Tuesday, 27 September 2011
Monday, 26 September 2011
Sunday, 25 September 2011
Red Dawn 2011 redo?
(redo of last years article with updates below-EvS)
A redo of Red Dawn done back in '84. This time its the Chinese instead of Cuban/Nicaraguan/Russian invasion force. A fantastic piece of propaganda back in the 80s. Even the young
Evil von Scarry couldnt wait for the commies to invade so he could "Get Some!!" I guess though in Canada we would have to scream "Grizzlies" instead of the now famous " Wolverines!" war cry, even though Wolverine is technically Canadian but that's a completely different thread.
Well this upcoming flick is causing quite the flap through the "conspiracy" network. Myself I think its just another remake in a long line of remakes and hollyweird runs out of ideas ( thats cuz they never ask the real geeks what would be cool cuz they dont give a shit). Some might say its " the system" preparing us or testing us for Chinese take over of the U.S. , fuck bring it on alot of folks have been itching to take some shots at the NWO poster children. Time for the Armageddon shuffle. Anyhow heres a vid with cool Rage soundtrack I found on you tube followed by some pics that Alex Jones has on his site.
update 2011- Sept
Turns out the film will be released but has been digitized to make the invaders North Korean instead of PRC troops, evidently due to sensitivities in the Chinese market. Funny I dont hear germans complaining about WW2 films. Below is article outlining the changes- EvS
By Ben Fritz and John Horn, Los Angeles Times
March 16, 2011
China has become such an important market for U.S. entertainment companies that one studio has taken the extraordinary step of digitally altering a film to excise bad guys from the Communist nation lest the leadership in Beijing be offended.
When MGM decided a few years ago to remake "Red Dawn," a 1984 Cold War drama about a bunch of American farm kids repelling a Soviet invasion, the studio needed new villains, since the U.S.S.R. had collapsed in 1991. The producers substituted Chinese aggressors for the Soviets and filmed the movie in Michigan in 2009.
But potential distributors are nervous about becoming associated with the finished film, concerned that doing so would harm their ability to do business with the rising Asian superpower, one of the fastest-growing and potentially most lucrative markets for American movies, not to mention other U.S. products.
As a result, the filmmakers now are digitally erasing Chinese flags and military symbols from "Red Dawn," substituting dialogue and altering the film to depict much of the invading force as being from North Korea, an isolated country where American media companies have no dollars at stake.
The changes illustrate just how much sway China's government has in the global entertainment industry, even without uttering a word of official protest. Although it's unclear if anyone in China has seen "Red Dawn," a leaked version of the script last year resulted in critical editorials in the Global Times, a communist party-controlled paper.
That followed postings of pictures on China's popular Web portals Sina and Tiexue in late 2009 of the "Red Dawn" set showing actors posing as Chinese troops and mock propaganda posters of the U.S. Capitol building smashed by a hammer. The posts received tens of the thousands of views. "When does it come out?" read one Chinese comment. "There is no hope for theatrical screening [censorship], wait for pirated version."
An MGM spokesman said that no one at the studio has had discussions with Chinese government officials about "Red Dawn."
Hollywood has learned the hard way that besmirching China's image on-screen can have long-running implications for the many arms of a modern media conglomerate. In the late 1990s, Walt Disney Studios, Sony Pictures and MGM all faced a temporary halt in their business dealings in the country after releasing the movies "Kundun," "Seven Years in Tibet" and "Red Corner," respectively, which were critical of the communist government.
Today, China is far more important to the Hollywood studios, despite the government's policy of allowing only about 20 non-Chinese films into theaters each year. In 2010, China was the fifth-biggest box office market outside of the United States, with $1.5 billion in revenue.
A number of Hollywood studios are deepening their business ties to the world's most populous nation. Disney is building a theme park outside Shanghai, Sony Pictures co-produced the recent "Karate Kid" remake with the government-affiliated China Film Group, and News Corp.'s Fox International Productions recently made the Chinese-language hit "Hot Summer Days" there. Even independent studios like Lionsgate and Summit Entertainment will release their films "Killers" and "Red" in China in coming months.
