Re: [scifinoir2] signing off for a while
Look at you, man. Going to wrack and ruin before our very eyes! :-))) But seriously... this is a bit of unsettling news. We do hope for the best possible outcome (((touch wood))). You, of course, are foremost in our thoughts and prayers. :-) Brent Reece Jennings mcjennings...@yahoo.com wrote: Hello everybody: I have to leave you for a while. Please keep my personal emails: mcjennings...@yahoo.com mcjenning...@comcast.net (spit!!!) I had a doctor's appointment yesterday with my lung doc. He scheduled me to see a Thorasic Surgeon to set up a surgical biopsy. (Isn't that a dinosaur park? Oh! That's JURassic!) My appointment is Tuesday, Sept. 1. I will find out when the surgical biopsy is then. After the biopsy, 3 - 5 weeks healing for NORMAL activities , or surgery, depending on the results. My lung doc said there are 2 things he's trying to differentiate, and the PETSCAN I had can't help him. Sarcoids, which are benign lymph node issues, and Lymphoma, which is cancerous. Either way, there are still treatment issues after the biopsy results are in. I will be in touch off and on, but for now I gotta leave ya! Remember, y'all (y'all?) are family! Peace! Reece Jennings
[scifinoir2] Necks Overflowing With Rivers of Metaphor
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/28/arts/television/28blood.html Television Necks Overflowing With Rivers of Metaphor By GINIA BELLAFANTE Published: August 27, 2009 It seems like too much futile work in the heat of August - work bound to lead only to phony conclusions - to decipher how the sanguivorous have become the meat and drink of popular culture at the end of the first decade of the 21st century. Though here we are in the summer of 2009 with the rage for Twilight continuing, the vampire movie Thirst claiming this years jury prize at Cannes, the supernatural series Being Human on BBC America, and others arriving on CW and AMC. HBOs True Blood has been credited with revivifying the channels fortunes. The Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris, which inspired the series, currently occupy seven of the top 20 spots on The New York Timess paperback mass-market fiction best-seller list. The show, a mishmash of Flannery OConnor aspirations and Anne Rice pop blood hunger, threatens to surpass Sex and the City as the most-watched series in HBOs history after The Sopranos. But True Blood is nothing like its mob-world forebear or anything else on HBO. Where The Sopranos had restraint and vast ambition, True Blood has excess and gall. During the current season, its second (the penultimate episode will be shown on Sunday), it has become an allegory for nearly every strain of tension in American life, despite a premise that suggested a more contained agenda. When True Blood appeared, it was easy to assume it was a metaphor for late-stage capitalism gone haywire, not simply because it began with an insolent store clerk reading Naomi Kleins Shock Doctrine but also because the show seemed predicated on an interest in the retail addicts belief that were made of what we buy. Set in the fictional Louisiana town of Bon Temps, the series imagines vampires living among us, assimilating uneasily but subsisting on a new form of nourishment: synthetic blood sold in bars and convenience stores, negating the need (if not the desire) to make value meals out of human bodies. The hot vampire in town is Bill Compton, played by Stephen Moyer, with the same potato-flesh complexion as the character of Edward Cullen in the filmed adaptation of Twilight. Despite the progress theyve made, vampires, like women bent on avoiding Botox, still cant subject themselves to the murderous effects of sunlight. Bills lack of availability for lunchtime patio dining makes him no less appealing to Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin), an orphaned mind-reading waitress, who when the series began was a virgin looking at a very limited number of days of continued sexual ignorance. Bill has a courtly reserve to him, one he has kept up at least since the Civil War. It is the women of Bon Temps whose metabolisms run rapid with appetite. They like to bed down with vampires and accessories. True Blood doesnt care where those accessories come from. It isnt interested in what we buy; it cares whether we really are who we sleep with. The sex is served in such luridly voluptuous, viewer-satiation-guaranteed portions that the show feels like nothing else on television, by which I mean television that isnt available exclusively on $15.99 hotel-room pay-per-view. True Blood is also like little weve seen on the larger screen in years, a vestige of the 80s forged from the musings of Adrian Lyne and the camera of David Lynch at a time when studios, unburdened by the need to sell DVDs at Wal-Mart, submitted to greater sexual permissiveness on film. The reactionary gender politics that often attended such permissiveness are embedded in True Blood, even as the shows creator, Alan Ball, works aggressively to prove what a fired-up liberal he is. As if weve consistently skipped those parts of the newspaper that have recounted the scandals of Jim Bakker or Ted Haggard, Mr. Ball insists on telling us that right-wing religious extremism is frequently linked with an untenable moral and sexual hypocrisy. A Congressional candidate who makes vampire bashing (read: gay bashing) part of his platform is buying V, vampire blood with a Viagra effect on civilians, from a drag queen on the black market. Mr. Ball, as he did in American Beauty, which he wrote, and Six Feet Under, which he created and where eros and thanatos did battle every week, shoots his metaphors as if activating an armed squadron. Standing in for a hundred Jerry Falwells and the Curse of American Sexual Paranoia, one detractor on the show declaimed, Vampires have taken our jobs and our women, and their very blood turns our children into addicts, drug dealers and homosexuals! The current season has set up a showdown between a psycho Christian cult called the Fellowship of the Sun, which runs a kind of conversion camp called the Light of Day Institute, and the vampires (and vampire sympathizers) the cult aims to destroy. At the same time it is
Re: [RE][scifinoir2] Defying Gravity on ABC now
Well, whatever may transpire, I hope it comes as a great success for you. :-) Brent C.W. Badie astromancer2...@yahoo.com writes: I'm doing okay...hoped to raise enough cash to get a piece of a truck or van for my carpentry trade, but failed, so going back to school for weldingyou never know what trade will come it handy when the world economy will revert back to the barter system... -From: brent wodehouse brent_wodeho...@thefence.us To: scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 12:45:15 PM Subject: Re: [RE][scifinoir2] Defying Gravity on ABC now Ê Oh, you know, bearing up as well as can be expected in these days of more modest expectations. :-) How 'bout you, sir? How's the general well being? Brent C.W. Badie [ mailto:astromancer2002%40yahoo.com ]astromancer2002@ yahoo.com writes: æ Brent! How are you sir? -From: brent wodehouse [ mailto:brent_wodehouse%40thefence..us ]brent_wodehouse@ thefence. us To: [ mailto:scifinoir2%40yahoogroups.com ]scifino...@yahoogro ups.com Sent: Tuesday, August 18, 2009 12:58:16 PM Subject: Re: [RE][scifinoir2] Defying Gravity on ABC now æ Ahhh yes. That she is... :-) Brent C.W. Badie [ mailto:astromancer2 002%40yahoo. com ]astromancer2002@ [ http://yahoo.com/ ]yahoo.com wrote: True...but Karen Leblanc is very easy on the eyes... -From: George Arterberry [ mailto:brotherfrom howard%40yahoo. com ]brotherfromhoward@ yahoo.com To: [ mailto:scifinoir2% 40yahoogroups. com ]scifinoir2@ yahoogro [ http://ups.com/ ]ups.com Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 11:17:06 AM Subject: Re: [RE][scifinoir2] Defying Gravity on ABC now ¾ It seemed cheap and boring.Just enough sci-fi , not to qualify as a sexual drama.. --- On Sun, 8/16/09, Mr. Worf HelloMahogany@ [ [ [ http://gmail.com/ ]http://gmail. com/ ]http://gmail.. com/ ][ [ http://gmail.com/ ]http://gmail. com/ ][ http://gmail.com/ ]gmail.com wrote: From: Mr. Worf HelloMahogany@ gmail.com Subject: Re: [RE][scifinoir2] Defying Gravity on ABC now To: scifino...@yahoogro [ http://ups.com/ ][ [ http://ups.com/ ]http://ups.com/ ]ups.com Date: Sunday, August 16, 2009, 8:12 PM ¾ The formula isn't right for network tv. They will kill it because they can't do any product placement or have cameos of guest stars to boost the ratings. The show is tepid at best and a snoozefest at its worst. On Sun, Aug 16, 2009 at 12:56 PM, Martin Baxter [ [ [ http://us.mc586..mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=truthseeker...@lycos.com ]http://us.mc586. .mail.yahoo. com/mc/compose? to=truthseeker01 3...@lycos.com ]http://us.mc586. .mail..yahoo. com/mc/compose? to=truthseeker01 [ mailto:3%40lycos.com ]...@lycos.com ]truthseeker013@ [ [ http://lycos.com/ ]http://lycos. com/ ][ http://lycos.com/ ]lycos.com wrote: Pal, it's a Canadian series, the rights to which ABC bought, so it'll probably last its full run. [ [ [ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1319690/ ]http://www.imdb. com/title/ tt1319690/ ]http://www.imdb. com/title/ tt1319690/ ][ http://www.imdb./ ]http://www..imdb. com/title/ tt1319690/ -[ Received Mail Content ]-- ¾Subject : Re: [RE][scifinoir2] Defying Gravity on ABC now ¾Date : Sun, 16 Aug 2009 12:06:12 -0700 (PDT) ¾From : C.W. Badie [ [ [ http://us.mc586.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=astromancer2...@yahoo.com ]http://us.mc586. mail.yahoo. com/mc/compose? to=astromancer20 0...@yahoo. com ][ http://us.mc586./ ]http://us.mc586. mail.yahoo. com/mc/compose? to=astromancer20 0...@yahoo. com ]astromancer2002@ [ [ http://yahoo.com/ ]http://yahoo. com/ ]yahoo.com ¾To : [ [ [ http://us.mc586.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=scifino...@yahoogroups.com ]http://us.mc586. mail.yahoo. com/mc/compose? to=scifinoir2@ yahoogroups. com ][ http://us.mc586./ ]http://us.mc586. mail..yahoo. com/mc/compose? to=scifinoir2@ yahoogroups. com ]scifinoir2@ yahoogro ups..com I liked it, but it's rather loose storytelling, the type of looseness the leads to cancellation. . .. __ _ _ _ _ __ From: Martin Baxter To: [ [ [ http://us.mc586.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=scifino...@yahoogroups.com ]http://us.mc586. mail..yahoo. com/mc/compose? to=scifinoir2@ yahoogroups. com ][ http://us.mc586./ ]http://us.mc586.. mail.yahoo. com/mc/compose? to=scifinoir2@ yahoogroups. com ]scifinoir2@ yahoogro ups.com Sent: Monday, August 3, 2009 8:24:50 AM Subject: [RE][scifinoir2] Defying Gravity on ABC now Keith, I almost missed it, stumbling across it two minutes before it bbegan. I I enjoyed it overall, though the pacing was a bit leaden at times. (Maybe on purpose?) The mysterious nature of the real mission has me hooked, without saying. Can't wait until the MC ventures into Pod 4 to find out what's really up. As for the incidental music, I really don't take notice of it as I watch a TV show or movie, unless it's a song near and dear to my heart. -[ Received Mail Content ]-- Subject : [scifinoir2] Defying Gravity on ABC now Date
Re: [RE][scifinoir2] Defying Gravity on ABC now
Oh, you know, bearing up as well as can be expected in these days of more modest expectations. :-) How 'bout you, sir? How's the general well being? Brent C.W. Badie astromancer2...@yahoo.com writes: Ê Brent! How are you sir? -From: brent wodehouse brent_wodeho...@thefence.us To: scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, August 18, 2009 12:58:16 PM Subject: Re: [RE][scifinoir2] Defying Gravity on ABC now Ê Ahhh... yes. That she is... :-) Brent C.W. Badie [ mailto:astromancer2002%40yahoo.com ]astromancer2002@ yahoo.com wrote: True...but Karen Leblanc is very easy on the eyes... -From: George Arterberry [ mailto:brotherfromhoward%40yahoo.com ]brotherfromhoward@ yahoo.com To: [ mailto:scifinoir2%40yahoogroups.com ]scifino...@yahoogro ups.com Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 11:17:06 AM Subject: Re: [RE][scifinoir2] Defying Gravity on ABC now æ It seemed cheap and boring.Just enough sci-fi , not to qualify as a sexual drama.. --- On Sun, 8/16/09, Mr. Worf HelloMahogany@ [ [ http://gmail.com/ ]http://gmail. com/ ][ http://gmail.com/ ]gmail.com wrote: From: Mr. Worf HelloMahogany@ gmail.com Subject: Re: [RE][scifinoir2] Defying Gravity on ABC now To: scifino...@yahoogro [ http://ups.com/ ][ http://ups.com/ ]ups.com Date: Sunday, August 16, 2009, 8:12 PM æ The formula isn't right for network tv. They will kill it because they can't do any product placement or have cameos of guest stars to boost the ratings. The show is tepid at best and a snoozefest at its worst. On Sun, Aug 16, 2009 at 12:56 PM, Martin Baxter [ [ http://us.mc586..mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=truthseeker...@lycos.com ]http://us.mc586. .mail.yahoo. com/mc/compose? to=truthseeker01 3...@lycos.com ]truthseeker013@ [ http://lycos.com/ ]lycos.com wrote: Pal, it's a Canadian series, the rights to which ABC bought, so it'll probably last its full run. [ [ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1319690/ ]http://www.imdb. com/title/ tt1319690/ ]http://www.imdb. com/title/ tt1319690/ -[ Received Mail Content ]-- æSubject : Re: [RE][scifinoir2] Defying Gravity on ABC now æDate : Sun, 16 Aug 2009 12:06:12 -0700 (PDT) æFrom : C.W. Badie [ [ http://us.mc586.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=astromancer2...@yahoo.com ]http://us.mc586. mail.yahoo. com/mc/compose? to=astromancer20 0...@yahoo. com ]astromancer2002@ [ http://yahoo.com/ ]yahoo.com æTo : [ [ http://us.mc586.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=scifino...@yahoogroups.com ]http://us.mc586. mail..yahoo. com/mc/compose? to=scifinoir2@ yahoogroups. com ]scifinoir2@ yahoogro ups..com I liked it, but it's rather loose storytelling, the type of looseness the leads to cancellation.. .. ___ _ _ _ __ From: Martin Baxter To: [ [ http://us.mc586.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=scifino...@yahoogroups.com ]http://us.mc586. mail.yahoo. com/mc/compose? to=scifinoir2@ yahoogroups. com ]scifinoir2@ yahoogro ups.com Sent: Monday, August 3, 2009 8:24:50 AM Subject: [RE][scifinoir2] Defying Gravity on ABC now Keith, I almost missed it, stumbling across it two minutes before it bbegan. I I enjoyed it overall, though the pacing was a bit leaden at times. (Maybe on purpose?) The mysterious nature of the real mission has me hooked, without saying. Can't wait until the MC ventures into Pod 4 to find out what's really up. As for the incidental music, I really don't take notice of it as I watch a TV show or movie, unless it's a song near and dear to my heart. -[ Received Mail Content ]-- Subject : [scifinoir2] Defying Gravity on ABC now Date : Mon, 3 Aug 2009 02:13:45 + (UTC) From : Keith Johnson To : scifino...@yahoogro [ [ http://ups.com/ ]http://ups.com/ ]ups.com Anyone watching ABC's entry into the Big Brother in Outer Space by way of BSG-style drama? It deals with a seven-year mission in the year 2052 that sends eight astronauts to visit six planets in the Solar System. Very quickly into the show, we're made aware there's some kind of secret involved. The two most experienced astronauts in the program (one of whom is played by Malik Yoba) are initially left off the mission aboard the spaceship Antares.. Later, when some kind of heart problem keeps cropping up among the crew--evidently tied to the secret--the two astronauts are blasted into space to join the mission. One comment I overheard makes me think some kind of sentient race has been encountered by humanity--perhaps on a previous tragic mission to Mars in which one of the current astronauts had to leave three of his fellows behind. Perhaps this sentient race is controlling the mission somehow? Not sure. Also not sure yet if I'll like the show. It has some decent actors and decent lines. But just when I'm starting to get into the mission and the scifi aspect of it, I'm distracted by overpowering music that attempts to heighten a scene, the lead astronaut's self-reflective monologue, too much of the newly-hot camera work (a la BSG and Star Trek
[scifinoir2] Visualizing Up To Ten Dimensions
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/08/18/visualizing-up-to-te.html
Re: [RE][scifinoir2] Defying Gravity on ABC now
Ahhh... yes. That she is... :-) Brent C.W. Badie astromancer2...@yahoo.com wrote: True...but Karen Leblanc is very easy on the eyes... -From: George Arterberry brotherfromhow...@yahoo.com To: scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 11:17:06 AM Subject: Re: [RE][scifinoir2] Defying Gravity on ABC now Ê It seemed cheap and boring.Just enough sci-fi , not to qualify as a sexual drama. --- On Sun, 8/16/09, Mr. Worf HelloMahogany@ [ http://gmail.com/ ]gmail.com wrote: From: Mr. Worf HelloMahogany@ gmail.com Subject: Re: [RE][scifinoir2] Defying Gravity on ABC now To: scifino...@yahoogro [ http://ups.com/ ]ups.com Date: Sunday, August 16, 2009, 8:12 PM Ê The formula isn't right for network tv. They will kill it because they can't do any product placement or have cameos of guest stars to boost the ratings. The show is tepid at best and a snoozefest at its worst. On Sun, Aug 16, 2009 at 12:56 PM, Martin Baxter [ http://us.mc586..mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=truthseeker...@lycos.com ]truthseeker013@ lycos.com wrote: Pal, it's a Canadian series, the rights to which ABC bought, so it'll probably last its full run. [ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1319690/ ]http://www.imdb. com/title/ tt1319690/ -[ Received Mail Content ]-- ÊSubject : Re: [RE][scifinoir2] Defying Gravity on ABC now ÊDate : Sun, 16 Aug 2009 12:06:12 -0700 (PDT) ÊFrom : C.W. Badie [ http://us.mc586.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=astromancer2...@yahoo.com ]astromancer2002@ yahoo.com ÊTo : [ http://us.mc586.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=scifino...@yahoogroups.com ]scifino...@yahoogro ups.com I liked it, but it's rather loose storytelling, the type of looseness the leads to cancellation. .. _ _ __ From: Martin Baxter To: [ http://us.mc586.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=scifino...@yahoogroups.com ]scifino...@yahoogro ups.com Sent: Monday, August 3, 2009 8:24:50 AM Subject: [RE][scifinoir2] Defying Gravity on ABC now Keith, I almost missed it, stumbling across it two minutes before it bbegan. I I enjoyed it overall, though the pacing was a bit leaden at times. (Maybe on purpose?) The mysterious nature of the real mission has me hooked, without saying. Can't wait until the MC ventures into Pod 4 to find out what's really up. As for the incidental music, I really don't take notice of it as I watch a TV show or movie, unless it's a song near and dear to my heart. -[ Received Mail Content ]-- Subject : [scifinoir2] Defying Gravity on ABC now Date : Mon, 3 Aug 2009 02:13:45 + (UTC) From : Keith Johnson To : scifino...@yahoogro [ http://ups.com/ ]ups.com Anyone watching ABC's entry into the Big Brother in Outer Space by way of BSG-style drama? It deals with a seven-year mission in the year 2052 that sends eight astronauts to visit six planets in the Solar System. Very quickly into the show, we're made aware there's some kind of secret involved. The two most experienced astronauts in the program (one of whom is played by Malik Yoba) are initially left off the mission aboard the spaceship Antares.. Later, when some kind of heart problem keeps cropping up among the crew--evidently tied to the secret--the two astronauts are blasted into space to join the mission. One comment I overheard makes me think some kind of sentient race has been encountered by humanity--perhaps on a previous tragic mission to Mars in which one of the current astronauts had to leave three of his fellows behind. Perhaps this sentient race is controlling the mission somehow? Not sure. Also not sure yet if I'll like the show. It has some decent actors and decent lines. But just when I'm starting to get into the mission and the scifi aspect of it, I'm distracted by overpowering music that attempts to heighten a scene, the lead astronaut's self-reflective monologue, too much of the newly-hot camera work (a la BSG and Star Trek) with a shaky cam to convey reality. Or I'm watching two astronauts make nekkid love in zero g and feeling vaguely manipulated at an attempt to make me feel awestruck or something. There's a lot of flashbacks and flashforwards that make following the story a bit confusing at times. Lost this ain't. There's also a odd flow: a mix of serious drama, melodrama, camp soap opera type moments, silly humour supported by Desperate Housewives type music, and a lot of titillation. It makes it hard for one to get a feeling of the overall nature of the show. Is it a drama, a reality-type show like Virtuality , a mystery? ÊDon't know, but I ! found myself losing interest a lot, then picking it back up, then losing it again as the standard nighttime soap feel comes back in the mix. Lots of TV veterans, including the blonde lady from The 4400 (the one who feel inlove with a black man), and Cristina Cox Blood Ties, who's been a guest in more series than Michael Michelle. They're all okay, but again, the uneven pacing, writing, and flashbacks undermine
Re: [scifinoir2] The mo better dystopian prophet: Orwell or Huxley?
Not to hedge, but events seem now to be unfolding in roughly equal measure. Though, given the starkness of choice, one cannot but feel terribly disheartened, in any case. By the way, what exactly changed your vote, and from what to what? ravenadal ravena...@yahoo.com wrote: Wow. After reading this, I changed my vote! ~rave! http://fatpita.net/?i=1952
Re: [RE][scifinoir2] What was the last SF novel you read that made you go WOW
Yah. An inspired choice. :-) Brent Adrianne Brennan adrianne.bren...@gmail.com writes: Phillip K Dick's VALIS.
[scifinoir2] We're Drawing Closer to a Will Smith/Zoe Saldana 'Harvey'
http://www.movieline.com/2009/08/were-drawing-closer-to-a-will-smithzoe-saldana-harvey.php Predictions We're Drawing Closer to a Will Smith/Zoe Saldana Harvey Written by Kyle Buchanan | 05 Aug 2009 Variety announced today that Tom Hanks has decided not to star in Steven Spielbergs remake of Harvey, avoiding exactly the kind of unwinnable and unimaginative comparisons to Jimmy Stewart that we warned him against. So whats next for the project? We can guess! At this point, it seems utterly inevitable that Spielberg will tap Will Smith to star - after all, the actor was in the mix when the project was first announced, and his shooting schedule is completely clear in 2010. Without pressing sequel commitments and with most of his star vehicles still in development (including a Spielberg-helmed redo of Oldboy), Smith would appear to have this one sewn up. And while were making predictions, heres another: If Smith gets the nod, expect Zoe Saldana to be cast as his skeptical sister. Shes worked with Spielberg before on The Terminal, shell be coming off a stellar 2009, and shes got no projects set with a definite date next year (since the Star Trek sequel is still in the planning stages). Im still willing to be surprised, but methinks you dont remake Harvey if youre intent on throwing audiences for a loop.
Re: [scifinoir2] What was the last SF novel you read that made you go WOW!?
Charles Sheffield's 'Proteus' series ('Sight of Proteus,' 'Proteus
Unbound,' 'Proteus Combined,' 'Proteus in the Underworld').
Brent
ravenadal ravena...@yahoo.com writes:
The question about Asimov's Foundation septology leads me to ask what
was the last SF novel you read that made you go WOW! And, by that, I
mean the last novel that made your head spin around. For me it was
William Gibson's Neuromancer and that was published in 1984,
twenty-five years ago!
By-the-by, I am only interested in novel novels - do not summit graphic
novels.
Thanks,
~rave!
Re: [scifinoir2] Did Anyone See Shatner
Classic Palin; incoherent free association, as rendered by Shatner as Beat Poet. Awesome. :-) Bosco Bosco ironpi...@yahoo.com wrote: on Conan reciting the Palin speech? A career highlight fer sure. Google: Watch Palin get Shatnerized and be amazed. Garaunteed Hilarity Bosco
[scifinoir2] Transparent aluminium is 'new state of matter'
http://www.physorg.com/news167925273.html Transparent aluminium is 'new state of matter' July 27th, 2009 (PhysOrg.com) -- Oxford scientists have created a transparent form of aluminium by bombarding the metal with the worlds most powerful soft X-ray laser. 'Transparent aluminium' previously only existed in science fiction, featuring in the movie Star Trek IV, but the real material is an exotic new state of matter with implications for planetary science and nuclear fusion. In this weeks Nature Physics an international team, led by Oxford University scientists, report that a short pulse from the FLASH laser knocked out a core electron from every aluminium atom in a sample without disrupting the metals crystalline structure. This turned the aluminium nearly invisible to extreme ultraviolet radiation. ''What we have created is a completely new state of matter nobody has seen before, said Professor Justin Wark of Oxford Universitys Department of Physics, one of the authors of the paper. Transparent aluminium is just the start. The physical properties of the matter we are creating are relevant to the conditions inside large planets, and we also hope that by studying it we can gain a greater understanding of what is going on during the creation of 'miniature stars' created by high-power laser implosions, which may one day allow the power of nuclear fusion to be harnessed here on Earth. The discovery was made possible with the development of a new source of radiation that is ten billion times brighter than any synchrotron in the world (such as the UKs Diamond Light Source). The FLASH laser, based in Hamburg, Germany, produces extremely brief pulses of soft X-ray light, each of which is more powerful than the output of a power plant that provides electricity to a whole city. The Oxford team, along with their international colleagues, focused all this power down into a spot with a diameter less than a twentieth of the width of a human hair. At such high intensities the aluminium turned transparent. Whilst the invisible effect lasted for only an extremely brief period - an estimated 40 femtoseconds - it demonstrates that such an exotic state of matter can be created using very high power X-ray sources. Professor Wark added: What is particularly remarkable about our experiment is that we have turned ordinary aluminium into this exotic new material in a single step by using this very powerful laser. For a brief period the sample looks and behaves in every way like a new form of matter. In certain respects, the way it reacts is as though we had changed every aluminium atom into silicon: its almost as surprising as finding that you can turn lead into gold with light! The researchers believe that the new approach is an ideal way to create and study such exotic states of matter and will lead to further work relevant to areas as diverse as planetary science, astrophysics and nuclear fusion power. A report of the research, 'Turning solid aluminium transparent by intense soft X-ray photoionization', is published in Nature Physics. The research was carried out by an international team led by Oxford University scientists Professor Justin Wark, Dr Bob Nagler, Dr Gianluca Gregori, William Murphy, Sam Vinko and Thomas Whitcher.
[scifinoir2] EXCLUSIVE: Disney's The Princess and the Frog Directors Address Racial Concerns
http://www.movieline.com/2009/07/disneys-the-princess-and-the-frog-directors-address-charges-of-racism.php Comic-Con 09 EXCLUSIVE: Disney's The Princess and the Frog Directors Address Racial Concerns Written by Seth Abramovitch | 24 Jul 2009 Disneys The Princess and the Frog marks the studios long-overdue return to hand-drawn animation, and those hands belong to Ron Clements and John Musker - two animation veterans responsible for later-era classics like The Little Mermaid and Aladdin. From the beginning, Disney proudly trumpeted that Frog would feature their first African-American princess with Tiana, a gesture that would go a small way towards righting the wrongs of all the yarn-spinning uncles, jive-talking crows and Neverland savages that came before her. But as scenes trickled out, there were murmurs of concern. Princess Tiana would be paired with Prince Naveen - a royal of seemingly South American lineage, voiced by Brazilian-born actor Bruno Campos - raising eyebrows and ire among a segment of the African-American blogosphere. Then we were introduced to Mama Odie - a blind, swamp-dwelling voodoo witch doctor. Dated caricature? Lovable sidekick? Both? Movieline had an opportunity to talk to Clements and Musker today at a series of Disney Animation roundtable interviews at Comic-Con. Both are chipper, unassuming men with a cute tendency of finishing each others sentences. Telling us the film is close to finished - just digital coloring is all thats left in the animation process - we then broached concerns over its minority representations. Here is what they said: MOVIELINE: Have you heard any of the race-related criticisms about The Princess and the Frog, that Disneys first African-American princess has not been paired with an African-American prince, and that Mama Odie comes across like a stereotype? How do you react to that? RON CLEMENTS: The first thing is that all the criticism of the movie has been from people who have not seen the movie, who dont know the context of the movie, who dont know the story. From the very beginning, when the project was first announced, there have been these issues. From the very beginning I think we wanted to be certainly as sensitive as possible with what we were doing. I mean, really early on it was clear that this was a major, major thing. So we did a lot of consulting, and our co-writer on the film Rob Edwards was African-American, and we talked to many African-Americans. We took them through the story, we showed them things, and weve since previewed the movie. The reaction weve gotten from everyone whos actually seen the movie, and knows the story, has been very, very positive, and thats been very encouraging to us. Weve gotten notes and weve addressed some things, but I say overall people who know the context of the movie - JOHN MUSKER: And that includes multiracial audiences - African-American and otherwise. And in fact the numbers coming out of our preview are high across the board - it didnt matter. MOVIELINE: You have Oprah Winfreys stamp of approval. RC: Oprahs a character, and she does a great job. Terrence Howard did a great job. So its been kind of tough for us, and the Internet is at a place where it wasnt necessarily a few years ago. Speculation tends to run rampant, but the only thing I can say is that if people have concerns, just see the movie and I think a lot of the concerns will go away. The issue with the Prince, the Prince is not African-American, and hes not white. Hes played by a Brazilian actor and hes definitely a person of color. Again, its the context of the movie, and the context of the story - thats very important in terms of how the story works, and how things sort of work out When people will see the movie, the reasons for things will be more clear. Not that there wont be issues. Im sure many people will have issues, but we feel good about the movie, and I think we feel that it works for all audiences the way we hoped it would. Because certainly you dont want to do this kind of movie and have it divide people. You want to bring people together. Thats always been the intention.
