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

[Fuzz]

Who will be doing this with their brand new PS4 or XB1??

[MIKA27]

Who will be doing this with their brand new PS4 or XB1??

Nope, not me... If I get any gaming time, it's when the kids are in bed so I like to take that opportunity playing Call of Duty and or Forza 5

[MIKA27]

How To Build Los Angeles In 2094 A.D.

One can never have too many post-apocalyptic visions of Los Angeles, right? This future L.A. is better known as Mega-City Two, a late 21st-century megalopolis that comes to us thanks to a new Judge Dredd comic,Mega-City Two: City of Courts, which hits shelves in January 2014.

Like Chris Burden’s Metropolis II sculpture crossed with the Futurama opening credits, Mega-City Two is a deliciously detailed cacophony of vehicles, fast food, and sprawl. Because it’s, you know, L.A., there will inevitably be comparisons to Blade Runner. But the Los Angeles in Mega-City Two is an entirely different animal, based on the ideas of another fictional city first created in the Judge Dredd universe 36 years ago: The New York-esque Mega-City One.

Those who aren’t comic fans are probably familiar with one of two Judge Dredd movies, says Mega-City Two‘s Portland-based writer Douglas Wolk. “A pretty terrible one with Sylvester Stallone in the mid-’90s, and a fantastic one with Karl Urban, Lena Headey, and Olivia Thirlby last year.”

Wolk was 12 when he first discovered Dredd, which has been appearing weekly since 1977 in a British comic book called 2000 A.D. He recently started a blog to write about some of the early episodes and was contacted by San Diego comics publisher IDW, who was launching a new American Judge Dredd series. Soon Wolk was teamed up with illustrator Ulises Farinas and colorist Ryan Hill to create a miniseries within the Dredd franchise, the first to take place in Mega-City Two.

Most of the Judge Dredd stories take place in Mega-City One, a 22nd-century megalopolis that has consumed most of the Eastern Seaboard — a kind of post-apocalyptic Gotham Gone Wild. Mega-City Two was first mentioned in a 1978 story as Mega-City One’s West Coast sister megalopolis, a “5,000 square-mile” California city, that, in 2114, is nuked to a cinder. “It was being overrun by zombies; they had to destroy it in order to save it,” says Wolk. Luckily Wolk’s Mega-City Two is set in 2094, 20 years before annihilation.

What attracted Wolk to the project was the incredible collaborative world-building that had taken place thanks to the many artists and writers over the years. In Matt Brooker’s brief history of the Judge Dredd franchise, Brooker argues that Mega-City One became much more of a character than anyone had expected: “Really, the city is the actual star of Judge Dredd.”

To build Mega-City Two, Wolk started by examining the urban planning of Mega-City One. “It’s basically wall-to-wall skyscrapers all along the Boston-to-Washington corridors,” he says, “‘cityblocks’ with tens of thousands of people living in each one where you can spend your whole life without leaving.”

He then applied those same rules to Mega-City Two, essentially extrapolating the current look of L.A. “Massive gigantic metastasizing cloverleaves of highways everywhere. Gorgeous Googier-than-Googie architecture, and a radically different look for every neighbourhood,” he explains.

In true L.A. fashion, each of the different neighborhoods in Mega-City Two is named after a 20th-century movie. So there’s Double Indemnity, Barton Fink — that naturally includes the movie studio where a chunk of the first issue takes place — Melody Time, Point Break, Barefoot Adventure, and Double Nickels. (I laughed when Wolk told me about this, but after thinking about it, I decided would be totally plausible in the near future.)

Wolk and Farinas also collaborated on the cultural references, which are absolutely priceless. There’s the Stallone Megway 3, freeway named for the star of the Dredd movie, of course. A billboard for the “Scientipicopalians.” A Carl’s Sagan, Jr. burger joint. I especially liked the “O’Shea Jackson Hyper Cube Zone,” named for O’Shea Jackson, the person you’ll know better as Ice Cube, who studied architectural drafting in college.

