Weird News of the World Thread

[Alex_Spider]

http://worldobserveronline.com/2013/10/04/man-lives-without-money/?utm_source=taboola&utm_medium=referral

The man who lives without money

Irishman Mark Boyle tried to live life with no income, no bank balance and no spending. Here’s how he finds it.

If someone told me seven years ago, in my final year of a business and economics degree, that I’d now be living without money, I’d have probably choked on my microwaved ready meal. The plan back then was to get a ‘good’ job, make as much money as possible, and buy the stuff that would show society I was successful.

For a while I did it – I had a fantastic job managing a big organic food company; had myself a yacht on the harbour. If it hadn’t been for the chance purchase of a video called Gandhi, I’d still be doing it today. Instead, for the last fifteen months, I haven’t spent or received a single penny. Zilch.

The change in life path came one evening on the yacht whilst philosophising with a friend over a glass of merlot. Whilst I had been significantly influenced by the Mahatma’s quote “be the change you want to see in the world”, I had no idea what that change was up until then. We began talking about all major issues in the world – environmental destruction, resource wars, factory farms, sweatshop labour – and wondering which of these we would be best devoting our time to. Not that we felt we could make any difference, being two small drops in a highly polluted ocean.

But that evening I had a realisation. These issues weren’t as unrelated as I had previously thought – they had a common root cause. I believe the fact that we no longer see the direct repercussions our purchases have on the people, environment and animals they affect is the factor that unites these problems.

The degrees of separation between the consumer and the consumed have increased so much that it now means we’re completely unaware of the levels of destruction and suffering embodied in the ‘stuff’ we buy.

Very few people actually want to cause suffering to others; most just don’t have any idea that they directly are. The tool that has enabled this separation is money, especially in its globalised format.

Take this for an example: if we grew our own food, we wouldn’t waste a third of it as we do today.

If we made our own tables and chairs, we wouldn’t throw them out the moment we changed the interior décor.

If we had to clean our own drinking water, we probably wouldn’t **** in it.

So to be the change I wanted to see in the world, it unfortunately meant I was going to have to give up money, which I decided to do for a year initially. So I made a list of the basics I’d need to survive. I adore food, so it was at the top. There are four legs to the food-for-free table: foraging wild food, growing your own, bartering and using waste grub, of which there far too much.

On my first day I fed 150 people a three course meal with waste and foraged food. Most of the year I ate my own crops though and waste only made up about five per cent my diet. I cooked outside – rain or shine – on a rocket stove.

Next up was shelter. So I got myself a caravan from Freecycle, parked it on an organic farm I was volunteering with, and kitted it out to be off the electricity grid. I’d use wood I either coppiced or scavenged to heat my humble abode in a wood burner made from an old gas bottle, and I had a compost loo to make ‘humanure’ for my veggies.

I bathed in a river, and for toothpaste I used washed up cuttlefish bone with wild fennel seeds, an oddity for a vegan. For loo roll I’d relieve the local newsagents of its papers (I once wiped my arse with a story about myself); it wasn’t double quilted but it quickly became normal. To get around I had a bike and trailer, and the 55 km commute to the city doubled up as my gym subscription. For lighting I’d use beeswax candles.

Many people label me an anti-capitalist. Whilst I do believe capitalism is fundamentally flawed, requiring infinite growth on a finite planet, I am not anti anything. I am pro-nature, pro-community and pro-happiness. And that’s the thing I don’t get – if all this consumerism and environmental destruction brought happiness, it would make some sense. But all the key indicators of unhappiness – depression, crime, mental illness, obesity, suicide and so on are on the increase. More money it seems, does not equate to more happiness.

Ironically, I have found this year to be the happiest of my life. I’ve more friends in my community than ever, I haven’t been ill since I began, and I’ve never been fitter. I’ve found that friendship, not money, is real security. That most western poverty is spiritual. And that independence is really interdependence.

Could we all live like this tomorrow? No. It would be a catastrophe, we are too addicted to both it and cheap energy, and have managed to build an entire global infrastructure around the abundance of both. But if we devolved decision making and re-localised down to communities of no larger than 150 people, then why not? For over 90 per cent of our time on this planet, a period when we lived much more ecologically, we lived without money. Now we are the only species to use it, probably because we are the species most out of touch with nature.

