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

[MIKA27]

Scientists Found A Possible Deal Breaker In The Quest To Build A Space Elevator

Carbon nanotubes have been pegged as the wonder material that could finally allow us to build a space elevator. A discouraging new study suggests these microscopic strands aren’t as resilient as we thought — and all it could take is a single misplaced atom to bring the whole thing crashing down.

Illustration of the interior of a carbon nanotube

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are tiny hollow cylinders made of interlocked carbon molecules. When woven together they exhibit extraordinary properties, including tensile strengths up to 100 gigapascals (GPa). To put that into perspective, a single strand the width of a thread could support an entire car. In theory, CNTs could be strong enough to support the tremendous strain exerted by a space elevator — a massive structure that would reach up into space from Earth’s surface.

CNTs are considered one of the strongest materials around, but efforts to manufacture the material have only yielded ropes with strengths of 1 GPa. As reported in New Scientist, Feng Ding of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University wanted to find out why, so he and his colleagues simulated CNTs with a single atom out of place. This converted two of the hexagons into a pentagon and heptagon, creating a malformation in the tube. This one simple alteration was enough to reduce the ideal strength of a CNT from 100 GPa down to 40 GPa. Naturally, this effect was exacerbated when they introduced more misaligned atoms. New Scientist explains:

The team’s simulations show that the kink acts as a weak point in the tube, easily snapping the normally strong carbon-carbon bonds. Once this happens, the bonds in the adjacent hexagons also break, unzipping the entire tube. The effect on CNTs spun together into fibres is similar — once one CNT breaks, the strain on the others increases, fracturing them in sequence.

This means that just one misplaced atom is sufficient to weaken an entire CNT fibre. In terms of a potential space elevator, imagine a cable running up from the Earth’s surface into space, and then suddenly ripping apart like a run in a lady’s stocking. That would be… bad.

Given the primitive state of CNT manufacturing at this stage, a bad tube is practically guaranteed. As Ding said, “Most mass-produced CNTs are highly defective, and high-quality CNTs are hard to produce in large quantity.”

This is definitely a setback in the effort to design and build a space elevator, which will require cables with tensile strengths reaching 50 GPa. If these skylifts are ever going to happen, engineers are going to have to figure out a way to make CNTs perfect at the atomic level — and that’s a daunting proposition.

[MIKA27]

Researchers Developing a “Universal” Vaccine to Cure Cancer

A team of researchers from Johannes Gutenberg University on Mainz, Germany have created a “universal” cancer vaccine that has shown promise in mice and in limited human trials.

The new, customized vaccine utilizes immunotherapy, using the body’s immune system to fight cancer. Because cancer cells act and react like normal cells, the immune system doesn’t attack them naturally. By using a cancer-specific antigen, though, the vaccine fools the immune system into attacking all cells that suppress it, seeking out tumors throughout the body. This vaccine is aimed for those already diagnosed with cancer.

The scientists first experimented on laboratory mice that had been riddled with engineered lung cancer. Scientists placed sections of the tumor’s genetic RNA code inside nanoparticles of a fatty acid membrane (that has a negative charge). They injected it into the mice where it could travel anywhere in the body – spleen, lymph nodes, bone marrow – where the vaccine would meet dendritic immune cells. These cells were stimulated to release interferon-a, a chemical that activated white blood cells (T-cells) to attack and destroy all cancer tumor cells containing this particular genetic code.

Thus, the mice’s own immune system fought the cancer cells. Within 20 days of receiving the vaccine, the mice were cancer-free.

The team wrote,

(Such) vaccines are fast and inexpensive to produce, and virtually any tumor antigen can be encoded by RNA. Thus, the nanoparticulate RNA immunotherapy approach introduced here may be regarded as a universally applicable novel vaccine class for cancer immunotherapy.

Researchers believe that because RNA samples are easy to obtain from every type of cancer, that the same techniques can be used to create vaccines for all types of cancer. It is a customized cure.

Using the body’s own immune system is proving effective in the cure of cancer and other diseases.

Dutch immunologists Jolanda de Vries and Figdor commented on the study in Nature,

Only relatively modest immune responses occur with vaccines containing antigens that are also expressed on healthy tissue. Strong immune responses can be expected only when cancer cells express antigens that are not usually expressed in normal adult cells.

After the successful mice trials, a limited human trial was conducted to test the safety of the vaccine. The results were also positive. Three melanoma patients received low doses of the customized vaccine. Though the doses were too low to have therapeutic benefit, the patient’s immune systems were stimulated, producing limited anti-cancer benefits.

One patient experienced a slight reduction in the size of their tumor. Another had their tumor removed and was still cancer-free seven months later. The third patient who had 8 tumors across their skin and lungs became “clinically stable.”

The scientific team has to wait 12 months to perform follow-up tests on the three test subjects before moving on to the next step, a broader study with full-strength vaccine. The results of a larger study will determine the vaccine’s success.

[MIKA27]

Raised in Hell: The Children Haunted by Juárez's Vicious Drug War

"Hi my name is David," said a small boy sarcastically, causing his friends to laugh at his use of English. "Motherfucker."

David is nine years old, has a buzzcut, a cut off t-shirt, and is growing up in Ciudad Juárez — the Mexican border city which claimed the dubious title of the world's most violent metropolis in the world three years running from 2008 to 2010.

