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

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The Norlan Glass Is Designed for Whisky Appreciation

The Norlan Whisky Glass was designed and developed to marry a scientifically engineered inside with an aesthetically beautiful outside. The end result is a hybrid design that’s pretty to look at while still giving you a glass that captures the complex perfumes and aromas of whiskey and delivers them right to your senses. The Norlan removes the need for water dilution. The Norlan focuses and diffuses aromatics. The Norlan lets you keep the conversation with your compatriots going instead of removing you from the equation while you’re nosing. The Norlan also uses specially developed protrusions in the glass to perfectly aerate your whisky. In other words, The Norlan is one of the best whisky glasses on the market.

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EDINBURGH SMALL BATCH GIN

While Scotland is known for other spirits, you might be surprised by some of their white spirits as well, like this Edinburgh Small Batch Gin. And while it is distilled in Scotland, the style is a perfect example of a London Dry style gin. Created using a blend of 13 botanicals, including native heather, milk thistle and pine, this small batch gin has taken home several awards and is a great choice for your next cocktail.

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KIEHL'S ORIGINAL MUSK

We love a product with a good story, and Kiehl's Original Musk has a good one. Supposedly formulated for the first time at Kiehl's Apothecary in the 1920s, the scent was found in a tub labeled "Love Oil" in the late '50s, and subsequently reintroduced in 1963. The updated scent leads with notes of bergamot nectar and orange blossom, followed by floral notes of rose, lily, ylang-ylang, and neroli, and finishes with a masculine blend of tonka nut, white patchouli, and musk. Arrives in a 1.7oz spray bottle with fittingly old-school labelling.

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WEATHER IN A BOX

Just in case you have $199 to blow and cannot look out the window to see what the weather is.

The tempescope is an ambient physical display that visualizes various weather conditions like rain, clouds, and lightning. By receiving weather forecasts from the internet, it can reproduce tomorrow's sky in your living room.

The tempescope originally started with a prototype created by Ken in 2012, as a weekend project. The motivation was to "always have the sunshine (and occasional tropical thunderstorms) of the Okinawa isles in the living room".

This first prototype was made from $1 shampoo bottles.

The prototype received a lot of attention, and in 2013, Ken created an Open Source version (OpenTempescope) that was designed to be reproducible by anyone with access to simple tools.

More Info Here...

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We Finally Know What Happened To Water On Mars

Mars today is a dry, frozen place. But this was not always the case. Ancient Mars was likely warm and wet, much like Earth. So what happened to change it? Thanks to brand new results from NASA’s MAVEN mission, announced today, we may finally know. Blame the Solar winds.

The Solar Winds

“When we look at ancient mars we see a different kind of surface, an environment that was able to support water on the surface” said MAVEN principle investigator Bruce Jakovsky today. “So what happened to the carbon dioxide in that atmosphere, what happened to the water on early Mars?”

Over the last year, MAVEN has been studying Mars’ atmosphere carefully. Using that data, researchers revealed (along with the simultaneous publication of the results in Science and Geophysical Research Letters) that, under bombardment from solar winds, Mars’ atmospheric gases were being striped away.

While the solar winds don’t directly strike the planet’s surface, the solar winds have been stripping atmospheric gas around the planet steadily, coming off in bursts as Jasper Halekas, MAVEN’s lead instrument investigator explained “like the shock wave around a jet plane.”

As the solar winds carried off more and more of Mars’ atmospheric gas, like you see above, the planet was left less and less able to sustain the watery surface it once had. “The analogy I use,” Jakovsky explained, “is when I step out of the shower into the breeze, the water in my hair is just whisked away by the wind.”

Today, that loss of atmospheric gas is continuing at the rate of about 113g of gas per second. But, researchers believe that in Mars’ earlier days, as it first began to lose atmospheric gas, that rate was much higher. And even today, that rate can easily jump 10-20 times during a solar storm, like you see in this comparison between the average rates and the solar storm rates:

Is Mars Earth’s Future?

So, if Mars was a once a wet planet that lost its water along with its atmosphere, what about Earth? Should we worry that our own home might one day look like the red planet’s dry, dusty surface? Fortunately, there’s something significant standing in the way: Earth’s magnetic field.

Like Mars, Earth is also subject to powerful solar winds — and like Mars, it also loses some of its atmospheric gases. But the geomagnetic field repels it enough that it does not run up as directly against the atmospheric gases:

Of course, as researchers noted during their announcement of the results today, 3.7 billion years ago, early Mars also once had a geomagnetic field protecting it, a fact that allowed its ancient waters to flow. It was losing this that set off the chain reaction that eventually turned Mars into the dusty, red, frozen surface that we know. “The turn-off of the magnetic field is what allowed the turn-on of the stripping by the solar wind,” noted Jakovsky.

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Watch Two Guys In Jetpacks Chase An Emirates A380 Through The Skies Over Dubai

I’ve seen some stunts in my day, but goddamn, this has to be one of the most impressive: two guys in jetpacks fly in formation with an Emirates A380 passenger plane over Dubai in a spectacular display.