RE: [scifinoir2] topic: What is the worst book to movie adaptation that you know
Madeleine L'Engle's 'A Wrinkle in Time' for one. Philip K. Dick's 'Paycheck' for another. Brent
[scifinoir2] What we didnt know about the moonwalk
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31965108/ns/technology_and_science-space/ What we didnt know about the moonwalk After 40 years, get the back story behind that one small step By Jay Barbree Correspondent NBC News Sun., July 19, 2009 CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Neil Armstrong moved slowly down the ladder. Getting to the moon had been a long time coming. He was an Ohio pilot who came from the same soil as Orville and Wilbur, who ejected from a crippled jet fighter over Korea just after turning 21, who flew seven test flights in the X-15 rocket, who saved himself and a crewmate in Gemini 8, who ejected from a lunar landing trainer a split second before it crashed. In the 1950s and '60s, he flew about every propeller, jet, rocket and helicopter built by his country. To say that this Midwestern farmboy was the best test pilot in an emergency ever was an easy argument. Thats why chief astronaut Deke Slayton chose Neil Armstrong to take the first step on a small world that had never been touched by life. A landscape where no leaf had ever drifted, no insect had ever scurried, where no blade of green ever waved, where in the silence of vacuum even the fury of a thermonuclear blast would sound no louder than a falling snowflake. More than 200,000 miles away, billions of eyes stared at the black-and-white TV picture. They watched Neils ghostly figure move like a spacesuited phantom, closer and closer, planting his boots in moondust at 10:56 p.m. ET, July 20, 1969. All motion stopped. That's one small step for a man, Neil said slowly, one giant leap for mankind. Neil gathered several ounces of rock and soil from the lunar surface and stuffed the invaluable material in a suit pocket. The plan was, after Buzz Aldrin joined him, they would remain outside for two hours, planting experiments and collecting primarily rocks, but if something should go wrong, at least they would have a tiny bit of the moon. With the contingency sample safely tucked away, he took the time to look around. The moon has a very stark beauty all its own, he said, almost whispering. Its like much of the high desert areas of the United States. Its different, but its pretty out here. What we on Earth did not know at the time was exactly why historys first moonwalk began when it did. NASA had scheduled a four-hour sleep and rest period for Armstrong and Aldrin in the lunar module, or LM, and we were told to wait. It turned out that we were hoodwinked. The truth came out last November. NBC News President Steve Capus was giving me a dinner to celebrate my 50 years at the network. Former astronauts Neil Armstrong, John Glenn and Edgar Mitchell flew in, along with other survivors of the old days. Following dinner and a short ride to one of our favorite watering holes, Neil spilled the beans. Of course we wanted to get outside as soon as possible, before an emergency. But we thought we would need several hours to get the LMs fluids and systems settled, he explained. For several hours you reporters would have been speculating, guessing about possible problems, and we didnt want one of you inventing stories, Neil grinned. Thats why we put in a four-hour sleep and rest period we hoped we would never use. We laughed, and Neil laughed, and he added, Everything went much faster than we expected. Most of us were having dinner when the call came that the moonwalk would begin early. We rushed back to our microphones and reported the history-making event of our lives. Buzz takes his turn While Neil took his one small step, Buzz Aldrin stayed aboard the lunar module, which they named Eagle, to monitor its systems. That was his duty as lunar module pilot, and that was one reason why he was the second man to walk on the moon. When he and Mission Control were convinced that the Eagle was safe and purring, he joined Neil on the surface. Beautiful, beautiful! Magnificent desolation, Buzz said as he stared at a sky that was the darkest of blacks above a landscape that was many shades of gray, a touch of brown, and utter black where the rocks cast their shadows. No real color, not even the places lit by the unfiltered sun. Then there was the weak gravity. They weighed only one-sixth of their Earth poundage, and Neil reported, The surface is fine and powdery. It adheres in fine layers, like powdered charcoal, to the soles and sides of my boots. I only go in a fraction of an inch, maybe an eighth of an inch, but I can see the footprints of my boots and the treads in the fine, sandy particles. Was the moonwalk faked? No! It would be these highly defined footprints that would set some armchair physicists crying the moonwalk was a fake. In the years to come there would be those who would claim Apollo astronauts never went to the moon. They said all of it was done on a movie set in an Arizona. It occurred to me that if NASA had been so deviously smart to persuade 400,000 Apollo workers to lie, to persuade the Russians to lie,
[scifinoir2] William Shatner: Rocket Man
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN3MGN899yE
[scifinoir2] To boldly go to Mars, Buzz Aldrin writes
http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/boldly+Mars/1798832/story.html To boldly go to Mars Forget the moon, the next goal should be to colonize the Red Planet, Buzz Aldrin writes By BUZZ ALDRIN, Freelance July 17, 2009 On the spring morning in 1927 when Charles Lindbergh set off alone across the Atlantic Ocean, only a handful of explorer-adventurers were capable of even attempting the feat. Many had tried before Lindbergh's successful flight, but all had failed and many lost their lives in the process. Most people then thought transatlantic travel was an impossible dream. But 40 years later, 20,000 people a day were safely flying the same route that the Lone Eagle had voyaged. Transatlantic flight had become routine. Forty years ago yesterday, Neil Armstrong, Mike Collins and I began our quarter-million-mile journey through the blackness of space to reach the moon. Neil and I walked its dusty ancient soil, becoming the first humans to stand upon another world. Yet today, no nation - including the U.S. - is capable of sending anyone beyond Earth's orbit, much less deeper into space. For the past four years, NASA has been on a path to resume lunar exploration with people, duplicating (in a more complicated fashion) what Neil, Mike and our colleagues did four decades ago. But this approach - called the Vision for Space Exploration - is not visionary; nor will it ultimately be successful in restoring U.S. space leadership. Like its Apollo predecessor, this plan will prove to be a dead end littered with broken spacecraft, broken dreams and broken policies. Instead, I propose a new Unified Space Vision, a plan to ensure U.S. space leadership for the 21st century. It wouldn't require building new rockets from scratch, as current plans do, and it would make maximum use of the capabilities we have without breaking the bank. It is a reasonable and affordable plan - if we again think in visionary terms. On television and in movies, Star Trek showed what could be achieved when we dared to boldly go where no man has gone before. In real life, I've travelled that path, and I know that with the right goal and support from most Americans, we can boldly go, again. A race to the moon is a dead end. While the lunar surface can be used to develop advanced technologies, it is a poor location for homesteading. The moon is a lifeless, barren world, its stark desolation matched by its hostility to all living things. And replaying the glory days of Apollo will not advance the cause of U.S. space leadership or inspire the support and enthusiasm of the public and the next generation of explorers. Our next generation must think boldly in terms of a goal for the space program: Mars for our future. I am not suggesting a few visits to plant flags and do photo-ops but a journey to make the first homestead in space: an American colony on a new world. Robotic exploration of Mars has yielded tantalizing clues about what was once a water-soaked planet. Deep beneath the soils of Mars might lie trapped frozen water, possibly with traces of still-extant primitive life forms. Climate change on a vast scale has reshaped Mars. With Earth in the throes of its own climate evolution, human outposts on Mars could be a virtual laboratory to study these vast planetary changes. And the best way to study Mars is with the two hands, eyes and ears of a geologist, first on a moon orbiting Mars and then on the Red Planet's surface. Mobilizing the space program to focus on a human colony on Mars while at the same time helping our international partners explore the moon on their own would galvanize public support for space exploration and provide a cause to inspire students. Mars exploration would renew our space industry by opening up technology development to all players, not just the traditional big aerospace contractors. If we avoided the pitfall of aiming solely for the moon, we could be on Mars by the 60th anniversary year of our Apollo 11 flight. Much has been said recently about the Vision for Space Exploration and the future of the international space station. As we all reflect upon our historic lunar journey and the future of the space program, I challenge America's leaders to think boldly and look beyond the moon. Yes, my vision of Mars for America requires bold thinking. But as my friend and Gemini crewmate Jim Lovell has noted, our Apollo days were a time when we did bold things in space to achieve leadership. It is time we were bold again in space. Buzz Aldrin was the second man to walk on the moon. He served as the Gemini 12 mission pilot in 1966, and was the lunar module pilot on the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. © Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette
[scifinoir2] Dan Aykroyd happy to revisit old 'Ghostbusters' haunts
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/2009/06/15/2009-06-15_dan_aykroyd_happy_to_revisit_old_ghostbusters_haunts.html Dan Aykroyd happy to revisit old 'Ghostbusters' haunts by Stu Horvath DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER Updated Monday, June 15th 2009 Dan Aykroyd has been waiting 20 years for this moment. While this Tuesday`s release of Ghostbusters: The Video Game is made for living rooms instead of movie houses, the 56-year-old actor says the game was the chance he and fellow actors Bill Murray, Harold Raimis and Ernie Hudson were looking for to reprise their famous roles. To me, this is the third movie, says Aykroyd, The third movie might wind up being a sequel to this game. The game, developed by Terminal Reality, picks up two years after the events of the 1989 sequel, Ghostbusters II. In addition to the voices and likenesses of the four Ghostbusters, actors Annie Potts and William Atherton reprise their characters while Alyssa Milano and Brian Doyle-Murray voice new ones. With all that talent and an original script by Raimis and Aykroyd, calling it Ghostbusters III isn't that out of this world. The project has scared up a lot of interest from fans who have been eagerly awaiting a third film installment, which has been foiled by everything from budget concerns to Bill Murray's schedule. It's show biz. Dreams get perforated, says Aykroyd of the problems. I just had to kiss it goodbye for a long time. Last summer, it looked like the game wouldn't materialize either. Originally developed for Activision, following that company's merger with Vivendi, the project was dropped - a controversial move in gamer circles considering the positive buzz the title had generated. Thankfully, Atari stepped in and secured the publishing rights. Now Ghostbusters: The Video Game is hitting stores on the 25th anniversary of the original movies release and renewed interest in the franchise has prompted the team behind The Office to pen a script for a new movie. Aykroyd gives the game developers all the credit. The guys who built this game were real fans, real passionate fans, he says, That love comes through.
[scifinoir2] Fwd: A Fond Farewell to Analog TV
http://digg.com/d1teCg
Re: [scifinoir2] Things I have learnt from the American and British movies TV s
lmao! :-) Brent Mr. Worf hellomahog...@gmail.com wrote: Silly but true... Things I have learnt from the American and British movies TV series: Large, loft-style apartments in New York City are well within the price range of most people--whether they are employed or not. At least one of a pair of identical twins is born evil. Should you decide to defuse a bomb, don't worry which wire to cut. You will always choose the right one. It does not matter if you are heavily outnumbered in a fight involving martial arts: your enemies will wait patiently to attack you one by one by dancing around in a threatening manner until you have knocked out their predecessors. When you turn out the light to go to bed, everything in your bedroom will still be clearly visible, just slightly bluish. Honest and hard working policemen are traditionally gunned down three days before their retirement. Rather than wasting bullets, megalomaniacs prefer to kill their arch enemies using complicated machinery involving fuses, pulley systems, deadly gasses, lasers, and man-eating sharks, which will allow their captives at least 20 minutes to escape. All beds have special L-shaped cover sheets that reach the armpit level on a woman but only to waist level on the man lying beside her. It's easy for anyone to land a plane providing there is someone in the control tower to talk you down. You're very likely to survive any battle in any war unless you make the mistake of showing someone a picture of your sweetheart back home. The Eiffel Tower can be seen from any window in Paris. A man will show no pain while taking the most ferocious beating, but will wince when a woman tries to clean his wounds. If a large pane of glass is visible, someone will be thrown through it before long. If staying in a haunted house, women should investigate any strange noises in their most revealing underwear. All bombs are fitted with electronic timing devices with large red readouts so you know exactly when they're going to go off. A detective can only solve a case once he has been suspended from duty. Police departments give their officers personality tests to make sure they are deliberately assigned a partner who is their total opposite.
Re: [scifinoir2] Obama Picks First African American NASA Chief
:-) Brent Tracey de Morsella tdli...@multiculturaladvantage.com writes: HOUSTON Ñ The nation's turbulent space program will be run by one of its own, a calming well-liked former space shuttle commander. [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/23/charles-bolden-obamas-pic_n_207043.html ]President Barack Obama on Saturday chose retired astronaut Gen. Charles Bolden to lead NASA. He also named former [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/23/charles-bolden-obamas-pic_n_207043.html ]NASA associate administrator Lori Garver as the agency's No. 2. If confirmed, Bolden, who has flown in space four times and was an assistant deputy administrator at one point, would be the agency's first black administrator. Bolden would also be only the second astronaut to run NASA in its 50-year history. Adm. Richard Truly was the first. In 2002, then-President George W. Bush unsuccessfully tried to appoint Bolden as the space agency's deputy administrator. The Pentagon said it needed to keep Bolden, who was a Marine general at the time and a pilot who flew more than 100 sorties in Vietnam. Charlie knows NASA and the people know Charlie; there's a level of comfort, especially given the uncertainty the space agency faces, said retired astronaut Steve Hawley, who flew twice in space with Bolden. Bolden likely will bring more balance to NASA, increasing spending on aeronautics and environment missions, working more with other nations in space, and emphasizing education, which the president often talks about when it comes to space, said former Johnson Space Center Director George Abbey, a longtime friend. He's a real leader, Abbey said Saturday. NASA has been looking for a leader like this that they could have confidence in. Bolden's appointment came during the tail end of the space shuttle Atlantis' mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope one final time. He was the pilot on the flight that sent Hubble into orbit in 1990. Bolden, 62, would inherit a NASA that doesn't look much like the still-somewhat-fresh-from-the-moon agency he joined as an astronaut in 1980. NASA now is faced with a lot of uncertainty, Abbey said. Story continues below [Image] Bush set in motion a plan to retire the space shuttle fleet at the end of next year and return astronauts to the moon and then head out to Mars in a series of rockets and capsules that borrows heavily from the 1960s Apollo program. The shuttle's replacement won't be ready until at least 2015, so for five years the only way Americans will be able to get in space is by hitching a ride on a Russian space capsule. And some of NASA's biggest science programs are over budget. Earlier this month, the White House ordered a complete outside examination of the manned space program. The Obama administration hasn't been explicit about its space policy, with White House science adviser John Holdren saying the policy would come after a NASA chief was named. These talented individuals will help put NASA on course to boldly push the boundaries of science, aeronautics and exploration in the 21st century and ensure the long-term vibrancy of America's space program, Obama said of Bolden and Garver in a statement. Bolden, a native of Columbia, S.C., and his wife donated $750 to the Obama campaign in 2008. At NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, where Bolden spent about a decade, his impending appointment was quietly cheered on all week long. The diminutive salt-and-pepper haired Bolden, who lives only a few miles from the space center, on Saturday morning said he couldn't talk until after Senate confirmation. He was busy answering congratulatory e-mails from home. He has his own consulting firm in Houston and sits on corporate boards. Those who have flown or worked with Bolden can't praise him enough. Retired astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz interviewed to become an astronaut the same week as Bolden, was picked at the same time, and they flew together on their first flights. Soon after that much-delayed launch of the space shuttle Columbia in January 1986, Chang-Diaz looked at his friend Bolden and saw that the shuttle pilot had a big, big smile... we were kind of like kids in a candy store. Hawley and then-U.S. Rep. Bill Nelson were also aboard that 1986 flight. Nelson, now the chairman of the Senate subcommittee on space that will oversee Bolden's nomination and one of the people pushing Bolden's nomination to the White House, commented: I trusted Charlie with my life - and would do so again. Kathryn Sullivan was the payload commander on the 1992 flight of Atlantis, which was Bolden's first of two shuttle commands. She said Bolden has all the aspects of leadership that a good chief requires. That includes experience, wisdom and the ability to listen to all sides. She called him one of the finest people I've ever known. Charlie's a great leader, Chang-Diaz agreed. He takes care of his team. ___ On the Net Bolden's NASA biography: [ http://tinyurl.com/2eln82 ]http://tinyurl.com/2eln82
[scifinoir2] U.S. Mission for Sci-Fi Writers: Imagine That Novelists Plot the Future Of Homela
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/21/AR2009052104379.html?hpid=features1 U.S. Mission for Sci-Fi Writers: Imagine That Novelists Plot the Future Of Homeland Security By David Montgomery Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, May 22, 2009 The line between what's real and what's not is thin and shifting, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has decided to explore both sides. Boldly going where few government bureaucracies have gone before, the agency is enlisting the expertise of science fiction writers. Crazy? This week down at the Reagan Building, the 2009 Homeland Security Science Technology Stakeholders Conference has been going on. Instead of just another wonkish series of meetings and a trade show, with contractors hustling business around every corner, this felt at times more like a convention of futuristic yarn-spinners. Onstage in the darkened amphitheater, a Washington police commander said he'd like to have Mr. Spock's instant access to information: At a disaster scene, he'd like to say, Computer, what's the dosage on this medication? A federal research director fantasized about a cellphone that could simultaneously text and detect biochemical attacks. Multiple cellphones in a crowd would confirm and track the spread. The master of ceremonies for the week was Greg Bear, the sci-fi novelist whose book Quantico featured FBI agents battling a designer plague targeting specific ethnic groups. What if we had a black box that IDs DNA on the scene? Bear asked a panel of firefighters and police officers. Put a swab in the box. How long would it take us to do that? Would that be of interest to anybody here? Absolutely! said a police official from Fairfax County. The dozen or so novelists sprinkled throughout the breakout sessions had camouflaged themselves in GS-conformist coats and ties, but they would have fit right in anyway. Science fiction writers tend to know a lot about science. And the ranks of federal and commercial RD departments are stuffed with sci-fi fanatics. The cost to taxpayers is minimal. The writers call this science fiction in the national interest, and they consult pro bono. They've been exploring the future, and we owe it to mankind to come back and report what we've found, said writer Arlan Andrews, who also is an engineer with the Navy in Corpus Christi, Tex. Andrews founded an organization of sci-fi writers to offer imaginative services in return for travel expenses only. Called Sigma, the group has about 40 writers. Over the years, members have addressed meetings organized by the Department of Energy, the Army, Air Force, NATO and other agencies they care not to name. At first, to pass the Beltway giggle-factor test, Andrews recruited only sci-fi writers who had conventional science or engineering chops on their résumés. Now about a third of the writers have PhDs. The communities converged again Wednesday evening when the scene shifted from the conference hall to Reiter's Books, the beloved old science-focused shop on K Street NW, where the writers signed books and led discussions. Harry McDavid, chief information officer for Homeland Security's Office of Operations Coordination Planning, had a question for Catherine Asaro, author of two dozen novels, about half of them devoted to her Saga of the Skolian Empire. She also has a PhD in physics. McDavid's job involves information sharing -- efficiently communicating information about response and recovery across agencies, states, business sectors. How, he wanted to know, did Asaro come up with the Triad system in her novels of flashing thoughts instantly across the universe? It evolved along with the story, Asaro said. Basically, she applied principles of quantum theory -- one of her specialties as a physicist -- to a fictional theory of thought space. McDavid has no plan to add telepathy to Homeland Security's communications strategy. That wasn't the point of his question -- or of the agency's invitation to science fiction writers in the first place. He's looking for ways to break old habits of thought. We're stuck in a paradigm of databases, McDavid said later. How do we jump out of our infrastructure and start conceptualizing those threats? That's very cool. All this attention from Uncle Sam does wonders for the self-esteem of science fiction writers. Despite the cultural acclaim of a few superstars, some others feel spurned by critics, dismissed by academics, ripped off by Hollywood -- another misunderstood subculture. And yet: Would the space program have flourished so quickly without a generation of engineers and scientists that grew up reading Robert Heinlein? Has anything been invented that somebody didn't first imagine and put in a story? I would now go so far as to claim that only readers or writers of science fiction are really competent to discuss the possibilities of the future, Arthur C. Clarke wrote in
Re: [scifinoir2] Newbie: Hello from Author Michelle Lauren
Hiya! Welcome to the fold. :-) Brent Michelle Lauren miche...@michellelaurenbooks.com wrote: Hi everyone. I just joined the group and wanted to introduce myself. I'm a published author, a freelance writer and a regular columnist for Romance Writers Report, the national magazine for Romance Writers of America. I am an eclectic reader, but I truly enjoy reading (and writing) sci-fi-futuristic and urban fantasy romances with multicultural characters. My first book published with Liquid Silver Books is called STARSTRUCK: HUNTER, a multicultural sci-fi romance. There is a link to it in my signature line if you want to read a blurb. And, if you're interested, I'm being interviewed today about the book and I'm giving away a Border's Gift Card. (Here's the interview link: http://jennifersrandommusings.wordpress.com) I'm a big fan of Joss Whedon (I saw some discussion here about his show DOLLHOUSE likely getting renewed for Season 2 -- thank goodness! I love that show). I hope to chat more with you all soon. Michelle Lauren STARSTRUCK: HUNTER(Multicultural Sci-Fi Romance)Available from Liquid Silver Books Buy Link: http://www.liquidsilverbooks.com/books/starstruckhunter.htm HOW TO TAME A HARPY ~ a Romantic Times magazine American Title V finalist http://www.michellelaurenbooks.com http://groups.yahoo.com/group/michellelaurenbooks/join ../../../../../michellelaurenbooks/join (Join for excerpts,contests, interviews more!)
[scifinoir2] A Primer to 'Star Trek' Food and Drink
http://www.seriouseats.com/2009/05/a-primer-to-star-trek-food-and-drink.html
Re: [scifinoir2] Intro: Angela AKA AngelaBabyCat, Washington, DC
(((Welcome))) Angela, to the throng. :-) Brent angelababycat asrobin...@mindspring.com wrote: Hello everybody! I just wanted to introduce myself as a new member of SCIFINOIR2. I'm a big fan of sci-fi film and television. Sarah Connor, Lost and Supernatural are my current favorites on TV, and looking forward to SG Universe this fall. I'm planning to be at the Friday morning showings of X-Men, Star Trek and Terminator next month (one beneift of being self-employed!). Warf (Star Trek) is my favorite Sci-Fi character; Ben (Lost) my favorite villain -- though some might argue that it remains to be seen whether he's actually friend or foe to the survivors. But I supose Star Wars IV will always be my all-time favorite story. The last novel I actually finished was, sadly -- very sadly, a week before I started law school (and that was years ago). Speculative fiction stereotypes that irk me: women who look like me don't go to Star Trek conventions. I don't do much web surfing, but someone recently turned me on to www.io9.com as a good sci-fi/fantasy site. Would love to know where others visit, though. Have a good one. Angela
[scifinoir2] 'Star Trek:' To boldly go where no prequel has gone before
http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/04/22/star.trek.screening.room/ 'Star Trek:' To boldly go where no prequel has gone before By Mairi Mackay CNN LONDON, England (CNN) -- Geek buzz flying around the Internet suggests that Star Trek could be one of the summer's biggest movies. Director J.J. Abrams' reinvention of the cult sci-fi franchise doesn't open across the world until May 7 and 8, but early reviews after London's Monday premiere are excellent. The hype building around the 11th Star Trek film suggests that it could turn into a movie event to rival last year's Batman movie, The Dark Knight, and introduce Star Trek to a legion of new fans. Hot director Abrams, the creative talent behind TV series Lost and last year's much-hyped homage to Japanese monster movies, Cloverfield, is the man given the unenviable task of re-working the franchise for the next generation -- without alienating its loyal fanbase. iReport.com: Chicago couple travels to world premiere [http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-247570] The 43 year old director says he went back to the beginning to look for inspiration for the latest installment. Are you excited about the new Star Trek movie or is it all a bunch of hype? Tell us below in the SoundOff box [http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/04/22/star.trek.screening.room/index.html#soundoff] I always felt there was something that had not been done with 'Star Trek,' he said. There have been 10 movies, but this is the first time that a movie has dealt with the fundamental, primary story Gene Roddenberry originally created in 1966. Interactive: A history of Star Trek »[http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/04/22/star.trek.screening.room/#cnnSTCOther1] There are so many versions and narrations of 'Star Trek,' it felt like bringing in another ship and a whole new group of characters wasn't the way to go. Abrams' Star Trek chronicles the first voyage of the U.S.S. Enterprise's now legendary crew, telling the story of how Kirk, Spock, Bones, Scotty, and the rest met. Abrams solves the problem of how to convincingly cast a prequel to a series whose characters, like William Shatner's Capt. James T. Kirk, are indelibly etched on the collective pop-cultural consciousness with an inspired mix of newcomers and more well-known faces. The new cast includes Australian star Eric Bana as Romulan captain Nero, and Heroes villain Zachary Quinto as Spock, while relative newcomer Chris Pine takes on the role of James T. Kirk. Video Watch Zachary Quinto, who plays Spock and Simon Pegg, who plays Scottie talk about Star Trek »[http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/04/22/star.trek.screening.room/#cnnSTCVideo] They uniformly manage to walk the tightrope between being recognizable as their predecessors without falling into caricature. That was the challenge for all of us, really, said New Zealander, Karl Urban who perfectly embodies the cantankerous Dr. Leonard Bones McCoy, the ship's doctor, not to deliver some carbon copy. A healthy dose of special effects adds a level of spectacle missing from previous Star Trek movies to Abrams' re-imagining of the franchise -- but, he says, the backbone of the film comes from the characters. [We had] to take something that has pre-existed us for decades, and make it feel legitimate, and vital, and relevant for today, Abrams said. And the only way to do that was through the characters that these actors played so well. None of the vast spectacle would matter if we didn't believe in and care about these characters. One member of the original U.S.S. Enterprise crew Abrams couldn't resist including in the new lineup was legendary actor Leonard Nimoy, who comes back as an aged Spock in one of the storylines. He was clearly supportive and excited, said Quinto who plays the young Spock. I don't think Leonard ever expected to play this character again. It had been 19 years since he donned the ears last time. For self-confessed sci-fi nerd Simon Pegg, who plays ship's engineer, Scottie, working with Nimoy was a curious experience. When Chris [Pine] and I were doing our scenes with Leonard Nimoy, it was weird because he was talking to me as the man that I've known since I was nine, he said. And it's not a man from this planet. It's a man from Vulcan. One of the big questions surrounding the film to date has been how the franchise's die-hard fans, known as Trekkies or Trekkers, will react to the all-new Star Trek. Abrams says that despite the daunting nature of taking on such a well-loved series, he trusted that if he did his job the rest would follow. It's so much bigger than anything I've worked on before. The scope is so crazy, he said. But I also felt that if we did our job and made a movie that was entertaining, it would include Star Trek fans. Pine thinks the new film will appeal to die-hard Trekkers and new audiences alike. It's a big movie, in that it is full of big, spectacular effects and wonderful imagery, yet a small movie because of the great character drama. So, whether
[scifinoir2] Do or die time for TV shows: 'Chuck' and 'Medium' among those on the bubble
http://public.aliant.net/Entertainment/Articles_Stories/?storyId=20364983 Do or die time for TV shows: 'Chuck' and 'Medium' among those on the bubble The Canadian Press Monday marks the season finale of both Chuck and Heroes. Could they also be series finales? This is the time of year when the fates of shows that are on the bubble - low rated and thus close to cancellation - are determined. By the middle of May, U.S. broadcasters will announce which shows have made the cut, as well as which new shows will premiere next fall. In Canada, CBC has already announced that both Sophie and Wild Roses are cancelled. Corner Gas has already exited for good at CTV, where a sharp drop in ratings threatens long-running Degrassi: The Next Generation. Some low-rated shows might get a reprieve this season due to the downturn in the economy. It costs less to keep an existing show on the air than to try and launch a new one. NBC has already worked out a deal with U.S. satellite provider DirecTV to co-produce two more seasons of acclaimed but low-rated drama Friday Night Lights. Other NBC hour-long shows won't be so lucky now that the Peacock network has decided to replace its 10 p.m. line-up with five hours of the new Jay Leno Show. That will bump at least one current NBC drama - Law Order SVU, which has been renewed for an 11th season - to an earlier hour, threatening a show or two there. The original Law Order, which needs a renewal to break the 20 season record set by Gunsmoke, might not get it due to declining ratings and a lack of drama space at NBC. ER is history, but what about the new John Wells cop drama Southland, which is holding its own in the old ER time slot? Other shows likely gone for good at NBC are Life, Knight Rider and Kings. There is some speculation that NBC might toss one of its low-rated dramas, Lipstick Jungle, over to one of its sister cable networks, Bravo or Lifetime. Even if this happens, the smaller economies of scale mean few episodes, reduced budgets and bye-bye to a few cast regulars. Shows on the bubble at NBC include Chuck, Medium and My Name is Earl. Heroes is down but probably not out thanks to favourable demographics. A show like Chuck might also be saved due to the downturn in the economy. There is a definite swing toward lighter, more escapist fare next season. Grim shows like Without a Trace may be deemed too scary for scary times. The hero of Chuck (played by Zachary Levi) is easy to root for, a nerd working at a big box store who is a secret spy hero. A visit to the set of Chuck on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, Calif., also provides clues to how it stays on the air despite low ratings. The main set is a replica of a big box retail outlet filled with plasma screens, Guitar Hero games and other consumer electronics. The embedded marketing opportunities are endless, something all networks are seeking as viewers grow more resistant to traditional advertising. A fan effort to save the show is gaining traction on Twitter, where viewers are urged to go to Subway - a sandwich shop featured on a recent episode - and buy a footlong before the Monday finale in an effort to save the show. Talk about putting your money where your mouth is. Some of the recent mid-season shows are already iffy for renewal. Motherhood unloved, Castle crumbling, Better Off Ted Dead went one Save Our Shows website heading. Cupid has already been pulled from ABC's line-up, although Surviving Suburbia, a traditional sitcom headlined by Bob Saget, has shown surprising strength - another indicator that audiences are looking for comfort viewing in tough times. Amy Poehler's new comedy Parks Recreation is also off to a strong start. ABC says Ugly Betty is definitely back, but Life on Mars is cancelled. Samantha Who? and Private Practice are on the bubble. In danger of cancellation at CBS are The New Adventures of Old Christine, Gary Unmarried, The Unit, Cold Case Eleventh Hour and newcomer Harper's Island, which will likely bow out after its current 13-episode run. Fans of Dollhouse and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles may be in for some disappointment in mid-May when Fox announces its fall schedule. Gone for sure are Prison Break and long-running King of the Hill. Also teetering is the new animated effort Sit Down, Shut Up. At The CW, odds are against low-rated, Vancouver-based dramedy Reaper. Privileged is a goner, with a new version of Melrose Place likely joining 90210 on the network's recycled schedule next season. - Bill Brioux is a freelance TV columnist based in Brampton, Ont.
[scifinoir2] Stephen Hawking hospitalized, reported very ill
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090420/ap_on_re_eu/eu_britain_hawking Stephen Hawking hospitalized, reported very ill By ROBERT BARR, Associated Press Writer LONDON Famed mathematician Stephen Hawking was rushed to a hospital Monday and was seriously ill, Cambridge University said. The university said Hawking has been fighting a chest infection for several weeks, and was being treated at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, the university city northeast of London. Professor Hawking is very ill, said Gregory Hayman, the university's head of communications. He is undergoing tests. He has been unwell for a couple of weeks. Later in the afternoon, Hayman said Hawking was now comfortable but will be kept in hospital overnight. Hawking, 67, gained renown for his work on black holes, and has remained active despite being diagnosed at 21 with ALS, (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), an incurable degenerative disorder also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Brian Dickie, director of research at the Motor Neurone Disease Association, said only 5 percent of people diagnosed with ALS survive for 10 years or longer. Hawking really is at the extreme end of the scale when it comes to survival, Dickie said. For some years, Hawking has been almost entirely paralyzed, and he communicates through an electronic voice synthesizer activated by his fingers. Hawking was involved in the search for the great goal of physics a unified theory which would resolve contradictions between Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, which describes the laws of gravity that govern the motion of large objects like planets, and the Theory of Quantum Mechanics, which deals with the world of subatomic particles. A complete, consistent unified theory is only the first step: our goal is a complete understanding of the events around us, and of our own existence, he wrote in his best-selling book, A Brief History of Time, published in 1988. In a more accessible sequel The Universe in a Nutshell, published in 2001, Hawking ventured into concepts like supergravity, naked singularities and the possibility of a universe with 11 dimensions. He announced last year that he would step down from his post as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, a title once held by the great 18th-century physicist Isaac Newton. However, the university said Hawking intended to continue working as Emeritus Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. Hawking had canceled an appearance at Arizona State University on April 6 because of his illness. Professor Hawking is a remarkable colleague. We all hope he will be amongst us again soon, said Professor Peter Haynes, head of the university's Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. ___ On the Net: http://www.hawking.org.uk
[scifinoir2] J.G. Ballard, author of 'Empire of the Sun,' dies at 78
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20090419/jg_ballard_090419/20090419?hub=TopStories J.G. Ballard, author of 'Empire of the Sun,' dies at 78 The Associated Press LONDON -- Writer J.G. Ballard, best known for the autobiographical novel Empire of the Sun, which drew on his childhood detention in a Japanese prison camp in China, died Sunday, his agent said. He was 78. Ballard was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2006. He had been ill for several years and died in London at the home of his long-term partner, his agent Margaret Hanbury said. She did not give the cause of death. His acute and visionary observation of contemporary life was distilled into a number of brilliant, powerful novels which have been published all over the world and saw Ballard gain cult status, Hanbury said. Ballard was born in Shanghai, China, and was interned there in a prison camp by Japanese troops in 1941 -- an experience he drew on in the 1984 novel Empire of the Sun, later adapted as a film by U.S. director Steven Spielberg. The writer moved to Britain in 1946, where he lived until his death. Ballard was sometimes controversial. His 1973 novel Crash, which explored contentious themes about people who derive pleasure from car accidents, was made into a film by David Cronenberg in 1996. J.G. Ballard has been a giant on the world literary scene for more than 50 years, Hanbury said. Following his early novels of the 60s and 70s, his work then reached a wider audience with the publication of Empire of the Sun in 1984, which won several prizes and was made into a film, she said. The book told the story of a young boy living through Japanese occupation of Shanghai, detailing his struggle and complex emotions toward the invading forces. I have -- I won't say happy -- not unpleasant memories of the camp. I remember a lot of the casual brutality and beatings-up that went on, but at the same time we children were playing a hundred and one games all the time! Ballard once said of his childhood internment. Born James Graham Ballard, the author was a sharp critic of modern politics, who once mocked the West's search for near mythical weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, in the buildup to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Ballard focused heavily in his work on what he saw as the negative effect on mankind of advancing technology and rejected the belief that humans can constantly improve themselves. Ballard often portrayed social and technological developments as adding to a sense of human worthlessness, rather than aiding the progression of mankind. The enlightenment view of mankind is a complete myth. It leads us into thinking we're sane and rational creatures most of the time, and we're not, Ballard said in a 2003 interview with Australian newspaper, the Age. Ballard was educated at Cambridge University and served as a British Royal Air Force pilot before working as a writer. He revealed in a January 2008 interview that he had been diagnosed in 2006 with advanced prostate cancer. Ballard married Helen Matthews in 1954. She died in 1964. He is survived by their three children. There was no immediate word on funeral plans.
