Choco-Thulhu is real!

I lamented the fact that the chocolate Cthulhu was just an April Fool's joke. Now, they are real. And green!

love all things lovecraft...

Lego Lovecraft house, with bricky tentacles

Lego artist Mr Xenomurphy created this great Lovecraftian horror-house, complete with Lego tentacles. Tentacles have so clearly been missing from Lego for all these years, it's a wonder they aren't standard issue now

That flick was hot.....

A San Francisco man caught on fire while watching a porn movie at a private booth in a sex shop on Thursday. Police and firefighters are still trying to determine what caused the man to catch on fire. Police said the man ran out of the sex shop “engulfed in flames” and police officers and firefighters arrived quickly, but he still has life-threatening burns on 90 percent of his body. An employee said the man was watching a movie in the back of the store, and police are searching the booth for flammable materials or other accelerants

Lincoln was a Theist & a Rationalist

(RNS) On the eve of the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, a long-lost letter has surfaced that describes President Abraham Lincoln's belief in God.

The Raab Collection of Philadelphia plans to sell a recently discovered letter written in 1866 by William Herndon, a Springfield, Ill., lawyer and Lincoln confidant.

"Mr. Lincoln's religion is too well known to me to allow of even a shadow of a doubt; he is or was a Theist & a Rationalist, denying all extraordinary -- supernatural inspiration or revelation," wrote Herndon of the nation's 16th president.

"At one time in his life, to say the least, he was an elevated Pantheist, doubting the immortality of the soul as the Christian world understands that term. He believed that the soul lost its identity and was immortal as a force. Subsequent to this he rose to the belief of a God."

The collection estimates the letter is worth $35,000.

Lincoln's faith has long been an elusive topic for historians. He was never baptized, did not join a church and usually did not discuss his beliefs.

"In rare instances, he divulged his true feelings to one close friend, longtime confidant and law partner, William Herndon," said Nathan Raab, vice president of the Raab Collection. "He did believe in God, however difficult it might be to easily define those beliefs."

differences in our political views are tied to differences in brain structure

Of course, it’s something many of us have suspected all along, but a new study published yesterday in Current Biology reveals that the differences in our political views are tied to differences in brain structure.
The next time you look at a Republican and wonder in astonishment at how small-minded, unscientific, inflexible and sometimes scarily racist their belief systems often are, well, wonder no more: They can’t help themselves…!
And the way you wince at them? It goes both ways, mate. Might be hard-coded into your gray matter as well. No wonder Conservatives find Liberals so infuriatingly condescending…
From Science Daily:

Individuals who call themselves liberal tend to have larger anterior cingulate cortexes, while those who call themselves conservative have larger amygdalas. Based on what is known about the functions of those two brain regions, the structural differences are consistent with reports showing a greater ability of liberals to cope with conflicting information and a greater ability of conservatives to recognize a threat, the researchers say.
“Previously, some psychological traits were known to be predictive of an individual’s political orientation,” said Ryota Kanai of the University College London. “Our study now links such personality traits with specific brain structure.”
Kanai said his study was prompted by reports from others showing greater anterior cingulate cortex response to conflicting information among liberals. “That was the first neuroscientific evidence for biological differences between liberals and conservatives,” he explained.
There had also been many prior psychological reports showing that conservatives are more sensitive to threat or anxiety in the face of uncertainty, while liberals tend to be more open to new experiences. Kanai’s team suspected that such fundamental differences in personality might show up in the brain.
And, indeed, that’s exactly what they found. Kanai says they can’t yet say for sure which came first. It’s possible that brain structure isn’t set in early life, but rather can be shaped over time by our experiences. And, of course, some people have been known to change their views over the course of a lifetime.

So there IS hope for Glenn Beck?
Here’s more on this from TIME’s blog:

This is not the first attempt to locate the biological roots of party affiliation. In an October 2010 study, researchers from the University of California, San Diego, and Harvard University identified a “liberal gene” — a variant called DRD4-7R, which affects the neurotransmitter dopamine — that has been linked with a personality type driven to seek out new experiences.
Another study from the University of Nebraska found that liberals and conservatives had different reactions to “gaze cues” — whether they tended to look in the same direction as a face on their computer screen. Liberals were more likely than conservatives to follow another person’s gaze, suggesting that people who lean right value autonomy more; alternative explanations suggest that liberals might be more empathetic, or that conservatives are less trusting of others.

