The song was written & produced by DJ MAYHEM & features the polish & vocal skills of Mouthmaster Murf, both from the up & coming band THE ANOMALIES & DJ act THE FARCICAL 3.The song was written & produced by DJ MAYHEM & features the polish & vocal... more
The US government said it is planning to relax the ban on imported meats which prevents the sale of haggis.
The Scottish government said it was greatly encouraged by the move, which was also welcomed by haggis producers.
The ban was introduced in 1989 because of concerns about the safety of British meat during the BSE scare.
On the eve of Burns night, the US Department of Agriculture said new regulations were being drafted, in line with international standards.
Imports of Scotland's iconic dish were banned by the US 21 years ago because it contains offal ingredients such as sheep lungs.
In the words of Scotland's bard Robert Burns in his Ode to a haggis, the US could be said to have looked down with "sneering, scornful view" on the "great chieftain o' the puddin'-race".
The dish is traditionally served with neeps and tatties on Burns night (25 January).
Giger, the Academy Award-winning artist responsible for making the 1979 film Alien so ... well ... alien, expressed "disappointment" at not being called in to work on the sequel, and so Cameron replied in a 1987 letter dug up and posted at "Letters of Note."
An expert on extraterrestrials has spoken out saying that satellite TV and the digital revolution is making humans invisible to curious aliens who may be trying to find us.
Although this may sound like good news for those fearing alien invasion, it also makes our search for life out there harder.
Dr Drake, who founded the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) organisation in the US 50 years ago, said the digital age was effectively gagging the Earth by cutting the transmission of TV and radio signals into space.
Apparently, to observing aliens the Earth is surrounded by a 50 light year-wide ''shell'' of radiation from analogue TV, radio and radar transmissions, whereas digital signals just look like noise and are much weaker.
ou can’t keep a good Predator down. Or bad Aliens. Or both the humans running for their lives from said aliens and predator. Good news for fans of the series, because rumor has it that the third installment in the battlin’ aliens franchise is, in all likelihood, will happen over at 20th Century Fox. Or at least that’s the word according to a scooper who told Shock Til You Drop, a horror movie site, so I don’t know what they’re doing covering sci-fi, but I ain’t complain’.
An anonymous source over at 20th Century Fox got in touch with us over the weekend to relay the news another Aliens vs. Predator sequel is a "certainty" at this point. If you recall, the brothers Strause - who helmed the Christmas release Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem - stated Fox was going to take a "wait-and-see" approach to a third chapter, furthermore, that the story would have to continue in space (details). "AvP-R" grossed a worldwide total of $128.8 million; $41 million domestically. It hits DVD on April 15th (specs and art). No word yet if the Strause brothers will return to the franchise.
I guess $128 million, not including DVD sales, which should add a nice chunk of change to the final total, is good enough for a sequel. I still haven’t seen the second one, though…
Looking to lose 15 to 20 lbs, Gorgon hits the gym with his bro Gorgoff. Despite being a gym newbie, Gorgon tries to impress his trainer and the ladies with his awkward feats of strength.Looking to lose 15 to 20 lbs, Gorgon hits the gym with his bro Gorgoff. Despite being... more
Part of a scientist's job is to read scientific papers -- lots and lots of scientific papers. You don't just read them: you also skim, peruse, look through, glance at and, occasionally, pore over them. There are just so many papers and just too much else going on. Still, some ideas just stick in your head and, with that in mind, I would like to present my Sort-Of-Best-Unheralded-Scientific-Paper of 2009.
The envelope please ...
People who think about extraterrestrial life have been bothered for a long time by a rather obvious fact: There isn't any here.
This is sometimes called the Fermi Paradox. Its an old conundrum (which may have started with physicist Enrico Fermi) that asks "If space-traveling ETs exist, why aren't they with us already?"
The idea is simple. Start with a civilization that colonizes one world. Then that world colonizes two more planets. Those worlds go on and do their own colonization. Follow this logic and you end up with a very, very rapid expansion of even a single star-faring civilization. Even one ET with space travel can, in a pretty short time, lead to a galaxy teeming with intelligent life.
