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

[MIKA27]

It'd be really cool if this thing made the same sound as the motion detectors from "Aliens".

Spot on with that!!

[MIKA27]

Glowing Silhouettes of Strangers in Chicago

Chicago-based Japanese photographer Satoki Nagata captures spectacular portraits of strangers for his ongoing series titledLights in Chicago. The collection of images, which the photographer has been accumulating for over two-and-a-half years, present almost ghostly silhouettes of people walking along the wintery streets of Chicago, a glowing projection of their outlines reflected in shop windows. The photographer creates this hauntingly beautiful effect by backlighting his subjects with a remotely controlled, off-camera flash, a technique he continues to perfect.

Nagata, who originally earned his PhD in Neuroscience in Japan and moved to the US as a scientist, developed a passion for photographing pedestrians while in America and eventually opted to pursue a full-time career in photography without any formal education.

In an interview with The Leica Camera Blog, he says, "I started by taking candid street photographs but soon after I realized that I am really interested in photographing the individual person. I chose to take photos closer and more connected to the subject. I engaged with the people on the streets and my style gradually evolved. When I got closer and developed intimate relationships with people, the images were different in comparison to those previously taken from a distance. This oriented my photography towards a more documentary style."

[MIKA27]

An Insider's View Of 19th-Century Paris (Even The Urinals)

Paris' public urinals, seen here in an 1876 photograph by Charles Marville, helped cement its reputation as the most modern city in the world.

A city under construction — and destruction — is currently on view at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. "Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris" is a collection of 19th-century photographs of one of the world's most beloved cities as it transitioned from medieval architectural hodgepodge to what became the City of Light.

The images were taken by photographer Charles Marville, who, according to an 1854 self-portrait, was short — a bit under 5 feet 2 inches — with a flowing mustache, blue eyes and a little bit of a potbelly.

Marville made more than 425 photographs of the narrow streets and crumbling buildings of premodern Paris, including this view from the top of Rue Champlain in 1877-1878.

With his large-format 8-by-10 camera, glass plates and natural light, Marville captured a sepia-toned Paris

"He's showing parts of the city at the moment before their disappearance," says curator Sarah Kennel.

Napoleon III was determined to make Paris into the world's most modern city, and he charged urban planner Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann with the task. In the early 1860s, Marville was commissioned to document the process, or, as Kennel describes it, "to create a record of the material culture of a city that would soon be destroyed."

"That's why I think his photographs were also so powerful," she says. "He's so conscious of taking down every detail of the streets, of the street signs, of the reflections in the window, of the shape of the cobblestones, because this is going to be the record of this place."

Paris at that time was, as someone delicately put it, "a giant hole of putrefaction."

"The sewer system was almost nonexistent," Kennel says, "so people would just throw the muck out onto the street."

The elegant gas lamps of Paris' Haussmann transformation, seen here in 1877-1878, also contributed to its reputation as a modern metropolis.

Napoleon and friends put in some outdoor facilities, which Marville photographed. They were called pissoirs, or public urinals: half-circle, high fences on poles with no roof. There wasn't much privacy, but they covered what needed to be covered — shoulder to knee. And they were certainly more hygienic than sloshing through the muck.

Haussmann had some 20,000 gas lamps installed on Paris streets, many of which Marville also photographed.

"The lamppost, the streets were all situated in perfect harmony," Kennel says. "And, in fact, the architect was very obsessive, in a way, almost about the height of the lamppost. And if you look down the street, they would all seem like they were at the same height, even if the streets themselves had slightly different heights. So you had some of them up on a little bit of a stilt and other ones cut down a little bit, so that you would see this regularity and harmony and order as you looked down the street."

Kennel says creating all that symmetry made a bit of a mess: "Paris was one giant construction site at this moment, particularly the center of Paris and the western edge of Paris. And everywhere you went, boulevards were being built, streets were being torn up, whole neighborhoods were being razed."

Again, Marville shows the evidence in a picture taken on the right bank of the Seine: There's the river, Notre Dame Cathedral in the far background and a new wing of the Louvre going up along the riverside.

"You can see the banks lined with chunks of quarry stone that are going to be used to build Paris, also enigmatic, covered piles of things," Kennel says. "And you also get a real sense of how much the Seine was the center of industry."

This 1854 Marville print shows a new wing of the Louvre being built (left), and the Seine before it underwent its own transformation.

Back then, before Napoleon and Haussmann, the river was the highway — everything went up and down the Seine.

"Then they built all the grand boulevards, and it became a place where now you can take nice, lovely boat rides and look at all the monuments," Kennel explains.

One of the many miracles of Paris is the history that's lived with every day. The most modern building will give onto a plaza that's been in place for centuries; the most glorious old garden has flowers that distract from an ugly new tower. In the 19th century, Marville photographed what was new then, and still delights us now. And, as photographer of Paris, he documented earlier histories before they were erased.

[MIKA27]

A Visit to the Ax Murder House

Villisca, Iowa, rests just off U.S. Highway 71, a quiet little town that in 1912 was the site of seven brutal murders. The Moore family, and two of their children’s friends staying the night, were bludgeoned by someone swinging an ax; someone who’d paced the attic smoking cigarettes, waiting for the family to come home from a June church picnic and go to sleep. The murders have never been solved.

Since then, many people have lived in the house, or at least tried to. One husband even elected to live in the shed behind the house because he couldn’t live with all the ghosts. No one lives there anymore, but it’s open nearly every day of the year for the curious.

That’s why I took a class of college journalists on a field trip there; you know, for the fun.

Let me back up. The media in the United States is a frustrating mess of political bias, and shoddy reporting. I’m a journalist; I can say that. When it comes to the paranormal, reporters use the term “little green men” in stories of UFO sightings, “Ghost Busters” quotes in reports of ghost sightings, and references to “Harry and the Hendersons” with Bigfoot stories. I proposed the class Paranormal Journalism to my university as an effort to teach young journalists to report on the paranormal as seriously as they would any other story. The university said OK. The field trip was just a bonus.

I told my students two things before the trip: 1) don’t try to anger the ghosts, and 2) don’t believe everything you see on TV. So, of course, my student Stratton yelled challenges at the spirits the minute we walked up the creaky back steps into the house, and Logan produced a Franks Box.

I’ve long been a skeptic of the electronic devices weekend ghost hunters point into the dusty corners of old homes, getting excited when the meters go “bing.” The Ax Murder House has made me much less skeptical.

But I’ll get to that later.

The house spread in front of us, seeming larger than it was. Maybe the oval sign that spelled “Ax Murder House” in bloody letters had something to do with that. Pie slice-shaped windows from the attic of this white building (the same room where the murderer waited with the Moore family’s own ax) stared into the coming dusk like angry eyes. A few students were a little tentative. Cool.

One student, Karra, was a little more than tentative. She seemed unnerved. Weeks before the trip, Karra related a dream about the ax murder house. In the dream she was in the second-floor children’s bedroom and a doll – a Raggedy Ann-type doll – lay on the bed. As she approached the bed, the doll turned its head and smiled. She awoke screaming. Before we arrived at the house, I assured her everything would be fine.

I was wrong.

