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

[MIKA27]

It’s Finally Time to Say Goodbye to Hellraiser’s Pinhead

PINHEAD, the demonic sadomasochistic hellpriest from the Hellraiser films, is one of horror cinema’s most popular and recognizable monsters, having appeared in nine feature films as well as numerous comic books and other media.

The character was first introduced by fantasy and horror author Clive Barker in his novella “The Hellbound Heart,” in which Pinhead played a minor role. Pinhead also played a minor role in the first Hellraiser film, appearing on screen for only about eight minutes. Barker didn’t realize he’d created a classic monster until he saw the response from fans.

“Soon after the movie opened we saw that almost every photograph was of the guy with the pins in his head,” Barker says in Episode 151 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “People teach you what they want. They educate you, if you like, in what you’ve done.”

Unfortunately, Barker had little control over how Pinhead was used in the Hellraiser sequels, and found himself less than thrilled with the results. His long-awaited new novel, The Scarlet Gospels, tells one last Pinhead story, in a way that stays true to Barker’s original vision. In this adventure Pinhead goes toe-to-toe with another popular Clive Barker character, the noir detective Harry D’Amour.

“I was dealing with two iconic characters for me, particularly Pinhead,” says Barker. “People view him with a certain amount of respect, and I like that. I wanted to say goodbye to him in a really good way.”

The showdown takes place against a big, ambitious backdrop—hell itself. Barker worked hard to present a vision of the netherworld that’s distinct from Dante or Milton. He puts special emphasis on the hierarchical and bureaucratic nature of hell, which he feels reflects the modern world.

“Hell is reimagined by every generation,” he says. “We have to reinvent the worst so that we can reinvent the best.”

The story is a grand operatic odyssey full of demon armies, grotesque monsters, and destruction on a scale far beyond even the most immense special effects budget. Pinhead’s story began on the page and now, appropriately, ends on the page.

“The word is magical,” says Barker. “The word is protean. It gives us all sorts of things, for almost nothing. Just the price of your imagination.”

Clive Barker on Lemarchand’s box:

“I wanted to have access to hell in the book and in the first movie, explored by something rather different than drawing a circle on the floor with magical symbols around it. That seemed rather stale and rather old. So I went back to something that I remembered from my childhood. My grandfather was a ship’s cook, and he came back from the Far East very often with strange little toys. One of the things he brought back was a puzzle box, which obsessed me for a long time. … So when I went back to the problem of how to open the doors of hell, the idea of [using] a puzzle box seemed interesting to me. You know, the image of a cube is everywhere in world culture, whether it’s the Rubik’s Cube or the idea of the [Tesseract] in the Avengers movies. There’s a lot of places where the image of a cube as a thing of power is pertinent. I don’t know why that is, I don’t have any mythic explanation for it, but it seems to work for people.”

Clive Barker on fan reactions to his coma:

“There have been a lot of examples recently—it happened to Anne Rice—where the readers’ interest in when the next book is coming along takes precedence over the author’s health. And I think that’s regrettable. … It doesn’t have to be bad health. It could be losing your husband, as it was with Anne Rice, who was losing her husband Stan. And the fans were not very kind—they were impatient, frankly—with Anne, wanting her to just stop moaning and groaning and mourning and get back to writing. That is cruel. That is inhuman, actually. It’s not what I would hope my fans would be first concerned with, but it turned out to be the case with some of the fans—I say only some, I think a small number, but they certainly had some volume to their voices.”

Clive Barker on religion and homosexuality:

“I’m a *** man, living an out life for a long time, and it’s tiring and anger-making to hear people continue to spit out the same old dreary cliches about the fact that *** men are doing something unnatural, and there’ll be a price to pay when the Rapture happens. …

But life has a tendency to prove that [religious leaders] have their own secrets, very often. Even in the time that I’ve been alive and doing interviews, there have been revenges taken by time and circumstance, which have revealed the true nature of many of these people, whether they’ve had their hands in the pockets of their congregation, or whether they’ve had their hands on the breasts of their congregations, they have been very bad men, by and large, and I think that is its own revenge, its own reward, from my point of view. I’d like to think more people would pay attention to what those lessons are telling us, but they don’t.”

Clive Barker on the power of fantasy:

“[At my readings] there will be *** readers who will say, ‘Thank you. I was 15 when I first read one of your books, and it made me realize that Clive Barker was also ***, and that it was cool to live in the world that way.’ So that’s a nice thing, but there are also people who want to believe in the fantastic, not as a reality, but as a way to shape their lives. You know, I’ve lived more by the rules of fantasy than I have by the rules of reality, because the rules of reality are rotten. … If you look at what politics tells you and what Ray Bradburytells you, well, then I want to learn about the world from Ray, not from politicians. You know, Ray had a lot of wonderful, kind things to say. Healing things, if you will. He made me feel better when I was ill in the soul.”

[MIKA27]

'Beautiful Mind' mathematician John Nash killed in crash

US mathematician John Nash, who inspired the Oscar-winning film A Beautiful Mind, has died in a car crash with his wife, police have said.

Nash, 86, and his 82-year-old wife Alicia were killed when their taxi crashed in New Jersey, they said

.

The mathematician is renowned for his work in game theory, winning the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1994.

His breakthroughs in maths - and his struggles with schizophrenia - were the focus of the 2001 film.

Russell Crowe, who played him, tweeted: "Stunned... My heart goes out to John & Alicia & family. An amazing partnership. Beautiful minds, beautiful hearts."

The film's director, Ron Howard, also tweeted his tribute to the "brilliant" John Nash and his "remarkable" wife.

Alicia Nash helped care for her husband, and the two later became prominent mental health advocates.

The two were thrown from their vehicle, police said. Media reports said the couple may not have been wearing seatbelts when they crashed.

Their taxi driver, and a passenger in another car, were also injured.

'Genius'

Born in Bluefield, West Virginia, Nash first studied in Pittsburgh before moving to Princeton.

His recommendation letter contained just one line: "This man is a genius."

Nash married Alicia Larde in 1957, after publishing some of his breakthrough works in game theory, which is the mathematical study of decision-making.

But he developed severe schizophrenia soon after, and Alicia had him committed for psychiatric care several times. The couple divorced in 1962.

"I was disturbed in this way for a very long period of time, like 25 years," Nash said in an interview on the Nobel website.

The two stayed close, and his condition had begun to improve by the 1980s. They remarried in 2001.

The President of Princeton, Christopher Eisgruber, said he was "stunned and saddened" to hear of their deaths.

"John's remarkable achievements inspired generations of mathematicians, economists and scientists who were influenced by his brilliant, groundbreaking work in game theory," he said.

Even this week, Nash received the Abel Prize, another top honour in the field of mathematics.

Nash Equilibrium, by John Moriarty, Manchester University

Great new mathematical ideas have a balance to strike - they must be precise enough to allow detailed conclusions to be drawn, and yet sufficiently loose that they can be useful in a wide range of problems.

The Nash Equilibrium, for which he won a Nobel Prize, is just such an idea. It offered something truly new - the ability to analyse situations of conflict and co-operation and produce predictions about how people will behave.

Nash's famous equilibrium has grown to be perhaps the most important idea in economic analysis and has found application in fields as diverse as computing, evolutionary biology and artificial intelligence.

More recently it has been used in studies of corruption and also name-checked amidst the Greek financial crisis.

[MIKA27]

Superman's Dark Past

Some fans are complaining that Zack Snyder’s envisioning of the Man of Steel is too grim—but it’s less a departure than a return to the superhero’s roots.

Since the official teaser trailer for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice debuted online in April, fans and critics alike have been discussing the kind of Superman Zack Snyder is going to depict in his Man of Steel sequel. The controversy stems from Snyder’s decision to cast Superman as a brooding, Dark Knight-like character, who cares more about beating up bad guys than saving people. The casting split has proved divisive among Superman fans: Some love the new incarnation, citing him as an edgier, more realistic version of the character.

But Snyder’s is a different Superman than the one fans grew up with, and many have no problem expressing their outrage over it. Even Mark Waid, the author ofSuperman: Birthright (one of the comics the original film is based on), voiced his concern about Man of Steel’s turn toward bleakness when it came out in 2013:

With the exception of the first-flight beat—the smile Superman gets when he first takes to the air—it’s utterly joyless. From start to finish. Utterly. Joyless. And I just have no interest in relentless joyless from a guy who can fly.

