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

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13 Ridiculous Inventions You Won’t Believe Existed

Just because someone believes they have a good idea, doesn’t necessarily mean the rest of us have to agree. That was certainly the case with this collection of interesting (but completely impractical) inventions from the past.

If you’d like some crotch splinters, why not wear a wooden bathing suit? Or you could strap your children into a torture device with the aim of cleaning their neck? Perhaps you want to share a smoke with your partner using a giant horseshoe pipe? How about taking a bike ride in the local lake? Or protecting your face from the elements by wearing a transparent spike on your face?

Whilst prototypes were made and limited runs produced, these inventions ultimately failed to capture the imagination of the public, ended up locked away in attics or thrown away in frustration. Still, points for thinking outside of the box right?

1. This Couple’s Smoking Pipe

2. This Baby Hanger

3. This Wooden Dog Restrainer

4. This Amphibious Bicycle

5. This Painful Neck Cleaner

6. These Fashionable Swimming Aids

7. These Bed Time Reading Glasses

8. This Handy Radio Hat

9. This New Type Of Motorcycle

10. These Wooden Bathing Suits

11. This Piano For The Bedridden

12. This Radio Pram

13. These Cone Face Protectors

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DARPA Tried To Build Skynet In The 1980s

From 1983 to 1993, the US Government’s DARPA program spent over $US1 billion on a program called the Strategic Computing Initiative. The agency’s goal was to push the boundaries of computers, artificial intelligence, and robotics to build something that, in hindsight, looks strikingly similar to the dystopian future of the Terminator movies. They wanted to build Skynet.

Much like Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars program, the idea behind Strategic Computing proved too futuristic for its time. But with the stunning advancements we’re witnessing today in military AI and autonomous robots, it’s worth revisiting this nearly forgotten program, and asking ourselves if we’re ready for a world of hyperconnected killing machines. And perhaps a more futile question:

Even if we wanted to stop it, is it too late?

“The possibilities are quite startling…”

If the new generation technology evolves as we now expect, there will be unique new opportunities for military applications of computing. For example, instead of fielding simple guided missiles or remotely piloted vehicles, we might launch completely autonomous land, sea, and air vehicles capable of complex, far-ranging reconnaissance and attack missions. The possibilities are quite startling, and suggest that new generation computing could fundamentally change the nature of future conflicts.

That’s from a little-known document presented to Congress in October of 1983 outlining the mission of the new Strategic Computing Initiative (SCI). And like nearly everything DARPA has done before and since, it’s unapologetically ambitious.

The vision for SCI was wrapped up in a completely new system spearheaded by Robert Kahn, then director of Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) at DARPA. As it’s explained in the 2002 book Strategic Computing, Kahn wasn’t the first to imagine such a system, but “he was the first to articulate a vision of what SC might be. He launched the project and shaped its early years. SC went on to have a life of its own, run by other people, but it never lost the imprint of Kahn.”

The system was supposed to create a world where autonomous vehicles not only provide intelligence on any enemy worldwide, but could strike with deadly precision from land, sea, and air. It was to be a global network that connected every aspect of the U.S. military’s technological capabilities — capabilities that depended on new, impossibly fast computers.

But the network wasn’t supposed to process information in a cold, matter-of-fact way. No, this new system was supposed to see, hear, act, and react. Most importantly, it was supposed to understand, all without human prompting.

An Economic Arms Race

The origin of Strategic Computing is often associated with the technological competition brewing between the U.S. and Japan in the early 1980s. The Japanese wanted to build a new generation of supercomputers as a foundation for artificial intelligence capabilities. Pairing the economic might of the Japanese government with Japan’s burgeoning microelectronics and computer industry, they embarked on their Fifth Generation Computer System to achieve it.

The goal was to create unbelievably fast computers that would allow Japan to leapfrog other countries (most importantly the United States and its emerging “Silicon Valley”) in the race for technological dominance. They gave themselves a decade to accomplish this task. But much like the United States, no matter how much faster they made their machines, they couldn’t seem to make them “smarter” with strong AI.

Japan’s ambition terrified many people in the U.S. who worried that America was losing its technological edge. This fear was stoked in no small part by a 1983 book called The Fifth Generation: Artificial Intelligence and Japan’s Computer Challenge to the World by Edward A. Feigenbaum and Pamela McCorduck, which was seen as a must-read on Capitol Hill.

As a way to sell the SCI to the American people — and to private interests — DARPA insisted that its goal was explicitly for the nation’s economic interests from the get-go. Spin-offs of the technology being developed were sure to stimulate America’s economy, according to the DARPA planning document:

“The consumer electronics industry will integrate new-generation computing technology and create a home market for applications of machine intelligence.”

Reaching out to the private sector and the university system would also ensure that the best and brightest were contributing to DARPA’s mission for the program:

Equally important is technology transfer to industry, both to build up a base of engineers and system builders familiar with computer science and machine intelligence technology now resident in leading university laboratories, and to facilitate incorporation of the new technology into corporate product lines. To this end we will make full use of regulations of Government procurement involving protection of proprietary information and trade secrets, patent rights, and licensing and royalty arrangements.

The long and short of it? The government gave assurances to private industry that the technology developed wouldn’t be handed off to competing companies.

But economic competition with the Japanese, while very much a motivator, was almost a sideline concern for many policymakers embroiled in Cold War politics. Military build-up was the prime concern for the more hawkish members of the Republican party. The military threat from the Soviet Union was seen by many of them as the larger issue. And SCI was designed to address that threat head-on.

The Star Wars Connection

The launch of the Strategic Computing program and DARPA’s requests for proposals in 1983 and 1984 set off a heated debate in the academic community — the same community that would ultimately benefit from DARPA funding from this project. Some were sceptical that the ambitious plans for advanced artificial intelligence could ever be accomplished. Others worried that advancing the cause of AI for the military would usher in a terrifying era of autonomous robot armies.

It was a valid concern. If the goal of Star Wars — the popular nickname for Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI), and a popular political football at the time — was an automated response (or semi-automated response) to any missile threat from the Soviets, it would seem absurd not to tie it into a larger network of truly intelligent machines. The missions of the two projects — -not to mention their originating institutions — overlapped too much to be a coincidence, despite everyone’s insistence that it was just that.

From a 1988 paper by Chris Hables Grey:

The Star Wars battle manager, probably the most complex and the largest software project ever, is conceptually (though not administratively) a part of [strategic Computing Initiative]. Making the scientific breakthroughs in computing that the SDI needs is a key goal of the [strategic Computing Initiative].

