Alex the famous African gray parrot, renowned for the landmark cognition research conducted by owner Dr. Irene Pepperberg, Ph.D., has died at the age of 31 [2007]. By learning elements of the English language to identify shapes, colors and sizes, Alex shattered the notion that parrots are only capable of mimicking words.
According to Pepperberg who is a faculty member at Brandeis University, Alex was able to identify 50 different objects, seven colors and shapes, and quantities of up to six. Alex also understood the concept of bigger and smaller and same and different. Pepperberg says they were in the midst of learning basic mathematics skills.
Designed to scan the heavens thousands to billions of light-years beyond the solar system for gamma rays, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has also picked up a shocking vibe from Earth. During its first 14 months of operation, the flying observatory has detected 17 gamma-ray flashes associated with terrestrial storms — and some of those flashes have contained a surprising signature of antimatter.
What is Antimatter? I'm not really sure. But according to Wikipedia,
In particle physics, antimatter is the extension of the concept of the antiparticle to matter, where antimatter is composed of antiparticles in the same way that normal matter is composed of particles. For example, an antielectron (a positron, an electron with a positive charge) and an antiproton (a proton with a negative charge) could form an antihydrogen atom in the same way that an electron and a proton form a normal matter hydrogen atom.
It reminds me of the music scale, where an A# (A-sharp) is also a Bb (B-flat), except antimatter is much more complicated.
I had always heard that running twice a day, like lifting weights twice a day, is ultimately bad for you, since the muscles you use need time to rest and rebuild, but apparently that is not true.
By running more often, you reap the same fitness benefits you get when you boost the duration and intensity of any one run: reduced body fat, increased VO2 max, and improved muscle tone. You just get those benefits sooner.
The article stresses that you work in the second daily workout slowly, doing it only twice a week and backing off the length of the original, longer workout so that your body can effectively catch up.
My growing fascination with the way we use language, and indeed how it changes, is the impetus behind posting this video...and also its message, I admit.
Language is indeed very powerful and yet something which changes frequently. In microscopic steps, it seems sometimes. An entire debate can hinge - as often the evolution debate does - on semantics, on whether people "believe" in evolution.
And yet, this is how scientists are "losing" this "debate". It's really a non-debate, and scientists aren't losing the debate. They're losing the PR battle. Every year - I won't say every day, though this distinction may be accurate - new evidence solidifying the relative truth of evolution is revealed (as much as anything can be "true").
This is the place where the rub happens. Scientists believe - there's that word again - that nothing can be known in an absolute way. It is not belief, as the video suggests, in a blind sort of way. So that's why there is a "debate".
I could, if I had the time and patience and desire, begin to dispute any number of scientific realities and end up turning the tide on them. That may sound arrogant, but it's not. It's a disparity between the way the two camps discuss the issue. I am no more capable than anyone (who is not a scientist) of disproving scientific data, but since I realize that disputing something in today's world creates a "debate", then I am already halfway to the point of converting people to my side.
Creationists/IDers are just the same as the PR folks who work for cigarette companies. They hire (Read: pay) scientists to say that "there is no known link between cigarettes and cancer". And there are people who say that trans fats actually clear arteries, rather than clog them. That Elvis is still alive. That George Bush was responsible for 9/11.
Grindhouse Releasing is bringing Sam Raimi’s original horror classic THE EVIL DEAD back to the big screen as a midnight movie.
Raimi and producers Robert Tapert and Bruce Campbell gave the go-ahead for a series of EVIL DEAD revival screenings to Grindhouse Releasing partner Bob Murawski, the film editor of Raimi’s SPIDER MAN 1, 2 & 3, DRAG ME TO HELL and the EVIL DEAD sequel ARMY OF DARKNESS.
I don't think my excitement at this moment can be quantified.
This is a selected list of video games with an undead theme, containing games featuring undead as the central theme or a major theme. Subjects for an undead theme may include zombies, vampires or ghosts. It also covers werewolves which can be portrayed as allies of the undead.
AdventureCORPS, Inc., an event production firm specializing in ultra-endurance and extreme sports events, hosts the Badwater Ultramarathon in July of each year. Recognized globally as "the world's toughest foot race," this legendary event pits up to 90 of the world's toughest athletes—runners, triathletes, adventure racers, and mountaineers—against one another and the elements. Covering 135 miles (217km) non-stop from Death Valley to Mt. Whitney, CA in temperatures up to 130F (55c), it is the most demanding and extreme running race offered anywhere on the planet.