[scifinoir2] Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes set for Clash of the Titans
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/apr/09/liam-neeson-ralph-fiennes-clash-of-the-titans Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes set for Clash of the Titans Actors will face off as Zeus and Hades in a new remake of the hit 1981 Greek myths epic Ben Child guardian.co.uk, Thursday 9 April 2009 Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes look set to play feuding Greek gods Zeus and Hades in a new remake of 80s sword-and-sandal epic Clash of the Titans, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Louis Leterrier, who made the critically-panned The Incredible Hulk last year, is directing the new take on the adventures of Perseus, the son of Zeus, who once again must battle snake-haired Medusa and the Kraken in order to rescue the Princess Andromeda. Sam Worthington has already signed on to play Perseus, with Gemma Arterton taking on the new role of Io, a priestess who in the myths is seduced by Zeus before being turned into a cow. Alexa Davalos and Mads Mikkelsen are also on board as Andromeda and Draco, a skilled fighter who accompanies Perseus. Neeson is playing Zeus, the wise and mighty king of the gods who was portrayed by Laurence Olivier in Desmond Davis's 1981 film, while Fiennes is in final negotiations to play Hades, the ruler of the underworld, who seeks to usurp his rival. The film will be the first new project for Neeson since the death of his wife Natasha Richardson, although negotiations began prior to her skiing accident last month. Clash of the Titans begins shooting in the UK later this month and is currently scheduled for a March 2010 release date. The original film, which was stop-motion animation legend Ray Harryhausen's movie swansong, was the 11th highest grossing film of 1981 in the US.
[scifinoir2] Vonnegut stories to be released
http://jam.canoe.ca/Books/2009/04/10/9078416-ap.html Vonnegut stories to be released By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS NEW YORK - A posthumous collection of short stories by Kurt Vonnegut will be released this November. The collection, called Look at the Birdie, contains 14 stories by the author of Slaughterhouse-Five and other works. Delacorte Press says it plans to reissue 15 Vonnegut titles including Mother Night, The Sirens of Titan, Galapagos and Slaughterhouse-Five. Also due: another collection of his unpublished writings and a book of letters sent to and from the author during his life. More never-before-seen stories by Vonnegut appeared in the 2008 collection Armageddon in Retrospect. Vonnegut died in April 2007 at the age 84. His works contained elements of social commentary, science fiction and autobiography.
[scifinoir2] Dungeons Dragons Co-Creator Passes Away
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Dungeons-And-Dragons-Creator-Dave-Arneson-Dies-Cancer-Claims-Life-Of-Fantasy-Game-Pioneer/Article/200904215259522?lpos=World_News_First_Home_Article_Teaser_Region_8lid=ARTICLE_15259522_Dungeons_And_Dragons _Creator_Dave_Arneson_Dies%3A_Cancer_Claims_Life_Of_Fantasy_Game_Pioneer Dungeons Dragons Co-Creator Passes Away Friday April 10, 2009 Dave Arneson, one of the co-creators of the Dungeons Dragons fantasy game, has died after a two-year battle with cancer. The pioneer of role-playing entertainment was 61. His daughter, Malia Weinhagen, said her father died peacefully in a hospice in St Paul, Minnesota. Mr Arneson and Gary Gygax developed Dungeons Dragons in 1974 using medieval characters and mythical creatures. The game sees players create fictional characters and carry out their adventures with the help of complicated rules. The quintessential 'geek' pastime, it spawned copycat games and inspired a whole genre of role-playing computer games that millions of people around the world now play together online. The biggest thing about my dad's world is he wanted people to have fun in life, Ms Weinhagen said. I think we get distracted by the everyday things you have to do in life and we forget to enjoy life and have fun. But my dad never did. A statement from DD producer Wizards of the Coast said Blackmoor, a game Mr Arneson was developing before DD, was the first-ever role-playing campaign and the prototype for all (role-playing game) campaigns since. (Mr Arneson) developed many of the fundamental ideas of role-playing: that each player controls just one hero, that heroes gain power through adventures, and that personality is as important as combat prowess, it added. In later years, Mr Arneson published other role-playing games and started his own game-publishing and computer game companies. He was inducted into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design Hall of Fame in 1984. Mr Arneson is survived by Ms Weinhagen and two grandchildren.
[scifinoir2] International Space Station Comes Together
http://i.usatoday.net/tech/graphics/iss_timeline/flash.htm
Re: [scifinoir2] Gerald T. Jennings Sr.
Reece, our hearts and prayers go out to you. Take care. Brent Reece Jennings mcjennings...@yahoo.com writes: Gerald T. Jennings Sr. [ http://mi-cache.legacy.com/legacy/images/Cobrands/HartfordCourant/Photos/JE ]http://mi-cache.legacy.com/legacy/images/Cobrands/HartfordCourant/Photos/JE NNGER.jpg JENNINGS, Gerald T. Sr. Gerald T. Jennings Sr., (AKA Coach, AKA G), departed this life on March 31, 2009 at Hartford Hospital. He was born September 11, 1951, in Torrington, to Carletta Wright and the late Sinclair Jennings Sr. He was predeceased by younger sister Robin Jennings. He graduated from Weequahic High School in Newark, NJ in 1968 and continued on to attain degrees from both The University of New Hampshire and Rutgers University. He gave 28 years of service to the CT Dept. of Transportation, where he retired as Transportation Assistant Planning Director in 2007. Gerald was a member of IIABO #6; and CCAFO since 1985, where he officiated numerous playoff and championship games. He was a founding member of Officials Of Color and served as Vice-President. This organization was created to encourage fairness and equality for all officials. Notably, Gerald devoted himself to being a role model for the youth of the East Hartford Community. He is well loved, admired, and remembered for the time he spent coaching the East Hartford Cardinals, East Hartford youth and travel basketball, East Hartford High School Basketball and Football, and Avon Old Farms Football teams. Left to treasure his precious memories are: his devoted wife, Jannett Jennings; two daughters, Nicole (Nigel) Gaynor; Jermain Jennings; two sons, Monte' (Latrice) Jennings; Gerald T. Jennings Jr.; his brothers, Maurice Jennings, Ralph (Cindi) Jacobs, Sinclair Jennings Jr., Jared Jennings, his sisters Cynthia Jennings, Crystal (Michael) Kelly, and Jeanette Jennings; seven grandchildren; Nigel Gaynor Jr., Nicholas Gaynor, Nasharia Gaynor, Namar Gaynor, Rickey Close Jr., Jhada Close and Trevon Wolfe, and a host of adopted sons, nieces, nephews. The service will be held at Bethel A.M.E. Church, 1154 Blue Hills Ave., Bloomfield,CT, on Monday April 6th, 2009. Calling hour will be from 10-11 a.m., funeral service will start at 11 a.m. In lieu of flowers please send donations to Hartford Transplant Program, Hartford Hospital, 80 Seymour St, Hartford, CT. 06108.
[scifinoir2] Japanese space scientists develop odour-free underwear
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,25235558-5012895,00.html Japanese space scientists develop odour-free underwear March 25, 2009 THE smells that eminate from your undies - or so your closest friends or mum says - may be a thing of the past. Japan's space scientists have developed a line of odour-free underwear and casual clothing. Koichi Wakata, the first Japanese astronaut to live on the International Space Station, is testing the clothes, called J-ware and created by textile experts at Japan Women's University in Tokyo, Reuters reports. He can wear his trunks (underwear) more than a week, said Koji Yanagawa, an official with the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency. Wakata's clothes, developed by researcher Yoshiko Taya, are designed to kill bacteria, absorb water, insulate the body and dry quickly. They also are flame-resistant and anti-static, not to mention comfortable and stylish. Japanese astronaut Takao Doi gave the clothes a trial run during a shuttle mission last year. Even after a vigorous workout, Doi's clothes stayed dry. The other astronauts become very sweaty, but he doesn't have any sweat. He didn't need to hang his clothes to dry, Yanagawa said. J-ware also should reduce the amount of clothing that needs to be sent to the space station, which has no laundry facilities. Toting cargo into orbit is expensive, so having clothes that stay fresh for weeks at a time should result in significant savings. The Japanese space agency plans to make the clothes available to NASA and its other space station partners once development is complete. A commercial line also is in the offing. Taya also is working with clothing manufacturers Toray Industries and Goldwin on clothes that have a microscopically thin chemical layer in the materials. Wakata, who arrived at the station last week for a three-month stay, said that the clothes appear to be working. Nobody has complained, so I think it's so far, so good, Wakata said.
[scifinoir2] Fwd: [MR] Obscure Tolkein Book to be Released
-- Original Message -- Received: Fri, 06 Mar 2009 01:55:21 PM EST From: Smith CTR Jeffrey C jeffrey.c.smith@usmc.mil To: Merry Rose atlan...@atlantia.sca.org Subject: [MR] Obscure Tolkein Book to be Released The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun, a thorough reworking in verse of old Norse epics that predates Tolkien's writing of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, will be published in May by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. More at http://www.military.com/entertainment/books/book-news/obscure-tolkien-book-to-be-released. Sounds interesting to me! Barcsi Janos The Merry Rose Tavern at Cheapside List Info: http://merryrose.atlantia.sca.org/ Submissions: atlan...@atlantia.sca.org Subscriptions: http://seahorse.atlantia.sca.org/mailman/listinfo/atlantia
Re: [scifinoir2] Philip José Farmer dies
:- Brent Amy Harlib ahar...@earthlink.net writes: [ mailto:aharlib%40earthlink.net ]ahar...@earthlink.net Philip Jos Farmer dies A real shame. Author Philip Jos Farmer Dies ([ http://sfscope.com/2009/02/author-philip-jos-farmer-dies.html ]http://sfscope.com/2009/02/author-philip-jos-farmer-dies.html) By Ian Randal Strock February 25, 2009 Philip Jos Farmer's web site reports the death of the author peacefully in his sleep in the morning of 25 February 2009. Born 26 January 1918 in Terre Haute, Indiana, Farmer won three Hugo Awards (Most Promising New Talent, 1953; Best Novella [Riders of the Purple Wage], 1968; and Best Novel [To Your Scattered Bodies Go], 1972), the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's Grand Master Award (2001), and the World Fantasy Award's Lifetime Achievement Award (2001). Farmer's first short story, O'Brien and Obrenov, appeared in Adventure in March 1946. In 1950, after a twelve-year hiatus (and a break to wash out of the Army Air Corps flight training program), he received his BA in English from Bradley University. In August 1952, Startling Stories published his first science fiction story, The Lovers. Farmer's first published novel was The Green Odyssey, which Ballantine released in 1957. In 1953, however, Farmer's I Owe for the Flesh won the Shasta prize novel contest. And though the prize was never paid, the book was the first in what would become his iconic Riverworld series. That series posits that everyone who has ever lived on Earth, from cavemen to 1984, is resurrected along the banks of a million mile long river. A character dying along the river simply wakes up somewhere else the next day. In these stories, Farmer has characters from any point in history meeting, interacting, and frequently fighting. Farmer also wrote the Dayworld series, in which overpopulation requires that people be placed in suspended animation for six days out of seven, each living but one day, and sharing their homes, jobs, and lives with six other people. Then, of course, there are daybreakers, who live different lives each day of the week. And his World of Tiers series introduced the idea of Pocket Universes, which have different physical laws. In the 1970s, when Farmer was suffering from writer's block, he turned his efforts to writing other people's novels; specifically, he wrote Venus on the Half-Shell by Kurt Vonnegut's fictional Kilgore Trout. He also wrote as Ralph vvon Wau Wau, who came to life on his own when Spider Robinson had him appear in Callahan's Bar. Farmer is survived by his wife, Bette (whom he married in 1941), as well as children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.
Re: [scifinoir2] Philip José Farmer dies
:- Brent Amy Harlib ahar...@earthlink.net writes: [ mailto:aharlib%40earthlink.net ] ahar...@earthlink.net Philip Jos? Farmer dies A real shame. Author Philip Jos? Farmer Dies ([ http://sfscope.com/2009/02/author-philip-jos-farmer-dies.html ] http://sfscope.com/2009/02/author-philip-jos-farmer-dies.html) By Ian Randal Strock February 25, 2009 Philip Jos? Farmer's web site reports the death of the author peacefully in his sleep in the morning of 25 February 2009. Born 26 January 1918 in Terre Haute, Indiana, Farmer won three Hugo Awards (Most Promising New Talent, 1953; Best Novella [Riders of the Purple Wage], 1968; and Best Novel [To Your Scattered Bodies Go], 1972), the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's Grand Master Award (2001), and the World Fantasy Award's Lifetime Achievement Award (2001). Farmer's first short story, O'Brien and Obrenov, appeared in Adventure in March 1946. In 1950, after a twelve-year hiatus (and a break to wash out of the Army Air Corps flight training program), he received his BA in English from Bradley University. In August 1952, Startling Stories published his first science fiction story, The Lovers. Farmer's first published novel was The Green Odyssey, which Ballantine released in 1957. In 1953, however, Farmer's I Owe for the Flesh won the Shasta prize novel contest. And though the prize was never paid, the book was the first in what would become his iconic Riverworld series. That series posits that everyone who has ever lived on Earth, from cavemen to 1984, is resurrected along the banks of a million mile long river. A character dying along the river simply wakes up somewhere else the next day. In these stories, Farmer has characters from any point in history meeting, interacting, and frequently fighting. Farmer also wrote the Dayworld series, in which overpopulation requires that people be placed in suspended animation for six days out of seven, each living but one day, and sharing their homes, jobs, and lives with six other people. Then, of course, there are daybreakers, who live different lives each day of the week. And his World of Tiers series introduced the idea of Pocket Universes, which have different physical laws. In the 1970s, when Farmer was suffering from writer's block, he turned his efforts to writing other people's novels; specifically, he wrote Venus on the Half-Shell by Kurt Vonnegut's fictional Kilgore Trout. He also wrote as Ralph vvon Wau Wau, who came to life on his own when Spider Robinson had him appear in Callahan's Bar. Farmer is survived by his wife, Bette (whom he married in 1941), as well as children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.
Re: [scifinoir2] Re: Philip José Farmer dies
'Traitor to the Living' was my introduction to his works. Brent B. Smith daikaij...@yahoo.com writes: He was one of the first sci-fi authors I got into. I loved Riverworld, The World of Tiers, Venus on the Half Shell, Dark Is The Sun and his Tarzan pastiches like A Feast Unknown and Lord Tyger. His pulp hero biographies were awesome as well. His mystery Nothing Burns In Hell is worth tracking down as well. It was great to see his hometown Peoria get treated like Sin City. R.I.P. --- In [ mailto:scifinoir2%40yahoogroups.com ]scifino...@yahoogroups.com, Amy Harlib ahar...@... wrote: ahar...@... Philip Jos Farmer dies A real shame. Author Philip Jos Farmer Dies ([ http://sfscope.com/2009/02/author-philip-jos-farmer-dies.html ]http://sfscope.com/2009/02/author-philip-jos-farmer-dies.html) By Ian Randal Strock February 25, 2009 Philip Jos Farmer's web site reports the death of the author peacefully in his sleep in the morning of 25 February 2009. Born 26 January 1918 in Terre Haute, Indiana, Farmer won three Hugo Awards (Most Promising New Talent, 1953; Best Novella [Riders of the Purple Wage], 1968; and Best Novel [To Your Scattered Bodies Go], 1972), the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's Grand Master Award (2001), and the World Fantasy Award's Lifetime Achievement Award (2001). Farmer's first short story, O'Brien and Obrenov, appeared in Adventure in March 1946. In 1950, after a twelve-year hiatus (and a break to wash out of the Army Air Corps flight training program), he received his BA in English from Bradley University. In August 1952, Startling Stories published his first science fiction story, The Lovers. Farmer's first published novel was The Green Odyssey, which Ballantine released in 1957. In 1953, however, Farmer's I Owe for the Flesh won the Shasta prize novel contest. And though the prize was never paid, the book was the first in what would become his iconic Riverworld series. That series posits that everyone who has ever lived on Earth, from cavemen to 1984, is resurrected along the banks of a million mile long river. A character dying along the river simply wakes up somewhere else the next day. In these stories, Farmer has characters from any point in history meeting, interacting, and frequently fighting. Farmer also wrote the Dayworld series, in which overpopulation requires that people be placed in suspended animation for six days out of seven, each living but one day, and sharing their homes, jobs, and lives with six other people. Then, of course, there are daybreakers, who live different lives each day of the week. And his World of Tiers series introduced the idea of Pocket Universes, which have different physical laws. In the 1970s, when Farmer was suffering from writer's block, he turned his efforts to writing other people's novels; specifically, he wrote Venus on the Half-Shell by Kurt Vonnegut's fictional Kilgore Trout. He also wrote as Ralph vvon Wau Wau, who came to life on his own when Spider Robinson had him appear in Callahan's Bar. Farmer is survived by his wife, Bette (whom he married in 1941), as well as children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.
[scifinoir2] Before Oscars, it's anti-Oscars time
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?sectionName=CinemaSectionPageid=6d93e067-ffce-4868-bb9c-c82d62c910a3MatchID1=4932TeamID1=7TeamID2=8MatchType1=1SeriesID1=1247PrimaryID=4932Headline=Before+Oscars%2c+it's+anti-Oscars+time Before Oscars, it's anti-Oscars time Andy Goldberg, DPA Los Angeles, February 21, 2009 For an industry that indulges in mere entertainment, Hollywood takes itself pretty seriously. But the overbearing self-importance displayed by many who work in the cinematic trades will be exquisitely deflated Saturday night when a group of renegade movie buffs delight in naming the worst movie moments of the year. The dubious Golden Raspberry dishonours, affectionately known as the Razzie awards, are now in their 29th year and never seem to lack worthy candidates. This year, the favourite for Razzie notoriety is the grossly overrated Canadian comedy star Mike Myers, who has a leading seven nominations for his truly awful movie The Love Guru. The movie was a worthy successor to the crude and unimaginative Austin Powers series, and got its just deserves at box offices, where it was one of the year's most notable flops. The film bomb was judged to be so bad by the hardened Razzie nominators that they chose it to compete in all the major categories including acting dishonours for Myers, Verne Troyer, Jessica Alba and even Oscar-winner Ben Kingsley. But The Love Guru has plenty of competition. Also featuring highly on the list of nominees was Paris Hilton, whose every screen moment seemed to yield a Razzie nod. She was nominated for worst actress for the classic comedy The Hottie and the Nottie, worst supporting actress for Repo: The Genetic Opera and as one-half of the year's worst screen couple together with both Hottie costar Christine Lakin or Joel David Moore. Hottie will compete for worst movie with The Love Guru, The Happening, In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale and Meet the Spartans. Beside Myers, the worst-actor nominees include Eddie Murphy for Meet Dave, Al Pacino for both 88 Minutes and Righteous Kill, and Mark Wahlberg, who also scored a double nomination for The Happening and Max Payne. No less than nine women are vying for worst actress, thanks to an ensemble nomination for the cast of The Women, which featured Annette Bening, Eva Mendes, Debra Messing, Jada Pinkett-Smith and Meg Ryan. The other nominees are Cameron Diaz (What Happens in Vegas), Kate Hudson (Fool's Gold and My Best Friend's Girl), Alba and Hilton. The biggest winner might turn out to be German director Uwe Boll, who will be the recipient of the worst career achievement for such timeless gems as the Bloodrayne series, Alone in the Dark and House of the Dead. Boll, who specialises in adapting video games to movies was also nominated as worst supporting actor for Postal and 1968: Tunnel Rats, while his In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale is up for the worst-movie award. Alone among cinematic auteurs, he seems to actually regard being the recipient of a Razzie with the honour it deserves, and even apologised in an online interview that he would be unable to attend in person to accept the prize. I will be filming out in South Africa, so I cannot be there in person, he said. Asked whether anyone else might deserve the worst career achievement more than him, he was indignant: No one, only me, he answered. Film fans may have other opinions, but at least with the Razzies they can do something about it. The Golden Raspberry allows anyone to vote - as long as they prove that they care enough to pay a $25 registration fee.
[scifinoir2] Beyond the Oscar Spectacle, Hollywood Is Grumbling
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/business/media/22steal.html?ref=business Scene Stealer Beyond the Oscar Spectacle, Hollywood Is Grumbling By MICHAEL CIEPLY Published: February 21, 2009 LOS ANGELES SWEATY hands will finally clutch their Oscars on Sunday night, putting an end to a Hollywood awards season that may go down as one of the most downbeat in memory. Movers and shakers in the film industry dont like to grumble openly about the Oscars. After all, nobody wants to be caught talking down a ritual that has been very good, for a very long time, to a very large number of people in the glamour business. Still, the Hollywood table-talk this year has been much less about Oscar prospects and more about the process. And an overriding theme is this: The movie prize cycle had better become shorter, brighter and more popular in its bent - or some major players are pulling back. The conventional wisdom has it that Slumdog Millionaire, the big-hearted little film made in Mumbai and distributed in the United States by Fox Searchlight, locked up the best-picture award months ago. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, whose voting membership is about 5,800, is increasingly foreign- and indie-oriented. The fellow best-picture nominees are The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, from Paramount and Warner Brothers; Frost/Nixon, from Universal; Milk, from Focus Features; and The Reader, from the Weinstein Company. These films have supposedly been along for an expensive ride, competing for an odd Oscar in other categories while burning up millions of marketing and promotional dollars. But they are widely reckoned to have no real hope of winning the big prize, and most have not quite hit their targets at the box office. For executives, filmmakers and publicists, the real shock came with the exclusion of The Dark Knight from this years list of best-picture nominees. It wasnt so much about admiration for the picture itself, though there was plenty of that. Insiders read the snub more as a rejection by the academy, once comfortably regarded as an adjunct of the industry that created it, of what the inner circle does best: Build complex, monumental films that move millions. To keep the mood here from curdling wouldnt have taken much of a bow toward the audience. A best-picture nomination for Wall-E, from Walt Disney and its Pixar Animation unit, if not The Dark Knight, from Warner Brothers and Legendary Pictures, might have done it. Even an acting nomination for Clint Eastwood, whose crusty appearance in Gran Torino, from Warner, turned out his biggest box office to date, would have helped. But the academy gave no points for popularity. And the company folks noticed. Some executives, speaking on condition of anonymity to protect their relationships with those who vote for prizes, have said in the last few weeks that they do not expect their studios to make any movie in the foreseeable future as a specific Oscar bet. If honors happen to come, as they came to The Departed, a Warner film that was a surprise best-picture winner in 2007, so be it. But few are looking to make the next Frost/Nixon, a smart, critically acclaimed film that got Ron Howard a nomination as best director this year. Frost/Nixon has taken in less than $20 million at the domestic box office, and may not make a profit when the cost of its long Oscar-season promotional campaign is added to its relatively modest $25 million budget. AS little as a year ago, the prestige that came with an Oscar contender could seem worth at least a small financial loss to studios that could always make up for it with their summer hits. In tougher times, not so. Already, 20th Century Fox and Columbia Pictures have become only occasional players in the Oscar game, allowing associated specialty units, Fox Searchlight and Sony Pictures Classics, to be contenders with relatively small films. If companies like Paramount, Universal and the now-smaller DreamWorks also step back, the academy - protective of an enterprise that brings it more than $70 million a year - will almost certainly start looking for adjustments to a system that still needs big stars and the big studios that pay them. The last significant structural change to the Oscars occurred in 2004, when they were moved up a month, to late February from late March. The shift was meant to lighten the expense and fatigue factor of a movie awards season that was then consuming nearly half the year. The next step could well be Oscars in January. That idea has been popping up in conversation here lately. One version suggests compressing the Oscars into the tail end of a two-week, festival-like Hollywood awards event that would include the Golden Globes and all the various guild awards, and take place in early to mid-January. Studios could fly in their talent just once, instead of three or four times. And companies could generate a whole new kind of excitement by throwing
[scifinoir2] 'Dollhouse's' Harry Lennix Is A Guardian With A Conscience
http://www.ifmagazine.com/feature.asp?article=3250 Television: Exclusive Interview: 'DOLLHOUSE'S' HARRY LENNIX IS A GUARDIAN WITH A CONSCIENCE The co-star plays the troubled protector of Eliza Dushku's Echo on the Joss Whedon series By ABBIE BERNSTEIN, Contributing Writer Published 2/12/2009 Whether youre into films, television or theatre, chances are good youve seen Harry Lennix. On the big screen, Lennix has been a towering, complex villain in TITUS, the film adaptation of William Shakespeares TITUS ANDRONICUS, and a glowering hero in the second and third MATRIX films. On stage, he recently performed in the Kennedy Center production of all ten of August Wilsons plays. On television, hes the President of the U.S. on LITTLE BRITAIN USA, was a regular on COMMANDER IN CHIEF and had recurring roles on 24 and ER, to name a few notable credits. Now Lennix costars on Joss Whedons new Fox series DOLLHOUSE (which debuts tomorrow night at 9:00 p.m. after the midseason debut of TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES) as Boyd Langdon, the troubled protector of Eliza Dushkus character Echo, one of the few figures in the show visibly disturbed by the concept of continually wiping Echos personality and replacing it with a new one to fit each assignment. iF MAGAZINE: Would you describe Boyd as conscience-stricken? HARRY LENNIX: Yes, thats a very good way of putting it. I definitely would. iF: Is it hard to maintain that demeanor? LENNIX: No. Not in such a morally dubious place, an ethically [uncertain] place like the Dollhouse. Having a conscience is the only way to get through the day working for these people. iF: Do you know how you came to Joss Whedons attention? LENNIX: I went in and auditioned. The role was not offered to me. I think I was just submitted like everybody else was. I had just finished a series of plays at the Kennedy Center, and then the weekend that I came back, there was this audition, and I was lucky enough to get it. I know that Joss saw Titus and I think he was a fan of TITUS. I know hes a big Shakespearean reader and I think he was very taken with [TITUS director] Julie Taymors vision and quite liked that movie, so maybe that had something to do with it. iF: Were you ever primarily a Shakespearean actor? LENNIX: No. Im trying to think of anybody whos primarily a Shakespearean actor these days. I dont necessarily think anybody can afford it, unless you can get a season up at Ashland, Oregon or at the Royal Shakespeare Company. It is required now that you have multi disciplines when it comes to your craft, so no. Ive been going back and forth between theatre and film and television probably since 1992. I probably do now one or two plays a year and try to do one or two movies a year. iF: Were you familiar with Joss Whedons work before you became involved with DOLLHOUSE? LENNIX: I was familiar with FIREFLY, I was familiar with TOY STORY -- I had a nephew who loved it. I was a little bit familiar with BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, but not as familiar as some of his ardent fans. Im not really a sci-fi person. I didnt know that he was such a virtual icon. I had no idea that there was a kind of subculture of people who were devotees of his work. iF: Eliza Dushku and Dichen Lachman [who plays another Active, or doll] have both said theyre enjoying getting to play different people every week. Are you at all envious that your character has only one personality? LENNIX: No, not at all. I think young actors are always looking for a way to display their talent, because theres a lot of it, and that certainly applies to Eliza and Dichen. But I have more fun, really, and its more cohesive for me to have the stability of a character that you get to explore in depth, as opposed to range. iF: Just from the pilot, it looks like your character has a lot of back story. LENNIX: Yes. iF: Are we going to get to see that? LENNIX: I hope so. I hope that the show has the longevity where we really get to explore the past of a lot of other characters. I think were establishing who we are as these characters, and then if we have a second season, we will get to go back into what the past was that led them to this present. iF: Do you have any idea what youd like your characters back story to be? LENNIX: I have my own story [laughs]. I wouldnt want to say it, because if it turns out in the course of the series that Im way wrong, then I dont want to be [quoted about it]. iF: And if youre right, theyll go, You spoilered! Do you have a favorite aspect of Boyds character? LENNIX: The fact that I get to have action scenes is something Im really excited about. Before, I never really had a chance to have fights and beat up people and get beaten up, shoot people, get shot, so its really a lot of fun and its a great way to expand an aspect of my career which I wasnt aware how much I missed [as in] never experienced, missed as in felt the absence of. I never
[scifinoir2] Directing Star Trek quite an enterprise for Abrams
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/movies/2008715939_startrek08.html Directing Star Trek quite an enterprise for Abrams Lost director J.J. Abrams is directing the new Star Trek movie, due in May. In a recent interview, he talks about the challenges of taking on a franchise with a rabid fan base. By Geoff Boucher; By Geoff Boucher Los Angeles Times; Los Angeles Times HOLLYWOOD - Star Trek will be back in May with the 11th film in a pop-culture franchise that has inspired one of the most impassioned fan followings imaginable. TV whiz J.J. Abrams (Lost, Fringe) is the director, but some fans have questioned the choice. After all, he was 2 months old when Trek launched its first mission in 1966. Abrams recently talked about the challenges of his deep-space mission. Q: As franchises move into new eras, it's interesting to watch how they change - or don't change. With Star Trek, you seem to be pursuing a revival like we've seen with Batman and James Bond, which holds on to core mythology but recalibrates the tone. A: I think I benefited because I came into this movie as someone who appreciated Star Trek but wasn't an insane fanatic about it. The disadvantage is, I didn't know everything I needed to know immediately at the beginning and had to learn it. The advantage, though, is I could look at Star Trek as a whole a little bit more like a typical moviegoer would see it; it allowed me to seize the things that I felt were truly the most iconic and important aspects of the original series and yet not be serving the master and trying to be true to every arcane detail. It let me look at the things I knew were critical. Q: What are some of the things that made that critical list? A: The characters were the most important thing in it. We needed to be true to the spirit of those characters. There were certain iconic things - if you're going to do Star Trek, you've got to do the Enterprise and it has to look like the Enterprise ... You have to do costumes that feel like the costumes people know. You have to be able to glance at it and know what that is. Even the text, the font of Star Trek has to look like what you know. The phasers, the communicators, the Starfleet logo - there are all these things that are the touchstones, the tenets of what makes Star Trek Star Trek. If you're going to do this series, those are things you don't mess with. Q: You know that no matter what you do, you'll get an earful from hard-core fans. A: The key is to appreciate that there are purists and fans of Star Trek who are going to be very vocal if they see things that aren't what they want. But I can't make this movie for readers of Nacelles Monthly who are only concerned with what the ship's engines look like. They're going to find something they hate no matter what I do. And yet, the movie at its core is not only inspired by what has come before, it's deeply true to what's come before. ... It will be evident when people see this movie that it is true to what (Gene) Roddenberry created and what those amazing actors did in the 1960s. At the same time, I think, it's going to blow people's minds because it's a completely different experience. Q: In the footage you showed at the Paramount lot, I was really struck by the comedic touches. A: Yeah, among the kind of anecdotal critiques I read online, some people said, Oh, look at this, they're trying to sex it up by having Kirk in bed with a girl or Uhura undressing, and they said, Oh, that's not 'Star Trek.' Other people wrote, Oh, there's comedy in it, that's not 'Star Trek' I know. Look, if you actually watch the show, that show was always pushing buttons all the time and was considered very sexy for its time. It had (a landmark) interracial kiss on television, and it was a show that was sexually adventurous. And it was very funny. Q: Last time I saw you, you mentioned there would be a tribble in the movie. That's fun. A: Yes! There is a tribble in there. But you have to look for it. And there's that other surprise I told you about, but please don't write about that. Q: I won't, I won't, I promised. There's plenty of other stuff to talk about. I'm fascinated by the challenge facing your captain. Chris Pine has the biggest acting dilemma of 2009: How do you play James T. Kirk without imitating William Shatner? A: Totally. I think all of the actors have a similar challenge. We lucked out on Star Trek with the production designer, the costume designer, the visual effects, the composer - everywhere you look on this production we lucked out and got the people doing the best work in the business. ... But I have to say that the place where I could not be more grateful or amazed is with the cast. The reason that it works - or the reason I believe it is working - is that I and people who have seen it have walked away feeling that these are the characters. There's a transition that happens. It's a weird thing. It's not that you will ever forget what DeForest Kelley did or
[scifinoir2] Think you're stressed? Battlestar Galactica actress Katee Sackhoff had to fend of
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/Think+stressed+Battlestar+Galactica+actress+Katee+Sackhoff+fend+crazed+evil+Cylon/1261952/story.html Think you're stressed? Battlestar Galactica actress Katee Sackhoff had to fend off a sex-crazed evil Cylon By Kat Angus, Canwest News Service February 6, 2009 You'll have to excuse me, I'm on the treadmill, Katee Sackhoff says, a little breathlessly. The Battlestar Galactica actress is pushing herself to get into shape for her latest gig, playing a tempestuous police officer on Dick Wolf's upcoming cop drama, Lost and Found. After four seasons on Battlestar as the tough, physically intimidating Kara Starbuck Thrace, relentlessly fighting to save the human race from extinction, one might think Sackhoff would be used to intense workouts by now. But, the actress says, her new regime is far more intense than anything she did for the hit sci-fi series. I didn't want Starbuck to be completely ripped. This is a girl who drinks most of her calories, so she was in extremely good physical condition but I didn't want her to look like a skinny person, the 28-year-old explains. This new role that I'm doing, she's a police officer who's a little nutso, so the workouts . . . well, they got stepped up a little bit. But regardless of the physical requirements of her new job, few things can match the emotional demands of Battlestar. Over the course of the show, Starbuck has experienced countless hardships including, but not limited to, being marooned on a deserted planet, being held captive by evil Cylon scientists intent on harvesting her ovaries, being held captive by an evil Cylon intent on starting a family with her, marrying the wrong man, dying, ostensibly coming back from the dead, leading the human race to a barren, useless Earth and discovering her own charred corpse in the wilderness. Bummer. Through it all, Sackhoff has played one of television's most complex, ever-evolving characters. We saw someone, in the beginning, who was willing to die for everyone around her because she didn't value her own life. At the end, we have a character who values existence so much that she's willing to die for other people, Sackhoff says. That's a huge change. It changes everything Starbuck does. It makes her compassionate and it makes her circumstances more tragic. Unsurprisingly, Starbuck went through so much over Battlestar's four seasons that it began to bleed over into Sackhoff's life. Towards the end, it was difficult. I took it home with me. It's something I've been proud of myself to not do for so long, but I finally did and it was hard. I said to my boyfriend, 'Why am I so depressed all the time?' And he was like, 'Because you're playing this character 22 hours a day who's completely out of her mind,' Sackhoff remembers. We were doing such long hours on the show and she was so much all over the place that it required more of my, I don't know, heart and soul - more stamina - to actually be able to do that. Shooting the last few episodes of the show was especially tough on Sackhoff - in addition to the long hours and emotionally gruelling scenes, she began feeling physically weaker; soon after filming wrapped, she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Luckily for me, and the people that get it, it's a 99 per cent success rate if you catch it in time because it's a contained cancer. So you take out the thyroid and you're OK, she says. I didn't have to do the radiation, which was great. Still, the diagnosis was enough to give Sackhoff pause. When you hear a doctor say to you that you have cancer, even if the words right after it are 'one of the most curable cancers,' you don't hear that. You're like, 'Oh, my God, I have cancer,' she admits. It makes you re-evaluate what's important in life and I did a lot of soul-searching and, you know, things change when you're confronted with your own mortality, I think. If anything, Sackhoff says, her brush with death made her even more satisfied of the work she's done on Battlestar Galactica. She's reached a place she couldn't have imagined when the show first premiered, when fans of the original 1970s series condemned the idea of a female Starbuck. At the start, I was young; I was stupid. I let the fact that people questioned whether or not a woman could play a man's role dictate how I was going to play her, Sackhoff recalls. Now, I think, personally, I feel proud of the performances I gave on a weekly basis. I did what they hired me to do. Sackhoff's performance was so successful, in fact, that aside from becoming a fan favourite, she is now frequently sought out to play other powerful women - her new role on Lost and Found, for instance, as well as the morally ambiguous Sarah Corvus on NBC's now-cancelled Bionic Woman. However, Sackhoff denies being typecast. I would rather by typecast as an independent, strong woman than go to work with fake tits up to my chin and pretend to be the slutty girl, she declares. There's always
[scifinoir2] Shatner/Takei TV Showdown Moves Closer
http://www.dailystar.co.uk/gossip/view/68432/Shatner-Takei-TV-showdown-moves-closer/ Shatner/Takei TV Showdown Moves Closer 4th February 2009 Former STAR TREK castmates GEORGE TAKEI and WILLIAM SHATNER's TV showdown is moving ever closer - the chat encounter is under consideration by the network bosses who run SHATNER'S RAW NERVE programme. The two former co-stars sparked a war of words in 2008 after Shatner claimed he hadn't been invited to Takei's wedding. Takei insisted he had and launched into a tirade about his old Star Trek Captain. The feud rumbled on with Shatner posting videos criticising Takei online and Takei taking to TV to retaliate - and now the two actors are set to meet on U.S. cable show Raw Nerve, which Shatner hosts. He says, There's a process. George has to be vetted like you have to vet a horse that you were gonna buy or a wife you were gonna marry. George is being Googled even as we speak. The AE network needs to okay each name... We want to invite you, George, but now we need AE's permission. Apparently George wants to be (on the show), but then George wants to be everywhere... It's called making a living. And Shatner insists he won't be rude or nasty to his guest when Takei eventually makes his appearance: George will wanna come on the show because I'm gonna be so gentle with him (and) I know he likes to be gentled.