Of course, one of the most important issues to figure out for Wolk and Farinas was how the L.A traffic of the future would be represented. Spoiler alert: It’s worse. The landscape is ruled by “traffic knots” and “traffic spheres,” which have multiple tiers of express lanes to which access is available for increasingly astronomical fees. (Again, not that far from today’s reality.) Notably, “Road Drones” — massive flying construction vehicles — are employed to fabricate or rearrange roads as needed. Traffic management on the fly!

To build Mega-City Two’s culture, Wolk looked to the literary world for inspiration, reading (or re-reading) books by Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson, and Bruce Wagner. The series itself is subtitled “City of Courts,” a riff on the 1990 Mike Davis book City of Quartz that examined the fate of Los Angeles through the lens of law enforcement. Wolk used Davis’ ideas to create Mega-City Two’s political structure. “One of the things that Davis suggests is that L.A. is a whole bunch of economically stratified communities smushed up against each other,” says Wolk. “So I figured: what if they were in fact so deeply culturally stratified that every one had its own set of laws — but the same police had to enforce them everywhere?”

Any depiction of L.A.’s future law enforcement will, of course, be compared to the L.A. of Blade Runner, which is set in a basically present-day 2019. But Wolk says that he specifically resisted its dystopian nature — and its darkness. “In Blade Runner, L.A. is a night city,” he says. “We’ll see a little of the nighttime side of things later on but, right off, I wanted to establish it as a really bright, sunny place — somewhere people might want to live.”

[MIKA27]

Kawasaki Built A Time Machine And Stole A Bike From The Future

Akira, Tron, I don’t care what pop reference you pick. The new Kawasaki J Three Wheeler EV — presented today at the Tokyo Motor Show 2013 — is absolutely insane. And the way you ride this amazing thing is even crazier. Check it out in Sport Mode:

The bike has different modes depending on your style and mood, and you can morph between them.

You can also drive it in chillax mode (officially Comfort Mode.)

I wish they were manufacturing it now. Why wait till the future?

[Fuzz]

Amazing RC A-380

[MIKA27]

You Could Be The Proud Owner Of These 19th-Century British Tunnels

Sure, this 185sqm, no-windows, no-view property is a bit of a fixer-upper. But think of the parties you could throw down here! This set of 200-year-old tunnels beneath the British port city of Plymouth are going up for auction next month for the low-low price of $US30,590.

The three 18m tunnels were originally built as moats around a military fortification in the early 19th century. Apparently, in one section you can still see where drawbridge used to rest upon a series of stones. During the Napoleonic Wars, the moats were enclosed and served as secret prisons for captured French soldiers, when the British military wanted to keep the horrors of war far away from local residents. A century later, during World War II, the tunnels were used as air raid shelters.

Kevin Tapper co-owns the tunnels with his brother, which have been passed down in their family since they purchased them from the Ministry of Defence in the 1950s. Their grandfather, who was a fisherman, used to store his boat in the tunnels. Later the family used them for storage, but they’ve been hard to maintain due to their inaccessibility, he told the Plymouth Herald. “We weren’t doing anything with them and because of their location they need a lot of attention so we’ve decided to move on now.”

The property is cheekily listed as a “0 bedroom, investment property”, with no vehicular access, by Bradleys Estate Agents, which suggests that the new owner might want to use them for a workshop, storage or “personal recreation”.

Unfortunately, as alluring as it sounds, the new owners will probably not be allowed to move in, according to agent Steve Allen. “We have had some people inquire about change of use for a commercial venture, which may be possible,” he told the Daily Mail. “But I think it is unlikely that they would get permission for residential use.”

[MIKA27]

Amazing RC A-380

Wow, awesome - Lets chip in and grab one

[MIKA27]

Self-Checkout Security Checkpoints Could Replace Touchy Airport Staff

http://youtu.be/UPxoZPlpN4U

Self-checkout registers at the supermarket have reduced the lines when it comes to buying food, but can a similar setup do the same for security waiting lines? A company called Qylur has developed the Qylatron automated checkpoint which it hopes will bring added safety to sports or concert venues without increasing wait times to get inside.