If you ask anyone who worked on the SCI at the highest levels (as Roland did for his 2002 book on the project) they’ll insist that SCI had nothing to do with Ronald Reagan’s dream for Star Wars. But right from Strategic Computing’s early days, people were making connections between the SCI and the SDI. The connective tissue came in part simply because the programs shared similar names, and were even named by the same man, DARPA director from 1981 until 1985, Robert Cooper. And perhaps people saw a thread because the interconnecting computing power being developed for SCI just made sense as an application for a space-based strategy of missile defence.

Whether or not you believe SCI was going to function as an arm of the Star Wars mission for space-based defence, there’s no denying that if both had worked out, they would’ve been natural collaborators.

Applying Strategic Computing on Land, Sea and Air

The 1983 chart above outlined the mission of Strategic Computing. The goal was clear: develop a broad base of machine intelligence tech to increase national security and economic strength. But to do that, Congress and the military institutions that would eventually benefit from SCI would need to see it in action.

SCI had three applications that were supposed to prove its potential, though it would acquire many more by the late 1980s. Leading the charge were the Autonomous Land Vehicle, the Pilot’s Associate, and the Aircraft Carrier Battle Management System.

These applications were built on top of the incredibly advanced computers that were being developed at places like BBN, the Cambridge company probably best known for its work on developing the early internet, and would allow for advancements in things like vision systems, language comprehension, and navigation — vital tools for an integrated military force of man and machine.

The Driverless Vehicle of 1985

The most ominous-looking product to emerge from SCI was the Autonomous Land Vehicle. The 8-wheeled unmanned ground vehicle was 10 feet tall and 13.5 feet long, with a camera and sensors mounted on the roof guiding its vision and navigation system.

Martin Marietta, which merged with the Lockheed Corporation in 1995 to become Lockheed Martin, won the bid in the summer of 1984 to create the experimental ALV. They would get $US10.6 million in the three and a half years of the program (about $US24 million adjusted for inflation) with an optional $US6 million after that if the project met certain benchmarks.

The October 1985 issue of Popular Science included a story about the tests that were being conducted at a secret MarTin Marietta facility southwest of Denver.

Writer Jim Schefter described the scene at the test facility:

The boxy blue-and-white vehicle crawls sedately along a narrow Colorado valley road, never venturing far from the center line. A single window, set cylcops-like in the vehicle’s slab face, gives no clue about the driver. The tentative trek looks out of character for the massive 10-foot tall eight-wheeled vehicle. Although three on-board diesel engines roar, the wheels creep along at three mph.

After about a half-mile, the hulking vehicle stops. But nobody climbs out. There is no one aboard — just a computer. Using laser and video for eyes, a seminal — yet still advanced — artificial-intelligence program has sent the vehicle down the road without human intervention.

DARPA paired Martin Marietta with the University of Maryland, whose earlier work in vision systems was seen as instrumental to make the autonomous vehicle portion of the program a success.

As it turns out, creating a vision system for an autonomous vehicle is incredibly difficult. The system was fooled by light and shadows, and thus couldn’t work with any degree of consistency. It might be able to detect the edge of the road at noon just fine, only to be thrown off by the shadows cast during the early evening.

Any environmental change (like mud tracked along the road by a different vehicle) also threw the vision system for a loop. This, of course, was unacceptable even in the highly controlled testing area. If it couldn’t handle such seemingly simple obstacles, how would such a vehicle deal with the countless variables it would surely encounter out in the battlefield?

Despite meeting significant milestones by November of 1987, the ALV component of SCI was effectively abandoned by the end of the year. Though the autonomous vehicle was still quite primitive, some people at DARPA thought it was being dumped way too soon.

In the end, it couldn’t overcome its battle unreadiness. As Alex Roland notes in the book Strategic Computing, “One officer, who completely misunderstood the concept of the ALV program, complained that the vehicle was militarily useless: huge slow, and painted white, it would be too easy a target on the battlefield.” DARPA formally cancelled work on the ALV in April of 1988.

R2-D2 in Real Life

Another application envisioned early on in the development of the SCI was the Pilot’s Associate. It was imagined as a sort of invisible R2-D2 — a smart companion (seen in a ghostly visage as illustrated above) that understood plain language delivered by the pilot. The associate might spot a potential target, for instance, and ask the pilot if it should engage. Top Gun meets Siri.

The pilot would still make the final decisions in this scenario. But the Pilot’s Associate was going to be smart enough not only to know who, what, and how to ask questions. It also understood why.

From the Strategic Computing planning document:

Pilots in combat are regularly overwhelmed by the quantity of incoming data and communications on which they must base life or death decisions. They can be equally overwhelmed by the dozens of switches, buttons, and knobs that cover their control handles demanding precise activation. While each of the aircraft’s hundreds of components serve legitimate purposes, the technologies which created them have far outpaced our skill at intelligently interfacing the pilot with them.

It’s here that we see DARPA’s case emerge for needing a Skynet of its own. The overwhelming nature of combat — overwhelming, DARPA implies, only because battlefield technology had already advanced so quickly — could only be achieved with new machines.

The pilot may still be the one pushing the button, but these computers would do at least half the thinking for him. When mankind can’t keep up, hand it off to the machines.

The Pilot’s Associate application never got the same exposure in the American press that the ALV did, probably because it was harder to visualise than an enormous, driverless tank rolling down the road. But looking at the speech recognition tech of today, it’s easy to see where all that research into a Pilot’s Associate ended up.

The Invisible Robot Advisor

The Battle Management System was the third of the three applications originally planned to prove that SCI was a practical endeavour.

As it’s described in Strategic Computing (2002):

In the naval battle management system envisioned for SC, the expert system would “make inferences about enemy and own force order-of-battle which explicitly include uncertainty, generate strike options, carry out simulations for evaluating these options, generate the [operations plan], and produce explanations.

The Battle Management System was essentially the brain of the entire operation, and for that reason it was kept out of the spotlight more so than grunts like the ALV. Robots rolling down the road without human control is terrifying enough for some people. Invisible robots with their invisible finger on the very real nuclear button? You don’t exactly send press releases out for that one.

The Battle Management System was devised as an application specifically for the Navy (just as the ALV had been designed for the Army, and the Pilot’s Associate for the Air Force) but it was really just a showcase for the broader system. Every one of these technologies was intended to eventually be used wherever it was most needed. The voice recognition software developed for the Pilot’s Associate would need to work for every branch of the military, not just the Air Force. And the Battle Management System would have to play nice with everyone — except the enemy target, of course.

