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

[MIKA27]

The Himalayas Dropped Almost A Metre After The Nepal Earthquake

The earthquake in Nepal was so violent it moved mountains. Satellite imagery shows that the parts of the Himalayas sank three feet (91cm) — and the area around it as much as five feet (152cm) — as tectonic plates snapped under extreme pressure. But the mountains will regain their height, slowly but surely, thanks to the geologic forces at work.

The European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1A radar satellite captured before and after images of the area hit by the earthquake. The image below show how the Eurasian plate bent, the land falling in some places (yellow) and rising in others (blue). The area of the Himalaya’s Langtang range sank by three feet (91cm). Everest, which was further away from the earthquake, sank about an inch (2.5cm).

The Himalayas were formed, after all, by the Indian plate pushing into the Eurasian plate. And the mountains are still growing thanks to the constant pressure at the fault. In the earthquake, though, the plate under Kathmandu snapped like a rubber band, causing the opposite to happen. Tim Wright, professor of satellite geodesy at the University of Leeds, explained what happened to the BBC:

“Between earthquake events, Nepal is being squashed and the part (including Kathmandu) nearest the big fault underneath it is being dragged down by the Indian plate, and [areas] further back are being lifted up as you imagine squashing something is going to push things up,” says Prof Wright.

“Now, during the earthquake itself what happens is the opposite. The part that was dragged down because it was stuck at the fault – that slips freely and rebounds up, and the part that was being squashed upwards drops down.”

The earthquake was one sudden and violent event, but in the long run, the Himalayas will slowly regain their height. The Indian plate will push into the Eurasian plate, as it has for millions of years, and the Himalayas mountains will get taller, as they have for been millions of years.

[MIKA27]

These Century-Old Drawings Show Humanity's Deepest Fear: Alien Invasion

We all know the scenes of a devastating Martian invasion: gigantic alien tripods and fighting-machines destroying towns, killing helpless humans, abducting men, women and children. But do you know the Brazilian painter who was responsible for bringing those images for the first time in the early 1900?

It was a painter and illustrator named Henrique Alvim Corrêa (1876-1910) who planted these images in our collective mind. Corrêa drew his illustrations for the 1906 Belgian edition of H. G. Wells’ sci-fi masterpiece, The War of the Worlds.

The ongoing Illustration Art Signature Auction at Heritage Auctions (ends on May 14) features 29 original pencil and ink artworks created for this book, the earliest apocalyptic depictions of a conflict between mankind and an extraterrestrial race. These pre-modernist drawings of our deepest fears made the artist world famous long after his very early death, showcasing his work in several exhibitions in museums and galleries.

Livre Premier: L’arrivée des Martiens

This illustration is featured as the title page of Book I: The Coming of the Martians, 1906.

Martians Head Toward Earth

This illustration is featured in Book I: The Coming of the Martians, Chapter I: “The Eve of the War”, 1906.

Martians Land

This illustration is featured in Book I: The Coming of the Martians, Chapter III: “On Horsell Common”, 1906.

Martian Emerges

This illustration is featured in Book I: The Coming of the Martians, Chapter IV: “The Cylinder Opens”, 1906.

Martians Blast House

This illustration is featured in Book I: The Coming of the Martians, Chapter VIII: “Friday Night”, 1906.

Martian in the Forest

This illustration is featured in Book I: The Coming of the Martians, Chapter IX: “The Fighting Begins”, 1906.

Martian Fighting Machine in the Thames Valley

This illustration is featured in Book I: The Coming of the Martians, Chapter XIV: “In London”, 1906.

Thunderchild Versus Martian

This illustration is featured in Book I: The Coming of the Martians, Chapter XVI: “The Exodus from London”, 1906.

Martian Gas Cannon

This illustration is featured in Book I: The Coming of the Martians, Chapter XV: “What Had Happened in Surrey,” 1906.

Martian Flying Machine

This illustration is featured in Book I: The Coming of the Martians, Chapter XVII: “The Thunder Child”, 1906.

Martian Handler

This illustration is featured in Book II: The Earth Under the Martians, Chapter II: “What We Saw from the Ruined House”, 1906.

Handler Grabbing Human

This illustration is featured in Book II: The Earth Under the Martians, Chapter V: “The Stillness”, 1906.

Martian Machine Over the Thames

This illustration is featured in Book II: The Earth Under the Martians, Chapter VII: “The Man on Putney Hill”, 1906.

Martian Viewing Drunken Crowd

This illustration is featured in Book II: The Earth Under the Martians, Chapter VII: “The Man on Putney Hill”, 1906.

Humans Dissecting Martian War Machines

This illustration was featured in Book II: The Earth Under the Martians, Chaper IX: “Wreckage”, 1906.

The War of the Worlds

[MIKA27]

Modern Samurai Slices 130km/h... Fried Shrimp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTFRvEg4BHw

That’s Isao Machii, a master Japanese swordsman. Here, he is battling deadly foes like fresh produce and fried seafood.

Machii has appeared on Japanese several times, showing off his amazing skills. This slick ad is for mobile phone carrier Softbank, and a good reminder that when fried shrimp are used as deadly weapons, then Machii is the dude to call.

No doubt, he’d be handy for slicing fruit and chopping vegetables.

[MIKA27]

Looks Like The Simpsons Just Lost The Voice Of Mr Burns, Ned Flanders

Harry Shearer, who for decades has worked as one of the stars of The Simpsons — lending his voice to characters like Ned Flanders, Mr Burns, Principal Skinner and Waylon Smithers — has seemingly announced he will no longer be working on the show.

A story on TMZ over the weekend claimed that attempts to renew the long-running cartoon for a 27th and 28th season were being held up by Shearer, who was reportedly fine with his pay offer for the new seasons, but had “issues with back-end and merchandising” rights.

Tonight, Shearer posted the following on Twitter, offering what looks like a differing source of disagreement:

from James L. Brooks' lawyer: "show will go on, Harry will not be part of it, wish him the best."

This because I wanted what we've always had: the freedom to do other work.

Of course, I wish him the very best.

Brooks is the show’s producer, so while the tweets could have been clearer, they certainly suggest Shearer’s time with the show is up.

