techyum ::

Creative Commons image by Schorle.

Use of the legal-in-Maryland designer drug “Spice” just brought about its eighth expulsion of the academic year from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

The most recent midshipman expelled was a male “plebe,” the Academy’s word for “freshman,” according to a Navy Times feature. The investigation began last fall, and culminated in seven expulsions last month.

“Spice” is legal under U.S. federal law, and is sold under a variety of brand names in head shops and convenience stores. Though 18 states have placed restrictions on sales of the drug, Maryland is not one of them. The U.S. Navy has explicitly banned its use by personnel, however.

“Spice” is known more generically as synthetic cannabis, and is also called “K2″ and, sometimes, “herbal incense.” The FDA announced its intention to ban the product late last year using its statutory emergency powers, but according to the latest on Erowid.com, that ban couldn’t be enforced until a 30-day period had passed and the ruling was placed in the Federal Register. That didn’t happen, because the DEA still has to write specific regulations for the substance. The product will not make users test positive for marijuana in a drug test, but it shows up in urine tests specific to synthetic cannabis.

As to what exactly Spice is — that’s anyone’s guess. It’s supposed to be legal herbs, but U.S. Customs and Border Protection says it found the illegal cannabinoid HU-210 in shipments of Spice it seized. HU-210 is a Schedule I drug in the U.S. — the same legal category as heroin.

Furthermore, researchers in Germany found that what’s promised on the label isn’t what’s in the package…like, at all.

Herbs listed on the packaging of Spice include Canavalia maritima, Nymphaea caerulea, Scutellaria nana, Pedicularis densiflora, Leonotis leonurus, Zornia latifolia, Nelumbo nucifera and Leonurus sibiricus. However, when the product was analyzed by laboratories in Germany and elsewhere, it was found that many of the characteristic “fingerprint” molecules expected to be present from the claimed plant ingredients were not present…This suggested that the actual ingredients might not be the same as what was listed on the packet, and a German government risk assessment of the product conducted in November 2008 concluded that it was unclear what the actual plant ingredients were…and whether the subjective cannabis-like effects were actually produced by any of the claimed plant ingredients or instead might possibly be caused by a synthetic cannabinoid drug.

John Huffman, the guy who first synthesized several synthetic cannabinoids, said that people who use Spice are idiots. Also, I hear it makes your eyes glow.

Sometimes there’s not all that much more to say than “Punk Rock Skeleton Demos Mind-Control System,” which is how New Scientist‘s MacGregor Campbell put it over at a blog post showcasing this video.

I once again voice my disgust, however, that the scientific and tech communities seem to have decided that controlling devices by one’s mind is called “mind control.” It’s not. “Mind control” is what the EU does to you by dosing your corn flakes with Belgian-built nanobots. “Mind control” is what the Bilderberg group is doing to Ghaddafi this week to make him say even more whack-ass shit than usual. “Mind control” is what the spectral invaders from Alpha Centauri are doing to your cat when it chases fluffies around the living room (the Centaurans love astral mice, and hey, can you blame ‘em? Your cat’s great at catching them.) “Mind control” is what the CIA does to its sex slaves.

What the video discusses here is a “brain-tech interface,” so claiming that “mind control” sounds cooler is just nuts. What could sound cooler than “brain-tech interface?” Anyway, here’s how it’s described at New Scientist:

The yellow spikes radiating from the skeleton’s head represent the firing of motor neurons in the brain. Each neuron is tuned to recognise a different direction in space, so as the arm moves, the spikes change to reflect the changing direction. By adding together the output of all the neurons, the direction of the arm’s movement – represented by the blue arrow – can be predicted.

Developed by Daniel Moran at the Moran Lab of St. Louis, Missouri’s Washington University, this device uses electrodes inserted between the skull and the brain, “less invasive than probes inserted into the brain itself,” which have been used in other experiments.

Today’s commercially-available “civilian” devices, obviously, don’t implant SQUAT — you just spank ‘em on your head and next thing you know, you’re piloting Firefox. Well…at least, that’s the idea. More likely, you’re making a ball move around a cube, but that’s why it’s called “in development.”