Patrons place their bags and other personal belongings in a small compartment, and then walk through a traditional metal detector.

On the other side their scanned items are waiting for them behind a locked door that’s only accessible using their own unique ticket.

This helps prevent theft, but if there’s a problem, it also allows the items in question to be locked down until they can be manually searched by a security officer.

Qylur claims that up to five of the Qylatron checkpoints can be monitored by just a single operator, which also makes them more financially feasible for venues hoping to improve their security. And while they’ve been already tested at an airport in Rio de Janeiro, the capacity of those scanning compartments would have to be increased for larger hubs to accommodate carry-on luggage. But if it means reducing the number of disgruntled TSA agents we have to deal with, let’s get these rolled out everywhere.

MIKA: I love technology and whilst this is a great idea in some respect, I'm not a fan of anything which replaces people and sends them to the unemployed queue.

[MIKA27]

FULL METAL JACKET JEEP | BY STARWOOD MOTORS

The Full Metal Jacket has to be the baddest jeep in existence.

Built by Starwood Motors, a company responsible for some of the most talked about Jeep Wrangler conversions available today, the impressive Full Metal Jacket Jeep boasts a Pentastar 3.6-liter, 285 hp, V-6 engine, and moves from zero to 60mph in only 8.4 seconds. It is fully equipped with the best equipment, rides as soft as a luxury car on the road, and is capable of driving on any route off road. Definitely the vehicle we´d pick for surviving the zombie apocalypse

[MIKA27]

PELOTON EXERCISE BIKE

The Peloton Exercise Bike has been designed for a superior experience in home use, it delivers live and on-demand indoor cycling classes to your home!

A 21.5 inch Full HD multitouch console connects to your wi-fi network and allows you to download cycling classes from instructors around the world. It also has Bluetooth and ANT+ radio for connecting heart rate monitors and wireless headphones or speakers.

The cycling classes are available on demand: simply download classes from your favorite instructors, or live: you can connect to other riders and take a class with a real instructor in real time. The Peloton Bike as you would expect, automatically tracks progress towards fitness goals, and tracks riding statistics such as: average RPM, power output, distance traveled, heart rate, and many other stats you can share with friends and fellow riders.

[MIKA27]

DELUXE POKER | BY RESTORATION HARDWARE

We can spend endless hours snooping around the Restoration Hardware website, their vintage game collection is awesome. Our pick from the collection is this beautiful Deluxe Poker box, complete with everything you need to host a late night poker game.

Crafted from solid wood, the box includes two decks of deluxe playing cards, a pair of poker dice and four trays of classic clay-composite chips.

[MIKA27]

Easy Camp Tipi Tent

Make life around the campsite just a little bit more comfortable with this Easy Camp Tipi Tent ($150).

Built as a modern take on an old-school teepee, this tent features a single pole through the center for support, with plenty of guy lines all around adding structure. Its hexagonal design gives it additional strength, while allowing it to accommodate up to four sleepers (or a whole lot of gear). Taped seams keep things nice and dry, while mesh prevents unwanted bugs and other pests, and fire-retardant polyester construction keeps you safe in case of a mishap.

[MIKA27]

Gold bars worth $1.1m found in plane toilet in India

A stash of 24 gold bars worth more than $1.1m has been discovered in the toilet compartment of a commercial plane in eastern India.

Cleaners found the haul in two bags on board a Jet Airways flight at Kolkata airport, officials said.

India is one of the world's main gold consumers and imports are seen as a major contributor to the country's account deficit.

It recently raised duty on imports of gold jewellery to 15% from 10%.

It was the third increase this year as the government attempts to curb demand for the precious metal, which many Indians traditionally hoard in the belief it will bring financial security.

The plane on which the 1kg (2.2lb) gold bars were found on Tuesday had reportedly come from Bangkok, local media reported, before making stops in India.

"The cleaning staff of the airport were going though their routine duties and found two bags in the toilets of the plane," airport director BP Mishra told AFP news agency.

