The Oriskany, a decommissioned aircraft carrier, was sunk earlier this month off the coast of Florida to form an artificial reef. The pictures of the event are tremendously impressive. (As a point of reference, at 888 feet the Oriskany is 6 feet longer than the RMS Titanic.)
[Via Needcoffee.com]
Could this be the worst gaming experience ever?
While I can't claim to have the worst gaming experience ever, though I've had some bad ones myself – I have to say the worst story I ever heard was from my friend Danwon:
When he was in high school, one of his classmates found out that he was a gamer, and sought him out in order to invite him to play in a game. When Dan arrived at the first session, he and his classmate were the only two players. Character generation began, and Dan's classmate and the DM both rolled up lesbian elf characters. With some misgivings, Dan rolled up a male rogue and gameplay began.
After their first victorious battle, the two lesbian elf characters celebrated by going into a tent and "making love". Their actions were evidently described in loving, if clumsy detail, by his classmate and the DM.
If this weren't bad enough, Dan gets to the real kicker of the story….the DM and his classmate were father and son.
Ew.
"Ew" sounds about right to me…
[Via Home on the Strange]
It turns out that using ice as a camera lens produces truly haunting images. Who knew?
I particularly like this image of a ghostly palace, but they're all worth a look.
[Via Memepool]
As the US midterm elections approach, Carl Hiaasen has a pertinent question:
Sen. Mel Martinez is getting bricks in the mail from people who don't like his immigration stance.
The bricks addressed to the freshman Republican often come with a curt message scrawled in black marker: "Build a wall. Secure the border."
According to Martinez's staff, some of the 200 bricks have been sent from Florida, Martinez's home state and a prized destination for illegal immigrants. An estimated one million undocumented aliens live here.
Florida's border measures 1,197 miles. That's only about 50 miles shorter than the border that Texas shares with Mexico, a border that many of the brick-senders want to barricade.
While Congress is prepared to spend a fortune enhancing the border walls and fencing in the Southwest, no such plan is in the works for the Sunshine State.
Where the heck is our wall? [...]
How's this for a what-if: Did this slip-up give us Thatcher?
Mrs Thatcher might never have become prime minister – with all that that implies for all of us – but for a hiccup in communication on January 9 1974 when the chancellor, Anthony Barber, summarily dismissed a unique offer by the TUC to prevent a miners' overtime ban from turning into a full-blown strike. [...]
It's easy to forget just how unlikely a potential prime minister Mrs Thatcher seemed in the early/mid 1970s. As things turned out, disarray among the 'Heathmen' (and, in fairness, her boldness in declaring her candidacy earlier than her rivals) let her build up real momentum, but if Heath had managed to safely navigate his way through the labour relations problems of the early 1970s who's to say that Willie Whitehall or Francis Pym or Jim Prior might not have stepped up to the top job in more favourable circumstances and left Mrs Thatcher and Keith Joseph marooned on the Powellite fringe of the Tory cabinet?
I can't make my mind up whether this poster for the US release of last year's British caving expedition horror movie The Descent is a really clever piece of work or a terrible mistake.
Seen at a small enough size – or, presumably, from far enough away – it looks precisely as skull-like as the makers intended. However, close-up the illusion falls apart horribly and you find yourself wondering why those women are so oddly positioned and how come the woman at the top of the picture has such long legs; if those are her feet showing up between those of the two women in the middle of the poster (and I can't see who else's they'd be) then by my reckoning she's about 7 feet tall.
I suppose the thinking is that anyone who notices the poster's flaws will still be looking at the poster, which is after all the point of the exercise…
This radio-controlled aircraft display is really worth seeing.
It's amazing what sort of hijinks a seriously high power/weight ratio lets you get away with.
The World Cup Powerdesk:
Powerdesk, creators of the world's first truly integrated desk and personal computer today unveiled a limited edition World Cup design for English football fans.
