The Stoner Arms Dealers

The e-mail confirmed it: everything was finally back on schedule after weeks of maddening, inexplicable delay. A 747 cargo plane had just lifted off from an airport in Hungary and was banking over the Black Sea toward Kyrgyzstan, some 3,000 miles to the east. After stopping to refuel there, the flight would carry on to Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. Aboard the plane were 80 pallets loaded with nearly 5 million rounds of ammunition for AK-47s, the Soviet-era assault rifle favored by the Afghan National Army.

Reading the e-mail back in Miami Beach, David Packouz breathed a sigh of relief. The shipment was part of a $300 million contract that Packouz and his partner, Efraim Diveroli, had won from the Pentagon to arm America's allies in Afghanistan. It was May 2007, and the war was going badly. After six years of fighting, Al Qaeda remained a menace, the Taliban were resurgent, and NATO casualties were rising sharply. For the Bush administration, the ammunition was part of a desperate, last-ditch push to turn the war around before the U.S. presidential election the following year. To Packouz and Diveroli, the shipment was part of a major arms deal that promised to make them seriously rich.

Packouz and Diveroli had picked the perfect moment to get into the arms business. To fight simultaneous wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush administration had decided to outsource virtually every facet of America's military operations, from building and staffing Army bases to hiring mercenaries to provide security for diplomats abroad. After Bush took office, private military contracts soared from $145 billion in 2001 to $390 billion in 2008. Federal contracting rules were routinely ignored or skirted, and military-industrial giants like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin cashed in as war profiteering went from war crime to business model. Why shouldn't a couple of inexperienced newcomers like Packouz and Diveroli get in on the action? After all, the two friends were after the same thing as everyone else in the arms business — lots and lots and lots of money.

"I was going to make millions," Packouz says. "I didn't plan on being an arms dealer forever — I was going to use the money to start a music career. I had never even owned a gun. But it was thrilling and fascinating to be in a business that decided the fate of nations. Nobody else our age was dealing weapons on an international level."

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Trend Setter

Lady Gaga
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Spring is Just Around the Corner

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Martha My Dear

I love this Paul McCartney tune about his old English sheepdog (um, Martha), and his girlfrend at the time, Jane Asher.  Hey...don't ask me, whatever works.

I particularly like Gerald's version.  He does a great arrangement and his singing is spot on.  Laurence Juber does the virtuoso version, but this is the one I like.  Man, I wish I could play like this.

Koi

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Sion Milosky (1976-2011)

Sion Milosky had surfed waves just like this one before. But this time, the colossal wall of water at Mavericks plunged him deep into the ocean and would not let him go.

Milosky, a famed big wave surfer from Hawaii, died late Wednesday after wiping out and being caught in a two-wave hold-down off the coast of California's infamous Mavericks Beach, south of San Francisco. Other surfers watched on in horror as a rogue wave broke on top of 35-year-old Milosky, a fixture in the small, elite world of big-wave surfing.

In the moments after the wave broke, other surfers said they saw Milosky's board popping up out of the water, ominously. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Nathan Fletcher, another big-wave surfer in the water at the time, jumped on a jet ski and sped toward the board in a bid to rescue Milosky. But 20 minutes later, Milosky's body was found floating face down in a nearby jetty.

"He looked perfect," fellow surfer Grant Washburn told the paper. "They'd removed his wetsuit, his eyes were closed, no apparent damage of any kind. Just a perfectly peaceful, healthy person. You felt like you could just jolt him back to life."

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photos: Bryce Johnson and Chuck Babbitt

How To Make a Viral Video

Chatroulette Love Song could well be the most romantic proposal ever seen on the internet. And what makes it even more amazing is that the pair in the video are complete strangers. The YouTube video has raised the bar on romancing a girl.

Chatroulette Love Song has become a big viral hit, with almost 2 million hits so far. For your info, Chatroulette is a site that matches you up with random strangers for a video chat.

The video features a geeky looking guy serenading a random brunette, called Diana, who he found on the web chat room, Chatroulette.

He starts off strumming his guitar and singing: "I was close to logging off but something caught my eye."