As tour guide Johnny Houser led us into the structure we broke into groups, one going upstairs, the other exploring downstairs.

Moments later, terror-filled screams rang throughout the house from the second floor. I rushed to the stairway and met Karra pounding down the steps.

“The doll,” she screamed.

Although nothing unexpectedly moved or smiled when she’d walked into the children’s upstairs room, the wallpaper, the bed, the comforter, and the Raggedy Anne-type doll sitting on the bed were the same as in her dream.

That wasn’t the only thing strange on that field trip.

Logan stepped into the pantry holding a Franks Box in front of him, asking the device random questions as a group followed him into the unnaturally cold room.

A Franks Box is a receiver that randomly tunes to spots on a radio dial with the thought that spirits may be able to communicate through this white noise, much like they do with EVPs, but in real time. Although I have doubts about any electronic device that’s supposed to detect ghosts, something happened.

Crowded in the cupboard with six people, Stratton now quiet and somewhere else in the house, Logan began to ask questions.

“Is there someone here with us?”

Static, followed by a distinctive male voice, “yes.”

This device scanned radio frequencies. I discounted that “yes” as naturally random.

“Do you want us to leave?”

Static again, followed by the same voice, “yes.”

Odd, but still accounted for.

“Is someone making you angry?”

Static, “yes.”

Although still within the realm of normalcy, this conversation was starting to pique my interest.

“Are they here in this room?”

Static, “no.”

Hmm. A different word.

“Who’s making you angry?”

Static, “Stratton.”

Stratton? A device randomly scanning radio signals came up with the name of the only person on the field trip who was, if I may say so, being a jerk. Bill, John, Aaron, or Dave I could have brushed off easily. But Stratton? The box answered the question, and the answer was correct.

I’ll never be convinced something like a Franks Box is legitimate, but I can’t say it’s not.

Oh, and the Villisca Ax Murder House? Creepy, and worth a visit.

[MIKA27]

Titanic burial at sea photo to be auctioned in Devizes

The photograph was taken on board the recovery ship, the CS Mackay-Bennett, days after the Titanic sank

A rare photograph showing Titanic victims being buried at sea is to be auctioned in Wiltshire.

The image was taken days after the tragedy of 15 April 1912, on board the recovery ship the CS Mackay-Bennett.

Devizes-based auctioneer Andrew Aldridge said the photo gave a "unique insight" into the burials.

Records show that 166 out of 306 bodies collected by the Mackay-Bennett were buried at sea but until now no image has been seen publicly.

'Ship of dreams'

The photograph was found by the family of one of the crew members of the recovery ship who had the image in a collection of his possessions.

The Mackay-Bennett was involved in the operation to recover the bodies of the victims from the North Atlantic.

Mr Aldridge, of Henry Aldridge & Son, said: "When we were looking through the archive, the picture jumped from the rafters. It is a chapter very little is known about.

"It has always been said that the process was dignified and organised but piles of bodies are neither of those. The bodies are piled up waist-high.

"This picture shows the dirty side of the business."

The photograph shows the ship's priest conducting the burial service.

Two crewman are shown consigning a body into the ocean, and a canvas bag containing the possessions of body number 177 - William Peter Mayo - can be seen.

The archive originally belonged to RD "Westy" Legate, 4th officer of the Mackay-Bennett.

It is expected to reach between £3,000 and £5,000 when it goes under the hammer on 19 October.

[MIKA27]

Alpine climber finds 'India plane crash' jewels

A French mountain climber high in the Alps has stumbled across a box of precious jewels thought to be debris from a plane crash decades ago.

The hoard of sapphires, emeralds and rubies worth hundreds of thousands of dollars was found near Mont Blanc.

The metal case marked "Made in India" is believed to have come from an Air India crash in 1966.

The author of a book on the crash says the jewels may have been intended for a man living in London at the time.

The BBC's Hugh Schofield in Paris says that it is almost certain that the jewels were on a 1966 Air India Boeing 707 flight to New York - via Geneva and London.

The plane crashed into a glacier near the mountain, killing all on board.

The glacier has periodically delivered relics from the accident. Last year mountaineers found an Indian diplomatic bag that was on the plane.

According to the author, Lloyds of London insurers at the time sent a letter to French authorities informing them that a parcel containing emeralds had been on board the flight.

The intended recipient of the parcel was a Mr Issacharov of London. He or his descendants might be very interested by this latest development, our correspondent says.

Police praised the honesty of the climber - who has asked to stay anonymous - for handing the treasure in.

"He could have kept them but he chose to turn them in because he knew they belonged to someone who probably perished," local police officer Sylvain Merly said.

[MIKA27]

The Half-Ton Giant Freshwater Stingray With a 15-Inch Poison Barb

Sailor lore once told of a whale so enormous that captains would mistake it for an island, anchoring their ships to the beast and ordering men ashore. When the sailors built a fire on this “island whale,” though, the fiend would heave up and dive, dragging the crew to their deaths and perhaps into starring roles in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. And on the way down they likely thought, I knew I saw an eyeball back there. I should have said something. But also, Well isn’t this just a doozy. Something so big, yet we didn’t realize it was right under our feet.

Scientists were probably thinking the same thing when in 1990 they first described Southeast Asia’s giant freshwater stingray, which can grow to more than 16 feet long and 1,300 pounds. And while it packs a 15-inch, poisonous, serrated stinger, it’s actually a gentle, inquisitive creature, an endangered titan that researchers are scrambling to understand before humans drive it to extinction.

Though this could be the largest freshwater fish on the planet, accounts of its existence only emerged in Thai newspapers in the early 1980s. It’s exceedingly rare to see one, in part because it destroys all but the strongest fishing rods and lines. Even if you have the right equipment, the giant freshwater stingray tends to take exception to being hunted and buries itself in the river bottom when hooked. In 2010, 15 anglers working in shifts reportedly spent six hours reeling one in, which either says something about the stingray’s strength or the group’s collective fishing skills. The fish can drag boats for miles, and even pull them under.

And while its toxic spike has been said to pierce the hulls of fishing boats — not to mention bone — it uses this fearsome weapon only as a last resort to defend itself. “They’re inquisitive, they’re not as shy as most other species of fish,” said Zeb Hogan, a conservation biologist with the University of Nevada, Reno. “There aren’t many fish out there that like to be approached, that will stay in one place if they’re close to humans, and the stingrays don’t seem to mind being in close proximity to humans. They don’t in some cases seem to even mind contact.”

This isn’t to say you should for a moment stop respecting the stingray’s awesome barb. Once it goes in, it won’t easily come out, on account of its backward-facing spines. Even the smallest cut can result in agony, kinda like cat scratch fever but with 100 percent less Ted Nugent.

“It’s a spine covered by a kind of very thin membrane, and trapped in that membrane is a toxin that causes pain, for one thing, but can also cause infection,” said Hogan. “I’ve never been stung directly, but I’ve rubbed up against the spine and had my skin receive a small cut, and it’s just an immediate painful stinging sensation.”

“I can’t imagine what it’d be like to actually be really jabbed by one,” he added. “It swells, it’s painful, the wounds almost always get infected, and the best way to relieve some of the pain and swelling is to actually pour hot water over the wound as soon as possible.