When the topic turned to his barrio, the tough kid facade dropped. He said life was "hard" and he felt "bad" when he saw stuff. "Like what?" I asked. "When they killed my dad," he said, very quickly.

David said he saw his dad gunned down when he was leaving for work, and he didn't know why it happened. "I always think about that," he continued. "Why did they kill him?"

But for David, the worst is when he sleeps. He said he has nightmares at least two nights a week in which people are murdered. Then he wakes up scared, sweating, and sad — all symptoms characteristic of post-traumatic stress disorder.

"I wish for a new, different life. Where I can live with my family, my dad," he said quietly. "When I grow up, I don't want to be sad. I want to be a soccer player."

Juárez is a scarred city, still reeling from a bloody turf war between rival drug cartels that left bodies strewn in the streets from 2007-2012. In 2010, the bloodiest year on record, Juárez averaged over eight murders per day.

After three years as the world's most violent city, followed by a year as the second most, Juárez finally fell out of the top 10 in 2012. The government claims the drop reflects the success of its security efforts. Others contend that it has more to do with El Chapo Guzmán's Sinaloa cartel defeating the homegrown Juárez cartel in the battle for control of the city's trafficking routes.

And now that the violence has lessened, its longer-term impacts are becoming more obvious.

"We have a lot of children who are very damaged, who are resentful and angry, and now we have teenagers who are committing high impact crimes," said José Luis Flores, director of The Network for Children's Rights in Ciudad Juárez, AC. "Now there's beginning to be an entire generation with post-traumatic stress that's not being taken care of too."

He pointed to the estimated 200,000 children who grew up during the height of the violence, and the 14,000 children who lost a parent. Many more witnessed the murder of other relatives, friends, and strangers.

"During the drug war they [the citizens of Juárez] were constantly being traumatized," said Kathleen O'Connor, assistant professor at the University of Texas El Paso (UTEP) School of Nursing. "They would run across shootouts and bodies in the street. And everyone was afraid to leave their homes."

Dr. O'Connor, who has published four papers examining post-traumatic stress amongst the adult inhabitants of Juárez, says she knows of no serious studies of the problem among children.

While researching she heard numerous stories about murder, torture, extortion, kidnapping, and disappearances, and coined the phrase narcotrauma to explain the mental health issues they have caused. She says it is often a chronic trauma made up of multiple events over a long period of time that contrasts with the usual way of thinking of PTSD as a reaction to a single incident.

"Children who have suffered trauma will have a host of problems as adults if its not dealt with," she said. "And they [the government] is basically doing nothing in that area."

El Paso is divided from Juárez by a fence, a small river, and a few bridges. El Paso consistently ranks as one of the safest cities in America — a far cry from the reputation of its neighbor.

From her office Doctor O'Connor can see the dangerous Felipe Ángeles barrio that sits on Juárez's western limits and is where nine-year-old David lives. The barrio's dusty roads also provide a view of the pristine UTEP campus.

The Felipe Ángeles neighborhood is one of the most dangerous barrios in Ciudad Juárez

At an after school center in Felipe Ángeles, I sat at a table with four pre-teen girls and asked 12-year-old Diana whether she liked her neighborhood. "Well, no, but what can I do?" she said.

The girls mentioned a particular incident that had stuck in all their minds, when someone was shot in front of them while they were in their elementary school. "I only saw it a bit," Diana explained, and then changed the subject.

That wasn't the only event that affected Diana during the drug war. Her father was killed when she was seven. She, like David, said she didn't know why, and like the younger boy talked of the lasting impact of the years of terror.

"I'm afraid all the time," Diana said. "I feel really unsafe. All the time, when I walk, I'm worried someone is going to kidnap me."

Daniela, the supervisor of the Felipe Ángeles center, was also sitting at the table. She works for a group called OPI, which stands for Independent Popular Organization. The group runs free after school centers in dangerous neighborhoods around the city. Here, Daniela leads activities with the children, trying to provide them an outlet to enjoy themselves, build their confidence, and keep them off the street. Some days they sing songs, other days they make art, anything positive they can find to do with a limited budget.

And every day Daniela witnesses the scars of the drug war on the faces of the children in the center.

"I see it in the children, they reflect within themselves all the violence that there was here," she said. "They carry the consequences of everything that happened."

Only 22 years old, Daniela's teenage years were marked by the murders of friends and the kidnapping of a cousin. The war left her scarred too.

"I'm going out a bit more now. Before I never went out, I didn't go to parties. When I was a teenager, I spent my time locked in the house because of the violence," she said, while the girls sitting beside her kept their eyes downcast. "I wouldn't even go to the movies because I was afraid they'd kidnap or kill me."

Even before Juárez's murder rate began breaking records, the city had a notorious reputation for another reason. In the 90s, Juárez became internationally infamous for the disappearance and murder of its women — femicides.

The Mexican authorities have shown little sign that they are willing to address the lasting impact of either on the city. When Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto made his first presidential visit to Juárez in January 2015, he and the governor of the state of Chihuahua, César Duarte, touted Juárez as a successful example of Mexico's fight against crime.

"Some cities, and Ciudad Juárez in particular, have a very different feeling than they did even two or three years ago," said Peña Nieto, enlisting the fallen murder rate in the city to underline a wider drop in the national number of homicides that has since been reversed.

Months after the president's visit, the plight of Juárez's children briefly made it onto Mexico's front pages when five kids, aged 12 to 15, tied up a six-year-old boy in a game of secuestro — kidnapping — who they then tortured and murdered.

