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

[MIKA27]

John Oliver Warned Us: FIFA Is ‘Grotesque’

Last Week Tonight rant from last June shows us what led to this week’s charges.

In light of all the news this week about corrupt and criminal activity involving FIFA, let’s take a look back at an episode of HBO’s Last Week Tonight, in which host, and soccer aficionado, John Oliver breaks down the “comically grotesque organization” and the misconduct that goes on inside.

Somewhere, John Oliver has to be saying, “I told you so.”

MIKA: This guy is genius!

[MIKA27]

TID NO2 WATCH

Stockholm based watch brand TID have launched the follow up of their popular No.1 watch, the stylish brushed steel cased No.2 watch. The minimalist timepiece is made with refined materials and great attention to detail, it features a monochromatic solid brushed steel case, face and hands, a doomed sapphire glass, and Swiss made movement. It is now available in two different sizes; 36mm and 40mm.

[Hypersomniac]

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.

Yeah, the pictures look kind of cool, but I couldn't do the "micro home" thing. It is just too cramped and doesn't look appealing. Besides, where do you put the humidor?

[MIKA27]

Yeah, the pictures look kind of cool, but I couldn't do the "micro home" thing. It is just too cramped and doesn't look appealing. Besides, where do you put the humidor?

You don't put a Humidor anywhere, you buy a second ecocapsule and use that exclusively for the humidor You're wife will love it... Then you wake up and realise all that was a dream and she hates you for buying two capsules.

[MIKA27]

For Fuzz: There's Already A Special Edition Of That New Devastator For Comic-Con

First revealed at Toy Fair earlier this year, you unfortunately can’t actually buy Hasbro’s gigantic new Transformers Constructicons set yet. But there’s already a special edition version being teased for the 2015 San Diego Comic-Con.

So what makes the special edition so special? It looks like the Constructicons have been given a shiny chrome finish courtesy of a vacuum metallising pass. It will no doubt look amazing, but it also means you’ll have to be extra careful playing with Devastator as metal on plastic finishes often chip and flake very easily. And since this set will no doubt not come cheap, you might want to skip the chrome version if you have a few battles planned for these new Constructicons toys.

[MIKA27]

Herpes-Based Drug Shown To Successfully Treat Aggressive Skin Cancer

A new drug based on a genetically modified herpes virus has been used to successfully treat patients with aggressive cases of skin cancer — and it’s hoped it could be used to treat other forms of cancer too.

The new treatment uses a form of the herpes virus which is modified so that it doesn’t produce the protein which allows it to attack healthy cells. But cancer cells produce their own version of the same protein, so when the two combine the herpes virus can infect the cancerous cells. From there, the herpes virus multiplies inside the cancer cells — until they eventually burst open, spilling the virus into the surroundings, allowing the effect to bring about a second wave of cancer killing. And so the process continues.

In a phase-three trial — the final stage of testing for drugs on large groups of patients — the technique, known as T-VEC, has been show to work. Working with 400 patients with “aggressive” cases of skin cancer, researchers injected the virus into the site of the skin cancer. They have shown that 25 per cent responded to the treatment and 10 per cent showed no signs of remaining cancer. Across all the participants, those treated with T-VEC lived an average of 41 months; those in a control arm lived just 21.5 months. The results, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, are the first time this kind of virus therapy has been shown to help treat cancer in a phase-three trial.

A particularly interesting finding of the study is that once the cancer cells begin to die, the body’s immune system appears to be kickstarted too. The researchers have noticed that cancers elsewhere in the body are detected and attacked more effectively by the body’s own immune system — and not the drug — once T-VEC has begun to work its magic. It’s not yet clear why this happens, but the recent trial certainly shows it to be the case: secondary tumours in some patients were seen to shrink or even disappear.

The drug has already been submitted to the FDA and European Medicines Agency for approval and the researchers hope that it could be available for use in US patients by 2017. Scientists are already investigating how the same drug could be used to treat head and neck cancers.

[MIKA27]

ASTON MARTIN DBS V12 ‘GLOW’ BY NEVANA DESIGNS

You can’t just drive any regular old Aston Martin during the infamous Gumball 3000 Rally. You need something that turns heads, something that will get you pulled over more than once. What you need is the Aston Martin DBS V12 “Glow.”

Led by Hamish Scott, the team at Nevana Designs used their renowned UV-recycling technology as a coat of paint on the vehicle made famous by Bond himself. The paint features an active ingredient, strontium aluminate, that stores all the sunlight from the day, and reflects it at night – something that could come in handy for all that binge driving the Gumball 3000 commands. And if the paint looks familiar, that’s because the award-winning inventor has already drenched a Nissan Leaf in the glowing awesomeness as well. The crew at Team 46 will be behind the wheel as this 2-door supercar tears the streets up during this year’s festivities.

[MIKA27]

8 NEW BOTTLES OF BOOZE YOU SHOULD KNOW

When it comes to stocking your home bar, it’s nice to mix in a bottle or two of something new. It’s like a surprise nightcap or cocktail ingredient no one has tried yet. Here are some the latest and greatest we’d recommend looking into.

I.W. HARPER 15 YEAR BOURBON

I.W. Harper bourbon has been unavailable in the U.S. for over two decades, but the distillery has a history that dates back to the 1800s. It might be owned by Diageo now, but they got their start with Isaac Wolfe Bernheim and the Bernheim Distillery–one of the few distilleries that was allowed to keep producing bourbon during Prohibition for “medicinal purposes.” We can get on board with that. [purchase]

PHILLY’S OLD FASHIONED COCKTAILS

There’s something about a perfect Old Fashioned that will always hit the spot, and with Philly’s new bottled cocktails you don’t have to worry about making it yourself. The line includes sweet and sour options with brandy or the more common whiskey and each bottle is filled with the best ingredients and a heavy hand the way only someone that’s been making Old Fashioneds for over four decades can do it. [Purchase]

EUPHROSINE GIN #9

Gin isn’t new. Barrel aged liquor isn’t new, But gin, barrel aged in American whiskey barrels for some additional flavor and mellowing, is not your run of the mill tonic compliment. Since federal law doesn’t allow age statements on gin (go figure), they just call it the “barrel finished reserve.” [Purchase]

JIM BEAM SIGNATURE CRAFT HIGH RYE AND ROLLED OUT

While technically two new bottles, the latest addition to the Jim Beam Signature Craft series includes two new 11yr old, 90 proof bourbons–High Rye and Rolled Oat. Each bottle is made with one, unconventional ingredient in the mashbill, but both are supposed to be delicious, affordable and top-shelf. [Purchase]

OREGON STARKA VODKA

The result of a collaboration between Big Bottom Distilling, Bull Run Distilling and Indio Spirits and Distillery, the Oregon Starka Project is a 91ABV vodka that’s produced in small batches and finished in oak casks. Each of the three collaborators has produced their own take on the traditional Starka vodka and the results will be released seasonally. [Purchase]

WHISTLEPIG OLD WORLD SERIES

Whistlepig’s has been doing rye for a while, but their latest release, the Old World Series, is actually all about wine. Available as a limited release in a few different states, the Old World Series starts with the 12 year, 95% rye, 5% malted barley mash bill WhistlePig Rye you already love, but then it’s finished in Sauternes, Madeira or Port barrels for a whole new range of flavors. [Purchase]