He was quoted as saying that no arrest had been made in connection with the find, though OneIndia News said a suspect was being questioned.

The gold has been valued at between 70m and 90m rupees (up to $1.4m or £890,000).

[MIKA27]

24,000-Year-Old Body Shows Kinship to Europeans and American Indians

The genome of a young boy buried at Mal’ta near Lake Baikal in eastern Siberia some 24,000 years ago has turned out to hold two surprises for anthropologists.

The first is that the boy’s DNA matches that of Western Europeans, showing that during the last Ice Age people from Europe had reached farther east across Eurasia than previously supposed. Though none of the Mal’ta boy’s skin or hair survives, his genes suggest he would have had brown hair, brown eyes and freckled skin.

The second surprise is that his DNA also matches a large proportion — about 25 percent — of the DNA of living Native Americans.

The first people to arrive in the Americas have long been assumed to have descended from Siberian populations related to East Asians. It now seems that they may be a mixture between the Western Europeans who had reached Siberia and an East Asian population.

The Mal’ta boy was 3 to 4 years old and was buried under a stone slab wearing an ivory diadem, a bead necklace and a bird-shaped pendant. Elsewhere at the same site about 30 Venus figurines were found of the kind produced by the Upper Paleolithic cultures of Europe. The remains were excavated by Russian archaeologists over a 20-year period ending in 1958 and stored in museums in St. Petersburg.

There they lay for some 50 years until they were examined by a team led by Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen. Dr. Willerslev, an expert in analyzing ancient DNA, was seeking to understand the peopling of the Americas by searching for possible source populations in Siberia. He extracted DNA from bone taken from the child’s upper arm, hoping to find ancestry in the East Asian peoples from whom Native Americans are known to be descended.

But the first results were disappointing. The boy’s mitochondrial DNA belonged to the lineage known as U, which is commonly found among the modern humans who first entered Europe about 44,000 years ago. The lineages found among Native Americans are those designated A, B, C, D and X, so the U lineage pointed to contamination of the bone by the archaeologists or museum curators who had handled it, a common problem with ancient DNA projects. “The study was put on low speed for about a year because I thought it was all contamination,” Dr. Willerslev said.

His team proceeded anyway to analyze the nuclear genome, which contains the major part of human inheritance. They were amazed when the nuclear genome also turned out to have partly European ancestry. Examining the genome from a second Siberian grave site, that of an adult who died 17,000 years ago, they found the same markers of European origin. Together, the two genomes indicate that descendants of the modern humans who entered Europe had spread much farther east across Eurasia than had previously been assumed and occupied Siberia during an extremely cold period starting 20,000 years ago that is known as the Last Glacial Maximum.

The other surprise from the Mal’ta boy’s genome was that it matched to both Europeans and Native Americans but not to East Asians. Dr. Willerslev’s interpretation was that the ancestors of Native Americans had already separated from the East Asian population when they interbred with the people of the Mal’ta culture, and that this admixed population then crossed over the Beringian land bridge that then lay between Siberia and Alaska to become a founding population of Native Americans.

“We estimate that 14 to 38 percent of Native American ancestry may originate through gene flow from this ancient population,” he and colleagues wrote in an article published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

A European contribution to Native American ancestry could explain two longstanding puzzles about the people’s origins. One is that many ancient Native American skulls, including that of the well-known Kennewick man, look very different from those of the present day population. Another is that one of the five mitochondrial DNA lineages found in Native Americans, the lineage known as X, also occurs in Europeans. One explanation is that Europeans managed to cross the Atlantic in small boats some 20,000 years ago and joined the Native Americans from Siberia.

Dr. Willerslev thinks it more likely that European bearers of the X lineage had migrated across Siberia with the ancestors of the Mal’ta culture and joined them in their trek across the Beringian land bridge.

He said his finding does not solve the much-disputed question of when the Americas were first settled. Archaeologists long believed the people of the Clovis culture, dated from 13,000 years ago, were the first Americans, but several recent finds point to an earlier date. “We need the sequencing of more ancient genomes to address this question,” Dr. Willerslev said.