Yves Rossy and Vince Reffet are the two lunatics chasing the Emirates A380 plane around Dubai and over the Palm Jumeirah in a new video for XDubai.

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Workers Discover 19th-Century Burial Vault With A Dozen Human Skeletons Under Manhattan

Crews working on water mains below New York City’s Greenwich Village made an appropriately spooky find for the week after Halloween: A 19th-century burial vault containing the remains of least a dozen people.

NYC’s Department of Design and Construction reported the discovery yesterday as they began excavating the site, which is on the east side of Washington Square Park. Anthropologists and archaeologists will work with the crews to identify the remains as well as with the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission determine the historical significance of the grave.

The vault is 2.4m deep, 4.5m wide, and 6m long — not exactly huge by any standards, but it’s pretty amazing that anything that could remain undisturbed for two centuries in a part of the city that’s laced with dozens of transportation and utility tunnels. Although such finds are rare, they’re not unheard of: Remember the 18th-century ship that was found under the World Trade Center site in 2010?

Although it might seem like an impossible task to ID the remains of people who died hundreds of years ago, forensic anthropologists can use a combination of DNA evidence, biometric data, and city records to identify people all the time.

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Watch How Supersonic Russian Bombers Drop Their Giant Cruise Missiles

The Russian Air Force’s Tupolev TU-160 is a gorgeous-looking plane with sweeping wings and the capability to reach supersonic speeds. It’s also a scary powerful bomber aircraft with the ability to launch the frightening KH-555 cruise missile, an air-launched missile that can be equipped with a nuclear warhead and has a 3500km range. Here’s training footage showing how those missiles are unleashed.

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Only Die-Hard Star Wars Fans Will Buy A Vader Fridge That Holds A Single Can

Lucasfilm and Disney have approved the ultimate loyalty test for Star Wars fans. Aqua, better known for its obscenely over-priced R2-D2 mini fridge, now also has a Vader fridge that’s a perfect life-size replica of Darth’s helmet. That’s the good news. The bad news? It can only chill a single can.

The tiny fridge isn’t quite as expensive as that $11,500+ rolling R2-D2, but $495 isn’t exactly pocket change either. When you crunch the numbers, that breaks down to about $495 for every can it’s able to keep cold — that’s a tough sell.

The fridge is available for pre-order now, but you’ll have to wait until December 20 for it ship out, giving you lots of time to question just how loyal you are to the Star Wars brand. On one hand, being able to only keep a single can cold is a bit limiting, but on the other hand, there’s nothing stopping you from buying 24 of these tiny fridges to chill an entire case

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Here Are 10 Deleted Star Wars Scenes That You Probably Never Saw Before

Some of these scenes were rightfully axed. Like Luke and Leia about to share a creepy intimate kiss before C-3P0 saves the day by interrupting them. Other scenes should have never been cut. Like the scene showing the Emperor demanding that the second Death Star be fired up to blow up the moon that Han and Leia were on. And other scenes are just fun like Han being Han.

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How The Hell Did This Happen, Australia?

It’s been a rough year for snakes eating things. Sure, any halfwit could’ve told that python eating a porcupine was a bad call, but apparently, snacking on your own kind is, too. What’s next, we’re not allowed to eat bacon anymore?!

It’s not clear what exactly happened between these two snakes, which were photographed by Geoff Mitchell several weeks back in Griffith, New South Wales. Another local shared the photo with theAustralian Zoo on Facebook, hoping a group of trained zoologists be able might shed some light on the matter. Nah.

“This is certainly unusual,” the zoo responded. “We can’t imagine a black snake climbing into another snake but this entire situation is very strange. We would still suggest that the brown one was eating the black but we will never know for sure.”

The situation has polarised the internet, with some insisting that brown snake ate black snake first, others asserting brown snake was dead long before black snake decided to crawl in its mouth and poke around. In either case, there are no real winners to be found in this situation, seeing as how neither snake lived to tell the tale. Perhaps they were both run over by a tractor, or maybe a hawk came along and busted the party up. Maybe the whole thing was a setup perpetrated by some twisted snake-hater.

In any case, the message to all living snakes is clear: think carefully before you put that in your mouth.

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How Champagne Is Made

Champagne is really hard to make. There are rules and regulations and specific grapes and soil requirements and is completely region specific and more that goes into each bottle that it’s impressive that even one bottle gets popped. In this video from the Science Channel, we get to see how Bollinger makes its champagne. It marries the old fashioned methods formed over hundreds of years of bubbly creation with impressive modern machinery. Delicious!

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Sennheiser's Built Probably The World's Best Headphones -- But They Cost $US55,000

In the ’90s, Sennheiser asked it engineers to make the best headphones ever and the result was 300 sets of the legendary Orpheus, each pair of which sold for $US16,000. Now, Sennheiser has created an ever better-sounding successor to those luxurious cans — but they will set you back $US55,000.

The reboot of the 25-year-old audiophile’s wet dream builds on the technology of the original. These headphones apparently took a team of Sennheiser experts almost a decade of continuous work to produce, and they update the electrostatic design and separate amplifier of the old Orpheus for the modern day.