[scifinoir2] CW puts Vampire, Politics on its pilot slate
http://www.reuters.com/article/televisionNews/idUSTRE5151QQ20090206 CW puts Vampire, Politics on its pilot slate Fri Feb 6, 2009 By Nellie Andreeva LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Vampires and D.C. politicians (hopefully not in combination) are the latest additions to the CW's pilot slate for fall. The network on Thursday gave the green light to pilots Vampire Diaries and Body Politics. Vampire Diaries is based on Alloy Entertainment's 15-year-old series of novels, which are enjoying a resurgence with their reprinting in the wake of the Twilight Success. It centers on a tragic young heroine who is the object of passion for two vampire brothers -- one good, one evil -- who are at war for her soul and for the souls of her friends, family and other residents of the small town in which she resides. Kevin Williamson, creator of Dawson's Creek and the Scream feature franchise, wrote the script with Julie Plec (Kyle XY). Body Politics looks at Washington politics through the eyes of optimistic young staffers, focusing on a young woman who moves to D.C. to work for a senator and the other eager up-and-comers with whom she becomes friends. Jason Rothenberg and Bill Robinson penned the script. Body Politics is the second Capitol Hill-set pilot this season, after the CBS drama House Rules. Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
[scifinoir2] Mars Rover Doing Well After Memory Glitch/Mars rover may be feeling its age - fin
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/30/science/space/30rover.html?_r=1ref=science Mars Rover Doing Well After Memory Glitch By KENNETH CHANG Published: January 29, 2009 NASAs Mars Spirit rover may be rolling again as soon as this weekend, although engineers remain perplexed as to what caused it to lose memory and abort an attempted drive last Sunday. Spirit is doing pretty good, as a matter of fact, said R. William Nelson, the chief of the engineering team for the two Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. On Sunday, Spirit did not move as instructed and, oddly, did not keep the data recording what it had done. The data files are usually written to a part of the rovers memory known as flash memory, which retains information even after power is turned off. The best guess for what happened is that Spirit somehow slipped into what NASA engineers call the cripple mode, in which the rover avoids using flash memory and instead writes to so-called random access memory. The data may have disappeared when the rover went back to sleep after trying to execute the instructions. This cripple mode proved invaluable during Spirits early days on Mars, when a software glitch caused the flash memory to overflow and Spirit was caught in a cycle of continually rebooting itself. By avoiding flash memory, engineers were able to troubleshoot the problem and send a software fix to the rover. The hypothesis would explain Spirits amnesia, but it is not at all clear how the rover could have instructed itself to go into the cripple mode. Its all very mysterious at this point, and we may never find out what happened, Mr. Nelson said. The engineers are also investigating a second, apparently unrelated glitch: the rover thinks the Suns position in the sky is four degrees off the actual position. Analysis on Thursday ruled out a problem with the camera, and the prime suspect for the error is a problem with the rovers gyroscopes. Mr. Nelson said that the team could work around any problems with the gyroscopes and that the rover otherwise appears to be in good health. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/29/MNN915JL6B.DTL Mars rover may be feeling its age - finally David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor Friday, January 30, 2009 Spirit, the aged and somewhat creaky Mars rover, is stalled on the Red Planet with a touch of bewilderment, but earthbound engineers are confident they'll get the mobile explorer up and running smoothly soon. The Spirit and its sister rover, Opportunity, landed on Mars five years ago for what was designed as a 90-day mission, but have far exceeded all expectations, exploring successfully on opposite sides of the planet ever since. The only signs of age have been a little wear on the wheels and problems with some of their onboard instruments. Lately, though, the Spirit apparently is disoriented. The robot vehicle has failed to obey radio commands from Earth to start driving, and has been unable to find the sun, NASA scientists say. We may never know what went wrong up there, or what caused the problem, Bill Nelson, a leading engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena where Spirit and Opportunity are controlled, said Thursday. But we're quite optimistic that it won't stop the vehicle. Scientists and mission control engineers calculate that a Mars day, or sol, is 39 minutes and 35 seconds longer than a day on Earth. It was during Spirit's 1,800th sol on the planet Sunday that it failed to start driving. Two sols later, it was told to find the sun with its camera, but the rover was disoriented and reported the sun's location in the wrong place. Communication between Earth and the rovers is relayed by the Mars Odyssey spacecraft, which has been orbiting Mars for almost nine years, and on Thursday Nelson and mission controllers were awaiting a new downlink carrying a fresh report from Spirit via Odyssey to help efforts at diagnosing the problems. One possible cause of the communication problem, Nelson said, might be an errant cosmic ray from distant space that somehow sparked a glitch in Spirit's computer and prevented it from storing the proper commands from Earth and responding correctly to them. The inability of Spirit's camera to locate the sun, he said, could have been a case of mistaken identity when it instead picked up a bright glint caused by the sun's reflection on one of the rover's metal body parts. Spirit was supposed to start trundling 20 to 25 feet this week from its present location in a spot on the Martian surface known as Home Plate. And that would precede a journey of about 900 feet to a new location called Goddard-von Braun, named for rocket pioneers Robert Goddard and Wernher von Braun. Both Spirit and Opportunity are powered by solar arrays, and dust storms now and then have left dusty films on their solar panels, Nelson said. This has cut power for both rovers, he said, but hasn't immobilized
[scifinoir2] 1000 novels everyone must read: Science Fiction Fantasy (part one)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jan/22/1000-novels-science-fiction-fantasy-part-one
[scifinoir2] X-Files/Supernatural director-producer dies
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/01/30/2478039.htm?section=entertainment X-Files director-producer dies Posted Fri Jan 30, 2009 Kim Manners, a prolific director and producer on The X-Files, died on January 25 of complications from lung cancer at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles. He was 58. Manners served as a producer on nearly 160 episodes of the TV series and directed more than 50, receiving four shared Emmy nominations for his work. At the time of his death, he was a director and executive producer on Supernatural. Manners's career started as a second assistant director on the 1971 feature Valdez Is Coming, which was produced by his father, Sam Manners. The younger Manners also directed multiple episodes of such TV shows as Charlie's Angels, Simon And Simon, 21 Jump Street and The Adventures Of Brisco County Jr. He is survived by his wife, Marline; his daughters, Jessica and Chelsea; his parents, Sam and Joyce; his brother, Kelly; and his sister, Tana. A memorial service will be held on February 7. - Reuters
[scifinoir2] Acclaimed writer John Updike dies at 76
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/01/acclaimed_write.html?p1=Well_MostPop_Emailed3 Acclaimed writer John Updike dies at 76 January 27, 2009 By Mark Feeney, Globe Staff John Updike, a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, whose jeweled prose and quicksilver intellect made him for decades one of America s foremost literary figures, died today. He was 76. Mr. Updike, a long-time resident of Beverly Farms, died of lung cancer at an area hospice, according to his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf Inc. A master of many authorial trades, Mr. Updike was novelist, short story writer, critic, poet -- and in each role as prolific as he was gifted. He aimed to produce a book a year. Easily meeting that goal, Mr. Updike published some 60 volumes. The first was a collection of poems, The Carpentered Hen (1958). My Father s Tears and Other Stories is scheduled to be published in June. Mr. Updike combined diligence with brilliance. Few writers have staged such elegant lexical ballets on the page. The scrape and snap of Keds fill the moist March air in the opening of Mr. Updike s second novel Rabbit, Run (1960). Thirty years later, in Rabbit at Rest, something as mundane as angina becomes that singeing sensation he gets as if a child inside him is playing with lighted matches. Mr. Updike could be brilliant even about his own diligence, writing in his memoir Self-Consciousness (1989) of my ponderously growing oeuvre, dragging behind me like an ever-heavier tail. Or there was the description of Fenway Park, a lyric little bandbox of a ballpark, in Mr. Updike s classic account of Ted Williams final game, Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu. It was Mr. Updike s boyhood attachment to Williams, as well as access to area beaches, that brought the Pennsylvania native to the North Shore, in 1957. He lived north of Boston the rest of life: first in Ipswich, later in Georgetown and, for the past three decades, Beverly Farms. Mr. Updike long ago became a monument on the literary scene, so much so that in 1991 the novelist Nicholson Baker could devote an entire book to his fascination with him, U and I. Yet what seemed monumental and effortless to readers didn t necessarily feel that way to Mr. Updike. It's always a push to get up the stairs, to sit down and go to work, he told Time magazine in 1982. You'd rather do almost anything, read the paper again, write some letters, play with your old dust jackets, any number of things you'd rather do than tackle that empty page, because what you do on the page is you, your ticket to all the good luck you've enjoyed. Mr. Updike's detractors held the sheer gorgeousness of his style against him. Stale garlic, Norman Mailer called it. Fixed in facility, Gore Vidal said. The presence of so distinctive a style, they implied, must mean an absence of substance. A brilliant actionlessness, the critic Alfred Kazin wrote, the world is all metaphor. The novelist David Foster Wallace consigned Mr. Updike, along with Mailer and Philip Roth, to the authorial category of G.M.N.s (Great Male Narcissists), condemning his radical self-absorption. That Mr. Updike was among the few serious American writers of any era to make a living from his books -- let alone quite a good living -- made him further suspect. So did his unwillingness to court literary fashion. When I write, Mr. Updike once noted, I aim in my mind not toward New York but toward a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas. Yet beneath the comfortableness of the affluent, suburban settings Mr. Updike most often wrote about, and the glittering surface of his prose, were profound and piercing concerns. One was an ongoing examination of his native land. America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy, he wrote in the 1980 story collection, Problems. Another concern (unto obsession) was sex. Mr. Updike told Time in a 1968 cover story that when his wife read his then-scandalous novel Couples (1968) she felt that she was being smothered in pubic hair. Adultery looms as large in Mr. Updike s fiction as paranoia does in Thomas Pynchon s or hunting and fishing in Ernest Hemingway s. Sex is like money, he once wrote; only too much is enough. Mr. Updike focused on the spiritual no less than the carnal. I wouldn't want to pose as a religious thinker, he said in a 1990 Globe interview. I'm more or less a shady type improvising his way from book to book and trying to get up in the morning without a toothache. He was being unusually modest. Religion figures throughout Mr. Updike s writing (fiction as well as essays). References abound to such religious philosophers as Kierkegaard, Paul Tillich, and Karl Barth. The protagonists of his novels A Month of Sundays (1975), Roger s Version (1986), and The Witches of Eastwick (1984) are, respectively, a minister, a religious historian, and the Devil (memorably played in the movie adaptation by Jack Nicholson). Raised a Lutheran, Mr.
[scifinoir2] [OT] Everything you ever wanted to know about inaugurations
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/story.html?id=1187379
[scifinoir2] [OT] What was Barack Obama like in 1990?
http://www.thestar.com/news/uselection/article/572960 PICTURE AND 1000+ WORDS TheStar.com | USElection | What was Barack Obama like in 1990? Hard to believe it was almost 19 years ago that the Star first ran this photo and feature on Barack Obama. Today, his ambitious goals and youthful views - not to mention the reactions to them - seem eerily prophetic Jan 18, 2009 Tammerlin Drummond SPECIAL TO THE STAR CAMBRIDGE, Mass.-Barack Obama stares silently at a wall of fading black-and-white photographs in the muggy second-floor offices of the Harvard Law Review. He lingers over one row of solemn faces, his predecessors of 40 years ago. All are men. All are dressed in dark-coloured suits and ties. All are white. It is a sobering moment for Obama, 28, who in February became the first black to be elected president in the 102-year history of the prestigious student-run law journal. The post, considered the highest honour a student can attain at Harvard Law School, almost always leads to a coveted clerkship with the U.S. Supreme Court after graduation and a lucrative offer from the law firm of one's choice. Yet Obama, who has gone deep into debt to meet the $25,000-a-year cost of a Harvard Law School education, has left many in disbelief by asserting that he wants neither. One of the luxuries of going to Harvard Law School is it means you can take risks in your life, Obama said recently. You can try to do things to improve society and still land on your feet. That's what a Harvard education should buy - enough confidence and security to pursue your dreams and give something back. After graduation next year, Obama says, he probably will spend two years at a corporate law firm, then look for community work. Down the road, he plans to run for public office. The son of a Kenyan economist and an American anthropologist, Obama is a tall man with a quick, boyish smile whose fellow students rib him about his trademark tattered blue jeans. I come from a lot of worlds and I have had the unique opportunity to move through different circles, Obama said. I have worked and lived in poor black communities and I can translate some of their concerns into words that the larger society can embrace. His own upbringing is a blending of diverse cultures. Born in Hawaii, where his parents met in college, Obama was named Barack (blessed in Arabic) after his father. The elder Obama was among a generation of young Africans who came to the United States to study engineering, finance and medicine, skills that could be taken back home to build a new, strong Africa. In Hawaii, he married Obama's mother, a white American from Wichita, Kan. TWO YEARS LATER, Obama's parents separated and he moved to a small village outside Jakarta, Indonesia, with his mother, an anthropologist. There, he spent his boyhood playing with the sons and daughters of rice farmers and rickshaw drivers, attending an Indonesian-speaking school, where he had little contact with Americans. Every morning at 5, his mother would wake him to take correspondence classes for fear he would forget his English. It was in Indonesia, Obama said, where he first became aware of abject poverty and despair. It left a very strong mark on me living there because you got a real sense of just how poor folks can get, he said. You'd have some army general with 24 cars and if he drove one once then eight servants would come around and wash it right away. But on the next block, you'd have children with distended bellies who just couldn't eat. After six years in Indonesia, Obama was sent back to the United States to live with his maternal grandparents in Hawaii in preparation for college. It was then that he began to correspond with his father, a senior economist for the Kenyan finance ministry who recounted intriguing tales of an African heritage that Obama knew little about. Obama treasured his father's tales of walking miles to school, using a machete to hack a path through the elephant grass - the legends and traditions of the Luo tribe, a proud people who inhabited the shores of Lake Victoria. He still carries a passbook that belonged to his grandfather, an herbalist who was the first family member to leave the small Kenyan village of Alego, move to the city and don Western clothes. He was a cook and he used to have to carry this passbook to work for the English, Obama recalls. At the age of 46, it had this description of him that said, `He's a coloured boy, he's responsible and he's a good cook.' Two generations later, at the most widely respected legal journal in the country, the grandson of the cook is giving the orders. Some of Obama's peers question the motives of this second-year law student. They find it puzzling that despite Obama's openly progressive views on social issues, he has also won support from staunch conservatives. Ironically, he has come under the most criticism from fellow black students for being too conciliatory toward conservatives and not
[scifinoir2] Our world may be a giant hologram
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126911.300-our-world-may-be-a-giant-hologram.html Our world may be a giant hologram 15 January 2009 by Marcus Chown DRIVING through the countryside south of Hanover, it would be easy to miss the GEO600 experiment. From the outside, it doesn't look much: in the corner of a field stands an assortment of boxy temporary buildings, from which two long trenches emerge, at a right angle to each other, covered with corrugated iron. Underneath the metal sheets, however, lies a detector that stretches for 600 metres. For the past seven years, this German set-up has been looking for gravitational waves - ripples in space-time thrown off by super-dense astronomical objects such as neutron stars and black holes. GEO600 has not detected any gravitational waves so far, but it might inadvertently have made the most important discovery in physics for half a century. For many months, the GEO600 team-members had been scratching their heads over inexplicable noise that is plaguing their giant detector. Then, out of the blue, a researcher approached them with an explanation. In fact, he had even predicted the noise before he knew they were detecting it. According to Craig Hogan, a physicist at the Fermilab particle physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time - the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into grains, just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in. It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time, says Hogan. If this doesn't blow your socks off, then Hogan, who has just been appointed director of Fermilab's Center for Particle Astrophysics, has an even bigger shock in store: If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram. The idea that we live in a hologram probably sounds absurd, but it is a natural extension of our best understanding of black holes, and something with a pretty firm theoretical footing. It has also been surprisingly helpful for physicists wrestling with theories of how the universe works at its most fundamental level. The holograms you find on credit cards and banknotes are etched on two-dimensional plastic films. When light bounces off them, it recreates the appearance of a 3D image. In the 1990s physicists Leonard Susskind and Nobel prizewinner Gerard 't Hooft suggested that the same principle might apply to the universe as a whole. Our everyday experience might itself be a holographic projection of physical processes that take place on a distant, 2D surface. The holographic principle challenges our sensibilities. It seems hard to believe that you woke up, brushed your teeth and are reading this article because of something happening on the boundary of the universe. No one knows what it would mean for us if we really do live in a hologram, yet theorists have good reasons to believe that many aspects of the holographic principle are true. Susskind and 't Hooft's remarkable idea was motivated by ground-breaking work on black holes by Jacob Bekenstein of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel and Stephen Hawking at the University of Cambridge. In the mid-1970s, Hawking showed that black holes are in fact not entirely black but instead slowly emit radiation, which causes them to evaporate and eventually disappear. This poses a puzzle, because Hawking radiation does not convey any information about the interior of a black hole. When the black hole has gone, all the information about the star that collapsed to form the black hole has vanished, which contradicts the widely affirmed principle that information cannot be destroyed. This is known as the black hole information paradox. Bekenstein's work provided an important clue in resolving the paradox. He discovered that a black hole's entropy - which is synonymous with its information content - is proportional to the surface area of its event horizon. This is the theoretical surface that cloaks the black hole and marks the point of no return for infalling matter or light. Theorists have since shown that microscopic quantum ripples at the event horizon can encode the information inside the black hole, so there is no mysterious information loss as the black hole evaporates. Crucially, this provides a deep physical insight: the 3D information about a precursor star can be completely encoded in the 2D horizon of the subsequent black hole - not unlike the 3D image of an object being encoded in a 2D hologram. Susskind and 't Hooft extended the insight to the universe as a whole on the basis that the cosmos has a horizon too - the boundary from beyond which light has not had time to reach us in the 13.7-billion-year lifespan of the universe. What's more, work by several string theorists, most notably Juan Maldacena at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, has
[scifinoir2] The Red Planet is Not a Dead Planet
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/15jan_marsmethane.htm?list952663 The Red Planet is Not a Dead Planet 1.15.2009 Jan. 15, 2009: Mars today is a world of cold and lonely deserts, apparently without life of any kind, at least on the surface. Indeed it looks like Mars has been cold and dry for billions of years, with an atmosphere so thin, any liquid water on the surface quickly boils away while the sun's ultraviolet radiation scorches the ground. The situation sounds bleak, but research published today in Science Express reveals new hope for the Red Planet. The first definitive detection of methane in the atmosphere of Mars indicates that Mars is still alive, in either a biologic or geologic sense, according to a team of NASA and university scientists. Methane is quickly destroyed in the Martian atmosphere in a variety of ways, so our discovery of substantial plumes of methane in the northern hemisphere of Mars in 2003 indicates some ongoing process is releasing the gas, says lead author Michael Mumma of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. At northern mid-summer, methane is released at a rate comparable to that of the massive hydrocarbon seep at Coal Oil Point in Santa Barbara, Calif. Methane -- four atoms of hydrogen bound to a carbon atom -- is the main component of natural gas on Earth. It is of interest to astrobiologists because much of Earth's methane come from living organisms digesting their nutrients. However, life is not required to produce the gas. Other purely geological processes, like oxidation of iron, also release methane. Right now, we don't have enough information to tell if biology or geology -- or both -- is producing the methane on Mars, said Mumma. But it does tell us that the planet is still alive, at least in a geologic sense. It's as if Mars is challenging us, saying, hey, find out what this means. If microscopic Martian life is producing the methane, it likely resides far below the surface, where it's still warm enough for liquid water to exist. Liquid water, as well as energy sources and a supply of carbon, are necessary for all known forms of life. On Earth, microorganisms thrive 2 to 3 kilometers (about 1.2 to 1.9 miles) beneath the Witwatersrand basin of South Africa, where natural radioactivity splits water molecules into molecular hydrogen (H2) and oxygen (O). The organisms use the hydrogen for energy. It might be possible for similar organisms to survive for billions of years below the permafrost layer on Mars, where water is liquid, radiation supplies energy, and carbon dioxide provides carbon, says Mumma. Gases, like methane, accumulated in such underground zones might be released into the atmosphere if pores or fissures open during the warm seasons, connecting the deep zones to the atmosphere at crater walls or canyons, he says. Microbes that produced methane from hydrogen and carbon dioxide were one of the earliest forms of life on Earth, notes Carl Pilcher, Director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute which partially supported the research. If life ever existed on Mars, it's reasonable to think that its metabolism might have involved making methane from Martian atmospheric carbon dioxide. However, it is possible a geologic process produced the Martian methane, either now or eons ago. On Earth, the conversion of iron oxide (rust) into the serpentine group of minerals creates methane, and on Mars this process could proceed using water, carbon dioxide, and the planet's internal heat. Another possibility is vulcanism: Although there is no evidence of currently active Martian volcanoes, ancient methane trapped in ice cages called clathrates might now be released. The team found methane in the atmosphere of Mars by carefully observing the planet over several Mars years (and all Martian seasons) using spectrometers attached to telescopes at NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility, run by the University of Hawaii, and the W. M. Keck telescope, both at Mauna Kea, Hawaii. We observed and mapped multiple plumes of methane on Mars, one of which released about 19,000 metric tons of methane, says Geronimo Villanueva of the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Villanueva is stationed at NASA Goddard and is co-author of the paper. The plumes were emitted during the warmer seasons -- spring and summer -- perhaps because the permafrost blocking cracks and fissures vaporized, allowing methane to seep into the Martian air. Curiously, some plumes had water vapor while others did not, he says. According to the team, the plumes were seen over areas that show evidence of ancient ground ice or flowing water. For example, plumes appeared over northern hemisphere regions such as east of Arabia Terra, the Nili Fossae region, and the south-east quadrant of Syrtis Major, an ancient volcano 1,200 kilometers (about 745 miles) across. It will take future missions, like NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, to discover the origin of the Martian methane. One way to tell if life is
[scifinoir2] Fwd: Story question
- From: Colleen R. Cahill c...@loc.gov Subject: Story question Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2009 11:46:13 -0500 We have a patron asking the following: I graduated high school in 1963 and in my senior year literature text there was a story (I am nearly sure) by Stephen Vincent Benet. It was a science fiction story about a man who goes to a travel agency to buy a ticket to another planet and he goes to this barn and is sitting with a lot of others and nothing happens. Then, he jumps up and says we've all been made fools of and runs out the door just as the others are beamed up. Then, he goes back to the travel agency and the man says, You left this money here by mistake. Can you hlep me find the name of this story which appeared in our Lit. text that year. I graduated from Santiago High School in Garden Grove, California in 1963. It would be helpful to me to find this story for a project I am working on. Does this ring any bells? Thanks! Colleen Colleen R. Cahill | c...@loc.gov Digital Production Coordinator | (202)707-8540 Recommending Officer for | FAX (202)707-8531 Science Fiction Fantasy | Library of Congress These opinions are mine, Mine, Mine! | Washington, DC 20540-4652
[scifinoir2] Saturday Night Special: Biggest Full Moon of 2009
http://www.space.com/spacewatch/090109-biggest-full-moon-2009.html Saturday Night Special: Biggest Full Moon of 2009 By Robert Roy Britt Editorial Director posted: 09 January 2009 If skies are clear Saturday, go out at sunset and look for the giant moon rising in the east. It will be the biggest and brightest one of 2009, sure to wow even seasoned observers. Earth, the moon and the sun are all bound together by gravity, which keeps us going around the sun and keeps the moon going around us as it goes through phases. The moon makes a trip around Earth every 29.5 days. But the orbit is not a perfect circle. One portion is about 31,000 miles (50,000 km) closer to our planet than the farthest part, so the moon's apparent size in the sky changes. Saturday night (Jan. 10) the moon will be at perigee, the closest point to us on this orbit. It will appear about 14 percent bigger in our sky and 30 percent brighter than some other full moons during 2009, according to NASA. (A similar setup occurred in December, making that month's full moon the largest of 2008.) High tides Tides will be higher, too. Earth's oceans are pulled by the gravity of the moon and the sun. So when the moon is closer, tides are pulled higher. Scientists call these perigean tides, because they occur when the moon is at or near perigee. (The farthest point on the lunar orbit is called apogee.) This month's full moon is known as the Wolf Moon, from Native American folklore. The full moons of each month are named. January's is also known as the Old Moon and the Snow Moon. A full moon rises right around sunset, no matter where you are. That's because of the celestial mechanics that produce a full moon: The moon and the sun are on opposite sides of the Earth, so that sunlight hits the full face of the moon and bounces back to our eyes. At moonrise, the moon will appear even larger than it will later in the night when it's higher in the sky. This is an illusion that scientists can't fully explain. Some think it has to do with our perception of things on the horizon vs. stuff overhead. Try this trick, though: Using a pencil eraser or similar object held at arm's length, gauge the size of the moon when it's near the horizon and again later when it's higher up and seems smaller. You'll see that when compared to a fixed object, the moon will be the same size in both cases. More lunacy If you have other plans for Saturday night, take heart: You can see all this on each night surrounding the full moon, too, because the moon will be nearly full, rising earlier Friday night and later Sunday night. Interestingly, because of the mechanics of all this, the moon is never truly 100 percent full. For that to happen, all three objects have to be in a perfect line, and when that rare circumstance occurs, there is a total eclipse of the moon. A departing fact: The moon is moving away as you read this, by about 1.6 inches (4 centimeters) a year. Eventually this drift will force the moon to take 47 days to circle our world.