BRUICHLADDICH PORT-CHARLOTTE SCOTTISH BARLEY WHISKEY

Designed to showcase the raw ingredients, materials and processes that go into a good bottle of scotch, Bruichladdich’s new Port-Charlotte Scottish Barley Whiskey is the taste of Islay in a glass. With a depth of flavor you’d need a few pocket notebooks to fully describe, this is a glass of whisky you’ll be enjoying over and over for a long time. [Purchase]

BLADE AND BOW KENTUCKY STRAIGHT BOURBON WHISKEY

Born from some of the oldest remaining stocks at the Stitzel-Weller distillery, the newest addition to the Diageo whiskey portfolio is as distinguished as it is nuanced. Named for the parts of a skeleton key, the award-winning Blade and Bow Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey will be available in a standard and limited, 22 year old variant. [Purchase]

[MIKA27]

URSA MAJOR BLACK WALNUT RAZOR

It's not going to change your life. It probably won't even give you a closer shave than what you're already using. But it's extremely unlikely your current razor looks as good as the Ursa Major Black Walnut Razor. It's compatible with Gillette Mach 3 cartridges — it ships with one so it's ready to use — and features a handle of reclaimed black walnut, sourced from New York and the southeast coast. Made in Vermont.

[MIKA27]

Kung Fury - Full Movie

Kung Fury is an over-the-top 80’s (Set) action comedy that was crowd funded through Kickstarter.

During an unfortunate series of events a friend of Kung Fury is assasinated by the most dangerous kung fu master criminal of all time; Adolf Hitler, a.k.a Kung Führer. Kung Fury decides to travel back in time, to Nazi Germany, in order to kill Hitler and end the Nazi empire once and for all.

The campaign that was launched in December 2013 was backed by more than 17 000 people who together gave more than $630,000.00

MIKA: Nostalgia overload!!!!

[MIKA27]

Saving The Last Of The World's Glaciers By Sending Them To Antarctica

Glaciology is in the middle of a slow-moving crisis. As the climate warms, glaciers are shrinking and then disappearing. So scientists have come up with a plan to put ice cores from melting glaciers in the most permanent cold storage possible on Earth — in Antarctica.

Glaciologists extract ice cores from glaciers all over the world to study ancient climates. The cores can run hundreds of feet deep, reaching into ice that is hundreds of thousands years old. The gases and sediments trapped in the ice are a frozen snapshot of the past. As glaciers melt, so do these valuable historical clues.

Ice cores are already stored in facilities like the USGS’s National Ice Core Laboratory in Colorado. But this plan has its flaws: A power cut to the freezers could undo decades of work. Plus keeping all that ice so cold is energy-intensive.

Antarctica, on the other hand, is the world’s natural freezer. Even with climate change, the ends of the Earth will likely stay cold enough to preserve the ice. The current plan, reports the BBC, is to bring ice cores to a snow cave at Concordia Research Station, a permanently manned Antarctic base run by the French and Italian. Teams are already planning to collect glacial ice from the Alps and Andes to ship to Concordia next year.

Ice cores in Antarctica will obviously be difficult to retrieve, but that’s not the point. The goal here is long-term storage, an insurance policy for a future when the Earth’s icy historical record has otherwise melted away.

[MIKA27]

Man Threatens Suicide, Police Kill Him

Justin Way was in bed with a knife. His girlfriend called a non-emergency number to try to get him into a hospital. Minutes later, cops shot him dead.

On May 11, Justin Way was drinking and threatening to hurt himself. His father, George Way, said his son was a recovering alcoholic and had been alcohol-free for five weeks.

“He just lost his job, and he had a setback,” he said.

Way’s live-in girlfriend, Kaitlyn Christine Lyons, said she’d caught Justin drinking a bottle of vodka, which she took away from him to pour out. She said he was drunk, lying in their bed with a large knife, saying he would hurt himself with it. She called a non-emergency number in an attempt to get her boyfriend to a local St. Augustine, Florida, hospital for help—and told them she did not feel threatened.

“My brother has been Baker Acted three times because he was threatening to hurt himself so I figured that would happen with Justin,” said Lyons. Florida’s Baker Act allows the involuntary institutionalization of an individual, and it can be initiated by law enforcement officials.

“The only person Justin threatened was himself and I honestly don’t think he wanted to die.”

Minutes later, two St. Johns County Sheriff’s deputies, 26-year-old Jonas Carballosa and 32-year-old Kyle Braig, arrived at the home, armed with assault rifles, and told Kaitlyn to wait outside.

“I thought they were going into war,” she remembered thinking when she first saw the large guns. Within moments, Justin was shot dead.

George Way said the initial report he received from Detective Mike Smith detailed an incident wherein his officers said they were attacked by Justin with a knife. Way said Smith told him Justin had threatened Kaitlyn. Kaitlyn denies this.

Denise Way, Justin’s mom, said the detective relayed to her that “they told Justin to drop the knife and he didn’t—so they shot him because ‘That’s what we do.’”

Denise said Smith then told her about “this new trend in law enforcement now—it’s called suicide by cop.” She said Smith explained “suicide by cop” is when suicidal people provoke the police in an effort to end their own lives.

She said Smith wouldn’t tell her family where or how many times their son was shot.

Justin’s parents do not believe their son was a threat, because they think Justin was shot while still lying in bed.

“If Justin was coming after them with a knife, at 6-foot-4, wouldn’t there be blood splattered all over the room?” George said.

Way’s parents brought Justin’s mattress to the curb after his death. George says he believes there was a bullet dug out of the bed from a hole found in the middle of it. He also said the blood was contained entirely within the mattress, and that it did not hit the walls or the floor.

In a phone interview with Commander Chuck Mulligan of the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office, The Daily Beast asked if it was standard procedure to bring assault rifles, but not mental health professionals, to a scene where someone is suicidal.

“If the deputies feel that that is the appropriate weapon system to use, then yes,” said Mulligan.

If the deputies used tasers and one prong missed, Mulligan said, they might be left in a difficult and potentially dangerous situation.

“They were in a very tight space within a residence,” he said.

Mulligan added that the difference between an assault rifle and a handgun would not have affected the outcome in Justin Way’s case.

“Whether it’s a rifle or not, in many senses, is a non-issue,” he said. “A bullet comes out of a handgun, a bullet comes out of a rifle.”

This wasn’t the first time that law enforcement in the area had been involved in a fatal shooting. One of the two officers that went into Justin Way’s home, Kyle Braig, was involved in a fatal shooting with a knife-wielding man five months ago. A few days after Way was killed, another suicidal man was injured by St Johns County deputies.

On Facebook, Jonas Carballosa, the second deputy involved in the Justin Way shooting, once posted the following quote: “Most people respect the badge. Everyone respects the gun.”

Way’s parents said they do not ever want to call the police again—for anything.

Kaitlyn Lyons said she hopes the police rethink how guns are used in cases where people are calling about those who are suicidal or seeking help.

“I think they should come in using other things,” she said. “And I think they definitely need to figure out how to handle suicidal people.”

[MIKA27]

Tracing France's History in the Heroin Trade

A couple of weeks ago I found myself sitting outside a bar in Marseille's Panier district, the old town, waiting for the daughter of the man who I'd been told was the city's "last Godfather." Before he died in his cell in Baumettes Prison in 1984, Gaëtan Zampa was so feared and respected in the south of France that even some of the police who pursued him were reluctant to actually catch him. "You don't like to put a lion in a cage," they'd say.