For the uninitiated, the expense of these headphone stems largely form the fact that they’re electrostatic: they work by placing a static electric charge on a thin film that sits between two metal plates. Audio signal voltages cause the film — which typically weighs less than the air around it — to oscillate and produce sound. But because the film is so light, it doesn’t have its own resonances or damping issues, so it produces sound of amazing clarity. The first Orpheus headphones demonstrated that.

Starting with the amp, Sennheiser explains that it “combines the superior impulse processing of a tube amplifier with the low distortion of a transistor amplifier.” In practice, that means the amp features eight vacuum tubes that are freely suspended, atop a housing of thick Carrara marble. “The decoupling of the tubes in combination with the damping properties of the marble has the effect of reducing structure-borne noise to an absolute minimum,” explain the audio engineers in a press release.

The amplifier then drives an ultra-high impulse amplifier stage that’s integrated into the cups of the headphones. This skirts a major issue with most electrostatic headphones, which is that much of the power of the audio signal is lost in the cable between the amp and thin electrostatic film in the headphones themselves. Sennheiser explains that the amp here uses MOS-FET transistors that “have a square characteristic curve to prevent the hard distortion that occurs in amplifiers with bi-polar transistors.”

Then, we get to the part that actually produces the sound: a platinum-vaporised diaphragm that sits between two gold-vaporised ceramic electrodes. The diaphragms can’t be etched or drilled, and are instead created using spraying and grinding process before being coated with a layer of gold to make sure they conduct effectively. The resulting diaphragm is just 2.4 microns thick. The engineers point out that they could have gone thinner, but that 2.4 microns simply worked best.

It’s perhaps not surprising that the test of the hardware is high-grade, too. For instance, the cabling is all made of oxygen-free copper, plated with silver and sheathed in a variety of materials to eliminate noise. Meanwhile, digital music input is handles by an ESS SABRE ES9018 chip that uses eight internal DACs to convert audio data with a resolution of 32 bits and a sampling rate of up to 384 kHz.

There’s also some serious pomp to the whole experience: when you press the on-off button, the controls and vacuum tubes rise out from the marble base, and a protective glass cover opens up to grant access to the headphones. The marble’s from Carrara in Italy — it’s the same type of material that Michelangelo sculpted with — while controls are milled from solid lumps of brass.

But enough of all this silly stuff. What the hell do they sound like?

Sadly, we’ve not been able to try a pair out yet, though we do have some specifications and the word of the engineers to go on. Sennehiser claims that the new Orpheus headphones have a a frequency response of 8 hertz to more than 100 kilohertz — far beyond what human ears are capable of hearing. That may seems like madness, but it helps Sennehsier ensure distortion is incredibly low in the audible range.

In fact, at 1 kilohertz and a sound pressure level of a hefty 100 decibels, Sennheiser claims the total harmonic distortion of the headphone system is 0.01 per cent. That is all but insane, and it likely makes this set of headphones on the cleanest-sounding audio products ever made.

In terms of how that sounds to the human ear, Sennheiser’s Axel Grell explains that “in some music pieces that I had known for years, I suddenly became aware of details which I had never perceived before. I found this really moving.” They do no doubt sound wonderful, and we can barely conceal our excitement at trying them out in real-life, especially given how impressive the original Orpheus headphones were.

But the price. Oh, the price. When the reference products — for that’s what this is, rather than a consumer product — goes on sale in mid-2016, it will cost a staggering $US55,000. You could buy a very nice car for that amount of money. Perhaps even property. Perhaps even one of each if you shopped around hard enough.

Or, if you really, really appreciate high-fidelity audio, you could buy a pair of headphones. Your call.

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Earthlight Puts You In The Boots Of An Astronaut On The ISS

Hand over hand, moving slowly and carefully with the void of space all around me, I make my way around the outside of the International Space Station. There’s an external ammonia leak somewhere on the station, and as an astronaut I have been deployed to perform a visual inspection. This is Opaque Media’s SteamVR tech demo Earthlight, one of the most immersive and realistic VR experiences I’ve played to date.

Opaque Media Group has been involved in the games industry for some time now, creating tools for developers and VR experiences with partners like Alzheimers Australia. With all their experience,Earthlight is their first true game, to be released on multiple VR platforms as of next year. They haven’t forgotten their spirit of collaboration with research organisations, however, with NASA having reached out to the company after they posted some of Earthlight’s progress online. The result is one of the most realistic space games that you’re ever likely to play. Below, you can experience some of Earthlight’s beautiful visuals for yourself, with its full 360° 4K trailer.

The short demo that I played is even based on a real life event up on the ISS: the external ammonia leak that required an emergency spacewalk to fix, early in 2013. You start out inside the station, have to climb up a ladder and onto the handholds that line the outside of the station — which are what the real astronauts on the ISS use to move themselves along in zero gravity, while on a spacewalk. Interaction is exceedingly simple, with two controllers that track your hand movements, each with a single trigger button that can be pressed to grab a handhold and released to let go. Despite the simplicity, it works.

