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CLYDE MAY'S 9-YEAR CASK STRENGTH WHISKEY

Last year, Clyde May's released a limited 8-year Cask Strength Whiskey. It didn't last very long and garnered its fair share of prestigious awards. That's a tough act to follow, but the Alabama based whiskey producers are up to the task with the newly released 9-year Cask Strength Whiskey. It's bottled at a fiery 117-proof in these beautiful bottles and like it's predecessor, is sure to sell out fast.

 

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In The First Trailer For Radius, A Guy Wakes Up With The Worst Superpower Ever

There are so many high-concept scifi movies out there, it's always interesting to hear about one with an original premise. And that's exactly what Radius has.

Co-directed by filmmakers Caroline Labrèche & Steeve Léonard, Radius is about a guy who wakes up from an accident with no memory and an unfortunate power: if anyone ventures too close to him, they die instantly. How that premise fits the story -- which also features a second main character, a woman with a similar amnesia and deadly distance-related abilities -- remains a mystery. It seems like their powers are connected? We aren't sure. But here's the trailer for the film, which is currently playing the festival circuit.

And if that guy looks familiar, good job. It's Diego Klattenhoff, best known for his work on Homeland as well as in Pacific Rim. There's no release date yet (and buzz from festival screenings hasn't been great), but the set-up is so interesting, it feels like one of those movies you really want to give a try.

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CHASING THE ILLEGAL LOGGERS LOOTING THE AMAZON FOREST

The cargo ship Yacu Kallpa rode impatiently at anchor off Iquitos, Peru, a ramshackle city on a bend in the broad, turbulent waters of the Amazon River. She was a midsize ship, a tenth of a mile long, low-slung, with a seven-story superstructure in the stern and plumes of rust fanning down the hull from her main deck scuppers. She was like any other cargo ship in the world, but with a dark history. At that moment, in November 2015, she needed to get out of town fast.
The captain and crew had a long run ahead, nearly 2,300 miles down the Amazon, then another 4,000 miles north to Tampico, Mexico, and finally to Houston, with lumber harvested from the Amazon rain forest. It was a route the ship and its predecessors had run hundreds of times for more than 40 years, hauling millions of pounds of timber at a time, to supply lumberyards and big-box stores across the United States with the ingredients for the floors, decks, and doors of the typical American home.

In Iquitos, the waters were too shallow for the Yacu Kallpa to dock amid the tin-roofed stilt houses and the brightly painted tourist boats that lined the riverfront. So small workboats were ferrying stacks of lumber from shore, to be lifted into the hold by two onboard cranes. This was a job that could take two weeks under the best of circumstances. The longer it took, the more time customs officials had to prove that the lumber being heaved aboard the Yacu Kallpa had no business being there at all.

As the loading crews worked, 35 inspectors from a government agency called Organismo de Supervisión de los Recursos Forestales y de Fauna Silvestre (Osinfor) were slogging through forests all around Loreto Province. The inspectors were armed with handheld GPS navigators and a few batches of documents that listed the supposed harvest sites and the species of trees on the ship. More often than not, as they visited the sites listed on the paperwork, they found no evidence that any trees had been cut down there—no stumps, no debris, no disturbance—much less the trees listed on the documents. Sometimes there was no suggestion that trees ever grew there in the first place. They’d leave a mark in spray paint and jot a note on a report: “No existe en un radio 50m,” shorthand for no trees logged here, nor within 50 meters in any direction.
The vast scale of illegal logging in the Peruvian Amazon has long been an open secret. Government officials didn’t care, and until recently there was little anyone else could do to stop it. Local activists often died trying. But for a few defiant government agents, this time there was hope. The urgent question: Could they finally prove that enough trees came from illegal logging sites for prosecutors to stop the ship from sending its cargo into the US market?

As the Osinfor inspectors pushed deeper into the Amazonian forests and dockworkers hurried to load the ship, 30 or so staffers at the Environmental Investigation Agency, a nonprofit organization, waited nervously in an office just off Dupont Circle in Washington, DC. They had been developing methods to tie the ship to illegal logging for four years. But at this moment, they just had to wait and see what would happen next. It was up to government agents in Peru and Washington to make stick all the work the EIA staffers and forest inspectors in Peru had done. If everything went right, this would be the last voyage of the Yacu Kallpa.

The vast scale of illegal logging in the Peruvian Amazon has long been an open secret.

THE ENVIRONMENTAL INVESTIGATION Agency got its start in the mid-1980s when a trio of Greenpeace investigators became disenchanted with that organization’s increasing scale and incendiary tactics. The idea was that the new organization should stay small—and focused on environmental crimes. Over the years, the EIA’s investigators have made a reputation for meticulously assembling detailed evidence of criminal behavior, via undercover work, in some of the most dangerous corners of the world.

One such investigator is a mild, studious figure named Alexander von Bismarck, now 45 years old, tall and thin with close-cropped red hair retreating at the temples to form a widow’s peak. Von Bismarck grew up spending part of each year with his American mother in the United States and part with his father in Germany. He graduated from Harvard on what he calls “the 12-year plan,” after a diversion to try his hand as a professional equestrian show jumper, another to study the demise of cichlids in Uganda’s Lake Victoria, and finally a tour in the Marines, where he trained as a scout swimmer for an amphibious landing unit. If his name brings to mind Otto von Bismarck, the 19th-­century German statesman and grand European strategist, that’s because he is descended from the Iron Chancellor’s brother (“a potato farmer,” he notes). A penchant for strategic thinking nonetheless persists.

EIA chief Alexander von Bismarck

In 2005, von Bismarck set out to persuade Congress to amend the Lacey Act, the nation’s chief law against trafficking in stolen wildlife. The ambition was to include stolen forests too, making it a federal crime to import illegally harvested plants. Von Bismarck was able to help forge what was later termed “a Baptist-bootlegger alliance” with US timber producers, who were ready to push for the amendment because, by their own estimate, competition from illegally imported timber was costing them $1 billion a year.

As the amendment was under debate, one of von Bismarck’s undercover investigations revealed that new terrorism-resistant doors ordered for the US Capitol building may have been supplied by an illegal timber-trafficking network in Honduras, and the wood may have been harvested illegally from a Unesco World Heritage Site. The contract for the doors was quietly canceled. (Other doors from the same source allegedly ended up at Mar-a-Lago, according to von Bismarck.) The Lacey Act amendment sailed through Congress and became law in May 2008.

Von Bismarck, who became executive director of the Environmental Investigation Agency in 2007, credits his tour in the Marines with giving him the “operational awareness” for undercover work. He once tracked wood from a protected tree species stolen from a habitat for endangered orangutans in Indonesia to baby cribs being sold by Walmart in the United States. He and other EIA agents also went undercover in the Russian Far East and helped prove that Lumber Liquidators was knowingly buying hardwood flooring made from illegal timber taken from the last remaining home of the critically endangered Siberian tiger. (Lumber Liquidators pleaded guilty to violations under the Lacey Act and agreed in 2015 to pay a $13.2 million penalty.)

Of the logging industry, von Bismarck says: “So many of them would love to have a system based on legal wood—so many of them feel trapped in a system that is a race to the bottom.” He pauses. Then he adds, “But some guys just need to go to jail.”