The Mal’ta people built houses that were partly underground, with bone walls and roofs made of reindeer antlers. Their culture is distinguished by its many art objects and its survival in an unforgiving climate.

Dr. Willerslev presented his team’s findings last month at a conference in Santa Fe on Native American origins. “There was a lot of surprise and some skepticism, as is often the case in science toward new findings,” said Dennis H. O’Rourke, an anthropologist at the University of Utah who works on ancient DNA and the North American Arctic.

Dr. O’Rourke said the result would prompt a search for more ancient DNA from Siberia in order to provide a better context for Dr. Willerslev’s reconstruction of early American origins. “I think it’s a very important and really interesting result, but it is from a single individual,” he said.

Theodore G. Schurr, an anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania, said Dr. Willerslev had provided an interesting new perspective on Native American origins that helped explain the presence of the mitochondrial X lineage in North America and enlarged the understanding of population history in Siberia. But the time and place of the East-West population mixing adduced by Dr. Willerslev is not yet clear, he said.

An unexplained feature of the mixing is that the Mal’ta people did not pass on their mitochondrial DNA since the U lineage is unknown among Native Americans. Since mitochondrial DNA is passed down only through the female line, the population ancestral to Native Americans could have been formed by men of the Mal’ta culture who acquired East Asian wives.

Dr. Willerslev sees this as one possibility, another being that mitochondrial DNA lineages are easily lost through genetic drift, the random change in DNA patterns through the generations. “One has to be careful setting up detailed geographical scenarios at this stage,” Dr. Willerslev said.

[MIKA27]

Australia May Work On Missile Defence System With United States

Australia is about to get its hands dirty with the US, agreeing to work more closely to develop technology for a missile defence shield in the Asia-Pacific.

The information was revealed in the a communiqué from the US State department about the recent AUSMIN meeting. Every so often, there’s this big, important meeting that goes on between the United States and Australia called the Australia-United States Ministerial Consultations, or AUSMIN. Usually it works to reaffirm commitments between our two great nations, but this year it has been revealed that we’ll be working on missile defence shield technology.

It doesn’t seem to be entirely locked in just yet, but that all comes down to how you read the AUSMIN

communiqué. Here’s what the two parties had to say on the project:

Ballistic Missile Defense

The United States and Australia agreed to examine opportunities to expand their cooperation on ballistic missile defense, including working together to identify potential Australian contributions to ballistic missile defense in the Asia-Pacific region.

They agreed to continue cooperative research on technologies to counter ballistic missile threats, and continue their consultation regarding options that increase capability development in this area.

The two countries will continue to consult as the United States develops its phased adaptive approaches to regional ballistic missile defense, which will allow missile defense to be adapted to the threats unique to the Asia-Pacific region.

Basically that means that our role in the ongoing development of missile defence shields will be closely looked at to see if Australia has anything to offer. Whether or not we’ll be able to contribute is another matter.

Previous analyses of Australia’s potential contributions from pundits have found that RADAR technology on the RAAF’s Wedgetail planes and the gear on Naval air warfare destroyers could prove useful to the project.

What we’ll actually contribute — if anything — remains to be seen.

The most recent AUSMIN meeting also saw Australia agree to an expanded space surveillance program to track debris and near-Earth objects. Check out the full details in the communiqué.

[MIKA27]

PORSCHE MACAN

Porsche have unveiled Cayenne´s little brother - the Porsche Macan. Smaller(and cheaper) than a Cayenne, the SUV will be first available in a Macan S version, equipped with a 3 liter TDI V6, 258 horsepower engine which reaches 156 mph and accelerates from 0 to 60 in 5.4 seconds.

Later will come the Macan Turbo with a 3.6 liter, 400 horsepower engine capable of accelerating from 0 to 60 in 4.8 seconds and reaching 164 mph. Macan S, starts at $49,000, and the Macan Turbo, will start at $72,300.

