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

[MIKA27]

SAMSUNG GALAXY S6 EDGE

The relative quiet with which Samsung just announced the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge is probably a good indicator that smartphone tech advances are no longer moving at a brisk pace. But if you’re big on premium materials, you might wanna hold out for the successor to the Galaxy S5.

The big changes for the S6 Edge are the body made from aircraft-grade metal and of course the 577 ppi 5.1-inch Quad HD Super AMOLED display that curves around the frame on both sides. Other highlights include Samsung’s new 64-bit Octa-core processor, a 16MP rear camera with real-time HDR & 4K video capabilities, a 5MP wide-angle camera on the front, and here’s a big one: built-in wireless charging. The battery won’t be replaceable this time around though, but Samsung says a 10-mnute charge by cord will produce four hours of power. Both the S6 Edge and S6 go on sale April 10 for a price to be determined.

[MIKA27]

THE WORLD’S LARGEST GROWLER

Growlers, for the most part, come in two sizes: 64 ounce and 32 ounce. But what do you do if you have a gathering with more than a handful of people ready to drink? The Juggernaut is a 128 oz. growler that blurs the line between classic growler and mini-keg.

Like DrinkTanks’ previous growler, The Juggernaut is cast from stainless steel and is double-walled for insulation. If you don’t plan on consuming all 128 ounces of beer in one or two sittings with friends, you can upgrade to a Juggernaut with the company’s Kegulator cap which uses CO2 cartridges to keep your beer fresher for much longer. Instead of lugging a handful of smaller growlers to your next party, pick up one Juggernaut and have a gallon of beer ready to go.

[MIKA27]

EXIMO RUM

The Facundo Rum collection from Bacardi is all about taking things to the next level, and with Eximo Rum they are doing just that. It's tough enough to get a great tasting blended rum after it ages, but it's a truly difficult task to hit the right flavor profile before entering a barrel, which was the process for the blenders of Eximo. It's a 10-year-old spirit, although some rums in the blend are a bit older, and taste like a tropical getaway. With notes of toffee, caramel, and vanilla and a smooth, easy finish, it's a special rum that is best when sipped neat or on the rocks.

[NJP]

'First human' discovered in Ethiopia

Scientists have unearthed the jawbone of what they claim is one of the very first humans.

The 2.8 million-year-old specimen is 400,000 years older than researchers thought that our kind first emerged.

The discovery in Ethiopia suggests climate change spurred the transition from tree dweller to upright walker.

The head of the research team told BBC News that the find gives the first insight into "the most important transitions in human evolution".

Prof Brian Villmoare of the University of Nevada in Las Vegas said the discovery makes a clear link between an iconic 3.2 million-year-old hominin (human-like primate) discovered in the same area in 1974, called "Lucy".

Could Lucy's kind - which belonged to the species Australopithecus afarensis - have evolved into the very first primitive humans?

"That's what we are arguing," said Prof Villmoare.

But the fossil record between the time period when Lucy and her kin were alive and the emergence of Homo erectus (with its relatively large brain and humanlike body proportions) two million years ago is sparse.

The 2.8 million-year-old lower jawbone was found in the Ledi-Geraru research area, Afar Regional State, by Ethiopian student Chalachew Seyoum. He told BBC News that he was "stunned" when he saw the fossil.

"The moment I found it, I realised that it was important, as this is the time period represented by few (human) fossils in Eastern Africa."

The fossil is of the left side of the lower jaw, along with five teeth. The back molar teeth are smaller than those of other hominins living in the area and are one of the features that distinguish humans from more primitive ancestors, according to Professor William Kimbel, director of Arizona State University's Institute of Human Origins.

"Previously, the oldest fossil attributed to the genus Homo was an upper jaw from Hadar, Ethiopia, dated to 2.35m years ago," he told BBC News.

"So this new discovery pushes the human line back by 400,000 years or so, very close to its likely (pre-human) ancestor. Its mix of primitive and advanced features makes the Ledi jaw a good transitional form between (Lucy) and later humans."

A computer reconstruction of a skull belonging to the species Homo habilis, which has been published in Nature journal, indicates that it may well have been the evolutionary descendant of the species announced today.

The researcher involved, Prof Fred Spoor of University College London told BBC News that, taken together, the new findings had lifted a veil on a key period in the evolution of our species.

"By discovering a new fossil and re-analysing an old one we have truly contributed to our knowledge of our own evolutionary period, stretching over a million years that had been shrouded in mystery," he said.

Climate change

The dating of the jawbone might help answer one of the key questions in human evolution. What caused some primitive ancestors to climb down from the trees and make their homes on the ground.

A separate study in Science hints that a change in climate might have been a factor. An analysis of the fossilised plant and animal life in the area suggests that what had once been lush forest had become dry grassland.

As the trees made way for vast plains, ancient human-like primates found a way of exploiting the new environmental niche, developing bigger brains and becoming less reliant on having big jaws and teeth by using tools.

Prof Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London described the discovery as a "big story".

He says the new species clearly does show the earliest step toward human characteristics, but suggests that half a jawbone is not enough to tell just how human it was and does not provide enough evidence to suggest that it was this line that led to us.

The jawbone was found close to the area where Lucy was discovered

He notes that the emergence of human-like characteristics was not unique to Ethiopia.