IN 2009, WITH the Lacey Act amendment in place, von Bismarck began trying “to figure out how to make a case with the new law.” A trade deal between the United States and Peru was just going into effect, and it included new penalties for illegal logging and made Osinfor an independent agency. Von Bismarck saw an opportunity. He and Andrea Johnson, then director of the EIA’s forest campaign, hired a Peruvian journalist named Julia Urrunaga, who had spent 15 years investigating corruption for Peru’s leading newspapers.
Urrunaga is a happy warrior sort, 47 years old, just over 5 feet tall, with a great mane of curly light-brown hair. “I’m a journalist. I didn’t know much about forestry,” she admits. She and Johnson, blue-eyed, freckle-­faced, and also 5 feet tall, with a degree from Yale’s forestry school, set off to find out exactly how the lumber business worked. They visited river ports, attended endless meetings, and interviewed people about life in the logging camps. Then, one day out of the blue, an email arrived at the EIA office in Peru. It came from an Italian immigrant in Iquitos named Francesco Mantuano, who said he had been duped into buying a logging concession for what he imagined would be a lazy jungle retirement. Instead, he found himself entangled with the “wood mafia,” as he called it, in a deeply dishonest business that was sweeping away the rain forest “in a maelstrom of semi-slave exploitation, social and environmental changes … and looting of biodiversity.”

Urrunaga was suspicious at first. “Maybe someone was sending us ‘the perfect case’ to lead us to a horrible mistake,” she says. But she was also curious, so she and Johnson headed to Iquitos. They found Mantuano—“a rail-thin, wildly gesticulating Italian,” Johnson says—with a friend, an Iquitos native. The two men spent their afternoons sipping coffee and smoking in sidewalk cafés, “as though Iquitos were Milan and not this chaotic frontier river city where the mufflerless moped taxis drown out anything you say whenever the light turns green,” she adds. Urrunaga and Johnson joined the two at their habitual café to hear out their tales.

According to Urrunaga, Mantuano said he had bought into a concession with large stands of trees approved for harvest by the national forest authority. But when timber crews showed up, they left far too quickly to actually have cut the trees they had supposedly purchased. Then the timber merchants expected him to hand over transit documents for large amounts of lumber. The intent, he gradually realized, was to launder timber that had already been illegally cut elsewhere—places like national parks, indigenous community lands, and other protected areas.

Mantuano launched an indignant letter­-writing campaign to explain all this to officials in Lima and Washington. But his efforts produced no investigation until Johnson and Urrunaga showed up. Mantuano’s story backed up what the EIA was already beginning to suspect: The logging industry’s basic operating method was to cut down trees on protected lands and then produce falsified permits, either purchased on the black market or via corrupt government officials. The permits typically listed legal sites—but ones that often were remote, or sparsely forested, and thus wouldn’t yield big profits. Meanwhile, Peru’s Amazonian rain forests were being destroyed at a rate of 400,000 acres every year—an area larger than the city of Los Angeles. The women could piece together the pattern. But there was a hitch. After a tree was cut down and loaded onto a ship for export, there was no way to prove where it came from. As they compared Mantuano’s documents and data with their own, Johnson and Urrunaga started thinking: Why not prove where the trees didn’t come from? The key was to compare export documents detailing where protected species, like mahogany and cedar, were supposedly harvested with Osinfor inspections of those areas.

It took nine months of pestering government officials in Lima, but finally the EIA received “thousands of pages of crappy photocopies,” Urrunaga says. As they waded through them, Johnson and Urrunaga could see, for the first time, where the trees had supposedly been harvested, right next to data on the ships that had sailed away with that wood. Some of those areas—like the most remote parts of Mantuano’s concession—hadn’t yet been inspected by Osinfor. Now they would just have to follow the paper trail back to the forest themselves.

With data from one of the ship’s many voyages in hand, Johnson set off on a field trip. It took her three days by boat upriver from Iquitos, then a day of hiking into land owned by an indigenous community, and another two days slogging deeper into the forest, trying to find a way around—and then across—a dense, almost impassable palm swamp. Exhausted, drenched in sweat, and wiping swarms of insects from her forehead, she finally reached the harvest location. Cedar trees from the site had supposedly been exported to a company named Global Plywood & Lumber, incorporated in Las Vegas, but no one had ever cut trees from anywhere around her. The remoteness of the place made cutting timber there about as practical as harvesting trees on the moon. There was no way the export companies were getting their wood from sites like this one. “We had set out looking for one shipment” to prove the wood being exported from Peru was illegal, Urrunaga says. “We found 100.”

Until then, most of the government officials the two women had tried to work with had been “very hostile, very aggressive” when the EIA team approached them about illegal logging, Urrunaga says. But at a meeting with Rolando Navarro, the newly appointed head of Osinfor, she and Johnson laid out evidence that “the entire system is corrupt,” Johnson recalls. “He said, ‘You’re right.’” Navarro had grown up in a river town, and he knew how loggers operated. He had worked with the World Wildlife Fund in Peru helping local communities find alternatives to illegal logging. He also knew, from Osinfor field inspections, that the documents listing the supposed harvest sites didn’t make sense. The women, Navarro, and the Peruvian customs officials they were working with realized that by homing in on suspicious exporters, they’d have a better shot at making a bust.

Eventually, customs officials asked Interpol for help, which allowed Navarro’s agents to expand their investigations. That meant they could get more documents and slog through more forests. Finally, in 2015, a multi­agency team released its report: It found that about 90 percent of the wood coming out of the Peruvian Amazon was illegal.

But “stopping the shipments and putting people in prison, that wasn’t happening,” Urrunaga says. The Yacu Kallpa kept sailing with what seemed like its old impunity, making four trips in 2014 and three more in the first half of 2015, carrying timber on its regular route to Tampico and then Houston.

Julia Urrunaga had been a journalist before tracking down illegal lumber. 

TO STOP THE shipments—to stop the Yacu Kallpa—Navarro pressed for his field agents to get transport documents earlier, while the timber was still being loaded, so they could demonstrate there was enough of a mismatch, enough deceit, to stop it before it set sail—or at least before the timber landed on the docks in Houston. So throughout early 2015, customs agents got better at extracting documents from the exporters, while Osinfor agents got more efficient in their field checks.
Soon after the ship left Iquitos for its August 2015 voyage toward Houston, Peruvian officials sent word to US investigators: A significant percentage of the timber aboard was of illegal origin.

Back in the States, the Department of Justice was just settling its illegal logging case against Lumber Liquidators and was eager to build on that success. But everyone wanted to tread carefully, as the investigation into the Yacu Kallpa could affect trade agreements between the two countries. To complicate matters, Urrunaga had been working with an Al Jazeera reporter and television crew on a story about the use of fake export documents in Peru’s logging trade, and in August the network aired its story. Prosecutors and investigators worried that it could blow the case.

In the Al Jazeera broadcast, a reporter doorsteps Kenneth Peabody, the general manager of Global Plywood, at his home near San Diego. The company had been selling Amazon rain forest timber into the US market for at least eight years, in steadily increasing quantities. Its business with a Peruvian exporter named Inversiones La Oroza had surged from $250,000 in 2012 to $2 million by 2015. Standing in his driveway, a Honda minivan on one side and a Mercedes Benz SUV on the other, Peabody looks like a soccer dad—middle-aged, in black shorts, a gray CATHEDRAL CATHOLIC DONS T-shirt, sunglasses, and a two-tone Nike golf cap.