Apparently that breaks down some of the toxin.”

In the Mekong River, which nurtures more super-massive fish than anywhere else in the world this stingray is a giant among lesser giants. Consider the positively puny giant Mekong catfish and giant barb, both of which are a measly 10 feet long and 650 pounds.

They’ve probably been focusing too much on cardio and too little on weight training. Classic mistake.

This ecosystem supports an abundance of fish and invertebrates like crabs and shrimp for the giant freshwater stingray to prey upon, which it finds with electroreception, like sharks do. It hunts by first settling over and essentially smothering its prey, then directing the quarry into its mouth, where it is crushed by powerful plates. (Hogan said he once offered a shrimp to one of these stingrays in captivity — by letting the animal cover him like a wiggly blanket. He called this an “interesting sensation.”)

The Mekong’s incredible biodiversity and plentiful space for large creatures to roam — combined with the tendency for fish to grow quicker in warmer waters — allow the stingray to attain its staggering size, according to Hogan. But the giant freshwater stingray and other Mekong giants are in serious trouble. Indeed, Hogan believes that these large fish are the litmus test for the health of the whole ecosystem, and at the moment, things aren’t looking good.

Habitat degradation from pollution and damming have driven the giant Mekong catfish, the giant barb, and the giant freshwater stingray nearly to extinction. Making things worse, sportfishermen catch the endangered monsters for the thrill of it — even when released, the massive stingrays and catfish can be stressed to death. And then there are the aquariums vying to acquire the fish for their collections.

But according to Hogan, the stingray’s size is at once a curse and a boon. “Most fishermen in Southeast Asia, if they have a fish that’s large enough to use as a bait for a stingray, that’s already something that they want to keep just for themselves,” he said.

“And they would also have to invest in very strong line and very strong hooks, and so stingrays are actually doing better [than other large fish] because at least in the part of the world where they occur they’re pretty hard to catch using the gear that people are using there. That’s a little bit of good news.”

So while the Mekong’s condition degrades as it sprouts ever more dams, and locals find themselves reeling in ever fewer fish — titans or otherwise — perhaps the giant freshwater stingray can yet avoid joining the rascally island whale in fisherman lore.

[MIKA27]

Gold, and Gone: The Mysterious Disappearance of Nazi Wartime Hoards

Few circumstances in modern Western history have spun so many varied and detailed conspiracy theories as Hitler and the Nazis.

Rumor and speculation about Hitler’s death have led to questions over the time and place of the Führer’s demise, and whether his remains were truly recovered by Soviet forces following the end of the war.

Much the same, few UFO conspiracy troves would be complete without the inclusion of speculation over highly advanced physics and propulsion systems the Nazis had sought to develop, which later could have been obtained secretly by Soviet and Allied powers, or perhaps continued secretly by some secretive organization that curiously managed to escape the notice of world superpowers after the conflict.

While there is much room for speculation regarding such Nazi-themed conspiracy theories, it is less easy to discount the untold millions in Nazi plunder that went missing after the fall of the Reich, a majority of which remains unaccounted for even in the present day. While there is continued hope that troves of Nazi fortune still await discovery by persistent historians and avid treasure seekers, there are also genuine mysteries associated with the momentous amounts of wealth that managed to disappear by the end of the Second World War. The trail left by the Nazi hoarders is elaborate and involved, and leads the seeker along paths that cross elegant European castles and underground passages, to the depths of scenic Alpine lakes, and even the operations and activities of the Holy Church of Rome.

What is known is that during World War II, particularly beginning with Germany’s capture of France, large amounts of fine art and innumerable objects of value were obtained, and stored in a variety of locations. Perhaps chief among these locales had been the Bavarian Neuschwanstein Castle (pictured above), originally a part time home of Ludwig II, which during the war had been utilized by the German Reichsleiter Rosenberg Institute for the Occupied Territories for purposes of concealing fine art that was removed from France.

Today, photo catalogues of the art hidden at Neuschwanstein Castle by the Nazis are still maintained in the U.S. National Archives. However, this wasn’t the only thing kept at the picturesque destination; before the end of the war, the German Reichsbank had also used the palace to store large amounts of Nazi gold. However, before it could be recovered by the Allies, this hoard of gold, like much of the fine art which had been kept there, was removed secretly. The question remains, even today, as to where much of this gold might have been taken.

There were still other locations where Nazi gold had been kept before the fall of the Reich. While much of the loot obtained by the Nazis was carried back to their headquarters in Munich, there were still other locations abroad that they used for storage, which included Musée Jeu de Paume in Paris. But one that would remain infamous had been a secret facility operated from within a salt mine at the municipality of Merkers-Kieselbach, near Thuringia, Germany. It was from this underground fortification, much of the stolen Nazi art–and gold–was recovered following the war, prompting a personal visit and inspection by President Dwight Eisenhower.

Despite knowledge of the various facilities where Nazi plunder had been kept, this would hardly facilitate recovery of all the items of wealth they managed to obtain from territories they occupied. Even once the visions of wealth and, in accordance with Hitler’s own warped visions of heritage and culture preservation, the institution of a so-called “Führermuseum”, had dwindled, there were efforts to prevent capture of the wealth obtained by the Nazis. What was believed to be a large amount of the Nazi treasure had been dumped into large bodies of water, such as Austria’s Lake Toplitz. Since the late 1940s, seekers of the lost Nazi hoard have continued to risk peril there, in order to prove that treasure might await in the lakes’ murky depths:

n 1959 a team financed by the German magazine Stern… [retrieved] £72m in forged sterling currency hidden in boxes, and a printing press.

The currency, it turned out, was part of a secret counterfeiting operation, Operation Bernhard, personally authorised by Adolf Hitler to weaken the British economy… In 1983 a German biologist accidentally discovered more forged British pounds, numerous Nazi-era rockets and missiles that had crashed into the lake, and a previously unknown worm.

Dives have continued at Lake Toplitz until as recently as 2005, though other sites of alleged submerged Nazi treasure have continued to undergo searches even more recently. In 2011, the British Daily Mail reported on an operation based on “new information” that aimed to uncover 18 boxes of gold that “were apparently thrown in Stolpsee Lake, about an hour’s drive north of Berlin in the former Communist East Germany.” A local area priest, along with secret SS documents discussing the personal collections of Hermann Goering, pointed to vast amounts of wealth being given to the waters of Stolpsee:

SS documents together with post-war eye witness statements to the events on the lake in March 1945, give credence to the theory that precious material was indeed dumped into the 400-feet deep lake.

One witness, Eckhard Litz, told a post-war allied commission: ‘I remember well the night that lorries with slit headlights drove up to the lakeshore and I saw about 20 to 30 skeletal figures dressed in striped concentration camp uniforms being forced to unload heavy boxes.

The “skeletal figures” were then taken back to shore, where they were executed, and finally, carried back to the same watery resting place of the boxes they had been forced to unload.

Still, there might have been locations even more inaccessible than the bottoms of lakes where Nazi gold had been carried. IN the fall of 1946, a memo issued by a US Treasury Agent named Emerson Bigelow implicated the Vatican in the transfer of Nazi funds through international banks and organizations, to the tune of 350 million Swiss francs that had been obtained “for safekeeping” by the Vatican. The Church denied this, and has continued to refute the claims asserted in the Bigelow memo.

