of discoveries have been made in the last two decades, thanks to bigger and better telescopes.

To date, we’ve identified some 10,000 near-Earth asteroids, ranging in size from several meters to hundreds of kilometres across. If that number sounds impressive, rest assured it’s not: By some estimates, there are upwards of a 150 million asteroids in the inner solar system alone.

Astronomers continue to locate more space rocks on the daily, but we’ve already found plenty to be excited about. Many of the asteroids out there are loaded with water, a resource that may, in space, be more precious than gold. As Chris Lewicki, president of the asteroid mining company Planetary Resourcesexplained when I spoke with him over the phone, some of this water could be converted to rocket fuel by splitting off the hydrogen. Wet asteroids, then, may serve as cosmic gas stations; watering holes for thirsty spacecrafts and humans alike.

“When you launch a satellite up to orbit, two thirds of the weight is fuel,” Lewicki said. “If we could only refuel things without sending them back to Earth, that would open up a planetary highway.”

Enticing as that sounds, water isn’t even the most valuable commodity locked up inside asteroids. That would be platinum, and its sister metals, which, renowned for their outstanding catalytic properties, are used in everything from computer hard drives to fuel cells to biomedical equipment. On Earth, these metals are extraordinarily rare: All of the platinum humans have ever managed to dredge from the ground, for instance, could fit inside a small Manhattan apartment. A 500m asteroid might contain more.

There’s a reason the private sector is now clamouring to get into space. The first successful asteroid miners may become richest human beings alive.

But before we can start trucking platinum en masse from the stars, space miners have their work cut out designing, testing and deploying the myriad technologies needed to do so. The two companies leading the charge, Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, have amassed a slew of scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs and investors to make it happen.

Asteroid Prospecting

The first task on any would-be asteroid miner’s list is to start pinpointing some seriously lucrative rocks. While we’ve got plenty of near Earths to choose from, a trip to any one of these neighbouring bodies is still a major investment, so before we send out the drills, we’d like to get as much intel as we can from afar. This, it turns out, is no trivial problem. Asteroids are small, dark, and difficult to make out within Earth’s obscuring atmosphere. In fact, the best way to get a good look at an asteroid is to put a scope into space.

That’s exactly what Planetary Resources is planning to do. Its Arkyd-100, a crowdfunded scope that weighs less than 25 pounds, will sit in low Earth orbit, peering into nearby space to analyse targeted asteroids. The next-gen version is the
Arkyd-300, fondly described

by company leaders as humanity’s first Imperial Probe Droid. The 300-series Arkyds, equipped with propulsion systems, will travel in swarms to nearby asteroids. Once they have reached a target, the bots will analyse the rock in detail, measuring its size, shape, density and elemental composition, and beam the specs back to Earth using laser-based optical communications.

The company has plans to launch two beta droids this year. If all goes well, the Arkyd-100 will launch in 2016, and the first of the Arkyd-300s will blast off in 2018.

3-D model of the Arkyd-100 in low Earth orbit

Deep Space Industries is also planning to start small, using cost-effective prospecting crafts to conduct the initial survey work. In 2017, the company hopes to launch its very first FireFlies, laptop-sized spacecraft destined for one-way asteroid recon missions. After targets are confirmed, the choicest rocks will be visited a second time with “DragonFlies”, which’ll bring samples back to Earth for detailed analysis. Eventually, “Harvestors” may be sent out to quite literally pull the most promising suckers back to us.

Concept art for DSI’s “Harvestor” craft.

Juicing a Space Rock

For mining water, we’ll probably go after carbonaceous chrondrites, or C-type asteroids — wet, crumbly rocks with an elemental composition similar to that of the sun. As Popular Mechanics describes, Planetary Resources envisions using its Arkyd swarms to slurp up rocky regolith and funnel the stuff into a processor. The water can then be steamed off and recollected in a separate tank.

A subset of the rocks we squeeze for water — the so-called L4 chrondrites — may also be rich in platinum-group metals. How we extract these metals is likely to depend on a host of factors, including their concentration and the sort of matrix they’re embedded in. “Space rocks are all different,” Rick Tumlinson, Chair of Deep Space Industries, told me in an email. “There is no one-size-fits-all solution to extracting what we need from them.”

Even so, both companies have floated some intriguing possibilities. Planetary Resources cofounder Eric Anderson has described how we can use the sun’s energy to essentially melt down asteroids and concentrate the heat-resistant platinum-group metals. Anderson goes on to explain how giant balls of the platinum might be safely returned to Earth by dropping them into an uninhabited desert somewhere.

The brilliant colours in this lake come from microbes that have evolved to live in boiling acid

Several weeks ago, DSI announced that it’s investigating the feasibility of injecting bioengineered, metal-munching microbes into space rocks. The idea here is that these mining bugs will, over the course of years, chew up an asteroid from the inside out and concentrate the metals for us.

“Certain living creatures, called extremophiles, are able to survive and thrive in environments that would blow your mind, including nuclear reactors,” Tulminson said. “Eventually, we believe that genetic variants of these and similar creatures might be used in space mining processes.”