The subject of a new fast-paced French-Belgian crime thriller directed by Cédric Jimenez called The Connection, Zampa was the heir of his family business, which was, yep, you guessed it, the notorious heroin smuggling operation known as the French Connection.

The French Connection began life in the 1930s, when the Corsican gangsters Paul Carbone and François Spirito were looking for a way to connect the opium fields of Turkey and Lebanon with the hungry veins of America's junkies. Marseille, a busy port, provided the perfect staging ground. They would ship in morphine base, hire French chemists to process it for a couple of weeks at temporary labs in the suburbs, and then smuggle it back onboard ships bound for America.

As World War II took hold in Europe, Italian fascists began to stamp out the trade. It soon recovered, and there are those—like Noam Chomsky—who believe the CIA was involved in supporting the Corsican mafia to restart their business in exchange for breaking up French strikes and helping Allied troops.

After the war, the Corsicans were joined by gangs from Armenia and Algeria, as well as Chinese-Vietnamese networks. They were all moving heroin and various other forms of contraband across the Atlantic to New York, Montreal, Mexico City, and Buenos Aires. The Armenian gangs proved themselves particularly adept at negotiating with the major wholesalers of opium and morphine base who were located in Istanbul and Gaziantep.

As Dr. Ryan Gingeras, author of Sultans of Smack: Heroin, Organized Crime, and the Making of Modern Turkey, tells me over email: "To think of a French Connection as a singular network dating back to the 30s is somewhat misleading. The milieu was not a centralized group."

Still, business was booming for the various gangs. During the 50s, the largest gang was controlled by the Corsican Antoine Guerin, and combined the various groups were moving an average of 600 pounds of heroin each month to the United States. The Connection became famed for the purity of their product, thanks in part to the French chemist Joseph Cesari. Cesari was nicknamed "Mr. 98 percent" for his almost-pure product, a remarkable feat when his competitors rarely exceeded 70 percent.

Trade increased so much during the 60s that by the end of the decade the French Connection was moving between 40 and 44 tons per year to the States, some 80 percent of America's total heroin consumption. If you were Lou Reed, waiting for the man in New York in 1967, the dope he was about to sell you had almost certainly summered in the south of France.

The operation moved from outlaw infamy to unwanted Hollywood fame in 1971 with the release of the film The French Connection, starring Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider. Adapted from journalist Robin Moore's book, it tells a lightly fictionalized version of the painstaking surveillance operation carried out by two New York police officers in the lead up to the arrest of French television personality Jacques Angelvin, who had arrived in America with a 1960 Buick Invicta that had 112 pounds of heroin secreted inside it. The mastermind Jean Jehan, who had helped talk Angelvin into it, escaped unscathed—a fact that The French Connection director William Friedkin attributed to the French police's reluctance to arrest a man who had been a hero of the wartime resistance.

The increased notoriety of the French Connection brought with it new problems. In 1970, the French government introduced a new act of parliament which heavily cracked down on the trafficking of illegal drugs. Thierry Colombié, an expert on organized crime in France, tells me in an email: "The 1970 Act was a gun blow against heroin production in Marseille. The French state had been left with no choice: an American report had highlighted that there were 40 teams of traffickers operating, mainly from Marseille. Nixon put his fist down, and it was a warning that paid off."

In Marseille, a young magistrate named Pierre Michel was leading a reinvigorated attempt to stamp out the trade. Over a period of 14 months, starting in February 1972, six major labs were found and dismantled in the suburbs of Marseille. Jimenez's The Connection tells the story of Michel, played by The Artist's Jean Dujardin, locked in battle with Zampa, who was by this point controlling much of the heroin traffic out of the city.

When Pierre Michel was assassinated, on October 21, 1981, the police immediately assumed Zampa had been behind it. In fact, the murder had been carried out by a hitman named François Checchi, employed by a rival gang headed by François Girard and Homer Filippi. As Zampa's empire, already undermined by in-fighting, began to crumble, the former kingpin went on the run.

His daughter, Celine, was just a child when Michel died. When she arrives to meet me for a drink in the Panier district she's chic and charming. In the years since her father died she's turned down many offers from the French press to speak about him, but with the release of The Connection she's decided she wants to tell her side of the story. Her inside account shows Zampa in a different light—as a devoted family man, even while running one of the planet's biggest drug trafficking organizations.

She remembers exactly where she was when they heard about Michel's assassination. "Our family were all together," she says. "As soon as he found out he knew it was over, because he knew that the finger of blame would be pointed at him and that he would be found guilty. My father was the highest within the hierarchy, so it had a big ripple effect on everything else. It wasn't just the police who wanted to get my father. There were a lot of people with dirty hands."

Zampa spent almost three years on the run. Before he was caught, in October 1983, they arrested his wife Christiane, Celine's mother. There's a story the Marseille police still tell about how they built a special exercise yard for her with a roof, because they were so convinced that Zampa, in his omnipotence, would otherwise swoop down in a helicopter to rescue her.

Celine tells me about visiting both her parents in prison, and I ask whether she ever wished her father had made different choices in life. "No, I don't," she says. "That was the life he was born into. He was the best at what he did. He had to do it. He didn't want it for us, but that was his lot. He was a man with honor and good values within his profession. He couldn't have done anything differently."

Once, Celine and her brother watched The Godfather. They knew exactly what their father did, but they struggled to square the images of Brando and Pacino with the doting dad they knew. "I couldn't really see him in The Godfather," she says, "but if I think about it, there are similarities. The emotion, the sentiment: there was an undercurrent that I recognized. The sense of family, the sense of honor, the sense of values, the hierarchy: all that I recognize. There's a triangle of respect between the professional side, and the family side. The family side is just as important."

Celine believes her father was always something of a reluctant gangster. Even if the French Connection had not begun to crumble, she knows he would never have allowed his own children to follow in his footsteps. "It was out of the question," she says. "We always respected that. He instilled us with the great values and good morals that he hoped we would take to follow a different path. He knew he led a very dangerous life and he protected us from that. He was a business man, but at the same time he knew there was a lifespan involved in what he was doing. He wanted to equip his children to keep us away from that."

Despite his keenness to keep her out of the business, Celine actually laments the end of that era. She believes that in some ways Marseille misses the order that comes when crime is an organized, family-run business. "He was really well-liked and respected, and he brought something to the city," she says. "He brought a sense of order to the heart of the city. In fact, he brought a sense of rules and regulations which are missing now. At the end of the day, he was a man who reigned through respect. As long as you operated within that, you knew that you were looked after."

Finally, I ask her what she thinks of when she remembers her father, Gaëtan Zampa, the French Connection's last Godfather?

"L'Amore," she says.

[MIKA27]

Solar Impulse Is Currently On A Epic 6 Day Pacific Ocean Crossing

Having taken off over the weekend from Nanjing, China, Solar Impulse is on the longest leg of its journey. With a cruise speed under 100 km/h, the 8500 km journey will take up to 6 days and nights.

In comparison, a Boeing 747 could do the same trip in about 10 hours. Of course Solar impulse is doing it completely powered by the sun, as part of a multi leg, round the world trip.

The plane has already set records, but the latest leg will be even longer.