“I’d like to talk with you about shipments of illegal wood your company is importing from Peru,” the reporter begins. He’s lean, hunched, and dressed in the shabby manner of journalists everywhere.

“Ah, I don’t have anything to say about that,” Peabody says, glancing down and then turning away to the SUV.

“According to Peruvian authorities,” the reporter continues, “your main supplier, this company called La Oroza, has been shipping many shipments of illegal wood to your company. I’ve got three of them here,” he adds, holding out some paperwork. “You don’t know about this?”

“I don’t know what you’re showing me,” Peabody says, turning back now.

“These are the documents of shipments sent to your company by this company in Peru,” the reporter explains.

After the reporter reveals that he has been to the tree harvest sites and seen no harvested trees, Peabody swallows and shifts his keys in his hand, ready for his exit.

“Do you know about the Lacey Act?” the reporter persists.

“Of course. We comply with all the requirements,” Peabody says with a dismissive sweep of one hand. The two of them go back and forth for a moment longer. Then Peabody gets into the SUV, the corners of his mouth compressed in disgust, and drives off. (Peabody declined to speak to wired. La Oroza, reached in Iquitos, denied any wrongdoing.)

Remarkably, the Al Jazeera broadcast did not stop the Yacu Kallpa from sailing on. As it neared Houston in September, agents from Homeland Security gathered. When the ship finally settled in port, they boarded and set about inspecting the cargo. Then they issued a temporary order “detaining” the timber—denying, at least temporarily, its import into the US market—and put the wood in a storage facility at the port in Houston.
A few days later, in early October, according to an affidavit from a H

omeland Security investigator, a man in the dock area was directing forklift operators to move bundles of timber. It was Peabody. He’d flown in from California. Confronted by federal agents, he told them that Global Plywood owned 85 percent of the wood the Yacu Kallpa had just delivered, and it was the largest shipment in the company’s history, worth $1 million. An official of the port told Peabody that customs agents would be taking samples of the shipment to verify that the timber species on board matched the timber species listed in the paperwork required under the Lacey Act. A week later, Peabody sent in revised paperwork that added another 40 tree species for this shipment.

It seemed like the end of the run for the Yacu Kallpa. But then, as if out of irresistible habit, the ship turned around and headed back to Iquitos to pick up another load.

Mahogany, cedar, chestnut, and rosewood are all logged in Peru

BY 2015, IT had been six years since the Peru free trade agreement, with all its environmental commitments, had gone into effect, and trade between the United States and the South American nation had almost doubled, to $20 billion. It promised to get even bigger under the upcoming Trans­-Pacific Partnership. But the Yacu Kallpa was quickly turning into a test case of whether the environmental commitments in free trade treaties amounted to anything more than words on paper. For critics, the ship was a big ugly billboard advertising the utter failure to stop the illegal timber trade. Potentially at stake: free trade between the two countries, and Peru’s already precarious economy.

At the same time, Urrunaga was hearing from her government sources that the lumber bosses were putting pressure on cabinet ministers to rein in Osinfor. Angry workers were taking to the street. Logging, after all, made the livelihoods of thousands of Peruvians. “The economy in Loreto moves because of logging,” Navarro says. Demonstrators staged noisy, sometimes violent protests, driving logging company trucks and tractors to the agency’s offices and carrying banners: osinfor works for the gringos. One inspector received a photograph over WhatsApp of his 1-year-old daughter in her stroller at a local park. The note said simply, “I am from Ayacucho,” birthplace of the brutal 1980s militant group Shining Path. That same week, demonstrators showed up at Navarro’s office in Iquitos carrying coffins, one of them bearing his name. Even after changing his phone number, the threatening calls rang through: “We know where your family lives.” At 3 am on November 30, two men in hoods tossed Molotov cocktails into the front of the agency’s office in Pucallpa, another logging town. “To get rid of people who are in the way is the normal thing to do,” Navarro says.

In late November, the Yacu Kallpa was loading up in Iquitos, and Osinfor agents were once again scrambling in the field. By the day before the ship was scheduled to depart, the agents had found that 15 percent of the timber coordinates were faked. A customs agent in Iquitos rushed a summary of the investigation to the local prosecutor—who hesitated. “You want me to prosecute them based on where the timber in the shipment didn’t come from?” he asked, incredulous. The details about what happened next are murky, but according to news reports and Navarro, the prosecutor wasn’t even sure he had the authority to stop the ship from leaving. The agent cajoled and bantered with him until 11:30 that night, reminding him that just weeks earlier, the nation had adopted a decree authorizing a prosecutor to seize a timber shipment on suspicion of illegality. Finally, the prosecutor agreed to meet the agent, before dawn, at the Iquitos dock—if Osinfor could provide all the documents from the investigation. Osinfor’s agents spent the next four hours printing out documents, downloaded via the creaky Iquitos internet.

Stacks of forestry documents in Iquitos

The reluctant prosecutor and agents from Osinfor and customs arrived at the port before the sun had risen. Iquitos is a small city, and word had gotten out. A platoon of timber company lawyers and managers followed on their heels. Word also reached Urrunaga, who soon had someone recording the scene. The discussion raged—a representative of the regional forest department wanted the ship to get under way—but the prosecutor pointed out that he was in charge. Arguments went around for hours until finally the captain said, “OK, take your 15 percent”—meaning the illegal wood. Reports say the prosecutor was told that the cost of offloading the timber would be $20,000. It then took him days to obtain the necessary permissions, but when he returned to the ship, the price was suddenly more than $200,000. The Iquitos prosecutor finally agreed to accept a declaration from the captain that the ship would bring the allegedly illegal 15 percent of its cargo back after dropping off the rest. So on December 2, the Yacu Kallpa weighed anchor and turned downriver at full speed.

In the EIA offices in Washington, Alexander von Bismarck and other staff immediately went on alert. They could track the ship’s movements minute by minute, as the Automatic Identification System that all cargo ships must use pinged its location, bearing, and speed. Government agents in Peru, the United States, and at Interpol were watching too. When the ship crossed into Brazil, police there, responding to a call from a prosecutor in Lima, boarded it briefly. But they had no Lacey Act nor any other means of real enforcement. The ship pushed on, with captain and crew now aware that everyone was watching.

Osinfor investigators were also pushing, heading deeper into the forests, working their way down the long list of GPS coordinates for the cargo. By mid-December, as the ship made its way north along the Atlantic coast, the investigators sent word to law enforcement agencies in Lima and the US: More than 60 percent of the cargo was illegal.

On December 20, the Yacu Kallpa paused unexpectedly in Trinidad and emerged again in the new year—suddenly under a new flag of convenience. “I thought I was going crazy,” says an EIA technician who was tracking the ship when the flag of Panama popped up on his cell phone.
On January 3, the Yacu Kallpa made a beeline for the Dominican Republic and began to unload its tainted cargo. “Meaning we lose,” von Bismarck says. An EIA staffer called a photographer friend in Santo Domingo and persuaded him to get to the scene and start recording. But then international pressure came down on the Dominican government, and the Yacu Kallpa sailed on—“Meaning we won,” von Bismarck says. The ship staggered onward, jinked briefly toward Jamaica, then reluctantly turned back on its familiar course, heading toward Tampico.