It’s an awesome idea, but, researchers have been quick to point out, one that’s still very, very preliminary. (There’s the minor challenge of genetically engineering a bug that’s able to sustain a hearty metabolism in the harsh vacuum of space for years on end). At this point, it seems safe to say that any and all options — blasting, melting, eating, vaporising, magnetically separating — are on the table.

Who Owns the Asteroids?

As we move ever closer to a space-mining future, some thorny legal questions have begun to rear their heads. To wit, under current law, it’s unclear who, if anyone, can legally own an asteroid — a fact which is making early investors squirm in their seats.

“Anybody who wants to go to an asteroid now and extract a resource is facing a large legal open question,” space lawyer Joanne Gabrynowicz told NPR in an interview earlier this month.

Space is a global commons, meaning that all nations have the right to use it and explore it. But when it comes to staking out resources in space, we’ve yet to reach any sort of agreement. Since the United States has obligations to regulate its private space enterprises under international law, the largely US-based asteroid mining industry has been pushing Congress to pass legislation clarifying the matter.

This past September, the House Science, Space and Technology Committee held a hearing on the Asteroid Act, a five-page bill that would recognise ownership by companies of the resources they have extracted from asteroids and, prevent companies from interfering with the operations of competitors. As Slate reported this past fall, the bill was met with support from the commercial space community, but criticism from legal experts. Gabrynowicz, for one, feels that the bill fails to address wide-ranging issues, including whether granting mining rights to a US company is actually legal under international law. You know, details.

For now, at least, it’d seem the asteroids are first come, first serve. We’re becoming the stars of our very own space western.

Post-Earth Economies

Asteroid settlement concept

Space may be a lawless frontier right now, but this just the beginning. It’s not hard to imagine asteroid mining taking off within the century, and with it, manifold new opportunities for exploration and development opening up. In the future, Deep Space Industries envisions a system of space-based manufacturing, wherein asteroid metals are fed directly into 3D printers to build new mining gear, platforms, and even outer space habitats.

If, as today’s space pioneers hope, we can begin to build and fuel structures off-world using asteroid-derived materials, that cuts out a very expensive middleman — Earth. At which point, manned interstellar missions and outer space settlements might be within reach. One can imagine asteroid depots scattered across the stars, resupplying our 3D-printed spaceships with hydrogen fuel, water, and replacement parts.

“If the door to long-term space travel will ever be opened, it will be opened by using the resources of space,” Lewicki said. “From an exploration standpoint, this is the next big push.”

As dangerous as it might be, it’s hard to resist the call of the frontier. If somebody offered me a pickaxe, a spacesuit, and a ticket up, I’m not sure I could refuse.

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This Sci-Fi Smart Gun Could Be The Colt .45 Of The Future

The above Terminator-like weapon is Colt’s latest, greatest invention. Developed with Defence Researchand Development Canada, this is the smart gun Canada wants to fight the wars of the future. And it’s hard to look at this insane level of firearm innovation and not think about the birth of the Colt .45.

This new super gun does it all. As the DRDC describes it:

The prototype, in development since 2009 through the Soldier Integrated Precision Effects Systems (SIPES) project, includes a firing mechanism to shoot lightweight cased telescoped ammunition, a secondary effects module for increased firepower and a NATO standard power and data rail to integrate accessories like electro-optical sights and position sensors.

In plain English, the firearm is designed in the NATO standard “bullpup” style — meaning the cartridge is in the back of the weapon rather than the front — and fires 5.56mm calibre bullets. That’s also a NATO standard. Meanwhile, that hulking barrel on top can operate either as 12-gauge shotgun or grenade-launcher with a three round capacity. The next iteration of the weapon is supposed include networking components so that the firearm can receive data from base as well as “automated target detection and assisted target engagement,” if R&D goes as planned. (Read: The gun will one day aim itself.)

The Canadian Armed Forces won’t be deploying with these new super-guns any time soon, it’s still in the early concept stages for now. But leaders want this — or something like this — to be the weapon of choice for their soldiers in the near future. “In the medium term, this weapon concept represents a lethal, flexible general-purpose platform,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Serge Lapointe. “It will be able to operate in all theatres of operations in the most complex terrain including urban areas, mountains, jungles, deserts and the Arctic.”

That’s not unlike the mission that Colt undertook in the years after the American Civil War, when it designed iconic Colt Single Action Army revolver, also known as the Colt .45. The firearm was adopted as the standard military service revolver in 1873, thanks to its innovative single-action mechanism and revolving cylinder which held cutting edge, self-contained metallic cartridges. The newly designed .45 Long Colt cartridges were also famously powerful, and it was just as useful to soldiers in battle as it was to sheriffs and frontiersmen. The firearm would eventually become known as “The Gun That Won the West.”

But what does a cowboy’s favourite revolver and a smart gun worthy of a Schwarzenegger movie have in common? Well, they’re both made by Colt, but they’re also both do-it-all weapons. While we’re used to seeing the Colt. 45 in pistol form, the company also made some with an attachable shoulder stock. This so-called “Buntline Special” sometimes came with barrels as long as 16-inches that made it easier to aim the powerful weapon. Pistol-grip rifles are now a military standard across the world, and the new Colt-made Canadian smart gun is a glimpse into the future of firearms.