[scifinoir2] Top 50 movie special effects shots
http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/177951/top_50_movie_special_effects_shots.html
[scifinoir2] Mystery Roar from Faraway Space Detected
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090107-aas-loud-cosmic-noise.html Mystery Roar from Faraway Space Detected By Andrea Thompson Senior Writer posted: 07 January 2009 LONG BEACH, Calif. -- Space is typically thought of as a very quiet place. But one team of astronomers has found a strange cosmic noise that booms six times louder than expected. The roar is from the distant cosmos. Nobody knows what causes it. Of course, sound waves can't travel in a vacuum (which is what most of space is), or at least they can't very efficiently. But radio waves can. Radio waves are not sound waves, but they are still electromagnetic waves, situated on the low-frequency end of the light spectrum. Many objects in the universe, including stars and quasars, emit radio waves. Even our home galaxy, the Milky Way, emits a static hiss (first detected in 1931 by physicist Karl Jansky). Other galaxies also send out a background radio hiss. But the newly detected signal, described here today at the 213th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, is far louder than astronomers expected. There is something new and interesting going on in the universe, said Alan Kogut of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. A team led by Kogut detected the signal with a balloon-borne instrument named ARCADE (Absolute Radiometer for Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Diffuse Emission). In July 2006, the instrument was launched from NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, Texas, and reached an altitude of about 120,000 feet (36,500 meters), where the atmosphere thins into the vacuum of space. ARCADE's mission was to search the sky for faint signs of heat from the first generation of stars, but instead they heard a roar from the distant reaches of the universe. The universe really threw us a curve, Kogut said. Instead of the faint signal we hoped to find, here was this booming noise six times louder than anyone had predicted. Detailed analysis of the signal ruled out primordial stars or any known radio sources, including gas in the outermost halo of our own galaxy. Other radio galaxies also can't account for the noise - there just aren't enough of them. You'd have to pack them into the universe like sardines, said study team member Dale Fixsen of the University of Maryland. There wouldn't be any space left between one galaxy and the next. The signal is measured to be six times brighter than the combined emission of all known radio sources in the universe. For now, the origin of the signal remains a mystery. We really don't know what it is,said team member Michael Seiffert of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. And not only has it presented astronomers with a new puzzle, it is obscuring the sought-for signal from the earliest stars. But the cosmic static may itself provide important clues to the development of galaxies when the universe was much younger, less than half its present age. Because the radio waves come from far away, traveling at the speed of light, they therefore represent an earlier time in the universe. This is what makes science so exciting, Seiffert said. You start out on a path to measure something - in this case, the heat from the very first stars - but run into something else entirely, some unexplained.
[scifinoir2] Breakthrough toy can read your mind, move objects
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/todays-paper/Breakthrough+read+your+mind+move+objects/1152974/story.html Breakthrough toy can read your mind, move objects By Vito Pilieci, The Ottawa Citizen January 8, 2009 Giving new meaning to the phrase mind over matter, technology that gives people the ability to move objects by thinking will soon be available at North American toy stores. Mattel Inc. has created a game that can read a child's mind and use thoughts to manoeuvre a small foam ball through a table-top obstacle course. The Mind Flex uses technology that reads the electrical impulses (called bio-feedback) that occur within a brain while a person is thinking. A device that looks like a pair of headphones sits on the child's head and tracks brain activity. Within the obstacle course are small fans that are activated when a child thinks. The more brain activity the child produces, the faster the fans blow. The goal is to have the child think the little foam ball through the obstacle course. The toy, to be officially revealed this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, is expected to be in stores later this year. The Mind Flex is targeted at children eight and up and will retail for $80 U.S. Canadian pricing has not been released. While the technology may sound straight from Star Trek, researchers have long been working on ways to use brain activity to direct machines. It all goes back to neurofeedback that has been around for 50 years, where you can record activity coming from the human brain through the scalp, said Melvyn Goodale, Canada Research Chair in Visual Neuroscience at the University of Western Ontario. It has the outside look of a science-fiction theme. You are controlling things through mind waves. But things like this have been around in various science museums for some time. Mr. Goodale says a museum in Sarasota, Florida, displays a similar toy that pits two competitors against one another. Instead of floating a ball through an obstacle course, each player tries to score a goal in a competitor's net. The person who could create and sustain the most brain activity would power a set of fans that pushed a foam ball into the rival's goal. Scientists are also delving into mind-over-matter technology, hoping to isolate specific brain activity with the goal of allowing people to interact with a computer or TV without a mouse, remote or a keyboard. The technology may also be used to help people who have lost their limbs control robotic prosthetics. There are attempts to actually record activity of specific parts of the brain, said Mr. Goodale. To use electrodes to record the activity of groups of cells of patients with spinal cord damage to get them to control robot arms, wheel chairs or cursors on a computer screen. Science may be close to a breakthrough, according to Mr. Goodale. He said several research papers detail advanced ways of capturing brain activity and tests are already under way meaning the day when human and machine can communicate may not be far off. We've been working for 20 or 30 years on this mind-borg or cyborg stuff. All of these things are examples of new interfaces between humans and machines, said Steve Mann, a professor with the department of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Toronto. Mr. Mann himself has been called the world's first cyborg, and is famous for having created wearable computers that allow him to interact with devices. He is working on technology called the EyeTap, which looks like a sleek monocle and can record what a person sees. It can also act as a display for computer-generated content. The EyeTap also responds to its environment, automatically lowering or raising lighting when a person walks into a room. © Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen
Re: [scifinoir2] Black Former Astronaut Rumored for Top NASA Post
I am not a fanciful person by nature, but in my younger days I dreamt of marrying the remarkably accomplished Ms. Jemison. Nothing cooler than wedding an astronaut in my estimate. I was truly besotted with her. Unfortunately for me, there was not then nor is there now any basis in reality to sustain this ridiculous fiction. :-) Still, she sends me into high spirits. sigh Brent keithbjohn...@comcast.net writes: Sounds as if she's living the dream--several, in fact. -- Original message -- From: Reece Jennings [ mailto:mcjennings124%40yahoo.com ]mcjennings...@yahoo.com Absolutely! In the video, she was touted as the possible FIRST female president of the U.S. IF you didn't watch it, you must. She has a WONDERFUL presence! And she is currently a professor at Dartmouth. _ From: [ mailto:scifinoir2%40yahoogroups.com ]scifino...@yahoogroups.com [mailto:[ mailto:scifinoir2%40yahoogroups.com ]scifino...@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Martin Baxter Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 8:25 AM To: [ mailto:scifinoir2%40yahoogroups.com ]scifino...@yahoogroups.com Subject: RE: [scifinoir2] Black Former Astronaut Rumored for Top NASA Post Sounds like a winner to me. -[ Received Mail Content ]-- Subject : RE: [scifinoir2] Black Former Astronaut Rumored for Top NASA Post Date : Wed, 7 Jan 2009 23:24:39 -0500 From : Reece Jennings [ mailto:mcjennings124%40yahoo.com ]mcjennings...@yahoo.com To : [ mailto:scifinoir2%40yahoogroups.com ]scifino...@yahoogroups.com I google her and found this video: [ http://www.asterpix.com/console/?avi=20256811 ]http://www.asterpix.com/console/?avi=20256811 Also: * 2007 Doctor of Engineering, Harvey Mudd College [40] * 2007 Doctor of Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute [41] * 2008 Doctor of Humanities, DePaul University [42] and * Jemison, Mae. Find where the wind goes: moments from my life. New York: Scholastic. ISBN 9780439131964. OCLC 44548911 .. * Jemison, Mae (PDF). S.E.E.ing the Future: Science, Engineering and Education ED464816 . Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College. pp. 56. ERIC ED464816. [ http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/contentdelivery/servlet/ERICServlet?accno=E ]http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/contentdelivery/servlet/ERICServlet?accno=E D464816. _ From: [ mailto:scifinoir2%40yahoogroups.com ]scifino...@yahoogroups.com [mailto:[ mailto:scifinoir2%40yahoogroups.com ]scifino...@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of [ mailto:KeithBJohnson%40comcast.net ]keithbjohn...@comcast.net Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 5:22 PM To: [ mailto:scifinoir2%40yahoogroups.com ]scifino...@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [scifinoir2] Black Former Astronaut Rumored for Top NASA Post Same here. By the by, what's Mae Jemison up to nowadays? -- Original message -- From: brent wodehouse thefence.us Happy Times :-))) (This is not quite the extent of my enthusiasm, but I am at a loss presently to know how better I might express my joy-joy feelings :-) Brent KeithBJohnson@ comcast.net writes: Interesting. I can't say I know anything about Bolden, but Obama may replace the current administrator simply because of the tensions between him and the transition team. There's a feeling that he has a hands off 'cause you don't understand this attitude. A bit off the topic of this article is something that struck me from it: In 2002, President George W. Bush nominated Bolden to serve as NASA's deputy administrator. However, the nomination was withdrawn after the Pentagon objected to civilian agencies drafting high-ranking officers during wartime. So the Pentagon was calling the shots on that, eh? Is it just me--am I the only one who was taught in school that only Congress shall declare war? To my knowledge we haven't been in an official war since WWII. Iraq is a military action (or regime change, or power grab, or invasion if you prefer) and Afghanistan is--well, it's a mess. I try never to give either conflict the validation of the term war, because that imparts a air of necessity and agreement to them that just simply isn't there. This nebulous definition of war has been used too many times by too many people to justify all sorts of actions that ordinarily wouldn't have been tolerated by the civilian populace. Its usage to something as undefined and unbounded as The war on terrorism allows those actions to go on ad infinitum, no end in sight, no end to draconian measures taken by our leaders because, after all, we're at war. Man do things need to change in this country... ** [ [ http://www.chron. ]http://www.chron. com/disp/story.mpl/nation/6197621.html ][ http://www.chron. ]http://www.chron. com/disp
Re: [scifinoir2] Black Former Astronaut Rumored for Top NASA Post
I am not a fanciful person by nature, but in my younger days I dreamt of marrying the remarkably accomplished Ms. Jemison. Nothing cooler than wedding an astronaut in my estimate. I was truly besotted with her. Unfortunately for me, there was not then nor is there now any basis in reality to sustain this ridiculous fiction. :-) Still, she sends me into high spirits. sigh Brent keithbjohn...@comcast.net writes: Sounds as if she's living the dream--several, in fact. -- Original message -- From: Reece Jennings [ mailto:mcjennings124%40yahoo.com ] mcjennings...@yahoo.com Absolutely! In the video, she was touted as the possible FIRST female president of the U.S. IF you didn't watch it, you must. She has a WONDERFUL presence! And she is currently a professor at Dartmouth. _ From: [ mailto:scifinoir2%40yahoogroups.com ] scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com [mailto:[ mailto:scifinoir2%40yahoogroups.com ] scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com ] On Behalf Of Martin Baxter Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 8:25 AM To: [ mailto:scifinoir2%40yahoogroups.com ] scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com Subject: RE: [scifinoir2] Black Former Astronaut Rumored for Top NASA Post Sounds like a winner to me. -[ Received Mail Content ]-- Subject : RE: [scifinoir2] Black Former Astronaut Rumored for Top NASA Post Date : Wed, 7 Jan 2009 23:24:39 -0500 From : Reece Jennings [ mailto:mcjennings124%40yahoo.com ] mcjennings...@yahoo.com To : [ mailto:scifinoir2%40yahoogroups.com ] scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com I google her and found this video: [ http://www.asterpix.com/console/?avi=20256811 ] http://www.asterpix.com/console/?avi=20256811 Also: * 2007 Doctor of Engineering, Harvey Mudd College [40] * 2007 Doctor of Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute [41] * 2008 Doctor of Humanities, DePaul University [42] and * Jemison, Mae. Find where the wind goes: moments from my life. New York: Scholastic. ISBN 9780439131964. OCLC 44548911 .. * Jemison, Mae (PDF). S.E.E.ing the Future: Science, Engineering and Education ED464816 . Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College. pp. 56. ERIC ED464816. [ http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/contentdelivery/servlet/ERICServlet?accno=E ] http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/contentdelivery/servlet/ERICServlet?accno=E D464816. _ From: [ mailto:scifinoir2%40yahoogroups.com ] scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com [mailto:[ mailto:scifinoir2%40yahoogroups.com ] scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com ] On Behalf Of [ mailto:KeithBJohnson%40comcast.net ] keithbjohn...@comcast.net Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 5:22 PM To: [ mailto:scifinoir2%40yahoogroups.com ] scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [scifinoir2] Black Former Astronaut Rumored for Top NASA Post Same here. By the by, what's Mae Jemison up to nowadays? -- Original message -- From: brent wodehouse thefence.us Happy Times :-))) (This is not quite the extent of my enthusiasm, but I am at a loss presently to know how better I might express my joy-joy feelings :-) Brent K eithBJohnson@ comcast.net writes: Interesting. I can't say I know anything about Bolden, but Obama may replace the current administrator simply because of the tensions between him and the transition team. There's a feeling that he has a hands off 'cause you don't understand this attitude. A bit off the topic of this article is something that struck me from it: In 2002, President George W. Bush nominated Bolden to serve as NASA's deputy administrator. However, the nomination was withdrawn after the Pentagon objected to civilian agencies drafting high-ranking officers during wartime. So the Pentagon was calling the shots on that, eh? Is it just me--am I the only one who was taught in school that only Congress shall declare war? To my knowledge we haven't been in an official war since WWII. Iraq is a military action (or regime change, or power grab, or invasion if you prefer) and Afghanistan is--well, it's a mess. I try never to give either conflict the validation of the term war, because that imparts a air of necessity and agreement to them that just simply isn't there. This nebulous definition of war has been used too many times by too many people to justify all sorts of actions that ordinarily wouldn't have been tolerated by the civilian populace. Its usage to something as undefined and unbounded as The war on terrorism allows those actions to go on ad infinitum, no end in sight, no end to draconian measures taken by our leaders because, after all, we're at war. Man do things need to change in this country... ** [ [ http://www.chron . ] http://www.chron . com/disp/story.mpl/nation/6197621.html
Re: [scifinoir2] Black Former Astronaut Rumored for Top NASA Post
Happy Times :-))) (This is not quite the extent of my enthusiasm, but I am at a loss presently to know how better I might express my joy-joy feelings :-) Brent keithbjohn...@comcast.net writes: Interesting. I can't say I know anything about Bolden, but Obama may replace the current administrator simply because of the tensions between him and the transition team. There's a feeling that he has a hands off 'cause you don't understand this attitude. A bit off the topic of this article is something that struck me from it: In 2002, President George W. Bush nominated Bolden to serve as NASA's deputy administrator. However, the nomination was withdrawn after the Pentagon objected to civilian agencies drafting high-ranking officers during wartime. So the Pentagon was calling the shots on that, eh? Is it just me--am I the only one who was taught in school that only Congress shall declare war? To my knowledge we haven't been in an official war since WWII. Iraq is a military action (or regime change, or power grab, or invasion if you prefer) and Afghanistan is--well, it's a mess. I try never to give either conflict the validation of the term war, because that imparts a air of necessity and agreement to them that just simply isn't there. This nebulous definition of war has been used too many times by too many people to justify all sorts of actions that ordinarily wouldn't have been tolerated by the civilian populace. Its usage to something as undefined and unbounded as The war on terrorism allows those actions to go on ad infinitum, no end in sight, no end to draconian measures taken by our leaders because, after all, we're at war. Man do things need to change in this country... ** [ http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/6197621.html ]http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/6197621.html Ex-astronaut may be Obama's pick to lead NASA He would be the first black to be named administrator By MARK CARREAU Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle A former astronaut who has made four trips into space is reportedly a leading candidate for the top job at NASA. If selected by President-elect Barack Obama, Charles Bolden Jr., 62, a retired Marine Corps general who makes his home in Houston's Bay Area, would be the first black American to head the space agency. The former test pilot left NASA in 1994 after 14 years of service to return to the Marine Corps, where he rose to the rank of major general. He retired in 2003. But Bolden has remained familiar with NASA's workings and personnel. He serves on NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, one of nine experts who advises the administrator. He is also an adviser to the four high-ranking NASA officials who are overseeing the upcoming space shuttle reconditioning flight to the 18-year-old Hubble Space Telescope. Bolden piloted the shuttle Discovery in 1990 that flew the observatory into space. Bolden said Tuesday night that while he has discussed the space agency and its future with friends at NASA, he has not been contacted by Obama's transition team. I'm as surprised as anyone, he said about the reports circulating in Washington and at the Johnson Space Center about his name surfacing as a leading candidate. NBC News and the Orlando Sentinel published the reports Tuesday afternoon. Asked if he would discuss the job if contacted, Bolden said, Yes, adding, You never say never. Bolden stressed that it would be difficult for any candidate for the job to know how to respond until he or she knew what the president-elect has in mind. In Washington, a spokesman for the Obama transition team declined to comment on the reports that Bolden had emerged as a leading contender for NASA administrator. During his campaign, Obama advocated greater funding for the $17.3-billion-a-year space agency. He favored a plan to close a five-year gap between the shuttle's scheduled 2010 retirement and the first manned trials of a replacement spacecraft. Some policy analysis believe Obama has not yet made a selection for the top NASA post in order to allow the small space transition team led by Lori Garver, a former NASA associate administrator in the Clinton administration, plenty of time to sort out the options. Other names in the mix On Bolden's first mission into space in 1986, he served as the pilot aboard the shuttle Columbia. The crew included Bill Nelson, then a Florida congressman, who was allowed to fly because of his role as a legislative overseer of the space agency. Nelson, now a Florida senator and champion of NASA and its economic impact on Central Florida, has counseled Obama on space matters. In 2002, President George W. Bush nominated Bolden to serve as NASA's deputy administrator. However, the nomination was withdrawn after the Pentagon objected to civilian agencies drafting high-ranking officers during wartime. Meanwhile, a Web petition drive started in December by former NASA astronaut Scott Doc Horowitz to
[scifinoir2] [Prediction] 24 Things About To Become Extinct In America
http://farmfreshiowa.blogspot.com/2009/01/24-things-about-to-become-extinct-in.html Friday, January 02, 2009 24 THINGS ABOUT TO BECOME EXTINCT IN AMERICA 24. Yellow Pages This year will be pivotal for the global Yellow Pages industry. Much like newspapers, print Yellow Pages will continue to bleed dollars to their various digital counterparts, from Internet Yellow Pages (IYPs), to local search engines and combination search/listing services like Reach Local and Yodle Factors like an acceleration of the print 'fade rate' and the looming recession will contribute to the onslaught. One research firm predicts the falloff in usage of newspapers and print Yellow Pages could even reach 10% this year -- much higher than the 2%-3% fade rate seen in past years. 23. Classified Ads The Internet has made so many things obsolete that newspaper classified ads might sound like just another trivial item on a long list. But this is one of those harbingers of the future that could signal the end of civilization as we know it. The argument is that if newspaper classifieds are replaced by free online listings at sites like Craigslist.org and Google Base, then newspapers are not far behind them. 22. Movie Rental Stores While Netflix is looking up at the moment, Blockbuster keeps closing store locations by the hundreds. It still has about 6,000 left across the world, but those keep dwindling and the stock is down considerably in 2008, especially since the company gave up a quest of Circuit City . Movie Gallery, which owned the Hollywood Video brand, closed up shop earlier this year. Countless small video chains and mom-and-pop stores have given up the ghost already. 21. Dial-up Internet Access Dial-up connections have fallen from 40% in 2001 to 10% in 2008. The combination of an infrastructure to accommodate affordable high speed Internet connections and the disappearing home phone have all but pounded the final nail in the coffin of dial-up Internet access. 20. Phone Landlines According to a survey from the National Center for Health Statistics, at the end of 2007, nearly one in six homes was cell-only and, of those homes that had landlines, one in eight only received calls on their cells. 19. Chesapeake Bay Blue Crabs Maryland 's icon, the blue crab, has been fading away in Chesapeake Bay . Last year Maryland saw the lowest harvest (22 million pounds) since 1945. Just four decades ago the bay produced 96 million pounds. The population is down 70% since 1990, when they first did a formal count. There are only about 120 million crabs in the bay and they think they need 200 million for a sustainable population. Overfishing, pollution, invasive species and global warming get the blame. 18. VCRs For the better part of three decades, the VCR was a best-seller and staple in every American household until being completely decimated by the DVD, and now the Digital Video Recorder (DVR). In fact, the only remnants of the VHS age at your local Wal-Mart or Radio Shack are blank VHS tapes these days. Pre-recorded VHS tapes are largely gone and VHS decks are practically nowhere to be found. They served us so well. 17. Ash Trees In the late 1990s, a pretty, iridescent green species of beetle, now known as the emerald ash borer, hitched a ride to North America with ash wood products imported from eastern Asia . In less than a decade, i ts larvae have killed millions of trees in the Midwest, and continue to spread. They've killed more than 30 million ash trees in southeastern Michigan alone, with tens of millions more lost in Ohio and Indiana. More than 7.5 billion ash trees are currently at risk. 16. Ham Radio Amateur radio operators enjoy personal (and often worldwide) wireless communications with each other and are able to support their communities with emergency and disaster communications if necessary, while increasing their personal knowledge of electronics and radio theory. However, proliferation of the Internet and its popularity among youth has caused the decline of amateur radio. In the past five years alone, the number of people holding active ham radio licenses has dropped by 50,000, even though Morse Code is no longer a requirement. 15. The Swimming Hole Thanks to our litigious society, swimming holes are becoming a thing of the past. '20/20' reports that swimming hole owners, like Robert Every in High Falls, N.Y., are shutting them down out of worry that if someone gets hurt they'll sue. And that's exactly what happened in Seattle . The city of Bellingham was sued by Katie Hofstetter who was paralyzed in a fall at a popular swimming hole in Whatcom Falls Park. As injuries occur and lawsuits follow, expect more swimming holes to post 'Keep out!' signs. 14. Answering Machines The increasing disappearance of answering machines is directly tied to No 20 our list -- the decline of landlines. According to USA Today, the number of homes that only use cell phones jumped 159% between 2004 and 2007. It has been particularly
[scifinoir2] [Prediction] 24 Things About To Become Extinct In America
http://farmfreshiowa.blogspot.com/2009/01/24-things-about-to-become-extinct-in.html Friday, January 02, 2009 24 THINGS ABOUT TO BECOME EXTINCT IN AMERICA 24. Yellow Pages This year will be pivotal for the global Yellow Pages industry. Much like newspapers, print Yellow Pages will continue to bleed dollars to their various digital counterparts, from Internet Yellow Pages (IYPs), to local search engines and combination search/listing services like Reach Local and Yodle Factors like an acceleration of the print 'fade rate' and the looming recession will contribute to the onslaught. One research firm predicts the falloff in usage of newspapers and print Yellow Pages could even reach 10% this year -- much higher than the 2%-3% fade rate seen in past years. 23. Classified Ads The Internet has made so many things obsolete that newspaper classified ads might sound like just another trivial item on a long list. But this is one of those harbingers of the future that could signal the end of civilization as we know it. The argument is that if newspaper classifieds are replaced by free online listings at sites like Craigslist.org and Google Base, then newspapers are not far behind them. 22. Movie Rental Stores While Netflix is looking up at the moment, Blockbuster keeps closing store locations by the hundreds. It still has about 6,000 left across the world, but those keep dwindling and the stock is down considerably in 2008, especially since the company gave up a quest of Circuit City . Movie Gallery, which owned the Hollywood Video brand, closed up shop earlier this year. Countless small video chains and mom-and-pop stores have given up the ghost already. 21. Dial-up Internet Access Dial-up connections have fallen from 40% in 2001 to 10% in 2008. The combination of an infrastructure to accommodate affordable high speed Internet connections and the disappearing home phone have all but pounded the final nail in the coffin of dial-up Internet access. 20. Phone Landlines According to a survey from the National Center for Health Statistics, at the end of 2007, nearly one in six homes was cell-only and, of those homes that had landlines, one in eight only received calls on their cells. 19. Chesapeake Bay Blue Crabs Maryland 's icon, the blue crab, has been fading away in Chesapeake Bay . Last year Maryland saw the lowest harvest (22 million pounds) since 1945. Just four decades ago the bay produced 96 million pounds. The population is down 70% since 1990, when they first did a formal count. There are only about 120 million crabs in the bay and they think they need 200 million for a sustainable population. Overfishing, pollution, invasive species and global warming get the blame. 18. VCRs For the better part of three decades, the VCR was a best-seller and staple in every American household until being completely decimated by the DVD, and now the Digital Video Recorder (DVR). In fact, the only remnants of the VHS age at your local Wal-Mart or Radio Shack are blank VHS tapes these days. Pre-recorded VHS tapes are largely gone and VHS decks are practically nowhere to be found. They served us so well. 17. Ash Trees In the late 1990s, a pretty, iridescent green species of beetle, now known as the emerald ash borer, hitched a ride to North America with ash wood products imported from eastern Asia . In less than a decade, i ts larvae have killed millions of trees in the Midwest, and continue to spread. They've killed more than 30 million ash trees in southeastern Michigan alone, with tens of millions more lost in Ohio and Indiana. More than 7.5 billion ash trees are currently at risk. 16. Ham Radio Amateur radio operators enjoy personal (and often worldwide) wireless communications with each other and are able to support their communities with emergency and disaster communications if necessary, while increasing their personal knowledge of electronics and radio theory. However, proliferation of the Internet and its popularity among youth has caused the decline of amateur radio. In the past five years alone, the number of people holding active ham radio licenses has dropped by 50,000, even though Morse Code is no longer a requirement. 15. The Swimming Hole Thanks to our litigious society, swimming holes are becoming a thing of the past. '20/20' reports that swimming hole owners, like Robert Every in High Falls, N.Y., are shutting them down out of worry that if someone gets hurt they'll sue. And that's exactly what happened in Seattle . The city of Bellingham was sued by Katie Hofstetter who was paralyzed in a fall at a popular swimming hole in Whatcom Falls Park. As injuries occur and lawsuits follow, expect more swimming holes to post 'Keep out!' signs. 14. Answering Machines The increasing disappearance of answering machines is directly tied to No 20 our list -- the decline of landlines. According to USA Today, the number of homes that only use cell phones jumped 159% between 2004 and 2007. It has been particularly
[scifinoir2] Fasten Your Seatbelts: We could be headed for a great adventure. Or apocalypse.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/02/AR2009010202211.html Fasten Your Seatbelts We could be headed for a great adventure. Or apocalypse. Either way, we're in for a wild ride. By Annalee Newitz Sunday, January 4, 2009; Page B01 When the present promises only economic hardship and political upheaval, what does the future look like? In 2009, it looks like a world of gleaming spaceships filled with enlightened people who have emerged with their humanity intact after a terrible war. They have entered the 23rd century, shed racism, no longer use money, possess seemingly magical technologies and are devoted to peaceful exploration. I refer of course to Star Trek [http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Star+Trek?tid=informline ] and its powerful story of a better tomorrow, which has been mesmerizing audiences for almost half a century and returns to movie theaters this coming May with an eagerly anticipated 11th full-length feature. But wait. The future also looks like this: a dark, violent world where a horrific war between humans and cyborgs leads to the near-extermination of humanity. This vision, in the latest Terminator movie, is also arriving at your nearest mutiplex in May. We imagine the future in places other than the movie theater, of course. Still, these two familiar franchises underscore the conflicting stories we tell ourselves in uncertain times about what lies ahead: Either we're bound for a techno-utopia of adventure, or a grim, Orwellian dystopia where humanity is on the brink of implosion. We've seen this dichotomy before. Nearly a century ago, Europe was headed toward war on an unprecedented scale. Traditional alliances evaporated, shocking new weapons ripped apart bodies and countries, and a generation of artists such as Picasso [http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Pablo+Picasso?tid=informline ] responded with paintings that showed reality reduced to unsettling, jagged abstraction. Meanwhile, a pulp writer from Chicago named Edgar Rice Burroughs was concocting stories about a soldier who wakes up one morning in a miraculous, futuristic world full of lost cities, advanced technologies and little green men. A Princess of Mars, serialized in 1912, was the first in a long line of swashbuckling adventure tales Burroughs wrote about his hero, John Carter [http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/c001051], sword-fighting and ray-gunning his way across Barsoom -- the natives' name for Mars. Carter and his new Barsoomian companions fought wars like the one the United States itself would soon be fighting. But they were winnable wars, against comprehensible, easy-to-vanquish alien enemies. Burroughs, who also went on to publish the Tarzan novels, supplied escapist fantasies of the future to a public weary of the grim, terrifying present. It's clear that hard times make audiences yearn for fantastical tales of a better tomorrow. During the paranoid heights of the Cold War, they thronged movie theaters to see Leslie Nielsen [http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Leslie+Nielsen?tid=informline] conquer the alien technology of Forbidden Planet. But in between the escapist fantasies of tomorrow, audiences also tuned in to grim tales of techno-fascist futures such as Brave New World and 1984. The best example of our polarized dreams of tomorrow came during the Great Depression. During this period, Americans couldn't get enough of Buck Rogers, a 20th-century soldier who falls into a coma and miraculously awakes in the 25th century. The story of his adventures, originally published as two novellas, became a long-running radio and movie serial and a newspaper comic strip that ran through most of the 1930s. Like John Carter on Barsoom, Buck and his comrades are fighting a war -- in this case, against the Mongols. But war isn't hell; it's a backdrop for awesome adventures and astonishing inventions. Later, the Flash Gordon comics and radio show competed with Buck Rogers for audiences craving escapism. Flash found himself on the Barsoom-esque planet Mongo, fighting the Han and swashbuckling his way through weird places filled with strange natives and sexy queens. But while Buck and Flash crossed swords on the radio, a very different idea of the future was being prophesied by British writer Aldous Huxley, who published Brave New World in 1932. The novel takes place in a 26th century where strife has been eliminated by means of state-controlled eugenics, mental conditioning, drugs and various technological niceties. Like a Buck Rogers in reverse, our hero Bernard finds himself alienated from the urban world of perfect plenty and promiscuity and repulsed by the savage reservations where unmodified humans live. In Brave New World, Buck's shiny future is revealed as an insidious, high-tech fascism. The basic question raised by Buck Rogers and Brave New World is whether humans would be more prosperous in the far future than in the 1930s.