People now often ask me what is missing compared to my old world of lucre and business. Stress. Traffic-jams. Bank statements. Utility bills. Oh yeah, and the odd pint of organic ale with my mates down the local.

 

[Anubis]

So basically a rich dude decides to become a dirty hippie.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Canadian Town Politely Waits for Dead Whale to Explode

Residents of Trout River, Newfoundland are anxiously waiting for a beached blue whale to explode after it washed ashore last week. The whale is believed to have died as a result of heavy sea ice a few weeks ago.

Butler is worried about what could happen if the carcass remains grounded near the town's historic wooden boardwalk. "It's only a matter of time — as the weather warms up, it's only going to worse," she said.
Exploding whales are not a new phenomenon — the gasses that build up inside of decomposing whale carcasses are known to build up enough pressure to pop through the blubber and rain whale bits on the newly-squeamish people unfortunate enough to be caught downstream.

The people of Newfoundland kindly set up a website called HasTheWhaleExplodedYet.com to inform the world of the fate of the bloated carcass. So far, it hasn't exploded. Yet.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfo...s-stench-bloating-worry-trout-river-1.2624297

Seems like you would want to remove it before it explodes but maybe that's just me and I'm sure it is a pain to do so

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Gas Explosion at Florida Jail Kills 2 Inmates, Injures 150

An apparent gas explosion at a jail in Pensacola, Fla. killed at least two inmates and injured as many as 150 prisoners and corrections officers Wednesday night, according to state officials.

The huge blast, which could be heard from seven miles away, took place at the Escambia County Jail's Central Booking Facility at about 11 p.m. CDT Wednesday night.

"There was a big flash that lit up the whole sky and the whole area shook for what felt like a good five seconds," James McLean, who works at a gas station near the jail, told NBC News.

Kathleen Castro, Escambia County's public information manager, who said she lives about a mile and a half from the jail, told CBS News the explosion "sounded like someone drove into my house."

About 600 inmates were housed in the jail at the time, according to Castro, who said building's second and fourth floors partially collapsed after the explosion. The building was quickly evacuated, and the injured were rushed to five local hospitals.

Pensacola was hit with heavy flooding earlier Wednesday, though authorities aren't yet clear if that was a factor in the explosion.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/de...ail-pensacola-florida-hit-deadly-blast-n94396

Man that is crazy, I did 30 days in that jail a while back. last thing you would be worried about is the jail exploding

 

[Alex_Spider]

http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/neanderthals-may-not-have-been-inferior-suggested

Neanderthals May Not Have Been as Inferior as Suggested

When Neanderthals went extinct about 40,000 years ago, Homo sapiens became the last remaining human species on Earth. The story frequently goes that they were inferior in a variety of ways to anatomically modern humans and just couldn’t compete. A new study turns this notion on its head and highlights a series of ways that Neanderthals were actually superior. The analysis was conducted by Paola Villa of the University of Colorado Museum and Wil Roebroeks of Leiden University. The results were published in PLOS ONE.

"The evidence for cognitive inferiority is simply not there," Villa said in a press release. "What we are saying is that the conventional view of Neanderthals is not true."

Their analysis looked at the top hypotheses for why our species beat out Neanderthals. After all, there is evidence that we interacted and and even interbred with them, so how did we succeed when they did not? Most of the ideas centered around the inferiority of Neanderthals in terms of cognition, technology, language, and hunting.

What they discovered, however, is that there isn’t evidence to support those explanations. There is evidence, they explain, that Neanderthals hunted in groups, and used cliffs and other features of the landscape to hunt large animals. This speaks to their ability to effectively plan, communicate, and cooperate as a group. Other evidence has shown that they ate a wide variety of foods, dismissing the idea that a narrow diet wiped them out as food sources changed.

The researchers note that some of these predictions of why Neanderthals went extinct was due to an error of comparing Neanderthals to the Homo sapiens of today, and not the Homo sapiens that would have been contemporary to them.

"Researchers were comparing Neanderthals not to their contemporaries on other continents but to their successors," Villa explained. "It would be like comparing the performance of Model T Fords, widely used in America and Europe in the early part of the last century, to the performance of a modern-day Ferrari and conclude that Henry Ford was cognitively inferior to Enzo Ferrari."

