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

[MIKA27]

First Asteroid Discovered in 2014 Hits Earth’s Atmosphere

Map showing the possible impact area of 2014 AA.

An asteroid first sighted yesterday has most likely plunged directly into our planet’s atmosphere and burned up. The object’s name, 2014 AA, highlights the fact that it was the very first asteroid discovered this year.

Based on the asteroid’s trajectory when it was discovered, “it is virtually certain that 2014 AA hit the Earth’s atmosphere on 2014 Jan. 2 ,” wrote Gareth V. Williams of the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center.

The asteroid was probably around 4 meters in diameter, about the height of double-decker bus. It is not uncommon for objects of this size to impact Earth, generally happening at least once a year. The combination of the asteroid’s small size and our planet’s thick atmosphere means that it mostly disintegrated in the air, with perhaps only a few small chunks reaching the ground. Anything surviving fell within a large swath of the surface, stretching from Central America over the Atlantic to Africa (see image above).

While the impact is not unusual, actually spotting an asteroid before it hits the Earth is quite rare. The only other asteroid seen before atmospheric entry is 2008 TC3, which came down in October 2008. That asteroid’s impact was widely recorded and set off a race to find fresh chunks on the ground, which turned up in the Sudan desert.

Below is an animation of 2014 AA as it approached the Earth’s nightside, so you can see what it feels like to slam right into our planet.

[MIKA27]

Blizzard Will Affect 100 Million

More than 100 million people — almost one-third of the U.S. population — are in the path of a vicious winter storm that started battering the midwest and the east coast with snow on Thursday.

Across the country, 1,664 flights had been canceled and 3,964 delayed by Thursday afternoon, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware. In Boston, authorities at Logan International Airport had already canceled or delayed dozens of flights, the Boston Globe reports. The airport’s last departure Thursday was scheduled for 8:30 p.m. and planes will not be brought in for scheduled Friday morning flights. Boston authorities warned up to two feet of snow could accumulate in some places.

The National Weather Service issued a blizzard warning through Friday morning for the northeastern United States on Thursday, warning that “falling and blowing snow with strong winds and poor visibility are likely. This will lead to whiteout conditions…making travel extremely dangerous.”

The warning contained a blunt piece of advice for those in the storm’s path: “Do not travel.

The storm is bringing winter weather to parts of the country stretching from Illinois to the eastern seaboard and Maine to North Carolina, with the harshest conditions expected in the area from West Virginia and Maryland to southern Maine, the Weather Channel reports. As the storm moves across the eastern U.S., temperatures in the region are plunging to below freezing, snarling transportation networks with up to a foot of snow in some places.

Residents of New York City braced for up to 10 inches of snow between Thursday evening and Friday morning, with wind chills as low as minus-10 degrees Fahrenheit and temperatures expected to persist in the single digits into Saturday, CNN reports. Albany, in upstate New York, was facing up to 14 inches of snow and wind chills as cold as 25-below zero.

Up to eight inches of snow were predicted to fall on Chicago on Thursday and more than 300 flights were cancelled Thursday morning at O’Hare International Airport.

In the Midwest and south United States, the frigid air is expected to continue into next week, as winter weather moves south Monday and Tuesday bringing temperatures as low as zero degrees as far south as Nashville.

A morning commuter walks against blowing snow in Chicago, Jan. 2, 2014.

Twitter users began posting pictures Thursday of the wintry mix as the storm began its assault on the Eastern U.S.

Meredith @mevesdropping

@universalhub this man rules. Ain't snowbody getting in his way. #centralsquare #bosnow

Terry Thomasson @TerryThomasson

@AliciaRomanNBC @KyeCommuteNBC Bad road conditions on Butterfield at 355

Crain's Chicago @CrainsChicago

It's *still* coming down out there. What's the snow looking like where you are? Tweet us pics! #Hercules #Chicago

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[MIKA27]

Why Millions of NFL Fans Might Not Be Able to Watch Their Team’s Playoff Games

Due to decades-old blackout rules, fans in three regions hosting NFL playoff games this weekend may not be able to see their teams on TV—including the squad that has probably the league’s most loyal fan base, the Green Bay Packers.

This weekend, four NFL playoff games are scheduled. As of Thursday morning, only one playoff host city (Philadelphia) had posted a ticket sellout. If the other three host stadiums—in Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Green Bay—fail to sell out, the games won’t be aired on local TV, per blackout policies adopted four decades ago to encourage fans to buy tickets.

In recent years, it’s become increasingly apparent that blackout rules are stupid and counterproductive because the league makes most of its money from TV contracts, and also because the taxpayers in host cities who pay billions to build stadiums should at least be able to benefit by being able to watch games from the comfort of their own homes. It seems unwise to alienate and annoy the folks who constitute the local fan base. And it looks like the FCC and the league will drop blackout policies in the near future.

For now, however, fans are facing the beyond-frustrating possibility of having their teams make the playoffs and host a game (yeah!) and yet not being able to see the game on TV (boo!). Because the playoff schedule wasn’t finalized until this past weekend’s games had ended, NFL franchises have had to try to market and sell tickets on the quick. Cold, snowy weather and the general chaos around the holidays, combined with tickets that cost a pretty penny have added to the difficulty of convincing fans to splurge on seats for this weekend’s games.

The Cincinnati Enquirer reported that in hosting a (very rare) playoff game on Sunday, the Bengals stand to bring in as much as $14 million in total revenues for the city, including hotel rooms, parking, bar and restaurant tabs, and money spent at Paul Brown Stadium. Even though local businesses and fans are clearly excited, the Enquirer also noted (as of Tuesday) that the Bengals “don’t expect Sunday’s game against San Diego to sell out unless there’s a last-minute surge from the general public or concentrated effort by the business community to fill the stadium.”