The romantic video features backing singers and a dinner-for-two complete with a pizza decorated with a heart.

There are also lovely touches which are sure to get the viewer wondering how it was done, like Diana's name on the place card at the table and a drawing of the two of them in a heart.

It might look spontaneous but the idea took more than two months to prepare.

The people behind the video are Danish friends Rune Iversen, 28, and Jeppe Vejs, 27, although neither play the main character.

Rune says: "We prepared it for two and a half months. There was a lot of effort put into giving each participant as little to do as possible but still completing their tasks.

"Every bit of it is real. We were on Chatroulette and she came up randomly, after having filmed for about 10 minutes, and we had choreographed it meticulously and we just played the song for her."

Rune came up with the idea after writing a thesis on how to make a successful viral video.

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Actors Acting Out

Internationally acclaimed photographer and artist Howard Schatz has had his work featured in galleries, exhibits and museums around the world. He has also published over 17 books of his incredible work.

In his book In Character: Actors Acting, Schatz captures actors who are doing what they do best: acting. Schatz takes portraiture of actors into another realm altogether, by directing them in the development of specific characters.

KEN JEONG
Left: You’re the new longboarder on the secret beach with the famous break, preparing for the onslaught from the territorial locals.
Center: You’re a suburban car dealer demonstrating in your three a.m. ad slot how much your customers $$$AVE when they come to you!
Right: You’re a Romanian gymnastics coach, exasperated at the failings of your 12-year-old star pupil, screaming, “You are imbecile!”

 

JANE LYNCH
Left: You’re a child swallowing a spoonful of medicine that your mom promised would taste good, and now she’s telling you that if it didn’t taste awful it wouldn’t work.
Center: You’re at a social dinner with your work colleagues and their spouses, desperately trying to signal your partner to stop talking so freely about your shared sex life.
Right: You’re a bunny-level skier who has decided to try a black-diamond slope, and now, with no idea how to stop, you’re headed straight for a tree.

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How To Hack Frequent Flyer Programs

In this video from OSCON Ignite, Evan "rabble" Hanshaw-Plath gives a five-minute primer on gaming frequent flier programs to get free flights, perks and bonuses. I actually met Evan on an airplane -- we randomly had adjacent seats on a flight during my last book tour, and I noticed he was wearing a FOO Camp shirt and we struck up a long and interesting conversation.

[ed. note.  even if most people wouldn't go through the lengths described here, there are still some useful websites provided to maximize your mileage accounts]

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Our Pets, Ourselves

We Were Kittens Once, and Young

All of our cats are dying.

A few months ago, Rebecca’s passed away after a short illness. Then, a few weeks ago, Choire’s died after a long one.

As for me, well, I always assumed Frog would go first. Unlike his happy-go-lucky brother, Frog was the one who startled easily, who stared off into space with a melancholy and pridefulness that seemed to suggest the accumulated wisdom of generations. I decided early on, probably after finding him regarding me thoughtfully when I stumbled through the door drunk, that he was the more emotional and fragile of the two, although it’s possible I was projecting. (I was probably just projecting.)

Admittedly, I suffer from a grim personality quirk in which the joy of welcoming a pet into my home is immediately followed by grief in the knowledge that I’ll likely outlive it. But everything feels different this time around.

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My Dog Days Are Over

Lee was everyone’s favorite dog in part because she didn’t make it easy for you to like her. She was stubborn and needy and scared of almost everything: kids, loud noises, basketballs and footballs, dancing — any sudden movement, really — and cats. She wouldn’t fetch. She barked, loudly, when people were having sex. When friends came over she would insist on being petted and if they stopped she would nudge them with her head, sometimes so hard that people who were holding glasses of wine spilled it on themselves.

But she was also silly and loyal and had a perfect round tan spot on her white back, and she wiggled her behind when she walked, and when you let her off the leash in the park she would bound toward the dogs who still hadn’t been neutered and flirt shamelessly with them, even if they were a fraction of her size. When she finally trusted people she would let them play with her and rub her tummy. She once stole a carrot cake off the back of a kitchen counter and ate the whole thing.

