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

[MIKA27]

Piranha-Proof Fish Inspires Bulletproof Armor

We’ve all seen the videos of some poor animal falling into a river and being devoured in a river and being devoured in seconds by a school of piranha. Can any animal or fish resist the slashing razor-sharp teeth of these miniature buzz saws? It turns out, theArapaima gigas fish is covered with scales that make it piranha-proof. And soon, humans wearing body armor inspired by the Arapaima will be bullet-, blade- and piranha-proof too.

According to his study published recently in the journal Soft Matter, Professor Stephan Rudykh, head of the mechanics for soft materials laboratory at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, noticed that the Arapaima gigas is protected by an outer layer of hard scales that interlock. The surprise was underneath them, where he found soft tissue that gives the fish flexibility to move while covered by the impervious scales.

Professor Stephan Rudykh showing the flexibility of his plastic body armor

The Arapaima gigas is a large freshwater fish native to the Amazon River where, even though it can reach 15 feet in length, it has to constantly resist attacks from pesky little piranhas. Those scales don’t protect it against humans so Brazil has banned commercial fishing for this tasty fish with its large boneless steaks. It can still be caught by native peoples who salt and dry the meat for long-term storage without refrigeration, making it the “cod of the Amazon.” The tongue has medicinal properties and those protective tough scales can be used as nail files.

Using a 3-D printer and funding from the U.S. Army Research Office, Rudykh and his team from MIT and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology created lightweight plastic scales and placed them over an elastic material. By adjusting the angles of the scales from 10 to 45 degrees, they were able to make the artificial skin up to 40 times stronger while maintaining its flexibility.

That sounds great but the material is limited by the strength of the plastic. Rudykh hopes to eventually replace it with Kevlar to create lightweight bulletproof uniforms for soldiers and flexible spacesuits for astronauts that can protect against micrometeorites, flying space debris and Klingon blades.

Once again, nature provides a better and more elegant solution than man could develop.

Body armor testing facility

[MIKA27]

EXO-TOP FOR JEEP WRANGLERS

Jeep Wrangler owners are nothing if not adventurers. They enjoy the open air, the off-roading, and the rugged versatility of their 4x4s. So that’s why they’ll probably enjoy the Exo-Top, an innovative accessory for 2007-2015 Wranglers that combines the pleasures of top-down driving with the utility of a roof rack.

What makes it so cool is that you can easily lower, raise, or remove the soft top while not having to unload any gear from the roof-rack cargo. The Exo-Top also features a Sun Slider retractable function which lets you slide the top back by simply releasing a pair of latches, giving you the open-top experience without having to get out of the driver’s seat. The 300-lb. capacity roof rack employs a series of Velcro straps along the perimeter bars of the roof rack, in turn helping to tighten and shape the soft top. It’s also a direct bolt-on application with no drilling for installation necessary. [Purchase]

[MIKA27]

AIR VENT HIDDEN SAFE WITH RFID LOCK

Whether it’s a gun, pack of Cuban cigars, or a Twinkie that your wife can’t know you’re saving for later, we all have stuff that we need to stash in stealth mode. Quick Safe’s Hidden Compartment Air Vent is an RFID-locked safe which not only has the whole air vent camouflage thing going for it, but the Radio Frequency ID technology means your valuables will be even more protected.

Just hover your RFID card over the sensor in the top center area and the safe unlocks and opens. Installation promises to be easy, as it fits in between two 16-inch center studs and instructions are included. [Purchase]

[MIKA27]

VICTORINOX SWISS ARMY INOX REMADE WATCH

The Inox was created to celebrate the company's 130th anniversary, so it only makes sense that the Victorinox Swiss Army Inox Remade Watch takes its heritage seriously. While still offering the same 43mm reinforced stainless steel case, Swiss quartz Ronda caliber 715, and 200 meter water resistance of the original, this new variant features a strap and removable protective bumper made from Swiss Army military bags dating from between 1911 to 1970. The result is a unique timepiece with a patina and legacy all its own. Limited to just 250 units.

[MIKA27]

STAR WARS THE DIGITAL MOVIE COLLECTION

From today, for the first time ever, you´ll be able to see the Star Wars Saga in Digital HD! You´ll be able to watch all six epic films, from The Phantom Menace to Return of the Jedi on any of your digital devices any place you go. Also included is some very special bonus material (over 9 Hours of bonus features) including documentaries, trailers and unwatched scenes, plus interviews with cast and crew, and rare behind-the-scenes footage

[Fuzz]

STAR WARS THE DIGITAL MOVIE COLLECTION

What I want to know is, will the unaltered theatrical versions of the Star Wars trilogy be available? I don't want a mini Jabba in SW, I wanna see Han shooting first, no Praxis effect for the Death Star, no young Anakin at the end of ROTJ.... and give me back the Yub Nub song!!!!

[MIKA27]

What I want to know is, will the unaltered theatrical versions of the Star Wars trilogy be available? I don't want a mini Jabba in SW, I wanna see Han shooting first, no Praxis effect for the Death Star, no young Anakin at the end of ROTJ.... and give me back the Yub Nub song!!!!

Unfortunately bud I think its going to be the re-mastered stuff vs the old stuff. IMO some remastered stuff was great such as the light sabres being given alternate colours. IMHO I love the red sabres vs greens and blues. The originals were all white lasers.