“Imagine a point-and-click game, where everything is also a physics puzzle,” says project lead, Norman Wang. With so many VR experiences on show at PAX this year, each experimenting with different control schemes to get around the technology’s unique constraints, Earthlight was one of the few that appeared to have nailed it. “Space is the ideal setting for the constraints of VR gaming, with astronauts mainly using their hands to get around,” says Wang, and this is exactly what I had just experienced myself.

The demo took me a bit longer than five minutes, and mainly consisted of making my way slowly along the outside of the space station. Of course I ended up stopping occasionally to admire the view, or to stop my legs from shaking at the thought of floating off endlessly into space if I happened to let go of both trigger buttons at the same time. Wang later told me that that wouldn’t have been possible within the demo — but the game’s success was evident in the fact that I was too scared to test it. I was clinging onto those triggers for dear life. Despite the repetitiveness of the action, the demo never became boring. Floating on the ISS, 400km above the Earth, there was always something to look at.

Clever mechanics and gorgeous graphics aside, one of my favourite parts of the game was the character whose spacesuit we inhabit. Compared to the strident realism of the environments and the mission, the character is a little touch of fantasy. First off, she’s an Australian astronaut — a bit of a pipe dream considering Australia’s lack of a space program, but a sensible design decision for a Melbourne-based studio. Secondly, she’s a she. When her voice first sounds inside the helmet, it was a bit of a shock. Being voiced by a local voice actor, it was a voice I could very much identify with — young, female, Australian. Earthlight doesn’t just want to put you in the shoes of an ISS astronaut, it wants to put you in the shoes of this ISS astronaut.

“Immersively experience the journey of becoming an astronaut, as well as the wonders and perils of space exploration,” says Opaque’s description of the game, yet from my discussion with developers at Earthlight’s booth, this is going to include much more about their astronaut Anna’s character development than any of Earthlight’s released material has yet shown. The game won’t only be restricted to space, either. One earlier sequence that Wang described to me about was set back on Earth, in Belgium’s super deep Nemo33 swimming pool. Once the deepest in the world — now only second — Nemo33 is used by astronauts and cosmonauts in order to teach them to problem solve in an extra dimension, ie thinking in the vertical plane of microgravity as well as the horizontal plane that we’re used to.

Earthlight’s short demo was an odd mix of inspiring and challenging, relaxing and terrifying, and I’m looking forward to being able to follow Anna’s full journey into space. Of course it’s not all science fact: the demo ended dramatically, with the faulty valves that I was inspecting rupturing suddenly and sending me floating away from the station. Obviously this didn’t happen in the true event the demo was based on — but what’s a game without a little drama?

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The Uncertain Fate Of The Fastest Ocean Liner Ever Built

The SS United States is the world’s fastest passenger ship, and the biggest ever built in the US. Despite last-minute donations and plans to transform it into startup offices and awesome restaurants, advocates are still fighting to save it from the scrapyard.

It’s an old ocean liner — relics of the past, they’re ships designed to ferry passengers between continents, but were totally dethroned by planes after World War II. The only ocean liner left in operation today is the Queen Mary 2. The SS United States, meanwhile, is an American treasure: It served royalty and celebrities, and still holds the record for the fastest transatlantic journey for any ocean liner.

It costs $US60,000 a month to keep the run-down ship safely moored in Philadelphia. Yesterday, the SS United States Conservancy, a nonprofit fighting to save the liner, announced on its Facebook page that it raised $US100,000 in donations last month, which saved the historic vessel. For now.

Completed in 1952, the 300m-long boat was originally a top secret Cold War project to build the world’s fastest ship, but ended up as a high-power, hi-tech luxury ocean liner. Some of its passengers have included heads of state like Kennedys, old Hollywood stars like Judy Garland, Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe, and artists like Walt Disney and Salvador Dali.

It still holds the record for the fastest transatlantic journey: Speed tests clocked a top speed of 38 knots (70km/h), and on its maiden voyage, it broke the transatlantic speed record in both directions, and still holds the record 60 years later. It was retired 46 years ago and has remained stationed in Philadelphia for the last 20.

The ship was a technical feat back in the day, as well, learning from many lessons from the Titanic: It has an improved rudder that sustained good manoeuvrability at high speeds, had more lifeboats than required by law (the SSUS lifeboats were aluminium to make them lighter), and was the first ocean liner to come equipped with a radar mast.

Known as “America’s flagship,” it is the biggest passenger ship ever built in the US, and the fastest passenger ship ever built in the world.

But the costs of maintaining it are becoming unsustainable, and it desperately needs restoration. Luckily, there could be plans to bring it to New York City and transform it into a brand new, usable, commercial space.

These photos show the ship as it appears today, currently based in Philadelphia.

A New York City investor has expressed interest in hauling it to NYC’s Red Hook district: a harbour neighbourhood in Brooklyn known for its microbrews and industrial vibes. Entrepreneur John Quadrozzi, who owns the Red Hook docks, has apparently offered to harbour the ship for free until its future has been officially decided. He also wants to help in the mission to turn it into mixed-use development, he told The Brooklyn Paper. The plan is to transform the inside of the ship into offices for startups, restaurants, a theatre, gym, bars, a maritime museum and school, and more. He also wants it to be eco-friendly, relying on solar and wind power.

