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

[MIKA27]

Controversial Anti-Aging Science Is Here… But Only in South America

The science of anti-aging has become all the rage in recent months, garnering cover stories on magazines like Time and Bloomberg Businessweek, in addition to numerous headlines in other periodicals around the globe.

While there is hope for a burgeoning field that, as many hope, may one day reverse debilitating disease and increase general human longevity, we aren’t yet to a point where these sorts of experimental scientific applications can be attained yet.

Well, at least not in the United States.

Josh Mitteldorf

Writing for H+, blogger Josh Mitteldorf says that the future of anti-aging technology is already becoming available… if you’re willing to travel to South America:

“For people who have a few hundred thousand dollars to spend and are willing to take on the risks of an “early adopter” and travel to South America, options are now becoming available that were inconceivable just a few years ago. A new company is leapfrogging over the time-consuming process of testing and regulatory approval, and offering the best-established and most promising experimental anti-aging technologies in the near future. This is a new vision for combining research with treatment, for treating diseases that have no proven therapies, and for aging itself.”

Boasting a number of services that are bound to cause eyebrows to raise, the BioViva company claims they are set to offer what they deem “experimental medical services” outside the United States. Among the services they offer are a lab facility which they say can produce “genetically modified viruses with a gene payload, made to order,” as well as an experienced staff with focus on the fields of experimental gene therapy (for which there is not yet FDA approval yet, at present), as well as Bill Andrews and Michael Fossel, “two of the most prominent, senior biochemists who developed the science of telomerase in the 1990s and before” on BioViva’s in-house scientific advisory board.

The focus of BioViva’s science involves gene therapy through utilization of Adeno-Associated Viruses (AAV), which are agents that enter human cells and locate the cell nucleus, then copy themselves into a specific location on Chromosome 19 in each nucleus. Here, the virus manufactures copies of its own DNA, “and also of the proteins that it needs to replicate, to penetrate other cells”, H+ reports.

If synthesized viruses entering your body and replicating on special chromosome regions sounds a little, well, icky, let’s consider for a moment what a virus actually is. Defined, we are talking about “a microscopic infective agent that consists of a nucleic acid molecule in a protein coat, able to multiply only within the living cells of a host.” Granted, in nature, viruses exist in a parasitic way, in that once they infect their host, they proliferate within the body’s cellular structure, and generally with effects on the host that are hardly conducive to health. However, utilizing such nucleic acids and their protein shells (which are shed at the time of entry into the cell) for purposes of advanced gene therapy are, in essence, copying what viruses in nature have evolved to do, but in ways that may promote longevity and overall health. Beneficial science, in other words, which draws inspiration from nature’s less friendly cast of microscopic characters.

For more on these promising, and perhaps controversial services BioViva will soon be offering, you can read Mitteldorf’s article here.

[MIKA27]

Catch Me if You Can: Fake Cop Investigates VA Deaths

Steve Pancoast carried a gun and sought justice for dead vets as ‘chief investigator’ for the Oklahoma VA. But it turns out that wasn’t his job—and now he’s facing charges.

With his badge and gun and take-charge bearing, Steve Pancoast seemed like justice personified as he investigated the death of a World War II vet who had been parboiled in a whirlpool bath at an Oklahoma state veterans center back in 2012.

Pancoast had been widely described in the press as the chief investigator for the Oklahoma Department of Veterans Affairs (ODVA), and he acted as well as looked the part.

His investigation established that 85-year-old Jay Minter had suffered second-degree burns over 50 percent of his body when he was placed in a whirlpool that lacked a working thermostat. Minter very well could have survived if he had been rushed to a hospital capable of treating him effectively.

But a physician’s assistant named Ken Adams allegedly opted to keep Minter at the Claremore Veterans Center. Adams happened to be married to Cynthia Adams, the center’s administrator at the time.

The next day, Minter died. Ken Adams filed a report with the ODVA attesting that the primary cause of death had been arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease, with the burns only a secondary factor. The medical examiner reached a different conclusion following an autopsy.

“Complications of thermal injuries,” the medical examiner reported, making no mention of the supposed heart disease.

In the course of the investigation, Pancoast decided that Ken Adams had also played a role in the death of 86-year-old Louis Arterberry at the center. The World War II vet is said to have been in need of urgent care following an apparent stroke, but Adams had allegedly been preoccupied with arranging what court papers term “a sexual liaison.”

Adams was charged with two counts of second-degree murder and caretaker neglect. He pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.

In the meantime, there has come another shocker. And this one concerns not a vet but Pancoast himself.

Last week, the Office of the Oklahoma State Attorney (OAG) announced that 31-year-old Pancoast had been arrested for impersonating a police officer, after he allegedly lied about being a certified cop.

He also was charged with possessing a weapon while a convicted felon. He was said to have neglected to tell his employers that he had served three years in prison for larceny and weapons possession in New Jersey in the 1990s, before he moved to Oklahoma.

On top of all that, the ODVA announced that Pancoast had never been an investigator at all and that the agency does not in fact have any investigators.

“We do not have an investigative unit, we do not have an investigator,” an ODVA spokesman told The Daily Beast last week. “That’s a title that was never given by us.”

The spokesman said Pancoast’s real title was “safety programs administrator,” with duties including fire drills and “non-skid in the shower rooms so that nobody slips and falls.”

“We take care of veterans,” the spokesman said. “We don’t investigate crimes or possible crimes.”

The spokesman added, “If someone’s carrying a badge, that’s something he got on his own.”

The spokesman concluded, “It’s a bizarre story.”

The bizarre becomes doubly so when you consider what recently ousted interim ODVA director John McReynolds was quoted as saying back in 2012 after questions arose over the agency’s handling of abuse reports in its seven veterans centers.

“In most cases we have investigators assigned to each facility who are trained to conduct lesser investigations,” said McReynolds. “But if it requires someone outside the facility…then it goes to the administrator, who will call me and I’ll dispatch Mr. Pancoast to that location and he will initiate the investigation.”

That is exactly what Pancoast did after the deaths of Minter and Arterberry. He was still doing it in June 2014, when he signed an affidavit for a warrant to search the residence of an American Legion official who was suspected of embezzlement.

As described in court papers, a fellow ODVA employee named Amanda Lomonaco saw Pancoast as he prepared to join cops from various jurisdictions in conducting the search.

“Lomonaco stated she had been present and had personally witnessed Pancoast wearing a police tactical uniform, a badge and a pistol on June 10, 2014, when he and several other police agency officers, including officers from Mustang Police Department, Oklahoma Highway Patrol and Office of Homeland Security served a search warrant,” the papers say.

The papers further describe Lomonaco as having “witnessed Pancoast wearing pistols to work almost every day for the past two years.”

“Lomonaco stated she had witnessed Pancoast in possession of a .223 caliber AR-15 type assault rifle as well as several shotguns,” the papers say. “She had seen Pancoast with three Glock semi-auto pistols he said he had received for Christmas, 2014.”

Pancoast again seemed the quintessential lawman after a Korean War vet named James Laughlin died from head trauma at the Norman Veterans Center in October of last year.

“I’ll tell you what, he sure looked the part,” Joan Laughlin says of the man who announced to her that he would be investigating her husband’s death. “He’s very official looking. He impressed me.”

The widow says she had initially been told by the center that her husband had fallen out of bed and bumped his head. She reports that Pancoast discovered surveillance video that seems to suggest another story.