On January 8, agents sent out a new field report: 72 percent of the cargo was illegal.

Peru’s rain forests are being cut down at a rate of 400,000 acres each year.

ONE DAY IN mid-January, as the ship was still en route, Navarro had a meeting in his office with two lumber trade association representatives, one of whom he later found out was also the CEO of Global Plywood. The men lamented that they had never had such trouble in 30 years of buying timber in Peru. “Yes, that’s probably the case,” Navarro said, “and we have nothing against private investment.” But, he told them, the evidence was showing that even shipments with apparently legal documents were coming from illegal sources.

As they talked, the businessmen periodically checked their cell phones. Then, abruptly, they announced that they had to leave. A few minutes later, Navarro found out he had just been fired by the president of the country. Four days later, feeling vulnerable without the protection of public office, he fled to the United States. (The Global Plywood executive did not respond to requests for comment.)

On January 26, 2016, at 8 pm, the Yacu Kallpa limped into Tampico. At the request of Peru, the US, and Interpol, Mexican officials seized roughly 8 million pounds of rain forest timber. When its holds were finally empty, the ship anchored in the harbor—and waited. A month later, the hapless crew was still onboard, abandoned 2,500 miles from home, unpaid, and requesting help and food. Finally, at the end of February, the Peruvian embassy intervened and brought the men home. The owners of the ship, based in Lima, liquidated their assets and abandoned the Yacu Kallpa in Tampico, according to a former employee. The Mexican government assumed ownership and reportedly plans to use it as some kind of training ship.

That May, a potential timber buyer from Shanghai phoned Peabody, the Global Plywood manager, and said he’d read about the case in the newspaper and wanted to sell the wood still stuck in Houston into the Chinese market. Peabody flew to meet the buyer at a Chinese restaurant in Vancouver. Even though the wood couldn’t be imported to the US, Peabody could theoretically still sell it elsewhere. He warned the prospective buyer that any sale might be complicated by the US government. The buyer sought reassurance that Global Plywood’s suppliers in Peru could be trusted. Peabody smiled. “We trust them to do what they need to do to get by in Peru,” he said. The customer, operating under a false identity and with a video camera recording, was of course an undercover agent with the EIA.

Many months later, final reports on the ship’s last voyages were complete. For the August shipment—the one impounded in Houston—it would show that at least 92 percent of the 3.9 million–pound haul was illegal. As for the vessel’s final voyage, it took nine months for agents to complete their field checks of all the GPS sites listed on the harvest documents. They found that more than 96 percent of the ship’s cargo had been illegally harvested from the Amazon rain forest and sent north.

In June of last year, federal agents showed up at the one-room office of Global Plywood, next to a volleyball court in a San Diego suburb, with a warrant to haul away paperwork, Peabody’s cell phone, and copies of computer hard drives. Peabody later emailed the “potential buyer”—the EIA’s undercover agent—to say that any possible deal was off the table. In the end, all the illegal lumber in Houston was destroyed earlier this year in a no-fault settlement with US Customs. A criminal investigation is ongoing, but so far no charges have been filed.

After more than four years and the work of hundreds of people, one offending ship responsible for carrying millions of pounds of illegally harvested wood into the US market had been stopped. It was a tremendous victory. But it was limited.

This past January, within days of taking office, President Trump pulled the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It was no longer clear just how much it mattered whether trade partners stood by their environmental commitments. Von Bismarck’s biggest concern was that timber importers in the United States would now persuade the administration to roll back the Lacey Act ban on importing illegally harvested lumber. That may not matter for the rain forests of Peru; China has now become the leading export destination for Peruvian timber, and it puts far fewer environmental conditions on its massive market for timber.

Von Bismarck says the EIA will also adapt. In fact, the agency is already developing a system to monitor forests worldwide by satellite, with updates every few days. Meanwhile, Osinfor agents continue their field inspections.

One day a few months back, in his office, von Bismarck rolled a video taken from a DJI Phantom 3 quadrotor drone. It showed two Osinfor agents in hard hats, traveling in a local man’s dugout, to check one of the GPS coordinates listed for lumber on the Yacu Kallpa’s final shipment. There was no sign that a tree could have been felled in the area, and one of the agents sprayed no e, for no existe, in blue paint on a grassy hummock. The men paddled slowly onward to the next GPS point. Then the drone pulled back to reveal that the site was in fact a vast, grass-fringed lake, glittering in the sun, with not a forest in sight and where none had ever grown.

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The F-35 Remains a Nonfunctional, Money-Sucking Nightmare

hen we last left our old friend, the F-35 fighter-bomber—a.k.a. The Flying Swiss Army Knife—they were working out the bugs in its ejector-seat mechanism so that the pilot would not be decapitated should said pilot have to exit the vehicle suddenly. There also has cropped up something of an oxygen problem which, if it were unchecked, at least would make the decapitation of the ejecting pilot superfluous. As Business Insider points out:

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US Air Force officials cancelled F-35 flights on Friday at Luke Air Force Base after over a month of pilots reporting that the plane caused them to suffer from hypoxia-like symptoms from a lack of oxygen. Pilots flying the world's most expensive weapons system apparently found themselves running short of air, though the Air Force said in all cases, the plane's backup system engaged and no lives or planes were lost…Pilots of the Navy's F-35C reported that when taking off from aircraft carriers, the plane sometimes bucked them hard enough to hit their head on the canopy. In some cases, severe, persistent pain resulted. (Ed. Note: I would imagine, yes.) Additionally, the F-35 has posed a risk to smaller pilots due to its ejection seat. In October 2015, Defense News reported that pilots under 136 pounds could have their neck snapped if they ejected from the F-35.

At this point, if you’re keeping score at home, the entire project ultimately will cost you and me your grandchildren and everybody else and their Uncle Fud $1.53 trillion (with a T), which is a projected overrun of $35 billion (with a B).

Nevertheless, the F-35 is now making a star turn on the world stage as part of whatever the hell this administration is doing in and around the Korean Peninsula. According to The Drive, Air Force F-35’s are going to Okinawa while a couple of them performed at an air show in South Korea a little while ago. You will not be surprised to learn, however, that, as Bloomberg tells us, there remain some glitches in the machine.

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The time to repair a part has averaged 172 days -- “twice the program’s objective” -- the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s watchdog agency, found. The shortages are “degrading readiness” because the fighter jets “were unable to fly about 22 percent of the time” from January through August for lack of needed parts. The Pentagon has said soaring costs to develop and produce the F-35, the costliest U.S. weapons system, have been brought under control, with the price tag now projected at $406.5 billion. But the GAO report raises new doubts about the official estimate that maintaining and operating them will cost an additional $1.12 trillion over their 60-year lifetime. Already, the agency said in the draft obtained by Bloomberg News, the Defense Department “must stretch its resources to meet the needs of continued system development and production while at the same time sustain the more than 250 aircraft it has already fielded.”

I’m no expert here, but it seems to me that I read somewhere once that combat aircraft occasionally fly in combat, during which time, I am told, they get shot at, and, every now and again, they get damaged. As I said, I am no expert, but I think the whole “replacement parts” problem should have been handled before we started shipping this baby off to conflict zones around the world.