"This is a state that says 'in Juárez, nothing happened'," said Catalina Castillo, the director of OPI, stressing the lack of government action and the tiny budget groups like hers can access. "They don't want to deal with the broken hearts of our children."

It was 6pm when the after school program started to empty out. Alejandro, 11, waited behind.

"My father died. Well, he went to work, a car came, and they shot up the van that he was in," said Alejandro. He was six years old when it happened, and said he's seen multiple strangers gunned down as well.

"I feel bad, sad, now. I think about it all week. I dream about him every night," he continued. What else do you dream about? "Fights, gunshots. Nothing else."

 

 

[MIKA27]

The Woolsey Agent Desk Is Named After James Bond

With plenty of storage, a lockable stow area, secret compartment and modular power, it’s no wonder that California-based designer Sean Woolsey decided to name his desk after Bond, James Bond. The Woolsey Agent Desk is made of American Black Walnut finished with a natural, food safe, hand rubbed oil and wax finish that sits atop a powder-coated steel base, but it’s all the other features that make this 60″ x 30″ x 30″ really stand out. The built-in leather mouse pad hides a secret compartment that can only be opened with the included magnetic wood geode. The drawers are lined with black leather bottoms and feature Blum soft close drawer slides. The lockable stow area is perfect for a laptop, iPad or even whiskey when you want to secure it. Woolsey even added a magnetic power block with 2 power sockets and 4 USB ports that can be attached anywhere on the steel frame. We can actually picture a secret agent using this desk.

 

[MIKA27]

SHINOLA CANFIELD CHRONO WATCH

Using inspiration from mid-century modernists, Shinola has come through with its most beautiful watch to date. Boasting an extra-open dial viewing area, the design of the Canfield Chrono Watch required Shinola's Detroit-based team to be trained in a new top-loading case process — and by the looks of the results, it's clear they've mastered it. In addition to Super-LumiNova diamond-cut hands, numbers, and indexes, the watch also sports a symmetrical date window, stopwatch function, and coin edge detail on the case. A mix of cowhide and alligator straps are offered, depending on the dial color, which come in white, black, green, blue, and our favorite, cream. Shinola has free overnight shipping right now, so if you've been waiting to order Dad something, now's the time.

[MIKA27]

The Walking Dead Has Reportedly Filmed Death Scenes For All 11 Of Negan's Potential Victims

The situation revolving around The Walking Dead‘s latest cliffhanger — a recreation of an infamous murder scene from the comics that AMC has managed to stretch out so far for two months and counting — is pretty ridiculous. Turns out, however, that its absurdity cannot match the lengths AMC is going to keep the outcome secret.

The detail comes out of an extensive Hollywood Reporter piece about the show’s next season, and how it intends to deal with the consequences of Negan brandishing his barbed-wire-wrapped baseball bat in the faces of the majority of the show’s principal cast. But how do you avoid getting the cliffhanger you’ve inconceivably stretched out for months and months spoiled ahead of broadcast? By filming the opening scene of the upcoming seventh season over and over again, each time with a different actor taking the fatal blow.

According to THR’s sources, that’s exactly what AMC has done, in an attempt to dissuade spoiler-hungry set photographers from figuring out who really dies. There were 11 potential victims — Rick, Carl, Michonne, Glenn, Maggie, Abraham, Sasha, Daryl, Eugene, Aaron, and Rosita — so that means AMC recorded 11 takes of the same scene. The director of the episode and the show’s producers will then slot in the true take in the editing process.

Kinda a crazy length to go to for something that viewers should have probably gotten to learn in last season’s finale, isn’t it?

[MIKA27]

NASA's Last Apollo Saturn V Rocket Is On Its Way To Mississippi Instead Of The Moon

We’re always impressed with how rockets and other pieces of space equipment are transported, whether it’s through busy city roads or by boat, as one of the remaining Saturn V rocket boosters was moved this week.

The Saturn V was moved along a canal from its home at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans and 64km down the Pearl River to NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. It’s currently near the entrance of the center until it’s driven the last 16km to the INFINITY Space Center Monday night.

Five F-1 rocket engines will be affixed to the booster, which in its prime could produce 7.5 million pounds of thrust. The Saturn V will be a part of a new exhibit that aims to educate visitors about the Apollo program and Mississippi’s role in space exploration.

“There’s a saying that if you wanted to get to the moon, you had to go through south Mississippi first,” said John Wilson, executive director for INFINITY Science Center in a press release.

The Saturn Vs were utilised for the Apollo missions to land men on the moon between 1966 and 1973. At the time, it was considered the world’s most powerful rocket.

This particular booster was originally slated for the Apollo 19 mission in 1973 before the mission was cancelled. According to the INFINITY Science Center, it’s the “last unpreserved Saturn first stage known to exist” and the “last remaining piece of Apollo space flight hardware. It was kept in storage at the Michoud Assembly Facility for more than 45 years.

Fred Haise, who was a pilot on the failed Apollo 13 mission, is on the board of directors at the center and was slated to be a part of the Apollo 19 mission before its cancellation. I can only imagine what he must be feeling knowing it’s on its way.

 

[MIKA27]

Star Trek Actor Anton Yelchin Dies In Car Accident

According to the Associated Press, actor Anton Yelchin has died at the age of 27 in a car accident.