In the eight years I had her, Lee was my only constant: I lived in seven apartments in two cities; I am on my fourth job, not counting internships and freelance work; I went to two graduate programs, one of which I finished, one of which I didn’t; I dated a bunch of guys, some for a while; I made and lost friends. And knowing I had to take care of her meant I couldn’t do certain things that people do in their 20s, like take spontaneous trips or stay out until dawn.

Even though I knew on a rational level that she wouldn’t always be there, I sort of assumed that she would be. I couldn’t picture a world of mine in which she wasn’t.

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Master Caricaturist

Jason Seiler began his professional career in a rather unorthodox way. After getting in trouble for drawing parodies of his history teacher in high school, Jason’s quick-thinking principle hired him to draw caricatures of different faculty members. A professional artist was born. Jason went on to study fine art illustration at the American Academy of Art in Chicago for two years before beginning his professional work in earnest.

Jason’s humorous illustrations have been featured as covers and interior pieces for TIME, Business Week, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, MAD magazine, GOLF magazine, KING magazine, Revolver, Guitar Player, The Village Voice, Penguin Group, Disney, The New York Observer, D Magazine, The Bloomberg Market, New Line Cinema, Universal Pictures, Aardman Animation, and Sony Image, among others. Jason also worked as a character designer on Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland, helping to create such characters as the Red Queen, the Tweedles, the Bandersnatch and more.

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Jason Seiler website

Singing The Body Electric

Experiments could lead to ways of melding minds with machines.

 

Nerve cell tendrils readily thread their way through tiny semiconductor tubes, researchers find, forming a crisscrossed network like vines twining towards the sun. The discovery that offshoots from nascent mouse nerve cells explore the specially designed tubes could lead to tricks for studying nervous system diseases or testing the effects of potential drugs. Such a system may even bring researchers closer to brain-computer interfaces that seamlessly integrate artificial limbs or other prosthetic devices.

“This is quite innovative and interesting,” says nanomaterials expert Nicholas Kotov of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. “There is a great need for interfaces between electronic and neuronal tissues.”

To lay the groundwork for a nerve-electronic hybrid, graduate student Minrui Yu of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and his colleagues created tubes of layered silicon and germanium, materials that could insulate electric signals sent by a nerve cell. The tubes were various sizes and shapes and big enough for a nerve cell’s extensions to crawl through but too small for the cell’s main body to get inside.

When the team seeded areas outside the tubes with mouse nerve cells the cells went exploring, sending their threadlike projections into the tubes and even following the curves of helical tunnels, the researchers report in an upcoming ACS Nano.

“They seem to like the tubes,” says biomedical engineer Justin Williams, who led the research. The approach offers a way to create elaborate networks with precise geometries, says Williams. “Neurons left to their own devices will kind of glom on to one another or connect randomly to other cells, neither of which is a good model for how neurons work.”

At this stage, the researchers have established that nerve cells are game for exploring the tiny tubes, which seem to be biologically friendly, and that the cell extensions will follow the network to link up physically. But it isn’t clear if the nerves are talking to each other, sending signals the way they do in the body. Future work aims to get voltage sensors and other devices into the tubes so researchers can eavesdrop on the cells. The confining space of the little tunnels should be a good environment for listening in, perhaps allowing researchers to study how nerve cells respond to potential drugs or to compare the behavior of healthy neurons with malfunctioning ones such as those found in people with multiple sclerosis or Parkinson’s.

Eventually, the arrangement may make it easier to couple living cells with technology on a larger scale, but getting there is no small task, says neuroengineer Ravi Bellamkonda of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.

“There’s a lot of nontrivial engineering that has to happen, that’s the real challenge,” says Bellamkonda. “It’s really cool engineering, but what it means for neuroscience remains to be seen.”

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More Fun With Algorithms

Does Anne Hathaway News Drive Berkshire Hathaway's Stock?

 

Given the awesome correlating powers of today's stock trading computers, the idea may not be as far-fetched as you think.