Despite going so slowly, Solar Impulse is actually wider than a 747, with a huge 72m wingspan. Even so, it weighs a tiny 2300 kg.

Powered by 17,248 solar cells with a 66 kW total capacity, Solar Impulse stores electricity during the day from solar in batteries so it can keep flying at night.

There is only a single pilot, who needs oxygen in the unpressurised cockpit. While the plane does have an autopilot, a 6 day and night flight in the cramped cockpit is way worse than even the longest passenger flight in economy.

For the full experience, check out the Solar Impulse website. Not only does it have a life stream of the mission, there is other cool info such as the battery level, how much solar it is gathering and the altitude.

At the time of writing, Solar Impulse is cruising over the Sea of Japan, with the ultimate goal of landing in Hawaii. Watch the live stream below.

[MIKA27]

An Inside Look At The Construction Of NASA's Next Mission To Mars

Preparations for NASA’s next mission to Mars are kicking into high gear. And the technology the space agency is building for the Martian lander slated to launch in 2016 is enough to make science fiction fans foam at the mouth.

The mission, Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight for short) is going to be the very first devoted to studying the interior structure of the Red Planet. Exploring Mars’ deep subsurface will shed light on how the planet has evolved geologically over time, but InSight could also offer clues about Earth’s future and the evolution of rocky planets at large.

Mars, roughly half the size of Earth, lost all of its core heat eons ago, which in turn caused tectonic activity to grind to a halt. In the distant future, something similar will happen on the blue marble, and our rapidly-ageing little brother might show us what to expect.

According to NASA, the technical capabilities of InSight represent a critical step toward a manned mission to the Red Planet, which the space agency hopes to ship off in the 2030s. Let’s have a look at some of the components of the geologically-minded craft now under construction by Lockheed Martin.

Solar arrays on InSight are deployed in this test inside a clean room at Lockheed Martin Space Systems.

A top view of InSight’s cruise stage, which has its own solar arrays, thrusters, and radio antennas.

In this photo, the back shell of InSight is being lowered onto the mission’s lander. InSight’s back shell, along with a heat shield, together comprise an aeroshell which will protect the lander from burning up as it plunges into Mars’ upper atmosphere.

The heat shield, under construction.

The most important part of InSight — the science deck, containing all the tools necessary to carry out plenty of awesome sciencing. Or so we think. All we know so far about this oversized motherboard is that the large circular component is a covering that will protect InSight’s seismometer — a device used to record earthquakes, volcanic activity, and other types of below ground motion — after the instrument is placed on the Martian ground.

WTF is this?! Oh, it’s the guts of the lander, being assembled by Lockheed Martin engineers in a clean room. Rad, I was worried somebody let Doc Brown loose on the premises.

And of course, no space mission would be complete without a big-arse parachute to make the landing extra soft, amirite?

[MIKA27]

US Tried To Attack North Korea's Nukes With A Computer Virus And Failed

Sometimes being an intensely secretive regime trading in relentless obscurity has its perks: The US tried to secretly attack North Korea’s nuclear program with a computer virus, but failed because it couldn’t find the information necessary to infect the North Korean system with a virus.

When the US launched a cyber-attack on Iran in 2009, it destroyed uranium centrifuges by infecting the Iranian nuclear program with a sophisticated computer virus called Stuxnet. If things had gone according to plan, Iran wouldn’t have been the only country in Bush’s Axis of Evil with janked-up centrifuges, according to a report from Reuters.

According to one US intelligence source, Stuxnet’s developers produced a related virus that would be activated when it encountered Korean-language settings on an infected machine.

But US agents could not access the core machines that ran Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program, said another source, a former high-ranking intelligence official who was briefed on the program.

The idea that the US may have tried to attack North Korea’s uranium with a virus like Stuxnet has been floated before; Gizmodo syndicated a story by Kim Zetter and Spencer Ackerman discussing the possibility of an attack exactly like this almost five years ago. Zetter and Ackerman pointed out that similarities between Iran and North Korea’s uranium enrichment systems meant that a modified version of Stuxnet could possibly give Pyongyang a big problem.

But according to Reuters’ sources in the intelligence community, that attack was never carried out successfully.

In years since, the US and North Korea haven’t exactly been at online peace. The FBI blamed the North Korean government for the hack of Sony Pictures, and after US President Obama promised a proportionate response, North Korea’s internet experienced a widespread outage. That was never confirmed as a US attack, but come on — as the Reuters’ report suggests, these are two countries looking for each others’ digital weak spots.

[MIKA27]

Open-Source Cyborg Hand Is Making Prosthetics More Accessible Than Ever

A generation ago, getting a prosthetic limb fitted usually amounted to a having a heavy, nearly useless hunk of plastic and metal tacked onto your body. But bionic hands such as this one illustrate just how quickly that’s all changing.

HACKberry, brainchild of the Japanese company exii, wants to become a game changer for those in need of a new arm, and it’s doing a good job convincing us it’s got the chops. The bionic limb, whose blueprints and source code are freely available, has a smartphone for a brain and uses camera batteries to power itself.

Most of the device is comprised of 3D printed parts that can be taken apart and swapped out. By encouraging transparency and openness in all aspects of development, exii hopes to garner the attention of the maker community and encourage faster innovation.

Among the hand’s more impressive features are its ductile wrist and fingers, which allow the wearer to make unusually expressive movements, pick up small objects, leaf through magazines and even tie shoes. At less than $US300 USD, it’s an absolute steal compared to most cutting-edge prosthetics.

It’s also about as futuristically cool looking as can be.

[MIKA27]

Inside California's Forgotten Grasslands

Filled with hidden canyons created by the San Andreas fault and home to the only antelope in Southern California, the Carrizo Plain is a fascinating, inhospitable, alien world. And one you probably haven’t heard of, much less visited. Let’s change that.

No one would ever hold it against you for not knowing that the Carrizo Plains exist. Located in Central California, halfway between San Luis Obispo and Bakersfield and directly between state highways 56 and 166, the Carrizo Plains are one of California’s last remaining natural grasslands, and the largest in the state. Though with the recent drought you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a bit more desert than grassland.

About

To appreciate the Carrizo Plains, you need to dig into the finite details of the area. To the casual observer, it may seem that the area is a barren wasteland filled with next-to-nothing. But to the trained eye, you’ll find things here that you’ll see nowhere else. If you’ve ever wanted to learn a bit more about the famous San Andreas Fault you’ll be happy to know that the Carrizo Plains contain some of the most visible surface fractures in the fault’s 850-mile stretch. There’s also abundant wildlife within the National Monument, including a flourishing bird habitat and the largest concentration of endangered species in California.

Adventures are plentiful in the Carrizo Plains National Monument, as it’s officially called — especially if you’re exploring by way of four-wheel drive or adventure motorcycle. Though it’s imperative that you stay on designated and marked trails, the environment is much more fragile than you’d think. But don’t worry, there’s plenty of trails.

How to get there

First decide if you’d like to explore the Carrizo Plains starting from the north (nearest to San Francisco) on Highway 56, or from the south (nearest to Los Angeles) on Highway 166. Soda Lake Road is the National Monument’s main thoroughfare, and connects you to several different 4WD trails. It is a scenic, but not challenging road, 18 of its total 37 miles are paved, the rest is well-maintained dirt road.