Sounds cool, but the plan would cost anywhere from a staggering $US50 to $US200 million, which isn’t including the $US2 million needed to bring the ship from Philly to Brooklyn, Curbed reports.

The $US100,000 in donations announced today is enough to keep the ship from the scrap heap, but not forever. The Conservancy’s board will “convene next week to assess our current situation from a financial, redevelopment and broker standpoint.” The Brooklyn Paper says Quadrozzi and the Conservancy are “in the midst of talks with donors, developers, investors, and government agencies to fund the endeavour.”

Amazing engineering feats like the SS United States are an important part of American history and heritage. Hopefully the ship’ll be around to impress landlubbers for generations to come.

Here’s what the ship looked like back in the fifties. Credit: SS United States Conservancy

The ship completing her maiden voyage from Europe to New York on 15 July 1952.

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A Harrowing Account Of What It's Like To Die From A Snakebite

In 1957, American herpetologist Karl P. Schmidt was bitten by a poisonous boomslang snake. With no anti-venom available — and mistakenly believing he hadn’t received a fatal dose — he proceeded to do what any diligent scientist would do: he kept a detailed diary chronicling the last agonizing hours of his life.

This fascinating video of Schmidt’s “Death Diary” was produced by ScienceFriday. But be warned, the descriptions in the video are quite graphic and disturbing.

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The Melting Antarctic Ice Sheet Is Heading Towards Irreversible Collapse

Computer models suggest that the melting West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is melting at a rapidly accelerating rate. A new computer simulation shows that at current melting rates, the ice sheet will hit a critical point in about 60 years, and could result in a sea level rise of as much as 3m over the next several centuries.

The results of this latest simulation, run by a pair of scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, just appeared in the latest edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet

Over the past decade, scientists have carefully watched the Amundsen Sea sector. This region of West Antarctica is currently suffering tremendous losses in ice volume, and its ongoing collapse is triggering downstream effects elsewhere on the continent.

A recent NASA study suggests that the Antarctic ice sheet is adding more ice than it’s losing, but this won’t likely be the case for much longer.

To get a sense of where this region is headed in the long-term, Johannes Feldmann and Anders Levermann ran their simulation to project the topographical conditions hundreds, and even thousands, of years from now — further in the future than any previous study.

The ultimate purpose was to determine whether or not the current Amundsen instability could lead to the entire ice sheet collapsing into the sea. The simulations suggest that this is in fact the case.

The models show that 60 more years of meltage at the current rate — a very reasonable estimate — will push the WAIS past a critical point-of-no-return. Beyond this threshold, a complete, long-term disintegration is predicted to occur. Feldmann and Levermann worry that the WAIS has already become critically unstable, and that this region has already passed the threshold point.

The study also predicts that, over the course of the next several centuries or millennia, the oceans will rise by as much as 3m.

“Our results show that if the Amundsen Sea sector is destabilized, then the entire marine ice sheet will discharge into the ocean, causing a global sea-level rise of about 3 m,” conclude the authors in the study. “We thus might be witnessing the beginning of a period of self-sustained ice discharge from West Antarctica that requires long-term global adaptation of coastal protection.”

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Samsung's Multi-Room, Omni-Directional Wi-Fi Speakers: Now In Small, Medium And Large

If you want music playing in every room of your house, there’s only one easy way to do it: buy a bunch of wireless audio speakers. Samsung is really stepping up its wireless audio game, and the new R1, R3 and R5 speakers are the first salvo in what is set to be a big war against Sonos, as well as other wi-fi speaker competitors like LG and Sony.

The new speakers are the first to be developed at Samsung’s multi-million-dollar audio research lab in Los Angeles, which has two anechoic chambers to measure and reduce unwanted sound reflection from walls and objects a 360-degree listening environment. The result is speakers that have excellent omnidirectional audio both at every horizontal point around their cylindrical designs and up and down their vertical axes.

The three new speakers are the $299 R1, $499 R3 and $649 R5, and are a good-better-best line-up in terms of size as well as price. Where the R1 has a downward-firing 3.6-inch woofer driver, for example, the larger R5 has a 5-inch driver and moves more air to create more bass. None are portable, though — all have to be plugged into power to operate, and don’t have internal rechargeable batteries.

All three will work with Samsung’s updated Multiroom app for Android and iOS, which now also works with Samsung’s Gear S smartwatch and the Apple Watch on respective platforms. You can group speakers together, or play different music — from services like Spotify, Deezer and Samsung’s own Milk Music — individually, or move music from one speaker to another seamlessly if you’re walking from room to room.

You’ll be able to buy the R1, R3 and R5 speakers soon. Samsung’s more powerful egg-shaped R6 and R7 speakers have already been out in Australia for some time, priced at $599 and $699 respectively.

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DORYU 2-16 GUN CAMERA

The Doryu Camera Company developed two generations of pistol cameras for police and surveillance tasks – although exactly why the police would need a camera that looks like a semi-automatic handgun is lost on me.