BUT... Digital yodas and Jabbas kinda sucked.

[Fuzz]

If I recall correctly, only in Ep IV were the lightsabers white. In V & VI, tech had improved and they were able to color the sabers in post-production.

[MIKA27]

Behind-The-Scenes Footage Of Avengers 2 Shows How Goofy Movie-Making Is

I have no doubt that Avengers: Age of Ultron is going to be ridiculously fun and awesomely badass in all the ways that comic book superhero movies should be. But boy, making such a spectacle for a movie leads to some hilarious behind the scenes footage. I mean, check out this 9 minute clip of Avengers 2 and try not to laugh.

It looks like people dressing up in Halloween costumes playing make believe. Which, I guess, isn’t too far off from the truth (the people are more beautiful and the costumes more complicated, of course) but really, seeing the behind the scenes footage just reminds me that the true stars of Avengers are the filmmakers and people in post turning these funny clips into seat rumbling action sequences.

[MIKA27]

13 Horrifying Ideas America Had For Invading Cuba

The United States is beginning to normalise relations with Cuba. Which is kind of amazing, when you consider the fact that America has been trying to sabotage the island nation for over half a century. In fact, the US government has officially produced dozens of ideas for destabilising Cuba. And many of them sound like conspiracy theory fan-fiction. Yet they’re all real.

When you look through the lists of declassified ideas from the early 1960s it can be a bit shocking. They were conceived under the umbrella of initiatives like The Cuba Project, Operation Mongoose, and Operation Northwoods, all with the rather straightforward goal of ousting Fidel Castro. Some of the plans literally involve false flag operations — covert missions to disrupt Cuba and instigate war, but hiding the fact that they were executed by the United States.

One of the more innocuous ideas involved distributing fake photos of an obese Fidel Castro living in the lap of luxury. Other ideas involved air-dropping one-way aeroplane tickets that would let Cubans fly to nearby cities. But some of the most bizarre plans called for staging fake attacks on Americans that would be used as a pretence for invading Cuba.

Below we have just a few of the ideas concocted by American intelligence and military planners. These aren’t crazy half-baked conspiracy theories that were floated by the tinfoil hat crowd. They’re real plans from the 1960s that are currently sitting in the US National Archives.

Stage a Cuban attack on an American aeroplane

Plane lands in Florida after being hijacked and taken to Cuba in 1968

Perhaps the most shocking plans to disrupt Cuba came from a top secret memo by Brigadier General William H. Craig dated March 13, 1962. The document was titled “Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba,” which pretty much explains itself.

Craig detailed plans to blow up empty American warships, stage riots at the gates of Guantanamo Bay, and conduct fake funerals for American soldiers. One of Craig’s plans even involved blowing up a CIA drone made to look like a civilian plane that was carrying American college students.

“An aircraft at Eglin [Air Force Base] would be painted and numbered as an exact duplicate for a civil registered aircraft belonging to a CIA proprietary organisation in the Miami area,” the 1962 plan says. “At a designated time the duplicate would be substituted for the actual civil aircraft and would be loaded with the selected passengers, all boarded under carefully prepared aliases. The actual registered aircraft would be converted to a drone.”

The document goes on to explain how the CIA drone would issue a distress call, explaining that it was under attack by Cuban fighters. The drone would then be blown up by remote control in the middle of its distress radio transmission. “This will allow ICAO radio stations in the Western Hemisphere to tell the US what has happened to the aircraft instead of the US trying to ‘sell’ the incident,” the document explained.

Make Castro look fat and happy with doctored photos

The goal of Operation Good Times was to create fake photographs of Fidel Castro living lavishly. The hope was to stir dissent and aid in some kind of homegrown uprising.

“Prepare a desired photograph, such as an obese Castro with two beauties in any situation desire, ostensibly within a room in the Castro residence, lavishly furnished, and a table brimming over with the most delectable Cuban food,” the planning document reads.

The photo would be accompanied with a caption such as “My ration is different,” to give the impression that Castro was living the good life, while his people suffered.

Drop one-way plane tickets on Cuba

Interior of a BEA Vickers circa 1960

With Operation Free Ride, the American government imagined a scenario in which planes would drop one-way tickets on Cuba to cities like Caracas and Mexico City. The idea was to stage a mass exodus and “create unrest and dissension amongst the Cuban people.” Interestingly, the planning documents explicitly state that no tickets to the United States would be dropped.

Coordinate real terror attacks on Miami and Washington

Advertisement on the Miami waterfront after Castro came to power

Shockingly, one idea that was floated involved staging terror attacks on U.S. soil. US officials actually proposed that Americans could start a campaign of terror to frame Cubans, complete with exploding bombs and attacks on refugees in American streets.

“We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington,” one document from 1962 reads. “The terror campaign could be pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven in the United States.”

The term “pointed,” in this case, means that Cuban refugees would be targeted with violence. Violence made to look like it was the act of radical Cuban terrorists loyal to the Castro regime.

“We could sink a boatload of Cubans enroute to Florida (real or simulated),” the document continued. “We could foster attempts on lives of Cuban refugees in the United States even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicised. Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots, the arrest of Cuban agents and the release of prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement also would be helpful in projecting the idea of an irresponsible government.”