In addition to the above characters, Shearer also voiced Kent Brockman, Dr Hibbert, Scratchy and Homer’s pal Lenny. The show just won’t be the same without him.

[MIKA27]

The Bizarre Honey Mummies of Ancient Arabia

Throughout human history there have been countless folk remedies, healing methods, therapies, and herbal fixes for nearly every ailment, disease, malady, affliction, or injury known to man. These run the gamut from tribal medicine men using magic to heal people, to practices that border on scientifically sound, all ranging from the fairly normal to the bizarre or even grotesque. Perhaps one of the strangest ways that people in the past tried to cure what ailed them was the alleged gruesome practice of “mellifying” people, or saturating them and embalming them with honey for the purpose of creating a mysterious all-healing confection; a process that began in life and continued well after death.

Accounts of what has become known as the Mellified Man originate in China, from a 16th-century Chinese pharmacologist named Li Shizhen. Li’s book was Bencao Gangmu, or the Compendium of Materia Medica, which is a medicinal tome that is still recognized as being the most meticulously complete and comprehensive book ever written on traditional Chinese medicine. In this book, Li mentions a practice that he had heard an account by another man, Tao Jiucheng, about a mysterious practice of mummification in honey carried out in Arabia which he refers to as miren, or literally, “honey person.”

According to Li’s report, the process started with a willing volunteer, typically an elderly person around the age of 70 or 80. Volunteering for the process was integral since it would allegedly not work unless there was an element of self-sacrifice involved.

The volunteer would cease to eat regular food in order to subsist on a strict diet of nothing but honey, and even go so far as to bather in honey. According to the legend, after around a month the volunteer’s sweat, urine, and even feces would be comprised of honey. Perhaps coming as no surprise whatsoever, the person was unable to survive on nothing but honey, and they would inevitably die. Upon death, the corpse would be transferred to a special stone coffin that had been filled to the brim with honey and the date of death was written on a seal placed upon it. The coffin was then buried for a hundred years to allow time for the corpse to become completely saturated and infused with honey.

Honey has remarkable preservation qualities due to its high acidity, low water volume and activity, and its potent antibacterial properties, meaning that the corpse would not merely rot away as usual but rather become infused with the honey surrounding it.

After a hundred years had passed, the seal on the coffin was broken and the body was removed. The now completely honey-embalmed corpse was then broken into pieces and used as a sweet confection that was apparently renowned for its powerful healing abilities. The concoction could be rubbed on wounds or taken orally. It was said that if this confection was taken orally, it would heal or cure any affliction nearly instantaneously. This strange confection was said to be exceedingly rare and exorbitantly expensive due to the lack of many people willing to voluntarily undergo the morbid process and the long amount of time needed to properly age the mummies. For his part, Li admits that he heard the story second hand, and his entry on the Mellified Man is written in a way that suggests he is imploring others reading it to verify his information.

What do we make of this rather bizarre and fantastical sounding confection? Physiologically at least, such a process could work. As had been mentioned, honey has remarkable preservative properties, so much so that a jar of honey from hundreds or even thousands of years ago could be opened today and still be edible. Jars of honey unearthed in ancient Egyptian tombs have been found to be totally and perfectly preserved, edible even. Honey has in fact been used as a preservative in many cultures throughout the world since ancient times, and it was long used as a way to keep food fresh before the advent of refrigeration.

Ancient Egyptians chose honey as a food for souls for the afterlife due to this very longevity, and jars of honey were customarily buried with mummies. In fact, the Hindus, Chinese, Babylonians, Greeks, Africans, and Romans, among others, also all had the tradition of burying corpses with honey placed next to them as food for their souls in the next life. It seems that a human corpse buried while steeped in honey could easily remain intact for a hundred years. It is also for this reason that honey has been used for thousands of years as a topical antibacterial ointment.

Other than food and ointments to cure various maladies, this also would not be the first case of honey being used to preserve human remains either, and there are many cultures in which honey has been used for this purpose. There seems to be a long historical link between honey and rituals of death and burial. In many cultures, it was desirable to prevent the decomposition of corpses, and additionally some cultures viewed honey as a sacred, pure substance which in some cases could sometimes even bestow a corpse with the ability to be revived from the dead. The Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, Assyrians, Spartans, Byzantines, and Arabs all made use of honey as a substance for embalming the dead of important members of society. The Burmese coat the corpses of high ranking priests with a layer of honey as well, and often use honey as a way to temporarily preserve corpses awaiting burial.

Many historical figures are known to have been embalmed with honey as well. Alexander the Great is said to have ordered that his body be embalmed with honey, and upon his death he was placed in a golden coffin filled with the purest of white honey and taken back to Macedonia. Other famous figures were similarly preserved with honey. The body of King Edward I of England, who died in 1307, was found to have hands and a face that were remarkably well preserved due to having been coated with a layer of wax and honey. Although in none of these cases are the corpses known to have endured a procedure like that described by Li for the Mellified Man, and none of them were consumed for healing purposes, it certainly shows that honey has long been closely entwined with death and that bodies can be successfully preserved for long periods of time with honey.

The use of human remains for medicinal purposes is also not unprecedented. The ancient Romans used the blood of dead gladiators as a medicine, and mummy powder was highly valued during the 16th and 17th centuries as a cure-all for a wide variety of ailments and for salves for treating gangrene. Since apothecaries were willing to pay vast amounts of money for such powders, it was common for ancient tombs to be plundered for their mummies, after which they would be ground down into the precious powder and sold for high prices. However, the Mellified Man account is the only known case of a honey embalmed mummy being used and consumed for its healing properties.

Although the use of honey for preserving the dead and the use of the dead for medicinal purposes is well established and not in dispute, there has been no other evidence other than Li’s account that the Arabians, nor anyone else for that matter, practiced the mellification of willing individuals starting when they were alive and subsequently using their remains as a potent healing confection.

There is no physical evidence that this occurred and no other documentation of such a ritual, nor is there any proof of the healing efficacy of the purported confection. Even Li himself doesn’t seem to be sure if it is real or not, rather mentioning it as more of a curiosity more than anything else. However, considering the long tradition of the marriage between honey and death, it seems like it could be more than a simple legend. It at least will likely change one’s way of looking at honey.