A couple weeks ago, Huffington Post blogger Dan Mirvish noted a funny trend: when Anne Hathaway was in the news, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway's shares went up. He pointed to six dates going back to 2008 to show the correlation. Mirvish then suggested a mechanism to explain the trend: "automated, robotic trading programming are picking up the same chatter on the Internet about 'Hathaway' as the IMDb's StarMeter, and they're applying it to the stock market."

The idea seems ridiculous. But the more I thought about the strange behavior of algorithmic trading systems and the news that Twitter sentiment analysis could be used by stock market analysts and the fact that many computer programs are simply looking for tradeable correlations, I really started to wonder if Mirvish's theory was plausible.

I called up John Bates, a former Cambridge computer scientist whose company Progress Software works with hedge funds and others to help them find new algorithmic strategies. I asked, "Is this at all possible?" And I was surprised that he answered, roughly, "Maybe?"

"We come across all sorts of strange things in our line of business, strange correlations," Bates told me. "And I've had a lot of interest in this for a long time because it's really often the secret source for certain hedge funds."

Companies are trying to "correlate everything against everything," he explained, and if they find something that they think will work time and again, they'll try it out. The interesting, thing, though, is that it's all statistics, removed from the real world. It's not as if a hedge fund's computers would spit the trading strategy as a sentence: "When Hathway news increases, buy Berkshire Hathaway." In fact, traders won't always know why their algorithms are doing what they're doing. They just see that it's found some correlation and it's betting on Buffett's company.

Now, generally the correlations are between some statistical indicator and a stock or industry. "Let's say a new instrument comes to an exchange, you might suddenly notice that that an instrument moves in conjunction with the insurance sector," Bates posited. But it's thought that some hedge funds are testing strategies out to mine news and social media datasets for other types of correlations.

Does it happen a lot? Bates doesn't think so, but it's not out of the question. And, in any case, we're going to see a lot of strange trading strategies as hedge fund managers' computing resources grow ever more powerful and they are actually able to "correlate everything against everything." Oh, it's raining in Kazakhstan? Buy pork bellies in Brazil! And sell wheat in Kansas! Dump Apple stock! Why? Because the computer says that the 193 out of the last 240 times it rained in Kazakhstan, pork bellies in Brazil went up, and wheat prices and Apple shares went down.

It sounds crazy, sure, but they're the ones making 10 figures.

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Moth Wing Scales

Scanning electron micrograph of the scales on the wing of a Madagascan moon moth, (Argema mittrei). This endangered moth is also known as the Comet moth, because of its characteristic long tail. The tail span is 15 cm and wing span 20 cm, making it one of the world’s largest silk moths. Creator Kevin MacKenzie has coloured the scales in this micrograph light green to reflect the natural colour of the moth.  (Credit, via)

Rather similar to the more familiar Luna moths, like the one we raised last year:

And, BTW, if you would like to take your own scanning EMs and don't have access to a scanning electron microscope, you can build one in your basement.  This guy did - and it works (video at the link).

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Useful Sponge Facts

From the collections of the Science Museum, London.


Sponges were widely used as contraceptives in the 1800s and 1900s. They were used in conjunction with liquids thought to have spermicidal properties... These included quinine and olive oil. This marine sponge was held in cotton netting to aid its extraction. During the 1950s and 1960s, sponges were often advertised under ‘feminine hygiene’ rather than contraception as for some parts of society contraception was a taboo. Many spermicidals were of little contraceptive value. Some even doubled as household cleaners. One was advertised as a dual treatment for ‘successful womanhood’ (contraception) and athlete’s foot.

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It's a Black and White World

Find This Man a Wife

And he promises to give you $10,000.  We talk to the guy behind HookChasUp.com -- and make him cry.

When I arranged to meet up with Chas, a 40-year-old San Franciscan promising $10,000 to whoever introduces him to his future wife, I expected a sales pitch. I figured he was either a cynic seeking viral fame or a lonely playboy who believed money could buy him anything. The last thing I anticipated was that I would make him cry.  But the man behind HookChasUp.com, a site that is going viral thanks to its buzzy premise, isn't what he at first seems.