Elkhorn Road follows the western side of the National Monument and provides a more remote, personal experience away from Soda Lake Road, but a high-clearance vehicle is recommended. This is the road I personally prefer to travel. If there are washouts, the road can have some minor technical sections, but low range would not likely not be required. There are several off shoots of Elkhorn Road on both the north and south ends of the road, with more technically challenging areas to the south.

What to know

It is best to go to the Carrizo Plains when it is dry (perhaps a benefit of the drought). Several roads you travel on will be marked “Impassible When Wet” and they mean it. No matter if you’re in a low-clearance hybrid or a Jeep on 37-inch mud terrains. The Carrizo Plains are a sensitive ecosystem that must be respected, in addition, the fine soil creates a sticky mud unlike anything you’ve ever seen.

Bring binoculars, animal sightings are frequent, and the area is a destination for avid birders. Be sure to bring plenty of maps, cellular service is non-existant within the Carrizo Plains, and the highways surrounding it.

The Bureau of Land Management has the most up-to-date information on restrictions, camping information, and general knowledge. Here’s a link.

What to see

Located on the North end of the Carrizo Plains, Soda Lake is a must-see. Park your vehicle on San Diego Creek Road (which coincidentally connects Soda Lake Road with Elkhorn Road) and take a short walk to the dry alkali lakebed. If it has rained recently, you’ll find some water in it which will make for an amazing photo.

Painted Rock is an awesome collection of ancient pictographs and petroglyphs created by the Chumash, Salinan, and Yokuts people over thousands of years. It’s worth the hike, but due to recent vandalism by arseholes, you can’t take any photos, nor can you bring your dog. Sorry Wiley.

If you want to see the power of the San Andreas Fault, check out Wallace Creek. You’ll need a basic understanding of geology to appreciate what you see, but the creek bed, which runs perpendicular to the fault line, has been shifted over 425 feet.

Elk and pronghorn call the Carrizo Plains home, and if you’re lucky you’ll see one. I’ve been here 5 times and I haven’t seen one once, damnit. On the subject of interesting species, also keep an eye out for the super-duper-seriously-endangered California condor, and the awesomely-adorable San Joaquin kit fox, which is also endangered.

The Audubon Society classifies the Carrizo Plains as an Important Bird Area (IBI).

So bring your binoculars, like this smart pretty lady did.

Once upon a time, the Carrizo Plains were used as a cattle grazing area.

Remnants of this past can be easily found if you get off the main road.

Elkhorn Road has some straight fast sections, only broken up by a gathering of tumbleweeds.

Farming relics from an age gone by litter the landscape.

Bullet holes, because it’s artsy.

The occasional dust devil can be spotted if you’re in the right place at the right time.

Bring your sunglasses. Soda Lake is brighter-than-bright on a sunny day.

I wouldn’t really know, but I guess I’d compare surface of Soda Lake to walking on the moon.

We took a bone-stock Jeep Wrangler Unlimited, it had no issues. You could do with much less, so long as it’s dry.

[MIKA27]

Britain Sent Loads Of Convicts To America, Not Just Australia

The joke about Australia is that it was founded by a bunch of criminals. And from 1788 until 1868, Britain did send roughly 164,000 convicts to the land down under. America’s dirty little secret? The same exact thing was happening there. In fact, experts estimate that over 52,000 British prisoners were shipped off to colonial America.

Britain had been shipping convicts to America for decades before they started sending them to Australia. In fact, it was precisely because of America’s fight for independence that the Brits had to start sending their criminals to Australia. But from 1718 until 1775, convict transportation to the American colonies flourished. Some estimates claim that almost 10 per cent of migrants to America during this time were British convicts.

Typically, getting banished to America was for a term of either seven or fourteen years, after which the convict could theoretically come back the Britain. Escaping home early, however, was punishable by death. And it wasn’t just men. Some female convicts were transported to the American colonies as well, for crimes such as being “lewd” and “walk[ing] the streets after ten at night.”

Many Australians have more or less embraced their convict history. But if you’re an American who had no idea that your country’s founding included a huge prison population, you’re not alone. Historically, Americans have not been too keen on discussing the fact that convicts came to what would eventually become known as the United States.

As Anthony Vaver explains in his book Bound With An Iron Chain, historians have sought to cover up the fact that so many prisoners were sent to America:

Through the 19th century, most historians simply ignored the institution, and those who did recognise it usually claimed that nearly all of the people who were transported were political prisoners.

No less a figure than Thomas Jefferson himself tried to downplay the history of penal transportation to America. Writing in 1786, Jefferson insisted that even if British criminals had been sent, they must’ve been small in number:

The Malefactors sent to America were not sufficient in number to merit enumeration as one class out of three which peopled America. It was at a late period of their history that the practice began. I have no book by me which enables me to point out the date of its commencement. But I do not think the whole number sent would amount to 2000 and being principally men eaten up with disease, they married seldom and propagated little. I do not suppose that themselves and their descendants are at present four thousand, which is little more than one thousandth part of the whole inhabitants.

Except that this wasn’t true. British convicts came over in droves, and free Americans weren’t too happy about it. In fact, even before the Transportation Act of 1718 really opened the doors for Britain’s dumping of undesirables in America, some colonies tried to pass laws that would prohibit the practice. In 1670 authorities in Virginia passed an act that prohibited convicts from being sent to the area. This, unsurprisingly, was overruled by the king.

Pennsylvania tried to do something similar in 1722 by passing a tax for the importation of any people for servitude who had been found “guilty of heinous crimes.” The king, naturally, said that this wasn’t allowed either, proclaiming in 1731: “Whereas acts have been passed in America for laying duties on felons imported, — in direct opposition to an act of Parliament for the more effectual transportation of felons, — it is our royal will and more pleasure that you approve of no duties laid on the importation of any felons into Pennsylvania.”

Many of those sent to the American colonies were put to work doing manual labour. From an 1896 paperon the subject by James Davie Butler:

Planters both in the West Indies and in Virginia, which was reckoned a part of them far on in the eighteenth century, needed laborers, and welcomed a supply from whatever quarter. […] As Virginia’s staple was tobacco, it naturally became a centre of white as well as black servitude, whether its victims were indented or not, and criminal or not.

Americans have rather romantic ideas about how their country was founded. We’ve long been fond of the mythology surrounding persecuted people freely travelling to the New World and building the greatest country on Earth. But, like all history, it’s much, much messier than that. Our history includes plenty of genocide, slavery, and just a dash of prison folk — and the latter may be news to many Americans who wouldn’t hesitate to make jokes about Australia being populated by the descendants of criminals.

But Australia really wasn’t special in that regard. Shipping criminals halfway around the world was part of America’s sordid history, too.

[MIKA27]

Protecting Priceless Art From Natural Disasters

In New York City, toward the southern end of the High Line, a new building seems to float gracefully above the ground. Some critics have compared it to a ship, a nod to New York’s nautical past. But its angled gray surfaces, and the way in which it hovers in the air suspended on thin columns, make it seem more like a spaceship version of Michael J. Fox’s DeLorean in Back to the Future.

The building, which opened on May 1, is the architect Renzo Piano’s new Whitney Museum of American Art, following a relocation from the museum’s old home on the Upper East Side. Piano himself has acknowledged the aeronautical aspects of the building’s design. “The new Whitney is almost ready to take off. But don’t worry, it won’t, because it weighs 28,000 tons,” he told a crowd at the official opening event.