By Joan Laughlin’s account, the video that Pancoast obtained and she subsequently viewed shows James Laughlin—who suffered from dementia—absently wandering into the room of a patient who was known to be violent.

She reports that the video then shows staff rushing into the room. They drag out a battered James Laughlin.

“[The violent patient] had like to beat him to death in there,” Joan Laughlin says.

She contends that the video shows the staff piling on James Laughlin as if he had been the assailant. They end up dragging him into his room and out of view of the cameras.

“I don’t know what happened in there,” Joan Laughlin says.

She ventures a guess from his apparent condition afterward.

“They did worse than [the violent patient] did,” she says.

She scoffs at the staff’s report that her husband had been “combative.”

“The most laid-back, meek little guy you ever saw, 123 pounds and he was feeble,” she says.

In her view, the investigation was well on the way to establishing the truth of her husband's death when she suddenly stopped hearing from Pancoast. She called his office and a woman answered.

“She said, ‘Well, I’ll have him call you back,’” Joan Laughlin recalls.

The widow then got a call from the OAG.

“‘Sorry to tell you, but he’s been fired,’” the window remembers being told.

She then learned that Pancoast had been arrested and that the investigator whom she had been speaking with for six months had not been an investigator at all.

“I just about went nuts,” the widow says. “I couldn’t believe it. I just couldn’t believe it.”

As set forth in an Affidavit of Probable Cause filed by the OAG, its agents had been contacted by a senior ODVA official who asked them to took into Pancoast’s credentials.

On March 9, the OAG’s chief investigator interviewed Pancoast, seeking to confirm that he was a certified law enforcement officer, as he had claimed in court documents and on the witness stand. Pancoast allegedly replied in the affirmative, but said he had neither the certificate nor his Oklahoma driver’s license with him.

Later that day, Pancoast hand-delivered to an OAG receptionist a photocopy of what he said were his law enforcement credentials. OAG investigators determined that the certification was in fact for a security guard and apparently bore a forged signature—it was dated after the supposed signatory ceased working at the certifying agency.

The affidavit says Pancoast told the OAG that his date of birth was March 11, 1974. A criminal record check showed that a Steven Pancoast—with matching fingerprints, but a date of birth of June 23, 1973—had served time in New Jersey from 1992 to 1996.

“Two felony convictions were noted on Pancoast’s New Jersey criminal record," the affidavit says.

Pancoast was arrested, and he pleaded not guilty. He reportedly denied being the Steven Pancoast who had done time in New Jersey, despite the apparent fingerprint match.

“Don’t believe everything you hear, man,” Pancoast told a reporter for The Oklahoman. “I’m saying it’s false...I really don’t want to be made out to be a bad guy because I’m not.”

Prosecutors sought to determine what impact the arrest might have on the cases that Pancoast worked, including the two outstanding murder charges against Adams.

And then there is the death of James Laughlin. His widow says she called the ODVA and was told to call the OAG, only to be told to call the ODVA.

She is left wondering if justice will ever be done now that the man who seemed like justice personified is himself under indictment. She is no less fervent in her belief that her husband should not have died the way he did.

“He did not deserve that,” she says. “He was a good guy. He never hurt anybody in his life.”

She is left with the letters he wrote to her as many as five times a day when he was off serving his country in time of war.

“‘To my dearest darling, I love you so much and I miss you so much,’’” she recited last week.

An ODVA spokesman told The Daily Beast that the local district attorney had looked into the case and confirmed what ODVA had initially told Joan Laughlin.

“He fell in his room,” the spokesman said. “He fell backward and hit the back of his head. That is the cause of his death.”

The spokesman allowed that the ODVA had fired several nurses present at the time of the incident.

“Because that’s obviously not the way we treat our veterans,” the spokesman said.

But the spokesman insisted that neither the nurses nor the encounter with the other patient were contributing factors to the patient’s death.

“The altercation played no part in it,” the spokesman said.

That being the same spokesman who reported that Pancoast had never been an investigator and that the ODVA has no investigators.

The press and the recently ousted agency director have said otherwise.

What seems clear is that the ODVA has trouble keeping track not just of its vets but also of its own staff.

And where did Steve Pancoast get that badge, anyway?

[MIKA27]

‘The Walking Dead’s’ Andrew Lincoln on Rick Grimes’ Future: ‘A Storm is Coming Our Way’

The star of AMC’s zombie epic The Walking Dead opens up about the show’s Season 5 finale and what to expect next season from Rick and Co.

Andrew Lincoln is at home in London, sipping tea that his wife’s just brought him. It’s the morning after The Walking Dead’s fifth season finale, when viewers watched him, as ex-sheriff Rick Grimes, come head-to-head against the leadership of Alexandria. The walled-off community is so wildly unprepared for the inevitable threats of their world that it has actually started driving poor Rick insane.

“You know, I was thinking, ‘How many of you do I have to kill to save your lives?’” Rick growls at the Alexandrians, his face covered in blood (for the second day in a row). Just 24 hours earlier, Rick had confronted Pete, Jessie’s abusive husband, and sparked an all-out brawl in the streets. Half-crazed, Rick drew a gun on Deanna, Alexandria’s leader, and pointed it wildly at the crowd that had gathered to watch—a move that almost got him exiled for good.

But in last night’s season finale, “Conquer,” Rick emerged triumphant: he put a bullet through Pete’s head and convinced Deanna and the Alexandrians to shut up, listen, and do as he says. “You’re gonna change,” he tells them. Welcome back to the Ricktatorship.

Andrew Lincoln hopped on the phone with The Daily Beast to talk about whether Rick’s feelings for Jessie are real, how Rick is morphing into his old nemesis, Shane, and his momentous reunion with Morgan, his oldest post-apocalypse friend.

So Rick proved his point last night about the Alexandrians needing to toughen up and fortify themselves, but Rick also went a little off the deep end there. Some people feel like he was becoming Shane 2.0. Did you think of Shane at all when playing Crazy Rick?

You know, funnily enough, I emailed Jon [bernthal] a couple of times while I was filming this season, just because I felt, “You’ve been in my thoughts a lot.” And I think that there were definitely echoes of Shane in the Sophia episode [season 2, Episode 7, “Pretty Much Dead Already”] when he feels like he’s not being heard. In [season 5] episode 15, I felt so much of Shane within Rick—that emotional kind of wildness, and also just the fact that he feels like he’s banging his head against the wall and people aren’t listening.

Shane called it, too, in the second season. He said, “You aren’t fit to lead these people. You can’t lead the way you are now. You can’t keep them alive.” I certainly thought of that. [Rick] has had to turn into that man, or at least have part of that man in him. I wanted to physically walk like him a little bit as well. I was thinking about Jon all season, certainly toward the end of it.

Did Shane have a distinctive walk?

Yeah, I wanted to be more sort of hunched over. He kind of tucks his head low, like a boxer, Jon. I kept talking to Scott about that. I kept saying, “Shane! Shane, this is an echo of Shane!”

What is it like for you to play those scenes where there's just blood pouring down your face and you're screaming, losing your mind in front of all these people?

It was wild… it was kinda crazy. But also, it’s the combination of a lot of things that have pushed him there. He was trying to be restrained for the sake of all of his family and the Alexandrians. He wanted to do right, he wanted it to work out. But he feels responsible for the loss of Noah, for not being on the supply run, and for keeping his guard down. Then he finds out that Deanna knew about the abuse [that Pete inflicted on Jessie], yet didn’t do anything. And then of course, he’s emotionally charged and physically exhausted from the fight with Pete. That unlocks it.