"The human-like features shown by Australopithecus sediba in South Africa at around 1.95 million years ago are likely to have developed independently of the processes which produced (humans) in East Africa, showing that parallel origins are a distinct possibility," Prof Stringer explained.

This would suggest several different species of humans co-existing in Africa around two million years ago with only one of them surviving and eventually evolving into our species, Homo sapiens. It is as if nature was experimenting with different versions of the same evolutionary configuration until one succeeded.

Prof Stringer added: "These new studies leave us with an even more complex picture of early humans than we thought, and they challenge us to consider the very definition of what it is to be human. Are we defined by our small teeth and jaws, our large brain, our long legs, tool-making, or some combination of these traits?"

Still desperate to make that link and announce with all the non scientific words of actual fact.. They should be disparate, kids are being tought the evolutionary link as fact without the " likely"

[MIKA27]

New Error Correction Take Us A Step Closer To Quantum Computing

Quantum computing could make complex calculations trivial in the future, but right now it’s fraught with problems. Consider one of them solved, though, in the shape of a new quantum error correction technique.

One of the many problems exhibited by the breed of future computers is that they exist in the delicate and fuzzy word quantum world, using not bits but qubits — quantum bits. Each of these qubits can represent a 0, a 1 or — crucially — something in between, providing the ability to dramatically bump up computation speeds.

But as Schroedinger was keen to point out, quantum systems need to be isolated from the rest of world in order to work: interactions with the external world cause the system to decohere, collapsing down and taking a binary state, just like a normal, slow computer. The internal workings of a quantum computer also introduce decoherence effects too — which in turn brings errors. As a result, scientists have to decide on a tolerable error rate and design for that. The problem is that to achieve an error rate small enough to benefit from the quantum computer, you need an awful lot of qubits, which are expensive to manufacture.

Now, though, a group of researchers led by John Martinis — who now works at Google but used to based at the University of California, Santa Barbara — has developed a chip which can detect at least one kind of quantum error introduced during calculations. The system, explained in a new Nature paper, links together nine qubits so that they can each monitor one another for “bit flips”, where a qubit assumes a state it isn’t meant to because of decoherence — with a qubit flipping from 1 to 0, say.

The new technique can accurately detect these occurrences, and also stop them propagating through a calculation — which means they don’t contaminate an ongoing computational process. It’s an important development, effectively removing one of the biggest error headaches that currently faces quantum computing. Indeed, Technology Review reports that “experts in the field say it is an important step toward a fully functional quantum computer.”

There are still plenty more problems to solve, of course. But, for now, we’re at least one step closer to the quantum computer we lust for.

[MIKA27]

What A 170-Year-Old Beer Uncovered In A Shipwreck Really Tasted Like

Back in 2010, divers off the coast of Finland stumbled upon some astonishingly old booze: champagne and beer preserved underwater in a 170-year-old shipwreck. Naturally, they had a taste. But now scientists are back with a rigorous chemical analysis of the beers.

In the initial taste tests, the beer was so sour no one would tell how they were originally meant to taste. But when our noses falter, we have machines. Chemists at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland looked at two particular bottles of recovered beer, which they called A56 and C49. Before they ran any tests, they recorded their own impressions of the beer’s smells, which seem, erh, largely unpleasant.

Bubbles of gas, presumably CO2, formed during sampling, producing a light foam. Both beers were bright golden yellow, with little haze. Both beers smelt of autolyzed yeast, dimethyl sulfide, Bakelite, burnt rubber, over-ripe cheese, and goat, with phenolic and sulfury notes.

Both bottles contained much more salt than usual, suggesting the beers had been diluted with seawater. With modern chemistry techniques, scientists are able to separate out individual compounds and by accelerating them through an electric field, figure out their molecular composition — cutting through the sourness and saltiness to the beer’s true character, in other words.

A56 and C49 turned out to clearly be different beers. C49 was much hoppier and thus more bitter. An analysis of yeast-derived flavour compounds — basically the stuff that gives beers its fruity and floral notes — also revealed rose and sweet apples flavours that were high in A56. C49 had a higher concentration of flavour compounds for green tea.

Some flavour differences may be because of how beer was brewed differently in the 19th century. For example, A56 contained much more of a compound called furfural, which is possibly the result of mash being heated over an open fire. Both beers, even when they were fresh, were also more sour than your average modern brew. It wasn’t until the late 19th century that brewers learned how to keep acid-producing bacteria out of beer. Until that breakthrough, pretty much all beer, including A56 and C49, was sour beer.

Back when the shipwreck was first discovered, chemists began analysing the beer with an eye towardrecreating it. But the study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry makes no mention of live yeast cells found in the beers, which makes the whole endeavour a lot more difficult. On the other hand, this study is the first step in a forensic beer reconstruction.

We have a sense of how they tasted — now it’s up to brewers to recreate it. Tell me that isn’t a gimmick breweries will exploit.

[MIKA27]

Drone Footage Soaring Through Angkor Wat Shows Off The Beautiful Ruins

Angkor Wat is one of those unbelievable places in the world where you can’t really fathom the history of the ruins around you. I thought it — and all of Northern Cambodia — looked fantastic from the ground but this drone footage shows me that the view is — as it always is — better from the top. The drone footage is stunning.

The drone footage of Northern Cambodia was taken by Cian Greaney in January 2015.