The reviews of the new design have been glowing (The New York Times called it a “glittery emblem of a new urban capital.”) But the new Whitney’s most intriguing feature might be one that’s gone largely unnoticed: its custom flood-mitigation system, which was designed halfway through the museum’s construction, in the aftermath of 2012’s Hurricane Sandy, when more than five million gallons of water flooded the site. The system’s features include a 15,500-pound door designed by engineers who build water-tight latches for the U.S. Navy’s Destroyers. “Buildings now have to be designed like submarines,” said Kevin Schorn, an assistant to Piano, reflecting on the demands of a warming world and what it might mean for design. “Do we have to completely rethink our infrastructure? Do we have to completely rethink everything?”

The Whitney’s system, with its technical sophistication and aesthetic sleekness, is proving to be a model for other U.S. art museums asking the same questions. While the country has been stuck in a surreal debate over the reality of climate change, disaster-preparedness has become a matter of pressing concern, and institutions in vulnerable areas are having to respond in real time. The museum’s actions—turning to specialists in naval engineering, for example—augur an era of improvised ingenuity, of localized efforts to address a problem in dire need of a global solution.

The Whitney, whose lobby is 10 feet above sea-level, is now designed to be water-tight against a flood level of 16.5 feet—seven feet higher than waters reached during Hurricane Sandy. The fortification includes a 500-foot-long mobile wall, comprised of stacked aluminum beams, that can be erected in less than seven hours. The flood door, located inside the building’s western facade facing the Hudson River, is 14 feet tall by 27 feet wide, and looks like something you might find at the back of an aircraft carrier. But despite its mass, the door is perfectly balanced so that a single person can push it shut. Both the wall and door are designed to withstand 6,750 pounds of impact from debris.

Schorn, an engineer who helped design almost every aspect of the Whitney’s exterior, has spent the past four years flying around the world while finalizing its various elements. As such, the story of the Whitney’s construction reads like a particularly rapturous passage from a Thomas Friedman book on globalization. The steel for the exterior gray planks originated in Belgium and was shipped to Germany to be cut and pressed by a special device. The pre-cast concrete was made in Quebec. The windows’ color-neutral, low-emissivity (i.e., heat-reflective) glass was made in Germany. The stone in the lobby is Spanish, but was shipped to Italy to be cut and fabricated. The lighting came from Italy; the audio-visual system from Canada.

Along with the more technical concerns, Piano also wanted to preserve the aesthetics of the building, which required engineers to design a flood-mitigation system that was all but invisible. And they succeeded: Reviews of the building have noted its interactiveness with the surrounding neighborhood, due to the lack of barriers between the interior and piazza-like space outdoors. “At the Whitney you’re kind of always in New York, always in the West Village, a little bit like you would be if you were with the artists in their studio,” Schorn said.

While flooding is a worldwide phenomenon—whether from storms or yearly rainy seasons—it’s only recently that interest in prevention has spiked. “After Sandy, the number of inquiries skyrocketed for us,” said Tom Themel, an engineer at Walz & Krenzer who helped design the Whitney’s system. “There’s no really comprehensive program that protects the entire city, literally building by building.”

The Whitney’s move to build a flood-protection system may be pointing to the future of Manhattan architecture. Until the city decides to invest in something like the former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s $20-billion proposal for seawalls, buildings in vulnerable areas will be similarly exposed. The Harvard geologist Daniel P. Schrag has cited Hurricane Sandy's 13-foot storm surge as an example of what will, by 2050, be the “new norm on the Eastern seaboard.” And leading climate scientists have predicted that the intensity of hurricanes will increase in a warmer climate. (Sandy caused roughly $70 billion in damage overall and the deaths of more than 230 people.)

The Whitney’s flood-mitigation system includes a temporary wall and two flood doors, all designed by Walz & Krenzer.

Other art institutions are taking similar precautions, in New York and beyond. In 2013, the Pérez Art Museum Miami moved into a cutting-edge facility that was specifically designed to withstand hurricanes. The museum is raised on an elevated platform above the flood plain and features the largest sheets of hurricane-resistant glass in the U.S. Its art storage space is more than 46 feet above sea level, and its signature hanging gardens are reinforced with enough steel to withstand category-five hurricane winds. The museum also features an advanced backup-electricity system that runs on generators. “We can be refueled by truck or by barge,” noted Alexa Ferra, the Pérez’s public relations manager.

Similarly, the Rubin Museum of Art, in Manhattan’s Chelsea, has a disaster-preparedness plan that runs 151 pages, and a few years ago invested in fortifying its roof against flooding and high-speed winds. The museum faced challenges in the aftermath of Sandy that it never anticipated: “Simple things, like not being able to charge a cell phone,” said Patrick Sears, the museum’s executive director. “We now have high-capacity, long-term storage batteries on site just for that reason.” Sears compared the unpredictable, evolving challenge of protecting art from environmental threats to the mission of a hospital. “We think of the art as being patients,” he said. “And we don’t want them to die.”

The 9/11 Memorial and Museum, in lower Manhattan, took on 22 million gallons of water during Sandy and was flooded with seven feet of standing water, prompting it to work extensively with the Port Authority to assess its vulnerabilities. (An adjacent construction site had caused water to pour in.) Joe Daniels, the Memorial’s president and C.E.O., said the museum took precautions to make sure the premises were sealed and equipped with enough pumping power in case of leaks. Additional protocols were also put in place to move sensitive artifacts to higher ground if need be.

While the Museum of Modern Art sits on more protected ground in mid-Manhattan, its storage facility in Long Island City is near sea-level. Several years ago the museum invested in a flood-retaining pool, which helped keep the facility dry during Sandy. “Obviously we’re on higher alert post-Sandy,” said James Gara, the MoMA’s chief operating officer, “and we have more backups, as anyone would have.” Gara said the museum was considering other investments, looking ahead to the possibility of even more catastrophic events that could cause a longer-term loss of power.

These days, the Meatpacking District doesn’t feel like a neighborhood that’s threatened by the elements; rather, it’s enjoying a new cultural vibrancy. The Whitney—“a building that flies,” Renzo Piano said at the ribbon-cutting ceremony, with Michelle Obama sitting nearby—looms large above it all, helping revitalize this little triangle of Manhattan between the West Village and Chelsea.

For now, the only sign of the threat looming on the horizon are the small, nearly inconspicuous holes on the sidewalk—where the mobile wall's posts lock into the concrete—wrapping around the eastern, southern, and western sides of the building in perfectly spaced pairs. The day will come when they’re needed. Until then, the aluminum beams remain stowed in a warehouse, the 15,500-pound door opened wide, waiting to protect billions of dollars’ worth of American art.

The piazza-like atmosphere outside is relaxed and festive, a testament to the power of architecture to take what might have been closed and forbidding and render it open and inviting. And this openness, the lack of barriers between the museum and the city, is made feasible by the simple fact that, in a matter of hours, this stunning new American landmark can transform itself into a fortress.

[MIKA27]

EVEL KNIEVEL WIDE WORLD OF SPORT SPECIAL

The Evel Knievel Wide World Of Sport Special is a documentary style film covering the life and times of one of America’s greatest stuntmen.

Evel is still listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the survivor of “most bones broken in a lifetime” – he suffered 433 documented fractures over the course of his professional life. Somewhat amazingly, he lived to the age of 69 and died of a non-stunt related disease.