Little green friends should already, have overrun us.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3822381,00.html
Have Mossad agents been given experimental mind altering drugs or possibly they seen things which have driven their minds into the ditch? Aliens perhaps?http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3822381,00.html
Have Mossad agents been... more
Jorge Carreon blogs on how "Avatar' was anything but snowbound over the weekend. While maverick James Cameron fresh from earning his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, his new film debuted to an estimated $76.8 million from 3,452 locations to claim the top spot of the Weekend Final Five. Meanwhile, the film doubled its North American total overseas by earning $165.5 million in its opening five days from 14,461 screens in 106 territories for a staggering global debut of $242.3 million and climbing.
Jorge Carreon blogs on how the ethereal blue shade of James Cameron's "Avatar" is starting to make plenty of green. 20th Century Fox is reporting the sci-fi epic landed on Earth with an estimated $3.5 million from midnight screenings at approximately 2,000 North America theaters.
A giant waterworld that is wet to its core has been spotted in orbit around a dim but not too distant star, improving the odds that habitable planets may exist in our cosmic neighbourhood.
The planet is nearly three times as large as Earth and made almost entirely of water, forming a global ocean more than 15,000km deep.
Astronomers detected the alien world as it passed in front of its sun, a red dwarf star 40 light years away in a constellation called Ophiuchus, after the Greek for "snake holder".
The discovery, made with a network of amateur telescopes, is being hailed as a major step forward in the search for planets beyond our solar system that are hospitable to life as we know it.
Measurements suggest the planet is shrouded in a thick atmosphere of hydrogen and helium that blocks visible light from its sun, plunging the watery surface into permanent darkness. The weight of the atmosphere keeps the water liquid despite it being a searing 120C to 282C.
Writing in the journal Nature, David Charbonneau at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics describes how his team used a suite of eight amateur-sized telescopes to spot the planet as it moved across the face of its star, which is less than 0.5% as bright as our own sun.
The telescopes picked up a slight dimming in light from the star as the waterworld, named GJ1214b, passed in front of it every 1.6 days. The planet has a radius 2.7 times as large as the Earth's and orbits at a distance of only two million kilometres from its star. Our own planet circles the sun at an average distance of around 150 million kilometres.A giant waterworld that is wet to its core has been spotted in orbit around a dim but... more
From old movies to new local news stories, it's hard not to feel Christmas in the airwaves.
infoMania is a half-hour satirical news show that airs on Current TV. The show puts a comedic spin on the 24-hour chaos and information overload brought about by the constant bombardment of the media. Hosted by Conor Knighton and co-starring Brett Erlich, Sarah Haskins, Ben Hoffman, Bryan Safi and Sergio Cilli, the show airs on Thursdays at 10 pm Eastern and Pacific Times and can be found online at http://current.com/infomania/ or on Current TV. And make sure to check out our facebook profile for special features at http://infomaniafacebook.com.From old movies to new local news stories, it's hard not to feel Christmas in the... more
"If the story sounds familiar, it is, and it's one of the largely computer-animated film's ironies that the only cartoon-like thing about it is its plot."
"That familiarity is compounded by the one-dimensional nature of most of the characters, with the notable exception of Jake and Neytiri. There's the venal corporate executive, the wise medicine woman, the noble chief, and on and on."
U.S. Secretary of State (and Nobel prize winner) Cordell Hull and Reverend Turner Hamilton Holt reported to have witnessed alien bodies in the basement of a Capitol building,1939.
What many of the UFO-alien-lore-challenged commoners do not know is that spooky and clandestine things had been going on long before the 1947 Roswell event took place. In fact, in 1939, Cordell Hull, Secretary of State for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, decided to show his cousin a little surprise. Hull brought his cousin, the Reverend Turner Hamilton Holt, into a sub-basement of the U.S. Capitol Building to show him something would shake him to his soul. Hull consequently made his cousin swear never to reveal what he was about to see. Though Holt swore to Cordell Hull that he would keep the secret, Holt feared that if he didn't tell his family what he saw, this information would be lost upon his death.