[MIKA27]

Killer Russian Bear Buries Woman Alive to Eat Later

A woman in Russia is recovering in a hospital after a bear attacked her and buried her alive for a future dinner. Are Russian bears becoming man-eaters? Is this a sign that Russian bears are expecting a harsh winter? Are Russian bears finally getting even for all of those years in the circus?

The Siberian Times reports that 55-year-old postal worker Natalya Pasternak was collecting birch sap (a traditional Russian beverage used for medicinal purposes) with a friend in a forest in Tynda in the Russian Far East when the bear appeared. Her dog barked and her friend ran for help while the bear attacked Natalya.

What happened next is the stuff of horror movies. The bear stopped attacking Natalya and decided to bury her alive for consumption at a later date. Her friend eventually returned with help, including wildlife expert Sergei Ivanov who says he shot and killed the bear “when it leapt towards us out of a ravine, in a rage.”

Graphic image of woman rescued after being buried alive by bear

That’s when the rescuers saw a hand sticking out from under a pile of dirt and leaves. Natalya was conscious with serious bites, scratches and bruises on her head, stomach and legs. A good sign was when she asked the rescuers, “Have you killed the bear?” They rushed her to the Tynda hospital in serious condition but she’s now recovering.

Why would this bear, a four-year-old female, attack a human without provocation and bury her alive? Brown bears are not to be messed with as they’ve been known to kill wolves and Siberian tigers. Veterinarians are examining a tissue sample to determine if the bear’s vicious assault on Natalya was due to disease. Locals fear it may be worse. Three people in the area were killed by hungry bears last summer because their regular foods like salmon were in short supply due to record high temperatures, flooding, excessive snowfall and other unusual climate conditions.

[MIKA27]

G-DRIVE EV ATC ALL-TERRAIN HARD DRIVE

G Drive ev ATC (All Terrain Case) is the hard drive and case set to get if you need something really rugged, that can withstand harsh conditions. Once the hard-drive is protected inside the ATC, It´s water and shock proof, it even floats in water, keeping your data protected. Featuring storage capacities of up to 1TB, with transfer rates that can go as fast as 136 MB/s and compatible with Mac or Windows, this pack also includes 3.0 USB cables. It’s the perfect device if you ever need to backup or simply store your data outdoors, where nature is always able to surprise you.

[MIKA27]

MOUNT FUJI BEER GLASS

Designed by Keita Suzuki, Fujiyama glass is an award winning item that pays homage to Japan´s iconic Mount Fuji, especially when you fill it with beer and get some froth at the top and get that typical snow cap effect. Each piece is individually handblown by craftsmen in Japan, in a company that´s been around since 1932, so we´re pretty sure they know their business. Each piece comes in an an exquisite paulownia box, that you can also use to store it in. This cone shaped glass is sure to make your drink more enjoyable, while making you travel to the land of the rising sun.

[MIKA27]

Legends Of Tomorrow: DC Comics And The CW Have A Superhero Team TV Show

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MubNoWQiSc

It’s new-show week in the US, and superheroes are very on trend. After the first-look at CBS’ Supergirl barnstormed onto the internet, we have another DC Comics’ series from The CW. It’s called Legends Of Tomorrow and features a billionaire with loads of tech, a guy with a bow and arrow, a lady assassin, a guy who changes form into a dangerous version of a hero and a pair of criminals turned good. Sound like every Marvel trope from the last two blockbusters crammed into one TV show to anyone else?

Legends Of Tomorrow sees the Green Arrow team up with The Flash to lead a new team of superheroes fighting for their city. The team consists of White Canary (the resurrected Black Canary we saw on Arrow); Hawkgirl; Captain Cold and Heatwave; the Atom and Firestorm.

It certainly feels like a bad Avengers and Guardians Of The Galaxy spin-off set in the DC Universe, but given that superhero teams are so hot right now, this series is probably going to be a winner.

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This Team Discovers 14 New Species An Hour, But They Have An Enemy

In every direction, things are getting legitimately intense. To the side, the submarine’s depth meter clicks towards the 150m mark. Above, condensation pools and drips as the tiny sub sweats out its temperature-change. Below, a vertical canyon walls falls away into blackness, its scale so vast that it threatens to overwhelm the brain. And in front — just on the other side of a gleaming, convex bubble-window that pushes into the dark — four figures cling to the sub’s collection basket, surreally lit by the glare of the vessel’s external lights. They’re all members of the California Academy of Sciences‘ “twilight zone” deep-dive team, and they’re headed for a five-hour shift in one of the most mysterious — and critical — ocean layers on Earth.

Sub rides aren’t the norm for this crew (in the increasingly underfunded world of scientific exploration, subs aren’t really the norm for anyone), but since a quicker-than-normal descent could give them a few extra minutes at today’s 137m max depth, they’re giving it a shot. Called the Curasub, the five-person craft belongs to Adriaan “Dutch” Schrier — a former deep-diver who owns Curaçao‘s Royal Sea Aquarium Resort, grounded a sister-ship of Cousteau’s Calypso to serve as his office, and has built more islands, kept more secrets, wooed more women, sweet-talked more dolphins, and risked more death than anyone you know.

Fortunately, the guy who looks uncannily like this also has a passion for advancing marine science, which explains why the Academy team — along with the Smithsonian’s Carole Baldwin and Cristina Castillo, both tucked into the sub beside me — are watching Curaçao’s famous turquoise waters turn a blue so deep it hums.

The whole quick-descent idea isn’t really working out (or at least that’s my interpretation of the increasingly rude hand-gestures Scientific Diving head Elliott Jessup is making on the other side of the glass), but that’s ok; for twilight-zone missions, outside the sub is where it’s at anyway. “Using an ROV or submersible to actually explore these reefs is like using a helicopter to explore the rainforest canopy,” says ichthyologist and team-member Luiz Rocha. “You just can’t get into the environment that way. Even if you spot something, you really can’t study it.”

The environment they’re out to study is a band of ocean between 60m and 150m that’s properly called the mesophotic. Don’t know anything about it? Neither does anyone else. It earned its “twilight zone” nickname not just because you say a slow, heart-pounding goodbye to the light as you descend into it, but because its deep coral reefs, incredible biodiversity, and the ways those reefs are intertwined with the health of Earth’s shallower reefs (i.e. the reefs you know and love; the reefs that support at least 25 per cent of all marine life and have experienced massive die-offs since the ’70s) are mysteries we need to understand. The team chips away at those questions each time they drop — discovering new species at rates as high as 14 per hour, for example — but today they’re hunting a well-known quarry: the invasive, venomous lionfish.

