Vulgaris Humanitas, Ars Divina

Fresh Brains Required

2007-07-27T06:55:54Z

Somehow, I don't see this working...

The Whitehouse Coup

2007-07-25T18:21:01Z

This current era is not the first time an Invisible Government was planned for the United States

Uncovering details of a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by a group of right-wing American businessmen.

The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression.

Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American democracy.

INTERNET RADIO ARTICLE: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/rams/document_20070723.ram

Hrry Ptt*r and the Fanfic of Doom

2007-07-25T16:30:19Z

Read it here.

Sweet!: Potentially habitable planet found!

2007-04-25T16:21:51Z

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Tue Apr 24, 7:00 PM ET

WASHINGTON - For the first time astronomers have discovered a planet outside our solar system that is potentially habitable, with Earth-like temperatures, a find researchers described Tuesday as a big step in the search for "life in the universe."

The planet is just the right size, might have water in liquid form, and in galactic terms is relatively nearby at 120 trillion miles away. But the star it closely orbits, known as a "red dwarf," is much smaller, dimmer and cooler than our sun.

There's still a lot that is unknown about the new planet, which could be deemed inhospitable to life once more is known about it. And it's worth noting that scientists' requirements for habitability count Mars in that category: a size relatively similar to Earth's with temperatures that would permit liquid water. However, this is the first outside our solar system that meets those standards.

"It's a significant step on the way to finding possible life in the universe," said University of Geneva astronomer Michel Mayor, one of 11 European scientists on the team that found the planet. "It's a nice discovery. We still have a lot of questions."

The results of the discovery have not been published but have been submitted to the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Alan Boss, who works at the Carnegie Institution of Washington where a U.S. team of astronomers competed in the hunt for an Earth-like planet, called it "a major milestone in this business."

The planet was discovered by the European Southern Observatory's telescope in La Silla, Chile, which has a special instrument that splits light to find wobbles in different wave lengths. Those wobbles can reveal the existence of other worlds.

What they revealed is a planet circling the red dwarf star, Gliese 581. Red dwarfs are low-energy, tiny stars that give off dim red light and last longer than stars like our sun. Until a few years ago, astronomers didn't consider these stars as possible hosts of planets that might sustain life.

The discovery of the new planet, named 581 c, is sure to fuel studies of planets circling similar dim stars. About 80 percent of the stars near Earth are red dwarfs.

The new planet is about five times heavier than Earth. Its discoverers aren't certain if it is rocky like Earth or if its a frozen ice ball with liquid water on the surface. If it is rocky like Earth, which is what the prevailing theory proposes, it has a diameter about 1 1/2 times bigger than our planet. If it is an iceball, as Mayor suggests, it would be even bigger.

Based on theory, 581 c should have an atmosphere, but what's in that atmosphere is still a mystery and if it's too thick that could make the planet's surface temperature too hot, Mayor said.

However, the research team believes the average temperature to be somewhere between 32 and 104 degrees and that set off celebrations among astronomers.

Until now, all 220 planets astronomers have found outside our solar system have had the "Goldilocks problem." They've been too hot, too cold or just plain too big and gaseous, like uninhabitable Jupiter.

The new planet seems just right — or at least that's what scientists think.

"This could be very important," said
NASA astrobiology expert Chris McKay, who was not part of the discovery team. "It doesn't mean there is life, but it means it's an Earth-like planet in terms of potential habitability."

Eventually astronomers will rack up discoveries of dozens, maybe even hundreds of planets considered habitable, the astronomers said. But this one — simply called "c" by its discoverers when they talk among themselves — will go down in cosmic history as No. 1.

Besides having the right temperature, the new planet is probably full of liquid water, hypothesizes Stephane Udry, the discovery team's lead author and another Geneva astronomer. But that is based on theory about how planets form, not on any evidence, he said.

"Liquid water is critical to life as we know it," co-author Xavier Delfosse of Grenoble University in France, said in a statement. "Because of its temperature and relative proximity, this planet will most probably be a very important target of the future space missions dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life. On the treasure map of the Universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X."