Hull took Holt into a room in that basement that contained four rather large glass containers into which a child could easily fit. In each of the jars was a creature of horrendous visage. The tiny humanoid-like creatures were floating in some sort of chemical preservative. The only word Holt could find to describe these beings was: creatures. No other detailed descriptions were forthcoming.
Near the preserved creatures was some sort of flying disc. It looked wrecked and as though someone(s) had been taking the thing apart to see what made it tick. An attempt was being made, no doubt, to see if the U.S. could glean information and useable technology that could be used.
According to Reverend Holt, Cordell Hull told him this had to be kept secret to prevent widespread panic among the American public. Holt asked his family to wait until both he and cousin Cordell were dead before revealing this information. Holt's children did just that.
Sometime in December of 1999, one of the Reverend's daughters, Lucile Andrew of Ashland, Ohio, sent a letter with this information to a prominent UFO Research center
Credibility of witnesses always is one of the main proving grounds when anything like this is revealed. The amazing thing is that both of the principals involved, Secretary of State Cordell Hull and Reverend Turner Hamilton Holt, Th.D, had impeccable credentials as intelligent and honest men.
Cordell Hull revealed to his cousin a secret long before the idea of a UFO and its Alien occupants was even remotely a part of the common culture and public mindset. Remember, this took place in 1939 and Roswell happened in 1947. Hull was a Statesman extraordinaire with no motive to set up some elaborate hoax.
"Cordell Hull (October 2, 1871-July 23, 1955) was an American politician from the U.S. state of Tennessee. He is best-known as the longest-serving Secretary of State, having held the position for 11 years (1933-1944) in the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Hull received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945 for his role in establishing the United Nations, and was referred to by President Roosevelt as the Father of the United Nations."
With a doctorate in theology from Ashland Theological Seminary and the minister of a Christian Church in Greenwich, Ohio, Holt was also a book author and community leader.
.U.S. Secretary of State (and Nobel prize winner) Cordell Hull and Reverend Turner... more
The Ministry of Defence has closed its UFO investigation unit, it was revealed today.
A hotline and email address for the public to report strange sights in the skies to the military were quietly shut down on December 1.
The MoD said it had received thousands of reports of UFOs over more than 50 years, but none revealed any evidence of a potential threat to the UK or substantial proof of the existence of extra-terrestrials.
It justified the decision to axe the X Files-style unit by saying there was no 'defence value' in investigating the sightings.
The officer who dealt with UFO reports has been moved to another post, saving £44,000 a year.
Past military files on UFOs will continue to be released by the National Archives.
In a statement, the MoD said: 'The MoD has no opinion on the existence or otherwise of extra-terrestrial life.
'However, in over 50 years, no UFO report has revealed any evidence of a potential threat to the United Kingdom.
'The MoD has no specific capability for identifying the nature of such sightings. There is no defence benefit in such investigation and it would be an inappropriate use of defence resources.'
An MoD spokesman added: 'Our resources are focused on the top priority - the frontline in Afghanistan.
'Any legitimate threat to the UK's airspace will spotted by our 24/7 radar checks and dealt with by RAF fighter aircraft.'
One UFO expert said the MoD's move seemed a 'logical step' at a time when it was having to justify every penny it spent.
Dr David Clarke, a lecturer in journalism at Sheffield Hallam University, said: 'I'm obviously disappointed because I think, hidden within all the noise, is interesting material.
'But people have got to be realistic, and when you've got the families of soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan saying they haven't got the kit they need, collecting reports of funny lights seen in the sky can't be seen as a priority.
'Hopefully in the future it won't be the military that looks into these things - it should be scientists or other people who have got the time to do it.'
When James Cameron’s science-fiction opus “Avatar” comes to the screen this month, audiences will witness meticulously conceived alien characters — speaking a meticulously conceived alien language.