Image from the INL.

An article in R&D Magazine today, reprinted from the Center for Space Nuclear Research, part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory, describes one of the CSNR’s design projects — for a fleet of nuclear-powered “Mars Hoppers” that could map the whole Martian surface in a matter of a few years, much faster than ground-based rovers could.

The hoppers would be about as big as an adult Emperor Penguin and would use Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs) run through a Sterling Engine to power the onboard instruments. The RTG/Sterling outfit would also run a device that draws in the thin Martian atmosphere and compresses it to create tanks of propellant, eliminating the need for the hopper to carry its own. Heat is then stored in a beryllium core, which the hopper uses to activate the rockets when it’s time to move. The system would allow the thing, when it finishes mapping a site, to “hop” about half a mile in the air and travel up to 9 miles away to map the next site. This process would be much more efficient than using a rover design, which moves at a crawl:

The twin Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity have outlasted their planned three-month lifetime and given us our closest look yet at the Martian surface. But the solar-powered rovers have covered only 21 miles of Martian terrain in their combined 11 years of operation, leaving most of the surface unexplored…

Whereas:

A single rocket launch from Earth could deploy several hoppers at once. A few dozen hoppers could map the entire Martian surface in a few years, Howe says. Hoppers could also serve as a network of weather stations monitoring the Martian climate and could collect a trove of air, rock and soil samples to send back to Earth.

[Link.]

I’m far from convinced on that last point — getting something back to Earth from Mars is a much taller order than bouncing around the low-gravity, low-atmosphere surface where you don’t have to worry about radioactive contamination. Going to Mars and back, even with a robot, is way more than twice the trouble of just going to Mars.

But what I really love is the idea of having a bunch of universities contribute:

The scientific community will ultimately decide what the hoppers will carry, says [CSNR director Steven Howe.] While the Mars rovers employ an armada of tools such as cameras, drills and spectrometers that allow them to photograph, sample and analyze the Martian environment, small hoppers might only carry one or a few tools apiece.

Howe envisions having different universities around the world competing to design their own hopper payloads and experiments. “You can have 10 to 20 universities from around the world, hopping around Mars,” he says.

[Link.]

Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators are the same technology used in the Cassini-Huygens Probe, which freaked people out when it hurtled past Earth a few years ago on its gravity-assisted way to the outer solar system. RTGs provide power through the thermal energy released in radioactive decay. They are used in space probes because they’re one of a very, very few viable choices:

Unlike solar panels, radioisotopes produce steady power even at night or when obscured by Martian dust storms. And unlike chemical fuel, which can burn only once, the same block of radioisotope fuel could be used to launch a hopper over and over again and run its scientific instruments for a decade or more.

In deep-space probes, RTGs are used because probes like Cassini travel so far from the sun that solar power isn’t an option past a certain point.

The Soviet Union used RTGs for lighthouses throughout the Arctic and in its Siberian territories — more than 1,000 of them — which were designed for a 10-year life (and many of them are out in the field after 30+ years). (In 2001, some Georgian woodsmen found one and slept near it as a heat source. This was not a good idea.) The US Air Force still uses RTGs at “sensing stations” in Alaska.

The Soviet lighthouses and USAF RTGs use Strontium-90; Cassini used plutonium. Polonium, americium, curium, prometheum and cobalt isotopes have also been studied.

Depending on how old and weird you are, you may find the above video of the East Coast PVC Band playing “The Mockingbird” the damndest thing you’ve ever seen, or just another entry in the Weird Parade.

The principal instruments appear to be harp, gut-bucket bass, and fiddle, all made from PVC pipe. As for that person down in the front right, I have no idea what the hell is being played there, other than a high-voltage switch wired into the panic centers of my brain. There’s a slide whistle, a stir drum, a little Zamfir-style pan pipes action, and some clackity things that truly scare me. And as to where those barking and farting noises are coming from? I don’t even want to speculate.