Other astronomers cautioned it's too early to tell whether there is water.

"You need more work to say it's got water or it doesn't have water," said retired NASA astronomer Steve Maran, press officer for the American Astronomical Society. "You wouldn't send a crew there assuming that when you get there, they'll have enough water to get back."

The new planet's star system is a mere 20.5 light years away, making Gliese 581 one of the 100 closest stars to Earth. It's so dim, you can't see it without a telescope, but it's somewhere in the constellation Libra, which is low in the southeastern sky during the midevening in the Northern Hemisphere.

Before you book your extrastellar flight to 581 c, a few caveats about how alien that world probably is: Anyone sitting on the planet would get heavier quickly, and birthdays would add up fast since it orbits its star every 13 days.

Gravity is 1.6 times as strong as Earth's so a 150-pound person would feel like 240 pounds.

But oh, the view. The planet is 14 times closer to the star it orbits. Udry figures the red dwarf star would hang in the sky at a size 20 times larger than our moon. And it's likely, but still not known, that the planet doesn't rotate, so one side would always be sunlit and the other dark.

Distance is another problem. "We don't know how to get to those places in a human lifetime," Maran said.

Two teams of astronomers, one in Europe and one in the United States, have been racing to be the first to find a planet like 581 c outside the solar system.

The European team looked at 100 different stars using a tool called HARPS (High Accuracy Radial Velocity for Planetary Searcher) to find this one planet, said Xavier Bonfils of the Lisbon Observatory, one of the co-discoverers.

Much of the effort to find Earth-like planets has focused on stars like our sun with the challenge being to find a planet the right distance from the star it orbits. About 90 percent of the time, the European telescope focused its search more on sun-like stars, Udry said.

A few weeks before the European discovery earlier this month, a scientific paper in the journal Astrobiology theorized a few days that red dwarf stars were good candidates.

"Now we have the possibility to find many more," Bonfils said.

___

On the Net:

The European Southern Observatory: http://www.eso.org

Sargent Pepper 40th Anniversary Re-recording in June

2007-04-09T13:32:43Z

My mother called me early this morning with this news. Maybe everyone already knows about this and I missed it.

Geoff Emerick, the lead recording engineer on the Beatles' legendary recording will use the original Abbey Road equipment, with many pop music groups, including Oasis, to record Sargent Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The original album was released June 1, 1967.

BBC Radio will debut the new album on June 2, 2007.

Politicos in the MU

2007-04-05T18:19:58Z

After seeing Omega Flight #1, I gotta ask a question. I always remembered Marvel using real world politicians in their books; it gave it that sense of Verisimilitude.

I recall that in the past they've used real world political leaders, such as in X-Men 136, with Jimmy Carter & X-MEn 150 with a page full of folks including Thatcher and Reagan and 141 with then PM Trudeau.

Have they given up on that? I don't recall Civil War, but did they show President Bush, or was it President Generic?

Marshall Rogers (1950-2007)

2007-03-27T21:28:05Z

Lousy news.

March 16, 2007: Doctor Orpheus Speak Day

2007-03-16T13:19:48Z

I, Doctor Orpheus, proclaim this day of 16 of March 2007, and each 16 of March there after, Doctor Byron Orpheus Speak Day! All beings of a sentient disposition shall speak with careful enunciation and thoughtful illumination, in a manner, such as I, as to clarify thoughts and ideas, in a manner which no other sentient persona shall suffer the slightest bit of intellectual confusions or the merest trickle of melancholia!

This day, Doctor Byron Orpheus Speak Day, which shall also be known as Orpheus Day, for the brevity of conversational use, shall never fall on 15 of March, also known as The Ides of March, and not in any way, a reference to the 1960s pop music combo! Nor shall Orpheus Day or The Day of Orpheus ever fall on 17 of March; The Drunkards' Holiday!

Let it be known, far and wide, in grotto or glacier, in hamlet or metropolis, that such is this day, a day of reckoning, a day of thought, a day of consideration, that I, Doctor Byron Orpheus, has made this proclamation strong and clear in the minds of all beings possessing the brain of a noble humankind within each and every cranium that such an organic and intellectual machine shall ever inhabit!

