Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton is dead

The extremely sad word has just got out in the past few hours that Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton, the world-renowned Appalachian moonshiner, has died in his home.

He was due to begin serving a sentence in federal prison this coming Friday, the result of a raid by government agents on his moonshine operation in eastern Tennessee last spring. Following the raid many rallied in support of Popcorn, especially across the Internet. He had also appeared in numerous documentaries about North Carolina mountain culture, and Popcorn was the subject of Neal Hutcheson's recent film The Last One, in which Popcorn brewed (what he claimed at the time anyway) would be his final batch of moonshine. Easily in the eyes of millions, Popcorn Sutton was the living embodiment of a proud but vanishing way of unique American life.

And now he is gone.

Don't quite know what else to say. I am overwhelmingly shocked and grieved by this news, even though I never got the chance I had long desired to meet him in person.

Read More

This year's NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament pairings...

...are the most screwed-up brackets that I've seen in a way long time.

I'm beginning to see some merit to Dad's suggestion: take the top 64 teams, and apart from the teams that deserve to be #1 seeds, pick numbers out of a hat and pair 'em up randomly.

I still haven't given up hope that someday, I'll live long enough to see Elon University go to the Big Dance. Along with witnessing firsthand a real tornado, it's one of my aspirations in life :-)

Read More

Sci-Fi Channel is now Syfy

Sci-Fi Channel's days are numbered: on July 7th it metamorphosizes into Syfy. Which is actually pronounced just like "sci-fi", so nothing really is changing at all. If that makes any sense...

Network execs are making the move because the popular cable channel has become about much more than spaceships and monsters. The station now carries reruns of Lost, which handily defies the traditional science-fiction genre. Heck, even Sci-Fi's own Battlestar Galactica is considered by many to be more hard-edged drama than anything fantastical. And the new name is also much more marketable: "Syfy" is now a trademark, whereas a generic term like "Sci-Fi", not as much.

I like it. It looks and sounds pretty snazzy :-)

Read More

Take a look at this shot from NORMALSVILLE!

Good friend, fellow filmmaker and renaissance man Marco van Bergen sent along this still from Normalsville, his latest project...

That looks stunning! Can you believe this is a film being made by mostly teenagers? Well, Marco and his crew are a very talented lot and I'm not ashamed to say this either: I've learned a lot from him that I'm eager to apply to my own productions. This is definitely a rising young name that we'll be hearing plenty more good from in the future.

And if you wanna know more about Normalsville, click on over to the official website! :-)

Read More

EXTREMELY crazy insane BIOSHOCK 2 news (it's about Big Daddy...)

So the Internets have been burning like mad all day with rumors regarding BioShock 2: Sea of Dreams. The prevailing word since late last night, and what very much upset many people, was word that the iconic Big Daddies - the diving-suit clad monstrosities that protect the Little Sisters in Rapture - would not be in the upcoming sequel to the 2007 first-person shooter.

2K Games came out this afternoon and said that the rumors were false.

A few hours later, we now know that 2K isn't kidding.

Kotaku has broken the news that, in BioShock 2...

You play as a Big Daddy.

In fact, you're the first of the lot, a so-called "renegade" Big Daddy who's on the hunt for a Little Sister of his own, according to a tipster who has the new Game Informer magazine in hand. You'll take out rival Daddies with your huge hand-drill and plasmid powers, claiming their wee sidekicks as your own. Similar to the first BioShock, you can choose to either harvest your Little Sister prize for ADAM or you can adopt her as your own.

That Little Sister comes in handy. She'll harvest ADAM from corpses strewn about Rapture, acting as a warning sign for when the Big Sister—the lithe, lightning fast enemy who will hunt your character throughout the game—has you in her sights. Based on her description, it sounds like she'll one hell of a fight.

From what we've heard, players will have access to all the things that made the Big Daddy such a menace in BioShock, with the character upgrades and options available in the first game expanded to keep things interesting. More details can be found in the new issue of Game Informer, which will be appearing in subscriber hands any second now.

And Gameyko has snagged a few more details along with pics of the GameInformer magazine exclusive about BioShock 2. The one on the right indeed shows the player with the drill arm of the "Bouncer"-type Big Daddy.

Hurm... don't know what to think about this. I love BioShock, have become a huge fan of its thought-provoking lore. But the notion of playing as a Big Daddy... aren't those things intended to be big dumb brutes that are no longer fully human?

But as good as BioShock was, I'll trust Ken Levine and the crew at 2K to deliver the goods. Even if, at the moment, this looks to be a most bewildering role that they are set to land the players into :-)

Read More

If Stan Lee had written WATCHMEN...

Alan Moore's Watchmen is rightly considered to be the most praised graphic novel of all time. And the long-awaited motion picture adaptation has introduced it to many who had never read it before (it's currently the #1 selling book on Amazon.com). But have you ever wondered what Watchmen would have been like if it were written by someone else?

Like, say... Stan "The Man" Lee, co-creator of Spider-Man and Hulk and the Fantastic Four, among many other characters?

Comic book writer and commentator Kevin Church recently revisited his 2006 article "Just Imagine... Stan Lee Creating Watchmen". It is a howling scream of a hilarious read!

Now all we need is for someone to show us what Watchmen would have looked like if Jack "The King" Kirby had drawn it :-P

Read More

Meet Jerry Jalava: The man with the 2 GB USB finger

Jerry Jalava of Finland is a motorcycle enthusiast and computer hacker. He lost a finger in a riding accident last spring and when the doctor working on rebuilding his hand heard about Jerry's love of technology, he suggested a USB "finger" drive to replace the lost digit. So now Jerry Jalava's right near-pinky finger is also a 2 gigabyte USB drive that carries a Linux distribution and the movie Freddy Got Fingered.

You can check out plenty more pics of his bionic finger on his Flickr photostream.

Read More

Bev Perdue's lottery looting costs county 4 schools

That "North Carolina Education Lottery" that we've had for going on three years now? The one that was supposed to do nothing but supplement, you know, education in North Carolina?

Well, our newly-minted governor Bev Perdue has raided the lottery's reserve fund of $50 million. And then she took another $38 million that was marked for new schools construction, and applied it to the state's budget shortfall.

And now because of her fiscal shenanigans, Rockingham County won't be getting those four new schools that it direly needs.

I have spoken to quite a few people in this county over the past few days who are, to put it mildly, extremely honked-off that this has happened.

The members of the Board of Education aren't taking this quietly either. According to the above-linked article Tim Scales has remarked "You don't want to know what I've got to say about it." Reida Drum and Steve Smith have likewise expressed frustration...

Upset about Perdue keeping lottery funds, board member Reida Drum said she could not believe the governor actually ran on the platform of supporting education.

"If I saw her surrounded by teachers one time in her campaign ads, I saw it 600 times," Drum said. "I think we should send word to her that we thought she was supposed to be an education governor."

Board member Steve Smith agreed.

"If we don't do something, we're just saying it's OK," Smith said.

The board voted 7-4 to send a letter to Perdue, state legislators and the North Carolina School Board Association expressing their disagreement with the decision to keep funds intended for the benefit of the state's school systems.

I sincerely regret having to say this, but I fear the months and years to come will bear it out to be accurate: there stands to be no foreseeable significant improvement of North Carolina's educational infrastructure. Partly it's because of the economic mess this state is in right now along with the rest of the country. And partly it's because North Carolina has followed the same track as most other states that began their lotteries on the good faith that the money would be applied to education. I can think of only one state off the top of my head - that being Georgia - which has for the most part wisely administered its lottery proceeds. All of the rest have ultimately used money from the lottery for other purposes than improving education.

We might as well have never had the lottery to begin with. And I say that as one who has gone on the record numerous times over the years as being in support of the lottery.

Read More

Man wants DNA testing to prove he's Al Capone's grandson

A guy in Boston named Christopher Knight (so far as I can tell there's no relation :-) believes that he is the grandson of infamous mob boss Al Capone and he has so much confidence about it that that he has legally changed his name to "Christopher Capone".

And now Chris Capone is seeking DNA samples from known male descendants of the gang so that a scientific determination can be made. If none are willing to provide him with genetic material, Chris Capone wants to exhume the remains of "Scarface Al" and get the DNA from that.

Maybe the exhumation can be turned into a live televised special. It could be like a chance for redemption for Geraldo Rivera :-P

Thanks to Tony Hummel for passing along the story!

Read More

New battery recharges in 10 seconds

Those wonderful engineers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have conjured up a new type of battery for mobile devices that recharges in just ten seconds. The battery is composed of currently existing materials and is said to be cheap to manufacture on a mass scale. Along with the extremely fast recharge rate, the new design doesn't degrade with repeated recharges as do currently existing batteries.

In addition to the uses this thing will have for gadgets like cellphones and iPods, it's thought that larger versions of these batteries can be used in electric cars: perhaps recharging for five minutes at a "fillin' station" before heading off again for long distance driving.

Sounds like an amazing breakthrough. Along with some really cool stuff I'm hearing from the data storage side of things, there looks to be a lot of neat gizmos heading our way soon :-)

Read More

Star Wars fan does 110 MPH trying to race toward eBay bid

From the Seattle, Washington side of the galaxy: a 46-year old man was stopped for speeding on I-90 by State Patrol troopers. He was doing an astonishing 110 miles per hour and once he had finally been pulled over, officers found his car loaded with Star Wars memorabilia.

The man's reason for going so fast? He was trying to rush home to bid for another Star Wars item on eBay.

Click on the link above for some hilarious reader comments!

Read More

United States poised for Zimbabwe-style economic collapse, sez governor

If the United States keeps "spending a bunch of money we don't have", it faces a collapse of its economy much like what has happened in Zimbabwe, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford predicts.

In case you haven't heard, the financial hyper-inflation which has rocked Zimbabwe has led that country to issue a one trillion dollar bill as part of its currency. For one of those legal tender notes, you can currently buy a hamburger or two.

Sanford gets what's really going on. Too bad there doesn't seem to be many other elected officials who are likewise calling for fiscal sobriety right now.

Read More

Artificial life possible "within five years"

Many scientists are predicting that synthetic life is going to be a reality within the next five to ten years. Geneticists have already created an artificial ribosome (a cell structure responsible for protein manufacturing) and the consensus is that a full-blown cell is just around the corner.

Color me "meh". I'd love to read the journals on what's going into this effort. It's one thing to replicate structure and function. But real life is much more than that. I wanna see how much "genuine" life is being used as the raw material in this thing, before judging that a real breakthrough is happening.

And while we're on the subject: I know the scientists involved are proud of their work, and their belief that they could create life. But does anyone else wonder if they should be doing it? All kinds of crazy scenarios come to mind. Maybe even something like I Am Legend (the book not the "movie").

Read More

Today's proof that fashion is dead

I have been thinking for awhile now that the traditional sense of fashion is dying before our very eyes. Mostly it's the fault of the Internet, that Great Leveler of Culture and Identity. Control of journalism and the entertainment industry is now becoming a thing in the hands of the average person... and it was only a matter of time before clothing style also became dictated by You and Me, instead of designers in New York and Paris.

But that doesn't mean that those who have been trying to tell us what is "in" are going down without a fight. Witness these... outfits... from a show in Paris yesterday:

The lady on the left is hopeless on a dinner date because of the chainmail covering her mouth. While the one on the right looks too much like a botanical reproductive organ.

I have to ask aloud: Who the hell actually WEARS stuff like this?!

See more wacky Parisian "fashion" here.

Read More

The world's greatest superhero is a giant bulldog

Sometimes you come across something on the Internet that is so overwhelmingly kewl just on the basis of the obvious amount of passion and intelligence poured into it, that you can't wait to praise the effort and share it with others.

That's what I felt after finding Lockjaw, The World's Greatest Superhero. It's a very detailed site that, with great affection and eloquence, argues why Lockjaw of the Inhumans from the Marvel Universe is the best comic book character around. In terms of innocence, nobility, and utter power, this Terrigen Mist-altered bulldog lives a life of romp, play, and the occasional rescuing of the universe on his own terms. Not even Galactus comes close to matching Lockjaw's unrestrained abilities, the author insists.

Gotta give the props to whoever made this site. And hopefully Lockjaw will be a playable character in Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, instead of just getting to scratch his ears :-P

Read More

Congress burning through $1 BILLION an hour (even while asleep)

According to Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, since Barack Obama has been sworn in as President the United States Congress has voted to spend $1.2 trillion... which breaks down to an expenditure rate of $1 Billion per hour. That's during a 24 hour day, not just when Congress is in session (unfortunately).

Anyone else wondering where the heck this money is coming from to begin with?

Read More

The mysterious stones of Gobekli Tepe

In 1994 a Kurdish shepherd in eastern Turkey discovered something while tending his flock: the tops of a series of buried stones. News of his find reached museum curators several miles away and ultimately made the site at Gobekli Tepe (pronounced "Go-beckly Tepp-ay") the subject of a full-blown archaeological survey.

Now, almost fifteen years later, Gobekli Tepe is being hailed as one of the greatest historical finds of the past half century, with some even calling it the "most important archaeological site in the world". The stones unearthed thus far are intricately decorated with carvings of humans and animals. Evidence indicates that many more stones are waiting to be uncovered. And then there is the age of the buried structures: calculated to be around 12,000 years old. That's approximately ten thousand years older than Stonehenge in Britain or the pyramids of Egypt. Little wonder then that more than a few are likening Gobekli Tepe to the biblical Garden of Eden.

Mash down here for an in-depth article from The Daily Mail, with a lot more photos of those curious stones at Gobekli Tepe.

Read More