While the researchers made a good case that general inferiority to Homo sapiens wasn’t the cause for the disappearance of the Neanderthals, they weren’t able to come up with an evidence-based explanation. They state there were probably several reasons that went into play, such as genetic depression due to inbreeding, as many Neanderthals lived in small groups. The male offspring between Neanderthal/Homo sapiens pairings are also believed to have a lower fertility, making it difficult to sustain the species.


Read more at http://www.iflscience.com/plants-an...e-been-inferior-suggested#D5vSAZ7pZE75RHlO.99

 

[Teelie]

I don't think this has been accepted in science for a while now. Public perception definitely. But then the public still thinks a lot of things long debunked are still true and refuse to accept new knowledge.

 

[Alex_Spider]

http://www.iflscience.com/environment/our-trash-reached-deepest-parts-ocean-us

Our Trash Reached the Deepest Parts of the Ocean Before Us

May 1, 2014 | by Janet Fang

photo credit: Cargo net entangled in a cold-water coral colony at 950 meters in Darwin Mound with the ROV Lynx / National Oceanography Centre, C.K. Pham et al., PLOS ONE
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Results from a survey of the seafloor off the European coast reveal the depths our garbage can reach. Bottles, plastic bags, fishing gear, and various crap have been found as deep 4.5 kilometers below the surface, and in areas far as 2,000 kilometers from land.

"Human litter is present in all marine habitats, from beaches to the most remote and deepest parts of the oceans,” study coauthor Kerry Howell from Plymouth University, UK, says in a press release. “Most of the deep sea remains unexplored by humans, and these are our first visits to many of these sites, but we were shocked to find that our rubbish has got there before us."

Marine litter causes problems for mammals and fish when they mistaken it for food; it also entangles coral and fish (the process even has a name, "ghost fishing"). But because surveying in the deep ocean is very expensive and requires a multitude of sampling techniques, scientists haven’t been able to get a comprehensive look at the extent and contents of marine litter. So, the European Union sponsored the Hotspot Ecosystem Research and Man's Impact on European Seas (HERMIONE) project, a consortium of 41 partners from 13 countries, which ran from 2009 to 2012. Check out their image gallery.

Using photos and videos from remotely-operated vehicles, a team led by Christopher Pham from the University of the Azores in Portugal analyzed nearly 600 seafloor transects gathered over 10 years from 32 sites across the Atlantic and Arctic oceans and the Mediterranean Sea. They also used trawling nets to collect litter on the ocean floor.

Litter was classified into six categories: plastic, derelict fishing gear, metal, glass, clinker (residue of burnt coal), and other, which includes cardboard, fabric, wood and unidentified items. Plastics accounted for 41 percent of the litter and derelict fishing gear was 34 percent.

They found litter at every location they surveyed: ranging from coastal seas to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, 2,000 kilometers from land. Litter was also found at all depths: from shallow, 35-meter waters in the Gulf of Lion to 4.5 kilometers waters in Cascais Canyon, Portugal. Submarine canyons suffered the highest litter density, while the lowest density was found on continental shelves and on ocean ridges.



Pictured here: A = Plastic bag entrapped by a small drop stone harboring sponges (Cladorhiza gelida, Caulophacus arcticus), shrimps (Bythocaris sp.) and a crinoid (Bathycrinus carpenterii) in the Arctic at 2500 m. B = Litter recovered within the net of a trawl in Blanes open slope at 1500 m on board the R/V García del Cid. C = Heineken can in the upper Whittard canyon at 950 m with the ROV Genesis. D = Plastic bag in Blanes Canyon at 896 m with the ROV Liropus. E = Uncle Ben's Express Rice packet at 967 m in Darwin Mound with the ROV Lynx. F = Cargo net entangled in a cold-water coral colony at 950 m in Darwin Mound with the ROV Lynx.


Read more at http://www.iflscience.com/environment/our-trash-reached-deepest-parts-ocean-us#kHv8pF15IH5EhVRU.99

 

[Alex_Spider]

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-27204988

Antibiotic resistance now 'global threat', WHO warns

Resistance to antibiotics poses a "major global threat" to public health, says a new report by the World Health Organization (WHO).

It analysed data from 114 countries and said resistance was happening now "in every region of the world".

It described a "post-antibiotic era", where people die from simple infections that have been treatable for decades.