If you think that's hardcore in and of itself, you should check out the rules and time requirements - YES, THERE ARE TIME REQUIREMENTS FOR THIS RACE - so you don't mistake yourself for being badass. The Rules. It's not enough that you finish this bastard of a run, but you must get your happy ass off the course by hour 60, or they'll do it for you.
Not only that, but you're not allowed to merely sign up for the race and show up on the start date. You have to apply for the race and hope you get in. You have to reveal your running resume, so to speak, and there's no guarantee you'll get in. In fact, they only allow 90 competitors per year. Wow.
Creationism is growing in the Muslim world, from Turkey to Pakistan to Indonesia, international academics said last month as they gathered here to discuss the topic. But, they said, young-Earth creationists, who believe God created the universe, Earth and life just a few thousand years ago, are rare, if not nonexistent.
This article is a veritable font of knowledge on the subject of Old Earth Creationism and Muslims, but I wonder how many people are shocked that in this modern era of religiosity that such a form of dogma could arise. I'm no more shocked than when seeing mountain people dig rattlesnakes out of pine boxes and kiss them, or people honestly attest to Jesus coming to America to be a prophet to the American Indians.
The article goes on to say more about this phenomenon in the context of Islam:
For many Muslims, even evolution and the notion that life flourished without the intervening hand of Allah is largely compatible with their religion. What many find unacceptable is human evolution, the idea that humans evolved from primitive primates. The Koran states that Allah created Adam, the first man, separately out of clay.
Pervez A. Hoodbhoy, a prominent atomic physicist at Quaid-e-Azam University in Pakistan, said that when he gave lectures covering the sweep of cosmological history from the Big Bang to the evolution of life on Earth, the audience listened without objection to most of it. “Everything is O.K. until the apes stand up,” Dr. Hoodbhoy said.
What we're seeing is not necessarily a dogged denouncement of science as a whole, but only in how science seems to explain the rise of humans out of the ranks of certain other primates.
It [The FCC] has long believed that the company that owns freecreditreport.com is deliberately diverting people from a government-mandated site where consumers can get free credit reports by law, and using the reports as a lure for a $14.95 monthly service that alerts subscribers to important changes in their credit status.
Want to know why and how those tacky little games - Farmville and Mob Wars - have taken over Facebook? Head over to TechCruch and you can find out why and how they continue to thrive.
In short, these games try to get people to pay cash for in game currency so they can level up faster and have a better overall experience. Which is fine. But for users who won’t pay cash, a wide variety of “offers” are available where they can get in-game currency in exchange for lead gen-type offers. Most of these offers are bad for consumers because it confusingly gets them to pay far more for in-game currency than if they just paid cash (there are notable exceptions, but the scammy stuff tends to crowd out the legitimate offers). And it’s also bad for legitimate advertisers.
I just finished 'Into the Wild' (last night, actually) and just started 'Into Thin Air'. I'm beginning to think Jon Krakauer is sort of a big deal, so I'll probably be posting a lot of interviews and such from him over the coming weeks, so consider youself lucky. Krakauer is a monster of a journalist, and I can't wait to get to 'Where Men Win Gloy'.
Some of Cinemassacre's episodes are just fine (especially 'And All Through the House', but I think some of the better ones are missing. Most of my faves come from the first two seasons, and go as follows:
'Dig That Cat...He's Real Gone' - This one's about a guy (Joey "Pants" Pantoliano) who gets nine lives because he gets a cat's gland, and uses them to make tons of cash cheating death as a carnival performer. You can only guess how it ends up.
'Dead Right' - Demi Moore and Jeffrey Tambor are dead-on in this episode, in which a foxy Moore is told by a fortune teller that she will inherit a ton of money after her disgusting (and disgustingly obese) beau (Tambor) dies. The only problem is that she doesn't know if she can stay with him that long. The episode has a great payoff. Totally worth watching.
'Korman's Kalamity' - Harry Anderson (of Night Court fame) plays a comic book artists whose drawings come to life and destroy his. It's a wacky episode, full of a kind of humor singular to 'Tales from the Crypt', and it doesn't take itself too seriously, which makes it easy to watch more than once.