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THE SPIDER-MAN REBOOT EYES A NEW DIRECTOR

PERHAPS THE SUPERHERO movie industry has been, like the rest of us, mourning the end of the first season of ABC’s Agent Carter, but things have been surprisingly quiet on the cape and cowl front this week. Is it a sign that things are calming down, or simply the calm before the summer storm? One thing’s for sure: when we’re pretending that Jared Leto getting a haircut is noteworthy, it’s a slow news week. With that in mind, here are the week’s highlights in superhero movie news.

Great Idea: Sony’s Second Spider-Man Reboot Might Have a Head Honcho

If Latino Review’s report is to be believed (and it’s been verified by a number of other sources), Drew Goddard is going from working on a stillborn Spider-Man spin-off to handling the 2017 reboot of the entire franchise, with the new Spider-Man being a high-school-age actor who’ll be sticking with the series for some time. For those playing along at home, rumors are now back to the new movie Spider-Man being white.

Why this is Great: As fans of both Cloverfield and The Cabin in The Woods, we couldn’t be more excited about the prospect of a Goddard Spider-Man in the near future. If nothing else, the Buffy The Vampire Slayer experience he’ll bring to it feels like a good thing.

Great Idea: The Crow Lives… Again?

The on-again, off-again plans to reboot The Crow appear to be happening once more, with Deadlinereporting that Boardwalk Empire’s Jack Huston is the actor most likely to take on the role of the undead anti-hero out for revenge for his own murder. This time, the potential movie is being developed by director Corin Hardy, a former music video director making his leap to the big screen with this year’s horror movie The Hallow.

Why this is great: While we’re neutral-minus on the prospect of a new Crow movie (why have there been four of them? That’s more than there have been Iron Man movies!), the Hardy/Huston pairing could pay off in interesting ways, especially if the more goth feel of the original graphic novel could be toned down for modern audiences.

Great Idea: Now Everyone Knows What the Avengers Look Like (As if They Didn’t Already)

Over the course of the last week, individual character posters for the members of Marvel’s premiere superhero team have been released online, reminding the world what Captain America, Thor, Hulk, et al will look like in this summer’s most anticipated superhero movie. All of this was in advance of a new trailer for the movie, scheduled to debut Thursday evening on ABC during the premiere of American Crime, because we are now officially in the Avengers: Age of Hype Machine.

Why this is great: This is just the start. We really are living in the Avengers’ world now, so if you weren’t that into the idea of looking at the Avengers, tough luck: they’re going to be everywhere for the foreseeable future. (Well, at least until May 1, when the movie opens.)

Great Idea: Hugh Jackman Would Really Like to Be in a Marvel Movie, You Guys

To the surprise of absolutely no one, Hugh Jackman, currently promoting Chappie, has said that there’s a “possibility” that Fox might let the X-Men appear in a Marvel Studios movie. This should only be expected, as Jackman has talked about this possibility many times in the past—even before Sony and Marvel came to their deal surrounding Spider-Man’s movie rights—and has always been in favor of the idea of allowing all the Marvel characters to meet onscreen.

Why this is great: Even though Jackman’s optimism is likely just that—certainly, there’s been no sign anywhere else that Fox and Marvel are even in talks about such a crossover—there’s something charming about his hope. If Wolverine can keep the faith, then shouldn’t the fans (who have far less insider knowledge) be able to do the same?

[MIKA27]

US snow: Plane skids off New York runway

A passenger airliner has skidded off the runway at LaGuardia airport in New York City, as a major winter storm bears down on a large part of the US.

Emergency officials helped 127 passengers and five crew off the plane just after 11:00 local time (16:00 GMT), but no one was seriously injured

Snow and freezing rain has been falling from Texas to New England over the past several hours.

Schools, businesses, and the US government have closed as a result.

Pictures from LaGuardia airport show the plane, a Delta MD-88, resting on an embankment having pushed through a fence.

"That runway had been ploughed literally minutes before, and other pilots had reported good braking action," New York and New Jersey Port Authority Director Patrick Foye told reporters.

The flight, Delta 1086, was attempting to land at LaGuardia after flying from Atlanta. It veered to the left shortly after making contact with the runway, but avoided crashing into nearby Flushing Bay.

Two passengers were transported to a hospital, but no serious injuries have been reported.

At one point the plane was leaking fuel, but emergency responders were able to stop the leak.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has been dispatched to the scene, Mr Foye said.

The airport has been closed, and is expected to reopen at 19:00 local time, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says. Planes en route to the LaGuardia have been diverted to nearby airports.

LaGuardia is one of the most difficult airports to land at in the US owing to its close proximity to three other busy airports.

Elsewhere:

• in Kentucky, motorists have slept overnight in their cars after getting stuck on two highways
• schools, businesses and local governments across the Northeast and South have closed
• in Washington, the US government told non-emergency staff to stay home
• about 82,000 businesses and homes lost power in the state of West Virginia
• over 4,000 flights have been cancelled

The snow is expected to largely skip Boston, which needs just two more inches of snow to break a record set during the 1995-1996 season.

A snowplough got into trouble in Henderson County, Kentucky

School children defied a ban to sled on Capitol Hill

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Vietnam: Officials try to trace 'mystery amphibian'

Officials in Vietnam are on the hunt for a mystery amphibian which was apparently captured and then sold in the north of the country, it's reported.