Use the American space program as a propaganda weapon

John Glenn in 196

The start of the US space program was rocky, to say the least. The first attempt by Americans to put a satellite into space didn’t go very well. The Americans were hoping to answer the Soviets and their successes but any time the Americans tried something in space, there wasn’t much confidence that it would work. So the military came up with two ideas aimed at Cuba that would utilise any failures to their advantage.

The first was called Operation Cover-Up (a little on the nose, no?), which was to convince Cuban officials that the US space program is a cover for something else. A cover for what? Even US military strategists didn’t care about thinking that far ahead. They just wanted to stir the pot and let the Cubans believe the worst. The second idea was called Operation Dirty Trick. If elements of the space program failed, such as the upcoming orbit of John Glenn, then the Americans would make it look like it was the fault of the Cubans.

“The objective is to provide irrevocable proof that, should the MERCURY manned orbit flight fail, the fault lies with the Communists et al Cuba,” one document explained. “This is to be accomplished by manufacturing various pieces of evidence which would prove electronic interference on the part of the Cubans.”

Destroy confidence in Soviet oil coming to Cuba

The goal of Operation Full-Up was to destroy confidence in fuel being provided by the Soviets. After the Cuban Revolution established a socialist state in 1959, the Soviet Union began sending oil to Cuba. At first American oil refineries refused to refine this oil, but that didn’t last long. Castro simply took over the oil refineries. So the Americans’ idea was to make Cubans believe that the oil coming into the country was somehow defective.

“This is to be accomplished by introducing a known biological agent into jet fuel storage facilities,” one document said. “This agent flourishes in jet fuel and grows until it consumes all the space inside the tank.”

Fake an attack on Guantanamo Bay

Guantanamo Bay in 1964

With Operation Bingo, US planners conceived of an idea to fake an attack on American soldiers at Gitmo as a pretence for war.

“The objective is to create an incident which has the appearance of an attack on U.S. facilities (GMO) in Cuba, thus providing the excuse for use of U.S. military might to overthrow the current government of Cuba,” a top secret document reads.

The plan was to use simulated war sounds that would sound like an actual fire-fight. This simulated attack would then be heard at Gitmo and understood by the majority of men stationed there as a real attack.

“This would, with proper preparation, be followed by a counterattack and with adequate planning the base at G’Mo could disgorge military force in sufficient number to sustain itself until other forces, which has been previously alerted, could attack in other areas.”

It was believed that such an attack could “overthrow the Cuban Government in a matter of hours, providing the plan is implemented within the next six months.” Since this document was written in March of 1962, that estimate of things being untenable after six months was pretty damn accurate. The Soviet Union would soon be sending nuclear missiles to Cuba, culminating in the Missile Crisis of October 1962.

Cause car and plane crashes in Cuba

American cars in Havana in 1958

Another idea that American planners had was to sabotage Cuban boats, cars, and planes so people would lose faith in them. Called Operation Break-Up, the idea was to “clandestinely introduce corrosive materials to cause aircraft, vehicle or boat accidents.”

Terrorise Cubans with a barrage of sonic booms

Concorde supersonic plane in 1969

The goal of what planners called Operation Invisible Bomb was to pummel Cuba with sonic booms in order to create confusion and damage. At first, Cubans would no doubt believe that they were under attack by isolated bombings. But over time, the shriek of the sonic boom would simply become an overwhelming presence of sustained terror.

“The ‘sonic-boom’ can be employed in several different ways such as an individual boom at selected spots or a continuous boom and performed at either high or low altitude,” one document explained. “It will cause not only apprehension but varying degrees of malicious damage as well, i.e. break all the windows on a street in Havana.”

The best part of the plan, as the government saw it? It was “relatively safe” while leaving “no tangible evidence” that it was conducted by the Americans. “It can be planned and executed with a minimum of effort and expense.”

Make coloured rain fall over Cuba

Cloud seeding unit flown over Vietnam via USAF

Much like the cloud seeding missions that were actually conducted years later in Vietnam , Operation Raindrop included a plan for weather control over Cuba.

The US wanted to “seed clouds off Cuba which would produce heavy rains during cane harvesting season.” The author of the paper explained that he was told that “the state of the art will permit colouring the rain (red/green).”

Hijack Cuban radio and TV with anti-communist messages

Fidel Castro in 1959

The idea behind Operation True Blue was to disrupt Cuban radio and TV broadcasts with anti-Castro propaganda. Their ideas for messages that could be broadcast are actually kind of amusing, if only because they’re so damn straightforward and earnest:

“Cuba Si, Russia, No.

Communism exploits the masses.

Communism is ruthless totalitarianism

Castro and henchmen: feast off the land while we are rationed.

Castro and his reign of terror.

Castro is a lunatic and should be put away.

Castro is the cause of all our troubles.

Rise up against the pig Castro, etc. etc.

“If approved this operation could become a continuous project, perhaps under control of USIA,” the planning document said. The USIA was the United States Information Agency, the country’s foreign propaganda-production arm.

Today, though the USIA is no longer in existence, it may not surprise you to learn that the United States creates fake social media accounts to influence conversations online. Or maybe it’s no surprise. After learning about false flag operations conceived by the US government it’s hard to be surprised by anything these days.