The thing this study doesn’t explain is why progressive women are so much hotter than Republican women

very cool....

Engineering school students look at the DelFly bionic robot during a demonstration at the International Workshop on Bio-Inspired Robots in Nantes April 7, 2011. Some 200 bio-robot technicians from 17 countries participate in the three-day event to show the latest developments in robots inspired from the animal world. (REUTERS/Stephane Mahe)
The DelFly micro is only 10 centimeters from wing to wing, and weighs just a little over 3 grams. Its developers call it "the smallest flying ornithopter carrying a camera in the world." Below, more photos of the little guy in action, including the 0.4 gram camera it carries.

really?

Today in elf news,

Some fantasy film buffs in Arizona are taking their obsessions to new levels by actually having their ears cut open and sculpted to look like elves. The elf ears craze has many health risks but that isn't stopping sci-fi fans having the top of their cartilage sliced and sewed back together in a point. ... The elf ears craze is believed to have been brought on by films such as Lord of the Rings and Avatar, as well as HBO's comedy television series Bored to Death

truth....

warp drive concept feasible....

Warp drive technology, as described in Star Trek, is nonsense, but there might actually be something to the idea of "warp drive" as a concept, says theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss.

George R.R. Martin Picks His Favorite Science-Fiction Films of All Time...

 Forbidden Planet (1956)

The Tempest on Altair IV. The only science-fiction film that William Shakespeare ever wrote (admittedly with some help from screenwriter Cyril Hume). The Bard of Avon and Robby the Robot make a combination that has still yet to be surpassed. Leslie Nielsen plays Captain Kirk a decade before William Shatner, and does it better. In fact, the C-57-D and its command trio of captain, first officer, and doctor are clear forerunners of the Enterprise and its Kirk/Spock/Bones triad, though none of Kirk’s myriad love interests could hold a candle to Anne Francis as the sexy yet innocent Altaira. It’s Walter Pidgeon who steals the film, however. His layered portrayal of the tormented Morbius is almost… well… Shakespearean. And did I mention Robby the Robot? Forbidden Planet was his first film role, but Robby went on to make numerous appearances in other movies and television episodes, a career that R2D2, C3PO, and Robocop can only envy. Forbidden Planet’s visuals and special effects were state of the art in their day, and still hold up pretty well… especially the sequence where the invisible Id monster gets caught in the disintegrator beams. The score was also amazing and unique, done in electronic tonalities that remain as unsettling as they were revolutionary. I hear rumors that they are going to remake this. Please, no.

                                                ALIENS

Once upon a time, Robert A. Heinlein wrote a classic (and controversial) science-fiction novel called Starship Troopers, which is still being read and argued about today. Many years later, director Paul Verhoeven and writer Edward Neumeier made a very bad film called Starship Troopers. Fortunately RAH was dead by then and never had to see it. In between, James Cameron made Aliens. According to Hollywood legend, when Cameron heard that they were going to film Starship Troopers, he said, “Why bother? I’ve done it.” And, you know, he had. His film was not based on the novel Starship Troopers, of course, but his Colonial Marines come a lot closer to the spirit and feel of Heinlein’s Mobile Infantry than anything in the Verhoeven movie, while still remaining true to the Alien franchise. Aliens is one of the rare cases of a sequel that was actually better than the original (no mean trick here, since the original was pretty damned good). This is probably Sigourney Weaver’s best turn as Ripley, though all of them were good. Her supporting cast was great as well: Hicks (Michael Biehn), Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein), the heroic android Bishop (Lance Henriksen), and especially Newt, as played by Carrie Henn. “Will I dream?” Newt asks Ripley in the last scene of the film, just before they settle down into their capsules for a long, cold sleep. “Yes” would be my answer. If they ever put me in charge of the franchise, the next Alien film will open with Newt waking up safe on Earth, having dreamed all those later, awful Alien movies.

