But anyhoo, io9.com has put together a list of five real-life maladies that could make you something like an undead horror. You'll have a whole new appreciation for rabies shots after you read this, along with knowing more about leprosy and necrosis than you probably ever wanted to have floating around your gray matter.
But first: yay for Beta Pictoris! For at least the past two and a half decades this has been a candidate star for having a planetary system. And now thanks to the European Southern Observatory's honkin'-big 8.2 meter Very Large Telescope, we've got the first observation of an extra-solar planet orbiting a star (namely, Beta Pictoris).
Click to enjoy an extra-huge aperture of astronomical goodness!
Click on the above link for better explanation about how neat this is. And thanks to Shane Thacker for finding this story.
Namely, that today - June 7th, 2010 - marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the release of The Goonies!
I have long thought of The Goonies as the definitive Eighties movie. That it's just as enjoyable (maybe more even) a quarter century later, is witness to that. The Goonies was the kind of film that made you really believe that there might be an old treasure map hidden away in the attic of your house, just waiting for you and your friends to go off looking for pirate booty.
So Happy Birthday to The Goonies! And maybe someday we'll finally get that sequel that Richard Donner keeps mentioning every so often :-P
So if you too are at wits end on communication rates, you are in good company with Molly Wood, who contributes a persuasive essay on CNET News demanding that universal data plans make more sense...
And although some elements of the new data plans will work for some customers, AT&T is moving in the opposite direction it should be going. I'm tired of multiple data plans, artificial caps, and arbitrary monthly usage charges. And I'm tired of paying the same companies multiple times for what is, essentially, the exact same service. That service? Data.Mash the above link for plenty more soundness and sanity about how we should fork over coin for precious data. I'll second the good lady's notion. What sayeth y'all?Between multiple cell phones, high-speed Internet connections, and even digital TV subscriptions, most households are now paying for data delivery at least three times over, and frequently paying the same provider twice. This is ridiculous, and it's time for some major consolidation. It's time for a universal data plan. I want to pay once (maybe twice) for data, I want that data to be unlimited, and I want to be able to use it in any fashion I choose.
Wooden was also quite a wise figure. ESPN has collected many of his quotes, including this one that I found especially noteworthy...
John Wooden was just shy of reaching his one hundredth birthday. An amazing long and wonderful life, he had.
According to the story at GeekTyrant "After a few necessary repairs, work proceeded: Gabe sawed off the crushed roof and built a custom frame for the new roof and windows. Inspired by the Batmanesque charm of his creation, Gabe then rigged up and riveted on fins, reworked the nose, and spray-painted the car matte black. The car even features high-tech theft-prevention gadgets the likes of which even Wayne Industries couldn't develop. When thieves tried to steal the car last year, the steering wheel broke off. In the process of trying to hotwire the car, they also fixed the brake lights."
Click on the link above for more photos of the "Batmobile", which is now listed for sale on Craigslist. Price for this crimefighting car: $600.
And in related news, Batman himself was arrested in Los Angeles on a loitering charge. I guess hard times have hit everyone... including costumed vigilantes.
"Wiggum and Gollum". Sounds like a law firm, aye?
I have to say, it's so weird doing this show at Rockingham County Senior High where I was once a student. We're using the J. Allan Lewis Auditorium (named after my late friend Allan "Doc" Lewis), on the same stage where I used to have drama class with Gene Saunders. Everything backstage even still looks exactly the same as it did all those years ago. It's almost enough to make me feel like a high school kid again :-)
The rehearsals will start to ramp up bigtime come Saturday. That's also when we'll be having our costume fittings and go through the makeup procedure for the first time. And speaking of that, I'm having a very hard time envisioning myself with Oriental features! Guess we'll find out what Chris Knight looks like as a man of Siam this weekend.
The King and I opens on June 18th. Visit the website for Theatre Guild of Rockingham County for more information. Hope to see y'all there!
Well, I won that case as best I can imagine an individual could take on such a huge corporation and eke out a victory (again, thanks in no small measure to the good people at the Electronic Frontier Foundation). And I've been keeping an eye on Viacom ever since. One of the things that has galled me most is how Viacom and its mega-hypocrite of a CEO Sumner Redstone have shown such disdain toward independent content producers such as myself. And recently Viacom referred to people such as myself as a "sideshow": intimating that the original content we're coming up with isn't as "legitimate" as the bigtime corporate-produced material that's allegedly being uploaded to YouTube in violation of copyright.
I'll use the terminology that I used then: this is "bass-ackwards".
Well, an artist named Alan Lastufka has disclosed that he's been assisting YouTube in its defense against Viacom. Lastufka and several others have come together in what they are proudly calling "The Sideshow Coalition". I'll let Lastufka explain things in his own words...
We recently all wrote brief statements for the court to read on how we’ve used YouTube to not only reach an audience with our original work, but how we’ve made YouTube a home, a business, or a place for friends and family.Here's the link to the amicus brief that the Sideshow Coalition has filed in support of YouTube. What I especially appreciate about this is that Alan Lastufka and his colleagues are rigorously defending productivity and originality, whereas if Viacom has its way this kind of home-grown industry will be greatly diminished if not outright quashed.My piece focused on DFTBA Records, and how this little company Hank and I started, run out of my garage, promoted only on YouTube, is now supporting numerous musicians full-time, myself full-time, and making tens of thousands of listeners from every country in the world, happy.
And none of that would be possible were it not for YouTube.
If Viacom wins this lawsuit, YouTube may be forced to manually approve every video uploaded to the website, making it impossible but for a select few to post videos on the site. No longer would YouTube be a place for everyone, it would be a place for Partners who are legally bound not to upload copyrighted content. This is obviously not what YouTube, or any registered YouTube user, wants.