It’s unclear whether or not the Canadian Armed Forces decide to contract Colt to outfit their troops with these firearms. DRDC is definitely proud of it, so proud they even made a little YouTube video of what it looks like in action. Just as the Colt .45 must’ve looked on the American frontier in the 1870s, this scifi weapon looks scary as s**t.

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Spectacular Live Fire Photos Taken By An F-18 Weapons Trainer Officer

Lieutenant Chris Nigus sent us these series of spectacular photos taken while flying on missions during the last couple of years of his deployment in Japan. Above you can see him flying low level in Japan’s Orange Route. Some of them show weapons firing from his F/A-18E Super Hornet.

F/A-18E Super Hornet’s M61A2 Vulcan nose cannon firing

Looking aft while firing the Vulcan

An air-to-air Sidewinder missile launch, just as it starts leaving the wing

Sidewinder leaving the wing

Flying upside down over snowed mountains

Wingman turning

Inflight refueling

Pass over the USS George Washington

Catapult launch

Lieutenant Chris Nigus is a Weapons Training Officer with the Strike-Fighter Squadron VFA-27 Royal Maces, based at Naval Air Facility Atsugi, in Japan.

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The Xbox 'Ultimate Game Sale' Is Pretty Good For A Console Sale!

This week Microsoft is running a fairly extensive sale on its digital stores for both the Xbox 360 and the Xbox One. Anyone feel like maxing out their credit card? I know I do!

Major Nelson listed all the games currently on-sale on the store. It’s a pretty significant list, and there are a lot of newish titles in there.

Everyone get Alien: Isolation. It’s great.

Xbox One

Alien: Isolation — Gold: 60%, Silver: 50%
Alien: Isolation Season Pass Add-On — Gold: 60%, Silver: 50%
Angry Birds Star Wars — Gold: 80%, Silver: 75%
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare — Gold: 33%, Silver: 33%
Costume Quest 2 – Gold: 67%, Silver: 60%
Destiny – Gold: 33%, Silver: 33%
Destiny Digital Guardian — Gold: 25%, Silver: 20%
Disney Fantasia: Music Evolved — Gold: 50%, Silver: 40%
Forza Motorsport 5 — Gold: 40%, Silver: 33%
Kinect Sports Rivals — Gold: 80%, Silver: 75%
Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris — Gold: 60%, Silver: 50%
Lara Croft: Temple of Osiris & Season Pass — Gold: 60%, Silver: 50%
Limbo — Gold: 60%, Silver: 50%
Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor — Gold: 40%, Silver: 33%
Monopoly Family Fun Pack: Gold: 33%, Silver: 25%
NBA Live 15 Digital Edition — Gold: 85%, Silver: 75%
Pro Evolution Soccer 2015 — Gold: 50%, Silver: 40%
Sniper Elite III — Gold: 80%, Silver: 75%
Styx: Master of Shadows – Gold: 75%, Silver: 67%
The Crew — Gold: 33%, Silver: 25%
The Crew Gold Edition — Gold: 33%, Silver: 25%
The Telltale Games Collection — Gold: 50%, Silver: 40%
Trials Fusion Deluxe Edition — Gold: 60%, Silver: 50%
Watch_Dogs — Gold: 60%, Silver: 50%

Xbox 360

Alien Isolation – Gold: 60%, Silver: 50%
Alien: Isolation Season Pass — Gold: 60%, Silver: 50%
Batman: Arkham City — Gold: 75%, Silver: 67%
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel — Gold: 50%, Silver: 40%
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare — Gold: 33%, Silver: 25%
Dark Souls — Gold: 75%, Silver: 67%
Dead Island Riptide — Gold: 75%, Silver: 67%
Destiny — Gold: 33%, Silver: 25%
Devil May Cry 4 – Gold: 75%, Silver: 67%
Dragon Age 2 — Gold: 75%, Silver: 67%
Far Cry 3 — Gold: 50%, Silver: 40%
FIFA 15 – Gold: 50%, Silver: 40%
Fight Night Champion — Gold: 80%, Silver: 75%
Forza 4 Season Pass — Gold: 75%, Silver 67%
Forza Horizon Rally Expansion Pack — Gold: 50%, Silver: 40%
Gears of War 3 — Gold: 75%, Silver: 67%
Gears of War 3 Season Pass — Gold: 80%, Silver: 75%
Halo 4 — Gold: 60%, Silver: 50%
Injustice: Gods Among Us — Gold: 75%, Silver: 67%
Just Cause 2 — Gold: 75%, Silver: 67%
LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham — Gold: 40%, Silver: 33%
LEGO Marvel Super Heroes — Gold: 67%, Silver: 60%
Mass Effect — Gold: 80%, Silver: 75%
Metro 2033 — Gold: 80%, Silver: 75%
Mirror’s Edge — Gold: 80%, Silver: 75%
Mortal Kombat — Gold: 75%, Silver: 67%
Pro Evo Soccer 2015 — Gold: 50%, Silver: 40%
Saints Row The Third — Gold: 75%, Silver: 67%
Skate 3 — Gold: 75%, Silver: 67%
SoulCalibur V — Gold: 75%, Silver: 67%
South Park: Stick of Truth — Gold: 50%, Silver: 40%
State of Decay — Gold: 75%, Silver: 67%
Terraria — Gold: 80%, Silver: 75%
The Orange Box — Gold: 75%, Silver: 67%
Watch_Dogs — Gold: 60%, Silver: 50%