Band frontman and PVC-instrument evangelist John Kovac will teach you how to make PVC instruments in his book titled, predictably enough, PVC Instruments and How to Make Them, which is a mere $25 at Kovac’s site. You can buy a PVC Harp Kit for $80 — they provide the strings, fixtures and instructions; you provide the pipe.

You can hear the best renditions of Kovac’s various instruments, including cello, slide guitar and more, at Highlights Kids of all places.

Kovac is also a traditional harpmaker, having authored another book called Harpmaking Made Simple, and one called The Musician’s Guide to Playing By Ear.

But even if you’re just a listener, you can still revel in the sheer WTF that only a PVC string ensemble can inspire. Here’s Kovac playing “Danny Boy.” If you know the words past “The pipes, the pipes are calling,” you get an extra slice of corned beef:

Want to feel extreme pain? Here’s Kovac playing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” on a terrifying device called the Nail Violin. Skip this one if you have metal fillings in your teeth.

The Turanor PlanetSolar in Hamburg. Creative Commons Image by Dr. Karl-Heinz Hochhaus.

The German-built Tûranor PlanetSolar, the world’s largest solar-powered boat, has now traveled over 9,900 nautical miles since launching last March. That beraks the previous distance record for a solar-powered vehicle, which was held by a Canadian solar-powered car.

The boat set out on September 27 of last year for a journey around the world to raise awareness of renewable energy, and recently reached Miami.

The double-hulled, 100-foot vessel runs on nearly 5,800 square feet of photovoltaic panels, which convert solar energy into electricity to run the two electric motors in each hull. The boat’s average speed in its round-the-world journey is expected to be about 8 knots, but it can reportedly reach 14 knots. When underway, the engines are almost totally silent.

Though a number of boats and ships are diesel-electric hybrids, very few are purely electric. Though the Queen Mary 2 is said by The Electric Boat Association to be the world’s largest electric sea vessel, it is in fact a diesel-electric configuration.

The previous distance record for a purely solar-powered vessel was 9,364 miles through the U.S. and Canada for the Midnight Sun Solar Race Team in 2004.

Remember that World’s Largest Online Guitar Lesson thing that Boston-based Berklee College of Music is doing with Lord of the Chin Beard Steve Vai?

Well, according to Gibson.com, it just got another dose of musical mojo in the form of moonlighting British Baron Nigel Tufnel, whose spirited attempt to play “Lick my Love Pump” on the floor of Parliament may have been responsible for House of Lords Act of 1999 that stripped The Rt. Honorable Christopher Haden-Guest of his seat in the House of Lords by limiting its members to just 102 hereditary seats. Pwned!!!!

Tufnel, robbed of gainful employment by the British government, has now been reduced to shilling Vai’s online guitar class, about which he says:

He’s a great guitar player…speedy, you know, all that…lanky sort of dude…there’s a fan that blows his hair…if I have a criticism of Steve Vai…he knows too much, and it’s a bit annoying, you know?

[Link.]

Still, Nigel shows the sort of aplomb that can only come from the man who once played in a band with Rufus Wainwright’s dad. Vai’s 30-minute online lesson is at 1:30pm Eastern Time on Saturday, March 3 at BerkleeMusic.com.

Did you know you’re not supposed to say that in bringing a food product to market, you’re not supposed to say it’s made from “real zombies” — unless, presumably, it really is? That you shouldn’t call it “slimy?” That the government really hates it if you imply that your product is made from mutated human (or formerly-human) flesh?

Well, the makers of Zombie Jerky know it, now that USDA has made them change their labeling to avoid misleading terms like “doesn’t turn you into a zombie.” As reported by David Moye at AOL Weird News, the original labeling for Zombie Jerky included a few choice succulent delicious phrases that tweaked the USDA officials, delaying the product’s entry into American markets:

Seems there were a few sticking points with the label, specifically terms like “mutagen free” and calling the flavor of the jerky “Teriyucky.” The reviewer also suggested removing or modifying statements that the jerky meat came from “naturally occurring zombies” and that it “doesn’t turn you into a zombie.”

