firehose

Fabienne Hurst writes:

When the then-Berlin-based drug maker Temmler Werke launched its methamphetamine compound onto the market in 1938, high-ranking army physiologist Otto Ranke saw in it a true miracle drug that could keep tired pilots alert and an entire army euphoric. It was the ideal war drug. In September 1939, Ranke tested the drug on university students, who were suddenly capable of impressive productivity despite being short on sleep.

From that point on, the Wehrmacht, Germany’s World War II army, distributed millions of the tablets to soldiers on the front, who soon dubbed the stimulant “Panzerschokolade” (“tank chocolate”). British newspapers reported that German soldiers were using a “miracle pill.” But for many soldiers, the miracle became a nightmare.

As enticing as the drug was, its long-term effects on the human body were just as devastating. Short rest periods weren’t enough to make up for long stretches of wakefulness, and the soldiers quickly became addicted to the stimulant. And with addiction came sweating, dizziness, depression and hallucinations. There were soldiers who died of heart failure and others who shot themselves during psychotic phases. Some doctors took a skeptical view of the drug in light of these side effects. Even Leonardo Conti, the Third Reich’s top health official, wanted to limit use of the drug, but was ultimately unsuccessful.

Full Story: Der Spiegel: WWII Drug: The German Granddaddy of Crystal Meth

(Thanks Trevor)

See also: An Interview with Infamous Meth Chef Uncle Fester

MIAMI—After eliminating the Indiana Pacers to reach the NBA finals for the third consecutive year, Miami Heat players were reportedly struggling Monday to determine whether those congratulating them on their victory were being sarcastic.

By Joyce Carol Oates

hypnosec writes "Security expert Tavis Ormandy has discovered a vulnerability in the Windows kernel which, when exploited, would allow an ordinary user to obtain administrative privileges of the system. Google's security pro posted the details of the vulnerability back in May through the Full Disclosure mailing list rather than reporting it to Microsoft first. He has now gone ahead and published a working exploit. This is not the first instance where Ormandy has opted for full disclosure without first informing the vendor of the affected software."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MIAMI—Following the Miami Heat’s decisive Game 7 victory over the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference championship series Monday night, security personnel at American Airlines Arena reportedly rushed to the floor to prevent Erik Spoelstra...

Sloth-facing is a new meme started by redditor treverhaas where photos of famous people are digitally manipulated to look like sloths.

The Slothfather

And then of course there’s Sloth from The Goonies:

images via treverhaas

via reddit, Blame it on the Voices

Agency has issued stop work order to the contractor responsible for the hidden rooms.

Top political appointees use secret email accounts Westport-News President Barack Obama and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, listen as Janelle Montaño, a mental health survivor and public speaker with Active Minds, speaks at the opening of the National Conference on Mental Health, Monday, ... and more »

A day after Chinese military killed at least hundreds, if not thousands of demonstrators in Beijing in 1989, a wiry man in a white shirt stepped in front of a line of moving tanks near Tiananmen Square and become one of the most famous protesters of the 20th century.

Twenty-four years later, his identity is still a mystery. He is called simply Tank Man. Today, on the anniversary of the crackdown, Chinese bloggers paid homage to him with imitations of the face-off.

The man blocked the path of the tanks, even as they gunned their engines. He climbed onto the first tank, pounded on the hatchet, and appeared to speak to the soldiers inside. When he stepped back down in front of the tank, two men ran into the street and pulled him away. The confrontation became one of the most enduring images of the pro-democracy, anti-corruption protests that swept China that spring and summer.

Speculation continues to circulate about Tank Man’s fate. Thousands of Chinese nationals were detained and imprisoned for their involvement in the protests, some of them kept in jail for almost their entire lives. Others were executed. No one has been able to determine whether Tank Man was among them.

A report (link in Chinese) cited a Hong Kong professor who said the man was a friend of his and an archaeologist from Changsha who had come to Beijing to protests. According to the professor, the man eventually escaped to Taiwan where he worked at the National Palace Museum. (The museum in Taiwan denied the report.) Others believed he was executed.