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Neptune: An Almost-Crazy Idea for Upending the Smartphone Ecosystem

Today, with every other commercial pushing a new phone or tablet, it’s easy to forget how drastically things can change, and how quickly. The iPhone, after all, is just eight years old—and five years ago, almost no one was talking about how mobile computing was going to eat the world. And yet today, the smartphone is the center of our digital lives. Does it have to be?

Neptune, a new startup launching today, believes the era of the smartphone is headed towards an end. “The current wearables space is best summarized as a master/slave relationship,” says Simon Tian, Neptune’s boyish founder, who is all of 20 years old. In his formulation, the phone is the master, and all wearables are the slaves, simply borrowing from the power and capabilities of the phone. “The smart watch actually just proves you’re also a slave to your phone. Imagine when it’s out of sight. You freak out!” Tian says.

But the Pocket is not meant to be a smartphone. Rather, it's simply a screen that the Hub can stream to, when a bigger screen is desired

Neptune wants to switch the relationship. Its wrist-worn device, the Neptune Hub, runs on Android Lollipop, and packs in the capabilities and power of a smartphone, with a quad-core processor, 4G, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, and NFC. It’s meant to be the center of its wearer’s digital life. Instead of a phone, the Hub comes paired with the Neptune Pocket, a 5-inch screen that’s available anytime a more robust display and touchscreen is called for, and has an 8 MP camera on the back and a 2 MP camera on the front. The Pocket isn’t a phone as much as it is a screen to which the Hub can stream its capabilities. (When the Hub is low on power, the Pocket also serves as a juice pack.)

The move of making the wrist-work device smart and making the pocket screen dumb might not seem like a major switch, but Tian is quick to argue that many pain-points of our digital lives simply disappear once the slave breaks its chains. The security of your phone itself is gone, since the Hub is always on your wrist. As for the pocket screens, those are low cost, easily replaced, and sharable between users. You simply pair them with your Hub as needed.

Moreover, the Hub is meant to serve as a new “bare minimum”: The screen is big enough that you can glance at notifications and respond to messages; it can also track fitness and place calls. Thus, rather than having a phone that always seems to suck you in, you can simply do the main things you still need a phone for in a far less burdensome way.

The Hub comes with 4G, Wi-Fi, NFC, GPS, and will run on Android Lollipop

Origin Story

Tian, young as he is, has been dreaming of the Hub and Pocket since November 2012. The idea first arrived in a rush, when he was still a teenager and fantasizing about starting his own business. The benefits just seemed too obvious. If you used a hub to stream content to a pocket screen, you wouldn’t have to worry about pesky problems like continuity between devices. Hell, the pocket screen didn’t have to be particularly powerful at all.

But the technology didn’t actually exist. So instead, as an exercise Tian resolved to ship a smart watch, just to learn the ropes of hardware production. He called it Pine, and, in January 2013, threw some half-baked renderings up on a website that he registered for. He admits that, at the time, he had no real sense of what it would take to make them real. People mocked the idea: “Apparently this runs on magic,” said one tech writer. Yet the orders came flooding in. Tian dropped out of his pre-college program, and threw himself into the arduous task of scouring Shenzhen’s factory ecosystem, finding suppliers and partners. When those were in place, he raised nearly $1 million on Kickstarter. Against all odds, the Pine shipped out to over 7,000 customers in June 2014. It wasn’t a breathtaking piece of hardware. In fact, it was mostly a smartphone strapped to your wrist. But it was the world’s first standalone smart watch, requiring no cellphone tethering to function. And to Tian, it was tantalizing proof that with a novel-enough idea, he could bootstrap a bona fide hardware company.

So far, according to the designers and engineers, Neptune's concept is far past the proof of concept stage. The circuitry has been laid out and the parts have all been identified.

This time around, Tian not only has the core technologies to make the hub concept real, he has a solid team around him, anchored by Pearl, the design firm perhaps best known for developing the Misfit Shine. To date, according to Pearl’s founder, Mladen Barbaric, they have already moved well past the point of knowing whether the product is feasible. They have already finished selecting components and engineering how they’ll fit together. They have already begun the arduous radio-frequency testing process. They already have have a slew of features and additions they plan on revealing in the coming months—including accessories, features, and how you interact with Hub.

For now, they just need to see if there’s a market for the product. Tian believes there must be. “It has become so cheap to push a message that now it’s all about your idea,” says Tian. “The gap between a startup like ours and Samsung just isn’t as big as it was.” Neptune is wagering that in between the looming shadows of Apple, Samsung, LG, and Google, there’s just enough daylight for a startup to sprout.