Piecing Together Skynet

All of the various components of the Strategic Computing Initiative were part of a larger hypothetical system that could have radically changed the nature of war in the 21st century.

Imagine a global wireless network overseeing various subnetworks within the U.S. military. Imagine armies of robot tanks on the ground talking to fleets of drones in the sky and unmanned submarines in the sea — all coordinating their activities faster than any human commander ever could. Now imagine it all being that much more complicated, with nukes waiting to be deployed in space.

The vision for the Strategic Computing Initiative was incredibly bold, and yet somehow quaint when we look at just how far it could have gone. The logical extensions of strong AI and a global network of killing machines are not hard to envision, if only because we’ve seen them played out in fiction countless times.

The Future of War and Peace

What finally killed the Strategic Computing Initiative in the early 90s was the acceptance — after nearly a decade of trying — that strong artificial intelligence on the level DARPA had imagined was simply unattainable. But if all of these various technologies developed in the 1980s sound eerily familiar, it’s probably because they’re all making headlines here in the early 21st century.

We see the vision systems that were imagined for ALV emerging in robots like Boston Dynamics’ Atlas, we see the Pilot Associate’s Siri-like understanding of speech being utilized by the US Air Force, and we see autonomous vehicles being tested by Google, among a host of other companies. They’re all the future of war. And if companies like Google are to be believed, they’re the future of peace as well.

Google’s recent purchase of Boston Dynamics has raised quite a few eyebrows among those concerned about a future filled with autonomous robot armies. Google says that Boston Dynamics will honour old contracts with military clients, though they’ll no longer accept any new ones.

But whether or not they continue to accept military contracts (and it’s certainly possible that they could do so under the radar within a secretive black budget) there’s no question that the line between military and civilian technology has always been blurred. If Boston Dynamics never again works for organisations like DARPA, and yet Google benefits from research paid for by the military, then ostensibly the system worked.

The military got what it needed by advancing the science of robotics with a private company. And now lessons from that military tech will show up in our everyday civilian lives — just like countless other technologies, including the internet itself.

In truth, this post barely scratches the surface of DARPA’s aspirations for Strategic Computing. But hopefully, by continuing to explore yesterday’s visions of the future we can gain some historical perspective to better appreciate that these new advancements don’t emerge out of thin air. They’re not even that new. They’re the product of decades of research and billions of dollars being spent by hundreds of organisations — both public and private.

Ultimately, Strategic Computing wasn’t derailed by some fear of what creating such a program would do to our world. The technology to build it — from the advanced AI to the autonomous vehicles — simply wasn’t evolving fast enough. But here we are, two decades after SCI faded away; two decades further into the development of this vision for smart machines.

Our future of super-smart, interconnected robots is nearly here. You don’t have to like it, but you can’t say you weren’t warned.

Sources: Strategic Computing: DARPA and the Quest for Machine Intelligence, 1983-1993 by Alex Roland with Philip Shiman (2002); Strategic Computing: New Generation Computing Technology: A Strategic Plan for its Development and Application to Critical Problems in Defence by DARPA (28 October 1983); Strategic Computing at DARPA: Overview and Assessment by Mark Stefik (1985); Arms and Artificial Intelligence: Weapons and Arms Control Applications of Advanced Computing edited by Allan M. Din (1988); The Strategic Computing Program at Four Years: Implications and Intimations by Chris Hables Grey (1988);

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Man, this is a great thread. Thanks for doing it!

Welcome to the forum Broski and many thanks.

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This Australian-Made. Life-Size, Air-Powered Lego Car Hits 32km/h

What happens if you take 500,000 pieces of Lego and 256 pistons, then hand them over to Steve Sammartino and Raul Oaida? This fully functioning, life-size, air-powered Lego car is what.

With four orbital engines powering the massive lump of plastic bricks, the vehicle can hit speeds of up to 32km/h. Styled to look like a hot rod, Sammartino and Oaida built the vehicle in Romania, but it’s since been shipped to Melbourne.

They’ve taken it to the streets, but admit that they currently “drive it slow as are scared of giant lego explosion.” Which is understandable. But the sheer excitement of riding in a car made entirely from Lego must surely go some way in compensating for that.

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Kidney grown from stem cells by Australian scientists

Australian scientists grow world's first kidney from stem cells in a breakthrough that could alleviate the demand for organ transplants

Scientists in Australia have grown the world's first kidney from stem cells – a tiny organ which could eventually help to reduce the wait for transplants.

The breakthrough, published in the journal Nature Cell Biology, followed years of research and involved the transformation of human skin cells into an organoid – a functioning "mini-kidney" with a width of only a few millimetres.

Scientists are hoping to increase the size of future kidneys and believe the resulting organs will boost research and allow cheaper, faster testing of drugs. Within the next three to five years, the artificial organs could be used to allow doctors to repair damaged kidneys within the body, rather than letting diseases develop before proceeding with a transplant.

"This is the first time anybody has managed to direct stem cells into the functional units of a kidney," Professor Brandon Wainwright, from the University of Queensland, told The Telegraph.

"It is an amazing process – it is like a Lego building that puts itself together."

The engineered kidney was developed by a team of Australian scientists led by the University of Queensland's Institute for Molecular Bioscience.

Professor Wainwright said the process for developing the kidney was "like a scientific approach to cooking". The scientists methodically examined which genes were switched on and off during kidney development and then manipulated the skin cells into embryonic stem cells which could "self-organise" and form complex human structures.

"The [researchers] spent years looking at what happens if you turn this gene off and this one on," he said. "You can eventually coax these stem cells through a journey – they [the cells] go through various stages and then think about being a kidney cell and eventually pop together to form a little piece of kidney."

The research could eventually help address the demand for transplant organs and improve medical testing of new drugs for patients with kidney disease.

Human kidneys are particularly susceptible to damage during trials, which makes finding effective medicines costly and time-consuming.

Professor Melissa Little, from the University of Queensland, said scientists could try to grow full-grown kidneys for transplants or even "clusters of mini kidneys" that could be transplanted to boost patients' renal functions. But she told The Australian she believed such developments were still more than a decade away.