Apparently, however, Cancer Man and his secret cabal of black-suited government obfuscators don’t regulate online claims, since Harcos’s website still delivers the truth on the green substance:

Zombie Jerky is a processed jerky made from the finest of zombies (or “cows” as some people might call them). Harcos Laboratories makes it a policy to never create new zombies, and just uses one of the many naturally-occurring zombies that can be found out trudging in the streets. Often times the same zombies that are used for the gathering of our Zombie Blood are used for Zombie Jerky as well. Consider it one of the many ways that Harcos Labs is going green.

Harcos also markets Zombie Blood, which comes in a container that looks like a plasma bottle:

Zombie Blood contains the extra strong green zombie blood cells that helped zombies to become the strongest, most horrifying scourge on the face of our planet. These cells temporarily give you zombie strength in the form of additional energy for sports, long workdays, late night studying, or ironically, killing zombies with a cricket bat…

And yes, you can buy this delicious, nutritious substance at Hot Topic.

…but you can rest assured that Chris Ryall and Ashley Wood’s IDW Publishing comic book Zombies vs. Robots will get a treatment pretty similar to Michael Bay directing a bowl of cereal, now that the famous Hollywood douchebag has signed on to give ZvR a hot steaming dose of his artistic vision.

To be fair, there’s a long smarmy road of hot-under-the-collar rock-video drama to walk in slow-motion in the rain before the film actually reaches the big screen. All that’s happened is that Sony’s acquired the rights to a spec script based on the comic book, for a co-production with Bay’s Platinum Dunes Pictures. About the comic book, the spinoff blog at Comic Book Resources says this:

Debuting in 2006, Zombies Vs. Robots is set on a post-apocalyptic Earth overrun by zombies whose only chance of recovery is a team of robots that must protect and clone the last surviving human baby. It’s unknown how Inherit the Earth differs from the original premise.

Another article on the same site tells me:

The film focuses on a young girl who is the last survivor on earth. She is protected by a group of robots from a pack of zombies that are intelligent and evolved.

Awesome! I’m really looking forward to watching zombies and robots overacting copiously to the sound of wailing cock-rock guitar solos.

Best of all, the project has fan cred. I mean, just check out this insightful comment from the Deadline story:

Very happy for this project. and couldn’t be happier about this for Brad Fuller! he always wears the most interesting shirts. he’s a very handsome man.

There you go…”interesting shirts.” Glad to know this will be a project of substance. That’s Platinum Dunes co-owner Bradley Fuller, incidentally, responsible for the recent remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hitcher, The Amityville Horror, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Friday the 13th. This project just looks better and better, doesn’t it? I couldn’t find a single picture of Fuller wearing an interesting shirt, though. It just be a Hollywood insider thing.

Public Domain photo by the ominously-named "The.Eleventh.One."

You know those women in Virginia who beat the world record for an all-female head-down formation skydive? I know…how could you forget? I was pretty excited, too. So excited, in fact, that I hit that pesky “like” button and get invitations with some frequency from Skydive Orange, the group that hosted that record-breaking, to come skydive with them. Hey, we’re all still figuring out this social marketing thing, right?

In any event, one of their Facebook messages tipped me off to an event I can’t possibly attend (because it’s on the other side of the country). But it let me know about the ultra-cool sport of wingsuit flying. It may look weird, but do you think that stops Batman? Hellz no. The suit may be called a “squirrel suit” or a “birdman suit,” and it’s bad-ass. Wingsuit flying can be performed any time you can get enough altitude to fall for a while, and when wingsuiters jump from, you know, planes and stuff, they also wear parachutes,and end their glide by pulling the ripcord. Apparently Burt Lancaster wore an early wingsuit in the 1969 film The Gypsy Moths.

The Wikipedia article on this sport tells me:

The main difference between the squirrel suit and a flying squirrel is that the real squirrel can use its tail as a rudder and is able to slow itself down while in the air, whereas the wingsuit base jumper still needs a parachute.