And he seems humiliated in that last episode. I think he really made a terrible call and is embarrassed by it. But it’s almost like he’s resetting himself in that final episode. He makes his own decision. He says, “You know what, I’m gonna do this.” A middle way. ‘Cause he’s a hardliner; he has turned into a very, very hardline leader.

What do you think is behind Rick's infatuation with Jessie? They haven't exactly spent a ton of time together, yet he's willing to kill for her. Do you think it might have less to do with Jessie and more to do with the ideal suburban life he once wanted with Lori? Is he projecting?

I think it’s funny to see when [Jessie] is holding the baby, when I sort of kiss her on the cheek. There’s this seemingly innocent moment when I expected to see my wife in a second with my child. Alex—who plays Jessie and is a phenomenal actress and has really sort of dovetailed beautifully into the cast—and I spoke a lot about this. I said it should just be two damaged people who kind of discover each other. It’s not a romance, I think it’s just they keep surprising one another with an intimacy. It’s not looked for, it just happens. She’s the first woman that makes this place feel real for Rick, and makes a future there seem possible.

And I don’t even think it’s conscious. Rick is attracted to her, but I think if you asked him on a lie detector, he would go, “What? What are you talking about?” Although my mum watched episode 15 and she was like, “Yeah, but I mean, you’ve got to question Rick’s motives about that.” She was just like, “Come off it.” But he’s a complicated cat, Rick. He carries lots of baggage. Alex and I have spoken a lot of about that, about it not being a smoldering kind of [French accent], “Ohhh, who are you? What is this?” It’s much more just two people being quietly surprised at the intimacy. But I do think there’s a slight problem now. Now that I’ve shot her husband. (Laughs.) I’m not sure how the next candlelit dinner is going to go.

And of course, the biggest moment from last night: Rick and Morgan are reunited again. What do you think is going through Rick's mind when he lays eyes on Morgan again? He's just shot a dude in the head and he's covered in blood and then here comes Morgan, of all people.

It’s extraordinary, isn’t it? [showrunner] Scott Gimple is astounding. I think it’s yet again like a mirage. So much has happened in this episode, certainly in the last night, that Rick is sort of completely spun out. And then he sees this apparition before his eyes. It’s a man he recognizes, but he doesn’t recognize because he looks incredibly different than the last time they met. I can’t wait to read that next episode. I’ve had to wait longer than you have, just because we shot this a few months ago. It feels like these two men are poles apart and I’m really interested to see how this new community recovers from this night.

Will you be watching The Walking Dead’s spinoff series, Fear the Walking Dead this summer?

Um, I don’t have AMC.

What?!

Is it going on in America when it airs? I know nothing about it apart from them doing a pilot. I was in L.A. having lunch with Robert Kirkman and David Alpert while they were shooting it, the only thing is I was in a coma when it all happened. So I’m not sure if I will. But then again, I think we’ve got cable at our place in Atlanta. I’ll need to get it.

Are you ready for next season? Has Scott Gimple broken down what happens next?

No, I was just talking about it. I’ve just been doing some press in London with [director and special effects creator] Greg Nicotero. I’m seeing him tomorrow properly so I’m gonna get as much information as I can out of the man. I said, “Look. I need to find out what’s happening.” In a couple of weeks I’ll be flying out to the writers’ room in L.A. so I’ll get a much better sense of whether I’m being killed off this season.

Ha! Yeah, that’s gonna happen.

(Laughs.)

Last question: What do you know about the Wolves? Should we fear them more than we did the Governor or Terminus?

They seem like incredibly bad people. In one sense, I’m pleased that Deanna made a movement toward my worldview, because I have a terrible feeling that a storm is coming our way.

[MIKA27]

SOUTHPAW TRAILER

Fresh off his heralded role as a wacko pseudo citizen-journalist in Nightcrawler, Jake Gyllenhaal is back with another intense project, this time playing a boxer who hits rock bottom.

The new trailer for Southpaw shows off Gyllenhaal’s ripped physique as he stars as a Junior Middleweight Champion who (spoiler alert) loses his wife and daughter—one more permanently than the other. And that’s a shame, because you’d like to see the fetching Rachel McAdams for the whole movie. The always solid Forest Whitaker plays the trainer who takes him under his wing, but having Gyllenhaal and Whitaker share camera time with 50 Cent? Come on now. Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) directs and Eminem is contributing new music for the film which opens July 31.

[MIKA27]

DUTCHMANN VICIOUS BIKE

The result of a collaboration between South Africa's preeminent bicycle frame builder Duncan MacIntyre and composite expert Anton Dekker, the Dutchmann Vicious Bike is a truly elite ride. The frame — designed by MacIntyre for competitive cyclists in the '80s — is hand-brazed from Reynolds 653 and Columbus steel tubing, while the custom tri-spoke wheels are crafted from high-end carbon fiber composites. Other components are supplied by trusted companies like Campagnolo, Vredenstein, and Brooks. Limited to just 10 examples.

[MIKA27]

BIOLITE NANOGRID SYSTEM

Power and light are at a premium when you're on the trail, since, you know, there aren't any outlets available. The BioLite NanoGrid System provides both.

This 4-in-1 system can function as a lantern, a torch, a powerbank for your USB-charging gadgets, and a daisy-chain overhead lighting setup. The starter kit includes one PowerLight — a 4,400 mAh battery pack and LED light all in one — and two SiteLights, 150 lumen lamps on ten feet of cord that daisy chain off the PowerLight to let you cover your entire campsite in illumination. You can expand the system by adding extra SiteLights, as it will support up to four, making it even more useful around the home should your power go out. Best of all, the entire system is compact, letting you replace multiple devices in your bag with a simple, affordable, and lightweight solution.

[MIKA27]

A Simple Design Tweak May Keep Drunk People From Falling On Train Tracks

The number of deaths linked to drunk passengers who wander off the platform and onto the tracks has steadily increased over the years. But a new study of these falls shows that many of them occur in the same way — and that there might be a few simple ways to prevent some of them.

The study was carried out by West Japan Railway Company, which explains that since drinking increases in spring, it’s focusing on how to prevent alcohol-related train deaths over the next month. In a synopsis reported by The Kobe Shimbun and translated by Spoon & Tamago, the company says it amassed data and video footage from hundreds of falls over the past two years that involved drunk passengers. According to JR West, these types of falls have increased by four times in the past decade — which is why it was interested in studying exactly how they occur.

The assumption was that most falls occur while the victim is walking parallel to the tracks and fails to notice how close they are to the edge. But what the researchers found was that the vast majority of falls follow a totally different pattern. In 60 per cent of falls, the victim gets up from a bench and makes a beeline straight forward onto the tracks. 30 per cent of the time, the victim is already standing upright and simply falls into the tracks. “Only ten per cent of drunks gradually drifted towards the ledge, while an outstanding majority briskly walked off the ledge as if they knew exactly where they were going,” says Spoon & Tamago.

The surprising results are helping the company rethink how it designs its platforms. To start with, it’s making a very small — but potentially pretty important — tweak to platform seating. Instead of arranging it so that the passengers are facing the tracks, benches and seats are now oriented away from the rails. Rather than looking directly onto the tracks, seated passengers will face the platform length-wise.