Distract and harass Cuban pilots by calling them names

Cuban Air Force B-26 lands in Miami seeking asylum in 1961, after taking part in air attacks on airports at Havana and Santiago

Operation No Love Lost was perhaps the most juvenile of the bunch. The goal? Harass Cuban pilots through radio communications by just calling them names. And here you thought state-sanctioned trolling was new.

“Argument could go, ‘I’ll get you you Red son-of-a-gun,’ and call by name if appropriate,” one document read. “Would be real trouble for Castro pilots in actual weather conditions.”

Sabotage Cuban communications equipment

The idea of Operation Smasher was to introduce faulty vacuum tubes into Cuba so that everything from military communications to home radios would be disrupted. The plan was to pay off employees of various suppliers and seed the country with vacuum tubes “modified in such a manner as to cause a short circuit.”

When compared with the other ideas on this list, Operation Smasher was pretty tame. But it still had the potential to do a fair amount of damage to the country’s communications infrastructure.

The Fallout

his list is far from comprehensive, but it does give a taste of just how badly the United States wanted to see Castro overthrown. Why were so few of these operations carried out, as far as we know? Because the US was hyper-aware of looking bad to the rest of the world. As one CIA memo from 1962 explained: “[…] the reactions to a determined US effort to overthrow Castro would range from lack of sympathy or support to expression and acts of opposition.”

After the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961 which involved Cuban exiles trained by the CIA in Guatemala, US officials figured that the only answer was to sabotage the Castro regime through tactics that couldn’t be traced back to the American military and intelligence communities.

A memo from Brigadier General William H. Craig (excerpted below) dated March 13, 1962 made the objectives of the Cuba Project abundantly clear:

This plan, incorporating projects selected from the attached suggestions, or from other sources, should be developed to focus all efforts on a specific ultimate objective which would provide adequate justification for US military intervention. Such a plan would enable a logical build-up of incidents to be combined with other seemingly unrelated events to camouflage the ultimate objective and create the necessary impression of Cuban rashness and irresponsibility on a large scale, directed at other countries as well as the United States.

[…]

The desired resultant from the execution of this plan would be to place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government of Cuba and to develop an international image of a Cuban threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere.

As James Bamford explains in his 2012 book Body of Secrets, many of these proposals were nothing short of treason. And these weren’t low level bureaucrats coming up with these ideas. They were top level military and intelligence advisors.

But there weren’t repercussions for the people who concocted these schemes. Instead, many were promoted. Where did Brigadier General William H. Craig wind up? He was promoted to General and went to work as the head of the Army Security Agency — the former military arm of the NSA.

[MIKA27]

Rockstar Editor: Get Ready For More Awesome Grand Theft Auto V Clips

I don’t know about you, but I love a good GTA V clip. That game is so bonkers and has such a vibrant community that anything can happen. Game developer, Rockstar, has a new mode for GTA V‘s PC release that means we’ll get more awesome clips than ever. It’s called the Rockstar Editor.

The Rockstar Editor looks a bit like iMovie for GTA V. You can grab a bunch of different camera angles from your in-game footage, splice it together and set it to music from the soundtrack or in-game radio station.

Editor even allows you to jump into insane worlds by dressing up your characters and interfering with the physics of the world. You can turn your gravity all the way down to make an awesome superhero movie, for example.

[MIKA27]

Hackers Could Commandeer New Planes Through Passenger Wi-Fi

SEVEN YEARS AFTER the Federal Aviation Administration first warned Boeing that its new Dreamliner aircraft had a Wi-Fi design that made it vulnerable to hacking, a new government report suggests the passenger jets might still be vulnerable.

Boeing 787 Dreamliner jets, as well as Airbus A350 and A380 aircraft, have Wi-Fi passenger networks that use the same network as the avionics systems of the planes, raising the possibility that a hacker could hijack the navigation system or commandeer the plane through the in-plane network, according to the US Government Accountability Office, which released a report about the planes today.

A hacker would have to first bypass a firewall that separates the Wi-Fi system from the avionics system. But firewalls are not impenetrable, particularly if they are misconfigured. A better design, security experts have warned for years, is to air gap critical systems from non-critical ones—that is, physically separate the networks so that a hacker on the plane can’t bridge from one to the other, nor can a remote hacker pass malware through the internet connection to the plane’s avionics system. As the report notes, because the Wi-Fi systems in these planes connect to the world outside the plane, it opens the door for malicious actors to also remotely harm the plane’s system.

“A virus or malware planted in websites visited by passengers could provide an opportunity for a malicious attacker to access the IP-connected onboard information system through their infected machines,” according to the report.

Members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee requested the report from the GAO out of growing concern that modern transportation systems, including planes, trains and automobiles, are becoming increasingly computerized and therefore susceptible to some of the same vulnerabilities and attacks that have long plagued desktop and laptop systems.

Boeing responded to the GAO report with a statement saying that a pilot manual override system would prevent someone from successfully commandeering its planes in this way.

This is not the first time the issue of aviation Wi-Fi security has come up for Boeing. In 2008, while Boeing was in the final stages of production on its new Dreamliner line of planes, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a report directing Boeing to address concerns about the passenger Wi-Fi system. The report was a “special conditions” document that the FAA produces whenever it encounters new aircraft designs and technologies that aren’t addressed by existing regulations and standards.