And my personal favorite: 'Television Terror'
'Television Terror' sort of paved the way for movies like 'The Blair Witch Project' and (sadly) 'Halloween: Resurrection'. In it, Morton Downey, Jr. (who is effing awesome in the role) plays a slimy and desperate television journalist (i.e. 90s era Geraldo Rivera) brings a camera crew into a haunted house live on air, and the results are, well, disturbing.
If you've been feening for a Bioshock 2 fix, head over to Playstation Lifestyle to check out some creepy new pics from the upcoming game. They're certainly not going to disappoint.
I'm trying to steer clear of the straight-to-video fare that would probably populate this list - I'm looking at you, 'American Psycho 2' - and sticking rather with sequels, preferably earlier ones, that just don't justify existence. I won't delve into 'Leprechaun in Space' or 'Freddy vs. Jason' due to their tongue-in-cheek nature. These franchises know they have drained the well, and so to place them on the list would be redundant. Most of the list is populated by movies whose first incarnations had such surprise success at the box office that the studios rushed a lame sequel to the theaters to make a few extra bucks, so most of them deserve my ridicule.
1. The Blair Witch Project 2: Book of Shadows
In a shameless cash grab, Artisan capitalized on the astoundingly unexpected fame of the first Blair Witch Project with 'Book of Shadows'. 'The Blair Witch Project' was so original, and more an execution of a brilliant idea than an actual film, that a sequel would have been (and proved to be) not only ill-conceived but unnecessary as well. How could they have expected to even come close to the phenomenon that was 'The Blair Witch Project'? Not since 'Halloween' had a low-budget flick commanded so much attention, and for good reason. It created a buzz by using the internet against cynics, going so far as to create web sites swearing up and down as to the events' authenticity, and so scores of people bought into the myth created by the movie, which made it even scarier than its stomach-turning camera work.
'Book of Shadows' is a bastard child of 'Scream' and any number of wink-wink-nudge-nudge postmodern horror flicks that dominated the late 90s, and its 'hipness' only takes it so far, which is not very far at all. Each character is a walking stereotype, the plotting is incoherent and transforms the film into a crappy suspense story by the end, and, well, basically everything about it is half-hearted and half-assed.
However, looking backward from 'Burn Notice', I will admit that Jeffrey Donovan's presence almost makes it worth a watch.
2. Jaws 2
Though it didn't entirely wreck the first Jaws movie - the third and fourth ones accomplished that - 'Jaws 2' is on the list for one simple reason: THEY KILLED THE SHARK IN THE FIRST MOVIE. Not only that, they killed off the most charismatic of the characters from the first movie, Robert Shaw's Quint, and Richard Dreyfuss is nowhere to be found. Granted, they were going for something different in the second movie, but the whole draw of the first movie (arguably) was the three main characters and not necessarily the shark. Once the trio of characters are broken up - from the chickenshit Sheriff Brody to the irascible Quint - the movie loses something ineffable.
Plus, the possibility of two such rampaging Great Whites is so miniscule as to defy logic, even for movie audiences, and even forgiving that possibility to a certain degree, certain parts of the second movie are so blatantly ripped from the first flick that they truly make this movie a no-brainer for the list. The ending, especially, makes it hard to believe that they had enough material to make a second movie. He electrocutes the shark. By himself. Out at sea. I'm being overly obtuse, though, since they couldn't very well have ended the movie in a theme park or a football stadium or anything, but watching the movie as an adult makes you wonder how much juice was left in the *shark* tank. Sorry.
3. I Still Know What You Did Last Summer
'Still' suffers from some of what plagues 'Jaws 2'. A majority of the cast members did not show for the sequel...because they died in the first movie. Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillipe, the dude from 'Big Bang Theory', they're all gone and have been replaced by Jack Black in white-dreads. Terrifying, but in a different way.
Since the movie was obviously too white and WASP-ish the first time around, they went and paired Jennifer Love Hewitt with a black best friend and set them off on a tropical getaway, giving this movie the same sort of Agatha Christie sort of feel as the first one without any modicum of creepiness that helped the first become a success. What we end up getting is a toothless carbon copy of the first film, sporting fewer scares than a car ride with Brandy.
4. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers
I'm including the fourth Halloween film at the behest of The Moviegoer, and for good reason: Halloween 4 (and all of the following sequels) steers the franchise back toward Michael Myers, and while plenty of people may say the third film is the most gratuitous (due in part to its incomprehensible and Myers-less storyline), 'Return' just turns the series into a cliched horror romp featuring an unkillable killer. At least 'Halloween 3' tried to do something different with the franchise, and 'Halloween 2' is safe because it ostensibly picks up just after the first movie's cliffhanger ending.
[Let me also take this opportunity to say that I briefly considered the second Rob Zombie 'Halloween' in its place, due in large part to the fact that Zombie originally intended his first movie to render sequels impossible. Only through a few pirouettes of plotting can a second movie take place, but H2 did not hold a candle to the redundancy of 'Return of Michael Myers.]
5. Carrie 2: The Rage
What should have been ostensibly a remake was instead a horrible, half-assed, ham-handed 'sequel' to the wonderful original film by Brian DePalma. 'Carrie 2' isn't necessarily legendary in being inessential, but it is a symbol for every bad (and usually straight-to-video) sequel to a Stephen King-based flick. All of the 'Children of the Corn' sequels, or the 'Mangler' sequels, or whatever, all can be contained in the decision to include 'The Rage' on this list.
This one just stands out because, rather than being a hastily thrown-together cash-raker of a movie - an offense which plagues the other movies on the list and is almost forgivable - 'Carrie 2' is embarrassingly, ridiculously, gut-wrenchingly late and irrelevant. Released an astounding twenty-three years after the original, 'Carrie 2' is a trying-too-hard clunker of a movie, just so filled with cliche that you could just pick the plot points from a list. Absolutely atrocious.
My Top Five Scream Queens, in no particular order 1. Heather Langenkamp (Nancy) - A Nightmare on Elm Street, Wes Craven's New Nightmare
To me, Heather Langenkamp is unrivaled in the realm of scream queens. I used to frequent a local video store with an extensive collection of horror flicks, and the one I looked at the most was Nightmare. Something about her wholesomeness - or the way she looked on the VHS box at Donna's Video - drew me in. I spent way too much of my mom's money renting that flick, and it's partly about Heather Langenkamp. Freddy might have had something to do with it, too, but without Ms. Langenkamp, it might have been just another mediocre horror flick.
2. Neve Campbell (Sydney) - Scream, Scream 2, Scream 3
It might be controversial to go with another Wes Craven queen so early in the list, but believe me when I say that Neve Campbell deserves the credit. As Sydney Prescott, she is as tough as they come, even for a suburban girl, punching, kicking, and taunting other characters like she was plucked from an action movie. 'Scream' deftly deconstructs the horror genre like no other film, with a killer script from Kevin Williamson and adroit direction from Wes Craven, and Neve Campbell is at the trilogy's center, so its reputation as a pop horror outing is ill-deserved and hardly accurate. It's no teen flick. It's R Rated and witty, something that most horror movies can't pull off without pandering.
And Neve never disrobes, not once. You'll have to go to 'Wild Things' for that kind of (un)coverage.
3. Jamie Lee Curtis - Halloween, Prom Night, Terror Train, The Fog
Even though her mother, Janet Leigh, sort of started the whole "Scream Queen" scene, Jamie Lee Curtis really embodied the idea at the height of its popularity, starring in several of the genre's most long-lasting movies. Even though 'Prom Night' and 'Terror Train' don't hold up as well today, 'Halloween' might just hold up better than it did over thirty years ago.
Beyond having plenty of skin, great music, wonderful cinematography, a great villain, and an unparalleled performance by Donald Pleasance as Dr. Sam Loomis (a reference to 'Psycho' itself), 'Halloween' stars a charismatic Curtis as Laurie Strode, a bookish homebody whose Halloween goes horribly wrong. However, though 'Halloween' proved to be the performance that jump-started her career, getting cast in 'The Fog' as hiker Elizabeth Solley sent her into the scream queen stratosphere.