Photos of the metre-long animal were posted on Facebook by a man who says he pulled it from a pond near his home in the Vinh Phuc region,Thanh Nien News website reports. But local environment officials don't know what it is, despite searching records of native species. While it bears some resemblance to a giant salamander, native to neighbouring China, officials say even if it's a related species there is no explanation for how it came to be found hundreds of miles away in northern Vietnam. And tracking it down now could prove tricky - the man who uploaded the images told Thanh Nien News that he has sold it, and won't give any more details.

Officials have now called in the police to try and trace it, the head of the region's forestry department tells the website. "No matter who is keeping it, we will try to bring the animal to Vietnam's Institute of Ecology and Biological Resources, where experts will know what to do with it," says Nguyen Van Tam. The images have been widely shared on social media and have provoked a storm of comments, with many people worried about the creature's fate. "Look at the tray and the chopping board," one user is quoted as saying, before suggesting that it could have ended up on someone's dinner table.

[MIKA27]

Thomas Edison Worked on a Spirit Phone to Record Voices of the Dead

A long-lost chapter of the memoir of Thomas Edison has been found and published in France and it contains details of the great inventor’s plans to build a device to record the voices of the newly departed.

Edison’s original memoir is called “Diary And Sundry Observations” and was published in 1948, 16 years after his death. The first edition of the book contained a last chapter called “Spiritualism,” a collection of essays in which Edison talks about his beliefs in an afterlife and a way to communicate with the dead.

I believe, rightly or wrongly, that life is undestructable … I am inclined to believe that our personality hereafter will be able to affect matter. If this reasoning be correct, then, if we can evolve an instrument so delicate as to be affected, or moved, or manipulated – whichever term you want to use – by our personality as it survives in the next life, such an instrument, when made available, ought to record something … I have been at work for sometime building an apparatus to see if it is possible for personalities which have left this earth to communicate with us.

Edison worked on what has come to be called the “Telephone to the Dead” during the last ten years of his life. Part of the work involved amplifying the sounds from his phonograph in hopes the background noise would contain spirit voices. As an insurance policy, he made a deal with He also made a deal with engineer William Walter Dinwiddie that whoever died first would attempt to leave a message on the machine. The device has never been found and his family had the chapter removed from all subsequent editions of the book.

Until now. In cooperation with Philippe Baudouin, a French radio presenter and philosopher, a French publisher is releasing the entire text with the missing chapter included in a book titled “Le Royaume de l’Au-dela” (The Kingdom of the Afterlife). Baudouin summarized Edison’s quest in this way:

(Edison) imagined being able to record the voice of another being, to be able to make audible that which isn’t — the voice of the dead.

Was Edison on the brink of what would truly have been his greatest invention? Crank up your phonograph and see if he’s left you a message.

[MIKA27]

Harrison Ford Hurt in Plane Crash

Harrison Ford is reportedly in serious condition after he crashed a plane onto a Los Angeles golf course.

According to TMZ, Ford, 72, incurred "multiple gashes to his head" when his two-seater fighter plane crashed at the Penmar golf course in Venice, California. The site is reporting that two doctors who happened to be on the scene rushed to treat the actor. Ford, a longtime flyer, has had multiple aviation accidents in the past.

[MIKA27]

LEXUS LF-SA CONCEPT

Is there a market for little luxury? Not “a little luxury”– we said “little luxury.” The designers at Lexus think there might be, as they’re celebrating their 25th year in business with a new ultra-compact concept, the LF-SA.

Created at Lexus’ European design studio, the 2+2 urban vehicle is designed for agility on city streets, with some cool stuff inside, like an adjustable steering wheel and pedals, wide-angle heads-up display, and a hologram-style display on the car’s infotainment system. The exterior features a funky new take on the Lexus spindle grille, impossibly narrow headlights and taillights, and a body that Lexus says will “change perceptions when viewed from different angles.” It’s all topped off with “Silver Stellar,” a color that the company says is meant to evoke a space exploration vibe. No word yet on whether this concept will make it to production.

[tmac77]

Ford, a longtime flyer, has had multiple aviation accidents in the past.

Multiple accidents!!....How the heck does he get insurance.

[NJP]

He is going to end up like Robert Duvall at the end of Secondhand Lions.

[MIKA27]

Jeremy Clarkson Has Been Suspended From Top Gear, Next Episode Cancelled

Jeremy Clarkson has been suspended from Top Gear, and this week’s episode isn’t being broadcast. Yikes!

In a brief statement, the BBC has said that Clarkson was suspended following a “fracas” with a producer. Clarkson’s producer-baiting is legendary on the show, but whether the fracas involved one of his infamous verbal gaffes or a more physical altercation isn’t yet clear. Clarkson was said to be on his final warning after an incident involving a racial slur last year. On the other hand, Top Gear is one of the BBC’s most profitable productions, and thrives in part on controversy.

The immediate impact is that this week’s episode isn’t being broadcast — a decision that will impact BBC Knowledge in Australia, which has been fast-tracking each broadcast on Mondays. We imagine there’ll be a repeat instead.

The suspension appears to cover two episodes; there’s no telling what happens after that, but it’s hard to imagine the current format without Clarkson, who normally takes the lead in hosting.

Update: the Radio Times reports that the suspension was due to Clarkson allegedly “punching a producer”, and that the remaining three episodes of this season have been cancelled.