But it seems at least as plausible that the man disappeared back into his normal life. If he had left the country, he would have been free to speak out, according to Canadian journalist Jan Wang, who witnessed the confrontation. And if authorities had found him, they would have put him on public display, she told PBS. She believes there’s a good chance he’s alive and living quietly in China. The Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy Movement in China said in 1998 that it had obtained official party documents that showed authorities had no idea what happened to him. In a 1990 interview with Barbara Walters, former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin said he couldn’t confirm (video) whether the man was arrested or not. He broke from speaking to Walters through an interpreter and said in English, “I think never, never killed.”

It’s also possible that Tank Man may have been simply a regular citizen in Beijing who had seen or heard of the brutal government crackdown that left students, workers, children, doctors and passers-by dead, many of them shot in the back. According to film footage and witnesses, he was walking alone along the six-lane avenue, holding a bag of shopping, when he saw the tanks and decided to do something.

blackfemalecoders:

“Without Women, Computing as We Know It Would Not Exist.”

violentblowjobs:

i just want to be part of the gang

Holy cow.

A Massachusetts teen has been jailed for a month without bail on charges of making a bomb threat after writing rap lyrics that some found threatening following the Boston Marathon bombings.

This will be the saddest Christmas: Matt Smith has announced that he's stepping down as the star of Doctor Who at the end of the Christmas special. Smith is irreplaceable, but already people are speculating on names to replace him. We have no idea who will take the role, but here's what we'd like to see from the Twelfth Doctor.

Read more...

Excellent analysis of the murky semantic subtleties surrounding the terms ‘Geek’ and ‘Nerd’ by multitalented data lover Burr Settles.    

vinces99 writes "Forget to turn off the lights before leaving the apartment? No problem. Just raise your hand, finger-swipe the air and your lights will power down. Want to change the song playing on your music system in the other room? Move your hand to the right and flip through the songs. University of Washington computer scientists have developed gesture-recognition technology that brings this a step closer to reality. They have shown it's possible to use Wi-Fi signals around us to detect specific movements without needing sensors on the human body or cameras. By using an adapted Wi-Fi router and a few wireless devices in the living room, users could control their electronics and household appliances from any room in the home with a simple gesture."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For Screen Junkies, Toronto, Canada-based film enthusiast Louis Plamondon (aka “The Sleepy Skunk“) conceived and edited a supercut video of actor Will Smith making strange noises in movies.

Half the time that Will Smith is speaking, he’s actually just making noises. Even so, he’s 100% easier to understand than Penelope Cruz or Vin Diesel.

via Screen Junkies

We’ve seen videos of goats yelling like humans and even people yelling like goats yelling like people, and now Petsami has uploaded this video of Cody, a dog whose bark sounds like a person yelling.

via Viral Viral Videos

Who Needs Art?

How does Captain America manage to look the same as he did in the closing days of World War II? It may not be entirely due to Abraham Erskine’s Super-Soldier serum.

In one of the more unusual team-ups in recent memory, cosmetics retailer Kiehl’s has turned to Marvel to produce a comic promoting its new Heavy Lifting anti-aging moisturizer for men. If any superhero knows about remaining ageless, even if it requires drugs and staying frozen for decades, it’s Captain America (and if anyone needs moisturizer, it’s probably Steve Rogers; all that time in ice is bound to leave the skin dry and flaky).

Created by William Harms, Angel Unzueta and Ty Templeton, Captain America: Transformation & Triumph will be given away to customers who purchase Heavy Lifting in stores or online (you can read it for free on the company’s website). In the comic, which cuts between the past and the present Cap follows Cobra to Kiehl’s iconic flagship store in New York City’s East Village, which in our hero’s youth was a pharmacy.