In Indianapolis, Colts fans are facing a sellout deadline of 4:30 p.m. on Thursday. According to the Indianapolis Star, the team still had to sell roughly 5,000 tickets in order to avoid a local TV blackout.

Even the Green Bay Packers, which are the only community-owned franchise in major pro American sports, are at risk of a TV blackout. A Green Bay Press Gazette column, which called the idea of a playoff game blackout “unthinkable” and “baffling,” pointed to a number of reasons the game hasn’t sold out, including an up-and-down season with quarterback Aaron Rodgers injured much of the time, the addition of 7,000 more seats at Lambeau Field, and a new no-refund playoff ticket policy that automatically applied unused funds to next year’s season tickets. There’s also this:

“It’s understandable that instead of shelling out between $102 and $125 for a ticket to the deep freeze, a fan would rather watch the game from the comfort of a warm living room sofa on a high-definition, big-screen TV.”

The threat of a blackout is supposed to push fans into getting off their butts and buying seats, and surely the impending deadlines will prod some into opening their wallets. Even so, it’s in the interests of host franchises and cities and the NFL as a whole to avoid angering fans. That’s why varying interests may wind up scooping up whatever tickets remain at the last minute and donating them to organizations that will distribute them to fans. Andrew Zimbalist, a Smith College professor who has done extensive research on the business of sports, told the Cincinnati Enquirer there’s a strong possibility of that scenario taking place. He also pointed out that if any blackouts do occur, there are likely to be consequences in addition to much fan frustration:

“If they don’t sell out, and the game is blacked out, this will give a lot more force to the FCC policy suggestion,” Zimbalist said. “Here it is, the most popular television sport in the United States, and not to have a postseason game on television in the home market? It will have very interesting ramifications.”

[MIKA27]

Why the US is addicted to fast cars and street racing

Film and TV star Idris Elba - best known as Stringer Bell from The Wire - has been touring the US as part of a series about the history of underground racing. It turns out the American obsession with speed dates back to the Prohibition era.

The recent death of Fast and Furious actor Paul Walker in a car crash in California has highlighted the popularity not just of the film franchise but also of street racing.

But ever since automobile production began in Detroit there has been a temptation to speed.

Daniel Pierce, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina, says: "I don't think the love of speed was so much an effort to thumb your nose at the authorities, although that was part of it.

"Speed was tied up with masculinity for a lot of young males. Especially in the south, and in southern California, to make a car go fast and to be able to control it was a sign of masculinity."

Prof Pierce, editor of Real Nascar: White Lightning, Red Clay, and Big Bill France, adds: "[Nascar driver] Richard Petty once said the first automobile race was when the second cat got his car."

The first mass-produced car was the Curved Dash Oldsmobile, which had a top speed of only 20mph (30km/h), and went into production in 1901.

That same year, the state of Connecticut introduced a 12mph speed limit.

Seven years later, Henry Ford brought out the Model T which, with the pedal to the metal, could reach 45mph.

Over the following 19 years he would produce 15 million Model Ts from a factory in Detroit.

But the 1920s and 1930s was the era of Prohibition and the bootleggers bringing whiskey in from Canada or transporting it across "dry" states needed faster cars to outwit the police and federal agents.

The death of Paul Walker and his friend Richard Roda highlighted the popularity of street racing

"You had to have fast cars to haul your whiskey to the people and to get away from the revenue and the ABC [Alcoholic Beverage Control commission] and the federal officers," says Junior Johnson, a former bootlegger from North Carolina who became a legend in the world of Nascar racing.

"If it hadn't been for whiskey, Nascar wouldn't have been formed. That's a fact," adds Johnson, who was jailed a year after he began his Nascar career, for running an illegal whiskey still, a crime that was pardoned 30 years later by President Ronald Reagan.

While Al Capone was shuttled around Chicago in a bulletproof Cadillac, his underlings would outrun the Feds in a Chevrolet Mercury or a Packard DeLuxe Roadster, which could reach 70mph or 100mph respectively.

In 1934, a year after Ford introduced the V8 cabriolet - which could do 80mph - he received a letter from bank robber Clyde Barrow, of Bonnie and Clyde fame.

Barrow wrote that the V8 was a "dandy car" and added: "For sustained speed and freedom from trouble the Ford has got every other car skinned."

After the war there was a boom in the number of people owning cars in the US and some of these motorists wanted to drive fast and even race each other.

Illegal street racing became popular in the 1950s and dozens of drivers and spectators were killed during that decade.

The authorities in California encouraged Wally Parks when he set up the National Hot Rod Association, which promoted drag racing in safe, off-street tracks.

While drag racing was taking off on the west coast, the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (Nascar) had been formed in Florida in 1948 and went from strength to strength.

A third genre, Indy car racing - akin to Europe's Formula 1 - suffered a setback in 1957 when, two years after the Le Mans disaster in France which killed 77 spectators, US car manufacturers were banned from taking part in the sport.

Nowadays Nascar is the second most lucrative sport in the US, behind American football, with top drivers such as Dale Earnhardt Jr earning $25m (£15m) a year.

Nascar was traditionally most popular in the southern US but it has in recent years attracted fans from Michigan, California and Arizona.

But despite the popularity of Nascar and drag racing, there remains a sub-culture devoted to illegal street racing.

The Chevrolet Corvair (right) was fitted with a turbocharger but withdrawn in 1969

In 2001 - the same year the first Fast and Furious film came out - the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reported that police listed street racing as a factor in 135 fatal crashes, up from 72 the previous year. But the NHTSA does not keep street racing data.

NHTSA spokesman David Strickland says: "Motorists who drive at excessive speeds put themselves and others at an increased risk of being involved in a crash and possibly of being injured or killed."