[MIKA27]

The Tech Inside This Satellite May Soon Scan Your Skin For Cancer

The European Space agency has just announced that doctors will be adapting its Proba-V vegetation-scanning satellite camera for a decidedly non-vegetative purpose: Monitoring human skin cells. The hardware within this satellite may, in a few years, form the core of a new medical device that doctors can use to scan human skin for disease.

Proba-V is a mini satellite that uses state-of-the-art digital infrared sensors, coupled with a high speed camera, to monitor changes to Earth’s vegetation from orbit. According to the ESA, the camera’s unique wide field of view allows it to construct a fresh picture of Earth’s flora every two days. From thousands of miles above our planet’s surface, it can resolve small differences in the colour of neighbouring trees that would appear identical to the human eye. This feature allows scientists to monitor the health of Earth’s ecosystems over time with unparalleled precision.

Apparently, Proba-V’s ability to see shortwave radiation our eyes cannot detect makes it an ideal tool for monitoring the health of humans, as well. Researchers discovered that if you mount Proba-V’s camera on a medical scanner, doctors can use the camera here on Earth, to stare deeper into human tissues than previous scanners, and perhaps detect signs of skin diseases such as cancer earlier on.

Perhaps in the near future, in addition using satellite cameras to map Earth’s climate, we’ll be using them to map our very own bodies.

[MIKA27]

Just The Blue Angels Doing Their Awesomeness

Excuse me for putting up another aerobatic shot this week, but I couldn’t resist this image posted by the US Navy. Their position in the sky seems counterintuitive, yet it is perfectly normal for them.

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Insane Night Wingsuit Flight Results In This Spectacular Picture

Wingsuit flyer Patrick Kerber didn’t seem to be daunted by the idea of jumping from the top of a mountain to a dark void — only slightly illuminated by a red flare he holds in his hand — to take a picture. It’s true that the resulting photo is stunning but also one of the craziest and most dangerous stunts I’ve ever seen.

[MIKA27]

Egypt Is Building A New Pyramid

Egypt, a country in the grips of a severe housing crisis, announced a glitzy new development this week — and it’s a throwback either to Vegas or to ancient Egypt. Or maybe a little bit of both.

The Cairo Post reports on a new development called the Zayed Crystal Spark: A 200m tall glass pyramid surrounded by a reflection pool and entered through a smaller, more squat pyramid at its base. The enormous glass tower will house “administrative, commercial and entertainment” programs inside, according to Egypt’s Minister of Housing Moustafa Madbouly, who will present the plan in greater detail during an economic conference this month.

The tower will be the highest in the country, eclipsing the ancient pyramids — which are only a few kilometres away — by 60m. It will also be one of the largest, sited on a block that totals 798,000 square metres

Meanwhile, Egypt is dealing with a massive housing crisis. The Middle East Institute reports that 18 per cent families in Egypt live in single-room housing, while there’s a shortage of 3.5 million units nationwide. Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics told Al Monitor that there are up to 20 million people living in “informal” dwellings, which often lack water and electricity.

The problem isn’t that housing doesn’t exist though: It’s that it’s too expensive for most people. The Middle East Institute’s Maria Golia points out that there are as many as six million vacant housing units that are simply too expensive for the average person. Before he was elected, president Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi said the government would build one million units of housing for low income youths, at a cost of $US40 billion, a project that has not yet materialised.

What has resulted is a vast illegal industry devoted to building “unlicensed” housing for middle- to low-income Egyptians, says Golia:

No one has succeeded in tackling this problem more directly than the Egyptian people themselves. While the SHP produced 50,000 units between 2012 and 2014, informal (unlicensed) housing in Egypt’s ashwa’iyyat (unplanned areas) increased by at least two million flats in that same period. Especially since 2011, in the absence of state supervision, construction of informal housing has increased to such an extent that licensed developers have encountered shortages of building materials for their projects.

So while Egypt’s housing minister is promoting a billion-dollar scheme for a luxury pyramid, a shadow industry has emerged to meet the demands of average Egyptians. It’s a dynamic that’s easy to find traces of in other countries, albeit under wildly different circumstances — the vast gulf between government-endorsed hyper-luxury flagships and the make-due housing of the other half. But hey, a new pyramid but without the dead dudes!

[MIKA27]

The Secret Weather Manipulation Program Of The Vietnam War

“It’s too bad the Post Office isn’t as efficient as the Weather Service,” Doc Brown says in the 1989 movie Back to the Future: Part II, referring to the fact that the weather could be manipulated by the government. But was that vision of the future really that futuristic?

Controlling the weather sounds like it should be the exclusive domain of science fiction. But manipulation of the clouds has a somewhat surprising history in the real world. In fact, the US military ran a secret, little-remembered weather control program during the Vietnam War.

From March 1967 until July 1972 the US military spent over $US3 million per year conducting a top secret operation in Southeast Asia. The goal was to extend the monsoon season and flood the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the system of supply routes used by enemy fighters in Vietnam. The Americans hoped to cause landslides, wash out river crossings, and just generally disrupt the movement of North Vietnamese troops. It was the first large scale effort to manipulate the weather for military purposes. And it’s still unclear how well it actually worked.

The program went by many names. It was called at various times Operation Popeye, Operation Motorpool, and Operation Intermediary-Compatriot. Reportedly the name had to be changed so many times on account of people without the proper security clearances learning the name.

