Sci-fi tanks meet prehistoric rockets in Gaza

Sophie Team Observers — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:29:17 +0100

While Hamas is throwing rockets by hand, the Israeli military is unveiling high-tech weaponry like the new "Iron Fist", capable of exploding a missile before it's even reached its target. Will technology make all the difference in Gaza?

Israel's reputation as a mighty military force was left shaken in 2006 after its bloody conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon. The war began with a missile attack on Israeli tanks, a strategy that Hezbollah then continued to use successfully throughout the 33-day fight. In response, the Jewish state has spent the past two years developing state-of-the-art equipment designed to prevent missiles by neutralising them with an interceptor before they make contact. Christened the "Iron Fist", the system has been tried and tested in production, but is yet to see real combat. As the promotional video states, "this age of asymmetric warfare poses a neat challenge to the survivability of armoured fighting vehicles".

When we tried to contact the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces), they refused to comment on the potential uses and impacts of this type of equipment.

New Radiohead clip is online sensation

Ségolène Team Observers — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 17:23:15 +0200

The music video for Radiohead's latest single "House of Cards" was yesterday the most watched clip on the web. Not only is it aesthetically pleasing, but technologically mystifying too - it was filmed without a camera.

It's only been online since Monday (14 July), but the latest clip from Oxford's finest musicians has already received 1,277,013 hits. This, along with the fact that Radiohead is the biggest rock group in the world, is largely due to the fact that critics went into rapture over the new album, "In Rainbow". But equal praise is reserved for director James Frost, whose technical prowess, also having served the likes of Coldplay, Stereophonics and Norah Jones, reached new heights on the project.

The short film is made using an experimental animation technique that employs neither lights nor camera, but is shot in real time. The contours of singer Thom York's face are not reflections but the mathematical harnessing of his movements. Followed by 64 revolving lasers and scanned by a clever device made by Geometric Informatics, every move he makes is registered by the reaction speeds of laser beams.

And to boot, never missing the chance to get their fans involved, the group put a page on Google to let people try out the technique. Once finished, there's a group on YouTube waiting for your attempt.