4. Adrienne Barbeau - The Fog, Swamp Thing, Creepshow, Escape from NY
Adrienne Barbeau had two big things going for her: her brief romance with John Carpenter, who cast her in 'The Fog'...and her breasts. Because of 'The Fog's marginal success, she was cast in other genre flicks, including a turn as Hal Holbrook's drunken wife in 'Creepshow' (I have never enjoyed seeing someone get eaten alive as much as I did during 'The Crate' segment). It is because of her brief run of cultish horror classics in the late 70s and early 80s that earned her a spot on this list.
5. Marilyn Burns - The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Though her role as Sally Hardesty did not lead to any real, lasting fame, Marilyn Burns could not be excluded from this list of notable horror ingenues. Her performance does not stand out as superb, but man alive can she scream. The second half of the movie, in fact, is rife with her strained voice, almost as prevalent as the soundtrack itself. Burns must also be given credit for the sheer amount of torture she must have gone through in making the movie, considering that she's literally covered in blood by the end of it. Hats off.
Honorable Mentions: Danielle Harris - Halloween 4, Halloween 5, Urban Legend, H2 Sarah Michelle Gellar - I Know What You Did Last Summer, Scream 2 Janet Leigh - Psycho, The Fog Sissy Spacek - Carrie Linda Blair - The Exorcist Drew Barrymore - Scream, Cat's Eye, Firestarter,
Have we reached an age in which facts are of no consequence? Nature.com has posted an article which has sparked my interest on the subject, and one of its premises is this: The assumption is that if they [scientists] explain things very, very clearly, everyone will understand. Unfortunately, this is an uphill battle.
The painfully unenlightened dialogue on the relative truth of scientific claims - we can never really "know" something - has digressed even farther, to the point that people, when confronted with evidence of an overwhelming variety, are able to appeal to belief in order to circumvent what has been said.
A consequence of being so surrounded by technology and knowledge is that we are free to disregard or contradict or subvert any claim with which we do not agree. Even the most uneducated person in America, with a desktop and an internet connection, can find corroborating evidence to support their beliefs, and this notion is specious and, in the end, unscientific. It is a gross misunderstanding of skepticism and thus deserves contemplation.
See, for example, I may believe that the Holocaust never happened. I may also believe that the events of the 'Iliad' never happened, either. Both are historical events, and I can only trust that both happened based on historical accounts, or available evidence. One glance at a photograph from Auschwitz will certainly convince any number of credulous people. Reading an account of an Auschwitz survivor depicted in one of the aforementioned photographs may convince slightly more skeptical people.
At this point, people may be able to still hold a certain amount of skepticism. If a picture and a few firsthand accounts were all we had, then we may feasibly doubt the existence of the Holocaust. It is certainly for that reason that people are unsure of the veracity of the war that is at the center of the 'Iliad'. The accounts are centuries behind the supposed events, so we are confident that we can discredit its actual happening.
The same is not true with the Holocaust. We do not have scant evidence for Hitler's persecution of the Jews, nor do we have very much wiggle room with regard to its truth, and yet people still do insist that the Holocaust either did not exist or was greatly exaggerated, despite the mounds upon mounds of evidence we have to prove otherwise.
I've taken a long detour here, but I'm getting back to my point. Let me, then, ask a question: Are Holocaust deniers mere skeptics? Are they even skeptics at all? How free am I to believe what I wish? Being on the other side, am I a member of the intellectual Gestapo if I insist that beliefs of an unfounded nature are simply unacceptable to hold in today's world? At what point do we stop accepting this kind of half-assed thinking? Is truth, as we experience it, really that malleable?
I do not mean to make a Straw Man out of the Holocaust deniers (though I think that few people would object to me ridiculing them), so let me move onto another subject: ghosts. Spirits. Poltergeists. Whatever you call them, there is a significant amount of observational evidence for their existence, and yet very little empirical, scientific evidence supports that the door that will not stay open in your grandmother's home has anything to do with the four people who were butchered there fifty years ago.
Most rational people reject the existence of ghosts, though, sight unseen. The white dots and inexplicable shadows on photographs do not point immediately to the idea that Uncle Bernie has come back in that form to...well, haunt a photograph. It's because the burden of proof is on the ghost hunters to make it so, and electromagnetic fields and dotted pictures do not pass snuff, just as random alignments of data do not point to the world ending in December of 2012.