Actor Idris Elba, who adopted a Baltimore accent for the TV series The Wire but grew up in London's East End, went to meet some street racers in Detroit and says: "I don't condone what they do, I can see why they do it. It is very exciting."

But Prof Pierce says street racing is nowhere near as popular nowadays as it was in his youth. "You can do it in a video game now and it's a little safer," he says.

He adds: "I don't think there is quite the car culture that you had in the 50s, 60s or 70s. It's hard to work on your own car any more because everything is computerised and young men don't seem to be so tied to cars as they were when I grew up."

Elba, whose father was a shop steward at the enormous Ford factory in Dagenham, east London, says: "Cars, racing, speed, they are and have been for many people throughout history, a way of life - either a means to make a living, or a means to escape.

"I'm addicted to speed, it's no secret, but whilst travelling, listening, learning and telling these amazing stories, what surprised me the most, was just how far people are willing to go, the risks people are willing to take, to satisfy that addiction."

In 1971 a group of mavericks, led by Brock Yates Sr, started the Cannonball Run - which was later fictionalised in a highly successful movie with Burt Reynolds and an all-star cast - involved a 2,800 mile coast-to-coast race.

It was named after Erwin "Cannonball" Baker, who had set a record of 53 hours for the drive in 1933.

Yates and co-driver Dan Gurney - winner of the 1967 Le Mans 24-hour race in France - cut that time to 35 hours and 54 minutes and amazingly picked up only one speeding fine.

Yates's son, Brock Jr, says: "Cannonball was started for two reasons - to prove that good drivers could traverse long distances at high speed safely... and a protest against the [proposed] 55[mph speed limit]."

But despite protests such as the Cannonball Run, President Richard Nixon introduced a national speed limit of 55mph (88kph) in 1973.

The limit has very little to do with safety. It was introduced as a result of the oil crisis triggered by the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.

Driving slower conserved fuel and with the US facing oil shortages there was an urgent need to cut speed.

But many car enthusiasts believed driving fast was as American as apple pie and the US government gradually backtracked on the 55mph limit.

Drag racing was introduced after a number of deaths through street racing in the 1950s

In 1987 it went up to 65mph and in 1995 it was scrapped altogether, with power being passed back to individual states.

Nowadays speed limits range from 60mph in Hawaii to 80mph in Utah.

In October last year Texas granted permission for an 85mph limit on a new toll road between Austin and San Antonio.

Scot Keller, chief curator of the LeMay Museum in Tacoma, Washington, says higher speed limits tend to be allowed in states with "vast open spaces".

"The enthusiasm for films like Fast and Furious show that people like to do things that are dangerous or outside of the norm.

"Young people who are racing these performance cars, the tuner cars, the muscle cars, are very much like the hot-rodders in the 1950s. But they are starting with vehicles which involve computers and more sophisticated engines," says Mr Keller.

Watch the first episode of Idris Elba: King of Speed

http://youtu.be/muja7qVFfeY

[MIKA27]

CARDIFF SKATES

Rollerblades and strap-on roller skates have been around for ages, now a California based company named "The Cardiff Skate Company” have combined the best of both devices in the form of Cardiff Skate.

With a similar performance of rollerblades and the practicality of the strap-on roller skates, the Cardiff Skate attaches to the users existing footwear, they are fully adjustable and feature a ski-boot-style ratcheting binding system. Unlike traditional inline or quad skates, Cardiff Skates feature a three wheel setup, with a fourth wheel being used exclusively for braking. According to the brand this configuration gives the user a unique maneuverability and excellent stabilization while both skating and braking. Now you can cruise to work with your favorite shoes on!

[MIKA27]

MULTI-SYNC KEYBOARD | BY KANEX

The new Multi-Sync keyboard by Kanex is exceptionally convenient if you work with multiple Bluetooth devices at once.

The wireless keyboard lets you take multi tasking to a whole new level, it can connect to your computer, plus three other devices via Bluetooth, switching between them at the touch of a button. So you can be working on your Desktop, whilst taking notes on your iPad and texting on your mobile phone. It also includes a full numeric keypad, arrow keys, and a iOS device home button. The keyboard also comes with a handy iPhone/iPad stand

[MIKA27]

Bugatti X Roland Iten belt Buckle

Before you ask, no — the Bugatti x Roland Iten Belt Buckle ($84,000) won't help you travel at speeds in excess of 250 miles an hour. But it is made with the same spirit of craftsmanship that's helped Bugatti reign over the super car market for generations.

This belt buckle uses a ratcheting mechanism inspired by watchmaking techniques to quickly pull your belt (the leather one that holds up your pants, not the one across your lap) tight without the need for holes. Featuring hand-crafted bridges, cogs, wheels, springs, and pinions, and elements made from titanium, stainless steel, rose gold, and sapphire crystals, and limited to just 44 pieces, it's enough to make gear heads and watch lovers green with envy.

[MIKA27]

Samsung Shape Speaker System:

With plans of taking a shot across Sonos' bow at the upcoming International CES, Samsung has added another weapon to their multi room wireless audio arsenal, the Samsung Shape Speaker System ($50-$400).

Combined with the already-existing Shape M7 Speaker, the smaller and less-expensive Shape M5 gives you a flexible solution for audio across your home or apartment. With the optional wireless connectivity hub and Samsung's iOS or Android app, you can play music through these speakers from a range of services, including Amazon Cloud Player, Pandora, Rhapsody, and TuneIn Radio, as well as connectivity over NFC and Bluetooth.

[MIKA27]

Johnnie Walker Gold Reserve

One of the most trusted blenders in the scotch whiskey game is switching things up again this winter, with the introduction of Johnnie Walker Gold Reserve ($87).