But what many fans don’t realize is that Superman hasn’t always been the Big, Blue Boy Scout they’ve come to know and love. In fact, in the very early stages of the character’s development, he wasn’t a hero at all, but a villain. And even after Superman became an enforcer of good in his earlier years, his brand of justice was as gray, morally speaking, as the color palette Snyder’s films embrace. In other words, the newest incarnation of Superman isn’t so much a betrayal of the character’s origins as it is a perhaps unwitting return to them.

Despite what many believe, Superman’s first appearance wasn’t in Action Comics No. 1 in June 1938. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster first published the character in a 1933 illustrated short story called Reign of the Superman as a bald supervillain not unlike Lex Luthor. Instead of physical superpowers, though, Superman had the power to read and control people’s minds, all in an effort to take over the world. Siegel, however, had second thoughts about Superman as a villain and reimagined him as a hero—some speculate that the inspiration for the change was the murder of his father at the hands of a robber. The revised character had enoughstrength to lift a car and the ability to jump great distances, exactly one-eighth of a mile.

When the comic book was still a nascent medium in the late 1930s and early 40s, Superman was more of an enforcer on behalf of the poor and disenfranchised. He rallied against the social injustices created by the corporate and political greed that led to the Great Depression. In the beginning, Shuster and Siegel’s Superman was very much grounded in the real-world problems facing many Americans: poverty, inadequate housing conditions, mobster violence, and corporate and political corruption. In his book Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book, Gerard Jones describes the early Superman in this way, “This was a grim, almost cruel Superman. His feats had no flamboyance ... The whole strip had the metallic odor of the early Depression.”

This Superman was far from the godlike hero and the epitome of morality he’s frequently portrayed as. In the first issue of Action Comics, for example, Superman faces off against a female criminal wielding a gun. She shoots at him and as he grabs her gun, crushes it in his hand, and threatens to do the same to her—something the “newer” Superman wouldn’t dream of doing. In another story, a villain threatens to shoot Superman, who responds by threatening to shoot him in return. Superman lives more by the Old Testament code of an “eye for an eye” rather than the “turn the other cheek” philosophy of Jesus’ Biblical sequel. This might not sound like a big deal, but Superman over the years has morphed into an ideal for fans to aspire to; as a symbol of hope, he’s held to a higher standard. As Marlo Brando, as Superman’s father Jor-El, says to his son in Richard Donner’s Superman: The Movie, “They can be a great people, Kal-El. They wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all—their capacity for good—I have sent them you, my only son.”

And yet in Bradford Wright’s book Comic Book Nation, the author writes:

Audiences familiar with the rather stiff and morally upright character that Superman would later become would be surprised to discover that Siegel and Shuster’s original character was actually a tough and cynical wise guy, similar to the hard-boiled detectives like Sam Spade who also became popular during the Depression years. Superman took to crime-fighting with an adolescent glee, routinely taking the opportunity to mock and humiliate his adversaries as he thrashed them.

The early Superman not only makes threats, he also delivers on them. And what makes his actions even more uncharacteristic is that he’s threatening mere mortals, not evil superhumans. In one story, a madman with a container of poisonous gas drops it on the floor as Superman advances toward him. As the gas fills the air, choking the man, Superman watches him die saying, “You’re only getting a taste of the fate you planned to doom others to,” effectively being a murderer by purposely refusing to save him. (And it happens other timesthroughout the hero’s 77-year-history). In another scenario, Superman threatens to leave two criminals hanging underneath an airplane as it’s about to land. He tells them what to expect if they don’t give him answers: “When the plane lands, you won’t make a pretty sight. Confess, or I won’t release you.” Luckily for the thugs and for readers, they do.

Superman’s more violent, or perhaps more grounded persona changed after The Adventures of Superman hit the radio airwaves in 1940. It was on that show that he gained the ability to fly, the nickname “Champion of the Oppressed” was dropped and the catchphrase “Truth, Justice, and the American way” forever became associated with the hero now known as the Man of Steel. Other changes occurred in the radio show that became part of the Superman mythos in the comics, the 1950s TV show starring George Reeves, and the Christopher Reeve movies in the 70s and 80s. Kryptonite was created as Superman’s only weakness to allow voice actor Bud Collyer, who voiced Superman and his alter ego Clark Kent, vacation time. Characters such as the Daily Planet editor-in-chief Perry White and his best pal Jimmy Olsen were created for the show and later incorporated into the comics. The show also made famous this introduction:

Faster than a speeding bullet.

More powerful than a locomotive.

Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.

Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Superman!

Gone was the darker, more cynical, and sarcastic Superman of the Depression-era. In his place came a much more fun-loving, lighter version—one more suitable for the mainstream, kid-friendly radio audience that comic books weren’t yet reaching in America.

Leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Superman—along with other comic-book superheroes—became much more patriotic. As a direct result of the bombing, Superman became a channel of American propaganda at its finest. Because Superman could literally win the war by himself, the editors at D.C. Comics thought it might be disrespectful to the troops to have story depicting him fighting the real-world bad guys. Instead, they figured the best way he could help the war effort was to advertise the sale of war bonds and encourage kids to recycle scrap metal for weapon manufacturing.

By the end of the 1950s, Superman had gained most of the powers fans are familiar with: flight, heat vision, super strength, super speed, x-ray vision, super hearing, and super breath. As the Man of Steel became more powerful throughout the following decades, D.C. Comics struggled to find interesting storylines to keep Superman relevant as historic events such as the civil-rights movement, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and the Vietnam War divided America. Against the backdrop of the social turmoil of the 1960s, things like comic-book superheroes seemed trivial.

Superman would go in and out of style throughout the following decade. The 1978 feature film starring Christopher Reeve solidified Superman as the hero most people know him as today—an inspirational beacon of hope and goodness. He never lies, he doesn’t fight unless he has to, and he would do anything to protect the people of Earth. He’s mannerly and wholesome and he’s ... well, he’s perfect.

And that’s the problem.

How do you write Superman—the most powerful man on Earth, the man who can blow out stars with a single breath, who can see through most anything, who has heat vision and super breath, who essentially is indestructible and has no character flaws whatsoever—in a compelling way? That’s Superman’s biggest problem, and it’s the one the writers and editors at D.C. Comics have faced continually over the years; trying to make Superman interesting and relevant.

And then along came Zack Snyder with 2013’s Man of Steel. The director of 300 and Watchmen took everything fans loved about Superman and threw it out the window, stripping the character down to his original essence. He went back to the beginning; all of the way back to Action Comics No. 1. Snyder made Superman a jerk again, or edgy, depending on your perspective.

Judging from the trailer for Batman v Superman, it looks like Snyder is playing off the controversy the first film caused: Superman’s forever-long fight with Zod and his violent death at the hands of the Man of Steel, along with the destruction of Metropolis, and Superman’s utter lack of effort to try to save people. The first line of narration addresses it directly: Is it really surprising that the most powerful man in the world is a figure of controversy?

The trailer brings up other compelling points. If Superman were real, how would people handle such a god-like being? Would we accept him or reject him? Would we follow him as a source if inspiration, or would we try to capture that power and harness it for ourselves?

For decades, Superman has been a much-needed source of hope and inspiration. From the John Williams score to the character’s trademark “S” to the bright red, blue, and yellow of his costume, Superman has become the symbol of our better selves. As for the hero Snyder will be delivering in the 2016 Man of Steel sequel, the question arises: What kind of Superman will we be seeing?

The Batman v Superman trailer shows a much more cynical world than the Donner films. The people of Metropolis don’t seem to be as trusting of a powerful stranger from another planet. If Snyder is mirroring modern society in the Man of Steel sequel, then let’s hope the dark days of Superman are only temporary.

[MIKA27]

Russian Villagers Find Strange Crater and See Stranger UFO

A strange UFO was recorded by witnesses in a village in the Perm region of Russia. Within a few days, a huge crater was found in the same area. Are they related? In Russia, you never know.

The video of the UFO was posted to the Internet on March 11, 2015, and the limited information accompanying it is in Russian, so the Google translations are somewhat garbled. It calls it a “fixed launch UFO” in Kizel in the Perm region, which is located in the east of the East European Plain of Russia on the western slope of the Middle Ural Mountains. The odd shape at the beginning, which changes as the video progresses, makes it difficult to determine what the object might be. Many are quick to call it a rocket launch, although Baikonur, the usual launch location for Russian rockets, is almost 1200 miles away in Kazakhstan. Perhaps it was from a secret location near Kizel … a launch of a secret mission or a new weapon? Or maybe it was something else.