LinkTV needs your help

2007-02-23T01:44:51Z

It's a great station that is TRULY public supported only. They take no money from any government or corporartions. Just us.

If you can, donate something. I hope you check out the station as well. LinkTV plays informative and entertaining shows and films from all over the planet.

You can find them on DirecTV; channel 375, Dish Network; 9410, or what ever your local cable channel may be.

At this moment, they're dedicating the evening to programming about the United States government and media 9/11 cover-up.

http://www.worldlinktv.org/

Aliens Among Us

2007-01-19T18:52:07Z

No doubt every here has already seen this, but just in case...

Man gets postcard postmarked in 1949

2007-01-16T22:07:33Z

The Associated Press, Last Updated: January 15, 2007, 04:40:31 PM PST

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) - A retired police chief who made a career out of solving crimes is puzzled by his latest case, a postcard dated nearly 60 years ago that recently showed up in his mailbox.

Ned Hethington said a plain white envelope containing a faded postcard of an old water wheel from the mountains of North Carolina arrived at his home Dec. 12.

There was no note and no explanation.

The card was addressed to Mrs. M.K. Hethington on King Street. A one-cent stamp was on the back, along with a postmark from Hendersonville, N.C., dated June 28, 1949.

"Dear Granny," the card read. "It is very hot up here. I thought this picture would cool you off by looking at it. Please write. Miss you. Aunt Olie Orr is going to take me around to see all the mountain. How is everyone. Margie."

Hethington, who spent more than 30 years in law enforcement, decided to investigate.

He searched his family tree and learned "Mrs. M.K." was his great-aunt, May King Hethington, who died in 1972. He later determined the sender was Margery Gilreath, a second cousin who died in 1985. She apparently sent the card while visiting another relative.

But all of the information he discovered still doesn't explain how it ended up at his home in West Ashley, several miles from its original destination.

The envelope the card arrived in was postmarked in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Dec. 9. The return address is an e-mail account held by someone using the moniker "lost.postcards." Hethington has e-mailed the account several times but hasn't received a reply.

"Someone paid 39 cents to send it to me, but why didn't they put a note in there?" Hethington said. "I'd just love to know who it was and where it's been all this time."

---

Information from: The Post and Courier, http://www.charleston.net

Do you believe????

2006-12-15T06:46:14Z

Celebrity rumours is the usual curiosity....

"We can rebuild her. Faster...stronger..."

2006-09-14T20:12:38Z

Meet the $4 million woman

By Robert Davis, USA TODAY Thu Sep 14, 7:52 AM ET

When her doctors first called her "The Bionic Woman," 26-year-old Claudia Mitchell didn't understand the reference to the 1970s TV show about the secret agent who was part woman, part machine.

Besides, the first woman to be outfitted with a bionic arm says that when the motors are running in the 10-pound device, it reminds her of another famous cyborg - Arnold Schwarzenegger's The Terminator.

"It's really cool," she says. "This is not just something in the movies. This is really happening." Mitchell, a former U.S. Marine, lost her left arm in 2004 on an Arkansas highway when the friend she was riding with lost control of his motorcycle.

As she struggled to cope with the loss of the limb, she read a Popular Science story about Jesse Sullivan, a Tennessee man who received the first bionic arms at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago after losing his in an electrical accident in 2001.

"I said, 'I've got to have one of those,' " Mitchell says.

Last year she had surgery and received an arm that's even more advanced than Sullivan's. Today, in a Washington, D.C., news conference with
National Institutes of Health officials, Mitchell will show off her skills with the arm developed in a $4 million project funded largely by the NIH.

Though recent prosthetic research has focused on implanting sensors that link devices to movement commands from the brain, Mitchell was drawn to the less-invasive work in Chicago.

"Most people have been looking at trying to tap into the brain, but that has a number of challenges," says Todd Kuiken, who heads neural engineering at the Chicago institute. Implants are "becoming more doable, but if something breaks you have to have surgery to fix it. The exciting thing about this technique is we are not implanting anything into her body."