[scifinoir2] Year of the remake: Top 25 movies to watch in 2009
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20081224/ENT_YE_movies_2009_090101/20090101?hub=TopStories Year of the remake: Top 25 movies to watch in 2009 Updated Thu. Jan. 1 2009 Constance Droganes, entertainment writer, CTV.ca Call it the year of the remake if you will. Seems that's what Hollywood's betting on to surpass 2008's record-breaking box office fever ignited by Indy, Bond, Iron Man and Batman. It's a tall order to fill. But with a new slew of classic remakes, eye-popping 3D fare and a supernova of CGI-driven extravaganzas, Hollywood's dishing up some rare fine amusements for these tough times with its big blockbuster contenders for 2009. 'Avatar' (December) Poised to become 2009's biggest blockbuster, James Cameron's US$185-million, 3D flick touts technological advancements never before seen in Hollywood. Set 200 years in the future, a paraplegic ex-marine (Sam Worthington) unwillingly travels on his race's behalf to the planet Pandora to exploit its natural resources. But this cosmic traveller with a conscience nixes his associate's plans for planetary genocide and joins the enemy in their fight for their survival. Inspired by every single science fiction book I read as a kid, bets say Cameron's intergalactic extravaganza will tank Titanic's mega-success at the box office. 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince' (July) Disgruntled Potter fans won't have to gnash their teeth practicing Patronus spells any longer, not with the sixth entry of J.K. Rowling's boy wizard saga finally headed for theatres in July of 2009. Bumped from its November 2008 release date, unprecedented millions could vanish from fans' pockets as they sweep into theatres faster than a Nimbus 2000 to see what happens to Harry, Lord Voldemort and the warring world of wizards and Muggles -- as if they didn't already know! 'Public Enemies' (July) Christian Bale and Johnny Depp in the same movie? Is Santa bringing Christmas early? Starring in this gritty gangster epic from Miami Vice creator Michael Mann, Bale and Depp make some mighty fine Hollywood hay in this flick about the FBI's search for the Great Depression's slickest bank robbers: John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson and Pretty Boy Floyd. Nicely timed for 2009's tough recessionary times. 'Star Trek' (May) Diehard Trekkies - and I mean those of you who are still peeved that William Shatner isn't in this movie - should get over it. To revitalize the stale sci-fi franchise, director J.J. Abrams has compiled a cast with the kind of plasticine perfection that emmotes volumes in a galaxy overrun with Klingons, Romulans and other pesky intergalactic scum. Set before the first TV series, Abram's prequel follows the rip-roaring adventures of James T. Kirk (Chris Pine), Spock (Zachary Quinto), Dr. Leonard McCoy (Karl Urban), and Scotty (Simon Pegg). With Eric Bana as Nero, the film's sexy Romulan villain, and Leonard Nimoy back as the older Spock, looks like it'll be fun times once more in space, the final frontier. 'Watchmen' (March) Alan Moore's famed comic book from the 1980s finally gets the epic, Hollywood superhero treatment. Starring Billy Crudup, Malin Akerman and Matthew Goode, Zack Snyder's ode to this awesome adventure series is set in an alternate 1985 and follows a group of ex-vigilantes as tensions peak between the United States and the Soviet Union. After one of the masked avengers is murdered, the superheroes reunite to prevent their destruction and, in the process, uncover a diabolical plot that threatens the world. If it's anything at all like Snyder's 300, Watchmen should KO moviegoers with plenty of knockout moments. 'X-Men Origins: Wolverine' (May) Hugh Jackman (aka People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive) is back in all his superhero glory in this prequel set 17 years before the franchise's first movie, 2000's X-Men. Although critics panned 2006's X-Men: The Last Stand, the third instalment in the film series, this look back at Logan before his Wolverine days -- and the wicked hairdo -- should be enough to pack 'em in at the movie theatres this spring. From the real story behind Wolverine's deadly talons to the secrets that define Logan's long lost life, this flick's got everything it takes to make this mutant and indestructible metal skeleton look super fine. 'Angels Demons' (May) Remember that blurp in time known as Da Vinci Code mania? Even if Ron Howard's 2006 movie didn't live up to Dan Brown's bestseller the A-list director is back again with another murderous adventure through Vatican City. In this sequel Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) investigates the murder of a physicist branded with the Illuminati ambigram - a graphical figure that spells out a word not only in its form as it's presented but also in another direction. The symbol helps Langdon uncover the secret society's scheme to murder four cardinals and destroy St. Peter's Basilica during a papal conclave using antimatter Sounds like Armageddon to me! Critics might still
[scifinoir2] Fwd: Looking for an Asimov story.
- From: David Wright dwright...@yahoo.com Subject: Looking for an Asimov story. Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2008 20:04:32 -0800 Hello there, My colleagues and I in snowy Seattle are in need of your assistance. A patron is looking for an old Isaac Asimov story which she described thusly: Years ago I read a short story by Isaac Asimov that was about the fight of a revolutionary hero to change the political system but when he finally accomplished the change a moderate career politician who could actually govern was either elected or appointed to be in charge of the government. So the well put point was those who can best motivate change can not always best govern. Ring any bells? Please let us know. Thanks, David Wright Fiction/Teen Librarian Fiction/Teen/LEAP Department Seattle Public Library www.spl.org
[scifinoir2] Mac vs PC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLbJ8YPHwXM
[scifinoir2] Rock stars Suck hard in forthcoming vampire film
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/dec/19/iggy-pop-moby-alice-cooper Rock stars Suck hard in forthcoming vampire film What's cooler than a movie about bloodsuckers? Not much, especially when it features Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper ... and Moby being eaten alive Sean Michaels guardian.co.uk, Friday 19 December 2008 Iggy Pop, Moby and Alice Cooper are among the musicians who will appear in Suck, a forthcoming movie about vampires, rock'n'roll and the record business. While many bands have sold their souls for stardom, in Suck this spiritual selling-out happens literally. A group called the Winners are torn between bloodsucking music execs and actual bloodsuckers, nudged along by characters like vampire-hunter Eddie Van Helsing (played by Malcolm McDowell) and DJ Rockin' Roger (played by Henry Rollins). The Canadian production is written and directed by Rob Stefaniuk, who stars, but its musical cameos come courtesy of producer Jeff Rogers, who worked for V2 Records. Besides Rollins, Suck includes appearances by Iggy Pop, Rush's Alex Lifeson, Burning Brides' Dimitri Coats, Carole Pope, and Alice Cooper, playing a sinister bartender. Cooper's daughter, Calico, also has a cameo appearance as a dancer. What's cooler than a vampire? Alice Cooper commented to Fangoria magazine. I love the mixture of horror and humour. Moby, a noted vegan, plays Beef Bellows, the frontman of a punk band called the Secretaries of Steak. The Secretaries' fans show their appreciation by hurling pieces of meat, Rolling Stone reported. The meat is foam rubber, the blood is raspberry syrup, but Moby said his enthusiasm for the part is not faked. I'm making a speciality of playing douche bags ... I could spend the rest of my career perfecting the douche bag. I only have 45 words [in the movie], he continued, but they are 45 important words. Then I get eaten. Suck will be released next autumn.
[scifinoir2] 2008s Top TV Shows Online
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/blog/138138/post/490038049.html?nid=3349 2008s Top TV Shows Online: BC Delivers the Numbers Nielsen and Networks Wont December 16, 2008 By Richard Bellamy, Special to Broadcastingcable.com When Nielsen released their top 10 lists for 2008 on Friday, they ranked the top television programs, using both Live ratings and Live+7 ratings for timeshifted viewing. But even Live+7 excludes a growing portion of viewer: those who watch television online. (Nielsen's methodology for compiling the data also left several CW shows off of the top timeshifted programs list.) We asked Nielsen for the top 10 television programs online in 2008, but according to a spokesperson, the company is not measuring program level data online at this time. Hulu, the NBC Universal-News Corp. joint venture, does not release viewership info (we asked), and neither do several broadcast networks we contacted. So we turned to Internet TV portal SideReel, which aggregates links to content hosted elsewhere, including official streams at the networks sites, Amazon and iTunes download services, and unauthorized streams. The company provided us with a list of the top 19 television programs of 2008, based on the number of people who clicked through to those shows. Top 19 Television Programs Online in 2008 1Gossip Girl 2House 3Heroes 4One Tree Hill 5The Office 6Weeds 7Dexter 8Prison Break 9How I Met Your Mother 10Entourage 11Smallville 12True Blood 13Family Guy 14Friends (1994) 15Bones 16Desperate Housewives 17Sex and the City 1890210 19Supernatural
[scifinoir2] Majel Roddenberry, wife of 'Trek' creator, dies
http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_11263728 Majel Roddenberry, wife of 'Trek' creator, dies The Associated Press Article Launched: 12/18/2008 01:21:50 PM PST LOS ANGELES - Majel Barrett Roddenberry, the widow of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, has died. She was 76. Family spokesman Sean Rossall says Majel Roddenberry died of leukemia Thursday morning at her home in Los Angeles. Her son, Eugene, was at her side. Roddenberry played Nurse Christine Chapel in the original 1960s TV series and had smaller roles in many of its successors. She also voices the computer in the upcoming Star Trek movie. After her husband's death in 1991, she continued to promote the Star Trek legacy at conventions. She also was the executive producer for two unrelated TV science fiction series, Andromeda and Earth: Final Conflict.
[scifinoir2] Actors' strike threat casts shadow over Oscars
http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World_Newssubsection=Rest+of+the+Worldmonth=December2008file=World_News200812144481.xml Actors' strike threat casts shadow over Oscars Web posted at: 12/14/2008 Source ::: Reuters LOS ANGELES: Even as Oscar organizers on Friday unveiled Hugh Jackman as the host of their gala film awards, the prospect of a US actors' strike was casting a long shadow over whether Hollywood's big show would go on as usual. The Academy Awards' February 22 date puts it directly in the path of a potential walkout by Screen Actors Guild members who vote next month on whether to give union leaders permission to call a strike in stalemated contract talks with major studios. Movie making by the big studios has wound down since late June in anticipation of labor strife, compounding a general slowdown from the US recession. The tension has only been heightened by fatigue from a tumultuous 14-week Hollywood writers strike that ended in February and cost the Los Angeles area economy around $3bl as production stopped on most prime-time TV shows. A strike, if one occurred, would be nothing short of horrible, said Ron Howard, the former actor and Oscar-winning director of A Beautiful Mind whose latest film, Frost/Nixon, is considered a strong Oscar contender. The timing couldn't be worse, he said on Thursday. Actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who on Thursday earned a Golden Globe nomination for his work in Revolutionary Road, said strike concerns are hitting everyone. It s really important that we come up with a solution, he said. These are unheard-of times, and no one can predict what is going to happen with the US economy. The Oscars, given out by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, are annually Hollywood s glitziest night. Putting the show in jeopardy, however, was this week s announcement by SAG that strike authorization ballots will be mailed to its 120,000 members on January 2 and tallied on January 23, a full month before the Oscars. That sequence of events raises the prospect of A-list stars boycotting the honors to avoid crossing their own union s picket lines - or even carrying picket signs themselves. The same dynamic came into play last January when a work stoppage by 10,500 Writers Guild of America members threw the awards season into disarray and caused the star-filled Golden Globe Awards to be replaced by a news conference. Only 5.8m TV viewers tuned-in, far below the Globes' typical 20m audience. Broadcaster NBC lost an estimated $10m to $15m in advertising revenue.
[scifinoir2] [Roundup] 'Star Wars' on stage, 'Twilight' and 'Near Dark' all in Everyday Hero h
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocomplex/2008/12/near-dark.html 'Star Wars' on stage, 'Twilight' and 'Near Dark' all in Everyday Hero headlines Dec 14 2008 Welcome to a chilly weekend edition of Everyday Hero, your roundup of handpicked headlines from around the fanboy universe... Star Wars, conducted: What possible new frontier could be left for George Lucas and his three-decade-old space fantasy epic? Well, going loud and live with orchestral power might do the trick. Jack Malvern has the story in the U.K.: Lucasfilm has authorised 'Star Wars: A Musical Journey,' a retelling of the story that will combine excerpts of the film with live orchestral accompaniment. Diehard fans may dream of Jedi Knights serenading Jabba the Hutt and C-3PO singing 'Dont cry for me, R2-D2' but they are likely to be disappointed. Producers for the show, which will have its world premiere in Britain, emphasised that although actors would be used to narrate the story, it would not be a stage musical. The production, which condenses more than 13 hours of film into 90 minutes, will be more like a classical music concert performed in front of a cinema screen, 27m (90ft) wide. The audience at the 17,000-seat O2 Arena in southeast London will watch key scenes from the film as 86 musicians from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra play extracts from John Williamss score. The composer has reworked the music for the show, which will take place on April 10. Other shows may follow, depending on demand. Another Planet, the company that is producing the show, said that the biggest challenge faced by Lucasfilm was condensing the footage so that the story remained intelligible. Spencer Churchill, a producer, said that the running order of the scenes was still being finalised. 'Weve worked out most of it,' he said. 'We originally thought it would be a chronological telling of the six films . . . but it is not as precise as that.' He declined to say which scenes had been cut, but insisted that most fans favourite moments had been preserved. 'Because there is so much to choose from there will be Star Wars fans out there who will say, How come that wasnt in there? But overall I think Lucasfilm has done a brilliant job.' [Times of London]...ALSO: I did a story on the show's producer, Another Planet, back in 2003 when the San Francisco company launched as a maverick force in the concert industry. You can read that story here. Not the droids you're looking for: Ah, what's better than debating a photo gallery best of list? The staff over at Entertainment Weekly have handed us a doozy with the gallery called The Sci-Fi 25: The Genre's Best Since 1982 which is a combo list of television shows and films. Given the parameters, the EW list is for the most part quite good, and has some nice inclusions such as Brazil and V, the great 1983 NBC mini-series. My knee-jerk top four -- 1. Blade Runner, 2. the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, 3. The X-Files, and 4. The Matrix -- ended up being their top four as well (albeit in a completely different order) so it's hard to complain about that. But I think they put Star Trek: The Next Generation too low at No. 8; the show has been gone for a while now but let's not forget how truly great (and game-changing) that series was at its peak. I am also a big fan of Children of Men, and it would be much higher than No. 14 on my list. I also seem to be the only person in the world who finds no charm left in Back to the Future, which would not make my Top 30 much less than land at No. 12, as it did on the EW list. Some of the other EW choices are just silly or, more likely, purposely provocative. I mean, Futurama, Starship Troopers and Star Wars: The Clone Wars (the 2003-05 series) all make it in a Top 25 that has no room for Twelve Monkeys, War of the Worlds, A Scanner Darkly, Independence Day, Jurassic Park, The Fifth Element, Predator, Men in Black, RoboCop, Return of the Jedi, Artificial Intelligence: A.I. or Minority Report? Come on, seriously? Wow. If Futurama and Clone Wars were included to give representation to animation, why not go instead with the landmark films WALL-E, The Iron Giant or Akira? Looking at the list, I'd also argue that it's artificially heavy on television entries (11 in total). Does Heroes, which was not that great for that long, really doesn't deserve its spot on the EW list ahead of those films I mentioned above? Ok, I'm ready: Tell me how wrong I am and how right you are. That is, after all, half the fun of making these lists, right? Next Twilight director named: One of our Hero Complex contributors, Patrick Kevin Day, has an update on the Twilight franchise. It's official: Chris Weitz is taking over the director's chair for the 'Twilight' sequel 'New Moon.' 'Twilight' author Stephenie Meyer confirmed the news on her official website Saturday morning in a post designed to calm the rising anguish among fans who loved the first film adaptation. After bidding a fond farewell to
[scifinoir2] [FirstPerson] When the Lich king calls
http://thechronicleherald.ca/ArtsLife/1095668.html When the Lich king calls After 18 months without Warcraft, new expansion lures gamer back By SETH SCHIESEL The New York Times Sat. Dec 13 In March 2007, I stopped playing World of Warcraft. At the time I had recorded 3,265 hours of playing time on my main character, a powerful warlock who binds demons to his will and corrupts his enemies with eldritch decay. For more than two years I had played the game as if it were one of the most important things in my life. Four or five nights a week, promptly at 8, I and a few dozen companions around the country would sit at our computers for a highly disciplined session of virtual dungeon raiding that would usually end around 1 a.m. It worked because my girlfriend during much of that time was an investment banker. She rarely left the office before midnight and preferred I spend my evenings slaying dragons rather than running around New York City without her. Call it codependent gaming. We broke up, but I stuck with WOW through its first expansion, The Burning Crusade, released in January 2007. I slept twice in four and a half days as I raced to be the first player on my server to hit the new power plateau: Level 70. Then I burned out. One random Thursday I realized I had become hooked on the impossible notion of beating the game, of not only seeing everything in the game but also seeing it before anyone else. More important, I realized it was interfering with the rest of my life. I quit my guild on the spot, logged off and never went back. Until three weeks ago. I had never experienced deep emotional trepidation in relation to a video game until I reinstalled World of Warcraft on my computer just hours before its latest expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, went live for the games more than 11 million players (up from around 8 million when I began my hiatus). I knew Wrath would be immense in scope, accessible and stylized in its art direction, rich in its lore and head-shakingly careful in its overall design. I knew that World of Warcraft had propelled Blizzard Entertainment, the games developer and publisher, to a level of staffing, craftsmanship and wealth unmatched by any other maker of massively multiplayer online games (known as MMOs). Over the last dozen years Blizzard has released not a single clunker. Across the Diablo, StarCraft and Warcraft franchises it has had an almost unnervingly consistent run of one global blockbuster after another. (It was no surprise that Wrath set a record for PC games with 2.8 million copies sold in its first 24 hours.) So I knew there was about as much chance of Blizzards dropping the ball with the latest expansion for its flagship product as there was of Plaxico Burress catching a touchdown for the Giants. And I am happy to have been right. With Wrath, World of Warcraft remains the consummate online game and in some ways the pinnacle of what video games are supposed to be about: melding lush production values with a profound appreciation for what people find fun, bringing people together cooperatively and appealing to both families and hardcore players. Instead of worries about the game itself, my trepidation stemmed from selfish and at times contradictory concerns. Would I get sucked in again? Would I want to get sucked in? Would I resent the loss of my old status as a top player? And most important, would I still know anyone? I am happy to have been wrong to be concerned. It has taken me about 110 hours to progress from Level 70 to Level 80, but at least I spread it out over three weeks this time. I actually enjoyed my anonymity as I moved across the new continent of Northrend, travelling from the Howling Fjord to the Grizzly Hills, the verdant Sholazar Basin and the peaks of Icecrown. As other players crowed about being the first on my server to reach various achievements, I discovered a new humility as just another journeyman adventurer. And most heartwarming, I have felt a bit like one of the Blues Brothers as my online teammates have started putting the band back together. Logging on that night just before Wrath went live, I was stunned to find that at least a dozen of my old friends had started a new version of our guild. Fifteen minutes after logging in for the first time in more than 18 months, there I was back in our guilds chat channel catching up with names and voices that I had once spent most weeknights with. From person after person I heard stories like mine, of players who had taken extended breaks from WOW only to come back for Wrath of the Lich King. How long will they stay this time? How long will I? One complication is that I have another online gaming family to worry about now, in Eve Online, the science-fiction MMO Ive been playing in my absence from World of Warcraft. Then again, Eve is a very serious, complicated game, while WOW seems to have grown easier over the years. Even the best players used to spend weeks or months figuring out
[scifinoir2] Seth Green and the Mystery of Boba Fett
http://www.dose.ca/tv/story.html?id=07253d69-32c3-41fa-b12b-707c909f4886 Seth Green and the Mystery of Boba Fett Kat Angus Published: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 The mythology of Boba Fett is more significant than the reality, Seth Green insists. The perception of him, his cultural significance, is more than his actual film role. Green has been carrying on for several minutes, passionately trying to explain the enduring popularity of the mysterious Star Wars bounty hunter. Despite appearing in less than ten minutes of the original trilogy and suffering a humiliating end inside a Sarlacc pit, Boba Fett remains one of the most revered Star Wars characters. Green explains that he was in awe of Boba Fett before The Empire Strikes Back was even released in 1980, when he and every boy he knew were tempted with a mail-away Boba Fett toy that came with his own rocket launcher. Six weeks later, everybody got a four-by-two inch white box in the mail and when we opened it up, inside was this brand-new Star Wars character. Inside also was a note that said, 'Hey, sorry, I know you thought you were going to get the spring-loaded rocket launcher, but due to safety standards, it has been deemed too hazardous for children in your age group,' Green remembers. What we determined, with wide-eyed wonder, was that this toy, this character, was too dangerous for us to play with. Too bad-ass, man! The Robot Chicken creator's love of the Boba Fett legend comes across even more in his show's second Star Wars special. The first special affectionately mocked the Star Wars franchise through stop-motion animation and was such a hit with fans and George Lucas himself (who even contributed his voice to the special) that U.S. network Adult Swim quickly commissioned a second installment. Much of Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode II (airing Dec. 12 on Teletoon) serves as Green's wish fulfillment for Boba Fett. In one sketch, the bounty hunter successfully attacks the Ewok village with two lightsabers and his rocket launcher; in another, he is indeed swallowed by the Sarlacc beast but then pretends he went out in a blaze of glory. Here's my thing: When Return of the Jedi came out and Boba Fett fired off his rocket for the first time, it doesn't work right, first of all, which was heartbreaking to every little boy who had been waiting ten years for him to fire that f*cking rocket, Green explains. And then he misfires it, gets bumped by a sight-impaired Han Solo and then falls, screaming like a woman, into the Sarlacc pit. And when that happened, every single boy was like, 'What the hell?!' And all I can think is: Boba Fett must have been feeling the exact same way. Nobody was cooler than Boba Fett and he was about to kill the Christ figure of the Jedi. He was about to kill his greatest enemy - and instead, in one fell swoop, when he was supposed to be the coolest ever, he got tripped into a hole that promises a thousand years of digestion. And that must have really sucked. Really sucked. But as a self-described nerd who embraces all things geeky, the 34-year-old expresses nothing but deep admiration for George Lucas, even as he pokes fun at certain Star Wars elements. George Lucas, at the end of the day, is a storyteller. He's a director; he's a nerd who likes sci-fi and history. I can relate. I can relate to that, Green says. He is successful in a superior way to the average person who pursues the same path. For that, I absolutely respect him. I think he is a pioneer and a really, really fun dude. Green also credits Lucas with having an open mind and a good sense of humour about Star Wars. The director even gave his seal of approval to a sketch that some Robot Chicken writers thought was too risky: parodying the scene in Revenge of the Sith in which Anakin Skywalker kills a room of Jedi younglings, the Robot Chicken special depicts Anakin imagining his happy place and pretending he is simply wielding his lightsaber in a field of sunflowers. The case that I made was that, you know, this is actually something that happened in Star Wars. Anakin Skywalker, on his path to become Darth Vader, murders all of the younglings, says Green. And I said, 'I know this is a moment that everybody doesn't want to acknowledge because it's so dark; let me make a joke about it and I think we'll all be cool.' And nobody wanted to say yes, so it ultimately had to go to George and then he watched it and said it was funny. And that's why I love him. But despite Green's reverence for Lucas and all things Star Wars, he can't stop trying to justify his love of Boba Fett. There is far more to the character than what the Star Wars films showed, he stresses again, and that is what an entire generation of men find so appealing. It is the mythology of the guy who was bad-ass enough to capture the most bad-ass guy in the Star Wars universe, who is Han Solo, he says. Han Solo is the coolest guy in Star Wars; Boba Fett caught him, trapped him in ice. So he
[scifinoir2] Because people got lost in Lost
http://blog.macleans.ca/2008/12/01/because-people-got-lost-in-lost/ Because people got lost in Lost Serialized shows are being phased out in favour of old-fashioned stand-alone episodes Things change so quickly. It was just a little over a year ago that critics and audiences were wild about shows like 24 and Heroes, where the stories were serialized over a full season, and episodes had no clear beginning, middle or end. Tim Kring, the creator of Heroes, gave an interview in which he exulted in the success of the shows complicated format and praised the network for embracing the very type of storytelling that was off limits less than two years ago. Now its in danger of being off limits again, as new shows feel the pressure to switch back to traditional self-contained stories. When Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles premiered earlier this year, it featured a long, elaborate story arc about the title character trying to uncover a conspiracy. This season, each episode focuses on a stand-alone adventure for the characters. Series creator Josh Friedman told the Television Critics Association that the shows producers are going where the ratings are: In the middle of the season when the ratings dipped, we were doing some heavily serialized mythology episodes. This year, were trying to tell slightly less ambitious stories. Serialization is last years thing; today, a show needs a story that gets wrapped up every week. You can tell that serialization is in trouble if you look at the ratings. Serialized shows like Greys Anatomy and Heroes are down, Prison Break is on the verge of cancellation, and the only shows that are doing better are the ones that tell self-contained stories, like comedies and mysteries (such as CBSs new hit procedural The Mentalist). Even the producers who helped create the serial fad in the first place are being encouraged to tone down their penchant for never-ending stories. With Lost, producer J.J. Abrams went further with serialization than anyone had gone before, creating plots that lasted not just for a season but an entire series; he expected the audience not only to know what happened last week, but to accept that nothing would be resolved in the current week. But while Fringe, Abramss new show, has an overarching mystery like Lost, every episode has a self-contained story about a monster of the week. Joss Whedons Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel were shows that became famous for featuring more complicated story arcs and fewer stand-alone adventures with every season. In 2009 hell return to TV with Dollhouse, but he wrote on his fan site whedonesque.com that the network asked him to make the episodes more stand-alone, stop talking about relationships and cut to the chase. The biggest problem networks have with serialized shows is that theyre closed shops: if you didnt start watching at the beginning of the season, its difficult to understand whats going on. Abrams explained to USA Today that Fringe is a reaction to complaints about his other shows: So many people would say to me, I was watching Lost or Alias, but I missed a couple of episodes and I couldnt keep up and get back into it. And unlike daytime soaps, these shows dont even have hotlines to bring you up to speed. Rob Thomas, creator of Veronica Mars - a show famous for its labyrinthine season-long mysteries - told Denis McGrath of heywriterboy.blogspot.com that network market research had demonstrated that the average viewer of any show will watch one out of four episodes, making it difficult for serials, where you have to watch every episode to know whats going on. Hes learned his lesson: on his new show, a remake of his 90s cult flop Cupid, every episode has the title character bringing together a different couple. Shows like these can still have subplots that run throughout the season; Cupid has a continuing storyline about the sexual tension between the main characters. But because every episode tells a complete story, new viewers arent lost; no matter when you find House, youll know that its about a misanthropic doctor who solves medical mysteries, and a mystery will be solved by the time the hour is up. And yet by appealing more to casual viewers who dont want to watch every episode, networks may risk losing some of the viewers who actually want to get hooked on a show. The shows that make the strongest impact are often the ones that build stories week by week. Shows as different as 24, The Sopranos and Buffy became cultural touchstones in part because they kept audiences arguing about where the story arcs would go. Networks may find that you cant create that level of involvement if viewers can afford to miss three out of four episodes.
Re: [scifinoir2] Blomicon
Very funny. :-) Shame I missed the bit. Brent ravenadal ravena...@yahoo.com writes: David Alan Grier's CHOCOLATE NEWS on Comedy Central recently did a funny take on both black comic geeks and black comic book creators. BLOMICON - 3 days, 6 booths and over 76 attendees witnessed the unveiling of the newest black superheros: Horsefly (Not Housefly! Houseflys eat sh*t, Horseflys eat NECTAR) Dee Jay (given powers at a block party by a fallen power line) Meltdown (cleaning guy caught in Nuclear Plant meltdown) Slavefish (I was on a slave ship and rather than be sold into bondage I chose to take my own life. Shortly after diving overboard, an asteroid hit the ocean giving me superpowers. Needless to say, No book deals, movie deals or comic deals were signed. ~rave!
Re: [scifinoir2] Blomicon on YouTube (for those of you who missed it)
ravenadal ravena...@yahoo.com writes: --- In [ mailto:scifinoir2%40yahoogroups.com ]scifino...@yahoogroups.com, brent wodehouse brent_wodeho...@... wrote: Very funny. :-) Shame I missed the bit. Brent You are in luck! Somebody posted it on YouTube! [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WCG3HTnINM ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WCG3HTnINM ~rave! Thank you very much! Brent
[scifinoir2] The mouse hits 40-year milestone
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7768481.stm The mouse hits 40-year milestone By Mark Ward Technology correspondent, BBC News The humble computer mouse celebrates its 40th anniversary today. On 9 December 1968 hi-tech visionary Douglas Engelbart first used one to demonstrate novel ways of working with computers. The first mouse that Dr Engelbart used in the demo at the Fall Joint Computer Conference (FJCC) was made of wood and had one button. Much of the technology shown off in the demo inspired the creation of the hardware and software now widely used. It was a good show, but it was all real, said Dr Jeff Rulifson, now director of Sun's VLSI research group but in 1968 architect and lead programmer for the software shown off at the FJCC. Pioneering work A day of celebration is planned in California to mark the 40th anniversary; with many of the researchers behind the original demo reunited to mark the event. The mouse, which was built by Bill English, helped Dr Engelbart demonstrate how text files could be clipped, copied and pasted as well as showing ways of using computer networks to collaborate on projects or co-edit documents. Dr Rulifson joined the group that Dr Engelbart assembled at the Stanford Research Institute in California after meeting the charismatic engineer while attending the FJCC in 1965. I met Doug and got thoroughly enchanted, Dr Rulifson told the BBC. I really understood what he was after. I was blown away by the ideas. Dr Engelbart wanted computers to act as helpers that augmented human intelligence and enabled people to operate far more efficiently and productively than they would without such tools. The 1968 demonstration showed off the computer system, called NLS, developed to put these ideas into practical form. Most of this, said Dr Rulifson, had to be invented by the team at SRI. There were bits and pieces all around, he said. There was no completely unique set of ideas but we pulled it all together. Although the mouse was central to what NLS could do, said Dr Rulifson, there was more to what Dr Engelbart wanted to achieve. I think people get fixated on the mouse, he said. It's a symbol they can hang on to but the idea behind it was this idea of putting text into NLS and giving it an entirely new flexibility. We had full text editing and hyperlinks - the mass of what we use today, said Dr Rulifson. In the 1968 demo Dr Rulifson was at the SRI Lab and appeared on screen in Brooks Hall auditorium while helping Dr Engelbart to show how co-workers could use NLS to collaborate. The demo was so far ahead of other uses of computers at the time and the technology on show was so powerfully convincing that one attendee later likened Dr Engelbart's efforts to dealing lightning with both hands. Command set Not only did NLS impress the audience at the FJCC, but it also became the first program scheduled to be used across the fledgling Arpanet that was just being built. NLS is mentioned in the first RFC - the technical documents that describe the workings of what we know today as the internet. In 1969 SRI, along with UCLA, was one of the two ends of the first link in the network that became Arpanet - and ultimately the internet. Sadly, said Dr Rulifson, NLS did not win enough people over to become the essential tool that Dr Engelbart envisioned. I think what happened was that Doug was very focused on extremely powerful systems for extremely highly-trained people, he said. NLS had 500 single key commands. Learning how to use NLS was a formidable task that few took on - despite its potential. Many of the people that worked with Dr Engelbart at SRI went on to Xerox Parc - another legendary lab in California where many contributed directly to the technologies that led to the personal computer revolution and the world wide web. Only now is Doug Engelbart's vision starting to be realised, said Dr Rulifson, and the world has yet to catch up with the ideas first aired in 1968. Half the vision has come along, said Dr Rulifson. We could see the day when these things would be small enough to carry about. But, he added, Doug was very frustrated with the stuff that grew up around the PC, because it's too static and paper-like.