And of course, there are the neutral countries, such as Switzerland and Portugal, which had managed to assist with the dispersal of Nazi gold just as well… but the ultimate question (and one that has quite often been asked) is where did it go? It seems very likely that this wealth, much of which arguably went into somebody’s hands, rather than merely languishing at the bottom of European lakes, must have been obtained, sequestered, and utilized by someone over the years… but by whom? This may remain one of the greater existent riddles of the world of finance and fortune that remains today; and arguably, its implications could lead to talk of far more dire and strange conspiracies than the scope of this present examination alone might seek to study.

Safe it to say, if there are indeed secret societies and organizations that have sought to utilize money and power to control hidden aspects of our world, there might very well have been a source of funding over the years that could have been utilized for such things, just as well.

[MIKA27]

This Could Be The First Official iPhone Gaming Controller

This image posted by perpetual juicy rumour machine @evleaks shows what could be a forthcoming iPhone gaming controller from Logitech. Given Apple’s reference designs for such a controller released at WWDC this year, the supposed leak looks pretty legit.

Indeed, the purportedly forthcoming controller looks pretty much identical to one of the two designs that Apple released in the iOS 7 documentation over the winter.

The tweeted image looks like your standard SNES controller: Four-way directional pad on the left, ABXY buttons on the right. We can’t exactly see what’s going on top of the controller, but it appears the left and right shoulder buttons from the spec controller are there as well.

The camera hole on the back is an interesting touch. Presumably, you wouldn’t use this forthcoming Logitech device at all times the way you do a case, so it’s not exactly clear why you would need a slot for taking photos while gaming. Developers have yet to work the iPhone’s camera into many (any?) games. On the other hand, why not?

If this device is real, we’ll surely have answers to all of these questions soon enough. Now the waiting game. Back to my boring touch-based Infinity Blade.

[MIKA27]

The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug Gets A New Trailer

Despite the fact that the last Hobbit movie was merely an ode to walking and not throwing up, the next film in the trilogy actually looks pretty awesome. Here’s a new trailer for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.

The new film features the original cast of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey as well as the arrival of Orlando Bloom playing Legolas and Evangeline Lilly playing Tauriel. Benedict Cumberbatch even makes an appearance as the voice of Smaug the Dragon.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug arrives in December.

[MIKA27]

A Crazy 3D-Printed Mouthpiece That Brushes Your Teeth For You

We can always get behind a 3D-printed object that does something practical. So we’re intrigued by the Blizzident 3D-printed toothbrush, because this insane thing basically does all the brushing for you.

When you brush your teeth, you probably miss the plaque hidden in the nooks and crannies of your chompers. But that’s because your toothbrush is a generic product made for thousands of different people with thousands of different mouths, to say nothing of human error (read: laziness). Blizzident, on the other hand, is created from a 3D scan of your very own mouth. When it’s time to brush, you just bite down on Blizzident for six seconds, and it will supposedly magically clean your teeth in the proper, dentist-recommended manner.

Sound too good to be true? It might be. But if you want to give it a go, you can go to your dentist to have him or her take an impression of your teeth; you know, like one of those casts you had made to mould your retainer once upon a time? Then you send the cast off to a dental lab to have it made into a 3D file. On the very off chance that you don’t have a dental lab in your Rolodex, Blizzident will refer you. Once you have the file in the proper format, you load it onto Blizzident’s servers, and you can order your very own teeth-brushing machine for $US300.

Sure, it seems like a crazy idea, and it would be risky to stop brushing your teeth altogether, but it’s an intriguing proposition. For example, have you ever tried to brush a toddler’s teeth? It’s not so easy. And while $US300 is expensive for a product that’s unproven, the more people who give it a shot the better it might get. And if it works, it’ll save you a mint in dentist fees.

[MIKA27]

This Harmonica-Housed USB Drive Contains All Of Bob Dylan's Albums

Not that any of us needed proof that the times are a-changin’, but grown-up hippies looking to grab this impressive omnipedia of Bob Dylan’s music might be dismayed to discover that instead of vinyl, it comes packaged on CDs as — well as this adorable USB flash drive housed in a faux harmonica.

At least this special collector’s edition includes the flash drive preloaded with 35 studio albums, six live albums and countless singles in both MP3 and FLAC formats for those particularly picky about their digital tunes. It’s a far easier solution than ripping all of the albums yourself, or waiting for them to download from iTunes. There’s a catch, though: you’ll be paying $US365 for the privilege. But break it down, and that’s a slightly more affordable dollar a day — -for an entire year.

[MIKA27]

Soundchucks: Someone's Finally Weaponised Bluetooth Speakers

If you want your Bluetooth speaker to stand in out in a market that’s getting more crowded every day, you need to come up with a design that’s more useful, more functional than anything else out there. And since everyone loves ninjas, why not just make them look like a pair of nunchucks? RIGHT?

That’s what Puma did with its new — and aptly named — Soundchucks, which finally let you weaponise your favourite tunes. But besides laying a beat down on anyone who criticises your taste in music, the Soundchucks’ unique design has other functionality too. The silicone band that tethers the pair of stereo speakers together lets you hang them wherever you want, while magnets let you merge the two speakers and close the loop so there’s less chance they’ll fall if precariously perched.

When they hit Apple Stores in October you’ll be able to get the $130 Soundchucks in red, orange, blue, pink, slate, and black, but you’ll probably want to stick with that first colour if you do intend to use for vigilante justice.

[MIKA27]

Researchers Bioengineer Bacteria That Poos Petrol

Korean researchers have engineered a new strain of E. coli that can produce a suitable substitute for petrol. And as they quite rightly point out, bacteria that poos petroleum could be some valuable s**t.

Digging up fossil resources carries tremendous environmental, monetary, and geopolitical costs, which means figuring out a way to feed the world’s huge addiction to petrol without unearthing crude could have a tremendous impact.

Bacteria, meanwhile, has already proven itself capable of amazing things. It’s responsible for making your booze boozy, and in recent years it has been used to produce everything from gold to diesel fuel. When it comes to producing biofuels, we’re probably most familiar with bacteria that produce ethanol, but as the Korean researchers point out in a new study published in Nature, petroleum has a 30 per cent higher energy content than traditional biofuels.

The new bioengineering process leverages existing E. coli strains to produce short-chain Alkanes molecules, which they claim is a chemically identical replacement for the combination of short-chain hydrocarbons commonly known as petrol. In other words, you could put this bacterial excretion into your car and it would run. The WSJ reports:

When the modified E. coli were fed glucose, found in plants or other non-food crops, the enzymes they produced converted the sugar into fatty acids and then turned these into hydrocarbons that were chemically and structurally identical to those found in commercial fuel…

Unfortunately, as the WSJ points out, one liter of glucose produces just 580mg of gas, which is a highly unfavourable yield to say the least. The tech’s too new to power cars anytime soon, but it’s an important step towards motoring the highways, powered by poop.