Rocha’s on the front line of tracking the rapid spread of lionfish throughout the Caribbean, a tsunami thought to have started with Floridians dumping their overgrown tank-pets into the ocean. Lionfish have no natural predators in these waters, he points out, “and they’re probably decimating some native species before we even know they exist.”

On this dive, Rocha and Jessup — along with Academy aquarium director Bart Shepherd and PhD student Hudson Pinheiro — are collecting as many lionfish as possible for stomach-content analysis and DNA testing. They want to know what native species the lionfish are eating (which will give them a sense of how food chains are being impacted), and whether twilight-zone lionfish are part of (or entirely separate from) the shallow-water populations. If the two groups are connected, then Caribbean countries’ current efforts to contain the lionfish problem — which usually amount to encouraging local divers to spear all they can at recreational depths — may need to be revisited.

In addition to the lionfish work, the team also furiously collects other scientific data: visual censuses, live animals, 4K video documentation, and more. It’s a high-yield, high-stakes endeavour made possible by modern “rebreather” technology: closed-loop systems that recycle the unused oxygen in your breath while removing exhaled CO2 via sodium-hydroxide-packed scrubbers. What you get is glorious — significantly longer dive times, no fish-disturbing bubbles, warmer breathing air (a nice perk when you’re so deep that your wetsuit is compressing) — but the benefits come with attendant risk. Brian Greene, a fish expert who sometimes dives with the Academy team, puts it this way: “There are maybe a dozen people on the f%*ing planet doing what we’re doing, because it’s f%*ing hard and people die.”

Rebreathers have to constantly balance a diver’s system by adding both oxygen and diluent — a mix of mostly helium and nitrogen that prevents the O2 from getting overly concentrated (and makes serious scientists sound like enraged chipmunks when they talk-yell to each other underwater). Hypoxia lurks on one side of the equation, hyperoxia waits on the other, hypercapnia skulks everywhere in between (all potentially deadly), and because of the amount of inert gases being absorbed into the divers’ tissues — onboarding that’s exponential the deeper they go — coming up from those depths is a mercilessly slow process involving four or more hours of decompression.

And with every minute at max depths carrying huge additional decompression penalties, the team has to work quickly, but also slowly, since physical exertion promotes the absorption even more gas and oh, by the way, could lead to a lethal CO2 build-up.

Finally, they have to be ready to solve each and every problem, from equipment to physiological, without surfacing, which is why in addition to being loaded with backpack-style rebreathers, they’re also each clipped to multiple tanks of bailout gas — different mixes for different depths. “Bailout” is kind of a misnomer here, since any quick ascent would actually kill you, but being able to switch to these backup open-circuit rigs should let them survive decompression in the event of a rebreather failure. “My mother hates that I do this,” says Shepherd.

Recreational tech divers (those with about $US4K to burn, at least) can purchase rebreathers and “poke their heads down there just for fun,” says Jessup, but actually working down here — chasing fish, laying out transect lines, spearing specimens, lugging video cameras in huge housings — raises the stakes exponentially. “My mum loved that I do this,” Jessup grins, “but I wouldn’t do these dives if it weren’t for science. We’re working so deep that there are no existing decompression schedules. It’s all about super-conservative, calculated risk.”

(On the up-side, lionfish — shown here in its post-stomach-contents-analysis carpaccio form — tastes amazing. Ceviche? Lightly battered? In tiny tacos? Shut. Up. Protect coral reefs and thrill your palate at the same time; start asking for lionfish at your local market.)

What I’m hearing you say right now is that you suspect people who spear this many lionfish scientifically must pretty good at it. And that you didn’t get enough submarine. And that those things probably deserve an almost unbearably dramatic soundtrack.

I think that seems fair.

[MIKA27]

What The US Can Learn From Australia's Drought To Avoid A Mad Max Future

The drought is no longer a California problem. The Colorado River, which supplies water to one-eighth of the population of the United States, is now reporting record low water levels. The US needs a little perspective when it comes to how bad this is going to get. Luckily we have one: Australia.

Over the past 20 years, Australia has weathered one of the most devastating droughts on the planet. You’ve seen the dust storms.

You’ve seen the wildfires.

And you’ve seen the trailer for Mad Max: Fury Road.The film takes place in a parched, near-future Australia, where the control and manipulation of water is the greatest power in the world.

Even as a kid growing up in Australia, director George Miller was influenced by the scarcity of water in his environment. He remembers adults talking about the imminent water wars, he told the Hollywood Reporter. “Growing up in an isolated rural town, I was very aware of the cycle of droughts and floods, so it was a natural thing to put in this story.”

Of course, Mad Max is fiction (we hope). But there is no question that the future it describes is not so very far flung. And over the last two decades, parts of Australia were transformed into something very close to that post-apocalyptic reality. Here’s what the US can learn from Australia when it comes to managing its hydrological fate.

“The Big Dry”

Australia’s Millennium Drought is named because it started around the turn of the millennium. But it could also be seen as a once-in-a-millennium event — it’s said to be the worst drought in the continent’s recorded history.

Australia’s naturally arid climate always sees a great deal of variability in precipitation. But starting in the early 1990s, it began to see much lower than average rainfall year after year. By 1995, an official drought was declared with the lowest annual rainfall seen in 100 years or more. Exacerbating the dry conditions were high temperatures triggered by El Niño — the very same weather pattern that’s making the West of the US so hot and dry right now. Some some major reservoirs shrunk to 25 per cent of capacity or lower.

Average rainfall from 1970 to 2010. Some areas saw the lowest amounts ever recorded. Commonwealth of Australia, 2011, Australian Bureau of Meteorology

Entire ancient forests were killed, lakes turned acidic, rivers evaporated and many species were pushed to the brink of extinction. The groundwater in some parts of Australia became so saline it was unfit to drink.

By 2000 the drought’s repercussions had reached major cities. Australia was on the brink of a full-scale economic disaster that threatened the livelihood of its citizens. But the farms were hit hardest. The part of the country that suffered the most was the Murray-Darling Basin, which grew almost half of the country’s food.

