Welcome to Weirdsville: "I don't feel so good ...."
Another neat piece from our guest blogger M. Christian (from "Meine kleine fabrik") - last time he put a spotlight on the military nuclear almost-accidents; this time he writes about anthrax and nerve gas - all in his inimitable cheerful style. We do wish the subject matter was less "close to home", though.
FOR SALE: ONE ISLAND, OFF THE COAST OF SCOTLAND ONLY ONE PREVIOUS OWNER (HER MAJESTY'S GOVERNMENT) CAVEAT EMPTOR
It's a nice enough place, this barren dome of rock between Gairloch and Ullapool. Conveniently close to the mainland, like most of Scotland it's not without a certain bleak charm. Just the place for a Heathcliff to do some Wuthering Heights or some Shakespearian witches to stir up a bubbling pot of trouble.
But if you'd landed on its shores just 17 years ago, you would have probably had a very different opinion, one formulated just before you began to suffer something kind of like a cold (high fever, aches, trouble breathing, etc.) and then ... well, how to put it?
You'd die.
Anthrax - For most of the world post-9/11, the word has an immediate stomach punch of frightening recognition. But well before some of it was sent out in envelopes piggybacking the terror of Al-Qaeda, anthrax has been tossed around as a weapon of last resort. There's only one problem when you toss anything around: you just might drop it.
Gruinard Island wasn't an accident, but it could be argued that the testing that took place there in 1942 exceeded the British Government's wildest expectations to a frightening degree. The special breed of anthrax, Vollum 14578l, that was released there via special bombs killed the flock of test sheep within only a few days but had the side effect of leaving that Scottish hunk of rock completely uninhabitable for close to fifty years. In 1990 the island was decontaminated and today it's considered safe for man and beast, though I doubt Gruinard will become a common tourist spot.
Ullapool in the Gruinard Bay: (image credit: Dave Henniker)
Once again, Gruinard can't really be considered an "ooops" if the island was intentionally turned into a terrifyingly lethal spot, though that doesn't really make it any easier to think about.
But then there's the town of Sverdlovsk, as it was called back in the days of the USSR (it's now called Ekaterinburg). Lovely little spot, I'm sure, full of all kinds of restfully quiet quaintness and charm, or maybe just the heavy grayness of a typical Soviet town. On a bad day back in 1979, though, Sverdlovsk got even quieter. It was close to a biowarfare lab; one that had an accident.
What happened to Sverdlovsk wasn't known until 1992 when the KGB finally released its death grip on the info. What came to light was this: because of Soviet slippery fingers, some people died from anthrax exposure. Sixty-eight of them to be precise.
Photos of the abandoned Russian biochemical laboratory (with some colorfully deadly stuff still lying around): (see full report here)
Another scary Russian spot is Vozrozhdeniya Island in the Aral Sea. (more info here) Ironically meaning "Rebirth," Vozrozhdeniya was used for extensive biowarfare testing. That is until the Soviet Union fell and researchers stationed there decided to walk off the job in 1991, leaving behind anthrax and bubonic plague containers.
Bad enough, but what's chilling is that the containers weren't treated with the respect they deserved and many began to [shudder] leak. Vozrozhdeniya was cleaned up in 2002 but between 1991 and 2000, the island was simply posted as a no-go zone. Vozrozhdeniya and Sverdlovsk are scary enough, without getting into the fact that anthrax and bubonic plague can survive for decades even in some very harsh environments, but consider this: we know about Sverdlovsk and Vozrozhdeniya. What about other places we don't know about?
Abandoned Biochemistry lab in Russia: (see full picture set here)
The Japanese against the Chinese in World War II, Iraq versus Iran, Irag against the Kurds, the Holocaust, Germany against the allies in World War I, the Aum Shinrikyo cult against Japan, Russian troops against Chechen terrorists: all kinds of countries and groups have used chemical weapons in battle, or as an attempt at genocide, and what hasn't been used has been developed and stored as forms of chemical and biological Mutual Assured Destruction. In addition to the Russians and the British, we've also conducted more than our fair share of experiments with nasty bugs and chemicals. And although the U.S. hasn't had any accidents -- that we know of -- we've not been particularly careful with these nasties, either.
Aral Sea Landscape (close to Vozrozhdenie island):
While anthrax is frightening because of its longevity and biological spread, for really scary stuff, dig into such delights as Novichok, the v-series, the g-series, and VX. Death in the animal kingdom is one thing, but if you really want to kill, leave it up to our own inventiveness: choking, nausea, salivating, urinating, defecating, gastrointestinal pain, vomiting, then comes the twitching and finally coma. Nerve gas exposure is not a fun way to go.