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Upkeep of the F-35 fleet will become more challenging as the Pentagon prepares for what the manager of the program has called a “tsunami” of new production toward an eventual planned U.S. fleet of 2,456 planes plus more than 700 additional planes to be sold to allies. The F-35 program office and Lockheed have identified steps to increase parts availability “to prevent these challenges from worsening” as aircraft numbers increase, the GAO said, but Pentagon documentation indicates “the program’s ability to speed up this time line is uncertain.”

Because this is an area, given the history of this particular turkey, where you want as much uncertainty as possible.

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The GAO also disclosed that the F-35B -- the Marine Corps version of the fighter that’s scheduled to begin ship deployments next year -- won’t have required maintenance and repair capabilities at sea and “will likely experience degraded readiness.” Ellen Lord, the Pentagon’s new undersecretary for acquisition, highlighted the underlying issue for new weapons systems this month in a speech to an Army audience. “My initial conclusion is we spend an incredible amount of time on the acquisition side” and “very, very little time on the sustainment side,” she said. “When you look over the life-cycle” cost “of most of our programs, it’s about 70 percent on the sustainment side. So we need to get that right.”

“The sustainment side” is nice. Truly, when it comes to robbing the public purse by euphemism, our Defense Department and its corporate auxiliaries remain unsurpassed. Esquire would like to stress that no pilots were injured in the making of this post.

[MIKA27]

A Beautiful Italian City Will Pay You to Live There

There's a little town in the center of Italy, now home to only 2,700 people, most of them older, where an enterprising mayor is trying to fill empty houses. Mayor Nicola Gatta is offering people—foreigners or Italians—money to inhabit Candela, Italy, in the hopes of revitalizing its streets and bringing the population back up to 8,000.

"This is how it works: 800 euros for singles, 1,200 euros for couples, 1,500 to 1,800 euros for three-member families, and over 2,000 euros for families of four to five people," the mayor's assistant Stefano Bascianelli told CNN. There might also be tax credits for people who relocate.

There are three criteria to prove you will be a productive resident of Candela and therefore worthy of the town's money: You must move to Candela, you must rent a house there, and you must have a job that pays over 7,500 euros a year. 

If you're still not convinced, here are a few more reasons to consider taking Candela up on its offer. The town is under two hours away from Naples, an hour from the beach in Puglia, and it is nestled in Italy's farming country. Bascianelli boasts there have been no crimes for 20 years. The town is home to a 35-centimeter-wide alley. There's beautiful architecture, winding streets, and good food, as you'd expect.

"I work each day with passion and commitment to bring Candela back to its ancient splendor," says Gatta. "Up until the 1960s, travelers called it 'Nap'licchie' (Little Naples), for it streets full of wayfarers, tourists, merchants and screaming vendors."

Applications are already rolling in to live in what could be Little Naples reborn. Better get a move on yours.

[MIKA27]

MONDO’s ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ Posters, Pins & LP Box Set Are Stunning

Just in time for Halloween, Mondo has debuted a new A Nightmare on Elm Street collection and this one’s a beaut. In addition to the really really ridiculously good looking 8-piece LP Box Set announced yesterday, Mondo is releasing two posters featuring Mike Saputo‘s artwork from the box set (he designed the entire package), along with three new Nightmare on Elm Street enamel pins from Ghoulish Gary Pullin.

They’re all really impressive pieces of work, but the “Box of Souls” LP set is next-level, splurge-worthy gorgeous; featuring 8 LPs from the original series remastered for vinyl by James Plotkin and gorgeous sleeves designed by Saputo. Of course, it’ll set you back a cool $250. The posters, pins and box set will be available at 12PM (CT)<tomorrow, October 25 via mondotees.com. Get all the price and item details in the breakdown below.

Quote

A Nightmare on Elm Street Enamel Pins. Designed by Gary Pullin. Includes Tina’s Nightmare, “…I’ve Got the Brains” and Elm Street Sign Enamel Pins. Expected to Ship in 1-2 weeks. $10 Each / $25 Set

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A Nightmare on Elm Street by Mike Saputo. 36″x24″ screen print. Hand numbered. Edition of 275. Printed by DL Screenprinting. Expected to ship January 2018. $50

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A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge by Mike Saputo. 24″x36″ screen print. Hand numbered. Edition of 225. Printed by DL Screenprinting. Expected to ship January 2018. $50

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DEATH WALTZ
Box of Souls – A  Nightmare on Elm Street Collection 8XLP Set. Music by Charles Bernstein, Christopher Young, Angelo Badalamenti, Craig Safan, Jay Ferguson & J. Peter Robinson. Original art by Mike Saputo. Pressed on 180 Gram black vinyl. Featuring liner notes from Charles Bernstein, Mark Patton, Jack Sholder, Ira Heiden, Craig Safan, Lisa Wilcox, Jay Ferguson, and Charles Brigden. Special thanks to Ryan Turek & Tommy Hudson. $250

Check out all eight individual pieces of record art below.

[MIKA27]

KOENIGSEGG BIKE 1090 CONCEPT MOTORCYCLE

You’d think that with as many true-to-life production and custom motorcycles as we see, concept bikes wouldn’t be on our radar much. And that’s absolutely true, except for when something truly stunning crosses our path. That’s exactly the case with this Koenigsegg Bike 1090 Concept Motorcycle by 3D designer Maksim Burov.

Paring down the hypercar brand’s signature style is something that Maksim Burov is familiar with, as he’s actually made a couple in the past. This one, however, features a measure of realism that gives us hope we might actually see something like it on the road in the future. There’s no available specifications, but we can gather from the low streetfighter-like stance, Goodyear racing-style tires, and Borla performance exhaust that this bike is built to do one thing very well: go fast. We can only hope that the Swedes over at Koenigsegg take notice of this stellar 2-wheeler concept.

[MIKA27]

MISFIT VAPOR SMARTWATCH

Announced early this year at CES, the Misfit Vapor Smartwatch is finally ready for an official release. The Vapor runs Android Wear 2.0 and has a round 1.39 AMOLED display. You also get 4GB of memory, a touch bezel for app browsing, and the ability to play music without the help of your smartphone. The watch is water resistant up to 164 feet and includes the voice automated Google Assistant for easy song or app swapping during a workout.

[MIKA27]

SEGERA X NAY PALAD BIRD NEST HOTEL

Cap off your day exploring the African wilderness with a night under the stars. Located in the heard of the Laikipia plains, the Segera x Nay Palad Bird Nest Hotel rises above the treetops for an unparalleled experience. Guests arrive just as the sun is setting. The lantern-lit wood and branch structure welcomes guests with champagne and a picnic dinner. Choose between a ground-floor bedroom or open-air accommodations, both offering beds dressed in deluxe linens and warmed with hot water bottles. Breakfast is served on the rooftop deck where views of elephants and giraffes can be seen gathering at the nearby river.

[MIKA27]

2018 ASTON MARTIN VANQUISH ZAGATO SHOOTING BRAKE

Admittedly, we are big shooting brake fans. And we understand that these glorified station wagons are not for everyone. That being said, every so often one comes along that deserves the recognition and respect of even the category’s biggest critics – like the Aston Martin Vanquish Zagato Shooting Brake.