In 2008 the Murray-Darling Basin was climatologically off the charts, receiving its seventh straight year of below-average rain and 11th year in a row of above-average temperatures. Some regions ceased all food production. No more food being grown. At all.

That same year, the Sydney Morning Herald published a radical thought — this is the new normal:

It may be time to stop describing south-eastern Australia as gripped by drought and instead accept the extreme dry as permanent, one of the nation’s most senior weather experts warned yesterday.

“Perhaps we should call it our new climate,” said the Bureau of Meteorology’s head of climate analysis, David Jones.

In preparation, Australia made some major changes in the way they looked at and lived with water.

A new grid for water

As people in the US have heard a thousand times this year, curbing municipal use is a very small part of the water puzzle. Still, Australia began with some impressive cutbacks in this area. Cities launched programs to promote conservation like stormwater capture, greywater recycling and rain barrel incentives for homeowners. “Indoor use only” water restrictions went into effect in for the cities of Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide. Melbourne in particular was able to reduce daily per capita water use by 43 per cent.

The country then focused on investing $US25 billion to strengthen the country’s water infrastructure, building a “water grid” much like how an electrical grid works. Three desalinisation plants were built on the coast to service the cities of Perth, Melbourne and Adelaide. But the important part about these plants were that they didn’t simply supply water to the nearby city. They could be linked to other waterways, allowing water to travel back and forth as needed.

The new “water grid” for the region around Melbourne with improvements made from 2007-2010, Australia National Water Commission

A series of pipelines were proposed — William Shatner’s idea doesn’t sound so crazy now, does it? — to connect these previously separate watersheds into one network. Notice they are pipelines, not gravity-powered aqueducts. Meaning water could be moved either way — it could hypothetically flow in both directions to go where it’s needed.

But the biggest impacts were seen through larger, systemic improvements to the way water was managed. The National Water Plan for Water Security placed water projects under national oversight and the federal government launched a reformed system to specifically change the way water was allocated. Instead of hierarchical rights that dole out different amounts of water, scientists make predictions about how much water will be available the next year and everyone pays the same, set market rate for water.

This spurred the biggest change in behaviour because it was financially beneficial for farmers to be more efficient in their usage, according to Jane Doolan from Australia’s National Water Commission:

From a revenue perspective, in 2008-09, our irrigators used 53 per cent of the water they used in 2005-06 which was still during the drought, but the on-farm production was only reduced 21%, so effectively through the drought, our irrigators ended up using virtually a third of their water and getting two-thirds of their production.

A final and very important goal of the water plan was to balance agricultural and economic demand while mitigating environmental impacts. The Australian government took the protection of riparian habitats very seriously, but all of this — including the privatisation of the water system — was highly controversial and led to many protests.

The call for a national plan

A few weeks ago I explored the archaic and downright backwards laws that govern California water rights, many of which could stand to learn a lot from Australia’s radical restructuring. Right now, the state is currently beginning emergency water cutbacks at the municipal level — looking at water use by community and telling each one how much more needs to be reduced.

But reform is absolutely needed, namely to help to fairly distribute the scarce water among California’s many powerful agricultural interests. But this is why state regulations aren’t enough: This is clearly a national problem, especially because the state produces 80 per cent of the food in the US.

Empty reservoirs in the Murray-Darling Basin from 2007 look a lot like California today

It’s also obvious now that the drought is affecting more than one state. Oregon and Washington are seeing their own historic droughts. Las Vegas is plunging a new straw deep into a historically low Lake Mead. Even in wet years, the Colorado River is overtaxed in a way that prevents it from flowing into the Gulf of California.

Now states like Arizona are drawing their full allotment off the Colorado River, which could spell unequivocal disaster for an entire swath of the country — a kind of ecological domino effect.

Instead of improving each watershed with these piecemeal, stopgap emergency measures, the US federal government needs to see the country as a holistic system. It needs to focus on policy and infrastructure working together. And it needs to reform its water rights as one US system.

Preparing for change

Here’s a curious footnote to this story. When Mad Max began location scouting, Australia was deemed no longer suitable for filming an arid post-water future. After almost two decades of drought, the climate made a complete 180 and the previously-parched desert saw torrential rains. Due to the years of drought, these rains were equally devastating, as floods swept through the country in 2010 and 2011. And those wet years turned the area around Broken Hill into a verdant landscape of wildflowers. Production was moved to the deserts of Namibia.

Since Australia’s drought ended with some of its wettest years, some of the infrastructure projects completed have never even needed to be used — yet. But with a better overall system in place, the country also had a better way to handle the influx of water. Stormwater was captured, reservoirs could be filled more efficiently, and water could be sold more fairly. Australia, as a whole, was more resilient.

And then, of course, drought conditions came back.

A still from Mad Max or Sydney Harbour during a 2009 dust storm?

The lesson here is that in the climate of today, cities cannot just prepare for one extreme or the other — they must be prepared for anything.

As for where to shoot the next Mad Max, Miller might need to look for yet another location. Namibia — considered to have some of the driest places on Earth — has started to see its own historic floods. Climate change may force the filmmaker to follow emerging weather patterns, chasing catastrophic droughts all over the globe for the best post-apocalyptic settings. Hopefully they won’t be filming the nextMad Max in the Central Valley of California.

[MIKA27]

This Jet-Powered Go Kart Is Basically A Fire-Breathing Monster On Wheels

Life demanded it so the mad genius that is Colin Furze delivered a jet-powered go kart that can go as fast as cars on a highway. The jet-powered go kart is so ridiculous it basically spits out fire while you drive it. I mean, the metal pipes turns orange because it burns so hot. What a beast.

The firemobile pushed past 60mph (97km/h), but that’s because the runway ran out of room. You can see how Furze built the craziest go kart here and here.

[MIKA27]

Watch A 500,000-Year-Old Mammoth Get Its First X-Ray

In this photo, staff members from the Naval Medical Center San Diego (NMCSD) and the San Diego Natural History Museum are X-raying a 500,000-year-old mammoth skull fragment in the NMCSD radiology department on Monday. Man, those are some pretty massive teeth.