The site is full of professional photos of himself and pithy, ironic lines -- for example, "If this helps me find a soulmate, it'll be worth bazillions. But I don't have bazillions. $10k seemed to say, 'I'm serious but not insane,'" and "I'm an optimistic guy. I try to see the good in things. Despite a world full of angry drivers, suicide bombers, and people who litter, life is too short for negativity." It seems too high-gloss to be genuine -- but the shots were taken by a photographer friend and it just so happens that Chas is a copywriter for an ad agency. "I'm so used to using my creativity to solve other people's problems," he tells me. "Now I'm using it to solve my own problem."

That seemed plausible enough -- but it wasn't until a woman interrupted us in the middle of our interview at a local Starbucks that I got a glimpse of the real, unvarnished Chas. She jutted out her hand, introduced herself and explained that she worked for none other than the social network: "You sparked an entire internal conversation. Everyone at Facebook is like, 'I love that guy! The world is better when it's social!'" When she explained that she had immediately recognized him as "the dude from the website," he clasped his chest: "Oh my gosh. My heart rate is like literally two times what it usually is." Then he started to tear up. "It's just really overwhelming." This was either the best actor I'd ever laid eyes on -- or a genuine, decent human being looking for love in the best way he knows how.

It seems a questionable approach. Why would strangers on the Web do a better job of setting you up than real-life acquaintances who know you well? If you look at it from another angle, though, he's essentially buying viral ad space. He's paying for crowd-sourced matchmaking. His site wouldn't get nearly so much attention without the offer of $10K. And yet he tells me that approximately half of the 700 or so e-mails he's received in the two weeks since the site launched explicitly say: Screw the ten grand, I just really want you to meet my friend. "People want their friends to be happy and I'm putting myself out there saying, 'I want to start a family,' and I really do." He really does, people. Toward the end of our conversation, I told him that he was the opposite of what I'd expected -- that he was shockingly kind, sweet and genuine. His eyes really started to tear up this time and his lip quivered.

It turns out he wasn't the jaded one; I was. Before meeting with Chas, I posed a question to my Twitter followers: "What should I ask a man promising $10K to the person who sets him up with his future wife?" The responses were unsurprisingly wry, for example, "Is he expecting a refund in the event of divorce?" and, more succinctly put, "www.mailorderbride.com/kthanxbai." The friend who had introduced me to his site jokingly e-mailed to call dibs on the $10,000 in the case that I hit it off with Chas and ended up marrying him myself. I joked to a co-worker: "I wonder if I get the ten grand if his future wife finds him through my article." What a cynical bunch!

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Dear Blank, Please Blank

Dear blank, please blank is quite the funny website where you can anonymously get all your frustrations, bad experiences or just everyday thoughts out in the open.

Now Dear blank, please blank has teamed up with the Sapling Press to make these funny and beautiful letterpress. Buy ‘em on Etsy here.

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Come As You Are

 

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Corporate Ethics

WASHINGTON — In 2009, top aides to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi called together 15 executives from global energy companies operating in Libya’s oil fields and issued an extraordinary demand: Shell out the money for his country’s $1.5 billion bill for its role in the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 and other terrorist attacks.

If the companies did not comply, the Libyan officials warned, there would be “serious consequences” for their oil leases, according to a State Department summary of the meeting.

Many of those businesses balked, saying that covering Libya’s legal settlement with victims’ families for acts of terrorism was unthinkable. But some companies, including several based in the United States, appeared willing to give in to Libya’s coercion and make what amounted to payoffs to keep doing business, according to industry executives, American officials and State Department documents.

In the first few years after trade restrictions were lifted — Colonel Qaddafi had given up his country’s nuclear capabilities and pledged to renounce terrorism — many American companies were hesitant to do business with Libya’s government, officials said. But with an agreement on a settlement over Libya’s role in the Pan Am bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, finally reached in 2008, officials at the United States Commerce Department began to serve as self-described matchmakers for American businesses.

At least a dozen American corporations, including Boeing, Raytheon, ConocoPhillips, Occidental, Caterpillar and Halliburton, gained footholds, or tried to do so. In May, the Obama administration and the Qaddafi government signed a new trade agreement, designed, according to Gene Cretz, the American ambassador to Libya, to “broaden and deepen our bilateral economic relations.”

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