The strange crater in Lunyevka

Adding to the mystery of the UFO is the appearance a few days later of a crater in the village of Lunyevka, less than 20 km (12 miles) from Kizel. The crater – measuring at least 25 meters (82 feet) wide and 10 meters (33 feet) deep – appeared quickly and mysteriously in Lunyevka, causing part of a farm and a number of trees to disappear. Villagers fear the worst is yet to come as a much larger crater formed in the nearby town of Solikamsk last fall and the nearby city of Berezniki has been plagued by the occurrences of multiple massive craters since 2006. While local officials are quick to blame the coal and potash mines that once operated in this Perm region, these mines have been closed for well over 50 years. Residents of Lunyevka want better answers.

Lunyevka doesn’t want its craters to become like this massive hole in nearby Berezniki

A strange UFO appears in an area that is slowing disappearing into mysterious craters. What’s happening in the Perm region and is this condition “perm-“anent?

[MIKA27]

HEIMPLANET CAIRO CAMO FISTRAL TENT

It’s officially camping season, and while you might already have yourself a good tent (or two), Heimplanet’s Fistral might have you hitting the buy now button.

Unlike most tents on the market, the Fistral does away with poles completely. In fact, all you have to do to set this thing up is unpack and inflate – the inner tent, fly sheet and inflatable frame all work as a single unit. It uses the brand’s patented Multi-Chamber-Safety-System, separating the air-frame into two independent air chambers, which comes in handy for emergency stability should one chamber become compromised. The 1-2 person tent also features two ventilation openings complete with two vestibules for storing dirty gear, storage pockets throughout, and a handy gear loft for your pocket carry. And although it doesn’t offer any kind of performance benefits, the Cairo Camo pattern comprised of geometric shapes is quite stunning, particular in the backcountry. [Purchase]

[MIKA27]

WINGBACK WALLET

Wingback is a beautiful tailor made leather wallet that is personalized to your taste, first choose your leather from three leather styles, pick the heavy duty thread color (10 bold colors available) and then personalization if you wish (you can add your own message, name or initials on the front and the inside). The minimalist wallet has room for up to 5 cards that can be easily accessed thanks to a notch at one end, there is also a wing which holds your notes securely. The Wingback wallet develops a beautiful patina over the years. You can receive it made to order, or as a kit with everything you need to put it together yourself

[MIKA27]

THEATRE BOX

Theatre Box is a thrilling innovation in audio industry, it is the most compact wireless home theater speaker, making 360-degree 3D surround sound portable. Manufactured by Acemile, the Theater Box promises to fill a 2,000 square-foot room with immersive 360-degree 3D surround sound, without the need for numerous speakers, costly components or cumbersome cables! It delivers a 360-degree 3D surround audio experience to everyone in the room, no matter the orientation to the speaker, bringing you thrilling enjoyment of superb sonic realism ready for movie lovers, music fans or game nerds.

[MIKA27]

MASTER & DYNAMIC MH40 HEADPHONES

Master & Dynamic are a recent audio brand that make beautifully designed, technically sophisticated headphones. Their sleek MH40 headphones feature a retro look and deliver an artful combination of beautiful design, rich materials, and technically sophisticated sound. Packed with custom 45mm neodymium high-performance drivers, these cans provide a rich, warm sound, and because they are masterfully crafted utilizing heavy-duty materials such as premium leathers and stainless steel, they and are designed for decades of use. Available in several colors.

[Fuzz]

Superman's Dark Past

Great. What now? Are we going to see Batman and Superman sitting in the dark, all moody?

[MIKA27]

You Can Take This Little Wind And Solar Powered Home Anywhere

If life in a future megacity isn’t for you, your hour of escape is fast approaching. Especially if you don’t mind living alone in a 14 x 7 x 7-foot pod. Well, what if I told you the view was fantastic?

Ecocapsule, which calls itself “the first truly independent micro-home,” is a new, teeny tiny smart home powered entirely by the sun and the wind. It can serve as your beachfront cottage, stylish mountaineering tent, or modern day yurt. You can take it just about anywhere, hitched to the back of your electric car — which, by the way, the Ecocapsule’s 9700 Watt-hour battery will happily charge for you.

As with most smart homes, clever features abound: The capsule has membrane water filters installed into its upper surface, which remove bacteria from rainwater before funelling it to a designated tank beneath the floor. The walls are padded with high performance thermal insulation, helping to reduce energy requirements and maintain a comfortable indoor temperature. It’s even got a proper loo, for those who were always averse to going in the woods.

The design itself is simple, modern, and elegant — pretty much what you’d expect for a pod that looks like it wants to be the prototype for future living habitats on the moon or Mars.

Ecocapsule goes on public display during the Pioneers festival in Vienna next week, and will be available for order later this year. The company has not revealed a price yet, but if you live outside of Slovakia where the smart home’s architects are based, be prepared to tack an extra few grand in shipping onto the retail cost. Still, that’s a small price to pay if you’re planning to go whole hog and forsake your city utility bill forevermore.

[MIKA27]

Mexico tornado: Thirteen dead in Ciudad Acuna

At least 13 people have been killed by a tornado that hit the northern Mexico border city of Ciudad Acuna.

Hundreds of homes have been damaged or destroyed in the city, in Coahuila state, just across the border from Del Rio, Texas.

The US state has seen severe flooding, with three killed and a dozen missing.

Images from Mexico showed cars and buildings badly damaged. Many people have been injured and there are fears the death toll could rise.

Coahuila Governor Ruben Moreira, on a visit to the stricken area, said 10 adults and three children had died and a baby was missing. Another 150 people had been taken to hospital, he said.

The missing baby had been strapped into the child-seat of a car, local media reported.

"Most of the dead are people who were outside, not people who were inside their homes," said Ciudad Acuna Mayor Evaristo Lenin Perez.

He added that it was the first tornado to hit Acuna since the city's foundation, more than 100 years ago.

Rescuers were searching the 750 damaged properties for more casualties.

A passenger bus was flipped over and twisted by the force of the storm

"There are cars on top of houses, there are dead people lying in the street, it is total chaos," said local resident Maria del Rosario Ramirez, quoted by Mexican newspaper La Jornada.

The tornado only lasted a short moment but that was enough to devastate a community. It struck at a busy time in the morning - people were driving or taking public transport to work. Cars were catapulted towards buildings, roofs ripped off and many vehicles left upended.

Residents of Ciudad Acuna are used to hearing about this sort of thing north of the border in Texas, not experiencing this first-hand. The infrastructure clearly wasn't strong enough to stand up to the impact - the army is helping to search for missing people and neighbouring states have also said they will lend a hand in the rescue effort.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto expressed his "solidarity" with the relatives of the victims and said he would travel to Ciudad Acuna.

He said the government would "take stock of the damage and provide all appropriate support".

Victor Zamora, Coahuila's interior secretary, said an area of about seven blocks had been "devastated" by the tornado, which struck at about 06:10 (11:10 GMT).

Civil protection officials said that eight temporary shelters had been set up for those made homeless by the disaster.

'Tsunami-like power'

In the southern US, warnings and alerts stretched from Colorado through to Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri and eastern Kansas.

Twelve people were missing after flash floods struck the Blanco river in central Texas on Sunday.

Texas governor Greg Abbott said it was the worst flooding the state had seen, and that the wave of water had a "tsunami-like" power.

The floods also damaged hundreds of homes, some of them swept off their foundations.

At least three deaths have been linked to the flooding in Texas since Saturday, the latest being a 14-year-old boy who was found with his dog in a storm drain in Dallas. Two people have died in Oklahoma.

A tornado also damaged a block of flats in Houston over the weekend.

The Blanco river basin in Texas is one of the worst hit areas

[MIKA27]

History’s Next Great War Zone: The South China Sea

The United States pushes back against Chinese claims over a vast tract of water of enormous importance. It’s a classic win-or-lose confrontation.

At the moment, the war is just one of words. On Friday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry called a U.S. Navy reconnaissance flight over the hotly contested South China Sea “very irresponsible and dangerous and detrimental to regional peace and stability.” The admonition came two days after the Chinese navy sent eight warnings to an American P-8A Poseidon patrol aircraft, telling it not to approach Fiery Cross Reef in the Spratly Island chain.