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The Lost Spy: Dissecting the CIA's Biggest Scandal Since 9/11

The AP, the Times and other news organizations knew for years, but they didn't spill the beans until Friday: Robert Levinson was an enterprising retired FBI agent who ended up getting captured in Iran while working under an "unapproved" contract for the CIA. His job was to supply information for an agency program related to money laundering; his output was prodigious and "helpful," despite the fact that he was not on an official contract in March of 2007, when he traveled to Iran to meet with a potential source and an American fugitive.

That's when Levinson was captured by local authorities, and disappeared, to become the longest held American hostage.

That was nearly seven years ago. The State Dept. would describe Levinson as a "private citizen" and, lest he be endangered by his CIA connections, the White House insisted the press do the same. He would appear only once again in a 2010 video, wearing a Guantanamo Bay prisoner's outfit, saying he was being treated well, and pleading for help from the US. Despite strong suspicions that Iranian officials were privy to Levinson's whereabouts, to this day, Tehran claims to have no knowledge of his fate.

Levinson's mission has been characterized as "rogue," operating in the shadows of an already shadowy agency. But it also appears to reflect a measure of carelessness about how contractors were handled at the agency, and about a lack of oversight, at the CIA and from Congress.

When, seven months after his capture in Iran, CIA officials finally learned the scope of the quasi-official mission that was going on under their noses, a secret investigation began into what some have called the most scandalous debacle at CIA since the intelligence failures of 9/11. The agency forced out three analysts and disciplined seven, tightened up rules about contractors, paid Levinson's family a tax-free annuity of $2.5 million, and insisted that the family and the press stay mum.

Why the story was held and why it was released

The press stopped abiding on Friday, when the AP published its story, followed by the Times, ABC News, the Washington Post and others. In statements, Levinson's family appeared to accept the release of information. "The CIA sent Bob Levinson to Iran to do an investigation on its behalf," said David McGee, a lawyer for the family. "And rather than acknowledge what they had done and try and save Bob's life, they denied him… They denied that they had sent him, they denied that they had a relationship with him. They lied," McGee said.

The White House called the AP story "highly irresponsible," and raised the question: why report the story now if it could potentially put Levinson in greater danger? After all, relations are just starting to thaw with Iran, potentially improving the chances of Levinson's release (assuming of course the government has knowledge of Levinson's whereabouts to begin with).

“My editors at the Times and I were mindful that a man’s life was potentially at stake. It is a realization that make things clear,” Barry Meier, who wrote the Times story, told Buzzfeed.

The counter argument—the one that Ted Bridis, the AP editor behind the story, made in an interview on the News Hour on Friday—is that reporting the story might help kickstart new efforts to find Levinson, and bring sunlight to a massive scandal.

Senator John McCain was among the politicians to lash out at the CIA in the wake of the stories. "What disturbs me is apparently [the CIA] did not tell the truth to the Congress," McCain said on CNN's "State of the Union." "If that's true, then you put this on top of things that our intelligence committees didn't know about other activities, which have been revealed by (NSA leaker Edward) Snowden -- maybe it means that we should be examining the oversight role of Congress over our different intelligence agencies."

More recently, said Bridis, "they couldn't provide a specific reason not to publish...They said that the improving relations... may yield some assistance, but there was nothing specific. There was no diplomatic progress for three years on this case." (The Times said it has known about Levinson’s ties since 2007; ABC didn't say how long it had known, other than “years.”)

The scandalousness notwithstanding, none of the outlets convincingly addressed whether they thought that the risk of publishing—revealing Levinson's connections to the CIA—had diminished in recent years. That is, if publishing could further jeopardize Levinson's life, why publish now?

The White House's criticism was echoed by Levinson’s home state Senator Bill Nelson of Florida. National Security Center spokesperson Caitlin Hayden released a statement saying publication hurts Levinson’s chances for freedom:

Without commenting on any purported affiliation between Mr. Levinson and the U.S. government, the White House and others in the U.S. Government strongly urged the AP not to run this story out of concern for Mr. Levinson’s life. We regret that the AP would choose to run a story that does nothing to further the cause of bringing him home. The investigation into Mr. Levinson’s disappearance continues, and we all remain committed to finding him and bringing him home safely to his family.

The AP's defense of its publication concludes with this assertion about the risk factor:

In the absence of any solid information about Levinson’s whereabouts, it has been impossible to judge whether publication would put him at risk. It is almost certain that his captors already know about the CIA connection but without knowing exactly who the captors are, it is difficult to know whether publication of Levinson’s CIA mission would make a difference to them. That does not mean there is no risk. But with no more leads to follow, we have concluded that the importance of the story justifies publication.

It doesn't sound like the most solid defense. The paragraph starts by saying that without more information, it's impossible to judge the risk of publishing, and ends by asserting that there are "no more leads to follow," which sounds like a big assumption. (There's also a chance that Levinson may have already been killed.) Also, how it is "almost certain" his captors know about Levinson's CIA links isn't made clear. And as Time's Massimo Calabresi writes, the AP's argument that it was revealing malfeasance at the CIA is "undercut somewhat by its own assertion that the rogue operation was almost unique."

To be sure, the story arrives amidst the momentous stream of post-Snowden journalism examining America's intelligence industry. Apuzzo, one of the reporters on the AP story, insisted to Buzzfeed that the media needs to challenge the government more on matters of national security more often.

“We don’t push back hard enough against the government. We could use, the country in general could use a more adversarial press corps especially when it comes to matters of national security,” he said.

“When the American government can put a citizen in harm’s way and not be straight about it with the American people for seven years, and not be straight with Congress about it straight away…that stuff can’t be in the shadows,” he added. “That’s what the press is for.”

Something the press is not for, however: introducing government spies to possible foreign assets.

But this is precisely how Levinson ended up in his Iranian pickle to begin with: a retired NBC News investigative reporter named Ira Silverman introduced Levinson to Daoud Salahuddin, an American fugitive living in Iran. Speaking to Silverman for a 2002 New Yorker profile, Salahuddin described assassinating an Iranian exile in Maryland in 1980 as a form of jihad.

That Silverman had introduced Levinson, a spy, to Salahuddin, his former source, wasn't mentioned in the segment about the scandal that aired on NBC on Friday, though it is mentioned, in brief, in a story at the NBC News website written by Michael Isikoff.

Since Levinson's abduction, Silverman has led the charge to get him back, but has made few public statements about the incident.

In 2007, Silverman told Newsweek (in a story also by Isikoff) that, contrary to the suspicions of Salahuddin, he "was not involved with the FBI to try to get him [salahuddin] out of Iran." He declined to discuss what he knew about Levinson’s trip to Iran, because he had been asked ‘by the people conducting the investigation’ not to make any public comments that could interfere with the effort to bring Levinson home.”