Blade Runner (1982)

Poor Philip K. Dick. One of the true geniuses of science fiction, he struggled all his life to find an audience, and never had two nickels to rub together. Then, after he dies, he gets discovered by Hollywood, and film after film after film follows. Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, The Adjustment Bureau, and more on the way. But Blade Runner was the first Dick film and remains the best. Based on Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, with a title borrowed from an unrelated novel by Alan Nourse, Blade Runner gave film audiences an entirely new vision of what the future might hold, very different from the sterile universe of Star Trek and its ilk. This was a gritty, dirty, dark tomorrow where it seemed to rain day and night, brought to vivid life by Ridley Scott’s superb direction, Syd Mead’s amazing production designs, and a script by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples that even Dick might have liked. Forget the theatrical release, with its hokey voice-overs and tacked-on happy ending. To get the true impact of this one, the director’s cut is the only way to go. I still get a chill listening to Rutger Hauer’s final speech. “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I’ve watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain. Time to die.”

5.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

 Alien (1979)

Some purists will argue that Alien is really a horror film in science-fiction drag, and maybe they have a point. But it’s a great horror film in science-fiction drag. The look of the film was unique; we had never seen a spaceship like the Nostromo before, though you have to wonder about all those dripping pipes—did this starship run on steam? H.R. Giger’s alien designs made “Gigeresque” an adjective. The blue-collar down-and-dirty crew seemed like real people. The chest-burster scene is strong stuff even today, and those who saw it in the theaters without knowing what was coming, like me, will never forget it. Tom Skerritt’s death packed almost as much punch (a chorus of “Wait a minute, I thought Dallas was the hero” was heard across the land). After that, you knew that no one was safe. And then there was the life-pod scene, Ripley in her underwear and the Alien in the pipes, sex and horror mashed together. From where I sit, Ripley is the defining role of Sigourney Weaver’s career. The fact that she never won an Oscar for Ripley just underlines the sad truth that the Academy does not honor actors for roles in science-fiction or fantasy films, no matter how good they are. (The single conspicuous exception will be dealt with when I get to my Honorable Mentions.)

There have been four versions of this story filmed to date, all deriving from the original Jack Finney novel, though I doubt the makers of the three remakes are familiar with anything beyond the original film. Every time they remake it, it gets worse. The second film, the 1978 Philip Kaufman version with Donald Sutherland, Leonard Nimoy, and Jeff Goldblum, is not half bad. Let’s be kind and pretend that Body Snatchers (1993) and The Invasion (2007) do not exist. It’s only the 1956 original that belongs on this list. A classic tale of creeping Red Scare paranoia and alien invasion, full of fathers who aren’t fathers, husbands who aren’t husbands, wives who aren’t wives, director Don Siegel’s film made a whole generation afraid to go to sleep, and contributed the phrase “pod people” to the idiom. The ending, with a crazed Kevin McCarthy standing on the highway shouting, “You’re next,” at passing cars, came as a real shock to the filmgoers of the 1950s, who expected happy endings in their monster movies.

The Road Warrior (1981)

The second of the three Mad Max films is by far the best. The original Mad Max was utterly forgettable, and while Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome has some great parts—the Thunderdome itself, Master/Blaster, Tina Turner’s turn as Queen of Bartertown, and the wonderful language of the tribe of lost children—it also recycles some of the best bits of The Road Warrior rather shamelessly. But The Road Warrior has it all. Mel Gibson is perfect as the reluctant hero, but much of the film’s juice comes from its supporting characters: Wez and the Humungous (“the Ayatollah of Rocknrollah!”), the Feral Kid, Pappagallo, the Mechanic, the Warrior Woman (played by Virginia Hey, who would later sign aboard Farscape)… and best of all, the Gyro Captain, masterfully played by Bruce Spence (“Remember lingerie?”). You have to love the end, where the embittered loner Max remains an embittered loner, while the lecherous cigar-chomping Gyro Captain becomes the new leader of the tribe. Maybe if he’d known that Thunderdome, Tina Turner, and all those pigs were waiting in his future, Max would have made a different decision.

…

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

The original version, of course. That thing with Keanu Reaves could not make a list of the top 100 science-fiction films. How do you remake The Day the Earth Stood Still and turn “Klaatu Barada Nikto” into a mumbled throwaway aside? That’s like remaking Citizen Kane and leaving out Rosebud. Jennifer Connelly, while lovely to look upon, is no Patricia Neal, and Keanu Reaves is certainly no Michael Rennie. Keanu’s acting range more closely approximates that of Gort from the first film. Edmund North’s script for the 1951 original actually improves on its source material, the Harry Bates short story “Farewell to the Master,” and Robert Wise’s direction is sure-handed and impeccable. There’s a certain sentimentality to the ’51 film that may come across as hokey to modern audiences, but I find that infinitely preferable to the sour misanthropy of the remake. And the original is intelligent from start to finish, where the remake is relentlessly stupid.