Beijing and Washington in recent months have been making many declarations about—and trading accusations and warnings over—these 3.5 million square kilometers of water that are roughly bounded by Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam, where annual commerce totals $5.3 trillion. About half the world’s oil-tanker shipments transit its waters. Six of the world’s 10 busiest ports dot its coasts.

“The South China Sea is the cockpit of geopolitics in East Asia,” wrote the International Crisis Group this month. Yet it may soon be more than just that. This body of water is where history’s next major armed conflict could very well start.

Beijing claims as sovereign territory the largely uninhabited Spratly Islands and virtually all the other atolls, shoals, rocks, and reefs in the South China Sea. Official Chinese maps contain either nine or 10 “dashes” forming “the cow’s tongue” of its self-declared boundary, covering some four-fifths of South China Sea water. The tongue hugs the coastlines of Taiwan and five other countries and extends about 1,800 kilometers from China’s closest shore.

China has not fully clarified the precise extent of its sovereignty claims to South China Sea waters, but it is nonetheless clear that those claims are inconsistent with its treaty obligations and international law. Accordingly, the issuance of the maps is seen as an attempt to exclude other nations from the area.

Taiwan formally maintains the same expansive claims as China but does not seek to enforce them, except on scattered islands. The Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia maintain competing claims to the islands and other features in the sea close to their shores.

Some countries have engaged in miscellaneous bits of dredging and construction on features they occupy, but none of them has come close to Beijing’s accelerated land “reclamation” program in the Spratlys, where there was once little more than a collection of coral reefs and, in fact, little land.

Since the middle of last year, China has, by dredging reefs and shoals, added approximately 4 square kilometers of land to the Spratlys, including Fiery Cross Reef, which is much closer to Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, and oil-rich Brunei than it is to China. There are, at this time, no fewer than 100 Chinese dredgers at work in the Spratlys.

“The speed, scale, intensity, and remoteness of China’s ongoing manufacture of land and infrastructure within the South China Sea have few or no parallels in history outside of wartime,” writes Victor Robert Lee, a reporter blogging for the Diplomat website. Adm. Harry Harris, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, in March labeled China’s “unprecedented land reclamation” the “great wall of sand.”

Beijing has been cagey about its intended uses of the reclaimed land, but it is apparent the People’s Liberation Army will be a major part of its plans in the Spratlys. The runway on Fiery Cross Reef, for instance, is extremely long, about 3,000 meters.

Specifically, there are worries that China’s new facilities will be used to enforce a South China Sea air-defense identification zone. Such a zone, complementing its East China Sea zone declared in November 2013, would represent a large expansion of Beijing’s reach.

Even without a formal declaration of an air zone over the South China Sea, it appears Beijing already has imposed one. Last Wednesday, the radio warning from the Chinese navy to the American P-8A specifically referred to “our military alert zone.” After the incident, Hong Lei, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, obliquely referred to the new zone. “The Chinese side is entitled to monitor the situation in relevant waters and airspace,” he said at a regular briefing.

Moreover, Beijing claims that the reclaimed features give rise to a 12-nautical-mile band of territorial water. The claim is inconsistent with international law and Beijing’s obligations under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, which it has ratified.

The U.S. has no territorial claims in the South China Sea, and because of that Beijing has consistently taken the position that the United States has no legitimate interest there.

Washington disagrees. If there has been any constant in American foreign policy since the birth of the republic, it has been the defense of freedom of navigation. China’s new military alert zone and its claims to territorial waters around reclaimed features certainly infringe on that notion.

And so does China’s attempted jamming of America’s Global Hawk, the Air Force’s long-range drone, near the Spratly chain. The Free Beacon website reported that U.S. officials have mentioned there has been at least one incident of drone jamming.

China’s challenge to the United States in the South China Sea sets up the classic zero-sum confrontation. Beijing has declared that its South China Sea claims are a “core interest” that cannot be negotiated. Washington, which has plied the seas from its very first days as a nation, cannot compromise its defense of the global commons. Each side can make tactical retreats, but neither can abandon its position for long.

There are two competing visions of the world, and only one can prevail. So, going forward, relations between China and the United States will be fundamentally different because of their disagreement over the South China Sea.

No one thinks the Chinese will drop their outlandish claims around the reclaimed features, so all eyes will be on Washington. The U.S., if it is to defend freedom of navigation, will have to fly planes into what Beijing considers its sovereign airspace and drive warships through waters China claims as territorial. “That would be the next step,” Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steve Warren told reporters Thursday.

Senior Colonel Zhou Bo of China’s Ministry of National Defense says China does not want a confrontation, but his country keeps trying to close off international water and airspace to everyone else.

The resulting contest could just be the one that determines whose vision of the world—and which nation’s rules—govern this century.

[MIKA27]

RARE 1999 MERCEDES CLK-GTR HITS AUCTION BLOCK

For both Mercedes and race car enthusiasts, here is your chance at a barely used 1999 Mercedes CLK GTR Roadster. Originally built from 1998 through 1999, this road going CLK GTR was produced to satisfy homologation standards for the CLK GTR racing in the FIA GT Championship Series. Let’s make one thing nice and clear; of the 35 originally built, exactly 6 were roadsters. So, yes this is very rare with a whopping 4 miles on it. Power is plentiful and comes courtesy of a modified 6.9l V-12 with 604 horsepower that will get you to 199 mph without much issue. At about $1.5m the CLK GTR was the most expensive production vehicle at the time so when this rarity hits the Goodwood Festival of Speed at Bonhams’ next month, expect it to fetch between $2.1m and $2.8m.

[MIKA27]

Samsung's Iron Man edition Galaxy S6 Edge lacks J.A.R.V.I.S.

With Samsung being an active promoter of Marvel's latest Avengers movie, it's no surprise to see the tech giant releasing some sort of special edition product to sweeten the deal. Why yes, it's an Iron Man limited edition Galaxy S6 Edge with matching red-and-gold color theme -- something that HTC should have done a while back. This curved 64GB device is quite a looker, and the special package even comes with an "arc reactor" wireless charger plus a clear cover, but you'll have to make do with Google Now instead of the snarky J.A.R.V.I.S. Here's the real bad news, though: right now Samsung is only releasing this phone in South Korea on May 27th, followed by China and Hong Kong in June. So while you're searching for the earliest flights to Asia, feel free to keep yourselves entertained with the official unboxing video after the break.

[MIKA27]

The Physicist Who Vanished: The Strange Fate of Ettore Majorana

During the middle 1930s, as the Great Depression loomed in the West, the rest of the world had begun to feel the gales of an oncoming economic storm. International trade had fallen by nearly 30 percent, and tariffs on importation were raised as countries scrambled to protect what had already been shaky industrial ground. Nearly 30 million people were unemployed worldwide by 1932, planting the seeds for much wider-reaching political effects that would emerge later: Argentina’s government turned to militarization, whereas in Europe, fascism gained foothold as Adolf Hitler and the Nazis rose to power, promising to restore Germany’s economic prowess, and combating unemployment with a burgeoning militarization that would soon threaten all of Europe.

Technological and scientific innovation were also areas where hope for prosperity could still be found, and with the rise of fascism in parts of Europe, dictators knew all too well the importance of scientific developments which present advantages to the State. Throughout the 1930s, the study of physics focused primarily on radioactivity and its implications, with comprehensive knowledge of alpha, beta, and gamma rays becoming apparent by the middle of the decade. By 1932, researchers Frédéric Joliot and Irène Joliot-Curie had documented what they believed to be the existence of a new and unusual particle, suspecting it may have been evidence of these mysterious gamma rays; however, the discovery had been interpreted differently by one young, and relatively unknown physicist with a background in engineering, who would later become one of the most mysterious and controversial names in science throughout the twentieth century.

An Unlikely and Unwilling Genius

Ettore Majorana was born in Catania, Sicily, and at an early age joined Enrico Fermi’s “Via Panisperna boys”, a group of young researchers credited with the first discovery of slow neutrons, encompassing an energy range of 1–10 eV. This famous discovery would lead to the development of the nuclear reactor, which later helped facilitate construction of the atomic bomb. Majorana had a penchant for mathematics, and having attended university to study engineering in 1923, shifted his focus to physics within five years, following his uncle Quirino, whose background in physics had perhaps influenced the young scientist.