To ensure that the tournament can be followed in perfect picture quality, a 19 inch LCD screen has been installed. The screen can be raised or lowered by remote control, taking less than 10 seconds from being fully raised to completely lowered. When lowered the screen is concealed beneath an electric sliding panel meaning it is completely hidden from view. To ensure that the atmosphere and excitement from the stadium comes through loud and clear a 320 watt sound system with four speakers is also built into the desk.
The computing power is delivered by a fully integrated Hewlett Packard PC, the full specifications of which can be selected when ordered. The PC comes with the manufacturer's on-site warranty and is fully and easily upgradeable at any time. The PC has a TV card installed so that live matches broadcast on television can be screened on the desk's LCD screen. In the front of the desk embedded within the thickness of the workstation there are two USB ports and a DVD/CD rewriter, perfect for downloading the World Cup highlights, watching streamed matches, listening to 'Three Lions' or watching the 1966 World Cup final on DVD.
To keep those beers or halftime snacks cool the desk also features a deluxe silver baby fridge with a light. With a five litre capacity the fridge cools to 20 degrees below ambient and can hold up to eight cans of coke, four small drink (0.5 litre) bottles, or a packed lunch for two. When the World Cup is over and the Autumn internationals come around the fridge can be switched to heating mode to keep food warm.
Tragic. Truly tragic.
The desk is made from glacier white Corian, is emblazoned with the cross of St George and is packed full of features perfect for any deskbound football fan.
Pricing starts at £8,000 [...]
[Emphasis added]
It's official: anyone who buys this has more money than sense.
[Via Gizmodo, via Idiot Toys]
From the Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society:
In his book Little Green Men, Meowing Nuns and Head-Hunting Panics: A Study of Mass Psychogenic Illness and Social Delusion, Robert E. Bartholomew writes, "In parts of Asia, entire regions are occasionally overwhelmed by terror-stricken men who believe that their penises are shriveling up or retracting into their bodies, whereupon they will die. Those affected often place clamps or strings onto the precious organs or have family members hold the penis in relays until an appropriate treatment is obtained, often from traditional healers. … Episodes can endure for weeks or months and affect thousands. Psychiatrists are divided as to the cause of these imaginary scares. Some believe that it is a form of group psychosis triggered by stress, while others view it as a mass hysteria. … While these episodes may appear humurous to Westerners, they offer a valuable lesson because they show how vulnerable we all are to mass delusion."
[Via The Morning News]
Nathan Alderman bids farewell to Alias:
And then, of course, there was Jack Bristow. The One True Jack. The Jack Before Whom All Others Must Bow. Victor Garber never stopped being a consummate badass from the moment the series began, and one of the only bright spots in Alias' later seasons was Garber and the writers' increasing willingness to have fun with Jack's gift for flinty, humorless mayhem. Though I initially rooted for Jack to come out of the episode alive — the man is simply too mean to die — the fantastic, entirely-in-character end he met was too good not to cheer for. Oh, sure, 24's Jack Bauer is a handy man with a set of alligator clips and a car battery, but would he take three shots to the chest, haul himself upright, secure a bandolier of high explosives, give an offer of guaranteed life everlasting the finger, and blow himself right the hell up just to screw over the man who done his little girl wrong? I think not. Jack Bristow, rest in peace. You've got a posse.
I don't think the last two seasons of Alias ever showed up on free-to-air TV over here, and the last season that was on Channel 5 went out at the customary post-midnight timeslot for US imports that the station wishes it hadn't bought. Despite all that, I enjoyed the first two or three seasons quite a bit so I'm glad the show rallied at the end and got a halfway decent finale.
The trailer for The Devil Wears Prada makes it look like good, trashy fun. I don't suppose it's the sort of role that'll win Meryl Streep a third Oscar, but she certainly looks as if she's enjoying herself.