[MIKA27]

Bruton Hydrogen reactor

If you're serious about backpacking, camping, or disaster preparedness, and you just can't imagine going on without a functional smartphone or tablet, then the Brunton Hydrogen Reactor ($150) is the portable recharging solution for you. This device doesn't rely on energy from an outlet to get its juice. Instead the hydrogen from its removable and rechargeable cores combines with oxygen from the atmosphere to create power on the spot, producing no emissions other than a puff of water vapor. The reactor is just over five inches long, weighs only half a pound, and can charge an iPhone through its built in USB port up to six times without needing a replaced or recharged core.

[Duxnutz]

That's pretty darn cool.

[MIKA27]

Any Animal That Touches This Lethal Lake Turns To Stone

There’s a deceptively still body of water in Tanzania with a deadly secret — it turns any animal it touches to stone. The rare phenomenon is caused by the chemical makeup of the lake, but the petrified creatures it leaves behind are straight out of a horror film.

Photographed by Nick Brandt in his new book, Across the Ravaged Land, petrified creatures pepper the area around the lake due to its constant pH of 9 to 10.5 — an extremely basic alkalinity that preserves these creatures for eternity.

According to Brandt:

I unexpectedly found the creatures — all manner of birds and bats — washed up along the shoreline of Lake Natron in Northern Tanzania. No-one knows for certain exactly how they die, but it appears that the extreme reflective nature of the lake’s surface confuses them, and like birds crashing into plate glass windows, they crash into the lake. The water has an extremely high soda and salt content, so high that it would strip the ink off my Kodak film boxes within a few seconds. The soda and salt causes the creatures to calcify, perfectly preserved, as they dry.

I took these creatures as I found them on the shoreline, and then placed them in ‘living’ positions, bringing them back to ‘life’, as it were. Reanimated, alive again in death.

The rest of the haunting images follow and they feature in Brandt’s book, available here. Or, you could go and visit for yourself — but keep a safe distance from the water, please.

[MIKA27]

This Particle Accelerator Is Barely Bigger Than A Grain Of Rice

Just getting a particle up to near the speed of light isn’t good enough for today’s physics. To properly unravel the fundamentals of the universe, particles have to be smashed together with enormous force. And two Stanford researchers have just devised a laser-based method that imparts 10 times the power of traditional methods at a fraction of the cost.

Particle acceleration involves two steps. First the particle, an electron, is accelerated (go figure!) to near the speed of light — that’s the easy part. But in order to get bigger and better collisions, researchers have to pump up the individual particle’s energy levels using a microwave array. This is both expensive and cumbersome to operate, and the technical roadblock is severely hampering development of next generation “tabletop” accelerators.

The accelerator that Stanford graduate researchers Edgar Peralta and Ken Soong designed instead relies on ultra-fast bursts of laser light. Peralta designed the patterned silica accelerator-on-a-chip while Soong created the precision laser optics for the experiment. Their results were published Friday in Nature.

After the electron beam has been accelerated to near the speed of light in a conventional accelerator, it’s focused onto a half-micron-wide channel in the silica chip. Along this channel a series of nanoscale ridges have been etched into the glass that generate precise electric fields that continually boost the power of electrons as they travel through it. Electrons exiting the chip are imbued with 10 times the energy as those entering it.

“We still have a number of challenges before this technology becomes practical for real-world use, but eventually it would substantially reduce the size and cost of future high-energy particle colliders for exploring the world of fundamental particles and forces,” said Joel England, the SLAC physicist who led the experiments, said in a press statement. “It could also help enable compact accelerators and X-ray devices for security scanning, medical therapy and imaging, and research in biology and materials science.”

[MIKA27]

Will we ever... live in underwater cities?

Living below the sea is possible, at least for a short time. So what is stopping us creating colonies to ease over-population, or guard against disasters?

Ian Koblick hoped the colourful seaweed samples he brought into class would impress. His marine biology professor at Stanford University commented on their beauty and asked where he had found them. Ian replied that he had collected them while exploring off the Californian coast using the Aqua-Lung, an early version of today's scuba equipment. His tutor dismissed his innovative approach. "Diving is for daredevils," she reprimanded. “If you want to be a real scientist, collect like a scientist.”

The year was 1962, and it did not take long for her words to seem antiquated. Jacques-Yves Cousteau's exploration of shipwrecks, discovery of previously unknown marine flora and fauna, and invention of novel deep-sea exploration tools had already captured public imagination worldwide. A wave of interest in undersea exploration was washing over the scientific community. There was serious talk of creating colonies on the bottom of the sea.

As for Koblick, he disregarded his professor’s advice and went on to become an ocean explorer and aquanaut. Ten years later, he opened La Chalupa, then the largest and most advanced underwater habitat and research facility at the world. Since then, however, interest in sending humans underwater for extended periods of time has ebbed. Of more than a dozen underwater habitats that once existed, just three remain, all in the Florida Keys. Koblick and his collaborators own and operate two of them – the Marine Lab, which is used as a research and training base by the likes of the US Navy and Nasa, and the Jules Undersea Lodge, which offers everything from education and training facilities to undersea weddings and luxury romantic getaways at $675 per night.

Creating larger-scale underwater habitation wouldn’t only benefit research (or indeed romantic getaways). Proponents maintain it could help alleviate over-population problems, or guard against the possibility of natural or man-made disasters that render land-based human life impossible. The question is how feasible this actually is.

Under pressure

According to Koblick, the technology already exists to create underwater colonies supporting up to 100 people – the few bunker-like habitats in operation today providing a blueprint. “There are no technological hurdles,” Koblick says. “If you had the money and the need, you could do it today.” Beyond that number, technological advances would be needed to deal with emergency evacuation systems, and environmental controls of air supply and humidity.

With safety being paramount, operators assure underwater habitats are running smoothly by monitoring life support systems – air composition, temperature and humidity – from the surface. Above the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Aquarius Reef Base, the third of the three existing facilities (which accommodates up to six aquanauts at a time), a bright yellow circular disc tethered to the undersea lab 60ft (18m) below collects data from a variety of sensors and sends it to shore via a special wireless internet connection. Future habitats could use satellites to communicate this important information. For now, energy independence is still a challenge. Sustainable future options might include harnessing wave action or placing solar panels on the surface.

Making larger habitats with multiple modules made of steel, glass and special cement used underwater would be simpler than trying to create one giant bubble. These smaller structures could be added or taken away to create living space for as many people as desired. Most likely, we wouldn’t want to build any deeper than 1,000ft (300m), because the pressures at such depths would require very thick walls and excessive periods of decompression for those returning to the surface. Koblick and his colleagues did not experience any ill effects from living below the surface for around 60 days, and he thinks stints up to six months would be feasible.

The air composition needed to sustain the aquanauts depends upon the depth of the habitat. The current habitats use compressors to constantly push fresh air from the surface down tubes to the habitat. A chemical product called Sodasorb is added to react with, and therefore remove, carbon dioxide. Below certain depths extra measures would be needed to ensure healthy ratio of oxygen to other gases in air – around 500ft (150m) for nitrogen and below around 1,000ft (300m) for helium. This is because the body requires different levels of different air components when at pressure. To become self-sustaining, future habitats could potentially grow plants using natural or artificial light to generate a fresh supply of oxygen, or develop other methods to produce their own oxygen.