At the time, writes the Times, "Silverman worried that he had misjudged Mr. Salahuddin. He also had never imagined that his friend might have gone to Iran without the approval of the C.I.A. or a backup plan to get out."

From the CIA to yoga

Whatever the case means for journalism, it is likely to have a smarting impact on the intelligence agency. Anne Jablonski, the CIA manager overseeing Levinson's mission, had contracted with him on an unofficial basis (they were friends previously) and, according to investigators, she "misled" higher-ups about the mission Levinson was on when he disappered in Kish.

The investigation found no "smoking gun" the CIA knew in advance about Levinson's trip, and Jablonski insisted she didn't know Levinson was going to Kish. When news broke he had gone missing, the AP reports, Jablonski "went to the bathroom and threw up."

Since being fired from the CIA, Jablonski, who told the Times she was a convenient scapegoat for the CIA, has pursued a career as a yoga instructor. In a 2011 blog post titled "Occupy Your Heart," she described a new path guided by meditation and love:

The day jobs I've had for the past two-plus decades have been - I see now - amazing laboratories for watching these earth lessons play out. I've watched things fall apart, big and small, and seen how applying love - especially in those places and situations and with people where it seems the hardest and most impossible - changes the subject, rewrites the story, manifests miracles. When we look into another pair of eyes, if all we're determined to see is someone who is wrong, whose behavior and actions we abhor, who is "other," then that's all we're going to see. And that's all they're going to see us seeing.

She found sympathy with the Occupy movement, which was then raging. "I don't think 'the system' is working either," she wrote.

"But the idea of us all being at each others throats and the idea of not channeling some of that raw energy into addressing its source makes less and less sense to me."

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Flying Man In Wingsuit Flies Deathly Close To The Ground Like Superman

He’s Superman. Actually, I take it back. I don’t even think Superman would fly this impossibly close to the ground because it’s just ridiculous. Insane, really. That didn’t stop wingsuit pilot Brian Drake from zipping mere feet from the ground though. Look at him tear through the gully and marvel at death being defied. So awesome.

Drake pulled this off along with Ellen Brennan and Ludovic Woerth, all three wingsuit pilots were on top of the famous ENSA Couloir. The video shows him exiting the seam in the mountain. Here’s what it looks like as he flies by from underneath:

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The Story Behind The Only Sculpture On The Moon Is A Doozy

In 1971, an astronaut placed a 3 1/2-inch aluminium sculpture on the moon, igniting an art world scandal transcending our earthly bearings. The long, bizarre tale of “one of the smallest yet most extraordinary achievements of the Space Age” is recounted by Corey Powell and Laurie Gwen Shapiro. If there’s anything to be learned, it’s that egos inflate in space.

The sculpture, called Fallen Astronaut, was created by artist Paul van Hoeydonck, and it made its way onboard Apollo 15 through maneuverings by a PR-savvy gallery owner and a Florida golf pro with “a full-time hobby of astronaut schmoozing.” What’s really interesting is what happened afterward.

For David Scott, the Apollo 15 astronaut who physically placed the sculpture on the moon, Fallen Astronautwas a memorial to those who had lost their lives to the space program. But for Hoeydonck, let’s not forget he’s was the only artist in the whole wide universe whose work has been exhibited on the moon! Hoeydonck gets peeved that initial press coverage doesn’t mention his name, and his gallery begins creating replicas for collectors at $US750. The pursuit of money and publicity then sours Scott on the whole project and things go south from there. The long back and forth between artist and astronaut is worth reading.

Fallen Astronaut on the surface of the moon.

Perhaps what’s most compelling of all is the glimpse inside the space souvenir industry. The dispute about selling replicas of Fallen Astronaut comes to a head because of another souvenir scandal, known as “the postage stamp incident”:

During Apollo 15 the three astronauts had brought 641 postal covers (stamped envelopes) to the moon, to be returned with a lunar postmark. Some were authorised by NASA as souvenirs, but 100 of them were earmarked for a German collector named Hermann Sieger. The plan was that he would buy them for $US21,000, split three ways to create trust funds for the astronauts’ children, and hold off on reselling them until after the astronauts were out of public life.

This, in turn, came at the heels of yet another controversy, wherein Apollo 14 astronauts had carried silver medals from the Franklin Mint to the moon. A trip through space imbued these objects with value — even meaning — far beyond their substance.

With these souvenirs comes tangible proof, in cold hard cash, of humankind’s fascination with the heavens. Haven’t you looked at a space shuttle or a piece of moon rock in a museum and wondered about its journey? If you were the only artist whose work has been on the moon, wouldn’t you want credit, too?

[MIKA27]

Chuck Norris One Ups Van Damme's Volvo Truck Ad With Aeroplanes -- And CGI

Remember Jean-Claude Van Damme’s split between two Volvo trucks, the ad that wasn’t computer generated but an actual stunt?

Well, Chuck Norris splitting between to Lockheed C-5 Galaxy with a squad of special forces on top of his hat is CGI.

But that doesn’t matter, because if Chuck wanted, Chuck would totally do it.

MIKA: Here I thought Van Damme's face looked CGI only to realise he has had plastic surgery, but looking at Chuck Norris, whilst I like him, he sure the hell looks like he's seen a taxidermist. Although in saying this, not bad considering his age.

[MIKA27]

Insane Bike Trick Seems To Murder The Laws Of Physics

We no longer live on Earth, my friends. We’re in some weird world where people can do the impossible. Do you want to fly?

You should try. Do you want to spin in the air in both directions? I think you can. Because this insane Superman double backflip bicycle trick destroys everything that should be humanly possible.

The rider does a full back flip while fully extended in a Superman pose, somehow re-gathers himself onto the bike and then does another full back flip. All in one jump. Sweet.

Ethen Godfrey-Roberts pulled off this incredible feat on two wheels and people are calling it the biggest bike trick of all time. It might be. Here’s another angle.

[MIKA27]

Jet Engines Endure Trial By Ice

Today’s shot of the day is from GE’s engine testing site in Winnipeg, Canada, where new engines endure trial by ice — a simulated winter gale that batters them with 1270kg of cold air per second and thousands of gallons of freezing water, all at minus eight degrees fahrenheit.

