Dragonflies Are Really Good Hunters, Not Drones

(via Tom Saper Photography)

The problem--or is it the upside?--with the word "drone" is that it's taking on a seemingly infinite number of definitions. The irony is that even though the majority of these definitions don't have shit to do with the hunter-killer aerial robots that traverse the Middle East and the Horn of Africa, snuffing out suspected bad guys, for most of the public "drone" still means one thing, and one thing only: an unmanned, remotely piloted, weaponized flying thing. Just ask the New York Times' Natalie Angier. 

Not to salt too hard on Angier or the Grey Lady, or anything. Angier's recent and fascinating piece on dragonflies titled "Nature's Drone, Pretty and Deadly," is a must read.

But here's the thing. When you spend an entire feature chronicling the shockingly higher-level processes by which dragonflies stalk and eat prey--and fuck mates--all in the service of highlighting some bio-mimicked link between killer insects and killer robots, you have to be sure enough similarities even exist to support that correlation. (You should also maybe be sure that the body of said feature employs the D-word more than once? I don't know. Just a thought.)

Nevertheless: Dragonflies are drones! It's a cute, if timely analogy. Too bad it hits far off the mark. If anything, the only prevailing link between these winged insects and, say, the Predator, is the word "predator." Here's why.   

NATURE ALREADY HAS A THE DRONE

Let's start from the top. Saying the modern dragonfly is "nature's drone" is like saying the modern great white shark is "nature's Jaws." It's as unnecessary and borderline redundant as it is misleading. Why? Nature already has a drone, and it's called--wait for it--the drone. By this I mean a male honey bee that can neither sting nor make honey, and whose sole purpose is reproduction. 

In the purest sense, then, "drones" are lazy and non-lethal. To hear Angier tell it, dragonflies aren't any of those things. 

DRONES ARE RELIABLY BLIND

Angier takes pains to plot all the ins and outs of the insect's shockingly precise and downright brutal hunting chops. "Dragonflies are magnificent aerialists," she writes, "able to hover, dive, fly backward and upside down" and almost effortlessly pivot 360-degrees on course for food and mates. It's this sort of beeline (sorry) interception that Rober M. Olberg, a dragonfly researcher at Union College, tells Angier is something of an "old mariner's trick." Angier explains:

If you’re heading north on a boat and you see another boat moving, say, 30 degrees to your right, and if as the two of you barrel forward the other boat remains at that 30-degree spot in your field of view, vector mechanics dictate that your boats will crash: better slow down, speed up or turn aside.

In aviation speak, that's called "sense and avoid." It's a human pilot's evolutionary ability to realize when something (another plane, a "drone") is careening too close for comfort, and to then get the hell out of the way, to change course, and quick. "Drones" don't yet have that awareness. This is proving to be one of the bigger roadblocks to not only ensuring that hulking Predators and Reapers don't collide with commercial and passenger airliners, but in integrating smaller, so-called civilian drones into domestic airspace in the run-up to NextGen Airspace. 

DRONES ARE A MEDIOCRE SHOT

Fact: We will never (ever, ever) know exactly how many people have been knocked out by Hellfire missiles launched from American drones in the shadow wars. But we can speculate. And for all we know, "drones" are--and have been--tragically imprecise in targeting folks for death. To the Bureau of Investigative Journalism's count, of the roughly 2,537-3,581 people killed in the 366 drone strikes between 2004 and 2013 in Pakistan alone, anywhere between 440 and 884 were innocent civilians. Hardly precise.

Dragonflies, on the other hand, are apparently the Robin Hood's of the arthropods. Dragonflies are so good, Angier reports, that they manage to pick off targets in midair an astonishing 95 percent of the time. 

In other words, it's a fool's errand--if not quite crass--to try and equate the accuracy of "nature's drone" to that of counterterror's drones. 

Again, this is not to rag on Angier. She does hit one similarity on the head. For creatures only boasting 1 million brain neurons, dragonflies have impeccable vision. Much like humans (which have about 100 billion brain neurons) are able to focus in on a specific target at a party, tuning out everything else, so too can dragonflies single out targets. I can't help but call to mind the coming Gorgon Stare drone-imaging technology when I hear that dragonfly eyes are "each built of 30,000 pixel-like facets" that taken together account for pretty much the 'lil bugger's entire head.

Still, this isn't enough to support Angier's (well-researched!) analogy. And that's a buzzkill. 

Reach Brian at brian@motherboard.tv. @thebanderson // @VICEdrone

Bomb hits Somalia's biggest bank

By Abdi Sheikh 

MOGADISHU - A bomb exploded outside the headquarters of Somalia's biggest bank on Tuesday, wounding at least two people hours after al Qaeda-linked militants ordered the company cease operations in areas under their control.