There were likely to be "devastating" implications unless "significant" action was taken urgently, it added.

The report focused on seven different bacteria responsible for common serious diseases such as pneumonia, diarrhoea and blood infections.

It suggested two key antibiotics no longer work in more than half of people being treated in some countries.

Continue reading the main story
“
Start Quote

What we urgently need is a solid global plan of action which provides for the rational use of antibiotics”

Dr Jennifer Cohn
Medecins sans Frontiers
One of them - carbapenem - is a so-called "last-resort" drug used to treat people with life-threatening infections such as pneumonia, bloodstream infections, and infections in newborns, caused by the bacteria K.pneumoniae.

Bacteria naturally mutate to eventually become immune to antibiotics, but the misuse of these drugs - such as doctors over-prescribing them and patients failing to finish courses - means it is happening much faster than expected.

The WHO says more new antibiotics need to be developed, while governments and individuals should take steps to slow the process of growing resistance.

In its report, it said resistance to antibiotics for E.coli urinary tract infections had increased from "virtually zero" in the 1980s to being ineffective in more than half of cases today.

In some countries, it said, resistance to antibiotics used to treat the bacteria "would not work in more than half of people treated".

Gonorrhoea treatment 'failure'
Dr Keiji Fukuda, assistant director-general at WHO, said: "Without urgent, coordinated action by many stakeholders, the world is headed for a post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries which have been treatable for decades can once again kill."

E.coli bacteria
Urinary tract infections caused by E.coli bacteria are becoming harder to treat
He said effective antibiotics had been one of the "pillars" to help people live longer, healthier lives, and benefit from modern medicine.

"Unless we take significant actions to improve efforts to prevent infections and also change how we produce, prescribe and use antibiotics, the world will lose more and more of these global public health goods and the implications will be devastating," Dr Fukuda added.

The report also found last-resort treatment for gonorrhoea, a sexually-transmitted infection which can cause infertility, had "failed" in the UK.

It was the same in Austria, Australia, Canada, France, Japan, Norway, South Africa, Slovenia and Sweden, it said.

More than a million people are infected with gonorrhoea across the world every day, the organisation said.

'Wake-up call'
The report called for better hygiene, access to clean water, infection control in healthcare facilities, and vaccination to reduce the need for antibiotics.

Last year, the chief medical officer for England, Prof Dame Sally Davies, said the rise in drug-resistant infections was comparable to the threat of global warming.

Dr Jennifer Cohn, medical director of Medecins sans Frontiers' Access Campaign, said: "We see horrendous rates of antibiotic resistance wherever we look in our field operations, including children admitted to nutritional centres in Niger, and people in our surgical and trauma units in Syria.

"Ultimately, WHO's report should be a wake-up call to governments to introduce incentives for industry to develop new, affordable antibiotics that do not rely patents and high prices and are adapted to the needs of developing countries."

She added: "What we urgently need is a solid global plan of action which provides for the rational use of antibiotics so quality-assured antibiotics reach those who need them, but are not overused or priced beyond reach."

Professor Nigel Brown, president of the UK Society for General Microbiology, said it was vital microbiologists and other researchers worked together to develop new approaches to tackle antimicrobial resistance.

"These approaches will include new antibiotics, but should also include studies to develop new rapid-diagnostic devices, fundamental research to understand how microbes become resistant to drugs, and how human behaviour influences the spread of resistance."

 

[Alex_Spider]

http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/04/nasa-decides-on-crowdsourced-tron-look-for-mars-z-2-spacesuit/

NASA decides on crowdsourced Tron look for Mars Z-2 spacesuit

NASA announced today that it has finalized the look for its new Mars-bound Z-2 space suit. The design was selected by the public in a vote, and the winning design was one of three showcased by the agency.
The new suit is the latest in NASA's Z-series of suits. These are a far cry from the simple pressure suits worn by the Mercury astronauts in the 1950s—today's suits aren't so much suits as person-shaped spaceships. The Z-series suits are being designed to function both in space and also on the ground on other worlds, most notably the moon and Mars.