Ettore Majorana

Majorana’s early papers dealt with atomic spectroscopy, but in 1932, he had taken interest in the work of Joliot and Joliot-Curie, giving consideration to the idea of a new particle bearing a neutral charge. Impressed with the idea, Enrico Fermi urged the young physicist to flesh out the idea in a scientific article, but considering many of his ideas to be either obvious, or simply boring, he neglected to do so. Within the year, the discovery of a new particle, the neutron, was awarded to James Chadwick, along with a Nobel Prize for his work.

The self-dismissive attitude Majorana espoused in regard to his 1932 discovery would dog him throughout his life, despite authoring a number of papers, some of them unpublished until long after his death, which dealt with subjects ranging from atomic spectroscopy and relativity, to the creation of what is known today as the Majorana equation, as well as its associated Majorana mass and Majorana particles. Lengthy manuscripts, as well as entire issues of scientific journals, have focused on his work and contributions to the study of quantum physics, and he worked alongside many of the great minds of his day, including Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr. Following a period of heath difficulties and family issues, Majorana became a professor of physics at the University of Naples, where his attitudes led to him becoming increasingly withdrawn from the world.

Sadly, despite his numerous achievements, Majorana is best known outside scientific literature for the strange circumstances involving his disappearance, and the unusual theories that would later emerge about what his ultimate fate could have been.

The Disappearance

“There are several categories of scientists in the world; those of second or third rank do their best but never get very far. Then there is the first rank, those who make important discoveries, fundamental to scientific progress. But then there are the geniuses, like Galilei and Newton. Majorana was one of these.” Thus were the words of Enrico Fermi the year that Majorana vanished under what, arguably, were suspicious circumstances.

What is known of the disappearance is that Majorana took rather decisive action when he withdrew the entire keepings of his bank account before a sudden, and perhaps unplanned trip made to Palermo, Sicily. This location is mysterious in that, being three hours from his birthplace, it seems unlikely he had gone there for purpose of meeting family members. Along with the sudden departure, Majorana left a message for Antonio Carrelli, Director at that time of the Naples Physics Institute, which suggested the possibility of grim plans Majorana had made:

Dear Carrelli,

I made a decision that has become unavoidable. There isn’t a bit of selfishness in it, but I realize what trouble my sudden disappearance will cause you and the students. For this as well, I beg your forgiveness, but especially for betraying the trust, the sincere friendship and the sympathy you gave me over the past months. I ask you to remind me to all those I learned to know and appreciate in your Institute, especially Sciuti: I will keep a fond memory of them all at least until 11 pm tonight, possibly later too.

E. Majorana

The final line in Majorana’s message, of course, is cryptic enough to have led to a prevailing theory of suicide. However, the story would not end here; a subsequent telegram would appear that evening, indicating Majorana’s apparent intent to return to Naples. A ticket was purchased, but the trip, if it were ever made at all, appeared to have remained incomplete; Majorana never resurfaced in Naples, nor was he ever seen again.

In addition to the notion that Majorana had committed suicide, other theories as to his fate and reasons for disappearance have emerged over the years. While Amaldi and others at the Institute in Naples kept by the suicide explanation, others have suggested the physicist became disenchanted with his work, perhaps leading him away from the scientific establishment, leading to bizarre (and unlikely) notions that Majorana had joined a monastery, or simply left and became a beggar in a far-off location where his identity remained unknown.

Majorana was, however, a scientist, mathematician, and engineer of an astute and meticulous nature. It remains a fact that, prior to his disappearance, his bank account had been emptied; this alone has led many who have studied the case to discount Majorana’s intention to claim his own life. A more probable theory involved the notion that Majorana, having expressed what some viewed as antisemitic sentiments over the years, could have collaborated with the Nazis, though little evidence exists that would imply this scenario carried any real weight.

Disappearance, or Departure?

Conspiracy theories about the death or disappearance would persist for decades, and the theories about Majorana’s disappearance, as well as investigations that would explore their merit, would culminate in two books on the subject, Leonardo Sciascia’s 1975 book La Scomparsa di Majorana (The Moro Affair and The Mystery of Majorana), and Erasmo Recami’s Il caso Majorana: Lettere, testimonianze, documenti (The Majorana case: Letters, Testimonies, and Documents) in 2000. Needless to say, Recami’s book differed strongly with Sciascia’s ideas, with Recami taking a controversial, though thoroughly-researched possibility: that Majorana had made his way to Argentina, where he worked as an engineer until his death.

Despite the numerous theories that remained until well into the 2000s, it might have appeared that the trail of clues involving Majorana’s disappearance had simply run cold. However, in 2008, a strange series of events led to what many would view as a breakthrough in the case, when a caller phoned in to an Italian television program called Chi l’ha visto (Who saw him), telling an unusual story.

The caller claimed that in 1955, while in Caracas, Venezuela he had talked with a friend who claimed he had met Majorana while living in Argentina. The caller was introduced to this man, now living in Caracas, who went by the name “Bini”, though it was confirmed by the friend that Bini was, in fact, the missing physicist.

Tommaso Dorigo, an experimental physicist at CERN and blogger at Science 2.0, translated the caller’s testimony in a blog post in June, 2011, which reads as follows:

I left to Venezuela because of disagreements with my father in April 1955. Once in Caracas, I went to Valencia with Ciro, a Sicilian friend, who presented me to a Mr. Bini. I connected Bini to Majorana thanks to Carlo, an Argentinian. He said “Do you realize who that guy is ? He’s a scientist. He’s got a brain you can’t imagine. He is mr. Majorana”. They had met in Argentina. He was of average height, with white hair, few and wavy. The white hair of a man who was once black-haired. One could see it from the fact that he wore his watch over his shirt, so to wash his hands he opened his sleeves and black hair could be seen. He was shy, often silent, and if you invited him to a night club he wouldn’t come. He might have been 50-55 years old. He had a roman accent but one could see he was not. One could also see he was well-learned. He looked like a prince. I sometimes told him “What the hell do you live for ? You are always sad”. He said he worked, we dined together, then he would disappear for 10-15 days. He had a yellow Studebacker. He only paid for the gas, otherwise he looked always penniless. Sometimes I used to tell him “You care so much for this car and have all these papers”. These were sheets with numbers and commas, bars. He never wanted to be photographed, and since I once had to lend him 150 bolivars, I sort of blackmailed him, I asked him to get a picture of him to send it to my family. He was shorter than I was. When I found the picture I decided to speak, otherwise it was useless for me to say I had known Majorana.”

The story, if true, is certainly interesting, and would seem to match the theory offered previously regarding Erasmo Recami’s research into whether Majorana left for Argentia to work as an engineer. But perhaps most interesting of all had been the caller’s claim that a photograph had been obtained of the man he thought had been Majorana. In fact, this information was considered compelling enough that the Rome Attorney’s office began its own inquiry into the case, which resolved in an analysis of the photograph in question by the Carabinieri (Italy’s military police), which alleged that there were ten specific points which drew similarities between the subject in the photo, purportedly taken in 1955 in Argentina, and earlier photos of Ettore Majorana.

Finally, in February of 2015, an official statement was issued by the Rome Attorney’s Office, stating that Majorana had indeed lived well after his disappearance, having retreated to South America where he lived until his death. “Ettore Majorana, the brilliant physicist… that some experts rank among Newton and Einstein [and thought to have] died mysteriously in 1938, was alive in the period 1955-1959, and was voluntarily living in the Venezuelan city of Valencia,” reported the Italian Corriere della Sera.

The question, however, remained as to why, specifically, the brilliant physicist would leave his life, work, and family behind to live in another part of the world, working in relative obscurity. Furthermore, what kind of engineering work, precisely, had one of the world’s most brilliant physicists undertaken in the years during and after the Second World War, while living in Argentina? While a number of speculative lines might be drawn, some family members, as well as researchers involved, felt that Majorana had gone into hiding, fearing the ethical and logistical implications on his work that helped facilitate the creation of atomic weaponry.

It is worth noting that the Corriere article published in February further noted the differences of opinion that still remain, despite the official declarations by Rome’s Attorney Office:

The revelations about the disappearance of Majorana, however, are challenged by a leading expert on the life and works of the late scholar, scientist Antonino Zichichi, director of the Cultural Center Ettore Majorana Erice (Trapani). Who comments: “But imagine if Ettore Majorana was seen in Venezuela in 1955. It can not be true at all. It ‘a false story, without foundation, even if it comes from the prosecutor of Rome. Majorana was a genius, because he had to escape there? “. He adds: “Majorana ended up in a convent, had a spiritual crisis. It’s enough. ” He tells a story: “I met the bishop of Trapani in the sixties, Monsignor Ricceri, was regularly in the events of the Centre for Scientific Culture and once told me that was the confessor of Majorana and had spiritual crisis. So he went to a monastery and just, other than Venezuela.”