The mammoth fossil was discovered six years ago, and now the museum’s requested NMCSD’s assistance in CT and X-ray scanning of the specimen, so they can learn more about the extinct Ice Age mammal. “For this species of mammoth, which is the Colombian Mammoth, it’s the first time that a skull has been CT scanned. That’s pretty exciting,” said Kesler Randall Collections Manager to NBC San Diego.

Researchers hope the scans will provide greater evolutionary context and might be used to create 3D-printable models of the skull. Here is a lengthy U.S. Navy video of the whole process including the CT and X-Ray scanning of the mammoth skull fragment:

[MIKA27]

PLYFLY WOODEN GO-KART

Go karts are fun. Shipping them fully assembled is not. The PlyFly Wooden Go-Kartovercomes this challenge by shipping to you in a flat-pack box, Ikea-style. All the wooden parts are made in Newport RI, and each kart offers rack and pinion steering, disc brakes, foam-filled tires, a seat that adjusts to comfortably hold adults, a smartphone mount for both video capture and telemetry, and a safety flag. Arrives with all necessary hardware and is available in 2.5 or 4 hp models.

[MIKA27]

JAPANESE FISH POPS ARE ALL THE RAGE IN THE WORLD OF SWEET TREATS

These hyperrealistic fish pops look like a sugar encased goldfish, but don't worry! They don't actually taste anything like the real deal. They're a lip-smacking blend of sugar and starch.

Crafted by a new candy shop in Tokyo called Ameshin , these candies are a form of traditional Japanese amezaiku which is a kind of artisanal candy making that dates all the way back to the 8th century! The sweet is a mixture of starch and sugar syrup that can be formed into any beautiful glossy form.

Not only does the shop carry fish, they also offer tadpoles, geese, snakes, frogs, lions, and a whole assortment of beautiful creatures!

[MIKA27]

The US Government Has A Plan To Prevent Bees From Going Extinct

A US federal task force appointed last year has released its strategy to help save declining bee populations. Bees, along with other insects, bats, and birds, play an important role in agriculture by pollinating crops, but they have been dying off in numbers that beekeepers say aren’t economically sustainable.

The task force’s plan includes guidelines from the Department of the Interior and the USDA, which would require federal agencies to plant bee-friendly plants on their properties, ranging from national parks to office landscaping. It also emphasises collaboration between federal agencies, state and local governments, and the private sector to expand pollinator habitat and increase the availability of food sources. Additionally, it asks for an additional $US34 million in funding for pollinator research in an effort to better understand the factors behind the decline in bee populations. That effort will include further EPA studies into neonicotinoid pesticides, which have been linked to bee die-offs.

The U.S. government is also cooperating with the government of Mexico to expand habitat for monarch butterflies, who spend their winters in Mexico but are also important pollinators for U.S. crops.

[MIKA27]

The Marvel Vs. DC Debate Finally Ends With These Comic Book Chess Pieces

Everyone just assumed that the Marvel Comics vs. DC Comics debate would rage on forever — or at least until mankind became extinct. But Eaglemoss has finally come up with a way to figure out which company is better, Marvel or DC, with custom chess pieces featuring the most popular comic book characters from each side of the debate.

The pieces are all available from Entertainment Earth in the US and range in price from $US15 or $US16 for individual characters, to $US38 for sets of two, like the Guardians of the Galaxy pair above.

And while pitting a Marvel fan against a DC fan in a civilized game of chess might bring some closure to the debate about which publisher is superior, these pieces will no doubt spark an entire new debate over which characters deserve to be kings and queens on the board, and which should be relegated to being just pawns.

[MIKA27]

British Submariner Goes AWOL After Leaking UK Military Nuclear Secrets

The British Royal Navy is searching for Able Seaman William McNeilly after he leaked an 18-page report called “The Secret Nuclear Threat.”

In the document, the submariner explained a wide range of insights relating to the UK’s submarine operations, reports The Independent. It covers everything from the mundane, such as food hygiene, to more worrying topics such as hydraulics failures that prevent submarines from launching missiles. In fact, he describes submarine floods during testing that would have killed if they’d happened at sea, and writes that he “learnt that HMS Vanguard is in the worst of the worst condition.”

Elsewhere, he claims that it’s”harder to get into most nightclubs” than into sensitive parts of the Faslane submarine base on the Clyde in Scotland. “I’ve gotten through a few times by just showing my pale white room key; looks nothing like a Green Area Pass,” he wrote.

He also explains that alarms on the UK’s Trident nuclear submarine’s missile control are often muted. “I could sometimes hear alarms on the missiles control and monitoring position while lying in bed,” he writes. “I later found out that I would have been hearing them more frequently if they hadn’t muted the console just to avoid listening to the alarms.”

McNeilly — who describes himself as “an engineering technician submariner for the UK’s Trident IID5 strategic weapons system” — didn’t return from leave on 11th April. In a press release, the Royal Navy explained that it is “concerned for the whereabouts and well-being of Able Seaman McNeilly and is working closely with civilian police to locate him.”

[MIKA27]

John Oliver Nails Australia For Threatening Johnny Depp's Dogs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucA2VM4ghw0

When Australia elevates itself onto the world stage these days, it’s rarely for something we can all be proud of. Last week saw Senator Barnaby Joyce threaten to euthanise Johnny Depp’s dogs after the star bypassed the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service to bring them in. John Oliver’s got wind of it, and is using the platform of Last Week Tonight on HBO to skewer the whole country.

No Aussie is spared: not Barnaby Joyce; not Kyle Sandilands; not echidnas or the platypus; not even Vegemite.

Check out the clip above before it’s taken down. We’ve linked to a slightly dodgy clip, simply because the real Last Week Tonight clips go behind a US geoblock to preserve local distribution rights.

If you’re after further reading on Depp’s dogs, the ABC’s Insiders program re-edited some Pirates Of The Carribean to reflect the Hollywood crisis.

[MIKA27]

How Cosmetics Companies Farm Human Skin To Test Their Products

As you slathered conditioner onto your noggin this morning, you probably weren’t thinking about lab-grown skin coins (if you were, r u OK?). But human skin grown in a lab is a booming business — and how it’s made is a little-known and fascinating story.