According to TMZ, friends noticed Yelchin was missing around 1 am after he was late to a rehearsal. The actor was discovered pinned to his mailbox by his car at the bottom of a steep driveway at his San Fernando Valley home. The car was in neutral and the engine was still running, according to TMZ. Foul play is not suspected.

Los Angles Police Department spokesperson Jenny Hauser released a statement, confirming some details of his death:

“On Sunday, June 19 at 1:10 in the morning, a fatal traffic collision occurred. It was the result of the victim’s own car rolling backwards down his steep driveway, pinning him against a brick mailbox pillar and security fence. The victim was on his way to meet his friends for rehearsal. And when he didn’t show up, his friends went to his house, where they found him deceased by his car. It appeared he had momentarily exited his car leaving it in the driveway.”

Yelchin was born in Russia in 1989, and immigrated to the United States as an infant. His first role was in E.R. in 2000, and he had worked as an actor in a number of additional television shows over the following years. He rose to national attention with his role in the film Alpha Dog, before he was cast as Chekov in J.J. Abram’s rebooted Star Trek franchise.

Since Star Trek, he had appeared in films such as Terminator Salvation, Odd Thomas, The Smurfs, and others. He is slated to appear in Rememory, We Don’t Belong Here and this year’s Star Trek Beyond. He was also cast in the upcoming Stephen King adaptation, Mr. Mercedes.

Some of Yelchin’s costars have reacted to the news on Twitter:

BAD ROBOT 

KARL URBAN - I can't believe it , I m fckn hurting bad !

JOHN CHO - I loved Anton Yelchin so much. He was a true artist - curious, beautiful, courageous. He was a great pal and a great son. I'm in ruins.

Zachary Quinto - our dear friend. our comrade. our anton. one of the most open and intellectually curious people… 

 

[MIKA27]

Las Vegas Looks Even Weirder In Infrared

Las Vegas doesn’t exactly need any help when it comes to looking ridiculous, but this footage, which was shot in infrared by Philip Bloom, makes bits of Vegas look like a fairy floss wonderland (as opposed to its typical styrofoam opulence).

Seeing the world in infrared isn’t exactly new, but the odd colours of the palm trees mixed with the stillness of the people and the total randomness of the Strip makes the effect seem especially eerie.

 

[MIKA27]

The Case That Turns Your Smartphone Into A Game Boy Was Shown Working At E3

The folks at Neowin made an exciting discovery at E3 this week. Originally teased as an April Fools’ joke over a year ago, Hyperkin’s Smart Boy was not only on the show floor with an updated design this year, it was also fully-functional, with a possible official release closer to December.

Designed to be a better way to play retro games on your smartphone without having to resort to awful on-screen touchscreen controls, the Smart Boy has a button layout, and colour scheme, reminiscent of Nintendo’s original Game Boy. It even accepts classic Game Boy cartridges via a slot on the back, presumably via emulation hardware inside, and using a smartphone as just a display.

The only catch? Originally the Smart Boy was designed to be both an iPhone or Android smartphone accessory, but at E3 the hardware was only shown working with the latter. It’s not terribly surprising, though, given the abundance of Game Boy emulators available on the Google Play Store, versus the hurdles one has to jump through to play the games on iOS. Disappointing, but this is as good a reason as any for iOS devotees to jump ship to Android.

[MIKA27]

Body Found In Well Confirms 800-Year-Old Viking Saga

Sverre’s Saga, composed between the 12th and the 13th century, tells the story of the brutal overthrow of King Sverre Sigurdsson his army of Birkebeiner mercenaries at his castle, Sverresborg, in 1197. It’s an incredible story and one of few documents we have of the events of the Viking era, and for years historians have been highly skeptical as to just how accurate it is.

But the recent discovery of human remains at the bottom of a well in Trondheim, Norway prove that at least one part of the Saga is astonishingly accurate.

According to Sverre’s Saga, when the Baglers took King Sverre’s castle, they burned down the building, and cut off the castle’s water supply by throwing one of the King’s dead mercenaries down a well and filling it in with rocks. This latter part is a small detail in a grand tale, and one that could easily be assumed to be apocryphal.

Indeed, part of the concerns of the authenticity of Sverre’s Saga derive from the fact that the work was started during the King’s life, and was sponsored in part by Sverre as his autobiography.

When archaeologists from the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research went to the site of Sverresborg castle and conducted a trial excavation of a well, however, they did find parts of a single human skeleton beneath a large mass of rocks.

After retrieving one bone from the well, radiocarbon analysis showed that it belonged to an individual who lived, and died in the late half of the 12th century–directly in line with the documented overthrow of King Sverre Sigurdsson in 1197.

Lead archaeologist at the site, Anna Petersén explained:

This is truly astonishing. As far as I know there is no known example of the discovery of an individual historically connected with an act of war as far back as the year 1197. And the fact that this actually corroborates an event described in Sverre’s saga is simply amazing

Now the archaeologists have returned to the site, and are conducting a full excavation of the well in the hopes of removing the entire human skeleton of Sverre’s ill-fated, but very real, Birkebeiner mercenary.

[MIKA27]

AUDI TRUCK PROJECT PLAN B

I think we can all agree on the unsightly and inconvenient nature of sharing the highway with big rigs. These massive 18-wheelers overpower all other vehicles on the road and lend themselves more to eyesores than their utility. However, that would all seem to get thrown by the wayside if Audi follows through with these concepts that two designers put together this past week.