 The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

If you have to have a Star Wars film on the list, this is the one. The original Star Wars—I refuse to call it A New Hope—changed the face of movies and science fiction both, though not always in good ways. It has dated rather badly, though. Empire holds up better, perhaps because of the Leigh Brackett script. She was the best writer ever to work on the franchise. The second film gives us more of Han Solo and Darth Vader and less of Luke, which is all to the good. Alec Guinness is missed, but we get Yoda. R2D2 and C3PO are still fun, not yet the annoyances they become in the prequel trilogy. Lucas has yet to conceive of Jar Jar Binks, thank God, and those cuddly cute Ewoks remain a film in the future. The ice planet and the swamp planet and the floating city were all familiar staples of print science fiction, and had been since the heyday of the pulps, but it was a thrill to see them realized on screen for the first time.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Well, there’s Avatar (2009). Amazing special effects, a feast for the eyes, but I liked the story better when they called it Dances With Wolves. Then you have Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), if you like watching Richard Dreyfuss playing with his mashed potatoes. I want to see the movie that starts where Close Encounters ends, the one about the people boarding that starship. Serenity (2005) has a lot to recommend it, but ultimately comes across as what is: the last episode of the ill-fated and much-mourned TV series Firefly. For those who never watched the show, the film has far less impact. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) was the best of the Trek films, but that still doesn’t earn it a place on the list. Maybe if I was doing the Top 20 instead of the Top 10. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is certainly a landmark, a film that students of the cinema, Kubrick fans, and French critics love to analyze and ponder. If only it wasn’t so bloody dull. The only memorable character in the film is the HAL 9000.
Galaxy Quest… ah, Galaxy Quest (1999). Maybe I should have put that one in the No. 10 slot, in place of Empire. It’s a Star Trek parody that’s better than any of the Star Trek films. “This episode was very badly written!” Maybe, but the film was not. A near-miss. A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001) had an amazing array of talent behind it. A script by Ian Watson, based on a story by Brian Aldiss, directed by Steven Spielberg, working with material that Stanley Kubrick had developed for years. They produced a brilliant, haunting, gorgeous, but ultimately flawed masterpiece. This one came close, too. The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) is… what? Science fiction? Horror? Musical comedy? Cult film? Act along? It is certainly in the Top 10 of whatever the hell it is, once we find a category for it.

The only science-fiction film ever to win an Academy Award for acting—science fiction and fantasy have won plenty of Oscars for special effects, makeup, etc.—was Charly (1968). Cliff Robertson took home the Oscar for his performance as Charly Gordon, a role he’d originally performed in a television adaptation of the same story, called The Two Worlds of Charly Gordon. The TV version was based on Flowers for Algernon, the classic short story by Daniel Keyes, the film version (script by Stirling Silliphant) of the novel Keyes made by expanding that story. In both cases, shorter was better.

cheers.....

 

German police are concerned about an increasing number of teens who are reportedly getting drunk using vodka-soaked tampons as the alcohol delivery system. The practice is known as "slimming," a term that hit the Urban Dictionary way back in 2008. From The Local:

Police in the Baden-Württemburg city of Tuttlingen responded Tuesday to growing online chatter among teenagers that they could become intoxicated using the vodka tampons without having alcohol on their breath. This is not true, police said, denying that it was an effective way to get drunk. They also warned girls that the alcohol could damage vaginal walls and increase the risk of infection. Boys have reportedly also been using tampons anally

shameless merchandizing....but cool anyway

Science fiction growth-chart takes your kid from Tribble to Vader

This geeky dad made a growth-chart for his daughter that allows her to log her height against Star Wars and other science fiction franchise characters. It comes as a seven-foot-tall PDF, in case your kid happens to grow to Darth Vader heights.

having it his way....

I’m not entirely sure what’s going on here, but it looks important

doing his part...