The scotch itself isn't brand new, but the limited edition, reflective gold bottle certainly is. Of course, it's what is inside the bottle that ultimately matters, and Johnnie Walker delivers again with a fruity nose, plenty of oak flavors and some subtle smoke to round things out. An addition to your collection that even King Midas would be proud of.

[MIKA27]

Pacific Caffeinated Shaving Stuff

Sometimes a cup of coffee (or three) in the morning isn't quite enough to get you going -- and while you could take up running every morning, it would be a lot easier to just use Pacific Caffeinated Shaving Stuff ($10 and up).

Every product in their line of shaving stuff is fortified with caffeine, helping to naturally constrict the veins in your face, keep your skin healthy with antioxidants, and absorb into your blood for a morning boost. Choose from their exfoliating wash, shaving cream, moisturizer, and after shave, each one made with caffeine. All of their products are made in the USA, not tested on animals, and made with a minty scent that invigorates you on even the roughest mornings.

[MIKA27]

This DC-3 Is Flying WAY Too Low

You know you’ve been watching too much Top Gun when you find yourself skimming a few feet above the ground and mere inches above your cameraman in an antiquated aeroplane from the 1940′s. Who exactly decided this was a good idea?

Details on this low-flying stunt are pretty slim save for the assurance by the clip’s creator that it was performed “at a private air strip no one around for miles and there was no dogs cats are birds harmed in the making of this video.” Well, seems they’d really thought this through before trying it.

The plane performing the fly-by looks to be a Douglas C-47 Skytrain (a US military version of the DC-3 Dakota), the same sort of propeller-driven aircraft used extensively by the Allies throughout the Second World War to ferry troops and supplies.

[MIKA27]

How Corpses Helped Shape The London Underground

As Mexico City archaeologists sort through the surreal array of Aztec sacrificial skulls recently uncovered while excavating their city’s subway system, it’s worth remembering that parts of the London Underground were also tunnelled, blasted, picked and drilled through a labyrinth of plague pits and cemeteries.

In her excellent and morbidly fascinating book Necropolis: London and Its Dead, author Catharine Arnold describes in detail the subterranean presence of corpses found throughout the British capital. To no small extent, she makes clear, dead bodies were basically buried everywhere, to the point that, as Arnold pithily states, “London is one giant grave.”

Here are just a few of my favourite examples, all of them taken from Arnold’s book, of how London is saturated from below with corpses, and I’d encourage anyone interested in this sort of thing simply to buy a copy of Necropolis.

Finally, at the end of this post, we’ll get back to how all these bodies affected the construction of the Tube — London’s subway — which is why this post was started in the first place.

London Hospital students play football on hospital grounds;

Hollow Ground

The London Hospital maintained its own on-site burial ground for six years, from 1849 to 1854. However, Arnold explains, “burials continued until about 1860, with porters acting as gravediggers.” Somewhat astonishingly, we learn that housing projects for the medical staff were then built over these old graveyards — and the coffins were not very far below the surface.

As Arnold describes, this made for some rather unsafe ground conditions:

The remaining part of the burial ground became a garden for nurses and medical students, complete with tennis court,

“where they are in the habit of capering about in their short times off-duty, and where it sometimes happens that the grass gives way beneath them — an ordinary occurrence when the subsoil is inhabited by coffins!”

In other words, these tennis-playing nurses “capering about” on their grass tennis courts would occasionally and literally fall through the surface of the earth only to find themselves standing in the rotting coffins hidden under the soil, an infernal honeycomb of badly tended graves like something out of Dante.

Ooh, That Smell

Far more horrifically, some local churches got in on the financial action of corpse disposal by accepting dead bodies — along with the high fees associated with their interment — only to do nothing at all with the corpses but toss them down into the cellar.

One church was so bad, Arnold writes, that its parishioners would often pass out from the horrible smell of rotting and partially liquified bodies wafting up from below.

A particularly nightmarish location described by Arnold is Enon Chapel, a Baptist church founded “as a speculative venture.” That is, the minister — a Mr. W. Howse — was in it purely for the money.

Arnold’s own description of what happened next says it best:

Worship there was a dangerous business; for members of the congregation frequently passed out — yet, because nobody guessed at the minister’s appalling secret, it never occurred to them that the cause of their sickness lay beneath a flimsy layer of floorboards, in the vault of the chapel.

In warm, damp weather, local residents were assaulted by a peculiarly disgusting smell. Occasionally, when a fire was lit in a nearby building, an intolerable stench arose, which did not originate from the drains. Vast numbers of rats infested the houses; and meat exposed to the atmosphere turned putrid after an hour or two.

The parishioners could even taste it, apparently: an acrid, oily slick on their tongues, resulting from the humid corpse-fog that filled the church, a kind of artificial weather system created by the dissolving bodies of the dead jumbled up beneath the floorboards.

Mind-bogglingly, when all of this was finally discovered, how many corpses do you think London city authorities found down there?

Several dozen? A few hundred, perhaps?

They found twelve thousand corpses. 12,000 corpses all turning into jello and contaminating the local water supply.

The Unforgettable Fire

Yet those churchgoers were lucky to escape with their own lives. At times, Arnold writes, London’s urban burial grounds simply exploded, their cheap coffins dangerously over-pressurised from within with corpse gas.

The resulting subterranean infernos, for the most part limited to the crypts and basements of churches, were physically repellent and not at all easy to extinguish. “In the 1800s,” Arnold writes,

“fires beneath St. Clement Dane’s and [architect Christopher] Wren’s Church of St. James’s in Jermyn Street destroyed many bodies and burned for days.”

To help prevent these corpulent bombs from bursting, sextons of the churches were required to “tap” the coffins now and again; this tapping would jostle the bodies within and thus “facilitate the escape of gases which would otherwise detonate from their confinement.”