The goal of the project, called Truck For Audi, was to create a concept for a self-driving electric truck for the German automobile manufacturer. In this case, since the idea itself breaks new ground in the transportation world, it only made sense that designers Artem Smirnov and Vladimir Panchenko would practically reinvent the way we view these trucks. What’s left for us is quite the imaginative piece of vehicle conceptualization, featuring elongated headlights and tail lights along with design lines smoother than Miles Davis. And let’s not forget that cockpit inspired cabin. Whatever the case, if these do make it on the road eventually, they’re sure to draw significant attention from surrounding drivers.

 

[MIKA27]

WHISTLEPIG 15 YEAR RYE WHISKEY

Some of the best rye whiskey around comes from the folks at WhistlePig in Vermont. And their latest release, which is also their oldest to date, is another step forward for the brand. WhistlePig 15 Year Rye Whiskey is sourced from Canada, and then finished in custom charred barrels made from Vermont White Oaks trees found on the WhistlePig Farm. The trees have a denser wood grain than the wood from most barrels, which imparts a distinct flavor into every bottle of whiskey. It clocks in at 92 proof and is made using a 100% rye mash bill.

[MIKA27]

PLUME WI-FI SYSTEM

We all rely on Wi-Fi for our Internet needs. Unfortunately, that normally means relying on a single router tucked away somewhere next to the torch-like lights of your modem. The new Plume Wi-Fi System does away with this paradigm completely, using a series of tiny Pods scattered throughout your house to ensure coverage, and shifting the routing duties to the cloud. As a result, it's able to respond to varying demands and conditions, optimizing the network in real-time to deliver maximum performance. They don't look too bad, either, in champagne, silver, or black, so unlike that old router, you don't need to hide these behind your desk.

[MIKA27]

COYOTE ASADO SMOKER

Time to up your cookout game with the Coyote Asado Smoker. Made from heat-resistant ceramic, it has adjustable venting and an integrated thermometer for precise temperature control, making it perfect for smoking, but also quite competent at searing and grilling, as well. The company's signature smoking grate is made from 304 stainless steel and offers 254 square inches of cooking area, letting it cook a crowd's worth of food at once, and the optional cart and side shelves let it more easily across the patio.

[MIKA27]

DEAD DISTILLERS

Throughout history, just about every culture has figured out a way to distill alcohol in one form or another. Dead Distillers: A History of the Upstarts and Outlaws Who Made American Spirits highlights the forefathers of distilling in the U.S.A., with profiles of the well known like George Washington to the names you see on bottles at your liquor store like Jim Beam, Jasper "Jack" Daniel, and Julian "Pappy" Van Winkle. Over 50 are profiled from the Whiskey Rebellion to Prohibition, to the current climate of experimental and craft distillers. From the same writers that brought you Guide to Urban Moonshining, it's an extensive look back at the men who are partly responsible for our fascination with booze.

[MIKA27]

You Can Now Buy This Sweet Star Trek Communicator In Australia

 

This screen-accurate 1:1 replica of the Original Series Star Trek Communicator is the very first fully functional wireless Communicator in the world (and galaxy!).

While it may not enable you to contact orbiting starships or request Scotty’s transportation services, the handset will enable you to communicate with friends and family back on terrestrial earth.

 

Simply pair your Bluetooth enabled Smartphone or device with the Communicator and all the Trekkies out there can make and receive phone calls in a way that you could only have previously dreamed of — with a flick of that iconic antenna grille.

It also hosts an awesome array of authentic Star Trek sounds and recorded conversation fragments that lets you to spice up any mundane telephone call.

Crafted from die-cast metal it comes in a fancy foam-lined transit case. “Every curve, every line and texture has been painstakingly 3D scanned from the original movie prop,” creators The Wand Company say.

You can pick one up online for $229.99. The communicator also comes with a magnetic stand for wireless charging with multi-colour LED charge status illumination.

 

[Fuzz]

7 hours ago, MIKA27 said:

COYOTE ASADO SMOKER

Time to up your cookout game with the Coyote Asado Smoker. Made from heat-resistant ceramic, it has adjustable venting and an integrated thermometer for precise temperature control, making it perfect for smoking, but also quite competent at searing and grilling, as well. The company's signature smoking grate is made from 304 stainless steel and offers 254 square inches of cooking area, letting it cook a crowd's worth of food at once, and the optional cart and side shelves let it more easily across the patio.

254 sqaure inches? Only 254?! The Komodo Kamado 32" Big Bad apparently has 12 square feet of grilling space!

 

[MIKA27]

Noomi Rapace Is In Alien: Covenant After All

Ridley Scott’s last Alien film, Prometheus, ended with Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and the head of cyborg David (Michael Fassbender) flying off to continue the story. So it was a surprise when the sequel, Alien: Covenant, was announced and Fassbender, but not Rapace, was in the cast. Now it turns out she is.

Deadline reports that despite those early casting stories, Rapace is currently on the Australian set of Covenant. She’s filming for a few weeks but how exactly her character fits into the story is a mystery, like the rest of it. The good news is fans who were worried the movies wouldn’t link together can now breath a sigh of relief.

Alien: Covenant is scheduled for release in the US 4 August 2017. An Australian release date has not yet been confirmed.