One of a group of four Vanquish-based collaboration vehicles between Aston Martin and Zagato, this station wagon-styled supercar benefits from the same 600PS (roughly 592 horsepower) naturally aspirated V12 engine as the rest of its family. It also, however, has the benefit of an extended cabin with Zagato’s iconic ‘double-bubble’ surfacing with glass inlays (allowing sun or moonlight to flood the cockpit) and carbon fiber accents throughout. The luxuriously appointed cabin also comes with a set of matched luggage, upping the desirability, uniqueness, and extravagance into the stratosphere. Unfortunately, however, all 99 examples of this limited vehicle run are already spoken for – so, if you were hoping to get into one, you might want to hunt down one of the lucky so-and-sos who already claimed them.

[Smokin_Safari]

On ‎09‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 8:36 AM, MIKA27 said:

Madagascar Is Fighting A Deadly Outbreak Of Plague

The World Health Organisation has delivered more than a million doses of antibiotics to Madagascar amid a raging epidemic of plague in which at least 33 people have died and 230 others have been infected.

The first confirmed death from the epidemic began on August 28 in the town of Moramanga, per the BBC, with the fatality rate continuing to rise since. Though instances of plague are not uncommon on the island, which usually sees around 400 cases a year, the ongoing epidemic involves mostly cases of pneumonic rather than the more common bubonic plague — and that airborne variety of the disease is significantly more transmissible and deadly.

Two regions, eastern Madagascar and the area surrounding Antananarivo in the central part of the country, have been particularly hard hit. Prime Minister Olivier Mahafaly Solonandrasana banned all public gatherings in Antananarivo on September 30th, the BBC reported, and later closed down universities and public schools on October 5.

"Plague is curable if detected in time," WHO Madagascar Representative Charlotte Ndiaye wrote in a statement. "Our teams are working to ensure that everyone at risk has access to protection and treatment. The faster we move, the more lives we save."

Despite a popular perception as a medieval-era affliction, plague is far from eradicated, noted a 2013 study in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. Due to its persistence in wildlife populations, it remains common in Asia, the Americas, and Africa, and is also "reemerging in countries where the disease was thought to have disappeared." Plague first arrived in Madagascar from Indian steamboats in 1898 before spreading through other harbours and then into the mainland along railroad construction lines.

As PLoS noted, Madagascar has made significant progress reducing infection rates but "still accounted for 30 per cent of human cases worldwide from 2004 to 2009." It is primarily associated with rural areas and agricultural activity, where "maximum abundance of rodents in the fields is observed in July and August, followed by the maximum abundance of fleas from September to November."

According to Ars Technica, recent research into medieval plague outbreaks has suggested the classic understanding of the disease as primarily rodent-borne may be incorrect, with human-to-human transmission playing a larger role than previously thought.

Yes, here right now in the middle of it, Marty

[helix]

On ‎10‎/‎25‎/‎2017 at 12:07 AM, MIKA27 said:

The F-35 Remains a Nonfunctional, Money-Sucking Nightmare

hen we last left our old friend, the F-35 fighter-bomber—a.k.a. The Flying Swiss Army Knife—they were working out the bugs in its ejector-seat mechanism so that the pilot would not be decapitated should said pilot have to exit the vehicle suddenly. There also has cropped up something of an oxygen problem which, if it were unchecked, at least would make the decapitation of the ejecting pilot superfluous. As Business Insider points out:

At this point, if you’re keeping score at home, the entire project ultimately will cost you and me your grandchildren and everybody else and their Uncle Fud $1.53 trillion (with a T), which is a projected overrun of $35 billion (with a B).

Nevertheless, the F-35 is now making a star turn on the world stage as part of whatever the hell this administration is doing in and around the Korean Peninsula. According to The Drive, Air Force F-35’s are going to Okinawa while a couple of them performed at an air show in South Korea a little while ago. You will not be surprised to learn, however, that, as Bloomberg tells us, there remain some glitches in the machine.

I’m no expert here, but it seems to me that I read somewhere once that combat aircraft occasionally fly in combat, during which time, I am told, they get shot at, and, every now and again, they get damaged. As I said, I am no expert, but I think the whole “replacement parts” problem should have been handled before we started shipping this baby off to conflict zones around the world.

Because this is an area, given the history of this particular turkey, where you want as much uncertainty as possible.

“The sustainment side” is nice. Truly, when it comes to robbing the public purse by euphemism, our Defense Department and its corporate auxiliaries remain unsurpassed. Esquire would like to stress that no pilots were injured in the making of this post.

Millennials engineering ?  LOL ! I kid.

[MIKA27]

6 hours ago, helix said:

Millennials engineering ?  LOL ! I kid.

Why Kid? I agree! 

[MIKA27]

This 1935 Car Of The Future Had Huge Spheres Instead Of Wheels

Between flying cars and three-wheeled cars, the period between World War I and World War II had some interesting ideas for the future of automobiles. But this one may have been the weirdest. Who needs wheels when you have gigantic rolling spheres?

The September 1935 issue of Popular Science included the illustration above, showing off the "streamlined" car of tomorrow.

Quote

A motor car that runs on air-filled spheres, instead of wheels and tires of conventional form, is the invention of a German designer. All parts of the new vehicle, he maintains, merge into a highly streamlined shape, thus minimising air resistance. The globe-shaped tires require no mudguards, and dispense with the need of springs to absorb road shocks, also reducing skidding and serving as bumpers in the event of collision. Multiple air chambers prevent sudden deflation, with its attendant dangers, if a puncture should occur. In the proposed design, the car runs on a pair of pneumatic spheres at front and rear, and the driver balances it like a motor cycle by manipulating a steering wheel. Small auxiliary spheres may be extended to hold the car upright while it is standing still or getting under way.

The short article doesn't include the name of this "German designer", which was a surprisingly common convention in 1920s and '30s tech magazines - especially in publications such as Science and Invention.

But you really can't fault people of the 1930s for having some impractical designs. Everything, and I mean everything, was supposed to be streamlined. From toasters to bicycles to even houses. Even if it wasn't supposed to move, it was streamlined, because the future was fast. Or at least that was the idea.

The proposed car from Popular Science looks like an absolute nightmare to drive. How do those enormous spheres grip the road? Your guess is as good as mine. I suspect that if this thing ever got tested, and I haven't found any evidence that it did, then there were a whole lot of accidents.

But I suppose that even accidents were supposed to be streamlined in the 1930s vision of tomorrow. If you're going to crash you'd better do it fast. That's what the future demands.

[MIKA27]

Report: The Raid's Gareth Evans Is In Talks To Direct A Solo Deathstroke Movie

For the past few years, Deathstroke has been linked to the standalone Batman movie. But now, it seems like Warner Bros. has bigger plans for the character -- and they're placing him in the hands of the director of The Raid in the process.

Both The Wrap and The Hollywood Reporter are reporting that Gareth Evans is currently in talks to both write and direct a standalone movie based around DC's legendary assassin Slade Wilson. Joe Manganiello, who was cast as Deathstroke for standalone Batman movie The Batman last year following a cryptic tease from Ben Affleck, is still attached to star as the character in the new movie.

There are no details yet on whether this means Deathstroke is out of The Batman altogether -- in the time since his casting for the movie, both the script and the director of the movie have changed from being... well, not Ben Affleck any more -- or if the movie will be part of Warner Bros.' new line of "Elseworlds"-style movies free of the continuity of the mainline DC movies.