[MIKA27]

PICKLES PIGS & WHISKEY

Pickles, Pigs & Whiskey is a new book by award-winning chef John Currence.

The manly cooking book is full of interesting ideas and recipes, it indulges your senses with the tastes of Mississippi. Illustrated beautifully with over 100 documentary-style color photographs you´ll have your mouth watering over 130 delicious recipes that include Pork Fat Beignets with Bourbon Caramel, Peach Rice Pudding Brulee with Brandy Chantilly Cream, Fire-Roasted Cauliflower, and Kitchen Sink Cookie Ice Cream Sandwiches

[MIKA27]

Willett Family Estate Rye Whiskey:

Whiskey collectors and connoisseurs are constantly hunting for the tastiest and rarest bottles around.

Some bottles carry a hefty price tag, while others are just difficult to find. The latter is the case with Willett Family Estate Rye Whiskey ($35) which isn't outside of most price ranges, but not much is made and it's tough to track down.

Every bottle contains a hand marked age statement and barrel number, but the amount of each batch rarely exceeds 200 bottles.

Despite the 110 proof, it's an easy sipper, with a classic rye mintiness and a clean, crisp finish. Add it to your Whiskey Envy list.

[MIKA27]

Sansaire Sous Vide Circulator:

Sous-vide cooking — a method that uses carefully-regulated water at a low temperature to cook meat and vegetables sealed in an airtight bag — is a great way of evenly cooking food while keeping it juicy and tender. But previously the equipment needed for sous-vide cooking was prohibitively expensive, keeping it pretty much exclusively in professional kitchens.

With the Sansaire Sous Vide Circulator ($200) you get all the advantages of sous-vide, without all the cost. This small, portable cooker lets you immerse it in any vessel, easily set the temperature, and leave it to work its magic.

[MIKA27]

IceCube Telescope Finds High-Energy Neutrinos, Opens Up New Era in Astronomy

After years of finding nothing, scientists at the IceCube neutrino telescope have detected 28 high-energy neutrinos that likely came from some of the most violent and powerful explosions in the universe. These are the precise results that IceCube was built for.

“We are seeing these cosmic neutrinos for the first time,” said physicist Francis Halzen of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, principal investigator of the IceCube collaboration. With these particles in hand, astronomers finally have a new window to the universe and may be able to figure out the details of mysterious processes that have so far eluded them. The findings appear today in a paper published inScience.

IceCube is a giant neutrino-finding telescope buried in the cold darkness 1.5 kilometers beneath the surface in Antarctica. With that much frozen weight above it, the ice at this location gets smushed, driving out any air bubbles and making it perfectly clear.

This allows the 5,160 light-sensitive detectors used in IceCube to see faint flashes across a large distance. Trillions of neutrinos pass like ghosts through the cubic kilometer of ice that IceCube is monitoring. Every once in a while, one of these tiny particles will crash right into the oxygen atom of a frozen water molecule, producing a faint blue spark. The flash of light tells scientists the direction and energy that a neutrino had when it flew into the detector.

Astronomers hypothesize that high-energy neutrinos are created in extremely energetic processes in the distant universe. Active galactic nuclei (AGN) and gamma-ray bursts are some of the brightest cosmic events that we see but researchers don’t really know how they work. Scientists speculate that giant black holes and collapsing massive stars are behind these mysteries but have yet to understand their mechanics.

Because they barely interact with anything, neutrinos get created in these events and then easily escape, shooting out in a direct line across the universe. These neutrinos have insane amounts of energy, more than a 1,000 times the energy that protons are smashed at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. Astronomers hoped that IceCube would see these lively neutrinos, allowing them to trace back where in the sky they arrived from, and help them figure out what’s going on with the unexplained bright sources.

But after being completed in 2010, IceCube took a year’s worth of data and found zilch. Not even one neutrino. Well, that’s not entirely true.

“We actually see a neutrino every six minutes,” said Halzen.