If reading about Vozrozhdeniya and Sverdlovsk leaves a bad taste in the mouth about the way Russia's handled its biological weapons, how about the way the U.S. has handled what could be potentially worse: until 1972 the military basically had carte blanche to dispose of nerve gas agents by dumping them into the ocean. Let's let that sink in for a moment. Nerve and mustard gas -- 64 million tons of it... In the ocean. Not just any ocean, mind you, but in 26 dump sites off the coast of 11 states.
"The Army now admits that it secretly dumped 64 million pounds of nerve and mustard agents into the sea, along with 400,000 chemical-filled bombs, land mines and rockets and more than 500 tons of radioactive waste - either tossed overboard or packed into the holds of scuttled vessels." ThinkProgress
"The SS William Ralston filled with 301,000 mustard gas bombs and 1,500 1-ton canisters of Lewsite -- sinks in the Pacific off San Fransico in 1958" (Photo courtesy of the U.S. Army)
Bad? Hell yes, but it gets worse. "How can it get worse?" you ask. Well, how about this: we know where about half those sites are. But the rest, because of poor record keeping, are a mystery. Those drums are out there, right now, rusting and no doubt leaking, spilling nasty death into the sea, doing who knows what to crabs and lobsters, fish and ocean flora, and thanks to the food chain, probably even us.
Let's hope the only bio-hazard we ever going to encounter would be of a natural kind:
Dumping chemical weapons into the ocean is a scary thought, but most of that stuff degrades and becomes inert very quickly when diluted into that much seawater. Oddly enough, agricultural and industrial run-off is usually much more threatening to ocean ecology than these dumped chemical weapons.
Another casualty was Ray Peck's family in Skull Valley. They were likely hit with low doses of the nerve gas from a Dugway Proving Ground test that accidentally killed 6,000 sheep near their home in 1968. The Pecks lived but haven't been the same since.
There was an incident at Fort Polk, Louisiana in the late spring/early summer of 1987 in which containers of mustard gas were unearthed while trenches for underground cables were being dug. It took nearly a month to clean up the site, and all involved, including myself, were told to keep our mouth's shut. The Army clamped down on this, and the story never went public...how many times has something like this happened, I wonder?
This photo is staged (photoshopped) but too funny ----------------------------- the guy who bumbs a vase is not photoshopped, it was a dutch commercial....
nilbaedThe last one must be true: when the 110 film size was introduced, around 1981, we received in our lab a lot of films to process with the same kind of pictures: an ear (blurred because too close) and a nice landscape, the one located behind the photographer...
The guy with the glasses and the printer hanging on his neck actually works at the Fontana di Trevi in Rome, Italy. I've been there several times and I used to talk a lot with the guy who said me he's been working there for the last 8 years and this is how (through all these years) he is living. He uses to work there with his wife.
Another great automated musical installation is If VI was IX, a huge automated sculpture by Trimpin at the Experience Music Project in Seattle. It plays loops of music in different styles on a number of automated guitars, banjos, keyboards, etc. Plus it looks awesome. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trimpin
I'm surprised you didn't mention the band Captured! By Robots which consists of one human and a band of automatons. See http://www.capturedbyrobots.com/.
If you look at it, you may notice it bears a striking resemblance to the vintage percussion instrument the Deagan Shaker Chimes (AKA "Deagan Organ Chimes"):
As you can read in the article, these vintage production-line chimes WERE based on the Anklung... so really, Mr. Raes' idea is nothing new.
Neither is automating them, apparently. The House On the Rock in Wisconsin has no less than THREE sets of Deagan Shaker [Organ] Chimes, all rigged to play (more-or-less) automatically with various ensembles; respectively the Blue Danube Room (opened in 1991),
The chimes in the Blue Danube ensemble (a rather ersatz affair made from an old Mortier dance organ facade) are especially notable, not only because each chime assembly has been taken out of its stand and arrayed visually at the top of the ensemble (rather than being left in the original rack like the other 2 sets),
but also because they are the only real tuned musical instruments in the whole ensemble! (the string and other non-percussion sounds are produced by synthesizers and emanate from a large speaker hidden behind the tympani on the far right).
You know, even if this was a photoshop project, it is a very good photoshop project. As much fun as it would be to be inside a hobbit house, it would be a huge amount of work. So whether it was a lot of work in the real world with a saw or in the imagination and with photoshop, it is beautiful! I know how hard it is to make something, even in a virtual world. I just finished building some hobbit houses in Second Life, not little squashed things, but nice hobbit houses and I can tell you it isn't easy.
How cute!!! I never knew that pandas were so minute in size, the second photo he is only 5 inches!!!!!
Fred Smilek Email- Fred_Smilek@yahoo.com Webpage- http://sites.google.com/site/fredjsmilek/
Fred Smilek is the acting president of the Society to Save Endangered Species. It was founded in 2006 by Fred Smilek along with his two best friends Charles and Jonathan.
VERY cool! I hate graffiti when it's just a way of pissing on a wall to mark territory but when it's art it's amazing. So glad you included the fun folks of Graffiti Research Labs.