That report was pointing out the same problem that’s getting the company in trouble today. Boeing’s design for the Dreamliner’s Wi-Fi network, the FAA noted in the document, connected it to the plane’s control, navigation and communication systems, thereby establishing “new kinds of passenger connectivity to previously isolated data networks” that are critical to the safe operation of the plane. The FAA called on Boeing at the time to demonstrate that it had resolved this issue before the new line of planes could be put into service.

Boeing spokeswoman Lori Gunter told WIRED in 2008 that the company did indeed design a solution to address the FAA concerns. She wouldn’t go into detail about how Boeing was tackling the problem but said Boeing was employing a combination of solutions that involved some physical air-gapping of the networks as well as software firewalls. “There are places where the networks are not touching, and there are places where they are,” she had said.

Gunter added that although data could pass between the networks, “there are protections in place” to ensure that the passenger internet service didn’t access the maintenance data or the navigation system “under any circumstance.”

But security experts had warned at the time that software firewalls were still insufficient to separate critical networks from the Wi-Fi network.

It’s unclear if the authors of the new GAO report tested or examined Boeing’s solution and found it was still vulnerable to hacking or if they simply based their report on statements from experts that any design that doesn’t involve complete air-gapping of networks is vulnerable to hacking.

Boeing responded to the GAO report with a statement saying that “Boeing airplanes have more than one navigational system available to pilots” and that “[n]o changes to the flight plans loaded into the airplane systems can take place without pilot review and approval. In addition, other systems, multiple security measures, and flight deck operating procedures help ensure safe and secure airplane operations.”

Airbus also released a statement, which said only that it “constantly assesses and revisits the system architecture of our products, with an eye to establishing and maintaining the highest standards of safety and security. Beyond that, we don’t discuss design details or safeguards publicly, as such discussion might be counterproductive to security.”

[MIKA27]

Female Chimps Make Better Spears, Knock Drone Out of Sky

Is “Planet of the Apes” finally becoming a reality? Two events this week involving chimpanzees may cause you to think twice about making faces at the apes on your next zoo trip – at least at the female ones. Researchers in Senegal have observed female chimps making spears and say they are better at it than the males. And at a zoo in the Netherlands, a female chimp annoyed by a filmmaker’s drone knocked it out of the sky with a stick and helped her family demolish it.

In eastern Senegal, the Fongoli chimps, named for stream that runs through their savannah, have been know to chew on the ends of tree branches and use them to catch and kill bushbabies – small primates – for food. According to an article in the current edition of journal Royal Society Open Science, researchers there have now found that females use the spears more often than males and are better at it.

According to study author Jill Pruetz, professor in the Department of Anthropology at Iowa State University, this may be because males rely on their strength while females must hunt while carrying babies. Pruetz believes this reveals something intersting.

In a number of primate species, females are the innovators and more frequent tool users, so I think it is possible that a female invented this technique.

Another smart female chimp using a stick managed to hit a flying drone and knock it to the ground where she and her fellow chimps turned it into an expensive toy. It happened at the Royal Burgers’ Zoo in Arnhem in the Netherlands. A 23-year-old female named Pushi became annoyed by a drone filming for the national television program Burgers’ Zoo Natuurlijk, so she whacked it down to her friends and helped them destroy it.

Bas Lukkenaar, a spokesman for the Royal Burgers’ Zoo, had this to say about Pushi.

Like human beings some of the chimpanzees are really individuals with their own character. Some are good at throwing and others only produce poor shots and Pushi is a very clever and capable chimpanzee.

Zookeepers are hoping the Fongoli chimps don’t teach others about spear-making and drone makers hope Pushi doesn’t show humans how easy it is to knock them out.

[MIKA27]

Kidney Stone-Removing Bed and Cancer-Fighting Barbecue Pit

With the costs of health care and the mistrust of conventional medicine both increasing, home remedies and homemade treatments are also on the rise. Two do-it-yourselfers have come up with their own ingenious and unconventional ways to potentially treat cancer and kidney stones without doctors, hospitals or medications.

I couldn’t stand on my head if my life depended on it, yet that’s exactly what doctors in China told rice farmer Zhu Qinghua that his wife had to do after a kidney stone was found in her remaining kidney (one was removed in 1993). To avoid risky surgery, doctors told Zhu’s wife to stand on her head until the stone dislodged.

Zhu Qinghua stapping his wife into the kidney stone-removing bed

Instead, Zhu spent $161 and built a kidney stone-removing bed. Based on the concept of the gravity-inversion bed, Zhu’s invention straps his wife in securely while upside down, then vibrates her vigorously using the driving wheel of a tractor. The bed quickly and safely dislodged her kidney stone and Zhu was granted a patent to manufacture and sell his life-saving contraption.

Zhu Qinghua with the plans for his invention

One of the many treatments for cancer is heat therapy – exposing affected areas to high temperatures to kill cancer cells. Another Chinese farmer, Jia Binhui, has leukemia which did not respond to a bone marrow transplant. When doctors in China told him that blasting cancer cells with 42 degrees Celsius (107 degrees Fahrenheit) heat could kill them, he decided try the expensive treatment at home.

While the doctors recommended using hot water, Jia found he couldn’t keep the temperature constant so instead he built a barbecue pit in his garden After stoking the coals to the proper temperature, he lies between two logs suspended over the heat for as long as he can tolerate it.