Since so many victims simply bolt upright and walk straight off the platform without realising where they are, the company hopes that something as simple as giving them more space to walk will prevent many of these accidents. JR West also says that since railway employees only have a few brief seconds to identify potential victims over video surveillance, the change will give them more time to act before an accident might occur.

Obviously, these accidents are tragic, but it’s amazing that they haven’t been analysed more closely until now. The details of the world around us, right down to the position our chairs are in, can have outsized effects on our lives. It’s just a matter of studying them.

[MIKA27]

Watching All The Gory Fatalities In Mortal Kombat X destroyed My Eyes

Don’t watch this video if you get queasy by pixel created blood and hyperrealistic video game gore. Because good lord the Fatalities in Mortal Kombat X are downright disgusting to see. If you remember the game, players are supposed to “finish” a character with a brutal Fatality move after a fight and these news ones are so graphic that they have caused irreparable damage to my soul.

This is crazy stuff. IGN compiled all the Fatalities in the video above.

[NJP]

I loved the Flawless Victory but that sh... Is full on. Mum wouldn't have let me play that one.

[MIKA27]

I loved the Flawless Victory but that sh... Is full on. Mum wouldn't have let me play that one.

Tell me about it! I'm grabbing a copy as soon as Eb Games release it BEFORE the nanny state here bans it completely

[MIKA27]

What Really Happens When Someone Enters The Witness Protection Program

Born of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, and the brainchild of longtime Department of Justice attorney, Gerald Shur, the US Marshall Service Witness Security Program (WITSEC) has successfully protected more than 18,000 people since it first began operations in 1971.

Membership in the witness protection program is typically for life, and usually begins with a visit from US marshals, whether anticipated or not. While many of the witnesses and their family members have time to make the decision and prepare for their new lives, others are forced to choose rather quickly. Even occasionally having to leave within moments of the marshals arriving.

Family members also join, and typically this includes a spouse and children, although sometimes even mistresses have been protected. And, since the program requires that all participants leave everything behind — including parents, siblings, assets and identity — innocent family members and informants alike are faced with an impossible decision: join the program and lose your “life”, or stay and potentially lose your life.

Relocation sites are chosen by WITSEC marshals, although families are allowed to choose from several options. The location ultimately chosen is then disclosed to only a few people within the program.

Before beginning their new lives, family members are given new identities. One woman, Jackee Taylor (née Jacqueline Crouch), who was 7 when her family entered the program in 1981, later remembered spending hours practising writing her new name while waiting to be placed.

Once a witness has finished testifying, the family is transported to the new location where they are often put up in a hotel until a suitable home is chosen. Relocated families receive a monthly stipend, along with money for housing and other expenses that are eventually phased out after the adults have had enough time to find new means of supporting themselves.

Early on, when the program was being developed, many things fell through the cracks. WITSEC marshals often either had to forge documents or simply failed to provide them for everyone; for example, Jackee Taylor was never given a birth certificate nor, obviously, is she able to get one from anywhere. So when she was little, she couldn’t play softball, and later in life she had a difficult time enrolling in college and getting married.

In addition, although today there are set limits for expenses, that policy only came about after some serious growing pains. For example, after the acting head of the Los Angeles crime syndicate, Aladena Jimmy “The Weasel” Fratianno, turned informant in 1978, he was paid nearly $US1 million over the next 10 years while in the program.

Perhaps worth it, Fratianno’s testimony ultimately helped to convict more than two dozen gangsters; on the other hand, in addition to paying for food, housing, living expenses and health care, WITSEC was also paying for unnecessary expenses including Fratianno’s wife’s plastic surgery and even a monthly stipend for her mother.

So, in 1987 when Fratianno’s information dried up, so did the government’s patience, and WITSEC cut off his income and stopped providing 24/7 protection. Although Fratianno claimed to fear for his life afterward, he lived for another 6 years and died in his sleep in 1993.

Today most of the bugs have been worked out, and legally sealed name changes, new social security cards, birth certificates and drivers’ licenses are all routinely issued; in addition, medical and school records are quickly transferred and fake credit histories are created.

In sum, since 1971, about 8500 witnesses and 9900 family members have been protected by WITSEC, and no one who has followed the program’s guidelines has ever been killed.

However, not everyone successfully transitions into the program. In 1980, Henry Hill testified against his former associates in the Lucchese crime family, and was placed in witness protection along with his wife and two kids. Having difficulty adjusting, the Henry Hill’s (changed to the Martin Lewis’s and later the Peter Haines’s) had to be relocated 10 times from places including Independence, Kentucky; Redmond, Washington; and Omaha, Nebraska.

Bored to tears, Henry (or Martin or Peter) continued with his criminal activities and during the 1980s was arrested for crimes ranging from assault to drunk driving to burglary. In 1985, he outed himself a bit when he worked with Nicholas Pileggi to write his memoir, Wiseguy, which became the 1990s Goodfellas.Shortly thereafter, in 1987, Henry/Martin/Peter was arrested for trying to sell a pound of cocaine to two DEA agents, which ultimately resulted in his expulsion from the program. Apparently, however, exile didn’t cause him too many problems with those he’d testified against, since Henry lived to 2012, dying of a heart attack.

[Fuzz]

I loved the Flawless Victory but that sh... Is full on. Mum wouldn't have let me play that one.

Tell me about it! I'm grabbing a copy as soon as Eb Games release it BEFORE the nanny state here bans it completely

Ouch. The Cassie Cage x-ray victory over Kotal Kahn was... well, there's no words for it. Definitely gets a one up on her daddy's split punch.

[MIKA27]

HOW AL “SCARFACE” CAPONE GOT HIS SCARS

It was June 1931 when the law finally caught up with Al “Scarface” Capone for good. After three years of building a case against Capone for tax evasion, the FBI was finally ready to arrest and try the notorious gangster. In the October of that same year, he was found guilty on five counts of tax evasion between 1924 and 1929, two of which were felonies. He was sentenced to eleven years in federal prison, plus fines. Though Capone “grinned as though he felt he had gotten off easily,” his prison time ended up draining the last healthy years of his life. He was released in 1939 (after spending only seven years in prison), but illness and disease – most notably syphilis – ravaged his mental capacity so much that in the FBI report it said that he had “the mentality of a twelve year old.” He died in 1947 on Palm Island at the age of 48. Here’s the story of how Alphonse Gabriel Capone became Al “Scarface” Capone.

Alphonse Capone was born January 17, 1899 in Brooklyn, a middle child in a large Italian immigrant family. His family moved around Brooklyn, in order to make sure they could afford the housing. This contributed to turning an otherwise smart boy (when he actually was in school, he purportedly maintained a B average, which was more of an accomplishment then than now) into one who regularly played hookey and was mischievous. His legendary temper was already apparent at 14, when he hit a teacher that he thought was unfairly lecturing him. He officially dropped out of school soon after, like several of his brothers. He took a few honest jobs – at a candy store, pin boy at a bowling alley, and a cutter at a book bindery – but that didn’t last long. At 15 or 16 years old, Al joined his first gang, the South Brooklyn Rippers. Quickly after, he was initiated into a more prestigious gang, the Forty Thieves Junior – a junior version of the notorious Five Points Gang.