Does the photograph from 1955 indeed show the face of one of the most intriguing missing persons cases of the last century? Or had a “spiritual crisis”, as described above (and perhaps very similar to the kinds of self-imposed ethical shortcomings which might have caused him to leave for South America) actually been the true cause for Majorana’s disappearance?

Perhaps the verdict will indeed remain open to some, although the photograph from 1955 had certainly been convincing enough to the analysts at Carabinieri’s photo labs. Enough so, in fact, that the Rome Attorney’s Office responded by closing the case, having no longer had cause for belief there had been any foul play at hand, and that Majorana had indeed left the country of his own free will.

Despite this “resolution” to the case, a number of questions remain about what motivations Majorana may have had for leaving Europe, and choosing to live in a part of the world which, incidentally, became notorious as a Nazi hideout after the war.

In truth, it seems doubtful that any explanation will ever emerge that fully accounts for the Majorana’s departure, as well as the questions regarding what occurred during the remainder of his years in hiding.

[MIKA27]

Will A Planetary Alignment Cause A 9.8 Earthquake This Week?

An earth-shattering 9.8 earthquake is coming this week! At least according to your weird uncle’s Facebook page. The Big One is supposed to hit this Thursday, May 28, thanks to a planetary alignment predicted by Nostradamus and some random guy in the Netherlands. Except that it’s all bullshit.

The video below already has over half a million views, and if I dare make a prediction of my own, it will get plenty more between now and Thursday. The video was produced by Ditrianum Media, which appears to be a lone guy in the Netherlands named Frank who’s fascinated with 9/11 conspiracy theories and believes that a spirit of some sort is talking with him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uVI8cQ3Hpo

The narrator of the video explains his revelation:

The 12th of August, 2013, I received an important message. Well, for me it felt important. I explained that I felt that it came directly from Spirit. And this message, what it told me, what I was being told, is that there would be a very very large earthquake or some kind of major event with very much energy release. And at the time the message was that it would be on the west coast of North America and that it would be comparable to a 9.8 magnitude earthquake.

The narrator goes on to explain that a planetary alignment is going to be the cause of this divinely predicted event. The only problem, aside from the fact that you shouldn’t believe random **** you find on YouTube? Planetary alignments can’t cause earthquakes. They simply can’t. If you need someone to do the maths for you, Phil Plait of the Bad Astronomy blog has gone ahead and worked it out.

But no matter how many times it’s debunked, we’re going to keep hearing from this Frank guy. In fact, Frank released a new video today. He points to some recent large earthquakes in the Solomon Islands and Tonga as evidence that something is indeed happening. He pulls up a graphic of the solar system and insists that an alignment between Earth, Mars and Mercury is to blame.

The problem with pointing to big earthquakes as a sign of things to come is that decent sized earthquakes are happening all the time. If you don’t believe me, there are earthquakebots on Twitter you can follow. Large earthquakes are surprisingly common. Of course, it will be interesting to see what kind of video Frank releases this coming weekend when the Big One doesn’t hit.

This isn’t the first time that people have put forth the idea that a planetary alignment will cause devastating earthquakes. The 1974 book The Jupiter Effect, by John Gribbin and Stephen Plagemann, warned that just such a thing was going to happen in 1982. And you can guess how that prediction panned out.

Now, you may be asking yourself if this YouTube video and its sloppy theories might have anything to do with a major motion picture being released on Friday. And, frankly, we don’t know. But if this really is just a viral marketing campaign for San Andreas (out this Friday) then I’d have to say it’s not terribly bright. If I thought a major earthquake was going to hit soon the last place I’d want to be hanging out is a crowded theatre.

The Big One is definitely coming. It’s inevitable. But if anybody tells you they know precisely when it will happen, you’re going to want to take that with a boulder-sized grain of salt.

[MIKA27]

Holy Crap, This Odd Viking “Treasure” May Rival the Crown Jewels

Paleoscatology, a branch of research that involves precisely what you think it does — ancient excrement — would rank high among areas one would least hope to find revelations about humanity and its prehistoric activities.

However, before you accuse us of being “full of crap” (placing all puns aside), among the most treasured, and perhaps stomach-turning items ever recovered from the ancient living spaces of Viking settlements involves this odd area of interest.

Known as the “Lloyds Bank coprolite”, the discovery in question is believed to be one of the most unique specimens of fossilized human feces ever found. It was discovered in 1972 at a dig site in England, upon which later the York area branch of Lloyds Bank was constructed, which lent its name to the odd discovery.

The fossil is notable for its size, logging in (quit snickering) at 19.5 centimeters, and dating back to the 9th century AD. While not the oldest, it is certainly the largest specimen of its kind.

One shouldn’t underestimate the importance of such a discovery, though. Strange though it may sound (especially since it’s understandable that you, like many of us, may still be reeling at the fact that there are archaeologists who actually look for feces at archaeological sites), fossilized dung is actually very useful, as it allows scientists to learn about the eating habits, as well as the general health of the inhabitants of locations where it is found.

“Whoever passed it probably hadn’t performed for a few days,” according to Gill Snape, a student conservator with the York Archaeological Trust, who spoke to The Guardian about the item in 2003.

In the case of the Lloyds Bank specimen, it also appears that this Viking guy-or-gal had subsisted mostly on meat and bread, though careful examination revealed that this individual had also suffered from parasites, as suggested by the hundreds of eggs it contained.

Andrew Jones, a noted paleoscatologist, was tasked with appraising the item in the early 1990s, for insurance liabilities. He noted at the time that it was the most “exciting piece of excrement” he had ever seen. “In its own way, it’s as valuable as the Crown Jewels.”

Who knew… one man’s trash really is another man’s treasure; or in this instance, one man’s crap is another’s Crown Jewels.

The Hope Diamond

The real Crown Jewels, like the Hope Diamond and so many other famous and irreplaceable treasures, have long been purported to have a curse associated with them. Specifically, the famous 186-carat gem that befits the crown of the late Queen Elizabeth, known as the Koh-i-Noor, is said to boast a curse that makes it lethal to any would-be male owner. According to tradition, “only God or a woman can wear it with impunity,” as the Daily Mail reported in 2010.

The question might be raised then, in light of Mr. Jones’ statement in 1991, “does the Lloyds Bank coprolite” possess a similar legend of bad luck or curses?” While there is no known history of those associated with fossil being afflicted with misfortune, things did take a turn for the worse in 2003 when the item fell off a display fixture during an exhibition, breaking it into three pieces. However, the ancient feces find was reassembled, and continues to be displayed for the public periodically.

So while it remains a treasure, no, this isn’t cursed-crap, apparently; but it really is one of a kind, and that alone makes it priceless, one thing it will always have in common with England’s Crown Jewels.

[MIKA27]

BMW 3.0 CSL HOMMAGE

Since 1929, the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este in Lake Como, Italy, has been one of the premier places in the world to showcase vintage cars and wow-worthy concepts. BMW brought its A-game this year with the BMW 3.0 CSL Hommage, a tip of the hat to one of the automaker’s finest sports coupes from the 1970s.

The exterior, built mostly with carbon fiber and soaked in “Golf Yellow,” works in a few styling cues from both the past and the current 6 Series, with a large grille, rear haunches, and robust creased fenders that wrap around to the massive rear wing, all with sweeping gentle curves. The laser headlights feature X-shaped centers that are reminiscent of old racecars, and just look awesome. Interior highlights include quilted racing bucket seats and a V-shaped, roll cage-like cross-member in the back.

[MIKA27]

BIOLITE BASECAMP STOVE

Remember the innovative BioLite Camp Stove, a portable stove that uses nothing but the sticks and twigs around you to cook meals and charge gadgets? Well, the same team behind the innovative project have recently developed a larger version, the BioLite BaseCamp Stove, a cooking and charging device for groups. The portable cooker is also powered by burning wood, and converts heat from your fire into useable electricity via a thermoelectric generator. You can then use the built-in USB port for charging up your gear whilst you make your wood-fired meal! The ecological device also allows you to transform the flame from dissipated heat for grilling, to direct heat for boiling, at the flip of a switch.