We've reached out to Warner Bros. for a statement about the reports, and will update this article if we hear back.

[MIKA27]

Paul Newman's Rolex Daytona Just Became the Most Expensive Watch Ever Sold at Auction

When news broke that Paul Newman's own Paul Newman Rolex Daytona was going up for auction with Phillips Auction House, whispers immediately started circulating around the watch world. Despite a (very) conservative estimate that the timepiece would fetch upwards of $1 million at auction, some folks had a feeling it would get more than that. A whole lot more.

In fact, the general feeling seemed to be that this watch was poised to set a new world record. In this instance, that feeling was bang on the money—to the tune of $17,752,500. Following a 12-minute bidding war, the reference 6239 Daytona—with its black-and-creme exotic dial, which became known among collectors as the Paul Newman Daytona—just became the most expensive wristwatch ever sold at auction. It sold to a buyer on the phone. I bet at least a few folks want to know the identity of that buyer. And I bet it'll be a while (if ever) before they do. 

[MIKA27]

‘Mudbound’: New Trailer Highlights Dee Rees’ Powerful Southern Epic

Netflix has released a new Mudbound trailer. Dee Rees’ new film follows two families, one white and one black, in the South in the lead-up and aftermath of World War II. It’s a masterful work of filmmaking with the kind of storytelling that evokes the best work of William Faulkner. The story is told from multiple perspectives, letting the viewer understand the hardships of its various characters as they seek to dig out a life as rural farmers in Mississippi.

The trailer itself isn’t bad, but I can’t help but feel like even with a limited theatrical release, Mudbound will fail to make waves, not because of the content of the movie, but because it’s just another title for the streaming giant. While Netflix might end up mounting an Oscar campaign for the movie, ultimately those campaigns are bolstered by audience interest, and you have to get audiences willing to take two and a half hours out of their day to see a tough drama that has no easy answers. On the one hand, I like the Netflix is backing these filmmakers, and given the choice between Netflix and no distribution at all, Netflix is the obvious choice. But I feel like it’s a title that’s going to be sadly overlooked, or it will just sit in people’s lists forever, a title you hover over before going to something more relaxing or immediate.

The film hits Netflix and select theaters on November 17th.

[MIKA27]

FREMONT BREWING BOURBON BARREL-AGED DARK STAR

There's never a wrong time for a barrel-aged stout. But the more temperatures begin to dip, the idea of a rich, high alcohol beer is even more appealing. Bourbon Barrel-Aged Dark Star from Fremont Brewing in Seattle is one of the better BA stouts around, and still somehow manages to fly under the radar. This year's release is a blend of 18,12, and 8-month versions of their Imperial Oatmeal Stout aged in 12-year-old Kentucky bourbon barrels. It has an inky black appearance, is full-bodied with a touch of sweetness, with a smooth and warming finish at 14% ABV.

[MIKA27]

Two Women And Their Dogs Rescued After Being Stranded At Sea For Five Months In Shark-Infested Waters

Two American women and their dogs have been rescued after spending nearly five months stranded on the Pacific Ocean surrounded by sharks. Jennifer Appel and Tasha Fuiava set off for Tahiti on May 3rd, but suffered engine failure and even a broken mast. To make matters worse, their phone fell overboard on the first day.

The two women, both from Honolulu, Hawaii, were finally spotted last week by a Taiwanese fishing vessel roughly 1448km southeast of Japan. The USS Ashland, a 190m Navy ship, set out to find them and arrived by 10:30am on Wednesday morning.

"I'm grateful for their service to our country. They saved our lives," Appel said in a statement released by the Navy. "The pride and smiles we had when we saw [U.S. Navy] on the horizon was pure relief."

Tasha Fuiaba, an American mariner who had been sailing for five months on a damaged sailboat, climbs the accommodation ladder to board the amphibious dock landing ship USS Ashland.

How did the two women and their dogs survive for so long with access to fresh water? They had water purifiers and a year's supply of dry food, including pasta, rice, and oatmeal.

Trouble started brewing for the women on May 30th, less than a month after first taking off from Hawaii. They hit a patch of bad weather but continued on anyway. They spent five months waiting for help, sending out distress calls that nobody could hear.

"It was very depressing, and it was very hopeless," Appel said on a phone call with the media that was organised by the US Navy. "The only thing you can do, you use what you can and what you have. You have no other choice."

Sailors help Zeus, one of twos dogs who were accompanying two mariners who were aided by the amphibious dock landing ship USS Ashland.

Aside from food, their biggest concern was sharks. The boat was constantly surrounded.

"We were slowly manoeuvring through their living room. They came by to slap their tails and tell us we needed to move along," Appel said on the recent phone call. "They decided to use our vessel to teach their children how to hunt. They attacked at night."

The Taiwanese fishing boat that stumbled upon the women alerted the US Coast Guard in Guam who then determined that the USS Ashland was in the best position to assist quickly.

USS Ashland Command Master Chief Gary Wise welcomes aboard Jennifer Appel, an American mariner who had received assistance from Ashland crew members

The two women were brought aboard the USS Ashland and received medical assistance. They will stay aboard the ship until the Ashland's next scheduled port of call.

The Navy released videos of the rescue on Thursday showing the approach to the damaged boat and the incredibly excited reactions from both the women (not to mention the two dogs) on board.

"The US Navy is postured to assist any distressed mariner of any nationality during any type of situation," Cmdr. Steven Wasson, Ashland commanding officer, said in a statement.

[MIKA27]

Slane Whiskey: The New Irish Whiskey 10 Centuries in the Making

As far as Irish whiskeys go, Slane has taken a lot of people—critics and casual drinkers alike—by surprise. A couple months back, they invited us out to Slane, County Meath, Ireland, to check out the distillery, learn a little more about the family’s storied history, and sample a bit of the sauce. We learned a lot about what they’re up to at Slane, but what we found fascinating wasn’t the juice, but the family behind it, and we don’t just mean the modern generation of entrepreneurial distillers. The Slane Irish Whiskey story actually begins somewhere in the mid 11th century, when the family earned its motto.

The Wanted Man and The Mad King

When you first step inside Slane Castle, one of the first things you see in the massive foyer is the Conyngham coat of arms, with the motto “Over Fork Over” emblazoned on it. We’ll admit, it’s a bit of a confusing motto, since most families get something closer to three honorable emotions or a quick bit of Latin advice. But as it was told to us by Alex Conyngham (officially titled Earl of Mount Charles and one of the men behind Slane Irish Whiskey), the story of the family’s crest and motto has a little more action behind it.

Malcolm III, future King of Scots, was on the run from Macbeth—yes, the same guy who went murder crazy in Shakespeare’s cursed production—and came upon a farm. Another Malcolm, the son of a man named Friskin, found Malcolm III in one of the family’s barns. Malcolm III quickly explained he was on the run and wanted to raise an army, come back and take the throne from Macbeth. Malcolm, son of Friskin, had to make a choice. Give Malcolm III up to Macbeth’s soldiers and win praise from a king who routinely saw his dad’s ghost; or harbor a wanted man who promised a great reward upon his return with his own army.