What’s the villain after? A little something for those rough elbows, maybe, but also some remnants of Erskine’s experiments, which were hidden away in the store’s subbasement. Because … Irving “Doc” Morse, who bought Kiehl’s in 1921, thought that’s what should be done with top-secret materials after Erskine’s death? Something like that.

“When you go onto our store, we’ve got skeletons and motorcycles and planes,” Kiehl’s President Chris Salgardo tells USA Today. “These are things that men love. So we thought, ‘OK, there’s a great backdrop here for a story.’ ” He gave the folks at Marvel a tour of the original location, which opened in 1851. “When they got to the store, it was pretty easy to make this thing come to life,” he adds. “The Marvel guys, they weren’t fans of Kiehl’s but they’re certainly fans of us now.”

Comedian, writer, and actor Eugene Mirman has sponsored his own comedy festival, the aptly titled Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival, in Park Slope in Brooklyn since 2008. But now Mirman is taking the festival on the road, with four nights of comedy in Cambridge and Boston June 28-30. To help with the independently produced festival events—which feature H. Jon Benjamin, Bobcat Goldthwait, Wyatt Cenac, and others—Mirman started a modest Kickstarter campaign with a great little video about how he doesn’t want to sell out to “some really cool urinal sponsor,” instead raising the money by doing silly things for fans. He’s offering rewards such as “10 seconds of silent eye contact…at the Official Eye Contact Booth,” an “Hors D’oeuvres & Hugs Hour,” or a tour of the Lexington Battle Green—where Mirman worked as a teenager—followed by lunch at a Chinese restaurant (what, no official ...

Read more

Hey, if a billionaire couple wants to spend $10 million on their wedding, it’s neither all that surprising nor interesting, as far as I’m concerned. So, when news and statistics started to trickle out about Sean Parker’s wedding here in California—namely that it’d cost millions of dollars to create Kardashian-level over-the-topness—I was ready to chalk it up to the standard excesses of crazy rich people.

But that was before I read the California Coastal Commission’s report on the Parker wedding’s destructive, unpermitted buildout in a redwood grove in Big Sur. Parker and Neraida, the LLC he created to run his wedding, ended up paying $2.5 million in penalties for ignoring regulations. (Move fast. Break things.)

Here’s what the CCC says happened. Neraida cut a deal with the Ventana Inn, which is a private company that manages both a higher-end inn and a lower-end campground. The campground runs along Post Creek under massive redwood trees. While not wild, it is an ecologically sensitive area: Steelhead run through the creek and the trees are ancient. In 2007, the Inn closed the campground because of septic issues, though it kept all of its high-end units open. Pursuant to a 1980s deal that let the Inn expand, they were also required to maintain a public parking lot at Cadillac Flats, which offers a good jumping off point for hikers and backpackers. But they’d stopped doing so, using the lot as overflow parking for the Inn. You with me so far? Basically, what was supposed to be a facility that people of all incomes—including the general public—could visit had become a high-end resort with no camping or public parking. Still, it remained a beautiful place. It looked like this:

Enter Parker. He cut a deal with Ventana to use the previously closed campground exclusively for months. Without a single permit or any real thought about the area’s natural components, Parker’s crew began to build walls and water effects and fake ruins on the old campground. The CCC describes the changes:

The Parker Respondents proceeded to perform unauthorized development activities within the campground. Existing roads and campsites were graded and contoured to create the appearance of ruins. Stone gateways and walls were constructed. Staircases were crafted around existing habitat and redwood trees. An artificial pond was dug and installed. A stone bridge over the pond was constructed. Several elevated platforms were created, some adjacent to Post Creek (Exhibit 9). Over 100 potted trees and plants were partially planted within the existing road beds and campsites, and lighting was installed in the redwood forest. In addition to the unpermitted development, other items to facilitate the event have also been placed on the site including tents and generators.

Nothing says, “I love the Earth!” quite like bringing bulldozers into an old-growth forest to create a fake ruined castle. And to build this fantasy world on a spot that should have been open to regular old middle-class people: That makes it even better.