A later version of the mostly Irish gangs of Five Points that was depicted in the 2002 film Gangs of New York, the Five Points Gang was primarily made up of Italian-Americans and led by Paul Kelly. Born Paolo Antonio Vaccarelli- he changed his name to Paul Kelly in order not to seem so Italian- Kelly was a charmer, a tough guy, and quite a skilled boxer. In fact, he was such a good prize fighter that he earned enough money to open his own businesses – mostly brothels and gambling houses. His establishments were often frequented by Tammany Hall politicians. Soon, him and his boys were “campaigning” for Tammany Hall candidates, making sure the right people got elected. In 1903, Kelly was arrested for assault and robbery, serving nine months in jail. Upon his release, he opened the Paul Kelly Athletic Association, a gym or club for youngsters to learn how to box and fight. This is how Kelly and his cohorts recruited the next generation of gangsters, like Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, Frankie Yale, and Al Capone.

It was Frankie Yale who recruited Capone to the Five Pointers. Six years older than Capone, Yale was known to engage in a fight or three, most famously when he and a buddy “cleaned out” a Coney Island pool hall with only a pool cue and a few billiard balls. Besides fighting, Yale was in and out of trouble with the law through his late teens. But like Kelly before him and Capone after, Yale knew the key to being a great criminal was being a good businessman. He got himself involved in the ice business (yes, in a time before everyone had freezers, ice was big business), selling “protection” to icemen and enforcing territories. He made enough money to open a bar in Coney Island, he called Harvard Inn – as a play on his own college-themed name. He hired Capone to work as a bouncer at that inn.

Harvard Inn was strategically placed, even though when Yale opened it in 1917, he didn’t know it yet. Located in an alley between Surf and what would become Boardwalk, Harvard Inn had exclusive access to the water – making it one of the first bars to serve liquor from the “coastal rum-runners” during Prohibition (which began three years later, in 1920). Yale, who by 1917 was already rather successful with the Harvard Inn, a mortuary, betting on prizefighters, and a line of cigars, would become extremely wealthy due to his good luck and well-positioned bar.

Being a bouncer at Harvard Inn required a “certain finesse,” according to Robert Schoenberg’s book Mr. Capone. They had to do it with tact and authority, but not too much that the customer didn’t want to come back. Capone was quite good and besides becoming his bouncer, Capone became Yale’s pupil.

Yale considered himself a businessman first, not a thug or a criminal. Sure, he extorted, “protected,” and racketed, but that was just part of business. If he needed someone beat up or even killed, he would never do it himself – he would hire someone. In Capone’s early days in the industry, he often played this role, in addition to being a bouncer. When Capone became the boss, he adhered to this strategy as well. Yale was also quite brutal, with the legend being that he beat his own 16 year old kid brother so badly for lying to him that his brother had to go to the hospital. Capone also picked up on this as well.

New York City was experiencing a heatwave in early August of 1917. To escape the heat, many came to Coney Island to play in the water and sleep on the cool beach at night. For this reason, it was as crowded as Coney Island had ever been. And Harvard Inn, due to its location, fans and cold drinks, was packed every day of this heat wave.

This brings us to how Al Capone got his famous scars. On one particular day during this time, a small stocky “hood” named Frank Galluccio sauntered into the bar with his date, Maria Tanzo, on one arm and his younger sister, Lena, on another. Despite the crowds, Capone, who was 18 at the time, honed in on Lena. Watching from afar, he finally got up the nerve to talk to her, asking her to take a walk with him along the beach. She supposedly said no and Capone walked away, but that didn’t stop him from continuing to watch her.

A little later, he supposedly asked her again for that walk. Lena, none too please, informed her brother of this annoying guy. She them told him that he was embarrassing her, but asked Frank to make him stop “in a nice way.” Galluccio took action, fully aware the situation could escalate. As such, he told his female counterparts to meet him outside. Before they could reach the door, Capone reportedly stepped in and told Lena loudly, “I’ll tell you one thing, you got a nice a** honey and I mean that as a compliment.”

Hearing this, Galluccio demanded an apology from Capone for the remark. Capone wasn’t having it, telling Galluccio he was only joking around.

This is when the situation got dicey. You see, Galluccio was only five foot six and slight of build and was now attempting to defend his sister’s honor by going toe to toe with the five foot eleven, very beefy Capone. Being at something of a disadvantage physically, Galluccio decided to escalate the situation beyond fists and pulled out his knife, slashing at Capone, and managing to get in three cuts to Capone’s face and upper neck before Capone went down. With Capone on the ground in a pool of blood, Galluccio ran out of the Harvard Inn.

At this point, Capone was rushed to Coney Island Hospital where he received eighty stitches and was told he’d wear the scars forever. Galluccio, knowing what he had done and who he’d done it to, feared for his life. This came to a head when Frankie Yale demanded a meeting with both Capone and Galluccio at the Harvard Inn. Sitting them both down, Yale turned Capone’s head to show Galluccio the giant scars that would be tattooed on Capone forever, ultimately earning him the nickname “Scarface.”

Galluccio, thinking this was the end of his life, tried to plead his case. But Yale never had any intention of hurting or killing Galluccio. He was a businessman and simply wanted to profit from this unfortunate scenario. He ordered that Galluccio pay Capone $1,500 for his trouble (about $27,000 today). In return, Capone had to promise never to retaliate. To top it off, Yale would lend Galluccio the money, making Galluccio indebted to Yale and earning interest to boot. Galluccio and Capone both agreed to this and the matter was settled.

Throughout his life, Capone would usually claim his scars were acquired fighting in France during World War I. He rarely owned up to the fact that his nickname came from a bar fight when a smaller man slashed his face for making rude comments to his sister.

[MIKA27]

The Restored HD Video Of The Atlas Missile Explosion Is Amazing To Watch

The guys at AtomCentral uploaded this video depicting the failed test of the Atlas missile back in 1961. The footage — scanned to HD from the original film — shows the rocket exploding in an epic and mesmerising slow motion that would make Michael Bay drool.

[MIKA27]

Lamb With Human Face Terrifies Russian Village

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOYy5U0M3y0

Welcome to another edition of “That animal looks like creepy Uncle Fred!” In today’s installment, we find a lamb born in the Russian village of Chirka that has the face of an elderly man and is terrifying residents and many others who’ve seen it on the Internet.

The lamb was born on the sheep farm of Blasius Lavrentiev in Chirka, a village in southwestern Russia near the Republic of Dagestan and the Caspian Sea. Blasius says he was looking forward to selling some lambs (you know what happens after that) when the man-faced bleater popped out.

But when I went down to see how it was going I nearly died from shock when I saw what looked like the hairy face of an old man staring up at me. Her parents are both normal looking sheep so I have no idea how she ended up looking like this.

Local veterinarian Dorofei Gavrilov blames the man-faced lamb on Blasius giving the mother too much vitamin A, which can cause birth defects and problems with bone development.

Not so fast, say terrified villagers who think the man-faced lamb is a sign of something bad for them, not the baby sheep. For some, that would be the Antichrist, who some readers of the Book of Revelation believe will be “like a lamb,” imitate the messiah and bring on the apocalypse. It also says the Antichrist will speak like a dragon, but so far the man-faced lamb is speaking in grunts. Oh, and the lamb is a female. That didn’t matter to one villager who said:

She terrifies my grandchildren.

As with other human-looking animals, there’s also rumors of bestiality, as was the case in the birth of a “half-sheep half-human” in Nigeria in 2012 and a goat with a human head in Argentina last year. It could be because Blasius mysteriously changed his mind about selling the man-faced sheep even though a circus offered him ten times the price of a normal lamb.

Whatever has caused it she’s a little beauty and I definitely won’t be selling her for anyone’s dinner table either as the buyers want her on display. She’ll be staying with us until then.