These common neutrinos are created when charged nuclei called cosmic rays hit Earth’s atmosphere, generating a shower of subatomic particles, including neutrinos. After taking data for two years, though, IceCube had yet to see a high-energy neutrino coming in from outside our solar system. The non-detection concerned and frustrated scientists, who thought there might be something wrong in their models.

Then, help came from an unexpected direction. Some members of the IceCube team began looking through their data for ultra-high-energy neutrinos – 1,000 times more powerful than even those created in AGNs and gamma-ray bursts – created when a cosmic ray interacts with the cosmic microwave background radiation.

While combing through the ultra-high-energy data, the IceCube team also unexpectedly found two neutrinos in the right energy range to have come from an AGN or gamma-ray burst. The neutrinos were so rare, the collaboration named them “Bert” and “Ernie.” These two discoveries showed them how to analyze the data and spot the neutrinos the telescope was built to see. Now, knowing how to find the high-energy neutrinos, the team saw 26 more in their data from 2011 and 2012 that they had originally missed.

Most of the 28 high-energy neutrinos so far detected originate from parts of the night sky that don’t include the Milky Way, making it quite likely that they are arriving from a distant source. There are still too few neutrinos to make any specific conclusions about AGNs or gamma-ray bursts, but the IceCube team will continue gathering new data.

Halzen said the team is already using the new tactic to look through their 2013 data. They have found at least one more high-energy neutrino, the most powerful one yet seen, which they are calling “Big Bird.” Halzen said he expects to have enough neutrinos to say something about cosmic accelerator within about five years.

The findings are generating a good deal of excitement in the neutrino astrophysics community.

“I think this paper is one that will go into the textbooks,” said physicist John Learned of the University of Hawaii, who is not involved in IceCube. “It will be recognized as the beginning of high-energy neutrino astronomy.”

Every time scientists open a new window to the universe, they find unexpected things, added Learned. Already, the IceCube data has several new mysteries to ponder, including the fact that some of the neutrinos seem to cluster from a source near the center of our galaxy. If IceCube continues to see neutrinos from this source, it could point to an unexpected and interesting new process.

Though scientists don’t know what that might be, “it’s certainly going to be something strange and new,” said Learned.

[MIKA27]

Boeing’s Massive Dreamlifter Lands at the Wrong Airport, Gets Stuck

Pilots flying Boeing’s massive 747 Dreamlifter landed at the wrong airport yesterday and were stuck there overnight.

The modified jumbo jets hopscotch the world picking up sections of the 787 Dreamliner and flying them to the company’s factories in Everett, Washington and North Charleston, South Carolina. But last night instead of landing at McConnell Air Force Base to retrieve nose sections made by Spirit Aerosystems, they landed several miles away at Jabara airport. No big deal? Big deal: The runway at Jabara is 6,101 feet long, a bit shorter than the 747′s normal takeoff requirements

Pilots landing at the wrong airport is nothing new. It can be an easy mistake, with airports often lined up with each other and especially for pilots flying into unfamiliar areas, and at night. But it is hard to imagine why the pilots on the Dreamlifter — who presumably have flown into McConnell many times before to pick up 787 parts — would not have been very familiar with the Wichita area and the approach procedure.

In the audio recording of the pilot’s communication with air traffic control, it quickly becomes apparent the 747 pilots are not quite sure of where they touched down.

“Yes sir, we just landed at the other airport,” pilots reply when told that they weren’t at their intended airport. At the time, the pilots still weren’t sure what the “other airport” was.

Eventually they read their coordinates to the air traffic controller who determined they were at Jabara airport 10 miles to the north.

For any pilot who has needed some navigation help from ATC (or has simply been corrected by ATC), the audio is familiar cringeworthy listening. The upside is that these pilots have set the bar rather high for future embarrassing communications with a controller.

Many questions remain — including why the pilots weren’t following the guidance for what was presumably an instrument approach, or why they weren’t simply following a GPS. There is also the issue of the basic descent and landing checklist, which normally includes checks to determine the pilots are heading for the correct airport based on either approach frequencies, GPS information, or simply comparing the view outside to a map.