Kuiken found a way to use chest muscles to connect the prosthetic to nerves that once sent signals to the hand, wrist, elbow and shoulder. After an amputation, the brain still thinks the arm is there. It feels sensations and sends signals to move. But those signals are too weak for modern mechanics to detect from the surface of the skin, so Kuiken's team amplified them.

First, plastic surgeon Greg Dumanian of Northwestern Memorial Hospital moved the targeted nerves into muscles in Mitchell's chest. Then, the nerves that cause the motion of those muscles were disconnected. Mitchell can no longer send a signal to flex her pectoral muscle, but when she wants to close her hand or bend her elbow, the nerve impulse moves her "pec."

When that muscle moves, it sends a signal strong enough for a sensor on the skin to detect. After some rewiring by Dumanian, six muscles in Mitchell's chest now move six motors in the bionic arm.

And nerve data flow up, too. When Kuiken touches a certain spot on Mitchell's chest, she feels him touch her hand, even though it's no longer there.

There is much still to sort out. Though Mitchell can perform a simple task such as folding a pair of pants without first stretching them out on a flat surface, Kuiken calls the arm clumsy. Both he and Mitchell say they are optimistic about making the prosthetic - hers and future versions - more sensitive and precise.

"We hope to be able to close the loop with Claudia and have the sensation be there so that when she touches something, she feels a touch of her hand," Kuiken says. Mitchell, who hopes to go to college next year to study communications, says she is proud to be part of the team. "I am really excited about the prospects of being able to, hopefully, pave the way to make this something that is more common," says Mitchell, a volunteer at Washington, D.C.-area military hospitals.

Until today, her role in the bionic research project has been shrouded in secrecy. But now, the former Marine who served in Kuwait can tell the amputees she counsels about her arm and the research.

And some soldiers and Marines can now apply to follow Mitchell's lead. Kuiken is looking for amputees who have lost arms above the elbow in the past year.

Mitchell says some of the returnees she meets may be candidates. "I have met these young women and men who are now changed forever," she says. "I see how they are coping with life and how they are learning to deal with their prosthesis. I know how they're feeling."

Some day, she says, the bionic arm may make it easier for amputees to strap on a prosthesis and get on with their daily routines.

"I can open a spaghetti jar and hold it up at an angle and use a spoon to empty it out," she says. "Small things like that may seem trivial to a two-armed person, but it is very exciting to me."

Music Video Clip inpsired by Sadako, Tim Burton and The Omen

2006-08-31T00:43:35Z

Hmm...I suppose the influences are geeky enough so I'll post here. I hope it's ok.

Sometime ago, we broke our piggie banks and got this video clip made.

Invalid video URL.

The Song is Lenore's Song, made from over 16000 digital pictures. No video camera was ever used in this production.

Would love to hear what you think :) and if you like it, help me spread it. Help my muses take on the music majors.

Yunyu
www.yunyu.com.au
--Album Spiked Soul now available on CDBABY and Earshot Music (Australia)

Holy Badguy, Batman!

2006-08-02T12:15:19Z

So, Christopher Nolan has chosen Christian Bale's next nemesis ...

Here we go.. Here's the good stuf...

2006-07-22T18:11:07Z

Deepak Chopra and Grant Morrison talk about spirituality and superheroes.

I'll post the transcript when it's provided by Virgin Comics.

What do these two characters have in common?

2006-06-15T15:06:06Z

This is a minor trivia question for those who adore the low arts.

What do Superman villain Lobo and Wrestling superstar Hulk Hogan have in common?

Who Essay

2006-05-27T21:30:23Z

Hello children everywhere!

Today, I have a spoiler-ific (everything pre- Idiot's Lantern) discussion of why the Doctor does not love (romantically) Rose Tyler.

here

ETA: issi_noho recommends:
No Sex, Please, We're Gallifreyan
for an alternative view on the Doctor's sexuality. It's much less spoilery than my discussion and less likely to spoil things for Americans.