[scifinoir2] Fought Over Any Good Books Lately?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/fashion/07clubs.html?_r=1partner=MOREOVERFEATURESei=5040 Fought Over Any Good Books Lately? By JOANNE KAUFMAN Published: December 5, 2008 JOCELYN BOWIE was thrilled by the invitation to join a book group. She had just returned to her hometown, Bloomington, Ind., to take an administration job at Indiana University, and thought she had won a ticket to a top echelon. I was hoping to network with all these women in upper-level jobs at I.U., then I found they were in the book group, she said. I thought, Great! Theyll see how wonderful I am, and well have these great conversations about books. Ms. Bowie cannot pinpoint the precise moment when disillusion replaced delight. Maybe it was the evening she tried to persuade everyone to look beyond Oprah Winfreys picks, and they all said Whats wrong with Oprah? she said. Or perhaps it was the meeting when she lobbied for literary classics like Emma and the rest of the group was abuzz about The Secret Life of Bees, a pop-lit best seller. The last straw came when the group picked The Da Vinci Code and someone suggested the discussion would be enriched by delving into the authors source material. It was bad enough that they wanted to read Da Vinci Code in the first place, Ms. Bowie said, but then they wanted to talk about it. She quit shortly after, making up a polite excuse: I told the organizer, Youre reading fiction, and Im reading history right now. Yes, its a nice, high-minded idea to join a book group, a way to make friends and read books that might otherwise sit untouched. But what happens when you wind up hating all the literary selections - or the other members? Breaking up isnt so hard to do when it means freedom from inane critical commentary, political maneuvering, hurt feelings, bad chick lit and even worse chardonnay. Who knew a book group could be such a soap opera? said Barb Burg, senior vice president at Bantam Dell, which publishes many titles adopted by book groups. Youd think it would just be about the book. But wherever I go, people want to talk to me about the infighting and the politics. One member may push for John Updike, while everyone else is set on John Grisham. One person wants to have a glass of wine and talk about the book, while everyone else wants to get drunk and talk about their spouses. There are all these power struggles about what book gets chosen, Ms. Burg said. Then come the complaints: Its too long, its too short, its not literary enough, its too literary ... The literary societies of the 19th century seemed content to leave the drama to authors and poets, whom they discussed with great seriousness of purpose. Some book groups evolved from sewing circles, which gave women a chance to exercise their intellect and have a social gathering, said Rachel W. Jacobsohn, author of The Reading Group Handbook, which gives a history of the format plus dos and donts for modern hosts. Today there are perhaps four million to five million book groups in the United States, and the number is thought to be rising, said Ann Kent, the founder of Book Group Expo, an annual gathering of readers and authors. I firmly believe there was an uptick in the number of book groups after 9/11, and Im expecting another increase in these difficult economic times, she said. Were looking to stay connected and to have a form of entertainment thats affordable, and book groups are an easy avenue for that. Most groups are all-female, but there are plenty of all-male and coed ones. Lately there have emerged plenty of online-only book groups too, though - given the difficulty of flinging a drink in the face of a member who suggests reading Trollope - those are clearly a different animal. And more clubs means more acrimony. Sometimes there is a rambler in the group, whose opinion far outlasts the natural interest of others, or a pedant, who never met a literary reference she did not yearn to sling. The most common cause of dissatisfaction and departures? Its because theres an ayatollah, said Esther Bushell, a professional book-group facilitator who leads a dozen suburban New York groups and charges $250 to $300 a member annually for her services. This person expects to choose all the books and to take over all the discussions. And when I come on board, the ayatollah is threatened and doesnt say anything. Like other facilitators, she is hired for the express purpose of bringing long-winded types in line. For Doreen Orion, a psychiatrist in Boulder, Colo., the spoiler in her book group was a drama queen who turned every meeting into her own personal therapy session. Dr. Orion was used to such people in her practice, but in her personal life - well, no thanks. There were always things going on in her life with relationships, and shed want to talk about it, she said. Thered be some weird thing in a book and shed relate it to her life no matter what.
[scifinoir2] [Review] Book Review: Animation Unleashed: 100 Principles Every Animator, Comic B
http://mag.awn.com/index.php?article_no=3847 Book Review: Animation Unleashed: 100 Principles Every Animator, Comic Book Writer, Filmmaker, Video Artist and Game Developer Should Know David B. Levy discovers how Ellen Besen's Animation Unleashed harnesses the essence of the craft with something to say. December 05, 2008 By David B. Levy Some people are just natural list-makers. It might be safe to assume that one of those people is Ellen Besen, the author of Animation Unleashed: 100 Principles Every Animator, Comic Book Writer, Filmmaker, Video Artist and Game Developer Should Know. Like the title, the book that follows is exhaustive -- but in a good way! The skeptic might ask, what good are a list of principles without the proper understanding of how (and in what circumstances) to apply them? Luckily for us, Besen had a larger purpose beyond explaining the essence of how animation functions. In the book's introduction, she writes, ... harnessing this essence was the key to making animation which didn't just move but had something to say. With that one sentence, I was converted to Besen's cause. This scholarly book not only intended to list every element that might make up an animated project, it also set out to further the reader's understanding of how this information is applied in active form. Besen, who is a former faculty member at Sheridan College's School of Animation (1987-2002) as well as an award-winning director of films for the National Film Board of Canada, begins with a chapter entitled General Principles and the heading, We Can't Use What We Don't Understand. She writes, ... Animation has an especially vivid ability to make analogy literal. She backs it up with the example of how, in the medium of animation, a man who feels like a puppet on a string, can actually be a puppet. What might appear to the reader as common sense, becomes another link in the chain of what sets animation apart from other forms of motion pictures. Throughout the book, Bryce Hallett's humorous illustrations punctuate the author's text, adding further understanding to each concept. Additionally, Besen proudly lays her own research on the table by providing sources where the reader will find an example in active form. These examples run the gamut from classic animation to TV series, as well as from recent indie films by the likes of Bill Plympton, Chris Landreth and a whole host of NFB works. Besen's examples take on a whole new meaning when read by someone as familiar with animation as she, allowing the reader to mentally catalogue other examples that might reinforce a particular principle. For instance, reading a section on Breaking Out of the Boundaries of Realistic Performance, (from Chapter 6,) triggered my memory of Konstantin Bronzit's indie film Switchcraft (1994), where a character's walk across the frame is aided by the character dematerializing in mid-step, only to re-materialize at its final destination, which is a few steps away. The director's device is a fine example of how each animated project can utilize the unique properties of this medium. In live action, a similar effect would have us believing the character is a ghost or, at least, on hallucinogenic drugs. As a teacher, and a sometimes-thesis advisor, I found myself wishing that every animation school based a foundation year class upon the teachings collected in this book. All too often, students dive into their animations hoping to ape a particular style or genre of animation. In their rush to animate, they make hasty choices (if they make any at all) on key foundation areas such as writing, design, and color. The smart students will seek out Animation Unleashed, devour it on their own time, and begin to apply what they newly understand. From the perspective of an industry professional reading this book, I gained additional insight on this medium that can only come from reabsorbing all this information neatly arranged in one place. I was reminded that animation is a series of informed choices and that none of them should be taken for granted. Besen concludes with the hope that her book will help readers reach their own creative aspirations, which may ultimately lead to better animation in the world. With this book, Besen has done her part. The reader is left with the obligation to take this information and create animation that not only moves, but has something to say. Animation Unleashed: 100 Principles Every Animatior, Comic Book Writer, Filmmaker, Video Artists and Game Developer Should Know by Ellen Besen, illustrated by Bryce Hallett. Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions, 2008. 245 pages. ISBN-13: 978-1-932907-49-0. ($26.95). - David B. Levy is the author of the successful book, Your Career in Animation: How to Survive and Thrive, (Allworth Press, 2006), which was the first career guide for animation artists working in North
[scifinoir2] An Injection of Hard Science Boosts TV Shows' Prognosis
http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/12/science-fact-fa.html An Injection of Hard Science Boosts TV Shows' Prognosis By Hugh Hart December 05, 2008 Emmy winner Bryan Cranston and three-time nominee Hugh Laurie bring unquestioned acting chops to their roles as quirky men of science in Breaking Bad and House. So do Emmy-nominated Michael Hall, who plays a police blood-splatter expert (and serial killer) on Dexter; ditto for CSI's rubber-gloved forensics geek Bill Petersen and for Simon Baker, who portrays a quack-debunking champion of observable fact in this fall's most popular new TV series, The Mentalist. But these prime-time A-listers might be neither rich nor famous were it not for the role played by nasal granuloma, Heller's Syndrome, the Riemann hypothesis, directional analysis and scores of other esoteric methods drawn from the annals of weird science. It's no fiction: Scientific fact has usurped science fiction as TV's favorite inspiration for prime-time story lines. And to keep everything on the up and up, show writers and producers are hiring scores of researchers and technical consultants to get the science straight. We try to make sure that all the science is real, that it's researched and that everything in the show could actually happen, says Cyrus Voris, an executive producer for CBS' crime-fighting biophysicist drama Eleventh Hour (pictured, right). In some ways, it's much easier to make shit up. When you have to make it real, you're holding yourself to a much higher standard. Why is real science so hot on prime time? Some of the credit goes to the late Michael Crichton. Ever since he introduced clinically correct doctor-speak to the airwaves with medical drama ER, story lines on science-heavy television shows have been bumping up references to astrophysics, neurobiology, quantum mechanics and other topics ripped from the headlines of obscure scholarly publications. The geek-friendly ER, which wraps its 15-year run in May, launched a spawn of pop culture/propellerhead crossovers that engage TV viewers' brainwaves even as they're being entertained by age-old soap-opera machinations. For an increasingly tech-savvy generation of couch potatoes, factually flimsy plot details simply don't pass muster. To make sure their shows ring true to prime-time couch potatoes, TV producers routinely hire scientists to vet scripts for accuracy. Princeton University professor of particle physics Andrew Bazarko reviews Eleventh Hour subject matter ranging from autism and cloning to the hallucinogenic effects that can result from licking the skin of a certain type of toad. And the show's considerable science chops don't stop there: Writer-producer Andre Bormanis conducted NASA-funded research in physics and astronomy, then earned a master's degree in space policy at George Washington University before getting into show biz as a science consultant for Star Trek: The Next Generation. In researching his upcoming cryonics-themed episode of Eleventh Hour about deep-freezing dead people, Bormanis got on the phone with a pro. I spoke to a chemist at Los Alamos in some detail about endothermic reactions, he says. There's a little bit of a stretch involved in what you see on screen but I wanted to make sure the explanations were credible. I hope people who are familiar with chemistry and cryonics as a science will see this episode and say, 'Yeah I believe somebody could come up with that sort of a thing.' Similarly, Lie To Me, an upcoming Fox series about so-called deception experts, gets its reality check from behavioral scientist Paul Ekman, who has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology. And Fox medical drama House employs Harvard-trained doctor-turned-writer David Foster to come up with stories that pit a contentious crew of medicos against a weekly barrage of bizarre medical afflictions. House is all about the evidence and the logical piecing together of the puzzle to see what it adds up to, Foster explains. That's the scientific method. Crime Time Crime dramas, a TV staple since Dragnet jumped from radio to the small screen, have also flourished due to an injection of hard science. In 2000, former Las Vegas carhop Anthony Zuiker created a show that thrust lab techs and their microscopes into the foreground. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation captivated viewers who'd become fascinated with DNA evidence during the O.J. Simpson trial, and a slew of forensic-themed shows soon followed, including Miami- and New York-based CSI spinoffs, plus Cold Case, Cold Case Files, Body of Evidence, Forensic Files, Forensic Investigators, Cracking the Case, The New Detectives, The FBI Files and Autopsy. Showtime's killer serial-killer show Dexter often delves into the tales told by squirts and sprays of blood left behind at crime scenes. CBS' Numb3rs, which revolves around crime-solving math genius Charlie Eppes (played by David Krumholtz), goes straight to the academic well to keep the science credible: Co-executive
[scifinoir2] Rowling's latest: reduced from £1.95m to £6.99
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/rowlings-latest-reduced-from-163195m-to-163699-1050587.html Rowling's latest: reduced from £1.95m to £6.99 A new work previously available only at auction goes on sale in the shops today Thursday, 4 December 2008 Last time a copy of J K Rowling's Harry Potter spin-off, The Tales of Beedle the Bard, was sold publicly, it went for £1.95m at a Sotheby's auction. As one of only seven handwritten copies and the only one available for purchase, it became the most expensive modern literary manuscript ever sold. But from today, Harry Potter fans will be able to get their hands on a copy for the slightly less eye-watering price of £6.99. Shops opened their doors at midnight last night to allow fans to purchase the supposed final instalment of the Harry Potter franchise. Unlike the previous seven books, The Tales of Beedle the Bard does not follow the adventures of Harry and his friends Hermione and Ron. Instead it is a collection of fairy tales bequeathed to Hermione in the final book which helped the trio defeat Lord Voldemort. A charity Rowling co-founded will receive the proceeds from sales after distribution costs have been recouped. The collection has been given a comparatively low-key launch compared to other Harry Potter releases, but it is still expected to be an international best-seller with a global print run of 7.5 million copies. The Royal National Institute for Blind People is also making Braille and audio copies. Rowling will attend a small book launch this afternoon in Edinburgh, where she lives, and will read extracts to children. She wrote the collection shortly after completing her last Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and described it as a way of saying goodbye to the series that made her the world's richest living author. One of the five tales, The Tale of the Three Brothers, was recounted in full inside the Deathly Hallows but fans have not seen the others before. Rowling never intended to release the book but decided to do so after fans voiced their disappointment that they would never get to read it. After finishing the Deathly Hallows, she handwrote seven copies of Beedle the Bard, which were bound in leather and encrusted with jewels. She gave six to friends who had helped her realise the Harry Potter phenomenon and the seventh to her charity, the Children's High Level Group which helps institutionalised children in eastern Europe. Auctioneers hoped that copy would fetch £50,000 but the retailer Amazon.com bought it for £1.95m. On the inside sleeve of the auctioned copy, Rowling wrote: The Tales of Beedle the Bard is really a distillation of the themes found in the Harry Potter books, and writing it has been the most wonderful way to say goodbye to a world I loved and lived for 17 years. Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book in the 1990s. She struggled to find a publisher but Bloomsbury finally agreed to release it, and it became Bloomsbury's most successful series, selling 400 million copies worldwide.
[scifinoir2] [Update] Warning system could protect Europe's giant atom-smasher
http://www.physorg.com/news147702251.html Warning system could protect Europe's giant atom-smasher Europe's giant atom-smasher, which broke down only days after being switched on with great fanfare, may restart in July or August with a new warning system to try to prevent future mishaps, its operators said Friday. Scientists have been poring over the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a multi-billion dollar machine designed to shed light on the origins of the universe, to better monitor its operations and avert future malfunctions, said a spokesman for the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN). The LHC took nearly 20 years to complete and cost 6 billion Swiss francs (3.9 billion euros, 4.9 billion dollars) to build in a tunnel complex under the Franco-Swiss border. It was switched on amid much excitement on September 10, but was shut down again on September 19 after a large helium leak. We didn't think it was possible to monitor this sort of thing happening, said CERN spokesman James Gillies. However, since the accident scientists have been looking again at the data the LHC had been providing, and have determined that it is in fact possible to measure the temperature of the helium cooling mechanism, he said. Even very small rises in temperature can be recorded which could give operators advance warning of a looming breakdown, he said. Under the current schedule, a total of 53 magnet units have to be removed for cleaning or repair, with the final one being reinstalled by the end of March 2009. This would mean the LHC being cold and ready for powering tests by the end of June, and possibly back up and running by July or August, Gillies said. © 2008 AFP
Re: [scifinoir2] Recommend Your Vampire Favorites
The short story 'Straight to Hell' by Paul McCauley ranks right up there. Hippie chic and stark horror in roughly equal measure. Brent tdemorsella [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: a few days ago, Bosco brought to our attention, a Vampire flick (Let The Right One In) that many of us likely would have missed. Are their other gems out there? Please post a list of some of your favorite vampire movies and books. Tracey
[scifinoir2] Grand old man of science fiction dies at 92
http://jam.canoe.ca/Books/2008/12/05/7648561-ap.html Grand old man of science fiction dies at 92 By John Rogers, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS LOS ANGELES - Forrest J Ackerman, the sometime actor, literary agent, magazine editor and full-time bon vivant who discovered author Ray Bradbury and was widely credited with coining the term sci-fi, has died. He was 92. Ackerman died Thursday of heart failure at his Los Angeles home, said Kevin Burns, head of Prometheus Entertainment and a trustee of Ackerman's estate. Although only marginally known to readers of mainstream literature, Ackerman was legendary in science-fiction circles as the founding editor of the pulp magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland. He was also the owner of a huge private collection of science-fiction movie and literary memorabilia that for years filled every nook and cranny of a hillside mansion overlooking Los Angeles. He became the Pied Piper, the spiritual leader, of everything science fiction, fantasy and horror, Burns said Friday. Every Saturday morning that he was home, Ackerman would open up the house to anyone who wanted to view his treasures. He sold some pieces and gave others away when he moved to a smaller house in 2002, but he continued to let people visit him every Saturday for as long as his health permitted. My wife used to say, 'How can you let strangers into our home?' But what's the point of having a collection like this if you can't let people enjoy it? an exuberant Ackerman told The Associated Press as he conducted a spirited tour of the mansion on his 85th birthday. His collection once included more than 50,000 books, thousands of science-fiction magazines and such items as Bela Lugosi's cape from the 1931 film Dracula. His greatest achievement, however, was likely discovering Bradbury, author of the literary classics Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles. Ackerman had placed a flyer in a Los Angeles bookstore for a science-fiction club he was founding and a teenage Bradbury showed up. Later, Ackerman gave Bradbury the money to start his own science-fiction magazine, Futuria Fantasia, and paid the author's way to New York for an authors meeting that Bradbury said helped launch his career. I hadn't published yet, and I met a lot of these people who encouraged me and helped me get my career started, and that was all because of Forry Ackerman, the author said in 2005. Later, as a literary agent, Ackerman represented Bradbury, Isaac Asimov and numerous other science-fiction writers. He said the term sci-fi came to him in 1954 when he was listening to a car radio and heard an announcer mention the word hi-fi. My dear wife said, 'Forget it, Forry, it will never catch on,' he recalled. Soon he was using it in Famous Monsters of Filmland, the magazine he helped found in 1958 and edited for 25 years. Ackerman himself appeared in numerous films over the years, usually in bit parts. His credits include Queen of Blood, Dracula vs. Frankenstein, Amazon Women on the Moon, Vampirella, Transylvania Twist, The Howling and the Michael Jackson Thriller video. More recently, he appeared in 2007's The Dead Undead and 2006's The Boneyard Collection. Ackerman returned briefly to Famous Monsters of Filmland in the 1990s, but he quickly fell out with the publisher over creative differences. He sued and was awarded a judgment of more than US$375,000. Forrest James Ackerman was born in Los Angeles on Nov. 24, 1916. He fell in love with science-fiction, he once said, when he was 9 years old and saw a magazine called Amazing Stories. He would hold onto that publication for the rest of his life. Ackerman, who had no children, was preceded in death by his wife, Wendayne.
[scifinoir2] Hollywood remakes sci-fi classics
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-franchise7-2008dec07,0,2684805.story Come visit the future. First stop: The past. By Geoff Boucher December 7, 2008 The future looks very familiar. Science fiction, by its nature, is a celebration of the new, but you wouldn't know that by watching Hollywood's space operas. Star Trek, for instance, is on the way back to theaters next summer in hopes that moviegoers will still want to boldly go where millions and millions have gone before. And it's been more than 30 years since Star Wars made film history, but the Force is still very much with us -- whether we like it or not -- with a seventh film in theaters this past summer, one of the year's bestselling video games and a new weekly animated television show (there's also talk of a live-action series in the next year or two). ¶ And that's just the tip of the meteorite. ¶ The Terminator and Robocop franchises are being revved up now for more mechanical-man mayhem, and classic films such as Forbidden Planet and When Worlds Collide are in the remake pipeline, while the new take on The Day the Earth Stood Still, starring Keanu Reeves, opens Dec. 12. Even Battlestar Galactica, which began as a small-screen Star Wars knockoff in the 1970s, has been revived with spectacular results and will break new ground in 2009 with the TV movie Caprica on Sci Fi, with a series to follow. The question, though, is why does Hollywood keep looking to the past? Science fiction should be about ideas and what it means to be human, it should always be about the new and the challenging, William Shatner said on a recent afternoon as he sipped a Starbucks coffee and watched traffic zoom past his Ventura Boulevard office. So why does Hollywood keep putting its money in the same old Enterprise? 'Star Trek' connected with so many people for so long, and 'Star Wars' is the same way, he said. There's a thrill for fans to see the heroes they know. Shatner won't be one of those heroes in the new Star Trek film -- a sour point for the actor who played Capt. James T. Kirk on television and in seven films and had hoped for a cameo -- but Paramount Pictures is absolutely hoping that the new film, directed by J.J. Abrams (Mission: Impossible III, TV's Alias and Lost) will have the warp power needed for a 21st century Star Trek franchise built around young stars such as Chris Pine (Kirk) and Zachary Quinto (Mr. Spock). Those ambitions go a long way to explaining the Hollywood fixation on tried-and-true properties. It's difficult to find a sci-fi project in recent years that wasn't based on an earlier film or television show, although Minority Report, Signs and Children of Men did buck the trend. Ronald D. Moore, creator of the modern Battlestar Galactica, said that commercial priorities push risk-adverse studios toward properties with established names, but he said it's wrong to presume that artistic ambition is stifled by remaking the familiar. Battlestar is proof of that, certainly. Moore's version premiered as a miniseries in 2003 and took the core concept of the creaky 1970s show -- a ragtag fleet of humans fleeing an implacable foe of their own making, the sentient machines called Cylons -- and added dark layers of complexity with themes of religion, government-sanctioned torture, class struggle, terrorism and bioethics. In the same way that Shakespeare's plays can be revisited again and again in new ways and settings, with things like 'Star Trek' or 'Battlestar Galactica' there is enough of the core mythology there that you can change and adapt all the things around it for something very new and worthwhile, Moore said. New generations can make it their own. Strong new interpretations build on the past, they don't repeat it. He added that Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek marked a point where science fiction in Hollywood reached a different level. There was enough there that it appealed to multiple generations and influenced creators. Some of those creators want to go back and work with these properties they grew up loving. Perhaps, but returning again and again to the same ground leaves new frontiers unexplored. There's also the risk of franchises becoming calcified, campy or too self-referencing. And there is the simple matter of fatigue, and not just with fans. Roddenberry had no idea he was creating a pop-culture behemoth when he pitched television executives the idea of 'Wagon Train' to the stars in 1964, but the colossal impact of Star Trek left the creator feeling stifled as well. I have felt many times trapped by 'Star Trek,' he once said. It cost me dearly. Hollywood's sci-fi trinity Because of intensely networked fans and all those fans-turned-creators, the galactic trio of Star Trek, Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica are now tied into one another more than ever. Battlestar's Moore, a huge Trek fan through the years, said the military life and quest nature of classic Trek helped shape his show, and Moore himself was a key
[scifinoir2] Sci Fi charts its course for the future
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-network7-2008dec07,0,1368411.story TELEVISION Sci Fi charts its course for the future 'Battlestar Galactica' helped lift the cable channel; 'Sanctuary' reflects its openness to new models. By Geoff Boucher December 7, 2008 The end is in sight for Battlestar Galactica and the beleaguered humans of the 12 Twelve Colonies aren't the only ones fretting about their survival -- there are also the executives at Sci Fi, the cable channel that has ridden Galactica as its esteemed flagship, who will now have to carry on without her. The final 10 episodes of Battlestar begin Jan. 19, and though a prequel series called Caprica has been locked in for 2010, that show begins with a new cast, a new story and no guarantees. Dave Howe, the president of the cable station owned by NBC Universal, said there is anxiety about losing the award-winning drama that gave Sci Fi so much of its identity. Believe me, none of us could ever overestimate the success of 'Battlestar' in terms of putting us on the map with not just a critical audience but actually with a new audience, Howe said. I think all of us will be depressed when it's over. On a recent visit to Los Angeles, Howe was plainly proud of the broader success of Sci Fi (formerly called the Sci Fi Channel), which for a considerable part of its 16-year history was known primarily as a fanboy corner of the cable dial with reruns of The Incredible Hulk and Planet of the Apes. Now the channel is in a different stratum. We're at No. 5 for the year, Howe said, and within spitting distance of AE at No. 4, which I think has shocked some people who have assumed that we're so niche and narrow that we don't even register on the Richter scale. The question is how the channel will make the earth move again. Howe pointed to the new series Sanctuary, which premiered Oct. 3 and saw its pilot finish as the night's No. 1 prime-time cable entertainment program among adults 25 to 54, as part of the answer. The fantasy show -- about the mysterious 157-year-old researcher Helen Magnus (Amanda Tapping), who tends to a refuge for magical beasties -- is also a symbol of Sci Fi's eagerness to embrace new models. Sanctuary began as an Internet series of webisodes and is filmed on a virtual set of green-screen technology and CGI effects. The show also uses RED camera, which records straight to a computer hard drive for a nimbler post-production process. Howe and his team are pushing online as well and view the cable channel as just part of the hard-wiring needed to get today's sci-fi and fantasy fans. Sci Fi is now working on a project for a 2010 premiere that Howe calls the Holy Grail: The channel is teaming television writers with video-game designers to create a franchise that is both a television series and a massive multi-player game on the Internet -- more than that, the fans who play the game will actually help shape the show's story arc. And although it has fiction in its name, Sci Fi is making a push into scripted reality shows, such as Estate of Panic, where contestants compete in a haunted house, and the delicately titled Cash or Capture, where men in black hunt players. If anything, Sci Fi seems to be dealing with too many ideas with a staggering number of development deals. That may be a bit of anxious hyperactivity by a channel losing its go-to franchise. Howe clearly hopes there's another Galactica in the stars. To take something that was a cheesy 1970s show and turn it into something like the 'West Wing' of outer space is not something that anybody set out to do, he said. It brought in people who would have never touched us before. Now we have to build on that. That is our challenge. Boucher is a Times staff writer. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[scifinoir2] Keanu Reeves' freaky flights of fancy
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-reeves7-2008dec07,0,849831.story The actor's predilection for taking on otherworldly roles as in The Matrix' series and 'A Scanner Darkly' continues in a remake of a sci-fi classic, The Day the Earth Stood Still. By Dennis Lim December 7, 2008 As a time-traveling high school dude in the Bill and Ted movies, Keanu Reeves blazed a path through the great expanse of Western civilization, with detours to heaven and hell for good measure. In the Matrix trilogy, he was Neo, the One, the hacker turned messiah who uncovers the underlying reality of our reality. More recently, in A Scanner Darkly, Richard Linklater's rotoscoped adaptation of the Philip K. Dick novel, he played a drug-addled narc who slips among identities with the help of a high-tech scramble suit and brain-frying hallucinogens. ¶ Reeves now continues his career-long tour of the otherworldly by assuming one of sci-fi's most iconic roles in the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, opening Friday. The 1951 original stood apart from many of its alien-invasion contemporaries by introducing a friendly alien, Klaatu (Michael Rennie), who arrived bearing a cautionary warning for mankind as it inched toward the precipice of mutually assured destruction. There is a certain logic to the Keanu-as-Klaatu casting (and not just because their names are near homonyms). Reeves is practically a science-fiction canon unto himself -- his other metaphysical dabblings include the cyberpunk noir Johnny Mnemonic, the occult thriller Constantine and even the alt-reality weepie The Lake House. Different as these films are in size and scope, Reeves tends to play subtle variations on the same slightly haunted figure: the seeker of head trips and excellent adventures. It's entirely possible that no other actor working today has spent as much time on screen pondering the meaning of life and death and the universe. Science fiction is a genre I enjoy, Reeves said over breakfast last month in an Upper West Side restaurant not far from the patch of Central Park where Klaatu and his trusty giant robot, Gort, land their luminescent globe-like spacecraft -- a considerable upgrade from the original flying saucer (not to mention the Bill and Ted flying phone booth). I guess I'm drawn to these films because there are usually really fun ideas in there, he added. And I like playing these characters with a weird existential conundrum. In fact it's probably more accurate to think of Reeves, who turned 44 this year, less as a science-fiction avatar than as an existential hero. He's a natural fit for the genre partly because of what one might call his cosmic blankness, a quality much remarked on over the years by his admirers as well as his detractors. Some look at Reeves and see the most inexpressive of thespians; others appreciate the Zen stoicism, the tabula-rasa minimalism. (It's worth noting that, in addition to his gallery of sci-fi questers, he also played the soon-to-be-enlightened Prince Siddhartha in Bernardo Bertolucci's Little Buddha.) Reeves' portrayal of Klaatu the humanoid alien benefits from the air of placelessness that he brings to most of his roles (the new film explains Klaatu's homo sapien guise by having him arrive on Earth encased in a layer of placenta -- the birth scenes echo those from The Matrix, with their womb-like pods). Reeves is too physically striking, even in middle age, to pass for an everyman, but he has an unusually vague aura for a Hollywood star -- mysteriously cosmopolitan both in lineage and upbringing (half English, half Chinese-Hawaiian; born in Beirut and raised in Australia and Canada) and scrupulous about keeping his private life off-limits. A fan of the original The Day the Earth Stood Still, which he had seen a few times as a teenager, Reeves said he wasn't sold on the idea of an update when Twentieth Century Fox co-chairman Tom Rothman first approached him. I'm not a big remake guy so the question was, 'Why?' he said. His interest perked up after discussions with director Scott Derrickson (best known for the 2005 breakout horror film The Exorcism of Emily Rose). Scott had a why, Reeves said. He had a real respect, not a reverence, but a real appreciation for the original. He thought that story of the alien coming to Earth with a warning, a perspective outside of what humans can see, was a worthwhile tale, and he's right. While the 1951 movie, directed by Robert Wise, tapped into the most pointed of Cold War anxieties -- nuclear annihilation -- the new film hinges on the more generalized specter of environmental disaster. (Reeves has sound green credentials, having co-narrated, with Alanis Morissette, the climate-change primer The Great Warming.) Klaatu professes to be a friend of Earth, though not necessarily mankind -- and in fact, may have to destroy the latter to save the former. We kind of inverted it, Reeves said, comparing his Klaatu to Rennie's. In the original he's more
Re: [scifinoir2] Hello from Brandon Easton (new here!)