A Pyramid to Rival Giza

We’ve looked at the design and construction of vertical cemeteries before, but necropolitan entrepreneurs in London were looking into this nearly 200 years ago. Why bury, in other words, when you can build?

Specifically, Arnold explains, an architecturally inclined businessman named Thomas Willson once “proposed a huge pyramid for Primrose Hill. At an estimated cost of £2,500, this massive mausoleum, higher than St. Paul’s, would contain five million Londoners.”

Intended to invoke solemnity and inspire awe, Willson’s colossal geometric structure was to be funded through subscription and run by a corporation called the Pyramid General Cemetery Company. As Arnold describes it:

Constructed from brick, with granite facing, the plans comprised a chapel, office, quarters for the Keeper, Clerk, Sexton and Superintendent, four entrances and a central ventilation shaft. A series of sloping paths would allow bodies to be moved. Each catacomb took up to 20-four coffins and could be sealed up after all interments had been completed. Resembling a beehive, it would be a thing of awe and wonder to all who saw it.

The pyramid was never constructed, of course, but perhaps in our own era of London megaprojects, some brick and granite Giza might yet emerge on the marshy edges of town to support and protect the dead of southeast England.

Drill, Baby, Drill

All of which finally brings us to the real reason I started writing this post, which was to tell the story of how these corpses — the city absolutely littered with burial grounds and plague pits — came to influence the construction of London’s Underground train system.

It’s a brief anecdote, but it’s both ghoulish and interesting.

As Arnold points out, there is an otherwise inexplicable shift in direction in the Piccadilly line passing east out of South Kensington.

“In fact,” she writes, “the tunnel curves between Knightsbridge and South Kensington stations because it was impossible to drill through the mass of skeletal remains buried in Hyde Park.”

Put another way, the ground was so solidly packed with the interlocked skeletons of 17th-century victims of the Great Plague that the Tube’s 19th-century excavation teams couldn’t even hack their way through them all. The Tube thus deviates SW-by-NE to avoid this huge congested knot of skulls, ribs, legs, and arms tangled in the soil — an artificial geology made of people, caught in the throat of greater London.

Thus, like the example of the Aztec skulls unearthed by subway crews in Mexico City, London’s Tube also sits atop, cuts around, and tunnels through a citywide charnel ground of corpses, its very routes and station locations haunted by this earlier presence in the ground below.

For many more gruesome and interesting stories of London’s dead, check out a copy of Necropolis.

[MIKA27]

Bucky Fuller's Forgotten WWII Shelters Rediscovered

Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion Deployment Unit — an emergency shelter developed during WWII — isn’t his most well-known work. In fact, for years, it’s been unclear if any DDUs still existed. But, this week, The New York Times tells the story of a handful of shelters that have resurfaced, after being abandoned on an army base just 50km outside of NYC.

Camp Evans, a military base in New Jersey, has been many things to many people: From a node on Guglielmo Marconi’s global wireless “girdle” in 1917, to a vital R&D hub for developing radar during WWII, to a research base during the Cold War (Joseph McCarthy even suspected its employees of Soviet intrigue, calling it a “house of spies”). But by 1993, the base had closed — and the army was planning to sell the land and demolish everything on it.

A local high school science teacher named Fred Carl had taken an interest in the site — and working with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, he managed to stay the army’s hand. It wasn’t until a few years later that he realised the provenance of the odd, circular shelters on the site.

The monitoring station at Camp Evans received signals from the TIROS satellite.

So what were these mysterious pods, and why were they designed? The NYT reports that it all began on a drive through the American Midwest in 1940. Fuller took a liking to the metal grain silos ubiquitous across the Great Plains — and soon, he was collaborating with Butler Manufacturing Company, a major maker of the silos.

Fuller imagined an emergency bungalow that was simple, inexpensive, and strong — a home that could be made quickly and airlifted to locations all over the globe. Butler began making these so-called Deployment Units in 1941 — it was among the first of Bucky’s designs to be mass-produced, according to MoMA.

DDUs were as much a product of WWII as the B-29 bomber: Its corrugated steel walls could be shipped flat and bolted together, and its windows were made from transparent plastic — a rare material at the time, mainly used in aeronautics. A fireproof curtain divided the circular space into individual rooms.

Each DDU only cost $US1250, or roughly $US20,000 in today’s money. The Galveston Daily News ran a feature on the units under the headline “HOW TO BE COMFORTABLE THOUGH BOMBED,” while The Winnipeg Free Press went with “A Shelter In War — A Beach House in Peacetime.”

Dozens — maybe hundreds — of the units made their way across the globe, but ironically, it was the war itself that doomed Bucky’s project: Soon after the US entered into the conflict, the government began rationing steel. Production was suspended. “A few hundred were put to use by the Army for medical operating rooms and Signal Corps housing,” explains Butler on its website. Including the 20 or so that made their way to Camp Evans.

Today, Fred Carl — who now runs a nonprofit dedicated to educational programming about the tech that was developed at the base called InfoAge — is working to restore and re-use the 12 remaining units. One is even being used as an art studio.

But the fact that the DDU’s so narrowly escaped being cast into the gaping maw of obscurity, rescued only because of Fuller’s famous name, is what’s really intriguing. How many other, more anonymous wartime architectural experiments must be rotting on the world’s abandoned military bases?

MIKA: Wow! I'd love to grab one of these shelters...would make an excellent Man-cave.

[MIKA27]

These Skydiving Lunatics Prove The World Has Always Had Total Badasses

Borderline supermen have been making crazy dives at the Earth since long before Felix Baumgarnter took a fall from space. Here are a pair of back-in-the-day badasses in a 1941 “Death Dive Race” to the ground. And looking back on it today they still seem as ballsy as ever.