[MIKA27]

FELLOW DUO COFFEE STEEPER

Paper filters, coffee particles, and sludgy leftovers are a thing of the past thanks to the Duo Coffee Steeper from Fellow. Just add coffee, and hot water into the well designed carafe, stir it up and wait for Duo to do its work. After 3 or 4 minutes, simply twist the top and watch the coffee filter into the lower chamber, then pour and enjoy. Duo makes up to four cups of coffee, and can even make cold press or Japanese-style iced coffee. It fits perfectly in your hand and pours effortlessly into your cup.

[polarbear]

Superman's Dark Past

Some fans are complaining that Zack Snyder’s envisioning of the Man of Steel is too grim—but it’s less a departure than a return to the superhero’s roots.

Since the official teaser trailer for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice debuted online in April, fans and critics alike have been discussing the kind of Superman Zack Snyder is going to depict in his Man of Steel sequel. The controversy stems from Snyder’s decision to cast Superman as a brooding, Dark Knight-like character, who cares more about beating up bad guys than saving people. The casting split has proved divisive among Superman fans: Some love the new incarnation, citing him as an edgier, more realistic version of the character.

But Snyder’s is a different Superman than the one fans grew up with, and many have no problem expressing their outrage over it. Even Mark Waid, the author ofSuperman: Birthright (one of the comics the original film is based on), voiced his concern about Man of Steel’s turn toward bleakness when it came out in 2013:

With the exception of the first-flight beat—the smile Superman gets when he first takes to the air—it’s utterly joyless. From start to finish. Utterly. Joyless. And I just have no interest in relentless joyless from a guy who can fly.

But what many fans don’t realize is that Superman hasn’t always been the Big, Blue Boy Scout they’ve come to know and love. In fact, in the very early stages of the character’s development, he wasn’t a hero at all, but a villain. And even after Superman became an enforcer of good in his earlier years, his brand of justice was as gray, morally speaking, as the color palette Snyder’s films embrace. In other words, the newest incarnation of Superman isn’t so much a betrayal of the character’s origins as it is a perhaps unwitting return to them.

Despite what many believe, Superman’s first appearance wasn’t in Action Comics No. 1 in June 1938. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster first published the character in a 1933 illustrated short story called Reign of the Superman as a bald supervillain not unlike Lex Luthor. Instead of physical superpowers, though, Superman had the power to read and control people’s minds, all in an effort to take over the world. Siegel, however, had second thoughts about Superman as a villain and reimagined him as a hero—some speculate that the inspiration for the change was the murder of his father at the hands of a robber. The revised character had enoughstrength to lift a car and the ability to jump great distances, exactly one-eighth of a mile.

When the comic book was still a nascent medium in the late 1930s and early 40s, Superman was more of an enforcer on behalf of the poor and disenfranchised. He rallied against the social injustices created by the corporate and political greed that led to the Great Depression. In the beginning, Shuster and Siegel’s Superman was very much grounded in the real-world problems facing many Americans: poverty, inadequate housing conditions, mobster violence, and corporate and political corruption. In his book Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book, Gerard Jones describes the early Superman in this way, “This was a grim, almost cruel Superman. His feats had no flamboyance ... The whole strip had the metallic odor of the early Depression.”

This Superman was far from the godlike hero and the epitome of morality he’s frequently portrayed as. In the first issue of Action Comics, for example, Superman faces off against a female criminal wielding a gun. She shoots at him and as he grabs her gun, crushes it in his hand, and threatens to do the same to her—something the “newer” Superman wouldn’t dream of doing. In another story, a villain threatens to shoot Superman, who responds by threatening to shoot him in return. Superman lives more by the Old Testament code of an “eye for an eye” rather than the “turn the other cheek” philosophy of Jesus’ Biblical sequel. This might not sound like a big deal, but Superman over the years has morphed into an ideal for fans to aspire to; as a symbol of hope, he’s held to a higher standard. As Marlo Brando, as Superman’s father Jor-El, says to his son in Richard Donner’s Superman: The Movie, “They can be a great people, Kal-El. They wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all—their capacity for good—I have sent them you, my only son.”

And yet in Bradford Wright’s book Comic Book Nation, the author writes:

Audiences familiar with the rather stiff and morally upright character that Superman would later become would be surprised to discover that Siegel and Shuster’s original character was actually a tough and cynical wise guy, similar to the hard-boiled detectives like Sam Spade who also became popular during the Depression years. Superman took to crime-fighting with an adolescent glee, routinely taking the opportunity to mock and humiliate his adversaries as he thrashed them.

The early Superman not only makes threats, he also delivers on them. And what makes his actions even more uncharacteristic is that he’s threatening mere mortals, not evil superhumans. In one story, a madman with a container of poisonous gas drops it on the floor as Superman advances toward him. As the gas fills the air, choking the man, Superman watches him die saying, “You’re only getting a taste of the fate you planned to doom others to,” effectively being a murderer by purposely refusing to save him. (And it happens other timesthroughout the hero’s 77-year-history). In another scenario, Superman threatens to leave two criminals hanging underneath an airplane as it’s about to land. He tells them what to expect if they don’t give him answers: “When the plane lands, you won’t make a pretty sight. Confess, or I won’t release you.” Luckily for the thugs and for readers, they do.

Superman’s more violent, or perhaps more grounded persona changed after The Adventures of Superman hit the radio airwaves in 1940. It was on that show that he gained the ability to fly, the nickname “Champion of the Oppressed” was dropped and the catchphrase “Truth, Justice, and the American way” forever became associated with the hero now known as the Man of Steel. Other changes occurred in the radio show that became part of the Superman mythos in the comics, the 1950s TV show starring George Reeves, and the Christopher Reeve movies in the 70s and 80s. Kryptonite was created as Superman’s only weakness to allow voice actor Bud Collyer, who voiced Superman and his alter ego Clark Kent, vacation time. Characters such as the Daily Planet editor-in-chief Perry White and his best pal Jimmy Olsen were created for the show and later incorporated into the comics. The show also made famous this introduction:

Faster than a speeding bullet.

More powerful than a locomotive.

Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.

Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Superman!

Gone was the darker, more cynical, and sarcastic Superman of the Depression-era. In his place came a much more fun-loving, lighter version—one more suitable for the mainstream, kid-friendly radio audience that comic books weren’t yet reaching in America.

Leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Superman—along with other comic-book superheroes—became much more patriotic. As a direct result of the bombing, Superman became a channel of American propaganda at its finest. Because Superman could literally win the war by himself, the editors at D.C. Comics thought it might be disrespectful to the troops to have story depicting him fighting the real-world bad guys. Instead, they figured the best way he could help the war effort was to advertise the sale of war bonds and encourage kids to recycle scrap metal for weapon manufacturing.

By the end of the 1950s, Superman had gained most of the powers fans are familiar with: flight, heat vision, super strength, super speed, x-ray vision, super hearing, and super breath. As the Man of Steel became more powerful throughout the following decades, D.C. Comics struggled to find interesting storylines to keep Superman relevant as historic events such as the civil-rights movement, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and the Vietnam War divided America. Against the backdrop of the social turmoil of the 1960s, things like comic-book superheroes seemed trivial.

Superman would go in and out of style throughout the following decade. The 1978 feature film starring Christopher Reeve solidified Superman as the hero most people know him as today—an inspirational beacon of hope and goodness. He never lies, he doesn’t fight unless he has to, and he would do anything to protect the people of Earth. He’s mannerly and wholesome and he’s ... well, he’s perfect.

And that’s the problem.

How do you write Superman—the most powerful man on Earth, the man who can blow out stars with a single breath, who can see through most anything, who has heat vision and super breath, who essentially is indestructible and has no character flaws whatsoever—in a compelling way? That’s Superman’s biggest problem, and it’s the one the writers and editors at D.C. Comics have faced continually over the years; trying to make Superman interesting and relevant.

And then along came Zack Snyder with 2013’s Man of Steel. The director of 300 and Watchmen took everything fans loved about Superman and threw it out the window, stripping the character down to his original essence. He went back to the beginning; all of the way back to Action Comics No. 1. Snyder made Superman a jerk again, or edgy, depending on your perspective.

Judging from the trailer for Batman v Superman, it looks like Snyder is playing off the controversy the first film caused: Superman’s forever-long fight with Zod and his violent death at the hands of the Man of Steel, along with the destruction of Metropolis, and Superman’s utter lack of effort to try to save people. The first line of narration addresses it directly: Is it really surprising that the most powerful man in the world is a figure of controversy?