Whatever the cause of the man-faced lamb, Blasius better beware of villagers with scythes and pitchforks.

[MIKA27]

The Most Isolated Town On Earth Wants A Radical Redesign

Smack dab in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean, 1600km from human civilisation, lies one of the most isolated towns in the world. It’s on an island called Tristan da Cunha, and for the first time, it’s looking to the outside world to plan its future.

It takes more than a week to get to The Settlement, as Tristan’s town is often called, by boat. When you do, you might not be able to land because the ocean swells are severe. There’s no airport. It’s a location so remote and unknown, it’s become almost mythical. To geologists, Tristan is the result of an eruption of a volcanic “hotspot” in the middle of the Atlantic. To historians, it’s a time capsule where the last remnants of colonial England remains. To Tristanites — or Trist’ns as some historians call them — it’s a community that preserves a way of life they have chosen over the outside world.

But this month, Tristan is looking to the world far beyond its tiny boundaries for help. Working with The Royal Institute of British Architects, the local government is staging an open competition for a plan to bring the community into the 21st century and bolster its ability to sustain itself over the next few decades, using everything from architecture to energy and farming innovations. But to know why it’s asking for ideas, it helps to know a bit more about the island itself.

Utopia in the South Atlantic

About 300 people live on Tristan today — which is a lot, considering its population has dipped far below that throughout its 200-year history.

The community was officially established in the 1810s because it was “close” to St. Helena, the remote island where Napoleon was exiled, and the British thought France might use it to spring him from his prison. But Tristan is still more than 1,300 miles away from St. Helena, which would have made springing the Little Corporal out of his prison very difficult.

But when England abandoned its paranoia-induced outpost, a few men stayed behind, signing an agreement that designated their property and their labour shared. “That document, now in the British Museum in London, embodies the communal, noncompetitive spirit that has characterised the culture of Tristan da Cunha ever since,” writes Donald Theodore Sanders about the island in Volcanoes in Human History: The Far-Reaching Effects of Major Eruptions.

St Helena marked in red, Tristan marked in green.

Thanks to a slow trickle of other settlers, Tristan slowly grew into its own tiny community, self-sufficient to the extreme. Without regular contact with the rest of the world, settlers had only themselves and the land to depend on for everything from produce to clothing to materials with which to build boats and homes.

Tristan existed with relative continuity until 1961, when the volcano it sits on the edge of erupted — and the entire town was evacuated to England. Faced with the wonders of modern life, most of the world seemed to assume that the move would signal the end for Tristan. Who would go back to a rough, remote settlement after experiencing the comforts of contemporary technology and entertainment?

It turned out that modern England had the exact opposite effect on Tristan’s community. If anything, life outside their volcano only reinforced their desire to return. It “actually strengthened their group structure and consciousness and therefore placed difficulties in their expected adaptation,” writes Óscar Álvarez-Gila about the Tristanites’ time in England.

So after those few years in England, most of the Tristan group returned to their tiny speck of ultra-remote land. Crisis in Utopia, the sociologist Peter Andreas Munch sums up how bizarre the decision seemed to the rest of the world:

[t]he Tristan Islanders did indeed return to their own simple life before the very eyes of an amazed, dismayed, and somewhat insulted Western World… It was as if our whole ethos and way of life had been put on trial, and had failed.

Terra Incognita

It sounds almost utopian. But while Tristanites prefer their way of life to any other, it’s still a struggle to survive on the island — and it’s getting harder. As its 200th anniversary approaches next year, the future of the island is in limbo, and the government is inviting designers from all over the world to think about its issues.

“Tristan’s economy is however shrinking and the cost of living continues to rise,” explains the competition organisers at RIBA. “It is critical that cost-effective long-term solutions are found to improve the community, to make buildings energy efficient and reduce the living costs of the Island’s population.”

Almost every aspect of life on Tristan is fair game. For example, the island’s economy depends mainly on fishing, and the current harbour only allows docking 60 days out of the year. A better one is desperately needed. Farming is another crucial issue, so it’s asking designers to consider contemporary ideas about improving soil quality and agriculture management. Water (and drought) is also a major problem, so the brief encourages entrants to design a more modern system for maintaining and recycling water.

And the houses and buildings are another issue — the current structures are decaying and inefficient, and they’re badly need an overhaul. “Construction of the houses is variable, but lack of insulation, lack of central heating, the maritime damp and mould are common complaints,” explains organisers. Tristan also wants to kick its diesel habit, and is asking participants to help it reach a goal of using 40 per cent renewable power within the next five years.

Even education is on the table, with designers asked to consider the infrastructure needed to bring vocational training programs to the island.

Internet and Experts

More than 60 years ago, Tristan’s inhabitants had the chance to abandon their town and chose to return. And while it’s tempting to see the competition as asking the outside world for help after all these years, that’s not quite it.

While Tristan has spent hundreds of years surviving on its own, the information age is arriving. The internet came to Tristan in 1998. In 2006, it opened an internet cafe with several computers with 256 kbps connections. The town may never reach the speeds the rest of the world enjoys, for technical reasons: “There are some places on earth — their locations are such that they are not in close proximity to fibre optic cables and they are not in close proximity to the footprints of satellites,” as one expert told the Tristan Times in 2005. “Frankly there is little we can do other than recognise the fact that it is going to be expensive and for people who live in those locations to accept that it is expensive and it’s a way of life.”

Slow internet isn’t such a huge problem. But it illustrates why the town is interested in an international competition: The lack of experts in particular industries, like architecture and engineering. When the internet arrived in 2006 Sarah Glass (who shares a last name with William Glass, who settled Tristan in the 1800s) wrote in the Times that “Tristan has continued to prosper in the last 500 years since its discovery and there’s only one piece left to the puzzle, and that’s a (safe operational) new harbour. Consultants are due to visit in September for an assessment of the old harbour, so we continue to be optimistic.”

It seems internet is an easier problem to solve than specialised knowledge — which helps explain why Tristan looking to the rest of the world for ideas about how it can use design to adapt. As RIBA explains, the competition doesn’t guarantee that any of the designs will be implemented — after all, Tristan doesn’t have a budget or workforce for a massive overhaul. But what it will do is bring new ideas to an isolated community.

It’s difficult for us to comprehend what that kind of isolation is like. On the internet, good ideas are plentiful and almost suffocatingly common. It’s hard to imagine a place where a good idea about farming or water recycling or harbour design isn’t just a smartphone button away.

In the end, Tristan and RIBA are staging a competition that’s unlike any other ever held. Here’s an island that is truly isolated, with only a few hundred inhabitants, that wants to rethink what a communal, sustainable, extraordinarily self-sufficient town looks like.

Let’s hope designers and architects get excited about it, because what happens on Tristan over the next few years could become a blueprint for communities all over the world.

If you want to read more about Tristan, check out this account written by the wife of a clergyman who travelled to the island in the 1900s. Or head over to RIBA to learn more about the competition.

[MIKA27]

A Behind-The-Scenes Look At The Insane Stunts Of Fast And Furious 7

Furious 7 is releasing in cinemas this week, which means all of mankind is about to have its eyeballs blasted (and brains removed for two hours) with the most insane special and practical effects that don’t involve space or superheroes or space-based superheroes. Here’s a quick cut of some behind the scenes footage of Furious 7. The action sequences look fantastic.