Our testimonials and personal stories will hopefully help the court decide in YouTube’s favor. Viacom doesn’t understand YouTube, or the community. And Viacom wants every registered user to have to pay for the actions of a very small portion of dishonest users...
You can help by bringing this case to the attention of others. You can simply tweet a link to this journal entry, or you can read the brief and write your own thoughts on your blogs.
If YouTube loses this case, we will all lose.
Needless to say, I am throwing whatever support and goodwill that I can muster behind the Sideshow Coalition. And I will gladly encourage everyone else reading this to do likewise.
(Thanks to Jenna St. Hilaire for passing along the info!)
The bad news is that the felt-tip markers cost $45 to replace (just kidding :-)
Seriously though: that is hella awesome!
Well, here's our first look at Xerxes from, well, Xerxes...
Here's the official title description from Dark Horse Comics:
Xerxes rose to power in fifth-century-BC Persia and became known as 'The King of Kings,' eventually raising and leading a massive army intent on ruthlessly destroying the hated Greeks who killed his father. Xerxes seeks nothing less than to become a god himself -- and achieves his wish!Hey, if this means more of that freakish Persian army that we saw in 300, I'm totally stoked for this dudes!!
Sony has refined organic light emitting diode (OLED) manufacturing to the point where a color display can be built that's 80μm thick... which is just shy of the thickness of average human hair.
I guess this also means that Steve Jobs will eventually be making the iPhone and iPad even thinner than they are now :-P
Gizmodo has more about this seriously cool new technology, including video of the OLED display in action.
Unfortunately that doesn't get to happen...
Thoughts and prayers going out to her family.
He was quite the memorable sort, no matter what he was in: be it Easy Rider or Speed or the first season of 24 or even the otherwise atrocious Super Mario Brothers movie (where he played King Koopa).
Somehow, his recitation of Rudyard Kipling's poem "If" seems a most appropriate tribute to his life and career...
Rest in peace Mr. Hopper. And were I a drinking man, I'd open up a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon and raise a toast in your memory.
So I filed a subpoena at the courthouse in Greensboro to have the source code for the software operating the cameras be given to me, so that I could "cross examine" it. 'Course, my real motive was to post it on the Internet so that better heads than my own could examine it.
Suffice it to say, my case was dropped like a hot rock.
At trial in Athens-Clarke Municipal Court on Tuesday however, it was the red-light cameras themselves which had been summoned to court in order to testify against two of Miss Quick's clients. The cameras were a no-show, and the judge found in favor of the defendants.
The story goes on to say that Athens-Clarke County is considering installing more of the cameras at intersections. Which tells me that they are another government jurisdiction with a budget shortfall, and is looking at making up for it by putting the safety of its citizens at risk. The Palm Beach Post this week ran a story in which it found that red-light cameras cause the rate of rear-end collisions to soar to more than double what they had been before the cameras were put in place. Figure that it's common knowledge by now that the duration of the yellow light at these intersections is usually much shorter than at a non-camera "assisted" intersection, and that the private companies under contract to run these cameras are profiting from each guilty citation, and there's a lot of reason to despise these things.
Remember: a robot is not a citizen. Not yet anyway. It doesn't enjoy the rights under the Constitution that you and I have. So if a droid sends you to court, dare it to take the stand.
I've been thinking that ever since reading the title of the sixth season's premiere, "LA X", that the Lost showrunners might be more than paying a homage to what happens to be one of my favorite Marvel stories. And, looks like I might have been right :-)
Anyhoo, the series finale aired almost 36 hours ago but the discussion and debate is just getting started... and threatens to continue for the next thirty or forty years. It's pretty clear by now that we won't be getting solid answers to everything (and I'm glad that we aren't) but lo and behold we have got a few answers to some burning questions, thanks to Kristin Dos Santos from E! Click on the link to watch the video which puts to rest a bunch of mysteries. Such as... the Man in Black's REAL name!
Yup, he had one even though it wasn't ever mentioned on the show. But it did appear in the scripts though Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof decided against letting the audience in on it.
But in case you're wondering, the Man in Black's real name is Samuel (an old Hebrew name meaning "man of God"). Jacob and Samuel: I like that. Has some symmetry to it.
Other things noteworthy from the video: the "Kwon" written on the wall of Jacob's cave was Jin, since Sun was removed from consideration as a candidate by Jacob because, like Kate, she became a mother. Whoever it is that is protector of the Island can cause the Island's weather to also change (which will no doubt have many going back to look for the times when it started raining during dramatic moments). The voice that Locke heard in the cabin in "The Man Behind the Curtain" was that of the Man in Black/Samuel.
And the DVD/Blu-ray release will reveal what happened to Walt. I'm thinking that he has already "moved on" but his time on the Island wasn't as important as it had been to Jack, Kate, Sawyer and the rest. Walt still had all his life left to live and prepare for that moment, in his own way. Who knows: maybe Michael also was able to finally enter into it, eventually. And I'm wondering if that scum Keamy is now eternally damned because he chose to remain the bastard that he was when he was still alive. I can't remember any other time during the "flashsideways" that a character was shown to have died, and I can't imagine him ever wanting to go inside the church... but who knows?
Indeed, who does really know? Lost's departure with so much unanswered still, well... more and more I'm seeing how that's a good thing. It kept drawing faithful viewers because we all loved speculating and analyzing stuff, and set itself up to keep doing that even after the show itself had "let go".
In a cyclical sorta way, I find that rather appropriate :-)
Check it out...
From what I understand, it only took them two attempts to make the basket.