[MIKA27]

These Incredible Light Columns Aren't Artificial But Natural Phenomena

When I first I saw this extraordinary image by Thomas Kast, I though “oh wow, nice light cannon setup.” Then I learned they are not artificial but a natural visual phenomenon known as sun pillar and it really blew me away. This looks as cool or cooler than an aurora.

[MIKA27]

Scientists Created Crude Oil From Algae In Mere Minutes

Be excited, Earthlings, because science has a surprise for you. Engineers at the US Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have devised a way to turn algae into crude oil in less than an hour. That oil can then be refined into gasoline that can run engines.

Excited yet? Try wrapping your head around the implications of a breakthrough like this.

As one of the most plentiful lifeforms on the planet, algae is a perfect candidate for conversion to biofuel. It’s especially good because the energy is packed pretty tightly into that green sludge. To replace all of the petroleum in the United States with algae fuel, you’d need a farm that took up just 0.42 per cent of the country’s landmass. By comparison, it would take up half of the United States to grow enough soybeans to replace petroleum with biodiesel.

Algae fuel is not a new idea, of course, and this is not the first time scientists have turned algae into fossil fuel. It is the first time they’ve done it so effortlessly and so quickly, however. Other methods require too much time and energy for the conversion to make sense as a petroleum replacement. The new process solves that problem. “It’s a bit like using a pressure cooker, only the pressures and temperatures we use are much higher,” said Douglas Elliott, who led the research. “In a sense, we are duplicating the process in the Earth that converted algae into oil over the course of millions of years. We’re just doing it much, much faster.”

This magic gas could be coming to your local gas station sooner than you think. The Department of Energy already has a partner, Genifuel, working on commercializing the process and making the algae fuel competitive with what’s already on the market. But, boy, is it going to be futuristic when you pull up to a gas station and pump your tank full of algae. Talk about going green.

[MIKA27]

Astronomers May Have Detected The First Moon Outside A Star System

Good news, everyone! We may have detected our first exomoon outside a solar system. It orbits a gas giant 1800 light years away from us, and it’s half the size of Earth — just like the famous Yavin IV from which the Rebel Alliance launched its attack against the Death Star. It’s a really weird moon too.

The moon seems to be orbiting at about 20 million kilometers from the gas giant, which is really surprising. For comparison: our moon is only 238,900 miles (384,400 km) from Earth. Ganymede — the largest moon in the solar system, which is still only a fraction of Earth’s mass — orbits at 665,116 miles (1,070,000 km) from Jupiter. The distance is comparable to S/2003 J 23, which orbits at 14,950,200 miles (24,060,000 kilometers) from the Jovian planet. That, however, is just a tiny four-kilometer-wide rock, neither a real moon nor a space station.

According to the paper titled “A Sub-Earth-Mass Moon Orbiting a Gas Giant Primary or a High Velocity Planetary System in the Galactic Bulge,” that’s the most likely explanation for this object. David Bennett — the main author and a research professor on astrophysics and cosmology at University of Notre Dame — wrote that “the data are well fit by this exomoon model, but an alternate star+planet model fits the data almost as well. The argument for an exomoon hinges on the system being relatively close to the Sun.”

And it gets even weirder: the moon and its planet are rogue objects — they seem to have abandoned the orbit of the star that the scientists used to detect it. Bennett actually thinks that the moon may have not started its life as a moon, but as another tiny planet of that solar system. When the gas giant flung out of the system, it may have trapped the smaller planet on its gravitational field, bringing it out on its interstellar trip.

Can you imagine that? One morning you are having a coffee and the next Jupiter takes Earth out of its orbit. Seems like a good start for an apocalypse survival movie.

[MIKA27]

The Monolithic Sculptures Of Data Viz Whiz Edward Tufte

Edward Tufte is a data viz pioneer, well-known for making complex information easy to parse.

But the man is also fascinated with manipulating the physical world; he has transformed the rolling hills and wooded terrain of Hogpen Hill Farms in rural Connecticut into a 234-acre sculpture garden that’s like a modern-day Stonehenge — if those pre-historic folks had access to I-beams, Airstream trailers, and Richard Feynman diagrams.

Here, Tufte experiments with massive, elemental constructions on a scale that completely dwarfs visitors (not to mention the adorable dog featured in a lot of the pics on his site).

While it’s tough not to be awed by the sheer size of the stones — sourced on-site, natch — his descriptions of the work are focused as much on the negative space formed between the balancing megaliths as the shape of the objects themselves.

For some, he encourages visitors to remain silent while they observe the unmoving masses, which adds to their meditative nature and general imposing presence.

These aren’t necessarily meant to be understood or read in a way that, say, a graph might be; and, while building up on the landscape is not a new artistic release for Tufte, who has an innate gift for beautifying charts and documents, it is an important one.

“Seeing and producing in real space and time is complex and luscious compared to staring at impoverished representations of real things on the glowing flat rectangle,” he wrote in an email to Gizmodo. “The most important interface is at the eye-brain system and real-world light, and at the hand that touches the real world. The forever interface is the thinking eye and hand.”

[MIKA27]

A Tiny Night Vision Camera That Lets Your Smartphone See In The Dark

If you’ve tried any of the countless smartphone apps that promise to turn your phone’s camera into night vision goggles, you already know they’re all snake oil. If you really want your device to see in the dark, you need a more sensitive sensor and a healthy blast of invisible infrared light, which the Snooperscope delivers.

Reminiscent of Sony’s QX100 smartphone camera, the Snooperscope doesn’t boost your handset’s built-in camera — it replaces it all together. A Wi-Fi connection to your Android or iOS device lets you monitor what the scope is seeing in total darkness for up to four hours with its rechargeable battery. And with a magnet on the butt it easily sticks to the back of your phone with the right accessories.

The Snooperscope is still raising funds on Kickstarter right now, but assuming retail versions every actually ship — never a guarantee-it’s expected to sell for just $US100. And while you probably won’t want to rely on it for covert night missions if you’re a Navy Seal, for the rest of us it sounds like a fun way to expand our smartphone’s capabilities even further.

[Snooperscope ]

[MIKA27]

Terrifying Video Of A Near Collision Between Fighter Jet And Airliner

There’s not a lot details of this video of a near collision between a fighter jet and an airliner. Taken from the fighter’s cockpit, it seems that the pilot — who is Italian — was completely taken by surprise. Two more seconds and it would have been a full frontal hit.

Imagine the face of the pilots in the airliner.

My italoñolo is rusty, but it seems that the pilot says that he saw it at the last second and wasn’t expecting it. Then air traffic control asks him to check his course and change altitude, but I may be mistaken. Any Italians care to translate the conversation in the comments?