This is the 16mm version of the model, called the Doryu 2-16. It has an f/5.6 30mm lens and comes with the original leather holster. It’s thought that only 600 or so were produced so the surviving examples are in high demand, this one has an estimated value of between $18,000 and $26,000 USD and will be sold by Bonhams on the 3rd of December.

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The Russian Island of Cannibals

With all of our civilization, intellect, and culture, it’s easy for us humans to fall into the sense that we are somehow superior to all around us. We like to think that it is these qualities, as well as all of our technology and sophistication that sets us apart from beasts, and with all of this self assurance of our higher place in the world it is easy to forget that we ourselves are animals. In our comfortable civilized society it is easy to lose sight of the fact that beneath all of our higher learning and intelligence there resides the primal, bestial drive to survive by any means, and base instincts no different than the fiercest animals that share this world with us. How much or how little would it take to strip us of our societal rules and calm mask of civilization, only to reveal the vicious animalistic nature that resides somewhere deep down within us all? What is the breaking point that reverts us from man to beast? For thousands of prisoners without hope in the frigid wilds of Russia, the answers to these questions would become all too clear as they spun down the road to our basest nature, careening away from what we think makes us human to end up at a place where survival is the only rule left and the mind becomes but a feral, pouncing shadow of itself. These were the prisoners of what would come to be known as the notorious Cannibal Island, and they would know of the horrors of having their humanity torn away, and to feast on each others’ flesh.

It was 1933 in the former Soviet Union, and Stalin’s brutal regime was in the midst of a diabolical plan originally thought up by a Genrikh Yagoda, the head of the Joint State Political Directorate, which was the Soviet secret police force. The grand plan was envisioned as sending up to 2,000,000 of society’s undesirables to the desolate wastes of Siberia and Kazakhstan in order to set up what was termed “special settlements,” and which most of us today know as the notorious gulags. It was thought that within two years, these settlements full of their “labor colonists” would be able to tame these wild, untouched lands and manage a state of self-sufficiency, moving them out of the cities and having them successfully populate the most remote and inhospitable regions, even though these regions were rife with famine at the time. The idea was that these people could inhabit these regions and live on their own, thereby purifying and cleansing Soviet cities of their more unsavory elements that were essentially considered parasites feeding off of civilized society.

Gulag prisoners on a train

The “undesirables” that were to be sent were mostly the homeless, beggars, petty criminals, gypsies, the mentally handicapped and the insane, more or less anyone who didn’t fit into the ideals of the Communist class structure, but it seems that simply not having a proper internal passport was enough to get someone on the list. By April of 1933, 25,000 people had been rounded up and loaded into stinking, cramped trains to be sent to off into the far corners of the frigid wilderness, and they were to pass through a transit camp at the remote Siberian region Tomsk on the way. The trip was a harrowing one, with very little food or water to go around, which caused the rise of gangs who beat or killed other prisoners to steal their food and belongings. Once they arrived at Tomsk things did not get any better. They had arrived a few days before they were expected, and the Tomsk authorities had been given very short notice in the first place, meaning they were poorly equipped to deal with the deluge of prisoners pouring in. There was not enough food, water, and medicine to go around, and furthermore the Tomsk authorities viewed the urban prisoners as wretched, diseased, and dangerous. Not surprisingly, many of the prisoners perished during the whole ordeal, but considering what was to happen next they were probably among the lucky ones.

In an effort to take pressure off of the limited available resources and to relieve the strain of the overcrowded camp, around 6,000 of the bedraggled prisoners were chosen to be moved to another temporary camp until it could be figured out just what to do with them. Four river barges typically used for hauling wood were hastily refurbished into prison vessels and the mass of freezing, starving prisoners were crammed aboard to be brought to an isolated speck of land surrounded by rivers, around 3 km long and 600 meters wide and located 800km away by the name of Nazino Island. Conditions aboard the barges were even worse than they had been aboard the trains, with prisoners kept stuffed below decks to wallow in filth and allocated only a meager 200 grams of rotting bread per person a day on which to subsist. There was no other food aboard the barges, no cooking utensils nor extra clothing, and very little water. Even the guards accompanying the prisoners were new recruits who didn’t have uniforms and in some cases even shoes. By the time the barges reached Nazino Island, 27 of the prisoners had already died due to the horrid conditions and around a third of the rest barely had the strength to stand.

Things quickly went from bad to worse when it was found that their new home was a frigid wasteland of thorny brush bereft of any natural food sources, and a further 300 prisoners died in a snowstorm on the first night as they slept out in the open without shelter. Nevertheless, the prisoners were abandoned there and left to fend for themselves without supplies, tools, or cooking utensils, and only a few guards who were practically as haggard as they were to preserve order. The only thing they were left with was around 20 tons of moldy flour which was dumped onto the shore of the island and then to be distributed equally, but things rather quickly devolved into chaos when the starving prisoners converged upon the flour in a churning, disorderly stampede which quickly turned to brawls and rioting. The panicked guards ended up firing into this crowd of people in a mad dash to get food, leaving many of them dead or wounded. For those who were able to secure flour for themselves, their troubles were only starting. Since there were no ovens or equipment with which to actually make bread, little water to be had, and not even any containers to put it in, most people resorted to mixing the flour with dirty, disease infested river water and eating it raw, which led to rampant dysentery and typhoid.