Today, Bloomberg’s Caroline Winter brings us news of a new partnership between the tissue-printing company Organovo and beauty giant L’Oreal. Her post gives us an incredible glimpse into the world of skin farming, which L’Oreal has been doing for decades. “The company started farming derma back in the 1980s,” writes Winter nonchalantly. Hang on, what?

Though it sounds like something out of a horror movie, growing human tissue for testing purposes is a quite well-established industry. L’Oreal has been a pioneer in the practice, and it even runs a facility dedicated to it called the Predictive Evaluation Center, located in Lyon, France — along with a new lab in Shanghai.

The term “predictive evaluation” refers to testing how a new ingredient or product will affect human skin or eyes. That’s a job that is often — even today — relegated to lab animals, which are put through what amounts to torture in order to test the safety of new products. Two decades ago, L’Oreal started investing in producing skin to replace animal testing, and today, it’s completely free of the practice. Since 2008, the company says it’s tested 13,000 different products in its skin lab, from concealer to conditioner.

Right now, L’Oreal’s scientists grow these skin samples using left over mammary samples from plastic surgery. They’re carefully grown into tiny samples, which are used to test new products. The commercial name for this product is called Episkin, and L’Oreal actually sells samples of what it grows to other companies, too.

Here’s how The New York Times described the growth process inside the lab back in 2007:

To make Episkin, donor keratinocyte cells, collected after breast and abdominal plastic surgery, are cultured in tiny wells of collagen gel, immersed in water, amino acids and sugars, and then air-dried for 10 days or aged to mimic mature skin by exposure to UV light. Cosmetics are tested by smothering the almost babylike skin in the material. The skin is checked for dying cells by adding a yellow chemical, MTT, which turns blue against living tissue, and then checked again with another molecule or biomarker for irritation.

L’Oreal says it produces 130,000 tissue units every year, including skin but also epidermis and cornea — which is important when you’re testing products that come into contact with millions of eyes.

So, what happens once the tissue is grown? How are the products applied? A great 2012 story from The Telegraph about plastic surgery waste material has an account of the lab work being done using the manufactured skin:

On the day I visited, laboratory assistants were soberly applying pink hair conditioner on to trays of skin the size of a Polo mint, and as thin as a cigarette paper. In another lab it was being blasted with UV light to assess the protective power of sun cream.

As you might imagine, artificial skin is astronomically expensive stuff. Winter says that in 2011, a single sample cost $US70.62.

That brings us back to the news that L’Oreal is partnering with Organovo, the San Diego-based lab that’s been pioneering 3D-printed tissue for almost a decade now. Organovo’s process is called bioprinting, and it uses super-precise printer head to print cells into specific structures using a scaffold

The idea, the companies say, is to apply Organovo’s bioprinting process to human skin, building on the decades of experience L’Oreal’s scientists have accumulated. Just as conventional 3D printing promises to make conventional manufacturing faster, cheaper, and more deft, bioprinting could do the same for a burgeoning skin manufacturing industry.

And the best part: It will help provide an alternative animal testing — and hopefully eradicate it forever.

Check out the full post on Bloomberg for more.

[MIKA27]

Anthony Bourdain Is Opening A Food Market Inspired By Blade Runner

Would you eat at a market inspired by the 1982 dystopian classic Blade Runner? Master chef Anthony Bourdain is hoping you will. He’s currently negotiating to open a market in the renovated 100,000 square foot SuperPier in New York. The floor plan is said to evoke “the set decor of Blade Runner and the vibrant back alleys of Tokyo.”

“It is meant to be crowded and chaotic because that’s what hawker centres should be,” Bourdain’s partner Stephen Wether recently said at a food conference in Singapore.

The planned market is said to include an oyster bar, butchers specializing in various kinds of meat, a bakery, a tapas bar, a pastry counter and possibly even a beer garden. The market will reportedly be BYOR (Bring Your Own Replicant).

“It’s a bit more chaotic than how the hawkers markets are organised [in Singapore],” Wether said. “Hopefully, it will be as crowded and popular. But it is supposed to be a mash-up of foods, styles, smells, tastes and visuals.”

You’ll have to wait a couple years for your Blade Runner dreams to become reality. The market (which also houses new Google offices) won’t open until 2017.

[MIKA27]

Is this Guatemalan Colossal Stone Head an Easter Island Refugee?

As a land made famous for its strange temples, monuments, carvings, and cultures, Guatemala is home to more unsolved mysteries than almost anywhere in the world. With a tumultuous past, and a people ravaged by war, conquest, disease, and economic disaster, it is a place known for holding tightly to its secrets, demanding outsiders respect the history they seek to decipher.

Guatemala may in fact be the birthplace of Mesoamerican culture. Its earliest settlements date to as early as 18,000 BCE, as is evidenced by the finding of rare obsidian arrowheads throughout the country. Those early Pre-Columbian peoples are thought to have been the first in the region to develop agrarian practices in South America, with evidence of the cultivation of maize along the Pacific Coast, and spreading in-land over the centuries. In any event, the area we now know as Guatemala was once the center of the great Mayan Empire, and as such, much priceless archaeological bounty lies within its borders.

One of those indecipherable mysteries is the story of the Olmec Colossal Heads. The Olmec peoples, who got their start in southwest Mexico in about 1500 BCE, were the first builders of the Americas. They were the pioneers of monumental construction, their culture gave rise to stone temples, pyramids, altars, statues, and they were the first to live in defined towns and cities. There is much we don’t know about who they were, but what we do know is pretty cool.

The La Venta Colossal Stone Head, monument 1

The Colossal heads are a collection of some 17 huge carved-stone (basalt) heads found throughout the jungles of central Guatemala. All known examples depict the same basic features: male faces with fleshy cheeks, flat noses, and slightly crossed eyes. Those features are consistent with the facial structure of modern Olmec descendents, and it’s believed by most scholars that the heads – which were quarried from the Sierra de los Tuxlas Mountains of Veracruz, suggesting that they were moved a long distance at great effort – depict the faces of important leaders of early Olmec society. Most of the known heads were buried at around 900 BCE, which means that they were carved and placed well before that, though unfortunately the heads themselves can’t be dated accurately.

There is one example that doesn’t fit this tidy narrative though.