Evel was inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 1999 and is remembered today as one of the most iconic American characters of the ’60s and ’70s. If you’d like to read more about him, you can click here to visit his Motorcycle Hall of Fame entry.

[MIKA27]

Medal of Honor At Last for Black WWI Veteran

After almost a century, Henry Johnson, nicknamed the “black death” for his heroism in the Argonne, will be fully honored.

Henry Johnson, all 5-feet-4 of him, was given the name “black death” for his valor in the Argonne forest during World War I. Cries of “Oh, you Black Death!” at a homecoming parade in Harlem greeted his return to the U.S. after the war. But Johnson’s legend quickly faded. He was too black to be an American hero and too crippled by war to hold his old job. He died in 1929, just over a decade after the war ended, destitute and unheralded.

Henry’s son, Herman Johnson, was raised by a great aunt and uncle. He knew his father only from occasional meetings in public parks and later visits to VA hospital rooms. After his father’s death, there wasn’t even a grave for Herman to visit.

As far as Herman knew, his father’s remains lay unmarked somewhere in a pauper’s field.

Until the past few decades there was no official award recognizing the man they called “Black Death.” Nothing in the government or military record books to preserve the legacy of a man Teddy Roosevelt had called one of the “five bravest Americans” to serve in World War I. So, in his later life, the younger Johnson fought, joined by senators and military veterans, to have the military award his father the commendations that he’d been denied during his short life. “Fighting for your country is an honor, but they would not give black people any honors,” Johnson said shortly before he died.

Both the Johnson men are dead now but Herman’s daughter, Tara Johnson, will be at the White House this week to see her father’s hopes realized.

On June 2, nearly a century after Henry Johnson made his legend fighting in Europe, President Obama will posthumously award him the Medal of Honor. Along with Johnson, the president will present the Medal of Honor to Army Sergeant William Shemin, a Jewish World War I veteran.

In the years that they have waited for this recognition, the Johnson family has kept up its tradition of military service. “Grandfather was World War I,” Tara Johnson said. “Dad was a Tuskegee Airman, my cousin Herman was a U.S. Marine, and my son DeMarqus was with the first Marines in Fallujah, Iraq.”

Her grandfather, Henry Johnson, left North Carolina in his teens and headed for Albany, N.Y., looking for steady work. After bouncing around as a laborer, he took a job as a Red Cap porter, one of the few positions at the time that promised some upward mobility to black Americans.

In 1917, the year President Woodrow Wilson entered the U.S. into World War I, Johnson joined the military. He volunteered in the 369th Infantry regiment, an all-black unit of the New York National Guard. For their first year of service the soldiers of the 369th were, at best, an afterthought for the Army. The men who would later take the name Harlem Hellfighters were subjected to racist abuse and assigned to perform “labor service duties” while white units received combat training.

It wasn’t until the 369th was transferred from the command of the segregated U.S. Army to the French army that its soldiers were sent into battle. Under the French, the 369th stayed under fire on the front lines for 191 straight days. That, and the high rate of casualties they sustained as a result, led prominent black intellectual and civil rights leader W.E.B. Dubois to accuse the French of using them as fodder.

Shortly after they were placed under French command, Johnson and the other Hellfighters were sent to man the French lines in northeastern France. In the early hours of May 14, 1918, Johnson and another soldier, Needham Roberts, were on guard duty when German snipers began firing on their outpost.

“There isn’t so much to tell,” Johnson told an interviewer in New York after the war when he described what happened next after the German snipers opened fire.

“…I began to get ready. They’d a box of hand grenades there and I took them out of the box and laid them all in a row where they would be handy… the snippin’ and clippin’ of the wires sounded near so I let go with a hand grenade. There was a yell from a lot of surprised Dutchmen and then they started firing. … A German grenade got Needham in the arm and through the hip. He was too badly wounded to do any fighting so I told him to lie in the trench and hand me up the grenades. Keep your nerve I told him. All the Dutchmen in the woods are at us but keep cool and we’ll lick ’em. … Some of the shots got me. One clipped my head, another my lip, another my hand, some in my side, and one smashed my left foot so bad that I have a silver plate holding it up now. The Germans came from all sides. Roberts kept handing me the grenades and I kept throwing them, and the Dutchmen kept squealing but jes’ the same, they kept comin’ on. When the grenades were all gone I started in with my rifle.”

Johnson was using the French rifle he’d been given after being placed under the French Army’s command. When he tried to load an American magazine, the French rifle jammed.

“There was nothing to do but use my rifle as a club and jump into them. I banged them on the dome and the side and everywhere I could land until the butt of my rifle busted. One of the Germans hollered, ‘Rush him, Rush him.’ I decided to do some rushing myself. I grabbed my French bolo knife and slashed in a million directions. … They knocked me around considerable and whanged me on the head, but I always managed to get back on my feet. There was one guy that bothered me. He climbed on my back and I had some job shaking him off and pitching him over my head. Then I stuck him in the ribs with the bolo. I stuck one guy in the stomach and he yelled in good New York talk: That black ——— got me. I was still banging them when my crowd came up and saved me and beat the Germans off.”

He concluded his account of the battle for which he is receiving the Medal of Honor: “That’s about all. There wasn’t so much to it.”

There was so little to it in the official record that despite some early accolades for his bravery, the U.S. military did nothing to formally recognize Johnson’s heroism. He was the first American to receive the Croix de Guerre, France’s highest military honor. Yet, for his valor, Johnson had nothing to show from his own government, not even a Purple Heart for the serious wounds he sustained that kept him hospitalized for months. Because the army kept no record of Johnson’s injuries, he was ineligible for disability benefits after his discharge.

Five years after he returned from the war, Johnson, unable to work because of his injuries, separated from his wife. Alone, Johnson spent his last years in poverty and alcoholism before dying in 1929 at a veterans hospital.

Though his father didn’t raise him, Herman Johnson grew up aware of his legacy. The younger Johnson was as a Tuskegee Airman, and Ivy League graduate before becoming a successful businessman in Kansas City, Missouri, where he was also the president of the NAACP’s local chapter.

“He never really talked about his father until I was 25 or 26,” Tara Johnson said of the relationship between her father and grandfather, whom she never met. “I think it was just hard for him to talk about having to go to a park to visit him or having to go visit him in a VA hospital.”

It wasn’t until later in his life that Herman Johnson began working to restore his father’s legacy. “His way of honoring his dad was to make sure he had his rightful place in this country,” Tara Johnson said.

Johnson was joined in his effort by John Howe, a black Vietnam veteran from Albany, New York, and by the office of New York Senator Chuck Schumer.

The first recognition for Johnson came in 1996 when President Clinton awarded Johnson the Purple Heart for the injuries he suffered in combat. He’d gone to the grave with his wounds but the paperwork took another 80 years or so.

In 2002 researchers told Herman Johnson that his father, who he believed to be laying in an unmarked grave, had been buried at Arlington National Cemetery, but previously unidentified because the burial paperwork had used a variation on his name.

Shortly before Herman’s death, his father received the second-highest military award, the Distinguished Service Cross. The Medal of Honor submission had been denied citing insufficient evidence.

“Then a miracle happened,” Tara Johnson said. “Senator Schumer’s officer never gave up. His staff kept doing the research and they found the original evidence that would allow them to resubmit.”