A finished 787 nose section awaits loading aboard a 747 Dreamlifter at Spirit Aerosystems factory in Wichita.

Pilots today are often criticized for being lazy by old-school pilots because they often simply type a destination into a GPS — an integrated system, or a handheld unit — and follow a magenta line to the airport. Traditionally pilots would spend more time tracing paths on maps and using radio-based navigation aids. Pilots of large airliners are usually given headings and follow directions given by air traffic control to their destinations, but they presumably should be verifying the instructions along the way. In this case the magenta line would have been helpful.

Once the pilots of the Dreamlifter figured out where they were last night, they also figured out that they shouldn’t attempt to take off from the relatively short runway. At 6,101 feet, most airplanes would have no trouble getting off, even fully loaded. But the Dreamlifter isn’t a normal airplane, and its runway requirements are a bit above average. Of course the first problem was simply being able to maneuver the airplane on the ground. Boeing drove one of its aircraft tugs (with a police escort thanks to its 13 mph top speed) from the airport where the pilots were supposed to land to help turn the big airplane around.

The Dreamlifter successfully and uneventfully took off at 2:16 p.m. Eastern today with a different crew aboard — presumably, one capable of going where they’re supposed to.

UPDATED 5:40 p.m. Eastern to reflect the successful liftoff from Jabara.

[MIKA27]

Latvia: Questions over 'swastika' at ice hockey match

Eastern Europe's largest ice hockey league is investigating the opening ceremony of a match after a giant swastika-like symbol was unfurled on the ice, it seems.

Members of the armed forces formed the symbol at the Kontinental Hockey League match in Riga between local side Dinamo and Russian team Yugra Khanty-Mansiysk, the Sport.ru website reports.

KHL is a Moscow-based league featuring top sides from Russia, Latvia and other east European and Eurasian states. Video of the opening ceremony shows ribbons in the colours of the Latvian flag forming geometric shapes, culminating in the swastika-like cross associated with the Nazis.

Mindful that memories of World War Two still loom large in the Russian psyche, Sport.ru describes the display as "all the more provocative ahead of a game with a Russian team". But Dinamo's press secretary Janis Stepitis says it's a traditional Latvian symbol seen in ornaments and the national costume. "It has many names, but this is not a swastika." League officials say they are checking to see if anything "criminal" occurred.

The fire cross or ugunskrusts is a traditional motif from Latvian folklore. It was used as a symbol of its armed forces before the country was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940. In 2006, local craftspeople were asked not to include it on items made as gifts for a Nato conference, in case it caused offence.

[MIKA27]

Van Damme Stars In Utterly Epic Volvo Commercial

Jean-Claude Van Damme aka “the muscles from Brussels” might be in the twilight of his action packed career at aged 53, but he’s still in better physical condition than you and I. It’s been a viral sensation, with over 40M people watching the commercial for Volvo on YouTube. The word “epic” doesn’t really doesn’t do it any justice.

Apparently there’s no staging, clever editing or props involved, it was all literally done in one take. You have to give a huge amount of credit to JCVD for pulling it off, that takes a serious amount of strength, flexibility and downright balls to do what you’re about to see.

Reckon you could pull it off?

[Fuzz]

Endgadget Review Of The Xbox One & PS4

[MIKA27]

Endgadget Review Of The Xbox One & PS4

NICE - Thanks for posting.

Well, I collected my XBOX ONE and I must say I am highly impressed thus far. The controller for example, was perfect on the 360, I couldn't imagine it any better BUT, the XBox ONE, has made it even more comfortable. It is somewhat thinner and fit's in your hand perfectly.

The Only big issue I think people will find is that you have to download the games off the disk to the console meaning your 500 Gb memory will be used quite quickly.

The initial day one download was 50GB!!

Subsequent games like FIFA 14 was 36GB, and Call OF Duty Ghosts and FORZA 5 were around 45-50Gb each. The good think however is that memory is expandable via external hard drives which is a bonus if you need it down the track.

FORZA 5 is an absolutely stunning game by the way.