[MIKA27]

The Secret History of the Underground Railroad

Fugitive Slaves Fleeing From the Maryland Coast to an Underground Railroad Depot in Delaware," 1850

A decade before the Civil War, the leading Southern periodical De Bow’s Review published a series titled Diseases and Peculiarities of the ***** Race—a much-needed study, the editors opined, given its “direct and practical bearing” upon 3 million people whose value as property totaled some $2 billion. The essays’ author, the distinguished New Orleans physician Samuel Adolphus Cartwright, described in precise anatomical terms the reasons for African Americans’ supposed laziness (“deficiency of red blood in the pulmonary and ar­terial systems”), love of dancing (“profuse distribution of nervous matter to the stomach, liver and genital organs”), and exceptional dislike of being whipped (“skin … as sensitive, when they are in perfect health, as that of children”).

But what drew readers’ particular attention was Cartwright’s discovery of a previously unknown medical condition that he called “Drapetomania, or the disease causing Negroes to run away.” (He derived the name from an ancient Greek term for a fugitive slave.) This affliction, he continued, had two effective cures: treating one’s slaves kindly but firmly, or, failing that, “whipping the devil out of them.”

Drapetomania seemed on the verge of becoming a fatal contagion in the summer of 1851, when Cartwright’s articles appeared. Although only a few thousand people, at most, escaped slavery each year—nearly all from states bordering the free North—their flight appeared to many Southern whites the harbinger of a larger catastrophe. The Mason-Dixon Line had become slavery’s fraying hem. How long before the entire fabric began to unravel?

Worst of all, the exodus could no longer be blamed on scattered outbreaks of Drapetomania. Rather, an organized network, vast and sinister, actively encouraged and abetted it. And increasingly, this movement operated not under cover of darkness but in broad daylight.

For most people today—as for most Americans in the 1840s and 1850s—the phrase Underground Railroad conjures images of trapdoors, flickering lanterns, and moonlit pathways through the woods. The century and a half since its heyday has only deepened the mystery. For a saga that looms so large in the national memory, it has received surprisingly little attention from scholars, at least until recently. What’s more, the existing literature sometimes seems to obscure the real story still further. Was the Underground Railroad truly a nationwide conspiracy with “conductors,” “agents,” and “depots,” or did popular imagination simply construct this figment out of a series of ad hoc, un­connected escapes? Were its principal heroes brave Southern blacks, or sympathetic Northern whites? The answers depend on which historians you believe.

Even the participants’ testimonies often contra­dict one another. A generation after the Civil War, one historian (white) interviewed surviving abolitionists (most of them white) and described a “great and intricate network” of agents, 3,211 of whom he identified by name (nearly all of them white). African Americans told a different story. “I escaped without the aid … of any human being,” the activist minister James W. C. Pennington wrote in 1855. “Like a man, I have emancipated myself.”

Now Eric Foner, one of the nation’s most admired practitioners of history—his previous book, on Abraham Lincoln and slavery, won a Pulitzer Prize—joins an increasing number of scholars shining lanterns into the darkness. Several years ago, an undergraduate in Foner’s department at Columbia, at work on her senior thesis, discovered the previously overlooked journal of a white New Yorker who aided hundreds of escaping slaves in the 1850s—a find that inspired his latest book. (The student, he takes pains to mention in his acknowledgments, decided to become a lawyer, so no scholarly careers were harmed in the production of this volume.)

Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad tells a story that will surprise most readers. Among its biggest surprises is that, despite the book’s subtitle, the Underground Railroad often was not hidden at all. Abolitionist groups made little secret of assisting runaways—in fact, they trumpeted it in pamphlets, periodicals, and annual reports. In 1850, the year of the notorious Fugitive Slave Act, the New York State Vigilance Committee publicly proclaimed its mission to “receive, with open arms, the panting fugitive.” A former slave in Syracuse, Jermain W. Loguen, announced himself in the local press as the city’s “agent and keeper of the Underground Railroad Depot” and held “donation parties” to raise money, while newspapers published statistics on the number of fugitives he helped.

Underground Railroad bake sales, as improbable as these may sound, became common fund-raisers in Northern towns and cities, and bazaars with the slogan “Buy for the sake of the slave” offered donated luxury goods and handmade knickknacks before the winter holidays. “Indeed,” Foner writes, “abolitionists helped to establish the practice of a Christmas ‘shopping season’ when people exchanged presents bought at commercial venues.” For thousands of women, such events also turned ordinary, “feminine” chores like baking, shopping, and sewing into thrilling acts of moral commitment and political defiance.

Even politicians who had sworn oaths to uphold the Constitution—including its clause mandating the return of runaways to their rightful masters—flagrantly ignored their duty. William Seward openly encouraged Underground Railroad activity while governor of New York and (not so openly) sheltered runaways in his basement while serving in the U.S. Senate. Judge William Jay, a son of the first chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, resolved to disregard fugitive-slave laws, and donated money to help escapees.

Eventually, such defiance gained legal standing, as Northern states passed “personal liberty” acts in the 1850s to exempt state and local officials from federal fugitive-slave laws. It is a little-known historical irony that right up until the eve of Southern secession in 1860, states’ rights were invoked as often by Northern abolitionists as by Southern slaveholders.