Greenham Airfield,June 5, 1944

He gives the order of the Day : 'Full victory-nothing else !' to paratroopers in England, just before they board their airplanes to participate in the first assault in the invasion of the continent of Europe.
Greenham Common Airfield in England about on June 5, 1944

interesting...

A novelization of the “lost” Doctor Who serial “Shada”, scripted by Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams in 1979, will be published next year, the Guardian reports:

Adams wrote three series of Doctor Who in the late 1970s, when he was in his twenties and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was first airing as a BBC radio comedy. “Shada” was intended as a six-part drama to finish off the 17th season, with Tom Baker in the role of the Doctor.
The story features the Time Lord coming to Earth with assistant Romana (Lalla Ward) to visit Professor Chronotis, who has absconded from Gallifrey, the Doctor’s home planet, and now lives quietly at Cambridge college St Cedd’s. (The Doctor: “When I was on the river I heard the strange babble of inhuman voices, didn’t you, Romana?” Professor Chronotis: “Oh, probably undergraduates talking to each other, I expect.”)
Chronotis has brought with him the most powerful book in the universe, The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey - which, in a typical touch of Adams bathos, turns out to have been borrowed from his study by a student. Evil scientist Skagra, an escapee from prison planet Shada, is on its trail.
Large parts of the story had already been filmed on location in Cambridge before industrial action at the BBC brought production to a halt. The drama was never finished, and in the summer of 1980 “Shada” was abandoned – although various later projects attempted to resurrect it.
Douglas Adams’s Doctor Who series are among the very few which have never been novelised, reportedly because the author wanted to do them himself but was always too busy. Gareth Roberts, a prolific Doctor Who scriptwriter, has now been given the job.
Publisher BBC Books declared the book “a holy grail” for Time Lord fans. Editorial director Albert De Petrillo said: “Douglas Adams’s serials for Doctor Who are considered by many to be some of the best the show has ever produced. Shada is a funny, scary, surprising and utterly terrific story, and we’re thrilled to be publishing the first fully realised version of this Doctor Who adventure as Douglas originally conceived it.”
Ed Victor, the literary agent representing the Douglas Adams estate, said: “The BBC have been asking us for years [to allow a novelisation of Shada] and the estate finally said, ‘Why not?’” Having Roberts novelise the Adams script was “like having a sketch on a canvas by Rubens, and now the studio of Rubens is completing it,” he added. The book will be published in March 2012 as a £16.99 hardback.
Adams died in 2001, and a posthumous collection of his work, including the unfinished novel The Salmon of Doubt, was published the following year. A Hitchhiker’s Guide followup, And Another Thing…., written by Eoin Colfer, was published in 2010, but Victor said there were “no plans at the moment” for more such sequels.

Bonus clip: Andrew Orton’s animation on the Daleks, inspired by Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide

man, that about sums it up...

John Scalzi's Epublishing Bingo card captures nearly every tedious talking point from nearly

should have known better...

DC Comics apparently shut down commenting on its blog The Source after things got ugly in a thread about an eternal question: Who runs faster, Superman or The Flash? "DC's Blog Closes Comments, Gives Up On Even Trying To Talk to You Jerks"

perfect

President Bush Portrait Made of Porn

At first glance this portrait of President Bush by Jonathan Yeo looks perfectly normal… and then all at once you realize that this Bush painting is actually quite NSFW.
Source

hard core....

From The Atlantic's archives, a harrowing 1961 account of a Soviet surgeon on a primitive Antarctic base who had to remove his own appendix, stopping frequently as he battled vertigo and blood loss:

I worked without gloves. It was hard to see. The mirror helps, but it also hinders -- after all, it's showing things backwards. I work mainly by touch. The bleeding is quite heavy, but I take my time -- I try to work surely. Opening the peritoneum, I injured the blind gut and had to sew it up. Suddenly it flashed through my mind: there are more injuries here and I didn't notice them ... I grow weaker and weaker, my head starts to spin. Every 4-5 minutes I rest for 20-25 seconds. Finally, here it is, the cursed appendage! With horror I notice the dark stain at its base. That means just a day longer and it would have burst and ... At the worst moment of removing the appendix I flagged: my heart seized up and noticeably slowed; my hands felt like rubber. Well, I thought, it's going to end badly. And all that was left was removing the appendix ... And then I realised that, basically, I was already saved

what the hell is this?