In 1987, Dr. Rafael Padilla Lara (a doctor of philosophy, a lawyer, and a notary) received a photograph of a massive stone head said to have been found in the jungles of Guatemala in the 1950’s. The photo had been sent by the owner of the land upon which the statue had been found, but no other information was provided.

Now, the finding of a stone head in a country littered with stone heads isn’t really something to get terribly excited about, except for the fact that this head looks nothing like any of the others. Where all other known examples of carved stone heads in the region showed a clear anthropological consistency, this one seemed to depict someone altogether different. Thin, pronounced lips, shallow cheeks, a large piqued nose, and its face upturned.

Dr. Rafael Padilla’s anomalous colossal head

Some, namely David Childress, famed author and Ancient Alien proponent, have claimed that Padilla’s colossal head is evidence that Caucasian (read: European) faces were known to pre-Hispanic cultures of South America. Childress claims to have met and interviewed Padilla, who in turn claimed that the head was found near a small village called La Democracia in southern Guatemala. Unfortunately, the statue was destroyed by militant revolutionaries in the 70’s, ten years prior to Padilla having been made aware of it, and as such, the only evidence we have of its existence is Padilla’s photo. Though, the photo provides us with a good amount of detail, so the cause isn’t totally lost. And here’s where things might get a little weird.

Virtually all of the researchers who’ve studied the photo have concluded that Padilla’s stone head is either a (relatively) modern forgery, or is evidence of pre-colonial contact between Europeans and the Olmec. Despite all evidence to the contrary, there are those who believe that conclusion is reasonable. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. But there’s another possibility that’s come to light recently, one that seems to have gone overlooked by most researchers.

When you look at the photo of Padilla’s stone head, does it remind you of anything? Does it remind you of facial features you’ve seen many times before, in pictures and documentaries about a little island nestled some 3,500 kilometers west of the pacific coast of South America? It should.

The face we see in Padilla’s stone head photo is strikingly similar (though admittedly not identical) to the faces we see lining the shore of Easter Island. Thin lips, large piqued noses, upturned faces. That might hit you like a brick wall, or you might think this is ridiculous. There’s a pretty good reason why this has gone overlooked all these years, but it’s a reason that’s no longer valid.

Moai of Rapanui (Easter Island)

Up until October of last year, it was thought that contact between the Rapanui, or Easter Islanders, and the cultures of pre-colonial South America was impossible, or at the very least highly unlikely. Indeed, the very idea was preposterous. A primitive race of islanders who may or may not have caused their own demise through deforestation and starvation, found their way 3,500 kms across the open Pacific Ocean in small boats no more sophisticated than lashed rafts? If anyone had attempted it, surely they perished along the way, or perhaps they made it, but that’s certainly a one-way trip.

Well, not so, according to DNA results reported by the journal Current Biology. The paper, clearly proves regular bi-directional contact between Easter Island and early Mesoamerican cultures, including the Olmec, long before European contact of any kind. In addition to those findings, researchers have found genetic similarity between certain varieties of sweet potato grown in both South America and Easter Island (as well as other Polynesian islands). So this, it seems, is settled…more or less.

What seems, if not obvious at this point, then perhaps likely, is that cultural practises, beliefs, traditions, and even methods of carving, tool-making, and the stylisation of artwork were readily exchanged by these early peoples. Indeed, repeated contact over several hundred years could not help but contaminate each culture with the others.

In light of this, does it not seem reasonable to suppose that Padilla’s colossal head, is in fact an attempt to replicate the look of the moai of Easter Island by an Olmec stone craftsman? Whether that craftsman, or craftsmen as the case may be, need not ever have stepped foot on the shores of Rapanui to gain knowledge of the artistic style involved, he could very well have been creating homage to a visitor from another land.

[MIKA27]

DRIVE A TANK

Ever dreamt about driving a tank? At Drive A Tank you can! In fact, its the only place in America where civilians can drive actual military vehicles. The company has several packages on offer where you can go on a rampage, drive one of their several tanks, fire historic and modern machine guns, plow through a mobile home, and even crush cars! "Drive A Tank"recently acquired two pieces of American WWII history - the Quad 50 cal gun truck and the Sherman Easy 8 tank, like the model used by Brad Pitt in the hit movie "Fury".

[Fuzz]

The Marvel Vs. DC Debate Finally Ends With These Comic Book Chess Pieces

And while pitting a Marvel fan against a DC fan in a civilized game of chess might bring some closure to the debate about which publisher is superior, these pieces will no doubt spark an entire new debate over which characters deserve to be kings and queens on the board, and which should be relegated to being just pawns.

Obviously, the author is not a comics fan. There is no such thing as "civilised" when you put a DC fan against a Marvel fan.

[MIKA27]

YotaPhone 2, The Dual Screen E-Ink Wonder, Is Blowing Up On IndieGoGo

The general consensus about YotaPhone, the wacky Russian smartphone with a dual LED and E-Ink screen, was simple: I’m not sure how useful it is, but I want to try that. Now the company is funding a North American run for the phone on IndieGoGo, and damn, people sure are excited about it.

The second generation YotaPhone has only been available in certain European countries since December, but this morning the company launched an IndieGoGo campaign to bring the phone to the US and Canada — explaining that “the North America smartphone market is one of the most challenging to enter.”

The goal? To raise $US50,000 and have the phone in backers’ hands by the end of the summer before a public launch. Only three hours into the campaign, the company has already raised $US60,000 in flex funding — and it’s safe to say that number will rise quickly over the next two days, since the company is offering a $US75 discount to anyone who backs in the first 48 hours.

If you missed out on the flurry of YotaPhone chatter, here are the basics. It looks like a fairly standard smartphone with a 5-inch AMOLED screen running Android Lollipop — all business in the front, you might say. It’s a party in the back, though, with an E-Ink screen that’s touch-sensitive and always on, letting you read, respond to messages, and check apps without turning the energy-hog LED screen on. The battery savings are huge: You could read for five days on a single charge, the company says.

It’s a strange idea, at first glance. And indeed, it may enter the annals of tech history as a one-off anomaly. On the other hand, increasing the battery life of a phone by days without giving up a conventional screen is a pretty smart idea. We’ll have to wait and see. For now, it seems the demand is certainly there.

The IndieGoGo campaign is here.