Foner’s compelling narrative centers on New York City, another un­expected twist. Unlike Boston and Philadelphia, with their deep-rooted reformist traditions—­and unlike such upstate cities as Buffalo and Syracuse—the metropolis was hardly known for abolitionist fervor. Slaves had worked its out­lying farms within living memory; as late as the 1790s, they made up 40 percent of Brooklyn’s population. By the time New York’s last bondsmen were freed, in 1827, its economy was thoroughly entwined with the South’s; the editor of De Bow’s gloated just before the Civil War that the city was “almost as dependent upon Southern slavery as Charleston.” New York banks financed planters’ slave purchases; New York merchants grew rich on slave-grown cotton and sugar. Slave catchers prowled Manhattan, and besides lawfully re­capturing escapees, they often illegally kidnapped free blacks—­especially children—to be sold into Southern bondage.

Yet in New York, runaways contested their freedom aboveground, in courtrooms and in the streets. In 1846, a man named George Kirk stowed away on a ship from Savannah to New York, only to be found by the captain and placed in shackles, awaiting return to his master. After the ship docked, black stevedores heard his cries for help and alerted abolitionist leaders, who managed to get a sympathetic judge to rule that Kirk could not be held against his will. The victorious fugitive left court surrounded by a vigilant phalanx of local African Americans. Soon, however, the mayor ordered police to arrest Kirk, and after an unsuccessful attempt by abolitionists to smuggle him away (inside a crate marked American Bible Society), he was hauled back into court. The same judge now found different legal grounds on which to release Kirk, who this time rolled off triumphantly in a carriage and soon reached the safety of Boston.

Kirk’s protectors included an unlikely pair of activists. Sydney Howard ***, the editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard, descended from Puritan luminaries and had married a rich (and radical) Quaker heiress. Louis Napoleon, his co-conspirator, is believed to have been the freeborn son of a Jewish New Yorker and an African American slave; he worked as a porter in Gay’s office. While *** published abolitionist manifestos and raised money, Napoleon prowled the New York docks in search of black stowaways and crisscrossed the Mason-Dixon Line guiding escapees to freedom.

It was *** who, in 1855 and ’56, kept the “Record of Fugitives” that the undergraduate found in Columbia University’s archives, chronicling more than 200 escapes. This document, Foner writes, “is the most detailed account in existence of how the underground railroad operated in New York City … a treasure trove of riveting stories and a repository of insights into both slavery and the underground railroad.” Perhaps most poignant, *** matter-of-factly recorded the slaves’ descriptions of their motives for escape. Apparently none mentioned Drapetomania, Dr. Cartwright’s theory notwithstanding. “One meal a day for 8 years,” begins one first-person account. “Sold 3 times and threten to be sold the fourth … Struck 4 hundred lashes by overseer choped cross the head with a hatchet and bled 3 days.”

Ultimately, Foner demonstrates that the term Underground Railroad has been a limiting, if not misleading, metaphor. Certainly a nationwide network existed, its operations often covered in secrecy. Yet its tracks ran not just through twisting tunnels but also on sunlit straightaways. Its routes and timetables constantly shifted.

The Underground Railroad did, in a sense, have conductors and stationmasters, but the vast majority of its personnel helped in ways too various for such neat comparisons. As with *** and Napoleon’s partnership, its operations often brought together rich and poor, black and white, in a common cause. Nearly as diverse were its passengers and their stories. One light-skinned man decamped to Savannah, put himself up in a first-class hotel, strolled about town in a fine new suit of clothes, and insouciantly bought a steamship ticket to New York. A Virginia woman and her young daughter, meanwhile, spent five months crouching in a tiny hiding place beneath a house near Norfolk before being smuggled to freedom.

Even on the brink of the Civil War, the number of such fugitives remained relatively small. Yet the Underground Railroad’s influence far outstripped the scale of its operations. Besides helping to precipitate the political crisis of the 1850s, it primed millions of sympathetic white Northerners to join a noble fight against Southern slave­holders—­whether they had personally aided fugitives, shopped at abolitionist bake sales, or simply thrilled to the colorful accounts of slave escapes in books and newspapers. It fueled Southern leaders’ paranoia, while forcing Northern leaders to take sides with either the slaves or the slave catchers.

Above all, it prepared millions of enslaved Americans to seize freedom at a moment’s notice. Just days after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861, escapees were reported to be streaming northward at an unprecedented rate. Within a few months, countless Union soldiers and sailors effectively became Underground Railroad agents in the heart of the South, harboring fugitives who flocked in huge numbers to the Yankees’ encampments. This was Drapetomania on a scale more awful than Dr. Cartwright’s worst fantasies.

Samuel Cartwright died in 1863, a few months after the Emancipation Proclamation, which had effectively made Drapetomania federal policy. That year, an abolitionist observed that all of the Union’s railway lines were enjoying record wartime traffic—­except one. The Underground Railroad, he wrote, “now does scarcely any business at all … Scarcely a solitary traveler comes along.”