Armchair, 2009, mixed media, 7cm x 8cm x 8cm @Jessica Harrison. Courtesy of the artist.
The use of what seems like the corporal as material is shocking and allows us to reconsider our relationships with the familiar. Take, for example, an armchair

finally, something to wear with my summer weight seersucker.....

A bookmaker called Betfair has released a line of synthetic hoof-shoes as a charity fundraiser. They cost £1,300 a pair, and sport carbon fibre hooves with horsehair uppers.

very cool....

They made a Cuban pork sandwich that looks like a Cuban cigar. "We take the spices that go into the pork shoulder and fashion that into ash," said Cantu." We take the sandwich and wrap it up into a collard green" and add an edible cigar band. "We put it in a $1.99 ashtray and charge you about 20 bucks for it."

does anyone doubt that this dude does some strange sh** late at night when his blinds are drawn...

Conservative pundit George Will offered a remarkable turn of phrase in his analysis of presidential candidate Mick Huckabee's recent political dog-whistling.

...sensible Americans, who pay scant attention to presidential politics at this point in the electoral cycle, must nevertheless be detecting vibrations of weirdness emanating from people associated with the party. The most recent vibrator is Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas who won the 2008 Republican caucuses in Iowa and reached that year's national convention with more delegates than Mitt Romney, and who might run again.

got to love this guy, for sheer balls if nothing else...

Of course it was, Newt. We’re all that fucking stupid…
Watch in amazement as cretinous, hypocritical blow-hard Newt tries to wiggle out of his past—and widely known—“indiscretions” with this ridiculously preposterous, transparently obvious attempt to connect with Christian votes on CBN. Where else does a Republican sinner go for absolution?

“There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate,” said Gingrich. “And what I can tell you is that when I did things that were wrong, I wasn’t trapped in situation ethics, I was doing things that were wrong, and yet, I was doing them.
“I found that I felt compelled to seek God’s forgiveness. Not God’s understanding, but God’s forgiveness. I do believe in a forgiving God. And I think most people, deep down in their hearts hope there’s a forgiving God. Somebody once said that when we’re young, we seek justice, but as we get older, we seek mercy. There’s something to that, I think.
“I feel that I’m now 67 I’m a grandfather. I have two wonderful grandchildren. I have two wonderful daughters and two great sons in law. Callista and I have a great marriage. I think that I’ve learned an immense amount. And I do feel, in that sense, that God has given me, has blessed me with an opportunity as a person.”

What a complete farce. This man’s unbelievable (in every sense) hubris is a gift to the nation’s comedians and satirists. The only good thing—besides the yucks—of a Newt Gingrich candidacy is that he’ll be soaking up political donation$ on the right with his no-hope presidential run.
 


Via TPM

cool....

Steampunk bugs made from deactivated ammunition

Tom Hardwidge's Arthrobots are sculptural steampunk insectoid junkbots made from spent ammunition polished to a mirror shine. They're lovely, detailed and delicate

tough economy

Pawel Hynek's 2006 image "Obsolete" depicts a homeless robot begging for electrical power; it's striking and funny as well as a little uncomfortable-making. It reminds me of one of the most demented scenes in science fiction history: the moment in Ian McDonald's stupendous novel The Broken Land in which a re-animated severed head is reduced to performing sexual favors on a street-corner in exchange for nutrient bath to fill the shallow dish in which its neck-stump rests.
Obsolete (via JWZ)

America is not broke.

Contrary to what those in power would like you to believe so that you’ll give up your pension, cut your wages, and settle for the life your great-grandparents had, America is not broke.

Not by a long shot. The country is awash in wealth and cash. It’s just that it’s not in your hands. It has been transferred, in the greatest heist in history, from the workers and consumers to the banks and the portfolios of the uber-rich.

 
  Today just 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined.
Let me say that again. 400 obscenely rich people, most of whom benefited in some way from the multi-trillion dollar taxpayer “bailout” of 2008, now have more loot, stock and property than the assets of 155 million Americans combined. If you can’t bring yourself to call that a financial coup d’état, then you are simply not being honest about what you know in your heart to be true.
And I can see why. For us to admit that we have let a small group of men abscond with and hoard the bulk of the wealth that runs our economy, would mean that we’d have to accept the humiliating acknowledgment that we have indeed surrendered our precious Democracy to the moneyed elite. Wall Street, the banks and the Fortune 500 now run this Republic—and, until this past month, the rest of us have felt completely helpless, unable to find a way to do anything about it

                                                                              Michael Moore

I don't think I like this....