These are great. I noticed a lot of fun and artistic graffiti when I studied abroad in Lausanne, Switzerland. I don't have all of my favorites online yet, but here are some good ones:
http://picasaweb.google.com/nora.mcdaniel/Graffiti/photo#5190169559015112306 (on a the back of a podium at our technical school)
http://picasaweb.google.com/nora.mcdaniel/Graffiti/photo#5190166410804083714 I found this one around town. The writer wrote "you wish"...
http://picasaweb.google.com/nora.mcdaniel/Graffiti/photo#5190166410804083714 This was on the inside of a bathroom door at school. It says "my height," "my nose," and "my mouth."
check that out, Its got the most AMAZING graffiti posts i mean it Im a graffiti artist here in Sao Paulo, brasil Iv been all over, but nothing compares to the art we have here so check out the Sao Paulo section With love,
OK I call hoax on that Calgary abandoned subway pic. I lived there during the 70s and early 80s during LRT construction (C-Train) and although there is one short underground portion soth of downtown (Cemetery Hill), there were never any tunnels built under the downtown area, all the lines were planned from the outset to run along the 7th avenue Transit Mall.
I have a hard time figuring out where in Calgary that alleged photo is from, there are no obvious identifying landmarks. Source?
The information about Calgary's tunnel under downtown can be found in the book "Calgary- Secrets of the City". I would list author and publisher but alas my books are packed at the moment
Stampede city gal..... I have lived here all my 32 years and in fact the tunnels do exist. If you go to the alderman's level of city hall parkade, there is a steel ladder. This descends to below the parkade, where the ORIGINAL plans for part of 7th ave c-train lines run. You can do a search and find them. There has been some hoopla about what to do with this vast amount of opens space built below the existing lines. There have even been suggestions in the Calgary herald about using it as part of the Downtown Public library!
If you have ever ridden the c-train just as you leave the Victoria park train station and head into downtown it is a very short, but completely underground section(before the cemetery which is south of the Erlton station) As you are surfacing, you can plainly see where the tunnel was suppose to branch into two, where it would connect UNDER city hall, not go around it as it does now.
I had seen those shadow sculptures about a month ago and decided to try and achieve one myself. I created the shadow of a cat. There is a picture located here: http://nicolerae365.blogspot.com/2007/07/shadow-art.html
No matter how hard I try, I can't see that girl spinning clockwise, but I think it's actually a mental map problem in my case. You see, I know how to dance, so the only logical way to spin is with the leg trailing, so my brain automatically rejects the alternate interpretation.
The Ferris Wheel right after it works fine, but the green dot doesn't get to eat all the magenta ones— tricksy little guys keep popping back up.
its indeed cheaper to recover any lost data in Africa than in the west send your damaged Drives,Corrupt RAID Servers to East African Data Handlers, ITS CHEAPER TO RECOVER YOU ALL YOUR LOST DATA!
B.Durbin it sounds like the problem is that you are looking at it as the same leg. Don't think of it as one leg either trailing or leading, rather think of it as the right leg trailing for it to spin in one direction, then think of it as the left leg trailing and it will spin in the other direction.
The trick with the spinning girl is to concentrate on the shadow of her toes on the leading foot.If you catch it just as it comes into view on the left side, she reverses direction...then on the right side, she reverses direction again. Quite an amazing little illusion. Thanks, Stephen B.
"QUANTUM SHOT" #236
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I think I feel a bit green around the gills. And I admit, it's likely to make me blanch a little when I think about going to the Maryland beaches.
Gruinard Island Coordinates
Latitude 57°53'32.80"N
Longitude 5°28'7.13"W
Dumping chemical weapons into the ocean is a scary thought, but most of that stuff degrades and becomes inert very quickly when diluted into that much seawater. Oddly enough, agricultural and industrial run-off is usually much more threatening to ocean ecology than these dumped chemical weapons.
I clicked on the link to thinkprogress.com. Credibility went out the door for this entire page. think bee ess.com would be more correct.
and lots of chemical, nuclear, and bio weapons oops in the US of A over the years. Lots of it happened in Utah.
tried to put a link up too, but it ate the link
www.deseretnews.com/dn/sview/1,3329,250010322,00.html
^ I was just about to post the same link James...
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,250010322,00.html
Another casualty was Ray Peck's family in Skull Valley. They were likely hit with low doses of the nerve gas from a Dugway Proving Ground test that accidentally killed 6,000 sheep near their home in 1968. The Pecks lived but haven't been the same since.
There was an incident at Fort Polk, Louisiana in the late spring/early summer of 1987 in which containers of mustard gas were unearthed while trenches for underground cables were being dug. It took nearly a month to clean up the site, and all involved, including myself, were told to keep our mouth's shut. The Army clamped down on this, and the story never went public...how many times has something like this happened, I wonder?
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