November 2012
99 posts
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Travel back to Neo-Seoul with more "Cloud Atlas"...
Before Cloud Atlas kind of, sort of delighted us, we got a peek at a tumultuous version of the film’s futuristic Seoul. Concept artist Adam Kuczek shows off the more brightly colored side of Seoul, its neon centers of commerce and its glowing transportation systems.
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Kuczek created some of these images while the producers were pitching the film to the Cannes Film Festival, but...
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The Ruins of an Abandoned Zoo Transformed into a...
By Lauren Davis
While the ruins of Los Angeles’ Griffith Park zoo have been left to molder as an oddball tourist attraction, the abandoned remains of Torino, Italy’s old zoo have gotten a second life as a Street Art Museum. Now the lion cages and primate houses are covered in bizarre, sometimes nightmarish works of public art. Warning: Fleeting NSFW imagery and lots and lots of...
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Archaeologists banned from referring to ancient...
Homo floresiensis likely stood about 3’6”, making this prehistoric human roughly the average height of one of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Hobbits. For years, Flores Man has been referred to by the nickname “hobbit,” contributing to the species’ popularity. But one company that owns film rights in The Hobbit has decided that the archaeologists who discovered Homo...
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Lavie Tidhar's Osama wins World Fantasy Award
By Charlie Jane Anders
The winners of the 2012 World Fantasy Awards were just announced here in Toronto, Canada — and the Best Novel Award didn’t go to George R.R. Martin or to Jo Walton, who’d already swept the Nebula and Hugo Awards. Instead, it went to Lavie Tidhar’s Osama, a strange pulp-oriented alt history about Osama Bin Laden.
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Here’s the...
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The books Mark Twain "dictated" from beyond the...
By Lauren Davis
There are always folks trying to exploit the success of authors long after those authors have died. Whether it’s capitalizing on a famous ancestor (see Dacre Stoker) or continuing to publish under a deceased writer’s pen name, some writers and publishers refuse to let celebrity novelists rest in peace. But few tales of posthumous publishing are quite as strange as...
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Jedi younglings find their lightsaber crystals on...
By Lauren Davis
On this week’s Clone Wars, we took a break from teaching rebels how to blow up power stations and headed back to the Jedi enclave. A group of Jedi younglings gathers for an important rite of passage: the discovery of their lightsaber crystals. Each youngling must confront his or her own greatest flaw in order to find their personal crystal—and the animators...
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Do amnesiacs dream of Tetris?
By Esther Inglis-Arkell
This was an actual experiment. And the results of it showed that the Tetris Effect - the fact that those who played Tetris for long periods of time tend to fit shapes together in their dreams and in the rest of their life – is a learning tool.[[MORE]]
Many people have heard of The Tetris Effect, the fact that gamers tend to have dreams that involve repetitively playing...
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Make a pair of dinosaur-heeled shoes of your very...
When we saw an amazing pair of high-heeled shoes propped up by neon green T-Rexes, we wanted a pair in every dinosaur. Sadly, we couldn’t figure out the origin of those theropod shoes, but Instructables user mikeasaurus comes to the rescue with a guide on how to convert ordinary pumps into custom dinosaur heels.
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mikesaurus’ method does require a bit of welding—so...
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How did MST3K pick those terrible, terrible...
Over the course of 10 seasons, the folks at Mystery Science Theater 3000 mocked nearly 200 movies. The films were bad, but watchably bad thanks in part to commentary from the show’s trio of B-movie snarkers. But how did the MST3K team select films that walked that line between bad and atrocious?
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Benjamin Vigeant at Splitsider sought out the answer to this timeless question, and...
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Who destroyed the White House best?
By Lauren Davis
Independence Day may feature the most iconic destruction of the White House, but is it the best? This week, we celebrate Election Day—and cope with our exhaustion with the US presidential campaign—by examining the myriad ways pop culture smashes up the presidential home.
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The British (1814): We may as well kick things off with a real historical example....
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Neil deGrasse Tyson's StarTalk Radio is now a...
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has long been delighting our ears with his space-themed StarTalk Radio. Now you can watch Tyson’s blend of pop culture and space age science on the new StarTalk video web series.[[MORE]]
Nerdist has added Tyson’s show to its ever-growing stable of podcasts and web shows. In this episode, Tyson talks with astronaut Mike Massimino, while John...
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This freaky vampire pig is credited as the first...
This 1907 film, Le Cochon Danseur (The Dancing Pig), features one of the most nightmarish anthropomorphic moments ever committed to film. At the end of the short film, the floor-pounding pig lips his lips to reveal a set of fangs worthy of a midnight movie monster. Lucky us, that early 20th century moment has lived on as a 21st century meme.