The major design focuses of the Z-series, and the Z-2 in particular, are mobility and ease of use. Since the earliest days of space travel, suited astronauts needed to cope with the tremendous physical burden of working inside what is essentially a rigid pressurized balloon; an air-filled space suit resists bending, and multi-hour spacewalks can be exhausting. Future suits like the Z-series try to help out their occupants with new materials and clever joint designs, not to mention by allowing astronauts to vary their pressurization level.

The gray-and-blue design picked by popular vote is only skin-deep, and all three designs contained only superficial differences. However, the public clearly wants a cool-looking space suit—the futuristic-looking design, aptly dubbed "Technology," took more than 60 percent of the vote. The other two, "Biomimicry" and the confusingly named "Trends in Society," were much less popular.

As noted in the voting page's FAQ list, the Z-series suits are still in the prototype/non-flight test phase, and these won't be used in flight. So at least for now, astronauts won't be trading in their boring white suits for fancy glowy bits.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Ben Affleck Banned from Blackjack Table for Counting Cards

Ben Affleck was banned from playing blackjack at the Hard Rock casino in Las Vegas for counting cards, claim sources at multiple outlets.

Affleck, who took home $800,000 from the same casino in 2001, was approached by security on suspicion of the legal-but-frowned-upon practice of counting cards. The casino reportedly allowed him to stay and play other games, and even ordered a car to take him back to his hotel at the end of the night. The source added, "The hotel was really nice to him."

Nice as the hotel may have been, it didn't stop them from banning him from their blackjack table for life. He was reportedly deemed an advantage player and was asked to leave the table for being "too good at the game."

http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/02/showbiz/ben-affleck-casino/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Must be using some of that new Batman tech

 

[Teelie]

He wasn't actually accused of card-counting, which isn't illegal but he apparently was good at the game anyways. Another reason I don't gamble at casinos. Even when you aren't cheating you're still told to leave if you're too good.

 

[Octoberist]

Long live Affleck. Long live the KING.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Ya it kind of boggles the mind, it is actually very hard to count cards without a team. That's what those MIT kids did back in the day. In a big casino they have a good system that prevents counting cards by alternating decks each hand so if he was doing it he would have to be keeping 2 separate counts for each deck going at the same time and that is extremely hard to do

 

[Teelie]

I watched a report that said he was counting cards and he used his poker chips to keep track of them. Kind of ingenious but obviously it was too noticiable.

 

[C. Lee]

When I hear that a casino lost money because someone was counting cards....I have to respond - Boo F'n hoo!!!!

 

[Octoberist]

Anway, there are so many other - better - casinos in the land of casinos. Ben won't be sad about it.

 

[Anubis]

Unless he gets banned from all of em.

 

[Teelie]

Casinos communicate with one another so he'll be banned from all of them.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Spy Plane Shut Down Los Angeles Air Traffic for Hours

Los Angeles International Airport shut down for several hours last week because a spy plane on a secret mission fried the airport's air traffic control center.

According to NBC, the airport grounded all incoming and outgoing flights for several hours last Wednesday after a Soviet-era U-2 spy plane cruised through airspace monitored by L.A. Air Route Traffic Control Center.

The plane, flying at around 60,000 feet, was miles above the commercial flights coming in and out of the Los Angeles-region airports. But the Traffic Control Center's computer registered it at the same altitude as other airborne flights and apparently overloaded trying to redirect the plane.

NBC says the plane was a U-2 "Dragon Lady" with a Defense Department flight plan.

A spokesperson for the nearby Edwards Air Base told NBC that, "There are no U-2 planes assigned to Edwards," but NASA's Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research Center, located at Edwards, is apparently known to host U-2s.

Hundreds of flights were delayed and thousands of passengers throughout Southern California and the Southwest were affected by Wednesday's shutdown.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/investi...affic-control-computers-shuts-down-lax-n95886

Seems like this wouldn't have happened if our air traffic control equipment wasn't from the 70's

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Horrifying and Rare "Goblin Shark" Found off the Coast of Key West

Oh good, another thing to fill our nightmares! A rare "goblin shark" was caught by Georgia fisherman Captain Carl Moore about 10 miles off the coast of Key West in April. The last recorded sighting of this species of deep-sea nightmare shark was in 2000.

According to NBC News (and the terrifying photograph) the goblins are identified by their "flat, elongated snouts that point off from the tops of their heads" and their "razor-sharp teeth." NBC continues:

Goblin sharks have been found in the Pacific, off the coasts of Japan and California, and in ocean depths of up to 5,000 feet. The latest sighting has surprised researchers.