[MIKA27]

Tobacco-Eating Caterpillar Has Toxic Nicotine-Filled Breath

Look, I'm not saying smoking is good, but tobacco can confer the superpower of breath so toxic it keeps away spiders. Take a quick breath and come meet the tobacco hornworm, a caterpillar that has managed to hijack a plant’s defence system for itself.

Nicotine is a poison — in fact, poisonous enough to use as a pesticide and poisonous enough to use for murder. That’s why tobacco plants bother to make nicotine in the first place: to keep insects less industrious than the tobacco hornworm from chomping on its leaves. (Interesting, isn’t it, that humans have created a whole industry out of drugging themselves with nicotine, a social exposure to plant toxins.) To eat nicotine-filled plant leaves, tobacco hornworms first need to safely get rid of the poison in its waste — but it also keeps some of the nicotine as a special, nasty surprise.

In a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists identify a interesting gene with a rather uninteresting name: CYP6B46. The gene lets the caterpillar take nicotine from its gut and put it into its hemolymph, or the blood-like fluid of an insect’s circulatory system. The caterpillar can then open breathing pores along its body and spray out nicotine, like a puff of the e-cigarette.

Cool party trick, but it gets better. The scientists also noticed that caterpillars raised on low-nicotine tobacco were surviving in lower numbers. Nicotine breath protected the caterpillars against predators, such as the wolf spider, which shrunk back at the toxic breath.

A wolf spider with a less fortunate caterpillar

The actual amount of nicotine the hornworm keeps for self-defence is very little, just 0.65 per cent of what they ingest, but that’s enough to create a concentrated spider-repelling spray. This caterpillar has not only neutralised the tobacco’s natural defence system, but also co-opted it for its own chemical warfare. What doesn’t kill the tobacco hornworm makes it stronger.

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Be Utterly Creeped Out By This Documentary On Alien

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Dubai Had The World's Largest Fireworks Show, And It Was Amazing

To celebrate the New Year, Dubai decided to break the Guinness World Record for world’s largest fireworks show. Because of course the world’s largest fireworks show would be in Dubai.

They put the best show on every year. Might as well put on the biggest too. Dubai exploded over 500,000 fireworks in just six minutes centred mostly around the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest structure, for a spectacle that even surpasses Dubai’s ridiculous standards. It was amazing.

Can you imagine? Almost 100,000 fireworks were going off every single minute! If you were there, your ears would probably go numb and your eyes might even suffer from temporary blindness but it would so worth it. Excess is what Dubai does and it does it so fantastically well. Watch the whole show below. Not over the top at all!

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How The Circumference Of Earth Was Accurately Estimated 2000 Years Ago

Born around 276 BC in Cyrene, Libya, Eratosthenes soon became one of the most famous mathematicians of his time. He is best known for making the first recorded measurement of the Earth’s circumference, which was also remarkably accurate. (And, yes, people at that point had known for some time that the world wasn’t flat, contrary to popular belief.)

Eratosthenes was able to accomplish this in part because of his education in Athens. There, he became known for his achievements in many different fields, including poetry, astronomy, and scientific writing. His activities became so talked about, in fact, that Ptolemy III of Egypt decided to invite him to Alexandria to tutor his son. Later, he would become the head librarian of the Library of Alexandria.

The mathematician must have been thrilled to have this opportunity. The Library of Alexandria was a hub of learning at the time, attracting scholars from across the known world. Eratosthenes was able to rub shoulders with the likes of Archimedes while continuing his own learning.

It was probably in the Library of Alexandria that he read about a curious event that took place in Syene (now Aswan, Egypt) at the summer solstice. Syene sat to the south of Alexandria. At high noon, the sun would shine directly overhead and there would be no shadows stemming from the columns. However, Eratosthenes realised that at the same moment in Alexandria, columns clearly did have shadows. Being a good mathematician, he decided to use this knowledge to do a few calculations to figure out the circumference of the Earth.

To do this, Eratosthenes measured the shadow of an obelisk on June 21 at noon. He discovered that the sun was about 7°14′ from being directly overhead. He realised that, because the Earth is curved, the greater the curve, the longer the shadows would be.

Based on his observations, he hypothesized that Syene must lie 7°14′ along a curve from Alexandria. Furthermore, he knew that a circle contained 360°, which meant that his calculation — 7°14′ — was roughly one fiftieth of a circle. Therefore, Eratosthenes thought, if he multiplied the distance between Syene and Alexandria by 50, he would have the circumference of the Earth.

The missing information was simply how far away Syene was from Alexandria. He measured the distance instadia. There isn’t an exact modern day conversion to stadia, and it isn’t perfectly clear which version of the stadia Eratosthenes was using, but regardless, from what is known, his estimation was remarkably accurate.

There are two theories as to how Eratosthenes figured out the distance: first, that he hired a man to walk there and count the steps. Second, that he heard a camel could travel 100 stadia a day, and it took a camel about 50 days to travel to Syene. Whatever the case, he estimated the distance between Syene and Alexandria was 5,000 stadia. If that was the case, then using his formula, the earth was 250,000stadia around.

Due to the uncertain distance that stadia represents (and particularly which stadia he was using), historians believe that Eratosthenes’ conclusion was between .5% and 17% off the mark. Even if the latter case was true, it was astoundingly accurate given the limited technology he was dealing with at the time. But many scholars think it likely that he was using the Egyptian stadia (157.5 m), being in Egypt at the time. This would make his estimate only about 1% too small.

There had been previous attempts at discovering the Earth’s circumference (which don’t count as “first recorded” because their methods didn’t survive, though we have references to them) which resulted in a 400,000 stadia figure, 150,000 more than Eratosthenes’ — obviously far from accurate.