And in early 1864, New Yorkers may have been startled to open The Evening Post and see a headline announcing plans for “A New Underground Railroad” in the city. The accompanying article quickly set their minds at rest, however. It described a scheme to build Manhattan’s first subway line, running northward up Broadway from the Battery to Central Park.

Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad

[MIKA27]

THE ORIGINAL BELL JAR TABLE LAMP

The Original Bell Jar Table Lamp by Southern Lights Electric is styled after the industrial desk lights of the early 20th century, each lamp has a wooden base, a vintage style socket, a cream cloth-covered cord with an inline switch and a glass dome to protect the light bulb.

The filaments of Edison light bulbs are beautiful to look at and they cast a warm light perfect for sheds, garages and gentleman’s rooms.

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JAGUAR D-TYPE

The D-Type Jaguar is an excellent example of what happens when you take an aeronautical engineer and have him design you a racing car. Post-WWII Britain was brimming with engineers used to the fast-paced design and engineering required during times of war, and this mindset helped launch the country to the forefront of both automobile and motorcycle design.

In the case of the D-Type, Jaguar hired a former Bristol Aeroplane Company engineer to design the monocoque – resulting in one of the most aerodynamic and beautiful cars of the 1950s. The engineer’s name was Malcolm Sawyer and he paid fastidious attention to the D-Type’s frontal area, going so far as to get the engine changed to a dry sump design and tilting it 8½°.

In order to minimise weight, aircraft grade aluminium alloy was used throughout, including an all-aluminium sub-frame attaching the engine to the bulkhead. Interestingly, the designers opted to carry fuel in a deformable Marston Aviation Division bag – common practice in aircraft applications but almost unheard of in automobiles.

Looking at the specifications of the car it’s not hard to see why it achieved so much success – it was powered by a 300bhp, 3781cc DOHC inline six-cylinder engine with triple Weber carburettors, a four-speed manual transmission, independent front suspension, a live rear axle with trailing links, a transverse torsion bar and competition spec four-wheel disc brakes.

With a kerb weight of just 864 kilograms (1905 lbs), the power to weight ratio offered by the D-Type is impressive even by today’s standards. Sadly, Jaguar chose to cut funding to its motor sport department at the end of the 1956 season, which meant that for 1957 onwards the only D-Types racing where entered by privateers.

The D-Type you see here was one such privateer car, it was ordered new by Curt Lincoln – a Finnish tennis player with a deep love of motor racing. In order to avoid as much import tax as possible he requested that Jaguar make the car look as second hand as possible, amazingly the factory agreed and wound the odometer forwards, scuffed up the pedals and carpets, and even added an old steering wheel.

The trickery worked and the Finnish customs agents didn’t tax it as a new vehicle, after some light modifications the car won first in class at the famous Elaintarhanajo – Finland’s version of Monaco which was run on the inner city streets of Helsinki. It would later be fitted with spiked tires and used for ice racing throughout Scandinavia, in 1959 it was sent back to Coventry for a full refurbishment ands shortly after it found its way into private ownership.

The story about what happened next to the car, including it essentially being two cars at one point, is fascinating and well worth the read. You can click here to read the whole tale, or to register with RM Auction to bid on it when it comes up for sale in March 2015.

[MIKA27]

Italy Fears ISIS Invasion From Libya

As ISIS makes inroads into Libya, officials in Rome are panicking about an Islamic State just across the sea—but have no idea how to combat the crisis.

ROME — Last weekend in Italy, as the threat of ISIS in Libya hit home with a new video addressed to “the nation signed with the blood of the cross” and the warning, “we are south of Rome,” Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi shuttered up the Italian embassy in Tripoli and raised his fist with the threat of impending military action. Never mind that Italy has only 5,000 troops available that are even close to deployable, according to the defense ministry. Or that the military budget was cut by 40 percent two years ago, which has kept the acquisition of 90 F-35 fighter jets hanging in the balance and left the country combat-challenged to lead any mission—especially one against an enemy like the Islamic State.

In fact, Renzi didn’t specify exactly who would wield that military might, and, two days later, when no one volunteered to lead the charge, he backtracked. “It’s not the time for a military intervention,” Renzi told an Italian television station Monday night and said the United Nations had to lead the way. “Our proposal is to wait for the UN Security Council. The strength of the UN is decidedly superior to that of the radical militias.”

Whether the time is right or not, there is no question that there is a palpable tension in Italy over the ISIS threat—Libya is just 109 miles away from the island of Lampedusa and 300 miles from Sicily—made worse by a 64 percent increase in illegal migrant arrivals by sea since last year. In all of 2014, more than 170,000 people arrived from Libya and Turkey, the highest number ever recorded. Last weekend, as the embassy staff made their way to Italy on a mercantile ship, 2,164 migrants left the same Libyan shores en route to Sicily. The week before, more than 300 people were lost in the same seas as their rickety fishing boats capsized before rescuers could save them.