Look for footage from 3:30 min mark

[MIKA27]

The New Mac Pro Finally Goes On Sale, Complete With Australia Tax

It’s sleek, black, looks a little bit like your waste paper bin, and could just be your ultimate workstation. The Mac Pro is an amazing piece of hardware and, finally, it went on sale today.

As of Thursday December 19th, you’ll be able to piece together your dream machine, chock full of Xeon processors, crazy-arse GPUs, PCIe-based flash storage and ultra-fast ECC memory. They won’t come cheap, but they will fly. Wheeeeee!

Allow us to refresh your memory about exactly what specs you can expect:

Sporting Intel Xeon E5 processors with between 4 and 12 cores — and topping out at 7 teraflops of computing power — with up to 12 GB of GDDR5 RAM with a 30MB L3 cache, the 2013 MP can hold its own against even the most resource intensive of professional design application.

The graphics are equally impressive. The Mac Pro’s dual standard workstation GPUs run AMD FirePro graphics which supports 4k video output. And for connectivity, the 2013 Mac Pro will feature 4 USB 3 ports, 6 thunderbolt 2 ports, 2 1Gb Ethernet ports, HDMI, and 802.11ac Wi-Fi.

That will, of course, cost a chunk of change, especially in Australia.

Australians are being slugged roughly $300 extra on the pre-configured Mac Pro models after currency conversion and GST.

You will, of course, be able to configure thing to whatever standard you choose and spend way, way, way more than that if you so desire. And if you do, we’ll be very jealous.

It isn’t available on the storefront just yet, but it should go up later on.

[MIKA27]

Target Admits Massive Credit Card Breach; 40 Million Affected

Shoppers weren’t the only ones rooting through Target stores the week of Thanksgiving. The giant retailer acknowledged this morning that intruders penetrated its systems beginning the day before the holiday, and maintained access for more than two weeks, potentially stealing the credit and debit card details of an estimated 40 million customers.

The breach, which was first reported by security journalist Brian Krebs on Wednesday, continued through December 15 and may have affected all locations nationwide. Customers who shopped through Target’s online storefront are not believed to have been affected.

The thieves breached the point-of-sale system (POS) and stole customer magstripe data, including names, credit or debit card numbers, expiration dates and everything else needed to make counterfeit cards. Target did not indicate if PIN numbers were also taken, which would allow the thieves to use the account data to withdraw cash from ATMs.

It’s unclear how the breach of the point-of-sale system occurred. It’s possible the thieves installed malware on the card readers at stores or breached the transaction network and sniffed data at a point that it was not encrypted.

Last year, thieves breached the point-of-sale system of 63 Barnes and Noble stores in nine states. In that case, the hackers installed malware on the point-of-sale card readers to sniff the card data and record PINs as customers typed them.

In July 2012, security researchers at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas showed how they were able to install malware onto POS terminals made by one vendor, by using a vulnerability in the terminals that would allow an attacker to change applications on the device or install new ones in order to capture card data and cardholder signatures.

The researchers found that the terminals, which use an operating system based on Linux, have a vulnerability that didn’t require updates to their firmware to be authenticated. The researchers installed their malware using a rogue credit card inserted into one device, which caused it to contact a server they controlled, from which they downloaded malware to the device.

But this isn’t the only way to tamper with POS terminals.

In May 2012, Canadian police busted 40 people involved in a sophisticated carding ring that tampered with POS terminals in order to steal more than $7 million. Police said the group, based out of Montreal,seized point-of-sale machines from restaurants and retailers in order to install sniffers on them before returning them to the businesses.

Police said the thieves took the POS machines to cars, vans and hotel rooms, where technicians hacked into the processors and rigged them so that card data could be siphoned from them remotely using Bluetooth. The modifications took only about an hour to accomplish, after which the devices were returned to the businesses before they re-opened the next day. The ring is believed to have had inside help from employees who took bribes to look the other way.

These breaches were minor in comparison to the one that targeted Heartland Payment Systems in 2009, which compromised more than 100 million accounts. In that case, thieves broke into a card processors network to steal data as it came in from multiple retailers on its way to being authenticated by banks.

[MIKA27]

Roof Collapse at London’s Apollo Theatre Injures Dozens

The West End theater, which originally opened in 1901, was packed for an evening performance

More than 80 people are injured, four seriously, after part of a ceiling in London's Apollo Theatre collapsed during a show, police say.

The venue in Shaftesbury Avenue was packed for a performance of The Curious Incident Of The Dog in the Night-Time.

Eyewitnesses heard "a crackling" noise before the collapse at about 20:15 GMT. Theatre-goers left covered in debris.

London Ambulance said there were 81 walking wounded and that all those who were trapped earlier had been freed.

Some 25 ambulance crews and an air ambulance were at the scene, it said.

London Fire Brigade said four people were seriously injured but none have life-threatening injuries.

It said its "search is now complete" and the theatre has been sealed off.

Eight fire engines and more than 50 fire fighters attended the incident in London's busy West End theatre district, along with hundreds of police officers.

The Apollo's ornate plasterwork ceiling collapsed and brought part of the lighting rig down, it said.

In a media briefing the Brigade said its officers inspected the theatre's roof via an aerial ladder platform that had been raised above the building.

Eyewitnesses saw theatregoers leave the Apollo covered in dust and debris

People were helped at the scene by emergency services

Police commandeered three London buses to take the injured to hospital

The fire brigade used an aerial ladder platform to inspect the roof

It said it did not believe scaffolding on adjacent building had anything to do with the incident.

Nick Harding from Kingsland Fire Station said: "A section of the theatre's ceiling collapsed onto the audience who were watching the show. The ceiling took parts of the balconies down with it.

"Firefighters worked really hard in very difficult conditions... They rescued people from the theatre, made the area safe and then helped ambulance crews with the injured.

"Specialist urban search and rescue crews were also called to the scene to make sure no one was trapped."

He added: "In my time as a fire officer I've never seen an incident like this."

Firefighters said the theatre had been almost full and 720 people were watching the performance.

The Met Police said more than 40 walking wounded were treated at the nearby Gielgud Theatre, while three London buses was used to transport others to hospital.

Prime Minister David Cameron tweeted: "I've been updated regularly on the Apollo incident. I'm grateful for the fast work of the emergency services in helping the injured."