[MIKA27]

New Trick Helps Winemakers Figure Out Which Microbes Make Good Wine

Winemaking is always an exercise in uncertainty. You don’t really know just what the wine will taste like until the very end of the process, which is sometimes decades long. A new technique, however, could help predict what wine will taste like before it’s even made.

A paper out last week in mBio from researchers at the University of California Davis details an extensive survey undertaken of over 700 different Napa and Sonoma wines, beginning in 2011. Before the fermentation process began — when the future wine was just grape juice — the researchers DNA sequenced the juice to identify the mix of microbes present within it. They then compared those results with analyses of their finished wines and found that they were able to link chemical compounds associated with flavour and taste to the microbial juice profiles.

Senior author of the paper David Mills of the University of California Davis’ Mills Laboratory said that this information suggested a new avenue for how we describe the tastes of wine. “Wineries often communicate to their consumers via vintage descriptions in terms of vineyard location, combined with specific weather and grape qualities of that particular harvest,” Mills told Gizmodo. “Perhaps the microbial ‘vintage’ profile might be similarly discussed in the future.”

The information isn’t just descriptive, however. Mills also suggested that the microbial profiles could eventually help winemakers in replicating particularly good vintages or, alternately, avoiding bad ones.

“By tracking this routinely, winemakers might be able to score ‘good’ vs. ‘bad’ microbes associated with grapes that might influence their wine,” Mills said. “Winemakers might change things ahead of time if they see microbes associated with bad outcomes or manipulate vineyard conditions to get the right regionally-linked microbial consortia on their grapes.”

Of course, the microbial profile of juice is one of many factors that shapes a wine’s overall flavour. Still, it puts us one step closer to untangling just what it is that gives a good wine such a unique taste.

[MIKA27]

Abandoned LA Pier To Be Converted Into Ocean Research Center

The busiest shipping port in the US will soon be home to even more activity, thanks to plans to open a state-of-the-art ocean research facility by 2023. AltaSea released architectural renderings last month, designed by Gensler, for a 35-acre “campus of innovation” at the historic Port of Los Angeles.

In a press release, AltaSea said having access to the port, which is also one of the country’s deepest, will create a unique space where experts could continue exploration of the ocean and conjure up solutions to environmental and sustainability issues such as food, energy, and climate security.

“The ocean is our planet’s last frontier. It is where new solutions lie. There is no project more profound, more impactful, more critical for the tomorrow we hope for our children and our children’s children than AltaSea,” AltaSea Executive Director Jenny Krusoe said.

The $US150 ($203) million initial phase of the construction is set to begin later this year and will include renovation of 180,000 square feet in some of the historic warehouses, which will become the Research and Business Hub for other businesses. The construction will also include that of the Wharf Plaza and the Education Pavilion, set to be completed in 2017. A Science Hub that will contain the Southern California Marine Institute, is set to open by 2020. The final piece, an Engagement Center for public education and exhibitions, is set to open by 2023.

The campus will be built on City Dock No. 1, which, according to Co.Exist, was built nearly a century ago to help the city gain access to the Panama Canal. However, since it was built on a landfill, it became useless in the 1960s after shipping containers became more common.

In addition to providing environmental sustainability solutions, the compound will also be powered by renewable energy and rooftop solar fields.

Here’s some more renderings of the future campus.

 

 

[MIKA27]

The Final Trailer For Legend Of Tarzan Really Swings (Sorry)

I mean, it’s a Tarzan movie. There’s gonna be lots of swinging around anyway. But if you needed a reminder that Tarzan loves to swing around the jungle, this “final” trailer (before the deluge of TV spots, that is) for The Legend of Tarzan lets you know: There’s gonna be a lot of swinging around in this movie.

That said, we also get a few new shots of Samuel L. Jackson, Margot Robbie, Djimon Hounsou and Christoph Waltz in here too — as well as some really amazing looking shots of the gorillas in action as Tarzan brawls with one he calls his former “brother”. Oh, and the petrifying stampede of wildebeest for no particular reason also returns to hilarious/awesome effect.

 

[MIKA27]

Why Did Japanese People Stop Performing Seppuku?

Seppuku, a highly ritualized form of suicide that involved cutting one’s own stomach, was once part of the bushido samurai code, and considered an honorable way to die and, until the 20th century, was quite common. So what happened? Why did this practice die out?

Now, this is not to say that suicide is not still a relatively common practice in Japan, nor that some people don’t attach rituals to their suicide. But, while martial suicide is a practice found in numerous cultures, the act of ritual self-disembowlment is peculiar to Japan. However, after World War II, the act of seppuku has become so rare as to be shocking. The seppuku of famed author Yukio Mishima in 1970 was seen as anachronistic and something of a national embarrassment, and judoka Isao Inokuma’s 2001 death by seppuku was an anomaly. But in the 19th century, seppuku was not only a relatively common practice, it was a much-desired death among members of the samurai class.

The End of Judiciary Seppuku

For two centuries, Japan existed in relative isolation. It was forbidden for Japanese citizens to leave the country, and trade with the outside world was limited to Chinese and Dutch ships, which were permitted to enter Nagasaki harbour. But in the mid-19th century, all that changed when Americans and Russians invaded Japan, taking trading rights by force. What resulted was a period of major social upheaval for Japan.