The blast outside Dahabshiil's office in Mogadishu shattered its doors and littered the area with debris, police said.

“A remote-controlled bomb planted in front of Mogadishu's Dahabshiil bank and money transfer headquarters injured two guards,” police captain Nur Hassan told Reuters.

Earlier, members of Islamist group al Shabaab walked into Dahabshiil branches in areas of Somalia under their control and demanded they close, accusing the company of working for aid agencies they have banned in their territories, according to a statement on the movement's website.

Money transfer firms like Dahabshiil are vital to the Horn of Africa country's fractured economy, which lacks a developed banking sector after 20 years of civil conflict.

Security in the coastal capital Mogadishu has improved greatly since al Shabaab fled the city after a military offensive in August 2011. But bombings and assassinations - blamed on militants - are still frequent.

Police said they had yet to identify who was behind the blast, but that a mobile phone attached to the device was used to detonate it. It was the first such attack to target a bank.

“The explosion crashed open the main entrance glass window but good luck it was dark, and customers were not near,” a Dahabshiil worker, who asked not to be named, told Reuters.

Somalis typically transfer money via “hawala” agents, an informal system based on trust, including $2 billion the Mogadishu government says Somalis abroad send home every year.

Dahabshiil declined to comment on the threats by Shabaab, which in 2010 briefly banned money transfers by mobile phone, saying it helped feed Western capitalism.

“I heard they accused us of allowing aid agencies to send cash through our bank,” Dahabshiil employee Sabdow Ali said from the al Shabaab-controlled southern town of Hudur.

Al Shabaab has thrown out more than a dozen humanitarian groups from areas under its control in the past three years, including the United Nations' food agency, the International Committee of the Red Cross and Islamic Relief.

The militants say aid creates dependency.

In control of much of the capital Mogadishu between 2009 and 2011, the group has been driven from most major cities in central and southern Somalia by African Union peacekeepers.

But in rural areas its fighters are notorious for amputating thieves' limbs and stoning to death women suspected of adultery, under a strict interpretation of sharia, Islamic law. - Reuters

Eritrea: Scenarios For Future Transition

By Albany Tribune

Change is in the air in Eritrea, a highly authoritarian state, but any political transition will require internal political inclusion and channels for external dialogue if it is

to preserve stability and improve Eritrean life.

Concerned Western partners, neighbours and other governments with special relations with Asmara need urgently to pay more attention to the small, isolated country that has remained mobilised on a war footing since a ceasefire ended its conflict with Ethiopia in 2000 and undertake planning and proactive measures to help avert internal chaos and wider regional troubles. Eritrea: Scenarios for Future Transition, the latest report from the International Crisis Group, examines the regime’s vulnerabilities, maps out six possible forms an eventual transition may take and identifies the main risks and opportunities.

“While the mounting number of incidents suggests that President Isaias Afwerki’s government is vulnerable, the country would face numerous institutional, socio-economic and geopolitical obstacles during and after any transition”, says Cedric Barnes, Crisis Group’s Horn of Africa Project Director. “A careful assessment of these is urgently needed to help avoid a violent power struggle that could prove dangerous for the Horn of Africa and potentially – as Eritrea is a littoral state – for the Red Sea region”.

It is difficult to predict what an eventually post-Isaias Eritrea will look like: after and in spite of 21 years of forceful nation-building, fault lines, especially of ethnicity, region and religion, are still there. The opposition is mainly in the diaspora, divided and mostly out of touch with both potential domestic constituencies and the young people who have been fleeing in large numbers for years and who crowd refugee camps. Since the state lacks any institutional mechanisms for peaceful transfer of power or even a clearly anointed successor, instability is to be expected, with the army the likely arbiter of who will rule next.

To reduce the risk of instability in Eritrea and its neighbourhood, a broad coalition of international actors should take precautionary moves, including immediate and decisive efforts to promote dialogue on avoidance of internal power struggles and mediation of a peaceful transition. This could lead to opening of political space and normalisation, both domestically and internationally. UN sanctions imposed on the regime for support of Al-Shabaab in Somalia and other destabilising activities need to be kept under active review. The European Union (EU) and U.S. should work with those, such as Qatar and South Africa, that maintain close relations with the leadership. Member states of the regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) should welcome Eritrea back and encourage normalisation of relations.

Specific attention should be paid to new, younger leaders emerging outside Eritrea, including in refugee camps. Attention should also be paid to the socio-economic and psychological side effects of the crisis. When a transition begins, the security sector will need to be reformed, and projects will have to be created simultaneously that focus on reintegrating those who fled their country.