Welcome, welcome! Brandon, to the SciFiNoir2 family. :-) Brent blackmalewriter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: My name is Brandon Easton and I am a professional writer and college professor living in Southern California. I received my master's degree in film a couple of years ago, and since then, I have written two screenplays and am working on my first novel. My big break came a few years back when I broke into the comic book industry through a major studio -- I wrote ARKANIUM and some TRANSFORMERS stuff for Dreamwave Productions back in 2003/04 -- and I have been enjoying a measure of success. I recently moved to Los Angeles, CA after teaching high school history and economics in NYC. Out here to pursue my dream of becoming a Hollywood screenwriter. Things are going well and I hope to be able to put some really good news here sometime soon. In early 2009, I have several new comic book projects coming out. The first will be my creator-owned series SHADOWLAW (www.shadowlawonline.com) I also host an online podcast show specifically for new and inexperienced sci-fi writers called WRITING FOR ROOKIES. Check it out here: http://writingforrookies.podcastpeople.com/ I hope to chat with and connect with other writers and people who love sci-fi. Best, Brandon
[scifinoir2] Courtney B. Vance, Davenport Flash Forward to sci-fi pilot
http://www.reuters.com/article/televisionNews/idUSTRE4B11JX20081202 Vance, Davenport Flash Forward to sci-fi pilot Tue Dec 2, 2008 By Nellie Andreeva LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Law Order veteran Courtney B. Vance and Jack Davenport, a regular in the Pirates of the Caribbean films, are the first actors cast in ABC's drama pilot Flash Forward, which is rumored as a potential companion to Lost. Flash Forward is based on Robert J. Sawyer's sci-fi novel and chronicles the chaos that ensues after everyone in the world blacks out for two minutes, 17 seconds and has a mysterious vision of the future that changes lives forever. Vance will play Stan Wedeck, the Los Angeles bureau chief of the FBI. Davenport will play Lloyd Simcoe, who is trapped in Northern California when the event occurs and struggles to reach his son in a Southland hospital. For six seasons, Vance played assistant district attorney Ron Carver on NBC's Law Order: Criminal Intent. The actor, who did a multi-episode on NBC's ER this season, will next be seen in the feature Hurricane Season. British native Davenport, who played Norrington in the three Pirates of the Caribbean movies, starred this summer on CBS' period drama Swingtown. The actor will next be seen in the feature The Boat That Rocked. Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
[scifinoir2] Movies Set To Boom In 'Recession'
http://www.ananova.com/business/story/sm_3105189.html?menu=business.reports.us Movies Set To Boom In 'Recession' With the latest instalments of big franchises on the horizon - including Harry Potter releases due in 2009 and 2010 - the film industry is predicted to prosper in the expected recession. In contrast to the rest of the media sector that has been left reeling by the turbulent economy, analysts are forecasting steady growth in worldwide box-office revenues. In a report covering 2008-2012, professional services giant PriceWaterhouseCoopers predicted that global box office spend would grow from £18bn to £24bn over the period. The economic situation has forced PWC to revise some of their predictions for the media sector. But Nick George - a partner in the firm's entertainment and media practice - told Sky News Online that he was standing by their forecast for the film industry. Box office cinema attendance in the past has held up well in consumer recessions, he said. That's because the film industry's performance tends to much less connected with what's happening in the wider economic cycle and much more driven by 'hits' - by original content and great marketing. Going out to the movies, he added, was seen as an affordable luxury in tough economic times. It's high quality entertainment, at a relatively modest price, he said. It's a cheap night out when compared to, say, going out to a restaurant for dinner. And the younger demographic use it as a place to go that's out of the house, away from their parents. Screen International's editor Michael Gubbins is similarly optimistic about the film industry's resilience during the expected recession. He argued that big releases like Mamma Mia, High School Musical and the latest Bond movie have all done incredibly well - and he sees no reason why that trend should not continue in 2009 and beyond. The industry's got a couple of Harry Potters up its sleeve, the next Bond, the next Pirates of the Caribbean and people will keep going to see the big franchises, he said. But I'm not sure that will have anything to do with seeking escapism during economic misery. Big films have been working well over the last few years anyway. He continued: So, yes, I'm optimistic about the box-office numbers, there are enough films in the can to keep that going. However, Mr Gubbins warned that while the main Hollywood studios will thrive, the independent sector - often responsible for the most original movies - would find it difficult to raise finance during the recession. The studios have begun to concentrate on fewer, but bigger films, while the riskier, middle-tier projects will struggle to get green lit, he said. Over the next few years, I think you'll see a smaller number of very well-funded, well-marketed studio films and a lot of other stuff, a lot of quality independent projects, will simply drop off the end.
[scifinoir2] [Interview] Terry Pratchett: 'If I'd known what a progressive brain disease coul
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/terry-pratchett-if-id-known-what-a-progressive-brain-disease-could-do-for-your-pr-profile-i-may-have-had-one-earlier-1036584.html Terry Pratchett: 'If I'd known what a progressive brain disease could do for your PR profile I may have had one earlier' Terry Pratchett is Britain's second-favourite living writer, and his Discworld books are loved by millions of devoted fans. But in the last year, the novelist's struggle with Alzheimer's has lent a frightening new twist to his own life story. Deborah Orr met him Interview by Deborah Orr Saturday, 29 November 2008 This is just perfect. Here is Terry Pratchett, white-bearded and diminutive behind a towering double-row of six computer screens, as their greenish glow plays on his face. He looks like the Wizard of Oz. Nothing in this room dispels the fancy. Giant hourglasses, a huge brass lectern shaped like a soaring eagle, a Gothic fireplace, a fat half-burnt candle in an iron wall-mount, a pointy hat atop a messy ziggurat of papers, a model of a dragon - all sorts of props and knick-knacks litter the place, proclaiming this solidly refurbished country cottage as mission control of a fantasy world. Appearances, of course, are not deceptive. For years now, Pratchett has sat here typing, adding all-too-human flesh to the bones of his great literary creation, the flat, out-of-time, alternative earth he calls the Discworld. Even now, he doesn't quite want to leave Discworld, and prefers to draw me into it instead. He asks me how many pies one might be expected to make from the rendered body of a large man. I assure him that I wouldn't know, and he goes on, with some relish, to make a convincing case for about a dozen. He also makes a request of his assistant, Rob, the presentable young man who hovers unobtrusively and protectively. Could Rob just make a note of a metaphor, please? Could Rob just record that a man's sagging adam's apple had the appearance of a chicken's giblets? And one can't help thinking, a little pruriently: Is that a sign? Pratchett may have sold something like 60 million books, in something like 35 languages. But for a year now, he's been just as famous simply for being diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's, aged just 59. That's not what I want to talk to him about though, not really. Actually, I think it's a bit of shame that the diagnosis of a progressive brain disease does more for a man's public profile than the amassing of a distinctive and valuable body of work does. So I refrain from asking about the giblets, and concentrate instead, as we settle ourselves in the adjoining room, on marvelling at all the exotic lumber. This room is full of stuff too, most of it instantly recognisable as having its provenance in the Discworld. One contraption is really weird, though. Some sort of electronic octopus, bristling with electrodes, is clamped to the back of a leather armchair. This would never appear in the Discworld, because the Discworld runs on magic, not electricity. What in Betty's name is it? It isn't, explains Pratchett, with some amusement, a prop. It's a slightly outlandish, but nevertheless possibly beneficial theraputic tool, delivering little shocks of electronic stimulus to the brain. You think, maybe it will work and maybe it won't. What's the harm in trying? he offers briskly. Look ... you're a lifetime science-fiction fan ... You've got to have something like that ... It's all there. Not enough flashing lights ... but it's remarkably restful. A friend cast my head so that they could make it so that it fitted me. Still, I now have the opportunity briefly and politely to enquire as to Pratchett's health, and get it out of the way. He's says he feels fine. But there's a lot more to it than that. I'd been worried that Pratchett's disorder might silently dominate our interview, like the proverbial elephant in the room. But the elephant's gone rogue already, and is crashing about our encounter as if such a meeting could have no other possible purpose. Pratchett talks beautifully, as beautifully as he writes, and once he starts, there's no stopping him. He's started. I have posterior cortical atrophy - PCA - which is an odd thing that affects visual acuity. No one would know unless I told them. About now, I might be going to the doctor's and saying I think there may be something wrong, if it wasn't for the fact that it hit my typing, spelling and handwriting. We're just coming up to the anniversary of that. I don't know if you can arrest development. Aricept [the first drug to be licensed in the UK specifically for the treatment of Alzheimer's] helps, for example, walking helps, and a busy and active life appears to help. But you don't actually get better from it. One of the things that I believe does happen is that if you have, as it were, the physical resources, consciously or unconsciously you come up with workarounds. This is difficult. On the one hand, it's really
[scifinoir2] e=mc2: 103 years later, Einstein's proven right
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081120/sc_afp/sciencephysicseinstein_081120235605 PARIS (AFP) It's taken more than a century, but Einstein's celebrated formula e=mc2 has finally been corroborated, thanks to a heroic computational effort by French, German and Hungarian physicists. A brainpower consortium led by Laurent Lellouch of France's Centre for Theoretical Physics, using some of the world's mightiest supercomputers, have set down the calculations for estimating the mass of protons and neutrons, the particles at the nucleus of atoms. According to the conventional model of particle physics, protons and neutrons comprise smaller particles known as quarks, which in turn are bound by gluons. The odd thing is this: the mass of gluons is zero and the mass of quarks is only five percent. Where, therefore, is the missing 95 percent? The answer, according to the study published in the US journal Science on Thursday, comes from the energy from the movements and interactions of quarks and gluons. In other words, energy and mass are equivalent, as Einstein proposed in his Special Theory of Relativity in 1905. The e=mc2 formula shows that mass can be converted into energy, and energy can be converted into mass. By showing how much energy would be released if a certain amount of mass were to be converted into energy, the equation has been used many times, most famously as the inspirational basis for building atomic weapons. But resolving e=mc2 at the scale of sub-atomic particles -- in equations called quantum chromodynamics -- has been fiendishly difficult. Until now, this has been a hypothesis, France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) said proudly in a press release. It has now been corroborated for the first time. For those keen to know more: the computations involve envisioning space and time as part of a four-dimensional crystal lattice, with discrete points spaced along columns and rows.
[scifinoir2] 'True Blood' amps up the enjoyable vamp antics as its finale approaches
http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/entertainment_tv/2008/11/true-blood-hbo.html 'True Blood' amps up the enjoyable vamp antics as its finale approaches OK, fine, True Blood fans. I give up. You win. I like this show. And yet. Those of you whove been e-mailing me telling me that True Blood, which airs its season finale 8 p.m. Sunday, is your favorite show -- I cant say I agree. But the friends and readers whove been saying the HBO show has finally become the escapist vamp potboiler that was lurking inside the somewhat pretentious show we first saw back in September -- yes, I agree with that assessment. Though its not perfect, True Blood has improved a lot. Dare I say it no longer needs a transfusion? There are so many things about True Blood I can still pick apart, and I mentioned many of them in my initial review. As Sookie Stackhouse, a woman in love with a courtly vampire, the miscast Anna Paquin is often the least interesting part of this show. The shows melodrama veers into laughable Southern Gothic at times (Demon exorcisms? Really?). There are plenty of plot holes that you could drive a hearse through. The shows vampire mythology is contradictory, if not downright chaotic. And dont start me on the variable accents on this show: In the Watcher household, a favorite pastime is imitating all the weird ways various characters on the show pronounce the name Sookie. On the other hand, lately, True Blood has been doing a lot of things right; in the last three or four episodes, in particular, it has gotten markedly better. Perhaps because of the obvious lack of charisma between Sookie and her vampire lover, Bill (the fine Stephen Moyer), the show has been adding terrific guest actors left and right. And its focused on the one through-line that unites the shows disparate elements: The mystery of whos been murdering women in Bon Temps, La. A few weeks ago, the wonderful Stephen Root showed up as a gay vampire accountant (and thats the first time I have ever written those three words in a row). His character didnt resemble the mostly predictable vamps on this show, which have tended to favor eyeliner, leather pants and wanton murder. He was a lonely, soft-spoken guy who thought becoming a bloodsucker would spice up his life -- but it didnt, at least not the way he thought it would. Sookies dim brother, the eternally shirtless Jason (Ryan Kwanten), used to be one of my least favorite characters. But recent developments involving Jason, Roots character and Amy, the hippie-dippie psycho played by the excellent Lizzy Caplan, did a lot to amp up Jasons story line, and it even gave Kwanten the chance to prove he can do more than take off his shirt. As if that werent enough, in recent weeks the show featured two Homicide veterans I would watch read from the telephone book: Michelle Forbes, of HBOs In Treatment, and Zeljko Ivanek, who won an Emmy for his work on FXs Damages. Theyre two of the best character actors working now, and Ivanek in particular was terrific as the Magister, the final adjudicator of vampire disputes. If anyone could make sitting in a chair in the back of a truck transfixing, Ivanek could. Forbes role is less clear -- her mysterious character just took in Sookies troubled friend, Tara (Rutina Wesley) -- but I dearly hope that if there is a second season of True Blood, Forbes is in it. Ditto for Alexander Skarsgard (Iceman in Generation Kill), who plays Eric, the quietly intimidating sheriff to Southern vampires. In addition to loading up the show with a terrific array of guest actors, True Blood features one of the best supporting casts around. As Tara, Wesley has given what could have been a grating character a lot of anguished depth, and I once again have to single out Nelsan Ellis, whose Lafayette is one of my favorite TV characters right now. Sam Trammell has also been providing solid support as the amiable bar owner Sam Merlotte (though I still dont understand why either Sam or Bill is attracted to the huffy Sookie). I dont know if this development follows the progress of Charlaine Harris Stackhouse novels, on which the series is based, but True Blood has wisely opened up the world of the show beyond vampires, a territory that his been well trod in books, TV and movies for decades now. There are shapeshifters in Sookies world, and other beings with strange powers have been hinted at as well. (One thing the show has not handled all that well: Sookies own psychic powers, which figured prominently early in the season but have been barely mentioned in recent weeks.) Though it still has its self-indulgent moments, True Blood has picked up its pace admirably and now boasts more tension than the lackluster current season of Showtimes Dexter. (Dare I say True Blood has sucked the life out of Dexter? Sorry, that may be one pun too many). An HBO representative says that viewership for the show has increased dramatically
[scifinoir2] [Review] Rocky Horror-esque 'Repo!' lacks charm
http://jam.canoe.ca/Movies/Reviews/R/Repo_The_Genetic_Opera/2008/11/21/7483651-sun.html Rocky Horror-esque 'Repo!' lacks charm By BRUCE KIRKLAND -- Sun Media Director Darren Lynn Bousman and co. clearly are trying to position their overblown musical, Repo! The Genetic Opera, as a Goth answer to The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It remains a mystery how Rocky Horror, a disaster on initial release, climbed out of the abyss and became a late-night cult favourite that is still beloved (including by me). But the originality of the original theatrical piece factors in, as does the quality of the show tunes and the compelling nature of the cast. With fans chanting lines, singing snatches of tunes and dressing like the characters, Repo! would like to replicate that enthusiasm and devotion now. Count me out. Repo! is a bloody grotesquerie, not a delicious delight as was Rocky Horror. Repo!, Bousman's first musical after helming three of the Saw sequels, sucks so large that only the Goth crowd could love it -- and only because few other filmmakers bother to cater to their particular tastes. The pseudo-operatic rock music is horrible. The acting is abysmal, from Alexa Vega's poor-little-me performance as the teenager, to Paul Sorvino's blustery turn as the despotic villain. Paris Hilton -- who plays Sorvino's drug- and surgery-obsessed daughter -- is not the worst thing on screen, so that tells you something because she is a hopeless twit as an actress. Even reliable Anthony Stewart Head (of Buffy fame) is ridiculous as Vega's daddy, a man hiding his horrifying secret-identity from her. Other thankless roles are played by Bill Moseley, Nivek Ogre, Terrance Zdunich and even Sarah Brightman, who wastes her powerful pipes singing as the weird-eyed Blind Mag. The production design is all gloom-and-doom. It looks like what would result if the artistry of Blade Runner was imposed on the sets for Chicago and gussied up with traces of Transylvania and washed over with buckets of blood. The story for this made-in-Toronto creepshow involves organs that Sorvino's all-powerful company dispensed to save lives during a prior plague. With the populace hooked, and in debt, GeneCo now sends out a repo man to rip the organs out of delinquent customers, leaving them as bloodied, mangled corpses. Ugh! And ugly.
Re: [scifinoir2] Re: FW: Scalzi: Do Science Fiction Movies Still Need Theaters?
Thanks B. Daryle, the second link will find you safely at the article's origin. Brent B. Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: John Scalzi is a science fiction writer and author of the Old Man's War series. He has a couple of blogs: [ http://whatever.scalzi.com/ ]http://whatever.scalzi.com/ and his blog over at AMC. [ http://blogs.amctv.com/scifi-scanner/2008/11/do-scifi-movies-need- ]http://blogs.amctv.com/scifi-scanner/2008/11/do-scifi-movies-need- theaters.php --- In [ mailto:scifinoir2%40yahoogroups.com [EMAIL PROTECTED], Daryle Lockhart [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hold up. They released a DVD with a downloadable version for portable video players? Disney has lost they dangone mind. I guess I'll just wait on Bolt to hit the web in HD, then. Thanks for this, Brent! What publication did this article come from? On Nov 18, 2008, at 4:02 PM, brent wodehouse wrote: -- From: Dennis Fischer [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Scalzi: Do Science Fiction Movies Still Need Theaters? Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:27:30 -0800 John Scalzi - Do Science Fiction Movies Still Need Theaters? The folks at Pixar sent me the DVD package for WALL-E last week, a three-disc set which includes the movie, an extra disc of goodies, and a version of the film compatible with portable viewers like the iPhone (so, presumably, you'll resist the temptation to find a pirate version online). In addition to giving my daughter something to brag about to her friends because we got the package early (it comes out Tuesday), the two separate versions of the movie -- one for the home and one to take with us wherever we go -- reminded me of how film viewing really has changed, particularly since the advent of portable media players. Go to an airport these days and watch people as they wait for their flights, and you'll see a good percentage of them staring down into a tiny screen, watching a movie or a TV show. People love their movies; we've known for years (much to the economic joy of the studios) that they love to bring them home, and we know now that we love to take them with us when we go places. But this also makes me wonder if we still need the theaters that are films' first homes. What do the movie theaters still offer us that we can't get at home? What Movie Theaters Offer For the studios, of course, the answer is obvious: The theater represents their first revenue stream, the place where they can make back some of the outrageous cost of making and marketing a movie. People like to speculate about the death of the movie theater, but they've been speculating it since the birth of the television era, and very likely they will continue speculating about it for decades to come. Studios keep finding new ways to draw people into the theaters -- or at the very least, new spins on old ways: The current rage for IMAX and/or 3D versions of movies recalls CinemaScope and, yes, 3D films in the 1950s. Given what the studios do to keep bringing us to the show, you would think that the main advantage that movie theaters have over home viewing is technological, but this is not entirely true. Chances are you don't have an IMAX theater in your house (and if you do, I'm offended you haven't invited me over yet), but on the other hand it's not at all unlikely that you might have a large screen HDTV- capable television with a Blu-ray disc play and a 7.1 digital theater sound setup -- or will have such a setup within a couple of years, as prices for all of these things drop. WALL-E or 2001 or Star Wars or Iron Man any other science fiction movie you might think of looks great up there on a theater wall, and sounds great too, but for all practical purposes you can create a nearly equally stunning cinematic experience at home... and many people have. So what does the movie theater still offer viewers that you can't get at home? I'm going to suggest something that I think is counterintuitive: It offers lack of control. What It's Like to Watch at Home Take WALL-E (again). My family sat down to watch it the other night, but we came nowhere near close to watching it interrupted all the way through. The phone rang and it was my wife's mother on the phone; we paused it so she wouldn't miss something. Then at some point we all decided a bathroom break was in order. Another pause. Later, snacktime. Pause. At various points we skipped back a bit because we missed something someone was saying or because we wanted to look at something in the background (for example, the Pizza Planet truck that's in every Pixar film). Contrast this with how I saw WALL-E in the movie theater. Once the film started, it was out of my control: The story unfolded at the pace the filmmaker chose, and the story's emotional beats came in a rhythm uninterrupted
Re: [RE][scifinoir2] FW: Scalzi: Do Science Fiction Movies Still Need Theaters?
Martin Baxter [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Brent, this speaks directly to something that either rave or Daryle said here sometime back, that the model for movie viewing has changed drastically during our lives. It's easier to market a movie to someone with a Mac or a PC than it is to toss it into a theater, looking to clear money after ad revenues et cetera ad nauseum. And, for folks like me who've really become disenfranchised with the entire movie-going experience, to say nothing of the Concessions Issue, it's nirvana. Yes, Martin, I am, too, somewhat disillusioned with the whole of the film affair (not exluding the 'Concessions Issue' :-). I appreciate all of the alternative outlets for viewing entertainments (both online and home theatre-wise). Yet, you know, in all honesty, I still enjoy a good outing to the local megaplex. Something about the smells, the crowds, the feeling of a Celluloid Event gone through collectively. All of that shared experience. Still, we may one day soon find that, to our liking or not, movie-viewing may bear almost no resemblance to today's passive cinema or home experience. Holography anyone? Brent -[ Received Mail Content ]-- Subject : [scifinoir2] FW: Scalzi: Do Science Fiction Movies Still Need Theaters? Date : Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:02:13 -0500 From : brent wodehouse [EMAIL PROTECTED] To : scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com -- From: Dennis Fischer Subject: Scalzi: Do Science Fiction Movies Still Need Theaters? Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:27:30 -0800 John Scalzi - Do Science Fiction Movies Still Need Theaters? The folks at Pixar sent me the DVD package for WALL-E last week, a three-disc set which includes the movie, an extra disc of goodies, and a version of the film compatible with portable viewers like the iPhone (so, presumably, you'll resist the temptation to find a pirate version online). In addition to giving my daughter something to brag about to her friends because we got the package early (it comes out Tuesday), the two separate versions of the movie -- one for the home and one to take with us wherever we go -- reminded me of how film viewing really has changed, particularly since the advent of portable media players. Go to an airport these days and watch people as they wait for their flights, and you'll see a good percentage of them staring down into a tiny screen, watching a movie or a TV show. People love their movies; we've known for years (much to the economic joy of the studios) that they love to bring them home, and we know now that we love to take them with us when we go places. But this also makes me wonder if we still need the theaters that are films' first homes. What do the movie theaters still offer us that we can't get at home? What Movie Theaters Offer For the studios, of course, the answer is obvious: The theater represents their first revenue stream, the place where they can make back some of the outrageous cost of making and marketing a movie. People like to speculate about the death of the movie theater, but they've been speculating it since the birth of the television era, and very likely they will continue speculating about it for decades to come. Studios keep finding new ways to draw people into the theaters -- or at the very least, new spins on old ways: The current rage for IMAX and/or 3D versions of movies recalls CinemaScope and, yes, 3D films in the 1950s. Given what the studios do to keep bringing us to the show, you would think that the main advantage that movie theaters have over home viewing is technological, but this is not entirely true. Chances are you don't have an IMAX theater in your house (and if you do, I'm offended you haven't invited me over yet), but on the other hand it's not at all unlikely that you might have a large screen HDTV-capable television with a Blu-ray disc play and a 7.1 digital theater sound setup -- or will have such a setup within a couple of years, as prices for all of these things drop. WALL-E or 2001 or Star Wars or Iron Man any other science fiction movie you might think of looks great up there on a theater wall, and sounds great too, but for all practical purposes you can create a nearly equally stunning cinematic experience at home... and many people have. So what does the movie theater still offer viewers that you can't get at home? I'm going to suggest something that I think is counterintuitive: It offers lack of control. What It's Like to Watch at Home Take WALL-E (again). My family sat down to watch it the other night, but we came nowhere near close to watching it interrupted all the way through. The phone rang and it was my wife's mother on the phone; we paused it so she wouldn't miss something. Then at some point we all decided a bathroom break was in order. Another pause. Later, snacktime. Pause. At various points we skipped back a bit because we missed something
[scifinoir2] FW: Scalzi: Do Science Fiction Movies Still Need Theaters?
-- From: Dennis Fischer [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Scalzi: Do Science Fiction Movies Still Need Theaters? Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:27:30 -0800 John Scalzi - Do Science Fiction Movies Still Need Theaters? The folks at Pixar sent me the DVD package for WALL-E last week, a three-disc set which includes the movie, an extra disc of goodies, and a version of the film compatible with portable viewers like the iPhone (so, presumably, you'll resist the temptation to find a pirate version online). In addition to giving my daughter something to brag about to her friends because we got the package early (it comes out Tuesday), the two separate versions of the movie -- one for the home and one to take with us wherever we go -- reminded me of how film viewing really has changed, particularly since the advent of portable media players. Go to an airport these days and watch people as they wait for their flights, and you'll see a good percentage of them staring down into a tiny screen, watching a movie or a TV show. People love their movies; we've known for years (much to the economic joy of the studios) that they love to bring them home, and we know now that we love to take them with us when we go places. But this also makes me wonder if we still need the theaters that are films' first homes. What do the movie theaters still offer us that we can't get at home? What Movie Theaters Offer For the studios, of course, the answer is obvious: The theater represents their first revenue stream, the place where they can make back some of the outrageous cost of making and marketing a movie. People like to speculate about the death of the movie theater, but they've been speculating it since the birth of the television era, and very likely they will continue speculating about it for decades to come. Studios keep finding new ways to draw people into the theaters -- or at the very least, new spins on old ways: The current rage for IMAX and/or 3D versions of movies recalls CinemaScope and, yes, 3D films in the 1950s. Given what the studios do to keep bringing us to the show, you would think that the main advantage that movie theaters have over home viewing is technological, but this is not entirely true. Chances are you don't have an IMAX theater in your house (and if you do, I'm offended you haven't invited me over yet), but on the other hand it's not at all unlikely that you might have a large screen HDTV-capable television with a Blu-ray disc play and a 7.1 digital theater sound setup -- or will have such a setup within a couple of years, as prices for all of these things drop. WALL-E or 2001 or Star Wars or Iron Man any other science fiction movie you might think of looks great up there on a theater wall, and sounds great too, but for all practical purposes you can create a nearly equally stunning cinematic experience at home... and many people have. So what does the movie theater still offer viewers that you can't get at home? I'm going to suggest something that I think is counterintuitive: It offers lack of control. What It's Like to Watch at Home Take WALL-E (again). My family sat down to watch it the other night, but we came nowhere near close to watching it interrupted all the way through. The phone rang and it was my wife's mother on the phone; we paused it so she wouldn't miss something. Then at some point we all decided a bathroom break was in order. Another pause. Later, snacktime. Pause. At various points we skipped back a bit because we missed something someone was saying or because we wanted to look at something in the background (for example, the Pizza Planet truck that's in every Pixar film). Contrast this with how I saw WALL-E in the movie theater. Once the film started, it was out of my control: The story unfolded at the pace the filmmaker chose, and the story's emotional beats came in a rhythm uninterrupted by my personal life and preferences. Short of walking out of the film entirely, I had to take it on its own terms -- surrender my will to the story, as it were. As a result, the emotional highs of the story were higher, the funny parts funnier, and the wrenching parts (yes, there are wrenching parts in WALL-E) that much more affecting. In the theater, you are able to approach the movie as a complete work, and as complete experience in itself. How we know WALL-E or any other film is a really good film is by how it makes us feel -- which is to say, how much the film sweeps us along and makes us a participant in its story. Being able to pause and rewind and such is all very cool -- they're part of the reason people like to watch movies at home, and it's especially fun with science fiction films, because thanks to special effects there's usually something cool to stare at in the background. Frankly, looking at the cool stuff in the background was just about the only way to enjoy the Star
Re: [scifinoir2] Re: Adrianne dances an intro dance!
I second the salutation. Welcome Adrianne! Brent ravenadal [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Adrianne, welcome to the list! We need some more female energy up in here. Write on, girl! ~rave! --- In [ mailto:scifinoir2%40yahoogroups.com [EMAIL PROTECTED], Adrianne Brennan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: *dances* I'm Adrianne Brennan, a romantic dark fantasy, paranormal, and science fiction author and reader. I've been an avid reader pretty much my entire life, and a writer for the past two decades of it. In short, writing is my passion, my life--and I can't get enough of it! :D I blame part of it on loving to read. I used to get in trouble as a kid for reading in class when I wasn't supposed to, lol. Interestingly, I came to the joys of published writing through mutual aquaintances who got together on a few lists and wrote Star Wars fanfic. Namely, lots of pr0n about either Anakin or Vader. From there, I was encouraged to submit my original works to Aphrodite's Apples, and here I am! So, never diss fanfic...you never know where you might wind up. :) For my full time job that pays my mortgage and feeds my kitties and me, I work as a computer programmer. Someday I'd love to have my writing career be my primary career, and like a lot of people on here I'm sure, I continue to dream and work towards that day. In the meantime, I landed the awesomest job ever back in mid-May, and I am LOVING it! And about time, too! They're nice to me, give me work to do which is fun, and they even let me work from home on occasion--and then I can get some writing done. So I can't complain. In my spare time, I enjoy reading, writing, and watching science fiction and fantasy books/tv/movies. It's pretty much my genre of choice. I also dig paranormal romances, which is what my *Blood of the Dark Moon* novel is for the most part, along with the rest of the Dark Moon series. I also enjoy watching anime, playing RPGs or participating in LARPs (live action role play), playing World of Warcraft, or going out to goth clubs. Someday I plan to learn how to knit. :) I've been playing catch-up on the Charlaine Harris novels, as I haven't had time to read the last two yet. I've been busy getting various releases out, edits, and all sorts of fun. Whee! I finally got to read Yasmine Galenorn's latest, however, and loved it. Among my guilty pleasures includes various fandoms including Doctor Who and Torchwood. And please don't remind me of the latest news regarding David Tennant 'cause I'm still in denial. :( My favorite beverage is chai. My favorite *alcoholic* beverage is red wine, preferably either pinot noir or shiraz. The latest anime I've seen lately is Full Metal Alchemist, and I highly recommend it. I've also been sucked into watching HBO's True Blood. OMFGS did anyone see the last episode? O_O I just watched it last night. HOLY SHIT!! And um...yeah. Somewhere in between all of this insanity, I sleep. Really. Love Magic, -A [ http://www.adriannebrennan.com/botdm.html ]http://www.adriannebrennan.com/botdm.html [ http://www.adriannebrennan.com/botdm.html ]http://www.adriannebrennan.com/botdm.html ~ Where love and magic meet ~ [ http://www.adriannebrennan.com ]http://www.adriannebrennan.com Take a bite out of Blood and Mint Chocolates: [ http://www.adriannebrennan.com/bamc.html ]http://www.adriannebrennan.com/bamc.html Experience the magic of Blood of the Dark Moon on 12/2: [ http://www.adriannebrennan.com/botdm.html ]http://www.adriannebrennan.com/botdm.html