[MIKA27]

Now You Can Fly Around Asteroid Vesta And Explore Every Crevice

NASA launched Dawn spacecraft in 2007 to study two of the three known protoplanets of the asteroid belt: Vesta and Ceres. And now here is an amazing interactive tool, very similar to Google Earth, calledVesta Trek, which let you explore Vesta — one of the largest asteroids in the Solar System — on your own.

Dawn studied Vesta from July 2011 to September 2012 and now is orbiting its second target, the dwarf planet Ceres. VestaTrek visualises tons of data gathered from multiple instruments aboard Dawn, the application developed by NASA’s Lunar Mapping and Modelling Project, including:

• Interactive maps with different layers of data sets including topography, mineralogy, abundance of elements and geology.
• 3D printer-exportable topography so you can print your own physical model of Vesta’s surface.
• Standard keyboard gaming controls to fly across the surface of the asteroid in a first-person view.

Here is a section of the 2D topography of Vesta you can zoom into a very detailed level in the application:

[MIKA27]

The Horrific April Fools Pranks Of The 19th Century

Here in the 21st century, April Fool’s Day is a pretty harmless holiday. Brands trot out their fake products, Ken posts about left footed Arsenal soccer balls and news organisations make silly claims and then we all go about our day. But back in the 19th century, April Fool’s Day could be pretty brutal. In fact, it could be downright dangerous.

I looked through old newspapers from the 19th century to find the most weird, mean, and just plain horrific April Fool’s Day pranks that made it into the news. From almost derailing a train to causing someone to nearly go blind, these are strange and cruel hoaxes of yesteryear.

Putting gunpowder in the pepper shaker to maim your cook

Sneaked into the kitchen, filled the pepper castor with gunpowder, and placed a cartridge in the coal scuttle. Ordered cook to keep up a good fire, and give me a beef bone for breakfast. Determined that wife should see that other people could blow up as well as herself. Went up stair and waited for row. Cook peppered the bone when it was on the gridirion, and, frightened into fizgigs, dropped castor into the fire. Both went off together — castor into atoms, cook into hysterics. Sam, the porter, who was toasting his bread and butter, that he might have a dejeune a la fourchette, said he was “narvish,” and popped on a few coals to make up the fire.

Grand explosion: last scene of Miller and his Men. — Boiler blown up, scalding cat and three kittens, who jumped about, giving fine specimens of animal magnetism. Sam, with a live coal in his eye, dancing about, blind with rage, cleared the shelves of crockery with his toasting fork; and coming to anchor in a large block-tin dish cover, sat down to swear. Never laughed so much in my life.

via the Baltimore Sun (1839)

Hiring someone to shout FIRE at your sleeping wife

First of April. Got up early this morning to prepare for business. Sally still in bed. Made arrangements with the watchman, to whom I gave a shilling to rap at my door, and cry fire! Sally started up in a terrible fright; and, no light being in the room, overturned every thing in her way, until she reached the street nearly in a state of nudity. Obliged to talk sweet things to appease her warmth. Soothingly reminder her of the first.

via the Reading Times (1862)

Sending someone a live cat in a bag

“A live cat in a bag” was received at this office from LaGrange on “April fools” day. We suppose it was intended to fool our “devil.” We learn also that a similar present was received by Capt. Richardson of the Midland Road. Fortunately the genial Captain is not a “cursing man,” or else the cat fur would have darkened the atmosphere when he opened the bag expecting to find a fat turkey or perhaps a live pig, and beheld a Tom Cat. Better not say cat to Capt. John for some weeks to come.

via Goldsboro Messenger (1882)

Tricking desperate young men into meeting non-existent dates

Some lively young ladies concocted a passionate love letter, which wound up with the request that the receiver should meet the writer on the next evening, with a white rosette in his button hole, under the post office clock. This epistle they went to diverse gentlemen of their acquaintance. The result was that fifty-two young men with white rosettes in their button holes assembled at 8 o’clock the night under the post office time-piece.

via the Times-Picayune (1864)

Setting up a fake wedding

Managed a note to the clergyman of the parish, appointing him to call and perform the marriage ceremony between two expectant aspirants, who had been only “paying their devotions” seventeen years. The clergyman attended — but found it was a hoax.

via the Reading Times (1862)

Nearly causing a train accident

Engineer Givens, of the Colorado Central passenger train, was placed in a most trying and heart rending position Sunday. As he was brining the regular passenger train into a Collins from the south, running at quite a rapid rate, as he was behind time, on approaching a cut a short distance beyond the Agricultural College he was horrified at seeing the form of a man lying in the cut, and across the railroad track. For a moment his hair stood on ends and the blood ran cold in his veins, and he felt for an instant as though he were frozen to his seat and unable to move a muscle.

But almost in another moment he was equal to the emergency, his strength of nerve and muscle had returned as quickly as it had disappeared, and with a heroic grasp upon the throttle and the brake with his strong hands he reversed the motion of the engine, at the risk of blowing out the cylinder head, put on the breaks and came to a stop within three feet of the form upon the track, throwing all the passengers in the coaches out of their seats and creating general confusion on the train. The engineer, as he let go his firm grasp upon the lever and stepped down upon the ground, his face was pale and large drops of cold sweat stood out upon his forehead. As he approached the form lying in front of the cow-catcher a ***** sensation came over him as the feelings of horror and fear passed into one of indignation. Without touching the form or, in fact without reaching it, he returned to his cab. He saw it all. It was April Fool’s Day and he was April-fooled.

via the Daily Journal (1883)

Telling your wife that your baby is very ill

Woke my wife, after lots of jogging; told her the nursery maid was knocking at the door, with the infant very poorly. Chuckled when I saw her jump out of bed and unbolt the door. “Why, Peter, there is nobody here!” Called her an April fool, and laughed like fun. Wife very indignant and very eloquent — put me in mind of a locomotive letting off steam. In the torrent of her passion, she poured the contents of a water bottle over me, and thus emptied the phials of her wrath.

via the Baltimore Sun (1839)

Accidentally hanging yourself

A thirteen year old son of H.H. Brown, a well known New York custom house official, accidentally hung himself in his father’s barn on April Fools day while preparing to play a first of April trick.

via the Record of the Times (1875)

[MIKA27]

The Pentagon Can't Account For $US45 Billion It Spent In Afghanistan

The US Department of Defense has spent $US66 billion since 2002 rebuilding Afghanistan. But it can’t account for $US45 billion of that money.

The auditing office in charge of overseeing the reconstruction of Afghanistan has asked the Pentagon for a full account of where those funds have been spent. Twice. But the Pentagon told the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) that doing so simply wasn’t feasible.

Matthew Gault over at the blog War is Boring reports that this lack of accountability wasn’t even illegal. Keeping tabs on where that much money was flowing was simply too time consuming and deemed too burdensome. Which means we’ll probably never have a full accounting of eight years worth of spending in Afghanistan.

To be clear, the Pentagon didn’t technically do anything wrong. The rules just didn’t require it to report how it funded the contracts, so it didn’t. According to the Pentagon, hiring people now to go through millions of old contracts from the past decade would require too much time and money.

The rules on reporting foreign military sales changed in 2010, and the Pentagon has reported the information since then … but that doesn’t help resurrect eight years of Afghanistan contract information lost in a sea of data the Pentagon says is infeasible to sift through.

It’s truly difficult to imagine any other area of government where you couldn’t get a full accounting of how $US45 billion was spent. Even if your particular brand of politics leads you to believe that government spending is inherently wasteful, every other entity spending public money has to say when and where they spent that money.