Anti-immigration politicians have argued for months that it would take little for jihadi fighters to infiltrate a migrant boat and effectively end up taxied into Italy by rescue ships and the Italian navy. In a biting editorial in Il Giornale newspaper, owned by the Silvio Berlusconi family, Sergio Rame hypothesized that the recent influx was an attempt by terrorists to effectively “smoke out” the Italian navy into rescuing the migrants, in an attempt to lure the boats close to Libyan shores in order to launch an attack. The Italian government, which supports the rescue of migrants fleeing war, dismissed the theory.

Meanwhile, the Italian government said they are prepared to deploy 500 special anti-terrorism police to protect sensitive tourist sites in Rome.

What is disturbing is that something is drastically changing in the migrant shuttling business, which has lead defense analysts to warn that Italy has never been so exposed to an attack. For the first time since Italy started officially rescuing migrants in 2013—first through its now defunct Mare Nostrum program and later through the European Union’s border control Frontex Triton mission—the smugglers, who usually melt in with the migrants, are armed and dangerous. Last weekend, smugglers wielding Kalashnikovs fought the Italian coast guard rescue boat to wrestle back a smuggler ship after the human cargo had been rescued and the boat seized. They hauled the boat back towards Libya, presumably to fill it up again. The Office of Migration in Rome says there could be as many as half a million people in camps waiting to come to Italy and the unrest will push them out faster.

The other major concern for Italy is its billion-dollar oil and infrastructure investment in Libya that began during the bromance between the now deposed and deceased Muammar Gaddafi and the now deposed and still very much alive Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. At the height of their alliance, Berlusconi’s photo was emblazoned in Libyan passports as if he was a national treasure. Italy’s ENI oil company was the first to develop the oil industry in Libya when oil was discovered there in 1959. For years, Italy fought international sanctions against Libya to keep its assets protected. Even now, Italy’s foreign ministry has ordered all Italian nationals to leave Libya, but nearly 100 remain to run the oil companies.

Upon his return over the weekend, the Italian ambassador to Libya, Giuseppe Buccino, told an Italian radio station that the situation in Libya was serious, but that not all of the country was in ISIS’s hands—yet. He also warned that befriending rebels in Libya who oppose ISIS was an equally dangerous game. “It is worrying that the logic that could prevail is that ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’,” he said, “and that is a dangerous logic that can lead to a strengthening of the extreme terrorism in Libya.”

[MIKA27]

BLACKPACK CYCLING BACKPACK

After being fed up with what the market had to offer for cycling backpacks, designer William Root decided to do something about it. The Brooklyn-based creator put together a gorgeous backpack that also provides some nice utility in the Blackpack Cycling Backpack.

Sure it looks amazing with its hardened black shell (that’s completely waterproof by the way), but it’s in the functionality where this thing really sets itself apart. Looking like KITT from Knight Rider, the pack is outfitted with a single strip illuminated tail light that helps the rider stay visible for other’s on the road. And it’s more than jut a flashing bike light, it’s a built in turn signal, and brake light, alerting others exactly what your next move will be. Right now it’s in the concept stage, but we imagine with enough support behind it, Root may end up taking it to the mainstream. [Purchase]

[MIKA27]

OAKLEY X METAL COLLECTION

When you’re a successful company, sometimes you can afford to roll the dice. Oakley did just that back in the 90s with its X Metal line of shades, using high-tech materials and radical designs to set itself apart from the typical eyewear. Now, after a hiatus, the X Metal Collection is back.

The new X Metal collection features two designs (Madman and Badman) that combine lightweight aerospace-grade aluminum alloy and the company’s trademark O Matter frame material. Both speak the aggressive industrial design language of the X Metal DNA, but the Madman glasses, with their evil scientist vibe, are the real attention-getters. The comfortable Three-Point Fit is even enhanced with the sure grip of “Unobtainium” components, which we hadn’t heard much about since Avatar. [Purchase]

[MIKA27]

BREITLING CHRONOLINER WATCH

You don't need to be a pilot to appreciate the Breitling Chronoliner Watch. But it doesn't hurt, either. Designed with aviation in mind, it features a COSC-certified chronograph displayed on counters at 12, 9 and 6 o'clock, ideal for measuring flight times. A second 24-hour time zone is readable via the red-tipped hand and the rotating, scratch-resistant black ceramic bezel with 24-hour scale, and white ceramic numerals keep things readable even at night thanks to a contrasting black dial.

[MIKA27]

MERCEDES-BENZ G500 4×4²

When you’re looking to really explore every square inch of the earth, leaving absolutely no stone unturned, the Mercedes-Benz G500 4×4² is the vehicle you will call upon.

Benz’s G-Wagen has always been a fully capable off-roader, but this is some next level stuff right here. Packed with ground clearance that is similar to the monstrous 6×6 iteration, the 4×4 squared is equipped with a 422-horsepower V8 powerplant, portal axles, and 22-inch wheels, each of which is wrapped in 325/55 off-road tires. Many of the details are still unknown at this point, but we imagine that vibrant highlighter yellow exterior paint job may be the only option when it comes to the exterior. There are plenty of removable carbon fiber body parts also scattered throughout the outside of the truck, while the interior is draped in luxury Designo touches. The vehicle is making its internet debut today, but we will get all the details when it rolls onto stage at this year’s Geneva Motor Show in March.