"This is a very rare finding," John Karlson, a research biologist at NOAA, told NBC News on Saturday. "We don't know very much about these animals."

Karlson said they can range up to 10 to 13 feet, although Moore's goblin shark was around 18 feet.
Moore reported his sighting to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration after returning to shore, and, from the photograph, Karlson believes it was a female shark.

Moore quickly released the shark back into the water, explaining, "When it came up, I didn't know what it was. I didn't measure him because his head was slashing around, and he had some mean-looking teeth and I didn't want to get caught up in those."

We don't blame you, Captain Moore.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/rare-goblin-shark-snagged-fisherman-florida-waters-n96301

One ugly SOB right there, I wouldn't mess with that thing if it came up in my nets either

 

[Captain Bryan]

Ben Affleck Banned from Blackjack Table for Counting Cards

Spoiler

http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/02/showbiz/ben-affleck-casino/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Must be using some of that new Batman tech

Affleck in Oceans Fourteen confirmed.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

A Year-Long Bath Will Reveal the Secrets of This Confederate Sub

In 1864, three years after the onset of the American Civil War, an ingenious new form of seafaring combat vessel ventured into the dark waters of Charleston Harbor and into the annals of history. Now researchers and historians are finally ready to begin piecing together what happened to the HL Hunley that fateful February night—but first, the Confederate attack sub will need a good long soak in the tub.

The Hunley proved to be a mixed blessing for the Confederacy. On one hand, the 40-foot long, 7.5-ton hand-cranked semi-submersible was the first such submarine to sink a Union frigate (the USS Housatonic), proving the effectiveness of the design. On the other hand, the eight man vessel killed 21 crew members in three (three) separate sinkings during her brief service.

The Hunley's first success was also her final attack. Just after she sank the Housatonic, she mysteriously sank off the coast of Charleston NC and remained lost until 1995. Five years after being rediscovered not far from a busy shipping lane, the Hunley was raised from the seafloor in a widely-publicized 2005 effort by the Friends of the Hunley conservation group.

As the conservation team explains on its website:

Preventing the disruption of an artifact's equilibrium is the primary purpose of archaeological conservation. Any artifact retrieved from a marine environment should be placed back in water as soon as possible before it starts to dry out or react with oxygen in the air. For this reason, the H.L. Hunley submarine was raised from the seabed and immediately transported to the Warren Lasch Conservation Center. The vessel was kept wet through the use of a water sprinklers during its eight-hour transit to the lab. Once at the laboratory facilities, the submarine was placed in a custom-built, 55' x 18' x 9' (16.8 x 5.5 x 2.75 m) metal conservation tank and filled with fresh water.

The water was refrigerated to 50°F (10°C) over a 3-day period in order to ****** the growth of fungus and algae as well as to cut down the rate of corrosion. The water chemistry in the tank is monitored continuously for pH, temperature, chlorides, conductivity, and oxygen.

In addition, the hull of the submarine is being subjected to an impressed current system designed by Corrosion Control Incorporated, which inhibits further corrosion, until the interior has been fully excavated. Following the excavation, the use of other corrosion inhibitors will be employed in the conservation process in order to stabilize the vessel.
Over the last nine years, conservationists and historians have carefully excavated the interior of the submarine, clearing away a century's worth of sediment and recovering the bodies of those who died on board. It wasn't until last year that researchers were able to see that the charge canister that sank the Houstonic was attached to just a 16 foot spar. This handle would have been far too short to sufficiently protect the Hunley's crew from the resulting shockwave, and suggests that they may have been rendered unconscious by the blast, unable to crank the propeller which also pumped in air. However, a closer look at the hull will be required to confirm if this really was the case. And that's where the 76,000 gallons of sodium hydroxide comes in.

See, the sea salt and sand and grit and marine life that have infested the Hunley's hull over the last 100 years can't simply be scraped off, for fear of damaging the antique structure underneath. So instead, conservationists plan to fill the vessel's 76,000 gallon conservation tank with the mildly corrosive hydroxide mixture and let the vessel soak for three months. This should be enough to sufficiently loosen the sediment.