Residents of underwater habitats can explore and study their watery surroundings for long periods using hollow tubes connecting their face masks or helmets and their living quarters. As well as allowing them to breath at depth, these "****** lines" also facilitate communication. Aquarius uses lines of up to 400ft (120m). Alternatively normal scuba tanks can be used, and exchanged every hour or so.

Fresh seafood is generally easy to come by on the bottom of the ocean. Aquanauts regularly spear fish and eat plankton, while canned, preserved and dehydrated foods stock the shelves. Cooking underwater, although possible, is usually avoided because of the smells it gives off. Like in an airplane, fumes seem stronger in static air. Aquarius transports freshwater from the surface, but water could be created using condensation or desalinisation. Depending upon the size of the colony, human waste could be treated and released into the environment, or cooked down to a fine ash.

Deep dive

Many marine biologists are enthusiastic about the possibility of being able to live underwater. “There are a number of scientists who firmly believe that the only way to really understand what’s happening in the oceanic environment is to be there,” says Tom Potts, director of the Aquarius Reef Base. “Divers from the surface have about an hour-and-a-half per day to do all of their work. If we could actually inhabit the bottom of the ocean for 30 to 60 days, imagine the productivity we could get out of researchers down there.”

An example of the benefits came in the mid-1990s when a research group at Northeastern University, Boston, was seeking to understand the basic mechanisms behind the growth and feeding of coral. They found that doing their tests in a lab introduced all sorts of artificial effects, and that attempts to do them using boat dives failed because using scuba equipment did not give them the two to three hours they needed to set up chambers in which they wanted to produce different sea water flow rates around the coral. Shifting the experiment onto the Aquarius base allowed them to calculate optimal water flow rate for coral feeding.

It’s not just marine biologists that would benefit. Underwater archaeologists could take their time resurrecting sunken ships or searching for lost artefacts. Astronaut training has taken place in the existing underwater habitats since the isolated environments can be used to simulate living and working conditions in space. They can also act as broader educational tools. Students can visit them, or teachers can inspire them with video lessons from the bottom of the sea. Koblick converted the former La Chalupa research laboratory into the Jules Undersea Lodge as both a luxury hotel and educational facility. “Giving more people the opportunity to observe the underwater environment and get a feel for living there would help promote the oceans by getting people more interested in those habitats,” he says.

There is growing interest in deep sea mining for minerals and metals, especially around island nations such as the Cook Islands, the Seychelles and Tonga. The Chinese in particular have been investing in deep sea expeditions to investigate the viability of mining manganese nodules, rocks that contain nickel, copper, cobalt, manganese, gold and also valuable rare earth minerals. This work is being done remotely, however if large-scale operations do go ahead they might be simplified by having people continuously on-site at depth, according to Koblick.

Life aquatic

Then there are those who see underwater living as a way of preserving our species in the event of an apocalyptic catastrophe. In the event of a disaster that put paid to human life, communities could perform reverse versions of Noah's ark. With that in mind, Philip Pauley, a futurist and the founder of the London-based visual communications consultancy Pauley, designed the self-sustaining habitat Sub-Biosphere 2. His design includes circular structures that could be floated out to sea and then sunk, creating a haven for 50 to 100 lucky people.

Building an underwater city is “all I have thought about for the last 20 years,” Pauley says. To raise interest and support, he is pursuing various academic collaborations and is looking for a publisher for the first of a planned science fiction trilogy for young adults he has written called The Moral Order, featuring a dystopian future in which the protagonist discovers a hidden underwater world.

“I don’t want to come across as being fanatical so I am waiting for the right time, when people come around to the idea for themselves,” Pauley says. “When that happens, I will be here with my design.”

Larger underwater colonies are already feasible. What stops them becoming a reality is a lack of interest, motivation and funding. However Polish company Deep Ocean Technology thinks tourism is the way to make the endeavour economical. It has signed deals with architects and builders to deliver the Water Discus Hotel at the Noonu Atoll, Kuredhivaru Island in the Maldives within three years. The company is also involved in discussions about building hotels under the waves in Dubai, Singapore and more than one European location, including in Norway.

“Not many people dive, but underwater life is beautiful and full of all kinds of interesting creatures,” says Pawel Podwojewski, the company’s leading architect. “People may think this is a project meant for just the very rich, but that's not true. In fact it won't be much more expensive than a regular night in a hotel, that's the idea."

Based on having carried out simulations, Podwojewski says it’s cheaper, safer and more efficient to design small steel and glass units that can be submerged and resurfaced using ballast tanks, than attempting to lower large structures to the ocean floor. “We ended up with a similar technology as used in submarines,” he says. “We have plenty of water around to submerge the hotel with, and if we have a problem, we release the water from the tanks and the unit automatically surfaces.”

The Water Discus Hotel will be situated 10 metres underwater in order to optimise sunlight, and will include 22 hotel rooms, a bar and a restaurant with views of the surrounding coral reefs. Prototypes are under construction. In the future, Podwojewski thinks it’s possible that such buildings could help manage overpopulation and serve as models for environmental sustainability, although he doesn't see permanent underwater living as desirable because of the lack of natural sunlight.

Pauley, on the other hand, believes living underwater is a logical solution to the problem of environmental collapse since it would be cheaper and easier to pull off than founding space colonies. “We will have a space colony eventually, but in the near or medium-term the future is going to be living underwater as far as I can see,” he says.

Outside of the realm of science fiction, however, Koblick doubts the life aquatic vision will come to pass. He still hopes that people will come around to the idea of creating new and larger underwater habitats for scientific and educational purposes, but laments that he sees no indication that this will happen within his lifetime. In some ways, he shares Pauley’s sentiments. “I was 27 when I went on my first long, deep dive, and I’m now 74 years old,” he says. “I’ve spent 40-something years trying to unlock the idea of living under the sea.”

Spending more than half his life trying to convince others of the value of longer stays below the waves has convinced him that only a major catastrophe will persuade people to follow his lead. That, or greed. “The only real motivation is if we destroyed the air environment up here and were forced to leave because we couldn’t live in it,” he says. “Or if we started picking up gold nuggets from the bottom. Then it would be done in a heartbeat.”

[MIKA27]

Fully-Furnished Fake Houses In UK Run Solely To Trap Burglars

Since the end of 2007, police in the UK have run a secret network of fully-furnished fake apartments and townhouses, solely for the purpose of capturing local burglary suspects. These are called “capture houses.”

First experimented with in the city of Leeds, capture houses are “secret homes fitted with covert police cameras, which film raiders and unique chemical sprays which contaminate intruders have led to further arrests in the area,” the Yorkshire Evening Post reported in December 2007. These chemical sprays and forensic coatings — applied to door handles, window latches, and other goods throughout the properties, including TVs, laptops, and digital cameras — are the same “SmartWater” used in booby traps to mark intruders.

Recently, as part of my research for a book I’m writing about burglary and architecture, I spoke with Detective Chief Inspector Dave Stopford of the South Yorkshire Police about the “capture house” program.