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Le Cochon Danseur was based on a...
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"Haven" reveals the identity of the Bolt Gun...
By Lauren Davis
Major revelations abounded on last night’s episode of Haven! Duke and Audrey went looking for the Colorado Kid in the logical place possible—Colorado—and learn the game changing truth about his relationship with Audrey. Plus, the Bolt Gun Killer is finally revealed—but what does this revelation means? We even manage to squeeze in a Trouble of the Week....
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Why haven't we gotten a musical "Doctor Who"...
By Lauren Davis
The music men at AVbyte have released a number of Broadway-inspired pop culture parodies, including The Walking Dead: The Musical and a medley of hipster Disney princesses. In their latest installment, a freshly regenerated Doctor sings about his adventures in Times Square. It begs the question: when do we get to hear Matt Smith’s pipes?
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After all, the Doctor...
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Don't Forget: It's National Novel Writing Month!
By Lauren Davis
Have you been waiting to start that novel you’ve been developing in your head? Wait no longer! November is National Novel Writing Month, the time when people from all over the world try to bang out 50,000 words of prose in 30 days. And just because we’re three days into the month, that doesn’t mean it’s too late to get started.
If you haven’t tried...
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Leonardo DiCaprio's "Twilight Zone" movie will...
Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way production company has had a feature film adaptation of The Twilight Zone on the books for a while now, but its script hasn’t been spaceship-shape. Now that the film has a new screenwriter, details are emerging about a trip through time and space.
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Vulture reports that the script, which was handed off to writer Joby Harold this summer, will...
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Kung Fu Baby knocks the stuffing out of his...
It’s Enter the Dragon…with an actual stuffed dragon. Filmmaker Patrick Bolvin outfits this little tyke in Bruce Lee footie pajamas and sends him after a stop-motion stuffed dragon. When children’s toys come to life, it takes a special effects-driven, martial artist child to defeat them. [via The Awesomer]
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Science Fiction’s Presidents Of The 21st Century
By Alasdair Wilkins
Looking to get a jump on the history books? Science fiction already has a complete list of the men, women, and murderous aliens who occupy the White House in this bright new 21st century.
The late twentieth century had a bit of a rough time when it came to fictional presidents, what with Richard Nixon’s controversial five-term administration, the suspected...
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What Mark Hamill revealed about Star Wars: Episode...
While we anxiously await more information about the Star Wars: Episode VII of tomorrow, here’s a little nugget about the Episode VII of yesteryear. While being interviewed by Maria Shriver in 1983, Mark Hamill teased a 2004 Star Wars sequel, in which he’d either play an alternate universe version of Luke Skywalker or an entirely different character. Jump to 3:06 for the meat of it.
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This 450-year-old clockwork monk is fully...
By Lauren Davis
This stern mechanical monk is a marvel of early automation; likely built in the 1560s, it is a completely self-acting device, with all of its clockwork mechanisms hidden beneath its cloak. Today, the clockwork monk can still scoot about, moving its mouth and arms in silent prayer.
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The origin of this automatic wonder is a bit of a mystery, although its creation is...
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Welcome to the denture shop of your nightmares
Famed photographer Ferenc Berko took this photograph of this denture shop in Rawalpindi, India, in 1946. The giant model dentures may have been used to market false teeth, but they could easily have been the set for some fantastical horror film. I can’t help but wonder if the models scared off more customers than they brought in.
[Ferenc Berko via Retronaut]
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Watch Pixar's luminous, heartwarming short "La...
By Lauren Davis
If you didn’t catch Pixar’s latest feature Brave in the theaters, you may have missed out on La Luna, Enrico Casarosa’s stellar short about the moon’s custodians: a young boy, his father, and his grandfather. Hit play and let yourself be transported to a magical world where you can sweep up the stars and a child must learn to find his own way.
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Saturday Webcomic: The dirtiest election of the...
By Lauren Davis
While the current US presidential election swirls amidst Super PACs, editorial endorsements, and constant fact-checking, the high school election of Prudence Shen and Faith Erin Hicks’ Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong involves something much more powerful: the high school cheerleading team. When Nate, the neurotic president of the robotics club fears that his club’s...
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What happens when you look up Adam West in the...
Redditor slapshotten11 lives near TV Batman Adam West, and decided to look him up in the Ketchum, Idaho, phone book. But it’s not that easy to track down the Batman. It’s nice to know that even in this digital age, paper phone books can still provide us with so much amusement.
[reddit]
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A Wookiee Jedi takes a crash course in lightsaber...
This week in the world of cartoons, young Jedis learn to make lightsabers on Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes returns, the Ninja Turtles play with monkey brains, and we get the season finale of Transformers: Prime!