The trailer brings up other compelling points. If Superman were real, how would people handle such a god-like being? Would we accept him or reject him? Would we follow him as a source if inspiration, or would we try to capture that power and harness it for ourselves?

For decades, Superman has been a much-needed source of hope and inspiration. From the John Williams score to the character’s trademark “S” to the bright red, blue, and yellow of his costume, Superman has become the symbol of our better selves. As for the hero Snyder will be delivering in the 2016 Man of Steel sequel, the question arises: What kind of Superman will we be seeing?

The Batman v Superman trailer shows a much more cynical world than the Donner films. The people of Metropolis don’t seem to be as trusting of a powerful stranger from another planet. If Snyder is mirroring modern society in the Man of Steel sequel, then let’s hope the dark days of Superman are only temporary.

That Joker pic is from the Injustice Series that ties into the popular Video Game of the same name.

If you want to see superman get dark (and I mean really dark) I suggest you look at that series.

From ripping apart members of the Green Lantern corps to beating Oliver Queen to death, its a serious (and almost disturbing) take on a dark and violent Superman.

Well worth a read

[MIKA27]

Photos Of India's Deadly, Street-Melting Heat Wave

An extreme heat wave with temperatures reaching 48C has killed at least 1118 people over the past week in India, where hot air, molten asphalt, dust storms are making life almost unbearable.

The homeless, construction workers, newborns, young children and elderly people are most at risk in this weather. In the state of Andhra Pradesh alone, where temperatures climbed to 47C on Monday, 852 people have died. In the neighbouring Telangana state, 266 people have died in the last week as temperatures hit 48C, the BBC reports.

Hospitals are struggling to treat victims of dehydration, heat cramps, heat exhaustion and heat stroke, and tens of thousands are suffering through power cuts from the overloaded electrical grid. The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) advises people to stay indoors, wear loose clothing, and drink water — even if they’re not thirsty.

Heat waves are not unusual in between March and June in South Asia, but experts point to climate change to explain more and more extreme weather conditions in this part of the year, predicting longer and more intense heat waves in the region. Lack of rain combined with dry, hot winds from the desert state of Rajasthan are responsible for the recent heatwave say meteorologists, who don’t expect conditions to get better until the arrival of monsoon in June.

Until then, top temperatures in New Delhi, home to 23 million people, could remain around 45C, according to Brahma Prakash Yadav, director of the Indian Meteorological Department. The following images depict these shocking conditions.

An Indian man rests inside a concrete pipe on a hot summer day in Hyderabad, India, Wednesday, May 27, 2015.

Pigeons fly over a traffic signal near the Indian Presidential Palace during a brief dust storm in New Delhi, India, Tuesday, May 19, 2015

An Indian passenger takes a bath beside rail tracks at a railway station in Jammu, India, Monday, May 25, 2015.

Indian woman cover their faces with scarves to shield themselves from the heat as they ride a scooter in Ahmadabad, India, Tuesday, May 19, 2015

An Indian motorist covers his face with a scarf to protect himself from the heat in Hyderabad, India, Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Indians collect drinking water from a leaking water pipeline on the outskirts of Jammu, India, Saturday, May 23, 2015

A young boy, son of a laborer, walks to a water pump to fill his bottle with drinking water in Ghasera, on the outskirts of New Delhi, India, Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Young boys dive into a water tank in New Delhi, India, Wednesday, May 27, 2015

A rickshaw puller rests in Kolkata, India, Wednesday, May 27, 2015

An Indian girl dances in artificial rain at Jalavihar water park in Hyderabad, India, Tuesday, May 19, 2015

[MIKA27]

US Air Force Certifies SpaceX For Military Space Missions

The US Air Force has announced that SpaceX is now certified to launch military and spy satellites. That means that the United Launch Alliance, a joint effort between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, no longer holds the monopoly on national security space missions.

The news, announced late yesterday, comes after two long years of negotiations between SpaceX and the US military. Over that time the company has managed to soundly demonstrate its abilities to put things in space — something the Air Force has now recognised. “SpaceX’s emergence as a viable commercial launch provider provides the opportunity to compete launch services for the first time in almost a decade,” Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said in a statement.

This is something we can all be happy about too, because the breaking of a monopoly means competition — and that means saving tax-payer money. “Ultimately, leverage of the commercial space market drives down cost to the American taxpayer and improves our military’s resiliency,” added Deborah Lee James in her statement. For some perspective, Bloomberg reports that SpaceX plans to launch government satellites for around $US100 million aboard its Falcon 9 craft, while United Launch Alliance charges $US160 million or more for the same service using its Atlas V rocket.

In other words, contracts seems to SpaceX’s for the taking. And we can perhaps expect to see the company taking on these kinds of missions soon: the Air Force will be issuing a request for GPS III launch services as early as June. SpaceX will no doubt clamour to lend a hand, but it will probably be a while before it’s actually putting the satellites into space.

[MIKA27]

US Air Force Can Use An Electromagnetic Pulse To Kill Enemy Computers

One of the US Air Force’s most high-tech weapons is a tool that can’t hurt people — but it kills electronic devices.

The CHAMP (Counter-Electronics High-Powered Microwave Advanced Missile Project) is a computer-frying device that emits a strong blast of targeted microwave energy that can take down enemy data centres and infrastructure without blowing anyone up.

The Air Force recently confirmed that CHAMP is an operational system, although it’s not yet able to be deployed in a remote-controlled missile. Congress recently pressured the Air Force to prepare the tech for battle, though it may blow its 2016 deadline.

CHAMP is accurate enough to target individual buildings, which means it can pinpoint specific systems to take down instead of wiping out everything in a general area. Unlike jammers, CHAMP will destroy or permanently damage electronics, which means it’s an incredibly potent weapon for screwing with enemy data centres.

Boeing successfully tested a missile carrying CHAMP back in 2012, knocking the power from every electric device in a two-story building. For that test, it used a AGM-86 Conventional Air-Launched Cruise Missile, but the Air Force Research Laboratory recently nominated Lockheed Martin’s Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM-ER) to carry the CHAMP weapons. A drone or aircraft could also carry the weapon, depending on the mission.

This is far from the first time the US military has experimented with electromagnetic pulses as weapons. Nuclear warheads also generate electronics-frying electromagnetic energy, but of course they also destroy a large geographic area and kill untold numbers of civilians. CHAMP is a step forward in electronic warfare because it’s so well-suited to minimising collateral damage.

[MIKA27]

Mysterious Deaths of Saiga Antelopes May Have Sinister Cause

With its beautiful spiral horns, big bulging eyes and distinctive large nostrils, the saiga antelope (Saiga tatarica) is one of the most recognizable wild animals of central Asia. Hunted to near extinction by the 1920s, the population managed to fight back, only to return to near extinction again after the collapse of the Soviet Union due to uncontrolled hunting for food and for their horns, which are used in Chinese medicine. Despite conservation efforts, another return of the saiga may not be possible. Since early May 2015, an estimated 120,000 or more saiga antelopes – half of the remaining population — have mysteriously died in Kazakhstan. What is killing these unique creatures and can it be stopped before it’s too late?

Saiga carcasses being removed for mass burial

According to veterinarians brought in from the Royal Veterinary College in Hatfield, UK,the deaths began on about May 10 and spread quickly because saiga females all calve in one week, lowering their resistance to infections and making it easy to pass them to the calves. The veterinarians offered some possible causes for the rapid and massive deaths: pasteurellosis – a bacterial respiratory infection, haemolytic septicaemia – a bacteria known to kill buffaloes, epizootic hemorrhagic disease – a mosquito-born infection, or toxemia caused by clostridia bacteria. None of the possibilities is conclusive.

There is another, more sinister possible cause. The deaths began at about the time a Proton-M rocket crashed after launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome just 300 km (186 miles) from where the saiga carcasses first appeared. Environmental groups blame the highly toxic rockets fuels dispersed by both launch exhaust fumes and frequent recent crashes for the saiga die-off and other environmental disasters in the area. While the Russian government denies the accusations, it has agreed to fund a joint study on the effects of the May crash.

As of this writing, the saiga deaths continue. Man has reduced its numbers, made it vulnerable to disease and exposed it to toxins. Will man put forth the same effort to save the saiga antelope from extinction? I fear not.