But perhaps, you might say, the Parker crew didn’t get permits, but at least they knew what they were doing, installing all this stuff in an ecologically sensitive area. But no, you’d be wrong there. The CCC continues:

The Parker Respondents did not install any erosion control measures or any BMPs when they commenced development within the campground. Structures, walls and elevated platforms have been constructed immediately adjacent to Post Creek with no setbacks employed. The Parker Respondents have recently installed temporary fencing in an attempt to reduce potential impacts to Post Creek, but most of the development occurred without any such erosion-control protections in place. Increased erosion resulting from hardscaping and vegetation removal along streams impairs riparian corridors, streams, and, ultimately, shallow marine waters by increased sedimentation. Increased sediment loads in streams and coastal waters can increase turbidity, thereby reducing light transmission necessary for photosynthetic processes, reducing the growth of aquatic plants. Additionally, structures have been built up to and around existing redwoods and vegetation within the campground (Exhibit 10). Beyond immediate physical damage to individual trees, failure to provide adequate development buffers from redwood trees can negatively impact the underground lignotubers by which redwoods clonally reproduce, thus impeding propagation. The unpermitted development has thus impacted the existing redwood forest habitat and has likely caused sedimentation of Post Creek.

Here’s what the site looked like during construction (note the stump in the pictures above and below). I think they call this disruption:

Here’s a poor old redwood that had to serve as an endpoint for a fake ruin because the most glorious forest in North America was not pretty enough for Sean Parker’s wedding:

I’m not a purist: Landscapes can get more beautiful with human intervention sometimes. Most landscapes we know have already been immeasurably altered by human behavior over the centuries. What’s rough about this particular situation is how wantonly Parker steamrolled structures, human and not human, legal and aesthetic.

To his credit, Parker paid up for the damage and said in a statement that he and his wife “always dreamed of getting married in Big Sur, one of the most magical places on Earth.” And weddings are great and I’m sure it was a good party.

But, of course, that’s also part of the new Silicon Valley parable: dream big,privatize the previously public, pay no attention to the rules, build recklessly, enjoy shamelessly, invoke magic, and then pay everybody off.

The old-guard Midwestern transplants like Bob Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Bill Davidow—not to mention a lot of newbie social entrepreneurs—would be ashamed of this kind of grandstanding, and rightly so.

Alexis Madrigal is a senior editor at The Atlantic, where he oversees the Technology channel. He’s the author of Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology.

This originally appeared at The Atlantic. More from our sister site:

Mexico’s drug wars show few signs of waning

A quest to save China’s languages

How a coal company bilked 20k workers out of health benefits

Stick It To The Man is a grungy, jazzy platform adventure game coming to PS3 and Vita this year, from Swedish developer Zoink!, publisher Ripstone, and written by Ryan North, author of the Adventure Time comic and creator of Dinosaur Comics.

Stick It To The Man stars average-city-dude Ray, who lives in a world made of stickers and paper. After an accident, Ray wakes up with a "giant pink spaghetti arm sticking out of his brain" (just go with it) and finds he has the ability to peel off parts of his surroundings - and surrounding people - and he can read everyone's thoughts (seriously, just let it happen). He's then framed by The Man for a nasty crime, and he must use his new powers to traverse the city safely.

Still on board? Good. Stick It To The Man will be out before the end of 2013, with a playable version at E3 next week.

Continue reading Stick It To The Man hits PS3, Vita this year with writing by Ryan North

Stick It To The Man hits PS3, Vita this year with writing by Ryan North originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 04 Jun 2013 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

MIAMI—Following their 99-76 Game 7 loss in the Eastern Conference Finals, Indiana Pacers players confirmed Tuesday that they felt like complete idiots for believing in themselves and foolishly thinking that they ever had a chance against the Miami H...

Critics say the upcoming Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson film about interning at Google has everything an audience in 2005 could want in a comedy.

pbh3:

Geeks vs. hipsters.