“There is an urgent need to pursue stability in Eritrea. Events in the last twelve months indicate growing discontent inside its tightly controlled regime, as well as deepening political and social divisions”, says Comfort Ero, Crisis Group’s Africa Program Director. “If instability intensifies, that would be bad not just for Eritreans, who have suffered enough, but for the broader region”

 

April Fools 2013: The Round-up

April 1st is upon us, and that can only mean one thing: pranks, gags, and joke products of dubious comedic value, as the tech world tries to make you crack a smile. Whether you love it or loath it, April Fools is inescapable, so join us as we run through 2013′s cons and let us know which – if any – convinced you, and which you thought were actually funny.

Nokia has cooked up a range of Lumia-colored touchscreen microwaves, the Nokia 5AM-TH1N6 Constellation, promising a mythical 5,000W to cook food in seconds and an integrated camera to share snapshots on Facebook. “More models, including a mini variant targeted towards people with small appetites, and a 10-inch variant aimed at no one in particular, are also planned” the company teases, a coy splash of April snark for those demanding a Nokia tablet.

Samsung has gone green for April 1st, with its new SMART Eco Trees idea: scented “S Buds” with over-the-air fragrance; the promise of CO2 to O2 conversion; and S-eeds for SMART Sharing. The Korean company says you can also climb them, and they’ll come in a range of colors.

Google is always good for an April prank or three, and the company has a few different fakes this year. Google Nose aims to bring scent to search, whereby a range of “expertly curated Knowledge Panels pair images, descriptions, and aromas” as well as links to what people also sniffed.

Gmail Blue, meanwhile, has apparently been six years in the making, as Google’s email team faces the challenge of “how do we completely redesign and recreate something, while keeping it exactly the same?” The result is a whole lot of blue, quite literally:

The Gmail team isn’t the only one to get in on the prank action. Google Maps unveiled Treasure Maps, a pirate-themed redesign with hidden treasure and hand-drawn landmarks, while YouTube revealed it had in fact all been an eight year experiment to find the best-ever video, and would be shutting down to allow judges time to sift through the millions of uploads. You’ll have to wait until 2023 to find out which it is, though, with YouTube promising to delete every other clip.

Twitter, meanwhile, finally came up with a way to monetize its users’ tweets: charge them for vowels. Twttr, so the company claimed, would demand $5 a month if you wanted to include A, E, I, O, or U in any of your messages; however, Y would remain free.

Least visited countries in the world

The few who visit Turkmenistan can see this flaming crater. (Photo: RapidTravelChai / Flickr)

For some travelers, getting off the beaten path is a point of pride, a way to see the parts of the world that don’t make it into glossy guidebooks.

But how many of those same adventurous travelers would be willing to visit, say, Somalia?

About 500, it turns out. At least, that’s how many tourists found their way to the war-torn east African nation last year.

That makes Somalia the second-least visited country in the world, after the tiny pacific island nation Nauru, according to a recent list compiled by travel writer Gunnar Garfors from UN statistics.

Little Nauru – 8.1 square miles in size, population 9,378 – got just 200 visitors last year, and it’s pretty clear why.

“There is almost nothing to see there,” writes Garfors, “as most of the island … is a large open phosphate mine.”

The 12th-century Minaret of Jam in Afghanistan. (Photo: AfghanistanMatters / Flickr)

Indeed, most of the world’s least visited countries seem to fall in one of two categories. There are the Naurus, where you’ll puzzle over what to do, and the Somalias, where it’s simply too dangerous to do much of anything at all. (As Somalia’s Wikitravel page aptly notes, “the easiest method for staying safe in Somalia is not to go in the first place.”)

Most of the “nothing to do” countries are the crumbs that dust a map of the Pacific Ocean: the Federated States of Micronesia, the Solomon Islands, Kiribati, and Tuvalu. The latter shares with the Maldives the dubious distinction of having "highest elevation points" that are the lowest on earth – 15 feet above sea level. Visit while you can, as rising sea levels could make the island uninhabitable within a century.

As for the “too dangerous” countries, the list reads like a global primer in political conflict. For instance, despite its pristine national parks full of wild gorillas and elephants, the perpetually ungovernable Central African Republic (#23) is an unpopular destination for tourists. And its stock will likely continue to plummet – last week a rebel alliance seized the capital, Bangui, and the president fled to neighboring Cameroon.

Afghanistan (#10) also suffers from tourism-deflating instability, which keeps visitors away from its rugged peaks, ancient Buddhist monuments, and Islamic holy sites, including the 12th-century Minaret of Jam, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

“The Taliban have a message for foreign tourists who come to Afghanistan, especially if they are from any of the 50 countries that are part of the NATO-led coalition supporting the government: Big mistake,” writes The New York Times.

Other countries on the list, like Guinea Bissau (#14), Libya (#15), and East Timor (#18), have seen their reputations – and infrastructure – hobbled by recent wars or uprisings.