"Chiseling away the concretion will allow us to travel back in time, potentially helping us learn what happened to the Hunley and her crew that night," Lt. Gov. Glenn McConnell, the chairman of the South Carolina Hunley Commission, said in a statement.

Once the sub has had its soak, another nine months of scrubbing and scraping will be necessary to fully eliminate the encrustment and another four years of conservation to pull the salts out of the hull so that it can eventually be put on display in a new museum in North Charleston.

http://www.stripes.com/news/us/confederate-submarine-chemical-bath-to-expose-hull-1.281027

This will be cool to check out if all goes according to plan

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

This Terrifying Glass Deck Lets You Walk Off a Cliff

This is the Glacier Skywalk, a newly-finished observation deck in Canada's Jasper National Park, smack dab in the middle of the Rockies of the Great White North. It makes you feel almost like you're walking on air.

The Glacier Skywalk is the brainchild of Brewster Travel Canada, Sturgess Architecture, and Read Jones Christofferson Engineering. It just opened late last week, but it's been underway for a few years—as you might expect, a glass bridge on the side of a cliff isn't the easiest construction job on Earth. The curved structure has a glass floor that cantilevers about 100 feet from the edge of the cliff.

Scared of heights? Probably avoid this guy, because it's your only safety net between you and a 918-foot drop. For the more daring among us, it looks like an incredible way to take in the majesty of the park.

[YT]qFm26c_taUQ#t[/YT]

http://www.designboom.com/architecture/glacier-skywalk-jasper-national-park-canada-05-05-2014/

This is pretty awesome, I'd love to check this out

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Drones Ordered Out of Yosemite by the National Park Service

The National Park Service issued a stern message on Friday to the would-be Ansel Adamses of today: Drones are illegal in national parks, so keep them out of Yosemite's air space.

According to the NPS, drones are being used to film just about everything in the park, from capturing scenic aerial footage to documenting the progress of climbers. It's not just detrimental to the park experience, it's potentially dangerous for visitors and wildlife:

Drones can be extremely noisy, and can impact the natural soundscape. Drones can also impact the wilderness experience for other visitors creating an environment that is not conducive to wilderness travel. The use of drones also interferes with emergency rescue operations and can cause confusion and distraction for rescue personnel and other parties involved in the rescue operation. Additionally, drones can have negative impacts on wildlife nearby the area of use, especially sensitive nesting peregrine falcons on cliff walls.
Yosemite then posted the link to their Facebook page, where some commenters are questioning the language cited in the NPS code which specifically prohibits aircraft that are "delivering or retrieving a person or object." Since drones don't actually transport people or objects, commenters are insisting they're not illegal. Perhaps. But they're still annoying.

An AP story says that drones are actually a "daily sight" within the park's boundaries, which is easy to believe when all one must do is search "Yosemite + drone" on YouTube to see the hundreds of videos.

No mention of a fine or any other enhanced repercussions, so drone operators are likely to just get off with a warning. Then again, given the size of the park, this would probably be a particularly tough thing to police in any way.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/...rs-say-20140502,0,3645936.story#axzz30lyOGH9r

Well I can see how you could get some cool videos but I do understand how you need to respect the wilderness and other park goers

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Two Gamers Are Going To Jail For Stealing $6,405 In Virtual Items

Stealing is bad. Stealing items in online games is also bad, and usually there's not much that can be done to combat it—so it's super good news that two Chinese internet thieves have been sentenced to prison terms.

According to a report released today, in early April, two men, surnamed Wang and Cai, were each sentenced to two years in prison as well as various monetary fines for the crime of cybertheft.

The duo, both from China's Sichuan province, are supposedly both avid gamers with a penchant for the Nexon-made multiplayer beat'em up called Dungeon Fighter Online. Both men were jobless and spent their time playing DNF. They eventually figured out that they could make money by selling in-game equipment for real cash.

It's not exactly clear how it happened, but in March 2013 the duo came into contact with a certain Mr. Ma. They sussed out Ma's information and his login information for DNF. The duo cleaned Ma's virtual accounts, making off with about $6405!

Within a month, the duo were apprehended by the police. A year later, they're now facing jail time. No word on whether Ma will be gaining any restitution but hey, the thought of the guys who took his stuff will be in jail should be good enough.

Imagine being in prison and they ask what you did and you have to tell them you stole stuff in a video game haha