Based in the city of Rotherham, Stopford explained to me the hit-and-miss nature of a capture house. Some of the fake apartments have been open for as little for one day before being hit by burglars, and as long as nearly a year without being broken into even once. As Stopford went on to describe, these otherwise uninhabited residences are fully stocked, complete with electronic equipment, lights on timers, and bare but functional furniture, and they tend to be small apartments located in multi-unit housing blocks.

That apartment you pass everyday on the fourth floor, in other words, might not be an apartment at all, really, but an elaborate trap run by the police, bristling inside with tiny surveillance cameras and ready to spray invisible chemical markings onto anyone who steps inside — or slips in through the window, as the case may be.

The program rapidly proved popular amongst the region’s police services, and has since rolled out nationwide. Indeed, only within a matter of months from their inception — by April 2008 — “capture houses” were “set to be unleashed across West Yorkshire,” popping up in such bustling locales as Wakefield, Kirklees, and Huddersfield, as well as in larger cities like Birmingham and Nottingham.

An individual capture house is most often set up by technical units operating within the police service, Stopford told me. These are employees who are not themselves police officers, but who work for the police service; they have the expertise to install the hidden cameras, the microphones, the fibre optics or Wi-Fi networks, and even the chemical sprays, let alone the most basic details of all, such as timers for the lamps and TVs. It is really an elaborate ploy of interior design and electrical engineering, all in the name of creating accurate fake spaces indistinguishable from the real thing.

Stopford joked that, once, unable to secure funds for the proper furniture and goods they needed to stock one of the local capture houses, an officer simply went desk to desk requesting any unused or soon to be discarded furnishings; most of the officers contributed something — a bedside table, an old couch, a tattered carpet past its prime — thus creating what could be thought of as the perfect distillation of a police officer’s apartment, a flat specifically furnished only with things taken from local cops. If only the burglar they later captured there had a better eye for law enforcement taste in interior design.

Oddly, once apprehended, many of the criminals are shown DVDs of their crime, as if they had inadvertently broken into a private film studio meant just for them, their own motion picture house, 15 minutes of fame captured on miniature cameras only the most paranoid among us would look for or even see.

As the BBC put it in 2008, each captured thief is “unwittingly the star of the show.”

Beyond actually trapping local burglars, the capture house program’s overriding and perhaps most successful effect is to inspire a very peculiar form of paranoia in those who would otherwise make a living from breaking and entering: the uncanny feeling that perhaps this apartment is not real, but a kind of well-furnished simulation, a mirage run by the local police department and overseen by invisible cameras.

Apartments, entire houses, and shopfronts — anything can become a “capture house,” similar to the “bait car” phenomenon found both here, in the United States, and in the UK.

As Assistant Chief Constable Dave Crompton explained to the BBC, “The capture house is completely indistinguishable from any other house in that street or area. The difference is the house is rigged up with hidden cameras which are so small that no-one is going to spot them or know where they are hidden. And the first that the burglar knows is when we are dropping on them to arrest them.”

Even if you’re looking for one, he confidently implies, you won’t find it. You won’t know you’ve broken into a fake apartment until the police come looking for you.

The specific notion of the “capture house,” of course, can easily spread and be adopted elsewhere. Fake storefronts set up by the LAPD, for example, have been used to trap would-be thieves, fences, and smugglers, and, as already mentioned, bait cars are a common technique.

However, more abstractly, the bizarre notion that those houses or these apartments standing around us are fake — that they exist as a kind of police simulacra, both deceptive and alluring — inspires the uncanny sensation, like something of The Matrix, that we simply do not ever fully know the motives behind the buildings we see or the spaces we enter.

For all we know, the capture house program implies, we ourselves have, in fact, come into contact with one of these traps — that is, we’ve looked out the window at night to see an IKEA desk lamp burning in an empty apartment somewhere and, while we briefly wondered who was at home or why they hadn’t turned their lights off, it was actually a kind of reality TV show run by cops, patiently studying that empty room — watching and staring — on a network of hidden cameras.

[MIKA27]

The UK Is About To Connect An Entire Highway To The Internet

Imagine a future where your car’s not just connected to the road between the tire rubber and tarmac. It’s connected to the internet and not only sending a steady stream of data but also receiving signals to speed up or slow down based on the traffic. This futuristic future is already here.

The United Kingdom just revealed the details of an ambitious new transportation project that effectively connects an entire highway to the internet. A 80.5km stretch of the busy A14 that runs between Felixstowe and Birmingham will soon be outfitted with sensors that will monitor traffic by sending signals to mobile devices in moving cars. In effect, it turns the highway into a smart road, one with greater capabilities than just monitoring traffic. Experts think that this type of technology could form the foundation of a communications system for self-driving cars.

The Brits obviously aren’t the only ones thinking of tricking out the infrastructure to make driving a little smarter. Ann Arbor, Michigan is hosting a massive experiment right now involving nearly 3000 cars that have been equipped with special wireless communication devices that enable them to communicate with each other and with devices embedded at intersections and on roadways. The idea is that a steady stream of data flowing back and forth between vehicles, the highway, and other vehicles will not only make driving safer but also more efficient.

Honestly, it doesn’t take fancy technology like mobile phone-hailing road sensors to make transportation smarter. A Dutch design firm has plans for a so-called “Smart Highway” that would use next generation paint to make signs on the pavement responsive to the environment. Snowflakes would appear, for instance, if the temperature dropped below a certain threshold, or the lines would light up when it got dark. “One day I was sitting in my car in the Netherlands, and I was amazed by these roads we spend millions on but no one seems to care what they look like and how they behave,” designer Daan Roosegaarde told Wired last year. “I started imagining this Route 66 of the future where technology jumps out of the computer screen and becomes part of us.”

Now that sounds like a future we’d like to be a part of. Actually, on that note, any future that involves technology jumping out of screen and into reality is a future we want to be a part of.

[MIKA27]

How Human History Could Have Turned Out (And Probably Should Have)

In this infinite universe of ours, every event that occurs and every choice that we make continually split away into countless individual timelines — alternate realities, if you will. So who’s to say that Bigfoot, Kraken, Martians, even Cthulu himself aren’t perfectly real but simply residents of a now divergent reality? Matthew Buchholz, author of Alternate Histories of the World illustrates just a few major alternate historical events of the last 6000 years.

The Great Chicago Fire — America 1871

The Great Fire of Chicago stared on Sunday, October 8, and continued until Tuesday, October 10, consuming the downtown business portion of the city, a multitude of public buildings, hotels, Interstellar trading depots, newspaper offices, railroad depots, and morel. All told, the devastation extended over an area of five square miles.

Accounts of the incident vary, but it’s believed the fire began when a group of Martians, feeling cheated in a business transaction, took to the skies in their flying saucer crafts and employed their Destructo-Ray on the city. Interstellar Trading was suspended soon after the fire, and the event caused a massive wave o anti-immigration rhetoric, with Mayor Roswell B. Mason calling for stricter enforcement of the Alien and Sedition acts.

For years after, the fire was remembered in the children’s rhyming song “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow”:

Five nights ago, Mrs. O’Leary was surprised,

When she looked and saw the martians had arrived.

And when she got to the barn,

The cow was vaporized,

It’ll be a hot time, in the old town, tonight!

Rogers Pass at the Selkirk Mountains — Canada 1909

With the invention of portable rocket jet packs in the early twentieth century, numerous lives were suddenly changed forever. While the packs remained too expensive and dangerous for everyday use, daredevils and explorers saw great promise in the ability to quickly rocket thousands of feet in the air. Man mountaineers, like Canadian Ward Feeney and Colonel Marion Marshall (pictured overlooking Rogers Pass in the Selkirk Mountains), quickly embraced the packs as a way to visit the tops of summits previously thought insurmountable.

Yet the jet packs had difficulty operating at high altitude, and the combination of ice and snow made for extremely hazardous flying conditions. Only two months after this photo was taken, Feeney’s pack malfunctioned over Hermit Range, and the intrepid adventurer plummeted to his death. The worldwide outcry over this accident led to the jet packs being relegated to military use; today, civilian jet-pack licenses are almost impossible to obtain.

The Signing of the Declaration of Independence — America 1776

John Trumbull’s famous portrait of the signing of the Declaration of Independence has long been a source of controversy, due to its purported historical inaccuracies and knockoff lithographs and engravings. This is the first sketch of the portrait, featuring John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert R. Livingston, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Magnificent Medwin the Mechanical Man, Charles Thompson, and John Hancock (seated).

Later drafts of the piece excluded Medwin, possibly because he was seen as a pawn of his creator, Franklin. Nonetheless, the Mechanical Man was instrumental in helping craft the first passages of the declaration, contributing the immortal “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and machines are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness and/or electro-circutry.” Magnificent Medwin would go on to lead a distinguished military career and later serve his country in a diplomatic capacity.

The Statue of Tyranny — America 1886

Officially titled Emperor Krgyyx Threatening the World, this grand statue at the entrance to New York Harbor has become known around the world as the Statue of Tyranny. A gift from the citizens of Mars, it was intended to dominate and subjugate the American people until Krgyyx himself would arrive for world domination sometime in the 21st century. The statue was delivered in one piece on the evening of October 27, 1868, and the mayor of New York received the dedication instructions the next day.

The statue was created long before the Martian Peace Accord of 1962, and the prophesied Coming of Krgyyx is a point of contention among many interstellar scholars. The fact that, as of this writing, numerous saucer crafts and heavy invasion cruisers were observed massing in orbit around Mars is probably just mere coincidence.

Tokyo & Mount Fuji — Japan 1858

Unlike all of the other cities depicted in this book, Tokyo has never experienced a problem with monsters. Gigantic irradiated beasts have never crawled out of the ocean to lay waste to the town, nor have absurd flying turtles and moth-like creatures dropped from the sky, crushing buildings at will. Tokyo for centuries has been a peaceful refuge from all types of supernatural activity.

Alternate Histories of the World is available fromAmazon.

[MIKA27]

This Massive Cargo Ship Will Harness The Wind With Its Hull

It doesn’t matter how efficient we make their engines or how many solar panels we install on their decks, the world’s largest cargo ships — those water-bound leviathans on which international trade depends — will require massive amounts of fuel for the foreseeable future. However, this conceptual super-carrier could potentially save billions of barrels of petrol every year just by harnessing the wind.

The Vindskip concept’s design by Norway’s Lade AS promises to cut fuel use by 60 per cent and CO2emissions by up to 80 per cent thanks to an indicatively applied hull design. Engineers at the firm modelled the ship’s hull after airfoils commonly found in aerospace design. This lifting body actually pulls the hull out of the water as liquefied natural gas-powered electrical generators propel the Vindskip forward. Just the wind created from its forward momentum — the ship’s relative wind — is enough to help reduce the vessel’s drag.

Given that the Vindskip concept has yet to get off the drawing board, nobody’s actually all that sure it will be feasible in real world scenarios. But if it does work out, the Vindskip design will easily be the most fuel efficient vessel to ever sail and could very well change the face of international trade.

[MIKA27]

Here's How Police Mapped The Seedier Side Of San Francisco's Chinatown

In the 1880s, San Francisco’s Chinatown was a den of thieves, sin, and debauchery — at least according to the police. To that end, the SFPD set about creating a comprehensive map of the neighbourhood’s vices. But was this effort genuine public service or was it merely an attempt to villainise a rapidly growing minority population?

According to historian and map collector David Rumsey, it was far more the latter — a barely concealed attempt by the city’s supervisors to marginalize Chinese immigrants. With the detailed, colour-coded vice map depicting the locations of every opium den, brothel, and gambling parlor, “they were trying to show how depraved the culture was in Chinatown,” Rumsey told Wired. “It’s pretty frightening to read today because it’s so anti-Asian.”

It’s understandable though, in historical context. Anti-asian sentiment ran high during the 1880s, with numerous local ordinances segregating them from white folk as well as the federal Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which stopped Chinese laborer immigration outright until 1943. Of course, that doesn’t make it any less reprehensible by today’s standards. Head over to Rumsey’s website to take a closer, zoomable look.

[MIKA27]

Beaver Butts Emit Goo Used for Vanilla Flavoring

Just in time for holiday cookie season, we’ve discovered that the vanilla flavoring in your baked goods and candy could come from the anal excretions of beavers.

Beaver butts secrete a goo called castoreum, which the animals use to mark their territory. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration lists castoreum as a “generally regarded as safe” additive, and manufacturers have been using it extensively in perfumes and foods for at least 80 years, according to a 2007 study in the International Journal of Toxicology.

“I lift up the animal’s tail,” said Joanne Crawford, a wildlife ecologist at Southern Illinois University, “and I’m like, ‘Get down there, and stick your nose near its bum.’”

“People think I’m nuts,” she added. “I tell them, ‘Oh, but it’s beavers; it smells really good.’”

Castoreum is a chemical compound that mostly comes from a beaver’s castor sacs, which are located between the pelvis and the base of the tail. Because of its close proximity to the anal glands, castoreum is often a combination of castor gland secretions, anal gland secretions, and urine.

The fragrant, brown slime is about the consistency of molasses, though not quite as thick, Crawford said.

While most anal secretions stink—due to odor-producing bacteria in the gut—this chemical compound is a product of the beaver’s unique diet of leaves and bark, Crawford added.

Instead of smelling icky, castoreum has a musky, vanilla scent, which is why food scientists like to incorporate it in recipes.

Save a Cow, Milk a Beaver

But getting a beaver to produce castoreum for purposes of food processing is tough. Foodies bent on acquiring some of the sticky stuff have to anesthetize the animal and then “milk” its nether regions.

“You can milk the anal glands so you can extract the fluid,” Crawford said. “You can squirt [castoreum] out. It’s pretty gross.”

Due to such unpleasantness for both parties, castoreum consumption is rather small—only about 292 pounds (132 kilograms) yearly. That statistic includes castoreum, castoreum extract, and castoreum liquid, according to Fenaroli’s Handbook of Flavor Ingredients.

Still concerned you’re chowing down on beaver-bum goop? Because of its FDA label, in some cases, manufacturers don’t have to list castoreum on the ingredient list and may instead refer to it as “natural flavoring.” Yum.