Er…yeah. That, and a flying squirrel is roughly the size of a big-ish person’s forearm, giving it lots and lots of wind resistance. A human is roughly the size of a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup, and that’s what said human will look like if he or she forgets that as an organism gets bigger, mass increases much faster than surface area. A cockroach can fall without hurting itself because it’s little; it has lots of surface area in relation to its guts. You? Not so much.

The function of a wingsuit, therefore, in grossly oversimplified terms, is to make your surface area much bigger. Wingsuit flyers are able to glide long distances; horizontal-to-vertical ratios of 2.5:1 are said to be common — in other words, if you jump from 3,000 feet you could cover 7,500 feet horizontally.

But wait…it gets better.

In May of last year, a gent named Visa Parviainen made the first powered birdman flight in Lahti, Finland. The information about it refers to jets, but I”m pretty sure these boots have to be rockets, not jets. (Jets have air intakes; rockets provide their own oxidizers). In the Lahti flight, ascent was accomplished by balloon:

The launch platform selected for the day was provided by the famous Finnish Balloon Bros, who graciously offered their services for this historic event. Visa had designed a unique launch platform to hang outside the balloon to avoid ‘cooking’ the balloon occupants during the ascent to altitude from the exhaust gases of the jet engines.

Once Visa had adorned his birdman suit and rig on the ground, it was time to test the rocket boots. Each jet engine provides around 16kgs of thrust, and is primed with a mix of butane and propane. Once ignited, the engines rely on a steady supply of kerosene (JetA1) fuel. This fuel burns at around the rate of 0.5 litres per minute, on full power, for each jet engine. The combined thrust of both power plants was calculated to be enough to sustain level human flight in a wing suit for an average weight skydiver.

[Link.]

Yup, yes, uh-huh. They said “rocket boots.” But don’t take my word for it. Check out the video; between the clever headline and the first comment (“It’s like squirrel had sex with Ironman”) I’m, like, seriously busting a gut.

Anyway, if you’re in the Baltimore/Washington/Virginia area and want a little wingsuit instruction (presumably sans rocket boots), check out Skydive Orange’s Facebook Page. The wingsuit first-jump instruction is taught by Andrea Olea on May 14, costs $35, and you have to have at least 200 jumps under your belt. “In addition to the first jump course she will be providing wingsuit organizing throughout the weekend. The in-air coaching and load organizing is no cost to the student other than the cost of the student slot compliments of Skydive Orange.”

Do you crave that special combination of glurgy weirdness and comforting predictability that only the Family Circus can provide? But do you worry about the permanent injury on your IQ inflicted by every viewing of that classic cartoon?

Why not inoculate yourself against Family Circus-induced brain damage by pairing that candy-apple morning-paper nightmare with the kind of bewildering yet possibly profound statements of German philosophy that probably sound so familiar to you because you think maybe you’ve heard Bruce Willis spilling them in interviews? Why not get the irresistible cuteness of Family Circus while chuckling at bold pronouncements about human experience and howling merrily, “Too true!”

Why not? Head on over to The Nietzche Family Circus, and that’s exactly what you’ll get: “The Nietzsche Family Circus pairs a randomized Family Circus cartoon with a randomized Friedrich Nietzsche quote.” What easier way could there be to sort of learn philosophy while mining random chance for juicy sig quotes sure to win you status among your friends who have heard that Nietzche is cool?

But the best thing about The Nietzche Family Circus is this: hit “Refresh” 100 times and you’ll not only be way, way smarter; you’ll be just a little more German. Gesundheit!

This is not, of course, the first time the smarmy mopes of Family Circus have been abused. Back in ’99, web developer Greg Galcik shut down The Dysfunctional Family Circus, a more broadly-themed orgy of satanic rituals and cannibalism, after a 90-minute phone call from Family Circus creator Bil Keane.

But surely Keane (now 88) would be able to see that in this case his images are being used for niceness, instead of evil, right? Right?

[Via Susie Bright.]