With Macbeth’s soldiers closing in, Malcolm decided to gamble. He saved Malcolm III by forking hay over him in the barn and keeping him concealed, presumably by leaning against his pitchfork and whistling until Macbeth’s soldiers passed. And when Malcolm III did eventually raise an army and came back to overthrow Macbeth, he remembered Malcolm, Son of Friskin, and unto him bestowed the Thanedom of Cunninghame and a shit ton of land, as well as his family’s motto: “Over Fork Over”—for the hay Malcolm forked over Malcolm III in the barn.

Do you know why, gentlemen? Because fortune favors the bold, and Malcolm, Son of Friskin, was just that. So began what has been the long and storied lineage of one of Ireland’s aristocratic families—the Conynghams. 

Slane Concert Proves Everyone Needs to Unwind

Fast forward some 900 years to 1981 and we get Henry Vivien Pierpont Conyngham, 8th Marquess Conyngham, known officially as Henry Mountcharles, long-removed descendent of the original Malcolm Son of Friskin, and co-founder of Slane Irish Whiskey. He decides he wants to throw an epic rock and roll concert.

Now, if you know anything about Ireland in the 1980s, you know it wasn’t the most pleasant of places. The IRA was still running a guerilla war to get the English completely off the island and Northern Ireland had a significant British military presence. Only a couple other counties stand between County Meath and Northern Ireland, potentially putting it in the literal firing line between Irish nationalists and British loyalists.

When Henry Mountcharles proposed the concert, he was told that it’d be impossible to pull off and it was exceptionally dangerous. Henry said the Irish aristocratic equivalent of “Nah fam, fuck that,” gambling not only that people wouldn’t wuss out and bail, but that no one would destroy the tiny village of Slane.

So, on August 16, 1981, the inaugural Slane Concert took place. It was headlined by Thin Lizzy, with support from names like Megahype, Rose Tattoo, Sweet Savage, and U2 (remember, they’re Irish and super into unity and stuff). Tens of thousands of people showed up, and despite everyone warning Henry Mountcharles about the risk for catastrophe, only a couple arrests were made, and the only reported property damage came in the form of a broken pub window. For all intents and purposes, we’ve been to rowdier family reunions. The Slane Concerts have grown into a tradition these last few decades, with Guns ‘N Roses headlining this year’s concert. In order words, like His ancestors, Henry gambled, and he was rewarded.

What About The Whiskey?

And that brings us to the whiskey. When it came time a few years back to find a new revenue stream to help the family castle stay afloat, the family had one solid idea: Henry Mountcharles and Alex Conyngham, Earl of Mountcharles (Henry’s son),  got into the whiskey business. During its first incarnation, Slane sourced its whiskey from the folks at Cooley Distillery (the same distillery the Teelings used to run). Cooley, now owned by Beam Suntory, is responsible for labels like Kilbeggan, Greenore, and The Tyrconnell, all respectable whiskey company to keep.

Lately, sourcing the whiskey has become increasingly difficult, forcing the Conynghams to adapt. That adaptation came in the form of turning the Slane estate into a beautiful, historic Irish whiskey distillery. You ever seen a crop of copper pot and column stills get stuffed into an 18th Century horse stable? Because if you visit their distillery inside the grounds behind Slane Castle, that’s exactly what you’ll see. They’re also restoring the original architecture on the grounds and turning part of the distillery into a state of the art tasting room, lounge, and visitor center.

While the distillery is nearing completion, it’ll be a few years before anyone will ever taste a drop of the stuff they’re distilling now. In the meantime, the teams at Slane and Brown-Forman (who recently inked a $50 million deal with the Conynghams) have spent a painstaking amount of time sourcing a blend fit for royalty. They’re keeping their sources quiet, respectively, but they did reveal they’ve settled on a mix of Irish single malt and grain whiskeys aged in light char, heavy toast barrels; ex-sherry casks; and ex-American oak bourbon barrels. We were able to try each individual source, as well as the final blended product, while we were out there, and it’s a high quality blend that will more than tide us over until they’re distributing their own distillations. Consider us fans.

Slane Irish Whiskey got a release in Ireland this past April, and it finally made its way across the pond to the States this summer, too. It might be difficult to find depending on where you are, but good whiskeys are worth seeking out, even if it takes 900 years to figure out that’s what your family should be making.

[MIKA27]

1972 BMW 2002 RACE CAR

BMW's 2002 was the entry-level BMW, a small car with not a lot of options — and an excellent motor and chassis. This 1972 2002 was built from the ground up to be a competition-worthy track star and an homage to the privateer racers of the 70s. The engine, chassis, and transmission have all been built to take the abuse of a race circuit, making this BMW ready to take on the track right out of the box.

[MIKA27]

YOSEMITE A-FRAME

Set in a scenic spot off the Sierra Vista Scenic Byway in Yosemite National Park, 7,000 feet above the sea and fourteen miles from Bass Lake, this Yosemite A-Frame is an ideal getaway — if you're lucky enough to book it. The property offers two separate lofts, each with a queen bed, a modern bathroom, a twin futon for a fifth person, and a full kitchen. It also offers Internet access, but we'd way rather be unplugged, enjoying the nearby swimming holes, meadows, and hiking trails.

 

[MIKA27]

ARISTI MOUNTAIN RESORT & VILLAS

Tucked away in the lush, green hillsides of the northwest, the Aristi Mountain Resort & Villas is a far cry from the white stucco-lined islands of the Greece you're use to. A sereis of traditional stone structures overlook the village below. Guest accommodations are found inside, where the exterior facade is left exposed to timber beam ceilings and wood floors. Vikos Gorge is on display in every room, captured through their large windows or private terraces. The property is surrounded by numerous alpine trails which may lead you to a post-hike visit to the on-site spa.

 

[MIKA27]

EL TESORO 80TH ANNIVERSARY TEQUILA

Known for producing some of the best agave in Mexico, the La Alteña distillery in the highlands of Jalisco is celebrating its 80th anniversary. To mark the occasion, El Tesoro is releasing one of its most aged tequilas to date. Only eight casks of this unique batch were matured for eight years, and the bottles are being released exclusively in the United States.

[MIKA27]

LUKE SKYWALKER LIGHTSABER FROM RETURN OF THE JEDI

This is one of Luke Skywalker’s original Lightsabers from Return of the Jedi (Star Wars: Episode VI), it was used in the famous escape scene over the Sarlacc Pit in the Dune Sea on Tatooine.

The Great Sarlacc Pit of Carkoon was (unsurprisingly) occupied by a Sarlacc, a favorite pet of Jabba the Hut. Sarlaccs take 30,000 years to reach maturity, at which time they bury themselves below the sand leaving only their mouths visible – to catch unsuspecting passersby and the occasional Jedi Knight.

Each Lightsaber was individually made from cast metal, brass, and rubber – with this one first seeing the light of day in 1983. Three Lightsabers were used when filming the scene, this one was shown in closeup insert shots of R2D2 – who would then fire out a second Lightsaber made of lightweight plastic which Mark Hamill caught before mounting his escape.

If you’d like to add an authentic Star Wars Lightsaber to your collection this one will be auctioned by Bonhams on the 21st of November in New York. The value estimate is a little eye-watering at $150,000 to $250,000 USD – but if you sell your house, car, kidneys, and non-blood relatives it should be doable.