Realizing that they were facing sure doom on the island if they stayed, many of the prisoners tried to make a break for freedom aboard jerry-rigged makeshift rafts, which didn’t go very well at all. Some of these escapees were shot by the ragtag group of guards stationed on the island while others drowned when their rafts disintegrated beneath their feet in the rough waters of the river. Those who actually managed to get out would have soon seen how misguided their plans were, since the only thing to be found downstream was vast expanses of frozen Siberian taiga and there were no roads leading to civilization for hundreds of miles around. In fact the nearest settlement of any size was hundreds of miles upstream at Tomsk, from which they had come in the first place. The handful of people who got away was quickly deemed to be doomed to die out in the Siberian badlands.

Nazino Island

Within a few more days of arriving on Nazino Island, dozens more had died, most of the bodies just lying out in the open, and it was not long before the starving masses of people began to resort to feeding off of the flesh of those who had fallen. It became a common sight to see dead bodies that had been cut up as if by a butcher, stripped of the best pieces of flesh and missing nourishing organs such as livers. It was not long after that that the prisoners began to graduate to cannibalistic murders, hunting each other down for food as if they were animals. Roving gangs of people crazed from hunger fanned out and terrorized the sick or weak, brutally slaying them and consuming their flesh raw. In one particularly disturbing account, a young woman was allegedly captured and tied to a tree, where bloodthirsty cannibals stripped her of meat while she was still alive writhing in agony. A common practice among prisoners was called “bleeding the cow,” in which a group would lure in another prisoner by inviting them to join them in an escape attempt, only to brutally kill and butcher them for their meat when they got the person alone. The few guards stationed on the island ostensibly for the purpose of keeping the prisoners in line were no use in protecting the victims in the face of this bloodbath. Not only were the guards undisciplined and corrupt, with many of them extorting the prisoners on a regular basis, but they were also mostly just as starved and disheveled as any of their charges, with one official once proclaiming that Nazino’s guards were “in no way distinguished from the déclassé elements they were supposed to monitor.” Many years later, one survivor of the ordeal, then in her 80s, who arrived at Nazino Island as a 13-year-old girl would say:

The things we saw! People were dying everywhere; they were killing each other. When you went along the island you saw human flesh wrapped in rags, human flesh that had been cut and hung in the trees. The fields were full of corpses.

Unbelievably, the Soviet government either did not know or did not care about how out of hand things had become, and continued to send shipments of even more prisoners to the island, with a further 1,200 arriving on May 27 to face the hardship of this untamed land and its marauding cannibalistic hordes. It is said that some of these new arrivals were savagely attacked and ravaged for their meat practically upon stepping off of the boat. As the savage bloodshed got worse and more people died, the government began to realize the gravity of the situation and became concerned that some of the savage prisoners on the island might actually make their way to remote villages in the region to run amok and become an apocalyptic cannibalistic scourge on the surrounding areas. Reinforcements were sent in to Nazino to aid the outnumbered and under equipped guards that were already there and dozens of prisoners were arrested for cannibalism, but it was too little too late. By the time the camp was totally shut down, just one month after it had started, it is estimated that 4,000 of the initial 6,000 people brought here had died, many of them violently, although the true death toll will likely forever remain unknown as many of the prisoners lacked any sort of proper documentation.

At the time, the Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Western Siberia launched a commission to look into what had happened at Nazino Island, but the report was promptly buried and kept under wraps, just as had been done with other similar accounts of the grim life and horrific atrocities of Siberia’s gulags. It was common practice at the time to suppress this sort of information, and those who wrote of the gulags or even spread rumors about them did it at the risk of being sent to one themselves or even outright killed. For decades the government denied and covered up what had transpired at Nazino, until the truth started to become known in 1988, due to the efforts of a Russian historical and civil rights society called Memorial, which gradually tracked down these top secret documents and made them known to the outside world, yet even then many Western publications mostly turned a blind eye to the problem. The trickle of information was also very slow, and the actual commission report on Nazino Island made by the Soviet government in 1933 was not published in full until 2002, also because of the efforts of Memorial. In more recent years, the horrific truth of what happened on Nazino Island has further been slowly revealed through dedicated work from organizations such as Memorial, as well as the work of authors such as French historian Nicolas Werth, who spent years meticulously digging through lost archives and documents for information that would culminate in his extremely in-depth book on the affair, Cannibal Island, published in 2006.

The story of Nazino Island is far from the only tale of barbaric brutality and atrocity to come from the Soviet gulags, but it is certainly perhaps the one that resonates the most on some primal level, with its disturbing imagery of zombie-like hordes of the starving giving into bloodlust and hunting other humans for food across this frozen wasteland secluded far from society. It is a potent reminder that lurking beneath out civilized veneer and all of our formalities, rules, and pleasantries there is a side of us not far removed from a vicious animal that just wants to survive at all costs. What does it take to devolve a normally rational human being to the state of a ravenous beast fully willing to ruthlessly slaughter and consume a fellow human being? How much must one endure before that civilized façade melts away to reveal the wild animal beneath, which simmers under the surface of every one of us? It seems that the denizens of Siberia’s Nazino Island found out the answer to these questions, possessed by our underlying savagery, staring deep into the black heart of the potential darkness of human nature and having it stare right back.