Blade Runner, The Sequel. Or The Prequel.

Alcon Entertainment, producers of the Blind Side and The Book of Eli, own the rights to make a prequel or sequel to Blade Runner. They seemingly haven't gotten much further than that. From Entertainment Weekly:

“We have some ideas that we’re not in a position to discuss yet,” Andrew Kosove, Alcon’s co-CEO, teases to EW. “But from our point of view, the thematic core of the original movie — what does it mean to be a human being? — is even more relevant today than it was when the film came out. After all, we’re living in the industrial age of technology.” Kosove and his fellow CEO, Broderick Johnson, are partnering on the project with Bud Yorkin, one of the producers of the original film. “That picture turned out so well — it’s just been selected for preservation by the Library of Congress — that for a long time I was afraid to try to make another one,” Yorkin says. “But now seems like the perfect time. We just need to find the right writer and director

well said....

As always, Mr Stewart puts it into perspective -- the same people who object to limiting the tax-funded bonuses of bailed out bankers because it would violate their contracts say that teachers' contracts should be torn up and their benefits slashed.

I love crazy...

The ratings for Glenn Beck’s nightly Fox News conspiracy theory rants are still taking a Nielsen nosedive. I’m not going to go out on a limb again and say Beck’s “over” because he rallied the very next day after I did it the last time and I just had to take it all back. So I’ll simply point out what James Downie wrote in The New Republic:

Beck, says [biographer Alexander] Zaitchik, was caught “in a vicious circle”: To keep viewers coming back, he had to keep creating new, more intricate theories. Last November, in a two-part special that indirectly invoked anti-Semitism, he accused liberal Jewish financier George Soros of orchestrating the fall of foreign governments for financial gain. During the Egyptian Revolution, Beck sided with Hosni Mubarak, alleging that his fall was “controlled by the socialist communists and the Muslim Brotherhood.” Beck is now warning viewers not to use Google, accusing the search-engine giant of “being deep in bed with the government.” In recent months, it seems, Beck’s theories became so outlandish that even conservatives—both viewers and media personalities—were having a hard time stomaching them. Now, each new idea appears to be costing Beck both eyeballs and credibility. “At some point,” says Boehlert, “it doesn’t add up any more.”

Yep, at this point even the very dumbest people watching Beck’s show have probably realized that Van Jones and obscure magazine articles written in 1965 don’t have shit to do with anything.
“It’s hard to gain a million viewers,” says Eric Boehlert, of Media Matters, in the article, “but it’s really hard to lose a million viewers.”
Worse still, for Beck’s, uh, fortunes, as Adam Weinsten points out on the Mother Jones blog today (quoting “The Wrap” an entertainment trade blog):

In January, [Beck’s] FNC show averaged 1.76 million total viewers during the 5 p.m. hour, according to Nielsen estimates—down 39 percent compared to January 2010.
And he scored just 397,000 viewers in the coveted 25-to-54-year-old demographic, a 48 percent slide.
February did not show much improvement. Through Feb. 27 his Fox show is down 26 percent in total viewers for the year (2.06 million compared to 2.89 million last year) and off 30 percent in the demo, averaging 501,000 25-to-54-year-olds vs. 760,000 last year.

But dig what this implies about the, er, vintage of his viewers:

Here’s the salient fact: Less than one-quarter of Beck’s viewers are ages 25 to 54. Assuming the number of youngs who watch him is negligible—a pretty safe assumption, I think—that means that dang near to 80 percent of his viewership is in or around senior-citizen territory. Perhaps it’s no surprise that the olds like Beck. But it gets me wondering: Who exactly makes up that 25 to 54 demographic

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Icecreamists, an ice-cream parlour in London's Covent Garden, is selling human breast milk ice-cream for £14 a scoop. The breastmilk is purchased from lactating mothers, and the product (called "Baby Gaga") is intended to raise awareness of breastmilk's deliciousness and encourage more breastfeeding. The milk is pasteurised and flavoured with lemon zest and vanilla pods.