Eye of the Beholder

2006-05-25T11:45:05Z

It appears one Florida city doesn't mind folks exercising their First Amendment rights - just so long as it doesn't it doesn't involve paintings of large ladies.

Drastic Plastic

2006-05-14T14:19:22Z

No argument: the folks who worked at Aurora back in the 1960s were completely insane. They designed great models, though.

Hee-Hee! Hand Claps!

2006-05-04T14:45:27Z

Holy Shit!

It looks like Han DID Shoot First, after all!!!

Praise be to thebitterguy for bringing George Lucas' moment of clarity to my attention.(Now I'm glad I didn't buy them again last year)...

For those of you wondering what the hubbub is, Check this link here out...

Aw... lookit him - all smug and shoot-ey. That's the Han I've been missing...

ars_divina @ 2006-04-18T00:54:00

2006-04-18T04:55:04Z

"Total and Utter Comics Geekery" Dept.:

I don't know how they do it, but the Japanese seem to have such an intrinsic understanding of what makes certain American things cool, that whenever they do their own versions of the same things, even if they stay completely on model while doing it, it just looks waaaay way better.

Case in point:

When Saban productions sold the X-Men cartoon series to Japan, the Japanese did their own Anime-styled opening sequences for the first two seasons. Since most of teh voice artists for that show came from Toronto, I've had the pleasure of meeting a lot of those folks, but there is *nothing* as cool as these two opening sequences that were ever meant to be seen by an American audience. The Japanese watching the show must have felt a little ripped off when it went from what you're about to see to the same static, boring American animation style that we all saw for the body of these shows.

But these intros - everything that is cool about the X-men is anime-ed out the wazooo and ten times as cool.

Check em out and tell me what you think:

Here's what we got in North America:

Yeah - servicible... Boring...

Japanese Season One Intro

CRY FOR THE MOOOON! (yeah, I don't know either... but those Sentinals and Brood aliens getting their heads sliced off by Cyclops look GREAT!!)

Season Two

I love the bit with Wolvie & Jubilee on the bikes! That weird cut from Wolvie slashing to Scott and Jean moodily being seperated by Wolvie, and then the three of them on the plain... Too too Japanese - but it works! The second theme song kicks ASSS too!

ars_divina @ 2006-03-30T10:32:00

2006-03-30T15:32:30Z

"As Good As It Gets: Television" Dept.:

From You Tube - the classic two-part Batman & Robin meet The Green Hornet and Kato episode of the 1966 BATMAN! TV series.

It really, REALLY, doesn't get any better than this.

Yes that's Harcort Fenton Mudd / Bart Furley (Ralph's older brother who owns the building) ROGER C CARMEL chewing scenery and spitting it out in juicy wads as the episode's arch-villain...

Enjoy!

A Poll

2006-03-16T22:47:55Z

I'm running a poll over at my LJ. Please feel free to join in the condemnation of others' work.

Project Vernacularisation

2006-03-15T17:54:21Z

ANNUAL NEOLOGISM CONTEST

Once again, The Washington Post has published the winning submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words. The winners are:

1. Coffee (n.) the person upon whom one coughs.

2. Flabbergasted (adj.) appalled over how much weight you have gained.

3. Abdicate (v.) to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4. Esplanade (v.) to attempt an explanation while drunk.

5. Willy-nilly (adj.) impotent.

6. Negligent (adj.) describes a condition in which you absent-mindedly answer the door in your nightgown. (Cherie Blair!)

7. Lymph (v.) to walk with a lisp.

8. Gargoyle (n.) olive-flavoured mouthwash.

9. Flatulence (n.) emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.

10. Balderdash (n.) a rapidly receding hairline.

11. Testicle (n.) a humorous question on an exam.

12. Rectitude (n.) the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.

13. Pokemon (n) a Rastafarian proctologist.

14. Oyster (n.) a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.

15. Frisbeetarianism (n.) (back by popular demand): The belief that, when you die, your Soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

16. Circumvent (n.) an opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.