[MIKA27]

FOLDABLE DRAS PHONE BY R&D CORE LIMITED

It’s undeniable that the majority of today’s smartphones have the same basic form factor. Gone are the days of sliders, clamshells and flip phones, and we’re mostly left with the basic smartphone style you commonly see today. While we’ve seen quite a few impressive phone concepts, this foldable DRAS phone by R&D Core Limited really uses some imagination.

Upon first glance, it’s an admittedly strange-looking device that you probably wouldn’t see yourself using. It combines the clamshell trend of the 90s with a flexible touchscreen display. It bends at three different points, allowing owners to fold it down to a compact size. With one fold, the phone transforms into a squarish MiniDras, and when it’s folded again, you have a MicroDras. In both modes, some portion of the touchscreen is still accessible, allowing users to have app notifications and relevant data visible even when the phone is in sleep mode.

[MIKA27]

MINUS-8 WATCHES

With the world embracing smartwatches in a mad frenzy, there is more swiping and clicking happening than actually telling the time. San Francisco watch makers Minus-8 pride themselves on keeping alive the functional excellence of traditional watchmaking, by offering fine timepieces which can be used for a lifetime, and passed down from generation to generation. If you are after a more watch-like watch, scroll down with pleasure.

MINUS-8’s parent company ASTRO Studios, is best known for designing hot items like the Nike Fuelband and Xbox 360, so they have high-tech roots. The brand takes its name from their GMT-8 timezone of the North American West Coast and is focused on delivering modern and basic watches that push design forward without attempting to reinvent the form. Each watch is a precise industrial machine.

Layer 24 embodies the clean restraint and modern industrial spiritual of MINUS-8. Layer 24 is the result of an uncompromised vision to build a watch of individually layered stainless steel. This process took over a year to develop and resulted in a striking watch that communicates luxury and precision. The result is a stadium effect of 6 layers of 316L bonded surgical steel flowing from the exterior to the interior of the watch face uninterrupted in one unified gesture. $598 | BUY

The Square is a modern embodiment of classic aviation timepieces. Made of 316L stainless steel that’s coated by physical vapor deposition for extreme hardness and corrosion-resistance, and is is fitted with a vegetable tanned leather strap. Sapphire crystal keeps the lens scratch-free, and it has the capability of withstanding pressure equivalent to depths of 10 atmospheres or 100 meters.
$398 | BUY

The Edge watch captures the transition from one moment to the next. Its stopwatch breaks time into minutes, seconds, and tenths of a second. Five-second intervals are marked on the case exterior, allowing for a cleaner watch face. The entire body is crafted of PVD-coated stainless steel, featuring a monochromatic finish that further connects and blends each individual linkage of the bracelet. The Edge has a sapphire crystal face, PVD-coated stainless steel bracelet, and is powered by a Japanese quartz movement. $298 | BUY

Zone 2 is a classically styled field watch with clear nods to utility, minimalism and industrial design. The Zone 2 is fitted with an adjustable vegetable tanned leather strap and a traditional stainless steel buckle. Sapphire crystal keeps the lens scratch-free, and it has the capability of withstanding pressure equivalent to depths of 10 atmospheres or 100 meters. $228 | BUY

The Layer watch gives the bare essentials a professional look. Its precision case is made of stacked PVD-coated stainless steel layers that create depth in the watch´s face. Three-hand timing and a date window make up its simple display, while visible movement provides a view of the complexity beneath. The Layer has a sapphire crystal face, NFC-enabled proprietary silicon band, and is powered by a Japanese automatic movement. $448 | BUY

Built in several parts and assembled by hand, the Zone’s split case design is unique to MINUS-8 and meant to resemble a time zone boundary. The case is constructed in several different parts and assembled by hand to maintain water-resistance. $248 | BUY

[MIKA27]

CHRONOS SMART WATCH DISC

Tracking your fitness is important. Wrist-bound notifications are handy. Yet you don't want to give up your favorite watch. With the Chronos Smart Watch Disc, you don't have to. It mounts to the back of nearly any timepiece, so it's hidden from view, and is only 3mm thick, so it's comfortable to wear. It gives you vibration and LED-based lighting alerts for incoming notifications, lets you dismiss or respond via taps and/or gestures, and also uses its accelerometer to track your steps and movement. All with nary a screen in sight.

[MIKA27]

The Warcraft Movie Trailer

Showcased at Blizzcon today, here’s the trailer for the upcoming Warcraft movie, which will debut in June.

[MIKA27]

The Japanese Star Wars: The Force Awakens Trailer Has Lots Of New Footage

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

This is not simply the old trailer with Japanese subs on it. This is much more.

You can watch the one minute and fifty-three second trailer below.