"Some people will hear about it and go yuck - but actually it's pure organic, free-range and totally natural." Mrs Hiley, who gets £15 for every 10 ounces of milk she donates to the company, said it was a great "recession beater".
"What's the harm in using my assets for a bit of extra cash?" she added.
"I teach women how to get started on breastfeeding their babies. There's very little support for women and every little helps."
Mr O'Connor said health checks for the lactating women were the same used by hospitals to screen blood donors

hmmmm....., beats recycling

Glass Eaten With Secret Fluid (Jun, 1931)

Glass Eaten With Secret Fluid
EATING light bulbs, bottles and tumblers with relish is the amazing feat performed by “Professor” Paul Owen, of New York City. The secret of his performance lies in a fluid which he swallows to render his intestines immune to cuts by the

Japan is just.....more interesting....

Latest Japanese fetish wear craze. I really don’t know what else to say here.
Check out… if you dare: Sexy Sheep, Pink Cow and F*cking Poodles. Arghhhhh! 


(via Coilhouse) 

The real and the perceived...

A series of 11 infographics from Mother Jones vividly illustrate the widening gap between America's rich and poor, and how skewed Americans' views of this inequality are. The myth of the American dream has led plenty of ordinary Americans to believe that they are rich-people-in-waiting, leading them to support policies that benefit the rich at their expense

You can blow out a candle, But you can't blow out a fire, Once the flames begin to catch,The wind will blow it higher...

He is now famous throughout Tunisia and the Arab world — a legend, in fact. But Mohammed Bouazizi never set out to be a byword. His aunt Radia Bouazizi says his dream was to save enough money to be able to rent or buy a pickup truck. "Not to cruise around in," she says, "but for his work." Her nephew was a vegetable seller. "He would come home tired after pushing the cart around all day. All he wanted was a pickup." Instead, he started a revolution

that about sums it up....

If I had a dollar for everytime this happened to me.....

Long arm of law wants public penis on shorter leash

 

French police say they have arrested a 63-year-old woman who was leading her 40-year-old companion along a busy shopping street by a leash attached to his exposed penis... The couple admitted to being sex addicts and said they were in the middle of a game when arrested, police said on Thursday

Spiderman ain't got nothing on Scalia.....

Some Reagan bon mots from our friend Christopher Hitchens

Ronald Reagan said that he sought a "Star Wars" defense only in order to share the technology with the tyrants of the U.S.S.R. Ronald Reagan professed to be annoyed when people called it "Star Wars," even though he had ended his speech on the subject with the lame quip, "May the force be with you." Ronald Reagan used to alarm his Soviet counterparts by saying that surely they'd both unite against an invasion from Mars. Ronald Reagan used to alarm other constituencies by speaking freely about the "End Times" foreshadowed in the Bible. In the Oval Office, Ronald Reagan told Yitzhak Shamir and Simon Wiesenthal, on two separate occasions, that he himself had assisted personally at the liberation of the Nazi death camps

Neither a fox nor a hedgehog

Ahhh... there was a president..

9/1/83 A Soviet fighter mistakenly shoots down Korean Air Lines flight 007 after it strays into Soviet airspace, killing 269. George Shultz calls Tip O’Neill to tell him about the incident. “What does the President think about this?” asks O’Neill. “We’ll tell him when he wakes up,” says Shultz. Only after CBS shows President Reagan on horseback at his ranch as the crisis unfolds does he reluctantly return to Washington

 

Happy Valentine's Day

From the Boing Boing Flickr Pool, Iain Burke's Zombie Love: a romantic decal that celebrates the love that transcends the grave

don't have it. need it...

This case-mod masterpiece from modder pinchillo was inspired by the Dreadnoughts from Warhammer 40,000. As you will see in the video after the break, the damn thing actually talks, has a spinning chain gun and working LED lights. Oh, and there’s a PC in there somewhere…whatever

Man's head rejects implanted camera

Artist Wafaa Bilal mounted a camera on a titanium base inserted between his skull and his skin, and planned to live with it embedded in his head for a year. Though he took antibiotic and steroid treatments, persistence was futile: his body rejected part of the implant, forcing its removal last week. Photo: Reuters/Jessica Rinaldi