Whatever you want to call it, the goals were ambitious. A power once thought to be only in the hands of your deity of choice was now a weapon to be wielded by Man. And in a strange way, some American forces saw it as more palatable way to fight by disrupting movement rather than bombing. “Make mud, not war,” was the unofficial moniker of the Air Force pilots who carried out the missions.

The project worked by seeding clouds over countries like Laos and Vietnam with silver iodide. Roughly 2000 runs were conducted over the five years of the program.

Cloud seeding was far from new in the late 1960s. There were extensive experiments by GE and the US military after World War II. And ARPA was working with advanced computers in the early ’60s to see how weather might be used in battle. But Operation Popeye was the first known successful use of weather control technology in combat.

Cloud seeding unit mounted to the side of a WC-130A Hercules

James Rodger Fleming, author of the book Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control explains that it’s unclear just how “successful” the program was, from a tactical perspective. Fleming comes down on the side of “very little” compared with less conservative historians. But if there’s anything that everybody can agree upon, it’s that the program made it difficult for the military to experiment with such tactics in the future:

Although some claimed that [Operation Popeye] induced from 1 to 7 inches of additional rainfall annually along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, no scientific data were collected to verify the claim. General Westmoreland thought there was “no appreciable increase” in rain from the project. Even if the cloud seeding had produced a tactical victory or two in Vietnam (it did not), the extreme secrecy surrounding the operation and the subsequent denials and stonewalling of Congress by the military resulted in a major strategic defeat for military weather modification.

The entire operation was naturally met with concern by the public once word of Operation Popeye started to leak out. Some people now go so far as to call the operation the “Watergate of weather warfare”. Nixon administration officials initially denied the existence of the program when it first leaked in 1971. Columnist Jack Anderson at the Washington Post had broke the story in March of 1971.

Denials from the Nixon administration were adamant and unequivocal. Nixon’s secretary of Defence, Melvin Laird testified at a Senate hearing on April 18, 1972 that, “we have never engaged in that type of activity over Northern Vietnam.” That was a baldfaced lie.

By July of 1972 the New York Times had published their own story about the program with new details that freaked out the public. Operation Popeye even had a brief cameo appearance in the Pentagon Papers. News organisations were starting to paint a better picture of what the US military was up to. Just a few days after the New York Times story broke, Operation Popeye was shut down.

Under public pressure from people nervous about the US military playing God, both houses of Congress rushed to pass legislation in 1974 to ban weather control for combat purposes. By 1974 a UN Treaty was in the works, but once it was signed in 1978 it was pretty much useless. It forbade countries from using environmental modification in war, but had so many loopholes that they may as well have not tried.

The world may have agreed that control of the weather and climate was a dangerous weapon of war. But weather manipulation is still very much on the minds of US intelligence agencies. Just last month a climate researcher reported that the CIA gave him a call to see about how technology might be used by a foreign power to disrupt our weather. It’s probably safe to say that humanity hasn’t seen the last of weather modification in war.

[MIKA27]

The Walking Corpses of Indonesia

Every society has its own way of dealing with death and the deceased. There are innumerable beliefs about what becomes of our spirit upon our inevitable death, and human beings have a long tradition of funeral practices, ceremonies, and rituals as varied as the many cultures they derive from. No matter what the culture or belief system, in most cases the deceased corpse itself remains dead throughout the practice, but in one society in Indonesia this is not the case. For in the Toraja culture the term “Walking Dead” is not a metaphorical term but rather very literal indeed.

The Toraja are an ethnic group of people indigenous to the mountains of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. The Toraja people are renowned for their wood carvings and their peculiar traditional, ancestral houses with huge, peaked roofs that sweep up like a boat, which are known as tongkonan, but they are even more well known for their elaborate and bizarre funeral rites and burial sites. This macabre fascination with death can be seen everywhere in Toraja villages, from the elaborate burial sites carved directly into craggy cliffs to the traditional tongokonan houses that are immaculately decorated with the horns of buffalos, a symbol of wealth, and used almost exclusively as resting places for the corpses of recently deceased relatives. However, it is in their funeral rites that truly showcase the Toraja culture of death.

Toraja corpses being tended to

The Toraja have a strong belief in the afterlife, and the process from death to burial is a long one. When a person dies, the corpse is typically washed and kept in the tongokonan while it awaits its funeral and subsequent burial. In poorer families, the body may simply be kept in another room of their own home. Since the Toraja funeral ceremony is typically an extravagant affair requiring all relatives to be present no matter how far away they may be, and bodies are usually entombed within coffins placed within burial caves painstakingly carved into limestone cliffs, weeks or even months can pass between death and burial. This time is required for all arrangements to be made, relatives to be gathered, and for money to be saved in order to pay for the expensive funeral and burial. This is not unusual, nor is it particularly unpleasant for villagers. In Toraja society it is believed that the process of death is a long one, as the soul gradually makes its way to the afterlife, known as Puya; the Land of the Souls.

During this waiting period, the corpse is still treated somewhat as if they are still alive, as the soul is believed to linger nearby awaiting its journey to Puya. The body is dressed, groomed and cleaned regularly, and even offered meals every day, just as if it were still a living member of the family. It is not even unusual for guests to thank the corpse for being a gracious host. When all arrangements have been made and all are present, the funeral ceremony begins.