Dan Mintz, whose DMG Entertainment is a leading producer and distributor of movies in China, said the "Red Dawn" story dramatizes how Western companies can fundamentally misunderstand how the nation works. If the picture had gone out without redacting the Chinese invaders, he said, "there would have been a real backlash. It's like being invited to a dinner party and insulting the host all night long. There's no way to look good.... The film itself was not a smart move."
Mintz, who met with the producers of "Red Dawn" to offer some suggestions on how they could proceed, said that doing business in China requires a partnership approach. "The more you reach out, the better your relationships will be," Mintz said. "This is bigger than a single film."
The "Red Dawn" remake follows several teenagers in Spokane, Wash., who fight invading Chinese forces allied with Russia in the near future (in the original film, the Soviets partnered with Cubans). The roughly $60-million production stars Chris Hemsworth, who will become much better known to moviegoers this May when he plays the title role in the superhero event picture "Thor."
MGM had been set to release "Red Dawn" in November, but the debt-laden studio filed for bankruptcy the month before and emerged under new leadership at the end of the year. New chief executives Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum are seeking to sell both "Red Dawn" and the horror film "The Cabin in the Woods," the last two pictures produced under a previous regime, as they try to reshape the 87-year-old company.
China will be an important market for the studio as it goes ahead with plans to produce two movies based on "The Hobbit" and James Bond sequels. The last Bond movie, 2008's "Quantum of Solace," grossed $21 million in China.
In the last few weeks, MGM has begun showing "Red Dawn" to potential buyers at other studios. Several people who have seen the movie but requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record said they couldn't risk distributing it given the potential blowback in China.
The feedback led to MGM's decision to make the highly unusual changes. Although it's common to reshape movies in the editing room, there's no known precedent for changing the nationality of an entire group of characters.
People close to the picture said the changes will cost less than $1 million and involve changing an opening sequence summarizing the story's fictional backdrop, re-editing two scenes and using digital technology to transform many Chinese symbols to Korean. It's impossible to eliminate all references to China, the people said, though the changes will give North Korea a much larger role in the coalition that invades the U.S.
"We were initially very reluctant to make any changes," said Tripp Vinson, one of the movie's producers. "But after careful consideration we constructed a way to make a scarier, smarter and more dangerous 'Red Dawn' that we believe improves the movie."
Representatives for director Dan Bradley did not respond to requests for comment.
If MGM is unable to find a distributor for the movie, it could end up going direct-to-DVD or could even be shelved, never to be seen by the public.
"Red Dawn" is not the only piece of entertainment to swap out Chinese villains for North Koreans recently. The video game "Homefront," which was released this week and features a script by John Milius, writer of the original "Red Dawn," was also originally intended to feature a Chinese invasion. For business reasons, publisher THQ changed the occupying forces to North Korea.
A representative for MGM said it's hopeful the unusual changes will have a simple result: turning "Red Dawn" from a complete write-off into a movie that can find an audience and make money.
"MGM has been working with the film 'Red Dawn's' director and producers to make the most commercially viable version of the film for audiences worldwide," said Mike Vollman, executive vice president of worldwide marketing. "We want to ensure the most people possible are able to experience it."
Times staff writer David Pierson in Beijing contributed to this report.
ben.fritz@latimes.com
john.horn@latimes.com
Saturday, 24 September 2011
Scientists Successfully Induce Hibernation in Animals for the First Time
Scientists at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks have successfully caused a group of arctic ground squirrels, naturally hibernating animals, to wake from and then go back into hibernation. It's the first time anyone has ever managed to induce hibernation, and it could have some pretty amazing medical benefits for humans as well.
Why is hibernation importnat? Hibernating animals can reduce their metabolism severely, which reduces heart rate and blood flow, enabling them to consume much less oxygen and survive in environments (especially in cold winters) that a non-hibernating animal would not be able to cope with.
These researchers discovered that the molecule that induces hibernation is adenosine, which is produced by all animals, including humans. When adenosine attaches itself to receptors in the brain, it causes the animal to feel sleepy. But in hibernating animals like the arctic ground squirrel, during hibernation season the body produces a huge amount of adenosine, which triggers a much more intense form of sleep--torpor, or hibernation. From that discovery, the scientists created an artificial form of adenosine as well as a synthetic version of caffeine, which was expected to have the opposite effect.