A spokesman for London Mayor Boris Johnson said: "He has spoken to the Met Police Commissioner and is liaising with the relevant agencies. His thoughts and prayers are with those involved in what is clearly a very serious incident."

Witnesses earlier said they had seen people leaving the building, covered in dust and plaster - with some people bleeding and crying.

'Strange crackling noise'

Amy Lecoz, who was at the theatre with her two children, aged 16 and 19, said: "The entire dome roof fell down on the audience just in front of us. We were protected by the balcony above and we ran. People started screaming.

"We thought it was water... We thought it was a part of the show. I grabbed my kids and ran."

Another witness said she heard a "strange crackling noise" before "the roof just crumpled".

The theatre "suddenly went dark" with "dust clouds everywhere", she said.

"You could see everyone ran off the stage... it went dark".

Theatre-goer Khalil Anjarwalla said he, his heavily pregnant wife and her parents managed to escape from the theatre safely after "kilos of concrete plummeted from the ceiling".

"We initially thought it was part of the show. Thankfully we are all OK. My wife is seven months pregnant but she is OK."

Speaking to the BBC News Channel, Martin Bostock said: "All the actors reacted, we saw all the actors looking up above us and pointing, looking horrified and then things started falling and smoke, and I thought it was part of the show until something hit me on the head very hard.

"I thought, that's not quite, that's not quite right, and then everything came down around us and to be quite honest I thought we were all going to be in really, really, really serious trouble and it felt horrific."

Independent newspaper journalist Simon Usborne was also in the audience.

"Everybody rose instantly and grabbed anything they could and dashed for the door," he said.

"I was very close to the exit, fortunately, with my girlfriend and we got out onto the pavement in, I would say, three seconds. And then people out on the pavement were in a state of shock.

"There were children, it's a family-friendly show, of course, who were crying, there were adults and then people started walking out, covered in dust, head-to-toe, many with blood on their heads and faces."

Witnesses said police and emergency crews were at the scene within minutes.

A 29-year-old audience member, who only gave his name as Ben, said: "It was about halfway through the first half of the show and there was a lot of creaking.

"We thought it was part of the scene, it was a seaside scene, but then there was a lot of crashing noise and part of the roof caved in.

"There was dust everywhere, everybody's covered in dust. We got out fairly quickly, I think everyone was quite panicked."

Jess Bowie was also in the theatre and said in a tweet that the experience was "absolutely petrifying... people outside are covered in dust and some in blood. Utterly horrible".

The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time has been running in London since August 2012. The show started at The National Theatre, before transferring to the Apollo in March this year.

The Grade II-listed Apollo was built in 1901 and has 775 seats over four levels. Since 2005 it has been owned and operated by Nimax Theatres, which also runs the Garrick, Duchess and Vaudeville theatres.

[MIKA27]

Bulgaria: Staking out a vampire tourist trail

Two towns in Bulgaria and Romania are planning to boost their tourist appeal by capitalising on their "vampire" past, it seems.

Bulgaria's ancient city of Sozopol on the Black Sea coast is teaming up with medieval Sighisoara in Romania, the birthplace of Vlad the Impaler, the ruler thought to have inspired Bram Stoker's Dracula. Last year, archaeologists in Sozopol found the 700-year-old skeleton of a man with an iron spike through his chest. The old pagan ritual was meant to prevent "bad" dead people from rising from their graves.

Sozopol's mayor, Panayot Reyzi, saw an opportunity to attract more tourists by twinning his city with Sighisoara. "Both Dracula and our vampire had a limp and could've been cousins," he tells the Flagman news website. Recently he announced the two towns had agreed to create a "vampire trail". Tourists visiting Dracula's house in Sighisoara would also be encouraged to go to neighbouring Bulgaria to see the "Sozopol vampire", explains Focus News.

The number of visitors to the archaeological museum in Sozopol has quadrupled since it exhibited the pierced skeleton this summer, Burgas 24 news website reports. However, with the "vampire trail" stretching to nearly 700 km, it would take a long day to bus tourists from one attraction to the other.

[MIKA27]

LAMBORGHINI AVENTADOR | BY SR AUTO GROUP

When hitting the slopes, the ideal vehicle for most people would be an SUV, a Pickup or a Jeep, not for Canadian tuner SR Auto Group though, they have converted a Lamborghini Aventador into a spectacular winter mode vehicle.

Named "PROJECT700”, this awesome build was painted in carbon and wrapped with a satin black vinyl for protection from salty roads. It features a custom fitted external storage compartment to store all the snow gear and is equipped with strong powder coated finish wheels able to withstand the winter months. Contact SR Auto Group to find out how they can properly "winterize” your car.

[MIKA27]

Lock Stock & Barrel Rye Whiskey

I love it when great design teams up with great whiskey, so that's why Lock Stock and Barrel Rye Whiskey ($120) is easy to recommend.

It's aged for 13 years in American oak barrels, and is modeled after something even older, the Prohibition era. Before Prohibition, rye was king, and thanks to a new group of great ryes like Lock Stock and Barrel, it's experiencing a renaissance.

At barrel strength, 101.3 proof, it sounds quite aggressive, but for something this robust, it's actually quite mellow and easy to sip. A limited, rare, high quality whiskey that could help push rye to the forefront again.

[MIKA27]

Comador Cigars

It's hardly a secret that Jay Z is more than just a multi-platinum hip-hop icon — he's a business, man — and he's just added one more venture to his already-impressive portfolio.

Comador Cigars ($350-$1,000), made in a partnership between Hove and Cohiba Red Dot, feature a signature blend of Carribean and Central American tobacco leaves that are aged for six months in a cedar room and wrapped in a Connecticut broadleaf binder.

Currently available in three editions, you can have yours in either a mahogany humidor that houses 21 cigars, a smaller humidor meant for taking on the road, or a Robusto box (both come with seven).

[MIKA27]

LG 105-Inch Curved Ultra HD TV

Feeling proud of that brand new 60-inch you bought yourself as an early Christmas present? Well, that's all about to change once you lay eyes on the LG 105-Inch Curved Ultra HD TV ($TBA).

This TV is appallingly huge — we don't even know who would have the space for something like this — but that doesn't make it any less incredible. It boasts a staggering 11-million pixels across its 105-inch curved screen (which is pretty hard to fathom), as well as a 21:9 aspect ratio, which the brand has named CinemaScope. While pricing hasn't been announced yet, we're assuming it should resemble something like the average American's yearly income. But hey, you can't put a price on these kind of bragging rights.