Many members of the samurai class resented the government reforms that came with reopening the ports and the appearance of foreigners on their shores. The imperial household had long held a largely symbolic position in Japan, but with the appearance of these foreigners came a kind of cultural fundamentalism, with many Japanese recommitting to the Emperor against the Japanese government. It was also a period that saw a number of killings of foreigners and those who made treaties with foreigners by members of the samurai class. Some of these samurai (who, in order to avoid bringing punishment down on their lords, would sometimes renounce their lords and become rōnin) would commit voluntary seppuku following these killings. Others were arrested and, if they were fortunate, permitted to commit obligatory seppuku as a judiciary punishment.

Matters were not helped by the Emperor Kōmei, who in 1863 issued an order to “expel all barbarians.” While the government was passing reforms to modernise Japan, many samurai took this as moral permission to kill foreigners. Westerners who made the mistake of pushing their ways through samurai processions (something considered extraordinarily rude) or violated Japanese laws, might find themselves on the wrong end of a samurai’s blade.

It was during this period that the Western fascination with seppuku (known by the somewhat more lurid term “hara-kiri” by Western writers). British diplomats Ernest Satow and Algernon Mitford witnessed incidents of judiciary seppuku and published detailed accounts of what they saw back home. Far from believing seppuku to be a barbaric practice, these writers stressed the nobility (and impressively quiet decorum) with which the condemned conducted themselves, and deemed it an honorable act of chivalry.

But things changed with the 1868 Incident at Sakai. Sakai is a costal town, which at that time was still closed off to foreigners, but in March of 1868, thirteen French sailors rowed to shore. There is some disagreement about what they did while they were there; some claimed that the sailors were a bit rowdy while eyewitnesses reported that they had only purchased some fruit. But the samurai of the Tosa clan took this small foreign invasion quite seriously, killing eleven of the unarmed sailors. Japan’s French consul, Léon Roches, insisted that the culprits be executed. Twenty samurai, mostly chosen by lots, were sentenced to death by obligatory seppuku.

Roches sent one of his captains, Bergasse du Petit-Thouars, to witness the execution, which they had anticipated would be by beheading. Much to Du Petit-Thouars’ surprise, the first samurai, Minoura Inokichi, marched out, shouted insults at him (saying, “You won’t want to eat meat after this, Frenchmen!”) and disemboweled himself. This was actually a particularly aggressive and grisly seppuku ceremony, lacking much of the reserved decorum that Satow and Mitford had written about. On top of that, the kaishaku, whose job it was to chop off the head of the seppuku practitioner once he had finished cutting his stomach, were particularly incompetent, hacking through the samurais’ necks rather than slicing them off with a single cut.

After eleven samurai had cut their stomachs, Du Petit-Thouars declared that the ceremony was over. Eleven samurai had died for the murders of eleven soldiers, and the captain decided that was sufficient. Believing he was performing an act of mercy, Du Petit-Thouars left over the objections of his Japanese hosts. This actually proved a grave mistake, with the official Japanese reports calling the Frenchman a coward. The Westerners were little kinder, with Satow shaking his head at Du Petit-Thouars’ actions, saying that he made it seem that the French were more interested in revenge than justice.

Other Western diplomats living in Japan learned something very important from this incident: judiciary seppuku was not a deterrent to killing Westerners. A glorious and honorable martyrdom was hardly a punishment to the more xenophobic samurai. The British consul general petitioned the government to outlaw judiciary seppuku, and by April 8th, an imperial decree had been handed down, saying that any samurai who killed a foreigner would “be stripped of their rank, and will meet with a suitable punishment.” Translation: even if a samurai is the one who kills a foreigner, judiciary seppuku would be out of his reach. That did, in fact, prove a deterrent to killing foreigners. There was one incident in 1870 when a battle between two rival samurai factions did result in a final judiciary seppuku, but otherwise, the practice was dead in the courts.

The Meiji Restoration

While judiciary seppuku may have ended with the imperial decree, martial seppuku continued as a dying cry of the samurai class. In 1868, a return to imperial rule under Emperor Meiji was announced. This was the proceeded by the resignation of Tokugawa Yoshinobu as shogun and the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate — which, in turn, initiated the decline of the samurai.

Many samurai who remained loyal to the shogunate were displeased with the new direction that the country was taking, and anti-imperial samurai rebellions raged in the following decade. Perhaps the most famous to Western readers is the Satsuma Rebellion, led by Saigō Takamori, whose final stand against the Meiji government provided the historical basis for The Last Samurai.

Takamori didn’t have the opportunity to commit seppuku himself; he died from bullet wounds during the Battle of Shiroyama in 1877. But so certain were his supporters that he would take control of his own death that commemorative prints of his imagined seppuku appeared immediately, and it took years for people to understand how Takamori really died.

But there were other famous incidents of seppuku during this period. During an 1868 battle in Aizu during the Boshin War, the youngest brigade of soldiers was known as the Byakkotai the “White Tiger Force.” The brigade was supposed to consist of 16 and 17-year old sons of the Aizu samurai, but some of the boys were even younger. During the battle, 20 members of the squad looked over the castle town and believed that they saw a fire. Thinking that their force had been defeated and their lord was dead, the boys decided to commit suicide. One read a death poem, in accordance with the samurai tradition. They then proceeded to kill themselves and each other in a number of ways, some of them driving their blades into their stomachs. One boy, Iinuma Sadakichi, survived his wounds and learned the terrible truth: the smoke they had seen was from cannon and rifle fire. The castle was not on fire and the battle had not yet been lost. The boys’ tragic adherence to the samurai code immortalised them, however. When Italian dictator Benito Mussolini heard the story, he donated a column from Pompei to stand by the boys’ graves.