The problem is that armchair skepticism has become the normal mode of expression of doubt in this country, and people are able to comfort themselves in constantly moving back the uprights on matters of evidence. Skeptics of evolution say that there are no "transitional" fossils in the record, using science's own language against it, and no matter how many actual, true transitional fossils scientists are able to haul out, people claim to have never seen them.
Perhaps it is because the science has outraced the common intellect. Scientists of two hundred years ago could be scientific hobbyists, and most people could identify with the claims being made and accept the facts because the facts were more or less the result of a thought experiment backed up with science and common sense. It's how we came to understand gravity, the lunar cycle, etc. Science now is so far beyond a common person's understanding that, by comparison, ghosts seem quite easy to believe in.
This, I'm afraid, is a problem. The burden of proof is always on the one who posits a truth - this IS so - rather than those who reject it. You do not, for example, have to prove that there are no fairies in my garden if I say so, or that there is not a pink elephant in my trunk, even if I stomp up and down and shout furiously. It is up to me, at that point, to bring about the compelling evidence. I can find millions of people to agree that there are, indeed, fairies in the garden, or that the squeaking noise in my attic is the spirit of a Civil War soldier come to find his bayonet, or that the Holocaust was a primitive and very successful Photoshop campaign, but if I cannot provide substantive scientific evidence to support my claims, then I really have no claim to proof.
[img source=Paul Gaugin - Don't Listen to the Liar]
At Shopgoodwill.com, you can bid on items - usually going very cheaply - just like on eBay. The sight isn't as aesthetically pleasing or as easily managed as eBay, but you can find good deals and very odd items on the site. For example, I found a set of 16 Mark Twain novels from 1906 that are going for fifty bucks, and I'm extremely tempted to get them. It's very much like Goodwill itself in that you still have to sift through everything to find something good, but you may just find something worth the look
"Almost Live Comedy Show" was announced earlier this month as part of a major marketing partnership Microsoft had sealed with a wide range of News Corp. properties to promote the launch of the computer giant's Windows 7 operating system. As part of the deal, "Almost Live Comedy Show" was set to run commercial-free, with Microsoft marketing messages built into the special instead (Daily Variety, Oct. 14).
But that was before Microsoft execs attended the special's taping Oct. 16. The program included MacFarlane and Alex Borstein -- the voice of "Family Guy" matriarch Lois -- pitching Windows 7. For most of the special, however, MacFarlane and Borstein made typical "Family Guy"-style jokes, including riffs on deaf people, the Holocaust, feminine hygiene and incest.
How were they shocked at this? Macfarlane and the others of the Family Guy crew have a solidly-developed shtick by this point, and it seems weird that they would pull out this close to airtime. Man, this is worse than the time that...[insert joke about pulling out].
Luv Ya Bunches, about four elementary school girls who have little in common, but bond over the fact that they’re all named after flowers, is the first installment of a four-book series. But Scholastic says the book, released on October 1, failed to meet its vetting process because it contains offensive language and same-sex parents of one of the main characters, Milla.
The company sent a letter to Myracle's editor asking the author to omit certain words such as "geez," "crap," "sucks," and "God" (as in, "oh my God") and to alter its plotline to include a heterosexual couple. Myracle agreed to get rid of the offensive language "with the goal—as always—of making the book as available to as many readers as possible," but the deal breaker was changing Milla's two moms.
It's not upsetting to know that acts of censorship of this kind still happen in 2009. Any look at the newspapers will give you a clear idea of where many people stand on the issue. It's still depressing, however, as I know that, in about 20 years, this kind of occurrence will be considered shameful and backwards.
The Obama administration on Monday came out strongly against efforts by Islamic nations to bar the defamation of religions, saying the moves would restrict free speech.
"Some claim that the best way to protect the freedom of religion is to implement so-called anti-defamation policies that would restrict freedom of expression and the freedom of religion," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters. "I strongly disagree."
This is a bill that is probably very divisive among religious people, but it is decidedly anti-American, if you are a proponent of certain kinds of speech. No one, incidentally, backs attacking people because of their religious beliefs, but the beliefs themselves are an entirely different story. It seems as though certain Islamic sects are presenting an effort to curb one's ability to be critical of actions based on belief, trying to paint those who are critical as "persecuting" Islam itself.
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