Adventure Time is off for a couple of weeks, while DC Nation continues it’s unusually timed hiatus. As always - minor spoilers ahead!
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Beauty & The Beast in "Steroids For My Horses"
By Meredith Woerner
I’m so, so, so, so, so, sorry I’ve fallen behind in my Beauty and the Beast recapping responsibilities. First, I was on leave and then… well I just didn’t want to because this show is terrible. However, that doesn’t mean I don’t love this series like an old toenail that grew over a new toenail, and you don’t really want to pull it...
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We nearly gave up on heart transplants
Heart transplants are common today, and recognized as life-saving procedures. So why did we almost give up on them in the 1970s?
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If you look up Norman Shumway online, you’d be forgiven for thinking that he had performed the first heart transplant. So many articles call him a “pioneer,” and stress his place as the “first” heart transplant surgeon – but he wasn’t. He was the...
The wild fantasy artist who won Ron Howard's photo...
By Charlie Jane Anders
This photo by Los Angeles artist Claire Oring looks like a still from a post-apocalyptic sword-and-sandal movie — and now that it’s won Ron Howard’s photo contest, it’s set to be the basis of a short movie directed by Jamie Foxx or Eva Longoria. This photo was one of 91 selected photos in Canon’s “Project Imagination” contest....
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Remains Of World War II Military Pigeon Ignites...
By George Dvorsky
Back in 1982, David Martin discovered the remains of a pigeon while renovating his chimney. Upon closer inspection he noticed that the dead bird had a red capsule attached to its leg, what has now been confirmed as a top secret message that was en route to an unknown location in Britain during World War II. Ignored for three decades, code experts are now trying to decrypt the...
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5 Best Quotes from the Star Trek Captains Reunion
By Meredith Woerner.
All five Star Trek Captains reunited on stage at Destination Star Trek London a week or so ago. Avery Brooks, Kate Mulgrew, William Shatner, Scott Bakula and Patrick Stewart were all there, talking Trek and taking questions from the fans.
Wired posted a great recap of the whole event, and we’ve gleaned the very best quotes from each Captain.
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Avery Brooks...
Check out the complete run of OMNI magazine, free...
By Charlie Jane Anders
OMNI magazine blended science and science fiction, and was one of the most influential publications in the history of both. We draw on the influence of OMNI Magazine every single day, and so do a ton of other people, whether they realize or not.
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So there’s great news — pretty much the entire run of OMNI is available online at the Internet Archive....
R.I.P. Lebbeus Woods, Cutting-Edge Architect Who...
By Charlie Jane Anders
Lebbeus Woods, the architect who died this past week in New York, might be best known by science fiction fans for suing Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys for allegedly copying one of this designs — that weird suspended chair that Bruce Willis sits in. But his strange designs were science fictional in so many other ways, and his drawings of urban spaces often...
Ridley Scott will make 6 low budget genre films in...
By Meredith Woerner.
Mixed Prometheus reviews certainly haven’t stopped director Ridley Scott from climbing back on the genre movie horse. In fact, he’s just signed a huge deal to produce and or direct six more genre films in Ireland.
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Slashfilm is reporting that Scott signed a deal with Focus Features International, linking Scott Free London to a large slate of genre...
Living walls and self-healing concrete are the...
By Robert T. Gonzalez
Concrete is the most widely used structural material on the planet, but it has a niggling habit of breaking down over time, giving rise to cracks, pits and holes that require expensive repairs or replacement. But what if concrete could mend itself? It turns out such a material already exists — and it could be used in a building near you in as little as 2—3...
Curiosity finds no sign of methane on Mars -- but...
By Robert T. Gonzalez
NASA’s Curiosity rover has been sniffing out Mars’ atmosphere in search of methane. Methane is a precursor chemical for life. It’s also thought that 95% of the methane in Earth’s atmosphere is organismal in origin. Methane on the Red Planet would therefore be suggestive of past or present life.
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But in a press conference held earlier...
Tongue-eating parasites and internet journalism...
By Annalee Newitz
The Bay was produced by the same people who made Sinister, and so I suppose it makes sense that both films are horror stories inspired by viral pictures on the web. While Sinister’s scary Mr. Boogie was based on a picture pulled from Flickr, the Big Bad in The Bay is modeled on a famous photo of a real-life parasite that survives by eating the tongues of fish. A few years...
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How to take pictures of the Milky Way without...
By Keith Veronese
On planet Earth, we sit at the edge of the Milky Way Galaxy, nestled thousands of light years from the black hole at its center, in the Orion–Cygnus Arm. In our textbooks we see beautiful images of our own celestial neighborhood, a spiral of stars emanating from a galactic core.
But if we’ve never sent a camera outside the solar system, how do we have pictures of the...
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