While finding the approximate circumference of the Earth was probably Eratosthenes’ largest contribution to scholarship at the time, it was by no means the only one. Eratosthenes is also credited with coming up with a way to map out the known world by drawing lines north-south and east-west — early latitude and longitude lines. However, these lines were irregular and often drawn through known places, meaning they weren’t entirely accurate. Nevertheless, it provided a precursor for maps we know today.

He is also remembered for the Sieve of Eratosthenes, a simple algorithm that makes it easy to find all prime numbers up to a certain limit. Though none of Eratosthenes’ personal work on the sieve survives, he was credited with the creation of the algorithm by Nicomedes in his Introduction to Arithmetic.

Not only that, but Eratosthenes estimated the distance to both the sun and the moon, and measured the tilt of the Earth’s axis all with amazing accuracy.

He also wrote the poem Hermes, correctly sketched the route of the Nile, and even gave a more-or-less accurate account of why the Nile flooded, something that had baffled scholars for centuries. He worked on a calendar that included leap years and he also estimated and corrected the dates of various historical events beginning with the Siege of Troy.

Despite these accomplishments and many more like them, Eratosthenes was often nicknamed “Beta.” Beta is the second letter in the Greek alphabet and referred to Eratosthenes being second-best in everything he did.

Eratosthenes died around 194 B.C. and is thought to have starved himself to death. It is believed that he started going blind in his later years and, unable to continue his work, he simply stopped eating.

Bonus Fact:

• A man named Posidonius copied Eratosthenes’ basic method about a century later, using the star Canopus, Rhodes, and Alexandria as starting points. However, he didn’t measure the distance between Rhodes and Alexandria correctly, resulting in a circumference that was smaller than Eratosthenes’ estimation. It was this circumference that was recorded by Ptolemy in his geography treatise and later used by explorers looking for a quicker way to the Indies.
  

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5 Radical Ideas To Protect Coastal Cities From The Next Big Storm

A bridge that deploys huge inflatable buoys to slow storm surges. A barrier reef grown from minerals harvested by electrical currents. An artificial island protecting the most surge-prone neighbourhoods. Most of us are bracing for a blizzard this week, but the winners of a recent design competition, Stormproof, are imagining how to protect cities for the next summer storm season.

This fall, One Prize, an annual “science and design” competition that focuses on a new theme every year, asked designers to imagine the future of the stormproof city — including concepts that might not qualify as conventionally acceptable. “A stormproofed future is imperative for maintaining existence,” explained the organisers. “This is a call to combine technological and quality-of-life design to assure a bright future for generations to come.”

Some of the winners proposed futuristic systems, others utilized nearly ancient techniques. Some would require cities to build huge megastructures, others are relatively modest in scope. But they’re all worth a look — let us know what you think in the comments.

Turn Manmade Waste Into an Artificial Protective Coastline

The winner of the entire competition, Kenya Endo, argued that Tokyo isn’t prepared — financially or socially — to protect itself from storms using traditional methods. “Even over 60 years of constructing dams, Tokyo is not ready for another 1/200 storm event,” Endo writes. “We need more DAMS! However, facing population decrease, ageing society, it is not the time to envision a mega-infrastructure as water management strategy.”

What does Endo propose instead? Rather than building new dams, Tokyo should collect a waste product of its current dam system — millions of tons of sediment produced by erosion — and use it to bulk up its shoreline.

This new coastal barrier would direct storm water into channels where it would be purified and stored — then, this newly desalinated water could be used to cultivate new plantings over the sediment, creating farmland and coastal recreation barriers.

Surge-Defending Coral Reefs Made From Shipping Containers

In the late 1970s, a German marine scientist invented a process called Biorock that was intended to restore damaged coral reefs.

The process works by transmitting a low electrical current through ocean water, which attracts minerals in the water and creates growths of brucite and limestone that are as strong as typical concrete.

That’s the process Ben Devereau proposes in his entry, which involves using Biorock to create a protective coral reef around a low-lying community in Sumatra.

By submerging abandoned shipping containers along the shoreline and transmitting a current through them, the mineral structures would slow storm water and mitigate surges.

Devereau also imagines using these super-strong reefs as foundations for small buildings above the waterline, which could serve as community spaces the rest of the time.

A Protective 7.5-Mile Artificial Peninsula

“Barrier Staten Island” proposes building a massive new peninsula along the south eastern shore of Staten Island — one of the absolute hardest hit areas of NYC during Superstorm Sandy.

This 7.5-mile stretch of land would radically alter the landscape of the borough, its main purpose being to protect the island from being pummelled by the crest of another surge. But it would also ply the island with new recreation and tourism areas — from running trails to areas for kayakers.

Hundreds of Miles of Meadows, Wetlands, and Basins

Designer Katherine Rodgers based her proposal, “Peripheral Multiplicity,” on the Gateway National Park System, a series of recreational areas along the NYC coastline — including the Rockaways and Staten Island — that are most at-risk during storms.

Rodgers proposed that this is the most vital region to focus on for protection: Creating a vast “frayed edge” of new types of landscapes, including sea meadows, tidal wetland channels, wetland basins, ponds, green and blue belts, and protective docks, will slow future storm surges and push human development further ashore.

A Bridge That Deploys an Inflatable Surge Barrier

Another entry by Will Belcher, Joey Hays, Chris Landau, and Henry Molly, spotted over on Bustler, imagines a remarkable multi-pronged defence strategy for Ocean City. First of all, a series of dune fields would create a massive layer of surge protection — plus doubling the area’s useable boardwalk:

Then, a new bridge would run from one side of the Ocean City Inlet to the other, serving a hidden purpose. It would function as a tourist attraction most of the time, but during storms, inflatable barriers along its underside would be deployed to create a massive wall against the battering ram of the storm surge.

Those sail-esque forms on the horizon of the rendering below? Those are permanent, deployable Traction Kite Power Plants, which capture wind energy after storms to supply Ocean City with emergency backup power.

Check out more on each proposal over on the ONE Prize website.

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A Giant Flaming Billboard Is The Best Way To Advertise A Steak House

This billboard started life as an image of a large hunk of meat. But it was eventually consumed by flames, revealing a rather clever advertisement for a Russian steakhouse. Because after letting the public scratch their heads for a few days, the image of the uncooked steak was eventually ‘grilled’ with a series of flaming wires.

Those were left to burn, leaving sear marks across its surface along with the name of the restaurant — Double Grill&Bar. Now if only burning paper and glue smelled as delicious as a grilled steak.

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A Mind-Controlled Exoskeleton Will Kick Off The 2014 World Cup

It won’t be a superstar football player who takes the first kick of 2014′s Football World Cup in Brazil. Nope, instead, it will be a teenager, paralysed from the waist down, who will use the world’s most advanced mind-controlled exoskeleton to get things underway.

A small part of a large-scale international collaborative project called Walk Again, the exoskeleton technology in question supports the lower body, using brain activity to trigger movements in the suit. Brain waves are detected using electrodes on the scalp, beamed wirelessly to the exoskeleton, and processed into commands which produce movement.

That motion, however, will be complemented by feedback, to make the experience feel more natural. That means the suit will include sensors to monitor touch, temperature and forces on the suit, which will be fed back to the user via visual displays and vibrating motors. In theory, those same signals could be transmitted directly into the brain to allow the users to experience the suit as if it were part of them. But, one step at a time, right?

The wearer of the suit will be chosen from a small group which will be training in Brazil during the run-up to the World Cup. For now, they’re using virtual exoskeletons, but will be trying the real thing well ahead of the first kick.

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Watch A Coin Transformed Into A Tiny, Intricate Sculpture

Imagine an alternate world where are coins are graced not by unsmiling presidents but Frankenstein, ET, skulls, pirates — hell, even a butt. That’s the funny, fanciful world of Italian artist Paolo Curcio.

Curcio has created some truly remarkable hobo nickels, an art form originally popular, as their name would suggest, among hobos during the Great Depression. Why did they carve them? There are multiple explanations: There’s the inherent portability of the coin, for one thing, as well as the fact that thousands of unemployed Americans had time on their hands during those years. Cabinet Magazine suggests that the carvings were meant to increase the value of the coins, making it easier to barter for food or a place to sleep.

Most of these folk artists chose to carve their work on the broad face of the new Buffalo nickel, introduced in 1913. By the time the Jefferson nickel replaced it, in the 1940s, the art form had seemingly reached its peak. But in later years, collectors and communities of artists, including Curcio, have kept interest in hobo nickels alive.

Curcio’s coins, as you can see in the video below, are incredibly intricate and require many rounds of carving. Some of the original coins are “clad”, meaning different layers of metal are revealed as you carve away. A skilled carver can thus “colour” a hobo nickel made from a clad coin. (I've posted the first two videos but check out all videos for this coin, I think there are 6 stages on youtube)

The old Buffalo nickel is still a favourite amongst enthusiasts, since its large size and rough features are a perfect blank canvas for artists. Here, you can watch Cucio transform a buffalo nickel into bearded guy with a hat:

MIKA: Gotta love the Richard Cheese music in the back ground!!

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Ancient Egyptian brewer's tomb found in Luxor

Archaeologists have discovered the tomb of a brewer who served an ancient Egyptian court more than 3,000 years ago in Luxor.

The man buried in it was "head of beer production", archaeologists say.

A Japanese team found the tomb during work on another tomb belonging to a top official under Pharaoh Amenhotep III, who died around 1354 BC.

Luxor is home to a large and famous temple complex built by Amenhotep III and later by Rameses II.

Experts say the tomb's wall paintings are well preserved and depict daily life as well as religious rituals.

Antiquities Minister Mohamed Ibrahim told the Egyptian al-Ahram newspaper that security had been tightened around the tomb until excavation works are complete.

He added that a comprehensive restoration would be carried out after its full excavation with a view to opening the tomb to visitors.

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Canadiano Coffee Maker

For the minimalist coffee lover in you, there's the Canadiano Coffee Maker ($60-$80; includes one pound of coffee). Carved from a single block of cherry, walnut, or maple wood, this coffee maker is truly as simple as it gets, featuring a metal filter that never needs to be replaced.

Each variety is meant for a specific sort of coffee — with walnut made for darker roasts, and maple or cherry made for nuttier, more citrusy beans. All you need to do is place it over your mug, add in two scoops of coarsely-ground beans, and pour over hot water.

With two to four minutes of brewing, and stirring to suit your preference, you get a personalized single cup of coffee every time, without all the waste of other single cup methods.

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LaCie's Silver-Plated Steel Sphère Houses 1TB Of External Storage

If you prefer everything on your desk to be a stunning example of industrial design, LaCie’s new Sphère is an external hard drive you won’t want to hide behind your monitor. It looks like a giant drop of mercury thanks to its hand-crafted and highly-polished silver-plated steel housing which helps explain why you’ll be paying $500 or more for just a single terabyte of storage.

But the Sphère isn’t targeted at those whose primary concern is storage capacity. It will really only appeal to those who care about aesthetics and branding, since the drive’s housing was designed and is being manufactured by Christofle at the company’s silversmith workshop in Yainville, France. That’s quite a pedigree for an external drive, and to ensure it’s not all uglied up by cables, a single USB 3 tether is all that’s needed for power and data. If anything, it’s nice to see how the one-percenters store their data.