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It is in these linguistically credible interactions that “Avatar” may make its biggest contribution to science fiction. In her foreword to “The Encyclopedia of Fictional and Fantastic Languages,” Ursula K. Le Guin mocked the conventions of pulp sci-fi perpetuated by films like the “Star Wars” franchise: “the permanent hegemony of manly, English-speaking men, the risible grotesqueness of non-English languages and the inviolable rule that pretty women have musical names ending in ‘a.’ ” The linguist Harold F. Schiffman has similarly noted that alien languages in films are primarily designed to “confuse and amuse,” with little or no attention paid to the nuances of cross-linguistic communication. Our sci-fi heroes may still be buff English speakers, but a little sensitivity across the human-alien divide could help them seem less like skxawngs.
Ben Zimmer is executive producer of visualthesaurus.com.
The Ministry of Defence has closed the UFO phone line that members of the public could ring to report strange objects spotted in the sky. In a statement, the MoD said that it was diverting resources.
Despite 11,000 sightings lodged, spending money on investigating UFOs can no longer be justified in these tough times.
Nick Pope who ran the UFO project in early 1990s said the decision to scrap it was "outrageous". He told press: "We're leaving ourselves wide open to terrorist attack."
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- It's Geek Pride Week in Atlanta as thousands of fans take over four downtown hotels for Dragon*Con, an annual celebration of science fiction, fantasy, comics and gaming.
Karen Lee and husband Dillan dressed like comic book characters for Dragon*Con in Atlanta, Georgia.
1 of 2 more photos » Where else -- OK, other than San Francisco or New Orleans -- are city streets shut down for a ragtag parade of zombies, superheroes, robots, Klingons and Middle Earth dwellers?
Where else can comic book collectors rub shoulders with movie stars, vampires, alternate-history speculators and Harry Potter look-alikes, all while taking part in a lively game of Godzilla Bingo?
The whole thing is a bit of a shock to college football fans in town for the season-opening game between Alabama and Virginia Tech, one of whom called it a "freak show." But those aliens grow on you after a while.
"At first I thought it was really strange," Hokies fan Emily Nardone of Ashburn, Virginia, said. "But now I see everybody's having so much fun. And I enjoy looking at the freaks."
One Dragon*Con "freak" getting a lot of looks was Karen Lee of Cullman, Alabama. She was dressed a dramatic, cleavage-baring winged costume inspired by "Dawn" comic book artist Joseph Michael Linsner.
Lee made the costume by hand at home. "My living room is completely demolished," she said. Her husband, Dillan, made up as the Batman character Two-Face, said he could attest to the condition of the living room.
Lee is entered in a Dawn look-alike contest with a top prize of $1,000.
"The theory behind the concept of Dawn is just paying homage to women of all shapes and sizes," she said. "She can be blonde, brunette or redhead. So basically, it's just inviting women to get up there and do their interpretation of what they think beauty in women is." iReport.com: Share your pics and videos from Dragon*Con
Fashion augmented with gadgetry is what drew Pendleton, South Carolina, librarians Gypsey Teague and Marla Roberson to a Dragon*Con workshop on Steampunk costuming.
Steampunk is sci-fi set in a Victorian aesthetic. Think pearl-handled, brass-barreled ray guns. The movies "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" and "Wild Wild West" are examples of the genre.
"Anything your imagination can come up with, you can do," Roberson said as she marveled at a vendor's shoes that had little copper boilers and compasses on them.
But it seems there's a certain element of snobbery in Steampunk. A crew of Steampunk pirates entered the room, decked out in their tricorn hats and eye patches. Teague was not impressed.
"Where's your molecular destabilizer?" she sniffed.
Out in the hallway, Steampunk time travelers Candace and Kane Bacon were just arriving. They're new to the game, but Kane had a copper staff with dials on top and a big metal backpack with dials and knobs strapped to his back. A large brass key dangled from the sash around Candace's waist, and she carried a basket of dinosaur eggs they'd found.
"Some of it we had just [lying] around the house, antique stuff," Candace said. "Other parts we got from Lowe's. The backpack is made from radio parts; my dad is in the radio business, and he got some old radio parts for us. And yard sale gadgets."
She said she was a Steampunker before she knew what Steampunking wasBy Jim Kavanagh
CNN
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- It's Geek Pride Week in... more
