Seriously freaky.How The "Horror Frog" Proves It Wants To Live Way More Than You Do
http://io9.com/how-the-horror-frog-proves-it-wants-to-live-way-more-1693521871
Talk about a bad ass frog
Egypt Wants To Build a Second Cairo... In Just Seven Years
http://gizmodo.com/egypt-wants-to-build-a-second-cairo-in-just-seven-ye-1691780079
Nothing bad ever happens when you rush construction and I'm absolutely sure there won't be any slave labor at all
This past Sunday workers demolishing a former telescope factory in Pittsburgh were surprised to find a 19th century time capsule in the cornerstone. Now the demolition company is claiming that it has every right to keep the capsule along with the incredibly cool telescope artifacts that they found inside.
The time capsule included the photo above dated August 1894, apparently showing workers from the Brashear Telescope Factory. The Brashear Company, founded by astronomer Dr. John A. Brashear, manufactured not only telescopes but other scientific equipment from the 1880s until the early 20th century. By the 1940s the building was being used to make bombsights for the U.S. military.
While most time capsules have little more than a few newspapers, some photographs, and maybe a book or two, this one also contains some pretty unique items from the 1890s. Items like the piece of optical glass seen below, which the demolition company would now like to call their own.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that Jadell Minniefield Construction Services is the company that was hired by the city to destroy the building at a cost of $235,000. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2012, but was condemned shortly thereafter. The city issued an emergency order to destroy the building last week after one of its walls collapsed onto an apartment building next door.
But now Jadell Minniefield doesn't want to hand over the time capsule that it found to the city of Pittsburgh. And it claims that it has no legal obligation to do so.
"We have a contract, and it basically states that any salvage belongs to the contractor," Odell Minniefield Jr. told the Post-Gazette. Minniefield says that the 10-person demolition and construction company received a call from the city's legal department that "wasn't courteous."
But the city of Pittsburgh insists that the company's claims are nonsense, and that it's the rightful owners of the time capsule which includes the optical glass which has writing on it proclaiming it to be, "one of the first pieces of optical glass made in America." The rest of the writing has been too smudged to make out clearly.
"The city is reviewing its legal options and will do all it can to preserve this artifact for its rightful owners, the people of Pittsburgh," Tim McNulty, a spokesman for Pittsburgh's mayor told the Post-Gazette. "Pittsburgh already suffered one heartbreaking blow when the historic Brashear building had to come down for safety reasons, and it is sad that someone would consider taking economic advantage of this tragic situation."
The city wants to preserve the capsule and claims it would like to put its contents on display pretty standard stuff for time capsules. But the Minniefiled company says that for now the capsule will remain in its control under lock and key. We probably haven't heard the last of this time capsule tug-of-war.
A few years ago, the Pentagon started misplacing some very expensive and highly sensitive equipment. As if that weren't embarrassing enough, the equipment has since started appearing on sites like eBay and Craigslist.
It's an astounding story. A Navy intelligence document obtained by The Intercept spells out the situation in clear terms, noting that the devices "are NOT for civilian use and are controlled under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations." Well, apparently eBay user nightvisionwarehouse doesn't care very much about arms trafficking rules. The Intercept found the above listing for a "Insight CNVD-T Clip-On Night Vision Device Thermal System." It can be yours for just $16,599with free shipping! That's an enticing 27-percent off the list price. But you'll notice that it's the exact same model listed as missing in the Navy intelligence document:
That highly sensitive piece of military equipment is still for sale, by the way. The Intercept also found an expired listing for a "UTMx Universal Thermal Monocular" by a seller from Rincon, George. The auction started at $6,000 and got zero bids. Here's the same device in the Navy intelligence document:
It turns out the missing equipment comes from a problematic Pentagon program called RCOS/Keyhole. The agency that funds this program is the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO), and it's apparently even more problematic. The Intercept explains:
The RCOS/Keyhole program attracted attention in 2011 when Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer sued BAE Systems, accusing the company of retaliating against him for criticizing the company's possible sale of night vision equipment to Pakistan. Meyer was concerned that advanced U.S. technology sold to Pakistan could end up being used against U.S. forces.
So a problematic Pentagon program that possibly sold equipment to the enemy also lost equipment that's being sold on eBay to whomever has a few thousand bucks. In a remarkable turning of the tables, taxpayers could buy back military equipment that they paid for to begin with. Put another way, the enemy could buy equipment (via PayPal) that was meant to protect American soldiers. Well, eBay always was the spot to buy rare things from total strangers.
The 9.0 Tohoku earthquake damaged thousands of buildings when it ripped through Japan four years ago. Much of that debris is gone now, but the broken buildings had an invisible effect, too: The earthquake released thousands of tons of ozone-destroying greenhouse gases into the air.
The chemicals, called halocarbons, came from old insulation, refrigerators, and electrical equipment damaged in the quake. Air quality monitoring stations recorded a major spike in halocarbon emissions in 2011. In apaper published in Geophysical Research Letters, scientists estimate that these "extraordinary halocarbon emissions" from the earthquake added up to 6,600 metric tons of gases.
The emissions included chemicals that had been phased out, demonstrating the long lingering effects of actions from decades ago. The American Geophysical Union's press release ticks down the list of dangerous chemicals:
These include chlorofluorocarbons like CFC-11, a powerful ozone-depleting chemical used in foam insulation until it was phased out in 1996, and hydrochlorofluorocarbons like HCFC-22, an ozone-depleting refrigerant that is also a powerful greenhouse gas and is in the process of being phased out of use. Among other halocarbons released by the earthquake were hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, and sulfur hexafluoride, both potent greenhouse gases.
A devastating earthquake has immediate and obvious effects, but it can have invisible and insidious ones, too, resurrecting dangerous chemicals we'd long forgotten about.