But not every country on the list is too dangerous or boring to visit. A few are simply effectively sealed off to the outside world.

All foreign visitors to North Korea (#16) are limited to a state-curated itinerary and must have an official government “minder” by their side at all times. But for the few Western tourists who venture into the country, that’s part of the appeal. “You will rarely get to see propaganda done more explicitly,” Garfors writes.

North Korea's repressive tourism laws help make it No. 16 least visited. (Photo: Matt Paish 2012 / Flickr)

Except, perhaps, in Turkmenistan (#7), where visitors who brave the onerous Soviet-esque visa application process are rewarded with sites like a 50-foot golden statue of former dictator Saparmurat Niyazov in the capital Ashgabat, which rotates throughout the day to face the sun. But the country’s most indisputably impressive site is a massive flaming crater deep in the Karakum Desert. Measuring 230 feet across and almost 70 feet deep, the so-called “Door to Hell” has been burning continuously since Soviet scientists lit it on fire in 1971.

Obscure? Yes. But that's part of the charm.

Mandela making progress in 7th day in the hospital

FILE - In this Wednesday, July 18, 2012 file photo, former South African President Nelson Mandela as he celebrates his 94th birthday with family in Qunu, South Africa. A South African official says Mandela is breathing "without difficulty" after having a procedure to clear fluid in his lung area that was caused by pneumonia. Photo: Schalk Van Zuydam

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South Africa's government says Nelson Mandela "continues to make steady improvement" as he spends a 7th day in a hospital being treated for a recurring lung infection that developed into pneumonia.

Admirers around the world have sent prayers and good wishes to the 94-year-old who helped end white minority rule and avoided civil war by his insistence on reconciliation despite being jailed for 27 years.

A brief government statement said Mandela "continues to respond satisfactorily to treatment."

Children play ball in front of a giant portrait of former president Nelson Mandela in a park in Soweto, South Africa, Sunday, March 31, 2013. Mandela remains in a hospital while he receives treatment for a recurrence of pneumonia. Presidential spokesman Mac Maharaj says there are no updates on 94 year old Mandela since an official statement Saturday on his condition. That statement reported the anti-apartheid leader was breathing without difficulty after having a procedure to clear fluid in his lung area. Photo: Denis Farrell

It said he has been visited by his family. Reporters saw his wife, Graca Machel, leave the hospital on Wednesday.

The government gave no indication when Mandela might leave the hospital. He contracted tuberculosis when he was jailed for 27 years by the apartheid government.

ILA QOSOL DAAWO VIDEO QOSOL BADAN KA KA KA KA KAAAAAA

Richard Branson Reveals Virgin's Social Media Secrets

Dominic Green

Hear from American Express, GE, McDonald's and other Fortune 500 co's on measuring social media impact at "Social Media ROI," Business Insider's conference on top tactics for Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest and more. May 15, 2013, in New York -- Reserve your ticket now.

Virgin's planes are decked out. So is the company's business plan. Virgin Group founder and chairman Richard Branson uses social media to make them that way.

Getty Images/Mark Thompson, founder Richard Branson

A small example: In 2011, Richard Branson blogged a question: "keep Virgin's iconic shiny salt and pepper shakers, or replace them with cheaper versions?" Overwhelming support for the accessories by Virgin's social media followers elicited an enthusiastic response from Branson a year later, also on his blog: the shakers would stay. "Thanks social media!" he quipped.

"We have one of the highest growth rates on Twitter and Facebook out of any domestic airline," says Jill Fletcher, a content and social media manager for Virgin. The success of the airline brand's Twitter hashtag sales, Groupon deals, and Foursquare partnerships have generated a lot of interest in exactly what Virgin Group's social media strategy entails.

A recent LinkedIn post by HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes features a video exploring Virgin's social media and user engagement secrets. Here is a rundown:

Everyone in the company is social media active. All Virgin employees, from the chairman to new recruits, engage directly with their customers through social media. "Richard tweets and blogs 24/7 every day, so it's knitted into the fabric of the whole company now," says Virgin's Content Manager Greg Rose.

They listen. They interact. They use social media to tap into conversations about Virgin and its competitors. Without feedback, Virgin can't improve, and there has never been a greater and more accessible feedback offering than there is now through its social media channels.

Virgin focuses on positive stories, but doesn't disregard negative activity. Rather, employees use it to find what customers WANT and NEED — this is how they expand their brand and network.

Virgin uses a social media dashboard: HootSuite. It's a simple way to connect each team to the rest of the company and link all internal and external networks in one place. HootSuite replaced a lot of extra screens at Virgin, and now allows them more flexibility and efficiency.

As in any area of business, energy and innovation are key. In terms of social media, Virgin works hard to be at the forefront and stay ahead of the game.

Get further insight here: