This is why I love the Internet so much: you get to learn stuff you otherwise might never have known. And this is why I love blogging so much: it gives me the opportunity to share stuff like this with others who also might never have known it :-)Apparently it's been recognized for awhile among those in the field that people with Down syndrome (a genetic affliction marked by an extra chromosome) very rarely get cancer. According to an article at...
Friday, May 22, 2009
Perhaps we should call it the "International Still Suit"?
Thanks to a newly-tested and approved recycling system aboard the International Space Station, its long-term crews are now able to drink water recovered from urine, sweat and breath exhalation. It's the first time that water has been acquired and imbibed in space in such a manner.The new system takes the combined urine of the crew from the toilet, moves it to a big tank, where the water is boiled off, and the vapor collected. The rest of contaminants...
Meet the Big Daddy that you'll play in BIOSHOCK 2 (and game release date?)
It's been known for a few months that in the upcoming BioShock 2 players will be stepping into the boots of the first-ever Big Daddy: the prototype of the ones that you fought in the original BioShock. The cover of the July issue of GamePro reveals the design. And the mag promises to deliver a lot more details when it hits the stands.(By the way, according to the comments...
Thursday, May 21, 2009
"They call it spreading hope!" It's ABC's trailer for V!
This could be the breakout hit of the 2009-2010 television season. But what has me gushing with joy is the return of the blood-red "V" graffiti! And I especially love how the reboot updates the premise of the original miniseries by having resistance to the Visitors spreading viral on the Internet.Check out ABC's first trailer for V...
If you are going to see TERMINATOR SALVATION...
Please don't.I just got back from the midnight premiere of it. And right now I'm weighing whether or not I should take the time to write a full review of the movie.So far as I'm concerned the Terminator story ended with Terminator 2: Judgment Day: one of the most perfect sequel movies of all time. Neither of the last two alleged installments have added anything of merit to the saga. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines was pretty bad and Terminator...
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
1 in 4 Americans are texting while driving
According to a new poll, 1 in 4 Americans are apparently text messaging while driving.I don't agree with laws prohibiting talking into a cellphone while driving, although I do believe that's something that individual drivers should make a determination about on their own. But texting is completely different. It demands an attention that talking doesn't require.Plainly put folks: it should be just common sense not to text while operating a vehicle....
Oliver Stone wants to make a new HELTER SKELTER film
According to Geek Tyrant, Oliver Stone (director of Platoon and JFK and co-writer of Conan the Barbarian along with a lot of other movies) is in discussion with Vincent Bugliosi to film a new adaptation of Helter Skelter.Oliver Stone. Making a movie about this guy:Holy #*@&...This would be the third movie to be based on the book that Bugliosi wrote about the Charles Manson...
FALLOUT 3 getting more DLC... and it's coming to PS3 too!
What the boys (and girls) at Bethesda are doing with their nigh-unstoppable hit Fallout 3 is possibly the future of single-player video games as a successful business model: pour a lot of effort into making an outstanding game experience, and then use the initial game as a platform upon which to build and sell more content that is just as outstanding. The Operation Anchorage...
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Bev Perdue - AKA "WORST NORTH CAROLINA GOVERNOR EVER" - signs smoking ban into law
It's a scene I've watched on television damn too many times: a chief executive like a president or governor sitting behind a desk and smugly signing away another right or liberty, with a backdrop made up of the sorry-a$$ed legislative bastitches, also grinning like they've just made some legitimate contribution to the betterment of mankind, who passed the effin' law to begin with.In today's case it was Bev Perdue - who I have already declared to...
Two clips from ABC's reboot of V!
Courtesy of James Hibberd's The Live Feed. Watch Elizabeth Mitchell (Juliet from Lost) gazing up at the sky along with the rest of humanity...And then there's this clip, which I find to be much more promising/menacing...The first clip seemed kinda... bland. Maybe it's just 'cuz I'm still a fan of old-school V (the original 1983 miniseries anyway). But the second one has sold me on this re-imagining's potential. That is a drop of distilled essence...
GPS system could start dying next year
The Global Positioning System may be months away from beginning to fail, it has been been announced. Mismanagement and a failure to maintain the fleet of satellites at the heart of the system now threatens to put both military and civilian use of GPS in tremendous jeopardy starting sometime in 2010.Here's hoping that this can be remedied and soon. I just recently started using GPS for highway navigation (a unit from TomTom) and it has already become...
Where Black People and White People BUY FURNITURE!
This is a commercial for The Red House Furniture, located in Greensboro, North Carolina: about 30 minutes south of where I live.What is it about this area that spawns such weird advertisements? :-PAnyhoo, I think it's terrific! And it's already achieved more than a million views on YouTu...
This is the long-sought "Missing Link"?
Color me "meh!" ...So what will this do to the never-ending battle between "Evolutionists" and "Creationists"? More than likely: not much. Proponents of evolution will see a proto-human in this fossil, and those siding with divine creation will insist it's merely a monkey.That's why this particular issue has no appeal to me one way or another: for as long as anyone can remember,...
STAR WARS EPISODE I: THE PHANTOM MENACE was released 10 years ago today
So very long we waited for it. And now looking back, it seems like only yesterday...It was ten years ago today that Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace opened, the first Star Wars movie since 1983.I saw it twice on opening day... and both times before 6 a.m.! The week before its release date I camped out overnight at the West End Cinema in Burlington, North Carolina...
Monday, May 18, 2009
Bodybuilding championship canceled after competitors flee from drug testers
Over in Belgium, that country's bodybuilding championship has been canceled after drug testing officials showed up... which caused all the competitors to split the scene. A doping official says bodybuilders just grabbed their gear and ran off when he came into the room."I have never seen anything like it and hope never to see anything like it again," doping official Hans Cooman said Monday.Twenty bodybuilders were entered in the weekend competition.Cooman...
Study Ball: Probably the WORST educational product EVER
Any parent who puts this on their child in order to make him or her study should be chemically castrated with the harshest drugs possible. If they must rely on something like the Study Ball (shown at right) then they haven't a damn clue about what it means to be responsible parents at all!(Yeah I know: this might just be one of those "tongue in cheek" gag products. But even...
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Quentin Campbell fights the Zombies!!!
So a few days ago en route to see Star Trek at the Wachovia IMAX in Raleigh, good friend/fellow blogger Phillip Arthur and I stopped by HyperMind in Burlington, 'cuz Phillip is a fellow geek in good standing and I thought he'd get a kick out of this place, and we had plenty of time before the 10 p.m. showing (we also hooked up with Chad Austin, who really needs to update his...