Jia getting the fire ready for his treatment

Will it work? Heat therapy dates back to Hippocrates and has been used for cancer treatment since at least the mid-1800s. Of course, that’s in a controlled environment under the supervision of medical experts, not in a backyard barbecue pit. Jia will know more when he returns to the hospital for a check-up.

If necessity is the mother of invention, desperation may be the father. Both of these do-it-yourself treatments are dangerous but are also based on science and one has led to a real medical innovation. There are certainly stranger treatments than lying over an open fire and many prescription drugs are risky. If Jia recovers, his cancer-fighting barbecue pit could have pharmaceutical companies sweating.

[MIKA27]

160 Beached Whales May Be a Japanese Earthquake Warning

Six days before the massive magnitude-9 earthquake that triggered the devastating March 11, 2011 tsunami in northeastern Japan, 50 melon-headed whales beached themselves in the area. This week, over 150 melon-headed whales beached themselves on two beaches is the same vicinity. Is this another warning from the whales? Will anyone listen this time?

On April 9, 2015, almost 160 melon-headed whales (Peponocephala electra), members of the oceanic dolphin family related to pilot whales and pygmy killer whales, were found beached on a 4 km (2.5 mile) section of beach in Hokotashi City, Ibaraki Prefecture. The Ibaraki coast guard reported the whales were near death. They saved a few but were forced to euthanize those not already dead. Tadasu Yamada, a senior researcher at National Museum of Nature and Science, gave this comment.

We don’t see any immediate signs of diseases on their bodies, such as cancer. We want to figure out what killed these animals.

Ibaraki Prefecture is also where the 50 melon-headed whales were found beached in 2011, six days before the earthquake and only 100 kilometers (62 miles) from its epicenter.

Before you say coincidence, in February 2011, over 100 pilot whales (close relatives of melon-headed whales) beached themselves on New Zealand’s Stewart Island less than 48 hours before an earthquake hit there. In the months right before the 2004 Indian Ocean (aka Boxing Day) earthquake and tsunami that killed over 230,000 people, over 170 whales beached themselves in New Zealand and Australia.

Indian professor Dr. Arunachalam Kumar believes there is a connection between the beaching of marine mammals and earthquakes.

It is my observation, confirmed over the years, that mass suicides of whales and dolphins that occur sporadically all over the world, are in some way related to change and disturbances in the electromagnetic field co-ordinates and possible realignments of geotectonic plates thereof.

“Beaching” makes these incidents sound like accidents. “Mass suicide” is a warning. Is anyone listening to the whales this time?

A warning from whales to humans?

[MIKA27]

TREATY OAK RED HANDED BOURBON

Just because you don't distill bourbon yourself doesn't mean it can't be fantastic. And Red Handed Bourbon from Treaty Oak Distilling in Austin, Texas is a perfect example. Using some of their favorite bourbons from Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee, Treaty Oak blends them together to find the perfect taste profile and then ages the whiskey for another 12 to 15 months. The results are an expertly blended, unique high rye bourbon that should be on your radar.

[MIKA27]

This 1.2m Tall Animated Iron Man Hulkbuster Figure Is A Masterpiece

Wow. That’s pretty much the only word one could ever possibly use to describe Comicave Studios’ new quarter-scale Iron Man Hulkbuster figure. Not only does the highly-detailed 1.2m tall suit light up, it also features extensive articulation and animatronic armour that automatically opens to reveal the Iron Man Mark 43 armour protected inside.

When finally available (this version is actually still just a prototype) it’s safe to assume this Hulkbuster figure will probably come with a price tag catered to the likes of Tony Stark, instead of the average Avengers collector. But if there was ever a reason to convince a bank to lend you money to buy a toy, this is absolutely it. I'm sure Fuzz will get it

[Fuzz]

This 1.2m Tall Animated Iron Man Hulkbuster Figure Is A Masterpiece

When finally available (this version is actually still just a prototype) it’s safe to assume this Hulkbuster figure will probably come with a price tag catered to the likes of Tony Stark, instead of the average Avengers collector. But if there was ever a reason to convince a bank to lend you money to buy a toy, this is absolutely it. I'm sure Fuzz will get it

Their 1/4 scale War Machine goes for about SG$700. Can you imagine how much a 1.2m fully articulated statue would be? My pockets are deep, but not that deep! Probably be around the $5000 mark.

Unfortunately, have heard in some circles that their quality isn't up to scratch on their smaller scale statues. And that they sometimes don't go into production with their sneak peaks.

[MIKA27]

Watch The Brand New Star Wars: The Force Awakens Trailer And Freak Out

Drop everything you’re doing for the next 20 minutes and watch the new Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer 10 times. The rest of the world is doing exactly that right now and smiling giddily at that last scene in the trailer. Enjoy.

Here it is — the second teaser trailer for Star Wars Episode VII. In which Luke Skywalker monologues about his family, and its powerful connection to the Force. And we glimpse how much things have changed since Return of the Jedi.

[MIKA27]

Video: How Cinnamon Is Harvested

In this quick short, Foodie explores how Cassia (synonymous with cinnamon in the States) is harvested to make cinnamon. It’s an interesting and decidedly old school process, the bark of the trees are cut and peeled off and then scraped and dried (where the bark curls up). Big pieces become powder, narrower pieces become cinnamon sticks.

Most of the world’s cinnamon is produced in Indonesia. This video shows the process from the jungles of Sumatra, Indonesia.

