Category: Defence

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Limit Telephotography

Dugway by Trevor Paglen

Trevor Paglen has created some beautiful photos of remote military installations using a process he called limit telephotography.

Limit-telephotography involves photographing landscapes that cannot be seen with the unaided eye. The technique employs high powered telescopes whose focal lengths range between 1300mm and 7000mm. At this level of magnification, hidden aspects of the landscape become apparent.

The image at right shows the US Army’s Chemical and Biological Weapons Proving Ground at Dugway, Utah, from a distance of 22 miles.

Paglen was also involved in the project Terminal Air, which explores the interconnections between government agencies and private contractors involved with the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program.

Hat tip to 3 Quarks Daily.

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Colossus reborn! And the race is on…

Photograph of Colossus computer

Colossus, the world’s first programmable digital computer that Alan Turing and the team at Bletchley Park used to crack the German Enigma code in WWII, is being rebuilt.

And what’s even more cool, it’s going to be used in a race against a modern PC to crack codes!

Tony Sale and his team of British vintage computer enthusiasts have a job a head of them, as the original Colossus machines were destroyed at the end of WWII. However the surviving Colossus engineers have been found, and they’re on the case.

Hat tip to Boing Boing.

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Hello Kitty, you’re dead, and other surprise products

Photograph of Hello Kitty-branded AK-47

Ah yes, what every post-modern terrorist needs: a Hello Kitty brand AK-47. A steal at just US$1072.95! Thanks for the pointer, Boing Boing.

I think it even beats the bacon chocolate bar! “Crisp, buttery, compulsively irresistible bacon and milk chocolate combination has long been a favourite of mine,” says the creator. Gluten-free, apparently, so it’s healthy, OK? Thanks again, Boing Boing.

[Update 16 January 2008: This page is still getting several hundred visitors a month. I’m curious. How did you get to this page? What brought you here? And while you’re here, do feel free to look around and maybe even post a few comments.]

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Two quick reads, and a quote

Yes, I’ve been busy. I don’t want to fall off your radar entirely, so here’s a couple of things I’ve read recently which will be good for your brain.

  1. All bloggers can now stop writing. The erudite and exceptionally English Stephen Fry has joined the blogosphere. His first post is an astoundingly detailed and well-informed essay on the evolution of the Smartphone. Anyone who can talk intelligently about Project Dynabook is worth masturbating over, IMHO. Pass the tissues please, Stephen?
  2. “Karl Rove could put faecal matter on his lapel and call it a boutonnière. Goodbye and good riddance,” said the redoubtable Garrison Keillor in No wonder they called him Turd Blossom. OK, not recent news, but a fun read. Thanks to Perceptric Forum for the pointer.

And the quote?

Admit it — back in the 20th Century, none of you imagined that World War III would be Robots vs Muslims. Seems obvious now.

The quote is from Gizmodo’s coverage of this video of a Packbot robot getting blown up by an IED. Thanks to The Long Tail for the pointer.

And now, to find time to write some more…

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Big boring “top secret” yawn

Photograph of nuclear submarine propeller

Apparently this photograph from Microsoft’s Virtual Earth is exposing some big dark secret — the shape of the propeller on a US Navy Ohio-class nuclear submarine. I reckon it’s a big “So what?”

Now the Sydney Morning Herald article is correct: the propeller design is an integral part of a submarine’s ability to remain undetected. The specific shape of the tips helps prevent noisy “cavitation”, the formation of tiny bubbles, which can reveal the sub’s location.

But let’s be real. This is one, grainy frame from a commercial satellite. The crucial propeller tip is about 4 pixels across.

The Russians, the Chinese and perhaps other people have military reconnaissance satellites with much, much higher resolution cameras — and they’d specifically target nuclear submarine bases trying to take photos. The 18 Ohio-class subs are so old they were going to be retired in 2002 — although a few are being kept on for other duties now that Destroying The World has gone out of fashion. Between them, those two facts lead me to believe that “They” already have plenty of good, clear pictures of those propellers.

And that’s assuming one of the many, many workers involved in the design, building and maintenance of the subs wasn’t persuaded to take a few happy snaps in exchange for a hand with his mortgage payments.

No, I don’t think this is revealing a deep, dark secret. I reckon it means the US Navy doesn’t care any more. But it will give the military geeks without access to classified data the chance to have a tug.