The original evidence, discovered by Schumer staffer Caroline Wekselbaum, was a letter written by General John J. Pershing shortly after Johnson’s battle in the Argonne, commending his bravery, and additional citations from Johnson’s peers.

The Medal of Honor application was resubmitted with the new evidence and approved.

After this week’s White House ceremony, Tara Johnson will go back to splitting her time between her business in Kansas City and her family in Toledo, Ohio.

“DeMarqus is the real reason I’m not running my company in Kansas City,” she said. After his service in the Marines, her son “had his first PTSD episode in 2009,” Johnson said. “I’m trying to give him the opportunity that wasn’t offered to my grandfather. It’s a battle. He has more help than my grandfather did but I’m trying to give him the family support that I don’t think my grandfather had.”

[MIKA27]

Bob Crane’s Strange Journey From ‘Hogan’s Heroes’ to Sex Addiction to Murder

Bob Crane was the star of Hogan’s Heroes, the ’60s sitcom about WWII POWs, and a sex addict, and the victim of an unsolved murder. His son still sifts the weird fallout of celebrity.

Fifty years ago my dad was the host of the number one radio show in the number two market in the country. He was, to the late ’50s and early ’60s morning drive in Los Angeles, what would much later become the province of Howard Stern and Don Imus. My dad interviewed a panoply of celebrities, from Bob Hope to Marilyn Monroe, Jonathan Winters to Jayne Mansfield. He played his drums on the air and punctuated all of it with wacky comedy effects—things he called “gimmicks”—to poke fun at everyone and everything, especially his sponsors. A 60-second spot for Hertz putting you in the driver’s seat ended with squealing tires, screeching brakes, and shattering glass.

My dad’s growing celebrity was sometimes a cause for alarm, as when a woman from Seattle showed up unannounced on our Tarzana, California, doorstep claiming my dad was the father of her child, though to my knowledge my dad had never set foot—or any other part of his body—in the Pacific Northwest.

For purely selfish reasons, however, my dad’s radio show had some monumentally positive effects. He once asked his listeners if anyone had extra tickets he could buy to hear a new band play locally. A woman in Culver City sent him four tickets for $5.50 each, and that’s how I got to see the Beatles live at the Hollywood Bowl. I thought maybe this celebrity thing was not all bad. That was a half-century ago.

As successful as my dad’s show was, he wasn’t content. He had a serious bite from the acting bug. He’d done a handful of guest shots on sitcoms like The **** Van Dyke Show as well as an abbreviated stint as the goofy neighbor on The Donna Reed Show, but he hankered to become the new Jack Lemmon or the next Gig Young. That’s when his agent called.

“Bob, have I got a script for you. Prisoner of war camp in World War II, Nazi commandant, German shepherds, gun towers, the whole strudel.” This was late 1964.

My dad said, “Thanks, but I want to do comedy. I want to be **** Van Dyke. I want to be Jack Lemmon. I’m not a dramatic actor.”

“Bob, what are you talking about?” the agent replied. “This is a comedy. These are the funny Nazis.”

And so my dad, Bob Crane, became Colonel Robert E. Hogan, commanding officer of Hogan’s Heroes. Hogan’s debuted in 1965, a mere 20 years after the end of the war. It was an immediate hit and ran for six years, though not without controversy. TV Guide reviled it as one of the worst television shows ever. Criticism notwithstanding, Hogan’s Heroes is still on the air a couple of hours every day on two different cable networks, and has been running continuously for the last 50 years.

On Thursday, June 29, 1978, I was 27 years and two days old. I had just interviewed Chevy Chase, the hottest star in Hollywood at the time, for an article I was doing for Playboy’s new Euro-hip Oui magazine. I was spiraling up in a thermal of great possibilities when I encountered a nasty downdraft.

I received a call that Thursday afternoon from my dad’s business manager who said there was a rumor my dad had been shot. He hadn’t. But someone had crept into the apartment where he was staying in Scottsdale, Arizona, while doing a dinner theater gig, and bashed his head in with a blunt object while he slept. My dad was two weeks shy of his fiftieth birthday.

The crime unleashed a cyclone of rumors, scandal, public shame, and unimaginable heartache for my mom—who in 1978 had been divorced from my dad for eight years—my two younger sisters, and me.

Nowadays we have a name for sex addiction. There are even ads on TV for lovely, oceanview treatment centers that cover any manner of anti-social and dangerous behaviors, but in 1978, after his grisly murder, my dad’s proclivities for videotaping his sexual encounters garnered him the headline, “Hogan’s a Pervert.” These days he’d have thousands of “likes” and his own Twitter feed.

I’m in no way defending his “hobby.” Far from it. My dad had no rein on his motor, verbally or physically. His quick wit and funny ad-libbing made him a success on the radio and television. It made him a genial character, a happy-go-lucky actor, but his inability to see the destructive path he was on was also his tragic flaw.

I carry my dad’s name, and like his celebrity, it brings both keys to the city and doors that slam in my face, neither of which have anything to do with me.

Chatter that accompanies grief volleys the term “closure” like a shuttlecock, floating back and forth in the days or sometimes hours after whatever tragedy happens to be afoot. But closure is not an emotion I’m familiar with. Having walked through my dad’s murder scene and buried my nose in the sad, sad set piece, I will never get the smell and images of the overflowing ashtray, the half-empty liquor bottles, the blood splatter on the walls, and my dad’s stripped mattress out of my head. I felt it was my duty to be my dad’s ambassador to the living, to report back to the troops on the home front with accurate descriptions of the battlefield I was witnessing. Closure doesn’t enter into it.

The Scottsdale Police Department has never solved the killing of Bob Crane, forever 49-years-old. Colonel Hogan, on the other hand, will turn 50 this year, soaring on the airwaves and still going strong.

[MIKA27]

THE GLENLIVET MASTER DISTILLERS RESERVE SCOTCH

Known for their line of top notch scotch whiskies, The Glenlivet is ready to treat travelers to this Master Distillers Reserve Small Batch Scotch. One of three new expressions, the Small Batch is a single malt, triple-cask matured whiskey, and carries a unique batch number. Each cask was tested and selected by master distiller Alan Winchester, whose name is inscribed on each bottle. It's another desirable dram from The Glenlivet, and is rolling out across global duty free stores starting in July.

[MIKA27]

One Woman's Trash Is Everyone Else's $200,000 Vintage Apple-1 Computer

Most of the time, recycled electronics are too crappy to sell on Craigslist. But one California e-recycling center recently received one of the most coveted gadgets ever: A genuine Apple-1 computer.

An unidentified woman dropped off the desktop computer, one of the original 1976 machines built by Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, and Rob Wayne, at Clean Bay Area in April.

According to Clean Bay vice president Victor Gushen, the mystery woman was cleaning out her house after her husband died. The backlogged centre only recently discovered that she’d nonchalantly surrendered a piece of computing history, and now it’s trying to find her.

Clean Bay sold the computer for $US200,000 to a private collector, and wants to split the profit with the donor. But first they need to find her: Gishun says he’d recognise her, but all they know is that she drives an SUV, and she clearly didn’t get anything appraised before junking it.

One of the last remaining Apple-1 computers sold at over $US900,000 in an auction last year, and only around 50 originals are thought to still exist, so this is incredibly rare.

Here’s hoping they can find the mystery woman!