Depending on the level of wealth the deceased had enjoyed in life, these can be incredibly extravagant, including massive feasts and lasting for days. During the ceremony, hundreds of relatives and extended family gather at ceremonial sites called rante, and express their grief with singing, the playing of music and chanting. A common feature at these events, especially for the wealthy, is the offering of water buffalo and pigs for sacrifice. These buffalo and pigs are thought to be required for the spirit of the deceased when they pass over to the afterlife, and the more animals that are sacrificed, the faster the journey is said to be. To this end, depending on the wealth of the family, up to tens of buffalo and hundreds of pigs are slaughtered, with the event drawing the fanfare of revelers who dance or attempt to catch the flying blood with bamboo straws. After the animals have been killed, the heads of the buffalo are often lined up on a field to await their dead owner. The spilling of blood upon the earth is thought to be an important component of the soul’s transition to Puya, and in some cases special cockfights known as bulangan londong are held for this purpose, as if the blood of all of those buffalo and pigs was not enough.

When the funeral festivities have ended, the body is ready for burial. Typically the corpse will be placed within a wooden box, after which it will be interred not in the ground but rather in either a specially carved burial cave just for this purpose, a naturally formed cave that fits the requirements, or in the case of babies or small children it will be hung from a cliff with thick ropes until the ropes rot and the coffin falls to the ground, after which it will be reattached. The reason for placing the dead so high up is that the Toraja believe that they must be placed between Heaven and Earth in order for the spirit to find its way to the afterlife. Within the burial caves are placed all of the tools and equipment the person’s spirit may need in the afterlife, including money (hey, you never know) and oddly cigarettes hey, it’s a hard habit to break), as well as rows of life-sized wooden effigies of the deceased which are meant to watch over them and are referred to as Tau Tau. Burial caves may have only one coffin and be elaborate mausoleums decked out in elaborate decorations for the rich, or may be packed with the numerous coffins of a whole family. Some of these graves are over 1,000 years old, with the coffins completely rotted away and nothing but bones and skulls remaining.

Toraja burial caves

However, this is not the last anyone will see of the bodies, for it is after the actual burial that the Toraja enact perhaps their most unusual ritual concerning the dead. Once a year, in August, villagers return to the burial caves in order to remove the bodies and change their clothes, groom them, and bathe them, as well as repair as much as possible any damage the coffins may have incurred. This ritual is known as Ma’nene, or “The Ceremony of Cleaning Corpses,” and is performed on the deceased no matter how long they have been dead or what age they may have been. Some of the corpses have been in the caves so long that they have been mummified. After the corpses are freshened up, villagers will hold the them upright and “walk” them from the village to their place of death and back again, after which the body is placed back in its coffin and returned to its cave until the following year, when the whole morbid process will be repeated.

Although this all may seem rather macabre and bizarre, some remote areas still allegedly practice an even older, even weirder ceremony in which the dead are said to literally walk on their own. One thing common to all of the funeral ceremonies and rites of the Toraja is that in order for the spirit to be able to pass into the afterlife certain conditions must be met. First, all of the relatives and extended family of the deceased must be present for the funeral. Second, the deceased must be interred in the village of their birth. If these conditions are not met, it is said that the soul will forever linger around its body in a state of limbo, and unable to journey to Puya until they were, a belief that in the old days of stark remoteness dissuaded most from travelling too far from their village lest they be trapped in some faraway place. This all posed some challenges in the past, as before the 20th century and subsequent colonization by the Dutch, the Toraja lived in remote, autonomous villages that were completely isolated from each other and the outside world, with no roads connecting them. When a villager died far from his birthplace, it was difficult for family to retrieve the body and carry it back through rugged, mountainous terrain to its place of origin. The solution to this problem was unique to say the least.

In order to make sure the corpse was able to be returned to their village of birth and spare the family the hardship of carrying it themselves, special shamans were sought out who allegedly had the power to temporarily bring the dead back to life. The particular brand of black magic used by the shamans only brought the dead back to life in the most rudimentary sense. These walking corpses were said to be largely unaware of their surroundings and nonresponsive, expressionless, and uncoordinated, only able to perform the most basic tasks such as walking. Upon being brought back to life, the walking corpse was said to shamble stiffly and robotically towards its village of birth, often guided by the shaman or a procession of family members, but sometimes on its own. Special runners would move out ahead of the group to warn others that a walking corpse was passing through. The walk back to the village was meant to be a completely silent, somber affair, and it is said that if anyone addressed the corpse directly by name it would immediately collapse and lose whatever power animates it. It is not clear whether a bullet to the head would accomplish the same effect, but I must assume it would.

Now before anyone reading this panics and starts preparing for an inevitable zombie outbreak, it is important to note that the process is only temporary and the effects only last until the corpse reaches its birthplace, although depending on the distances involved this can take days or even weeks. No word on what happens if a villager dies overseas. Throughout this time, the “zombie” is not a snarling creature that attacks the living but rather is totally passive, showing no interest in or recognition of those around it. Once the walking dead reaches its home village, it reverts back to being a mere corpse to await its funeral in the normal manner of being bathed, offered meals, and redressed every day. In some traditions, the body will be reanimated once more in order to make its way to the coffin in which it will be buried.