[MIKA27]

What To Do When Your Friend Turns Into An Animated GIF

When a commercial starts with a silly premise like:“What would you do if your friend turned into an animated GIF?” you know you’re about to watch something great. That’s why I’m such a big fan of Flying Horse’s ads. The Brazilian energy drink brand makes some of the weirdest and most hilarious commercials I’ve seen lately.

Here’s another great ad from the same campaign and my favourite Flying Horse commercial ever:

[MIKA27]

Here's A Tank Drifting Across A Frozen Lake

If Batman ever needs to fight a bunch of Siberian warlords trying to invade Gotham from the North (free plot idea), he’ll want to be riding in this: a terrifying custom-made tank that you can see here just casually drifting across a frozen lake.

Called the Ripsaw EV2, it’s the product of a company called Howe & Howe. They custom-build EXTREME vehicles for the emergency services, military, and really anyone with a spare $US30,000 lying around. Basically, if you want something with tracks rather than wheels, these are your guys. Tracked ambulance? No problem. Quadbike with tracks? Why the hell not.

There’s no real details about the Ripsaw, save a touted top speed of 97km/h, and some photos of the decidedly spartan interior. Price? Way too much — if your last name isn’t Wayne.

[MIKA27]

How McDonald's Became a Target for Protest

On Thursday, Bloomberg reported that 130 McDonald's locations in Japanwould be closed due to lagging sales amid food scandals. This is the type of story we're used to seeing about companies, a story where success or failure in a market is tethered to performance. But coverage of McDonald's in particular tends to concern a very different type of story: McDonald's as icon of capitalism.

The fast food chain celebrated its 60th birthday on Wednesday. Technically, it's a few years older, but the company's first franchise location opened 60 years ago this week in Des Plaines, Illinois, by company pioneer Ray Kroc. In Hawaii, for example, franchises offered 60-cent burgers and gave away birthday cake.

One could be forgiven for missing the revelry. Elsewhere in the country, the Fight for 15 minimum wage protests raged, forcing shut McDonald's franchises in places like Denver and Chicago and hosting a die-in outside a McDonald's in Manhattan. And while the Fight for 15 movement included home care workers, adjunct professors, Walmart staffers, and others, the central target for the protests was the Golden Arches.

There is something about McDonald's that makes it the target of continual protest—more than other fast-food franchises and more than other powerful global moneymaking entities with less-than-sterling reputations for fair pay. (Consider that one-third of bank tellers reportedly live on public assistance and yet no one staged a die-in at a Chase Bank yesterday.)

But McDonald's isn't just the focus of domestic ire for practices deemed "un-American" by opponents. Internationally, the company symbolizes something "all too American." Last week, the Washington Post reported on two Russian filmmakers who, in the spirit of nationalism, started a campaign to turn all the McDonald's restaurants in Russia into franchises called “Let’s Eat At Home.”

According to the Post's account, Russian President Vladimir Putin is having his deputy prime minister review the proposal.

This episode continues a series of anti-American maneuvers in Russia that focused on the franchise. After the Russian annexation of Crimea last year, the three McDonald's franchises there were shuttered. At least one of them became a nationalist chain called Rusburger, which serves "Czar Cheeseburgers" where Big Macs once reigned.

Meanwhile, within undisputed Russia proper, authorities initiated a crackdown in late 2014 against McDonald's franchises, forcing some to close for dubious reasons and opening investigations into hundreds of others. We've come a long way from 1990, when throngs of Big Mac seekers lined up outside the McDonald's at Pushkin Square in the final moments of the Cold War. More recent headlines echo 2002, when a franchise in Santiago, Chile, was burned down on the anniversary of the coup that toppled Marxist President Salvador Allende.

Chronicling attacks on fast-food franchises in the wake of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Eric Schlosser and Charles Wilson note that McDonald's outlets were attacked in Russia, Ecuador, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Turkey, Spain and Italy.

Everything from globalization protests to the Danish cartoon scandal havebrought about attacks on the Golden Arches.

So what do we make of a franchise that is beloved, reviled, embraced, and rejected as a symbol of American industry? Even as it serves food on military bases, it also offers Kosher and Halal options in Middle Eastern markets. Even as protestors fight for $15 wages at American chains, many McDonald's workers in Denmark make $21 an hour.

In the midst of all this bad news, it's easy to forget that McDonald's also opened 35,000 stores in 119 countries. That may be a sign that somewhere in the world, someone is still Lovin' It.

[MIKA27]

Welcome To Asteroid War Games, Where Scientists Practice Saving Earth

There’s a 1200-foot asteroid headed straight for the Earth. You’ve got five days to come up with a plan, or go the way of the dinosaurs. This isn’t the script for the Day After Tomorrow sequel — it’s the scenario being war-gamed by a roomful of PhDs as we speak.

The Planetary Defence Conference is a meeting of scientists, engineers, policy-makers, and people who don’t want to be crushed by asteroids currently taking place in Frascati, Italy. It looks like most other scientific conferences — papers, seminars, lots of people with nametags getting lost — but with one crucial difference: the asteroid war-games.