[Via Cinemarati Blog]
I was out last night seeing X-Men: The Last Stand so I didn't get a chance to post any comments until this evening. I think the simplest approach is to adapt what I said about the film in an email earlier this evening:
The Good: Most of the returning cast can deliver even a lacklustre script well enough to sell it. The exception is Halle Berry, who is the leader of the X Men in the field this time round but completely fails to convince. (It's not that she's a bad actress, but somehow putting her in a superhero film seems to leech away her talent. OK, so she was given a terrible kiss-off line to deliver in the first film, but this time round she got the extra lines she wanted and a big, dramatic story that put her in a leadership role so what other explanation is there?)
Kelsey Grammer's Hank McCoy is much better than I'd expected, though I still can't quite bring myself to like the makeup job. (Also, there's nary a mention in the film that the man is a brilliant scientist. All it would have taken was one scene showing him, say, analysing the 'mutant cure' to determine that it was what it said it was!) The pick of the new characters (OK, new actors) in this instalment, though, is Ellen Page's Kitty Pryde: she's not given nearly enough screen time to properly develop her character, and her romantic interest should be Piotr Rasputin not Bobby Drake (dammit!), but she's an engaging presence; her running battle with Juggernaut is one of the highlights of the film. If they're going to do a Wolverine spinoff, I hope they can find an excuse to have him team up with Kitty. (Though I gather the Wolverine film is going to be a prequel, so Kitty would presumably not be born yet. Shame.) Alternatively, someone tell Joss Whedon to forget about Wonder Woman and do Shadowcat: The Movie.
The Bad: Vinny Jones is just about as bad a Cain Marko as you'd expect if you've had the misfortune of seeing his other big screen outings. The other members of the Brotherhood are mostly anonymous, brought on to use their power once during an action scene. Also, they completely wasted Jamie Madrox and Warren Worthington III, neither of whom really needed to be here.
The Ugly: If you're looking for an adaptation of the original X-Men Dark Phoenix saga then this isn't the film you're looking for. The film badly needs another half hour of quieter character scenes to balance all the widescreen mayhem.
On the other hand, there's no denying that the sheer weight of mutant-on-mutant mayhem looks pretty impressive and I suspect that non-comic fans will enjoy it quite a bit. Personally, I feel mildly positive about the experience: X-Men: The Last Stand isn't a patch on the first two films, but it's by no means a disaster and it does bring the story to an interesting place. I probably will go and see it again before long, and that's not something I expected to say going in.
(NB: you definitely want to stay on to the very end of the credit sequence.)
Gary Farber has posted a collection of links to early reviews.
Clive Thompson suggested that it might be worthwhile to build traffic overpasses and underpasses catering for wildlife in towns.
[...] I wonder if a city could experiment with building little overpasses or underpasses for squirrels? They could actually be quite lovely — metal or wood archworks spanning roads, festooned with climbing vines. Granted, squirrels are hardly endangered species, and it's possible that automobile deaths constitute an essential herd-culling that is keeping squirrels from booming in population, overrunning cities, and demanding voting rights. But at very least it'd be pretty hilarious to watch 'em scurrying back and forth across overhighway trellises!
They've worked well in the countryside, and you can certainly appreciate that what with cities and suburbs alike being home to more wildlife than you'd think there's a case for doing what we can to help out furry neighbours.
However, forget about the humane argument. One of the commenters came up with the clinching argument in favour:
I think if you made squirrel passages, in order to make them popular, you'd have to make them needlessly complex. Almost art-like. Make them look difficult to cross. Squirrels are amazing at doing ridiculous jumps from our perilous surface to another. It would be like a constant squirrel circus. Just, no one tell PETA.
(Snicker, j/k of course)
Suddenly, I hear the theme music from Mission: Impossible playing in my head…
I've been meaning to post about eMusic for a while; this account of the company's rise from Ars Technica sets out the basic facts nicely:
It sounds like such a simple idea, but in the context of the music business, this is radical, French Revolution-type stuff. What's perhaps even more interesting is the fact that eMusic's decision to offer unprotected MP3 files was not an ideological one; the idea made great business sense, and has established eMusic as the #2 retailer of downloadable music behind the iTunes Music Store.
Basically, a US$9.99 monthly subscription buys you 40 tracks, with other subscription options for those who find 40 tracks too limiting. As you'd expect, the eMusic catalogue is a bit short on major label releases, but there's quite a bit of fascinating material even so. The eMusic download manager makes it extremely straightforward to download the MP3s I choose, and adding the tracks to iTunes (and thus to my iPod) is a simple matter of dragging a folder onto iTunes.
I've been subscribing for two months now, and I've picked up some quality material from acts like the New Pornographers, They Might Be Giants, Badly Drawn Boy, The Go-Betweens and Creedence Clearwater Revival. I've got my eye on a few possibilities if I come to the end of the month and have some track credits left to use: Neko Case, or something by the White Stripes, or perhaps one of the early Flaming Lips albums that were added to the catalogue recently. eMusic won't replace the iTunes Music Store (from where I downloaded the new Pet Shop Boys album yesterday) any time soon, but it's a slick piece of work.
[Via Slashdot]
Neil Gaiman has posted a poster for Henry Selick's forthcoming stop-motion adaptation of Gaiman's novel Coraline.
The image is only concept art, not a proper poster: I'm sure the real poster, when the time comes, will be a fine piece of work, but I love that concept image. Especially the buttons for eyes…
Six episodes into the second season of the revived Doctor Who, Adam Stone wonders how we think it's going so far.
I think things are coming along nicely:
If I had to give scores, I'd say the season has ranged from a 5 out of 10 (New Earth) to a 10 out of 10 (The Girl in the Fireplace), with an average of about 8 or 8½ out of 10. Right now I still prefer Christopher Eccleston's take on the Doctor; I find David Tennant's version a bit too wacky and giddy at times. But then, I might just need to give Tennant more time and the opportunity to play some more episodes where his Doctor has to make some big decisions with big consequences. They've dropped enough hints about the "lonely god" and his regrets over the consequences of his past decisons to suggest that I'll get my wish before long.
Three years ago I'd have been astonished at the idea that The Doctor would return at all; to have had one and a half really decent seasons is a delight, and I suspect it's only going to get better from here on in. With Battlestar Galactica not showing up on free-to-air TV, this is as good as televised SF gets over here right now.
Remember, folks: a good landing is one you can walk away from.
Writing in The Guardian, Steve Boggan describes how picking up a discarded boarding pass in a railway station opened up a world of opportunities to gather the sort of information required to carry out identity theft. None of the details Boggan describes will be news to anyone who has been following the writings of people like Bruce Schneier, but a concrete illustration like this is worth a hundred essays on the theory behind data mining.
That said, I did learn one thing from the article. Having described the history of the various attempts by the US government to capture information about airline passengers and match those details with information about potential terrorists, Boggan talks with computer security expert Adam Laurie about the way airlines act as conduits for personal data on their passengers, gathering data and passing it on to the US authorities:
"The problem here is that a commercial organisation is being given the task of collecting data on behalf of a foreign government, for which it gets no financial reward, and which offers no business benefit in return," says Laurie. "Naturally, in such a case, they will seek to minimise their costs, which they do by handing the problem off to the passengers themselves. This has the neat side-effect of also handing off liability for data errors."
"You can imagine the case where a businessman's trip gets delayed because his passport details were incorrectly entered and he was mistaken for a terrorist. Since BA didn't enter the data – frequent flyers are asked to do it themselves – they can't be held responsible and can't be sued for his lost business."
[Emphasis added]
Not being a frequent flyer I'm not sure what to make of this. Laurie is quoted as saying that frequent flyers are "asked to" to enter their personal data; is that "asked to" as in "required to" or "asked to" as in "invited to"? If it's the former, it's breathtakingly cynical of the airlines to insulate themselves from liability under cover of providing a "service" to their customers.
The real question, however, is whether most of their passengers would care if they were aware of all this. I have a horrible feeling that it'll take a tenfold increase in the incidence of identity theft – possibly tied in with the introduction of the National Identity Register – before the public demands that companies and governments stop being so careless with their data.
[Via linkmachinego]