[MIKA27]

US Marines Helicopter Looks Like Its Powered By The Stars

Here’s a really neat photo that shows a US Marines CH-53E helicopter during a training exercise at night that makes it look like the blades of the military chopper have been replaced with star-powered flight. It’s like a helicopter of the cosmos that has the ability to create portals into another universe.

The US Marines describe the sight:

U.S. Marines assigned to Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron One (MAWTS-1) break down a rapid ground refuelling during the Weapons and Tactics Instructor Course (WTI) near 29 Palms, Calif., March 27, 2015. WTI is a seven week event hosted by MAWTS-1 cadre. MAWTS-1 provides standardised tactical training and certification of unit instructor qualifications to support Marine Aviation Training and Readiness and assists in developing and employing aviation weapons and tactics.

The photo was taken by Sgt Daniel D. Kujanpaa.

[MIKA27]

Spectacular Photo Of A Scuba Diver Swimming Under A Massive Fish Tornado

National Geographic’s Your Shots features this spectacular picture of a scuba diver swimming under a massive shoal of fish at Cabo Pulmo, in Baja California peninsula, Mexico. The picture, shot by Californian photographer Jeff Hester, shows a colourful ocean full of life but that wasn’t always the case:

I believe this is what our oceans should look like. In 1995, [the] park was established by local citizens to counteract depleted reef fishes and marine life due to overfishing. Today, the biomass is booming, and the ecosystem is returning to a healthy state. For this particular image, I wanted to show some scale … so I had my wife, seen in the foreground, swim ahead of me.

[MIKA27]

This Air Force Tech Could’ve Averted the Germanwings Crash

The Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System is designed to prevent flights from hitting terrain by executing an automatic recovery maneuver when terrain impact is imminent. The system continuously compares trajectory prediction, terrain profile, and elevation data.

AN OLD AVIATORS’ joke goes like this: In the future, airline cockpit crews will consist of one pilot and a dog. The pilot is there to feed the dog, the dog is there to bite the pilot if he touches any of the controls.

Today, we’re just about there. Autonomous unmanned aircraft have been flying for a long time now, fighting our wars and patrolling our borders. On paper, at least, we already have the technology to take the humans out of the cockpit and prevent tragedies like last week’s Germanwings crash in the French Alps, which investigators believe may have been caused by a suicidal pilot.

Full-blown autonomous flight is still a long ways away for passenger planes, but there is one piece of technology with the power to automatically take control of the airplane when it’s in danger of hitting the ground—exactly the kind of thing that could have stopped the Germanwings Airbus A320 from slamming into a mountain, killing all 150 people aboard. And it’s already in use on American military jets.

The Automatic Ground-Collision Avoidance System (Auto-GCAS) has been in development by the US Air Force, NASA, and Lockheed Martin since the 1980s, and it went operational in October. It’s essentially a software upgrade, requiring some modifications to the airplane’s digital flight-control computer and advanced data-transfer equipment.

Once installed, the computer monitors altitude, attitude, and speed, and when these parameters show that a crash is imminent, it triggers an autopilot-commanded maneuver to return to safe flight. Last year, the USAF said the system was ready to become operational and would be installed in the entire F-16 fleet, with the F-22 and F-35 next in line for the upgrade.

Auto-GCAS already has been credited with saving an Air Force F-16 operating out of Jordan last November, and the Air Force predicts it will save 14 more planes, 10 lives, and more than $500 million over the future life of the F-16. The technology has the potential to go widespread—the USAF says it can be incorporated into aircraft avionics systems. NASA is already working with commercial vendors to explore possible uses for GCAS in the civilian fleet.

Could GCAS have prevented the Germanwings crash? Maybe not, because the USAF system also has a function that allows the pilot to override it at any time—and it’s hard to imagine that civilian pilots won’t demand that same authority. There may be ways to protect that override function from abuse—requiring that two pilots agree, for example—but it would still make intentional crashes difficult to prevent, especially since there’s no way to force someone to land safely.

Intentional crashes are exceedingly rare, but this latest incident still brings up the question of taking the human role out of flying. So can we do it?

Kind of. We may have the technological know-how to make planes command themselves, but implementing it would require a radical change in plane design, regulation, and public opinion, on top of leaving tens of thousands of pilots without jobs.

Pilots have long resisted the onslaught of increasingly autonomous airplanes, insisting that old-fashioned stick-and-rudder skills and solid common sense are the best ways to stay out of trouble. As early as 1912, autopilot technology began to take over some of the pilot’s chores, using hydraulics and gyroscopes to keep airplanes straight and level.

Computers accelerated that process, and in modern airliners, the technology does much of the flying, making boredom one of the job’s biggest challenges. Yet the benefits of these systems have proved impossible to deny: The number of airline accidents has steadily decreased, to fewer than three for every 1,000,000 flights.

The economic and safety considerations of an aviation system without pilots may make self-flying planes inevitable, but they also push against that reality. Boeing, Airbus, or another plane maker would need to design an aircraft entirely from scratch, which would likely cost billions of dollars and take at least a decade. Then there’s the long, expensive, and difficult process of ensuring a system can handle any emergency a human pilot might encounter, with hundreds of lives at risk.

Then you have to think about whether human passengers be willing to fly on an airliner without a cockpit crew. And if our technology gets too smart, will it start to second-guess us, with detrimental effects—as in Hal’s refusal to open the pod bay doors in 2001: A Space Odyssey? Will it be vulnerable to hacking attempts?

Aviation has come a long way in its first 112 years, and commercial airliners already are the safest means of travel humans have come up with. Getting the fatality rate down to zero will be the challenge for the next 112 years. Those efforts are sure to bring changes beyond what seems possible today—including aircraft without a pilot, or a cockpit, or even a dog.

[MIKA27]

2016 CADILLAC CT6

Cadillac has always been a brand we’ve had love for, and now they’re really going after the Germans as they delve deeper into the luxury sector with the Cadillac CT6.

Sure, Cadillac is already known for being a luxury auto maker, but let’s be honest – they haven’t really kept up with the Mercedes-Benz and BMWs of the world. The American brand is looking to change all that. The CT6 is packed with a ton of technology, luxury details all throughout the interior cabin, and a solid powerplant that’s sure to get any automotive enthusiast excited. Under the hood is an available 3.0-liter twin turbo V6 pumping out 400 horsepower. The interior is decked out with extended seats with 5 massage settings, individual climate control to keep each passenger comfortable, and hand stitched, cut and sewn upholstery with plenty of wood, carbon fiber, and Galvano chrome accents to boot. There’s also a 10.2-inch touchscreen and Bose Panaray sound system to handle all of your media needs along with a rear camera mirror outfitted with HD video. There’s even an available night vision system, ensuring nothing gets by you. Well done, Cadillac.

[MIKA27]

NEO SMARTPEN N2

Neo Smartpen N2 is a new pen that literally turns whatever you write or draw by hand into a digital text or support. You can even save them after on PDF!

You can store up to a 1000 pages on this smartpen and sync them later on to your device, mobile phone, laptop or tablet. It also quickly syncs with your Evernote account. It also features a small microphone and voice recorder so you can use it as a voice memo whenever you get a thought or idea worth recording, it even allows to sync these voice recordings with any notes you wrote at the time.

You can even search your texts by date or by a tag you gave to any work you did at the time. Built with a full aluminum body, it´s sleek and elegant, with a durable look and feel, that you can sync with an Android or IOS device