Over the course of five days, the conference attendees play out an asteroid scenario that, in real-world terms, would last about seven years. People like me, stuck on a different continent, can follow along online. The exercise kicked off with the sighting of our hypothetical world-wrecker, asteroid 2015 PDC:

A recently discovered near-Earth asteroid is predicted to pass very close to the Earth on September 3, 2022. The asteroid, designated 2015 PDC, was discovered on April 13, 2015, and has been tracked continuously over the last two months by observatories around the world. Predictions for the asteroid’s encounter in 2022 indicate that, while unlikely, an Earth impact cannot be ruled out. The current likelihood of impact is about 0.9% or 1 chance in 110, according to the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN), a worldwide partnership of agencies that detect, monitor and track potentially hazardous asteroids.

As each day goes by, the teams are drip-fed a little more information. By Day 2, we’re at April 4th, 2016, and the chance of asteroid impact is 43%. In other words, things are getting real.

Worst Case Scenarios

A 1200-foot asteroid impact doesn’t sound like the end of the world — and technically, it’s not. According to Matt Holman, the Director of the Minor Planet Center at the Smithsonian, an asteroid that size wouldn’t be the end of the life — but it would still be a disaster of epic proportions.

How epic? 2250 megatons, or the equivalent of 2250 million tons of TNT. To give you a sense of scale, the biggest nuclear device ever detonated, the Tsar Bomba, was 50 megatons. The 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor that hit Russia was 50-60 feet wide, with an energy of 0.5 megatons.

Here’s what the blast radius would be on 2015 PDC if the asteroid were to hit New York City head-on:

The asteroid would create an impact crater 5-7km wide, 500 meters deep, creating a 6.8 magnitude earthquake. Everything within 20 miles would be totally destroyed, whilst fireballs and 140mph winds stretch out to 100 miles.

Still, it’s not the worst-case scenario. That honour goes to the asteroid impacting at sea. Depending on the angle of impact, the asteroid could cause a tsunami generating 20-foot high waves along the coast of an entire continent.

So what do we do? Our possible courses of action mostly depend on how long we’ve got, and the size of the asteroid.

How to Stop an Asteroid

For asteroid 2015 PDC, humanity has until 2022 to try to neutralise the danger. With an asteroid its size, just firing an oversized missile to shatter it would be a bad idea: chunks big enough to enter our atomsphere would still be floating around, but in a manner too haphazard to predict, turning our planet into one big crash site.

That means asteroid deflection is the better option. “Deflection is a bit of a misnomer,” says Holman:

You don’t really try to change its direction. Imagine it like an intersection — there’s going to be a point in time where the asteroid and the Earth are in the same place. You can’t change the roads that they’re on, but you can speed it up or slow it down, so that they avoid one another.

In essence, deflection involves speeding up or slowing down the asteroid so that it misses the Earth. To change its velocity, you’ve got a number of options. One way — the most basic — is to approach with a nuclear device and detonate it nearby. That would vaporise part of the asteroid, and the effect of material vaporizing off the surface would exert pressure on the main body, thus changing the velocity.

Another option is a space-based laser, mounted on a satellite, which would similarly fry the asteroid, vaporizing material and achieving the same outcome. Other options include impacting the asteroid with a satellite, transferring kinetic energy the old-fashioned way, like an intergalactic game of pool. Finally, of course, you could land a spacecraft on the asteroid itself, fire up a rocket, and push it off course that way.

When dealing with a timeframe of months, not years, the list of working solutions decreases dramatically. According to a 2013 study, the only practical solution for an asteroid a year away is nuclear — firing a small rocket into the surface of the asteroid, and following up with a nuclear missile, which would hopefully fragment the asteroid whilst not showering our planet with chunks of flaming stone.

The Politics of Doom

Back in Italy, the teams have been working hard to find the best solution to the half-kilometer problem flying towards the planet. The first two days (in real terms: 18 months) were spent ‘tracking’ 2015 PDC, upgrading the possibility of impact from 40 to 100 per cent, and calculating the impact corridor — the red band along which the asteroid could possibly hit.

By Day 3 (December 2016), plans are in place to launch kinetic impactors, non-explosive spacecraft which would impact the asteroid and push it off course. Doomsday has been calculated for September 3, 2022, with the list of countries in danger including the Philippines, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and Turkey.

One interesting — and highly realistic — aspect of the asteroid scenario are the media relations and geopolitics playing out every day. Conference attendees have colour-coded lanyards: red for world leaders, green for media, with others for scientists and members of the public.

In addition to working out the physics to defeat the asteroid, the teams have to work out the delicate geopolitics (that list of at-risk nations isn’t exactly the most stable), and work out the best media plan to inform the public, without boosting the membership of doomsday cults too much.

As of this morning (aka August 1, 2019), six Kinetic Impactors are on the launchpad, ready for liftoff later in the month. In total, they only need to change the velocity by one inch per second, but we won’t know whether the mission has succeeded until 2020 (or, tomorrow morning).

The last daily update will be posted at the NEO website tomorrow morning; until then, you’ve still got time to work on your doomsday shelter.

[MIKA27]

There's A Boeing 787 Dreamliner That Looks Like R2-D2

God bless the good folks at ANA. To celebrate the new Star Wars film, it decided re-design the livery on one of its Dreamliners to make it look like the world’s most adorable robot, R2-D2. Get in here and look at how good it is.

The blue and white of the ANA logo fits perfectly with this flying nerd-ship. Now all it needs is to screen the original trilogy in-flight and it’d be perfect.