Shamans who could raise the dead did not restrict their dark practices to only human beings. It is said that at some funeral ceremonies magic would be cast upon the carcasses of the animals slaughtered for sacrifice, and there are stories of the shamans bringing the bodies of headless buffaloes to life in order to walk about, or to make the decapitated heads move, look around, grimace, or cry out. The same thing was sometimes said to be done to slaughtered pigs and chickens too. Often the purpose of this gruesome display was so that the shaman could demonstrate his powers in a public display before being called upon to raise a human being.

Alleged photo of a walking Toraja corpse

Nowadays, with plenty of roads and ample access to transportation, the purported walking dead ritual is largely seen as unnecessary and so in modern times, the practice of bringing the dead to life to walk has declined and is rare to find in Toraja society. Indeed, many of the younger generation do not believe in such stories at all. However, some remote villages still allegedly practice it. One isolated village by the name of Mamasa is particularly known for its practice of this macabre rite, and there are occasional reports of people sighting these zombies ambling through the wilderness or amongst a procession of family members. In recent years, photos of these alleged zombies have sometimes made the rounds and stirred up debate and controversy. Although the corpses in these photos certainly look real, they are often dismissed as nothing more than a hoax or are perhaps people suffering from some disfiguring disease such as leprosy, that merely gives the illusion of death.

Is any of this real or is it all mere folklore and trickery? Do the Toraja really have the power to temporarily raise the dead and make them walk? Whatever the case may be, there is certainly a strong tradition of doing so in South Sulawesi, and some of the villagers here certainly seem to think it is very real. At any rate, it is undoubtedly a creepy tradition in this fascinating society that has taken death and funerals to a whole new level.

[MIKA27]

Mushroom Cloud on Mars Spotted by India’s Orbiter

While the rest of the world was buzzing about the report by NASA scientists that Mars possibly had an ocean with more water than Earth’s Arctic Ocean about 4.3 billion years ago, the Mars Orbiter launched by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) was looking at something that happened a little more recently – what appears to be a mushroom cloud on the surface of the planet!

India’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) was launched on November 5, 2013, and entered Mars orbit on September 24, 2014. Images taken by the onboard Mars Colour Camera (MCC) and displayed on the ISRO website are breathtaking in color and clarity. Especially the one with the mushroom cloud.

The cloud is in the enormous Valles Marineris Canyon. It’s definitely mushroomed-shape and enlarged views of it show what looks like a crater formed underneath the cloud and a shadow of the cloud extending from it across the surface.

Enlarged view of the Martian mushroom cloud

So what caused this mushroom cloud to form? We can probably rule out surface wind because it’s rare on Mars and the cloud lacks a windy swirl. The Curiosity Rover has recently detected methane, but the amounts are far too small to cause such an explosion and craters like we’re seeing in Siberia.

Is it a nuclear cloud? Dr. John Brandenburg writes in his recent book, “Death on Mars: The Discovery of a Planetary Nuclear Massacre,” that the “high concentration” of Xenon-129 in the Martian atmosphere and uranium and thorium on the surface are remnants of a nuclear explosion by an alien invader that wiped out two ancient Martian civilizations. Have they come back? Was the explosion from an old leftover bomb? Is there a war on Mars we don’t know about?

Another explanation might be the comet Siding Spring which passed close to Mars on October 19, 2014. NASA cut off the live video feed of the comet before it passed (what a surprise) but amateur astronomer Dr. Fritz Helmut Hemmerich made a video from the Canary Islands after it passed showing an explosion. Did MOM happen to be looking at just the right spot when a piece of Siding Spring sprang and crashed? How would they know? Why would ISRO be photographing during the comet’s pass but not NASA? Is NASA hiding the cause of the explosion?

Nuclear explosion? Methane blast? Comet crash? A warning to Mars One settlers? Something else? You never know with mushroom clouds.

[MIKA27]

SAMSUNG PORTABLE SSD T1

The cloud certainly has its advantages for storage, but there’s a lot to be said about the tangibility of a portable drive. When you’re looking for the best way to carry your entire professional and personal data with you, there’s nothing that comes close to the Samsung Portable SSD T1.

Moving parts in your current HDD are prone to breaking, leaving your data stuck in “cyber space.” Samsung opted for a solid-state drive in their latest portable storage offering, and built it to be the size of a credit card, making it truly portable. But don’t let the small size fool you. This thing features 1 terabyte of storage space (also available in 250GB and 500GB), and with its laser patterning, chrome metal finish and jet black custom T1 cable, it fits right in with your current EDC kit. Utilizing Turbo Write Technology, the SSD T1 is capable of super fast read-write speeds of up to 450 mB/s, supports data encryption, and works on both Macs and Windows-powered computers.

[MIKA27]

ZACKEES LED TURN SIGNAL GLOVES

When you’re on your bicycle, sticking a left arm out to signal your intentions for the upcoming intersection does you absolutely no good at 10pm. Cycling becomes so much more dangerous at night, and we’ve found something to take some of that danger out of the equation.

Zackees LED Turn Signal Gloves feature bright lights (54 lumens) in each glove, letting traffic behind you know which way you’re going to turn when you press the contact plates on your thumb and index finger together. The LEDs are powered by rechargeable coincells that are said to last three weeks with regular use, traveling 30 minutes each way. The gloves are also designed with high quality textiles and a waterproof coating that allow them to be machine washed. [Purchase]