The results were actually a little mixed; the scientists definitely did managed to induce and reverse torpor in the ground squirrels, but that success was partly dependent on the season. During the middle of the hibernation season, torpor was successfully induced in every case, but only a third of the squirrels could be put back into hibernation during the early part of the hibernation season. The scientists are not quite sure yet how the season affects the animal's susceptibility to the drug.
Next up is an attempt with rats, which will give a better sense of how the drug might work on humans. And there are indeed some serious medical uses for induced hibernation: After intense episodes like a heart attack or stroke, many lives could be saved if highly reduced blood flow could be induced. Why else would DARPA be looking into it?
Mind-Reading Tech Reconstructs Videos From Brain Images
Scientists are on the cusp of translating brain and visual activity into images...God help those who read mine..but this can have some scary and cool applications...imagine recording your dreams to watch later! For full article click here: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-01/mind-readers
Thursday, 22 September 2011
Tim Burton's~Dark Shadows Cast photo!!!
1967
1991
2012
"In the year 1752, Joshua and Naomi Collins, with young son Barnabas, set sail from Liverpool, England to start a new life in America. But even an ocean was not enough to escape the mysterious curse that has plagued their family. Two decades pass and Barnabas (Johnny Depp) has the world at his feet—or at least the town of Collinsport, Maine. The master of Collinwood Manor, Barnabas is rich, powerful and an inveterate playboy…until he makes the grave mistake of breaking the heart of Angelique Brouchard (Eva Green). A witch, in every sense of the word, Angelique dooms him to a fate worse than death: turning him into a vampire, and then burying him alive.
Two centuries later, Barnabas is inadvertently freed from his tomb and emerges into the very changed world of 1972. He returns to Collinwood Manor to find that his once-grand estate has fallen into ruin. The dysfunctional remnants of the Collins family have fared little better, each harboring their own dark secrets. Matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Michelle Pfeiffer) has called upon live-in psychiatrist, Dr. Julia Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter), to help with her family troubles."
Slated for May 11, 2012
Wednesday, 21 September 2011
Face Substitution
Face tracking software the substitutes one face for another...pretty cool! I see some video game applications already..
Tuesday, 20 September 2011
Monday, 19 September 2011
Saturday, 17 September 2011
Friday, 16 September 2011
Kepler Spots a Planet Orbiting Two Suns, Just Like Star Wars' Tatooine
A mournful French horn blows. An angsty Luke Skywalker stomps out of his aunt and uncle's sand hut and peers up at Tatooine's double sunset, his hair blowing in the breeze. It's a memorable scene from Star Wars—but now, a precedent for such a sky with two suns has been found in our universe.
Using data from the Kepler space observatory, scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and SETI have discovered for the first time a planet orbiting a binary star system, passing in front of both its parent stars along its orbit.
The planet, Kepler-16b, resembles Saturn in its mass and gaseous makeup. That mostly rules out the possibility of any living beings being present to enjoy the double sunset view, although chances are good Kepler-16b has an icy, non-gaseous satellite or two, as Saturn does.
The two stars in the system are 20% and 69% as massive as our sun, respectively. The planet orbits at a distance analogous to Venus's orbit in our solar system, which typically would place it within the "habitable zone" of planets that could support life. But since the combined mass of the two stars is still less than our sun, Kepler-16b's Venus-like orbit is most likely a cold one.
An animation of Kepler-16b's orbit:
Binary star systems, first cataloged at length by English astronomer William Herschel in the early 19th century, are key to our understanding of distant stars, since it's easy to derive each star's mass by studying their linked orbit (the two stars in a binary system both orbit around their shared center of mass). But whether or not such systems, which by some estimates account for about half of the stars in the known universe, could form and support orbiting planets has been a contentious topic--making today's finding significant not just for Star Wars fans.
"It's been pretty much a split vote amongst the theorists," said Alan Boss, a theoretical astrophysicist at the Carnegie Institution for Science, and a co-author of the Kepler 16-b paper. "Some say 'Yeah, we think it's possible to make a Saturn-mass object [in a binary star system].' Other papers say 'Well, no, we don't think it's going to work at all, because those changing gravitational forces from that central binary are going to screw up the process of trying to get little bodies to run into each other and grow bigger and bigger.'"