In 1876, the Meiji government put a major nail in the coffins of the samurai class and seppuku by banning the carrying of swords. Only commissioned army officers and certain security officials, it decreed, could carry swords. Supporters of the samurai were incensed. The sword was a symbol inherently tied to the samurai, and a ban on swords made anti-reformist outrage even stronger.

Kaya Harukata, a Shinto priest, and his former classmate Ōtagurō Tomō founded a new Shinto faction, called Keishin-tō, the Party of Divine Reverence. It became more commonly known, however, as Kumamoto Shinpūren, the Kumamoto League of the Divine Wind. Harukata and Tomō recruited the sons of samurai families and students from the Shinto schools, many of them teenagers. Others were men outraged by what they saw as the decline of Japanese culture. In the end, the force was less than 200 men strong, but they decided to attack Kumamoto, where an Imperial Japanese Army was stationed. It was 173 samurai against some 2000 armed troops. And, to make the odds even worse, the Shinpūren fought only with swords, a symbol of their commitment to the samurai way of life.

Although the samurai made an impressive showing against the superior manpower and firepower of the Imperial Army force, they were eventually beaten back. A few dozen made it back to their shrine, where they decided to disband and say their farewells to the living world.

The suicides went on for days, with the defeated fighters disemboweling themselves to avoid capture. Some performed seppuku while on the run from the army and police. Others made it to their homes, where they were able to speak with their family members before slicing their bellies. Still others went to relatives, friends, and temples to find a venue for their suicide. All told, 87 of the rebels died by suicide. The tale of the Shinpūren Rebellion would inspire other anti-reformists, but samurai culture eventually lost out; the Meiji government was victorious and the emperor remained in power until his death in 1912.

Modernisation, it seemed, had killed seppuku.

Seppuku in the 20th Century

Thirty-five years after the Shinpūren Rebellion, former Commander of the Imperial Third Army General Nogi Maresuke begged off the funeral of Emperor Meiji and was later found dead from two crossed wounds gut across his stomach. Nogi was himself a member of the samurai class, but during the early Meiji period, he took the side of the imperial government, crushing the very rebels that his friends and family were often sympathetic to. In fact, Nogi’s younger brother was killed fighting for the rebels during an insurrection in Hagi.

Nogi may have become suicidal after an incident involving the Satsuma Rebellion, during which he lost the regimental flag presented to him by Emperor Meiji. A fellow officer, Kodama Gentarō reported that, after the flag was lost, he discovered Nogi about to disembowel himself and ended up confiscating the man’s sword. After the emperor died in September 1912, Nogi put his affairs in order, rewriting his will and visiting his friends. Then, on the day of the funeral, he and his wife went into a large windowed room in their residence where Nogi stabbed his wife (this appears to have been consensual on her part) and then sliced his own abdomen.

The Japanese reaction to Nogi’s death speaks volumes about how the Japanese viewed seppuku at the time. This sort of death was anachronistic, and some commentators were actually quite outraged by it. Nogi had committed a violent act from Japan’s past while Japan was enjoying a more modern image in the world. It struck some as selfish, sullying the national character for his own samurai ego. The message was clear: seppuku was not an act that belonged in modern Japan.

Martial suicide would see a resurgence during World War II, including acts of seppuku. And when World War II found the Allies victorious, many officers decided to kill themselves rather than surrender. But in the wake of World War II, Japan underwent another great upheaval. The Allied forces occupied Japan and forced the country to abolish the Meiji Constitution in favour of the Constitution of Japan. The Emperor became a figurehead once again as Japan adopted a parliamentary-based government. And when, in 1970, Yukio Mishima barricaded himself in an office of the Eastern Command of Japan’s Self-Defence Forces, delivered a speech demanding that power be returned to the emperor, and then disemboweled himself, the reaction from embarrassed Japanese commentators was non unlike the response to Nogi’s suicide: that seppuku was simply not an act that belonged to modern Japan.

[MIKA27]

Espolòn Añejo X Limited Release Tequila

Espolòn’s delicious tequilas have found their way into glasses and cocktails all across the country for a few years, and the latest release is sure to share a similar fate. Under wraps for 6 years, Añejo X Limited Release Tequila is finally here. It starts with the same 100% Weber Blue Agave character that made all their other releases so good and adds to it with six years of added depth and character with a vanilla profile and notes of nutmeg, peppercorn, cocoa nibs, roasted fruits and bitter chocolate. If you’re not already sold, the limited release Añejo X comes in a jet black matte glass bottle with a label that tells the story of “The Day of the Dead” that was inspired by the work of Jose Guadalupe Posada. This is one bottle of tequila you should make room for in your bar.

[MIKA27]

RARE PRESENTER WHISKEY GLASS SET

If you take whiskey seriously, you know that proper glassware and presentation make a big difference. Inspired by those needs and fine whiskey comes the Rare Presenter Whiskey Glass Set. It features a suspended tray with a handle that lets you carry it one handed while you hold a precious bottle of fantastic whiskey in your other hand. And the glasses themselves are even more vital, hand-formed by glassblowers from Boroscilicate glass. The shape allows for ideal nosing and tasting, while the material gives a high degree of thermal resistance for hot and cold beverages.