"One of the exciting things about this is: Kepler, as usual, has answered the question for us," said Boss.
The Kepler observatory's mission is to find and analyze potential Earth-like exoplanets throughout the universe. Today's discovery now significantly expands the working set of stars that could potentially harbor orbiting planets. That means more work for Kepler as it continues what has so far been an extremely successful mission.
The paper, authored primarily by Laurence Doyle of the SETI institute, appears in the journalScience today.
Thursday, 15 September 2011
Tuesday, 13 September 2011
12 Gauge Hot Dog - Epic Meal Time
http://youtu.be/5_wl7CD5B7Q
Link being wonky to youtube..........but here is the latest Epic Mealtime
Link being wonky to youtube..........but here is the latest Epic Mealtime
Monday, 12 September 2011
Sunday, 11 September 2011
Friday, 9 September 2011
Wednesday, 7 September 2011
Chalkboard Skull
http://www.etsy.com/listing/67192828/chalkboard-skull-in-jet-black
Tuesday, 6 September 2011
Saturday, 3 September 2011
New 'Goldilocks' Exoplanet Could be the Most Earth-Like We've Yet Seen, Lets Take it over!
Scientists have tracked down another goldilocks planet 31 light-years from Earth, and according to astronomers it has some strong points in its favor when it comes to the possibility of harboring the ingredients for life. HD85512b orbits an orange dwarf in the constellation Vela, and it’s just the right distance from the sun--and just the right mass--to rank among the most Earth-like planets ever discovered.
And by “among,” we mean really one of just two (or three, depending on how you feel aboutGliese 581g). Of the hundreds of exoplanets astronomers have recently discovered orbiting distant stars, only one--Gliese 581d--has been of the proper mass and distance from its star to be considered a strong candidate for habitability. Nearby Gliese 581g was once thought to be even more Earth-like than 581d, until some scientists asserted that 581g doesn’t even exist--a point that is still under debate.
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TAGS
Technology, Clay Dillow, eso, exoplanets,harps, HD85512b, life in the universe, Space
That alone makes it a potential candidate for life, but HD85512b has a couple of other characteristics working for it. For one, its orbit is almost perfectly circular and stable, so any climate on the planet wouldn’t swing wildly as it orbits. The planetary system is older than our own--a full one billion years older--so clearly it’s had enough time for life to potentially have developed there. in the same vein, its star is also more mature than our sun so it is less prone to violent solar activity that could destabilize the planet’s atmosphere.
Of course, there’s no way to tell if it actually has an atmosphere with modern instruments, and atmosphere is a critical ingredient here. Since HD85512b is orbiting on the inner portion of the goldilocks zone, it is more akin to Venus than to Earth in the amount of solar energy it’s taking on. But scientists speculate that cloud cover of fifty percent or more could offset that proximity enough to allow life to thrive--albeit a kind of life more suited to a balmy, hot environment (relative to Earth’s).
On average, Earth boasts 60 percent cloud cover so the idea of HD85512b having 50 percent isn’t so far-fetched. In fact, it’s probably more likely than the idea of humans building a light-speed spacecraft and then making the 31-year journey to go in for a closer look at the weather. But it’s fun to think about.
Tissue Engineering for consumption!? Yes!!
=
Ummmm Panda-burgers, here we come!!! Lol....
Earlier this week, we rejoiced at some promising news about the future of creating tasty meat without killing animals. Today, New Scientist is reporting from a workshop in Göteborg, Sweden, where Maastricht University meat scientist Mark Post relates his intention to grill up an in-vitro hamburger within a year.
RELATED ARTICLES
 | Dutch Scientists Grow First Pork Meat In Lab |
 | Is Your Dinner Endangered? DNA Detectives Investigate |
TAGS
Technology, Paul Adams, cooking, food, in vitro meat, lab-grown meat, meat
Steffan Welin of Linköping University offers the enticing reminder that lab-grown meat need not be limited to the sorts of beasts we typically eat, which have been chosen as much for their ease of cultivation as for their deliciousness. But cells in a vat don't have to graze or romp, aren't endangered, and thrive in captivity, so they can be cultured from whatever animal appeals. I think I fancy a hippo steak.
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