Big NASA Press Conference on Thursday?

This sounds interesting...

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. -- NASA will hold a news conference at 11 a.m. PST on Thursday, Dec. 2, to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life. Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe.

Tune in Thursday, 2 PM Eastern Standard Time.

R.I.P. Leslie Nielsen

Legendary film and TV actor Leslie passed away 11/28/2010 at the age of 84, due to complications stemming from pneumonia.

Nielsen appeared in over 100 films and 1,500 television programs over the span of his career, portraying over 220 characters.

Maybe one of Neilson's best known genre appearance was as Commander John J. Adams, in the 1956 film "Forbidden Planet alongside acting notables such as Walter Pidgeon and Anne Francis.

Leslie Nielsen Wiki Forbidden Planet Wiki

Trailer: Source Code directed by Duncan Jones

Remember Duncan Jones? Come on.... Moon? With me now? Ok, here is the trailer for his newest mind twisting film called Source Code.

Batelco - Infinity

I came across this Youtube video, first on Gizmodo. They rightly called it The City Where Everything Awesome Happens All The Time. Oh and the awesomeness that get crammed into three and something minutes! This little piece of happiness was Directed by Alex & Steffen of Spy Films for Batelco (Bahrain Telecommunications Company)

Did Bell Labs Slow Information Technologies by More than 50 Years?

Author Tim Wu writes of a Bell Labs engineer, Clarence Hickman, who had a secret machine, about six feet tall, standing in his office. It was a device without equal in the world, decades ahead of its time. If you called and there was no answer on the phone line to which Hickman's invention was connected, the machine would beep and a recording device would come on allowing the caller to leave a message. Oh yes, an answering machine - at it's heart, a magnetic tape recorder using magnetic tape. Hardly decades ahead of it's time though huh? Well what if I told you that this machine was built and working in 1930?! At that time we were lead to believe that sound could only be captured by pits pressed into hot Bakelite. Magnetic tape would make cassettes and video take possible and ultimately the medium that made it easy to store and transfer computer information and the tech at the heart of most every computer today - the hard drive. This information avalanche began in the 80s, decades AFTER the tech was shown to be feasible.

Oh it gets weirder! The information concerning the research and advancements made with magnetic tape research was not even discovered until the early 90s! Soon after Hickman had demonstrated his invention, AT&T, who controlled Bell Labs, ordered the Labs to cease all research into magnetic storage, and Hickman's research was concealed for more than sixty years! Historian Mark Clarke, came across Hickman's laboratory notebook in the Bell archives while doing research. Clarke writes AT&T "refused to develop magnetic recording for consumer use and actively discouraged its development and use by others". Why? Well according to Clarke's research, has to be some of the most twisted logic that I have ever heard of. It seems "AT&T firmly believed that the answering machine, and its magnetic tapes, would lead the public to abandon the telephone."

It's definitely a surreal and twisted idea to think that tape recording would keep businessmen from signing contracts?!! You have got the read the Gizmodo article here. The short sighted paranoia will leave you stunned! But AT&T / Bell Labs execs thought it was reason enough to squelch technological advancement for better than half a century! Unbelievable !

20 Essential Works of Utopian Fiction

Tim Handorf, from the Best Colleges online, sends in an article that lists twenty must read books that deal with the pros and cons of Utopian science fiction. Mr. Handorf describes this style of science fiction as -

• fiction that, enables the readers to travel to a world that will never truly exist. A world without the ills we experience today and how perpetually imperfect humans would achieve such an existence.

Here is an excerpt of the most notable:

• Lost Horizon, by James Hilton: Plane crash survivors in Tibet encounter a utopian civilization in Shangri-La that differs from their own. The protagonist meets with the Head Lama, learns about the history of his surroundings and is given the secret to the monk's longevity. He ultimately discovers there's much more to life than he previously realized.
• Island, by Aldous Huxley: Huxley's final novel reflects his lifetime of thoughts on society as he cultivates a practical island utopia called Pala that heavily subscribes to the values of Buddhism. A man sent to secure an oil contract soon realizes that the island must be saved from the civilization that promises to ravage it.
• Men Like Gods, HG Wells: The World of Utopia is quite different from Victorian England. It has evolved from an Earth-like period known as the "Days of Confusion" and now has a socialist work government and advanced science. A group of English transplants are confused by the selflessness exhibited by the inhabitants, as it conflicts with everything they were indoctrinated to believe in their native land.
  

And many more. Check out the complete list here

I would also like to hear suggestions of Utopian themed stories that you feel should make the grade.

Symphony of Science: A Wave of Reason

Here is another Symphony of Science offering! This entertaining mashup is called "A Wave of Reason" The composer writes: "A Wave of Reason" ... is intended to promote scientific reasoning and skepticism in the face of growing amounts of pseudoscientific pursuits, such as Astrology and Homeopathy, and also to promote the scientific worldview as equally enlightening as religion. The video features Carl Sagan, Bertrand Russell, Sam Harris, Michael Shermer, Lawrence Krauss, Carolyn Porco, Richard Dawkins, Richard Feynman, Phil Plait, and James Randi.

Star Trek TNG's “The Inner Light” Played On A Theremin

Now here is something that just has to tag you where you live. From the Treck Movie online blog comes this listing of a Peter Pringle YouTube video of his rendition of the theme, From Star Trek TNG's The Inner Light. Here Pringle is using a Moog Ethervox Theremin

Review: Casshern Sins anime series

Casshern Sins
Director: Shigeyasu Yamauchi
Studio: Madhouse
Writer: Yasuko Kobayashi

In this science fiction anime series the Earth has gone through a cataclysmic event which has poisoned the atmosphere. Humans are few but a large amount of robots still exist. However the robots are doing no better than the humans. The change in Earth's environment is called The Ruin and it causes their metallic bodies to degrade and crumble.

Into this hellish apocalyptic Earth Casshern awakens with no memory of the past. It is clear that Casshern is a robot but it seems the Ruin does not effect him. He is able to regenerate any damage done to him. Stranger still is when he encounters any other robot he is attacked and told that by killing Casshern a robot will reverse the ravages of the ruin and gain immortality. They also seem to think that a very long time ago Casshern was responsible for causing the ruin.

Through out the story arc Casshern learns of Luna who will grant a robot immortality so many are traveling to find her. Also Casherrn starts to remember and recall a Luna in a previous time. It seems that he may have somehow killed Luna and brought about the Ruin. So Casshern himself travels himself in search of Luna to find out the truth.

The rest of the series arc is Casshern traveling and meeting people and robots along the way. Fighting and making friendships. As he searches for truth to fill in his memory and hopefully changing a small portion of the world to save those he has learned to care for. As you might expect Casshern does indeed find Luna in the series climax and the final episode does manage to spring a surprise that is a bit unexpected. Though I can't say with any certainty as to what Cassher's final disposition is.

The series is at present available on Hulu and is worth checking out.

Pluto's Status Changes Once again.

Tim Sayell writes -First is one, then it's not....then it is one...then it's not... You know what I think? I think two scientists in white coats find an empty observatory somewhere and just flip a coin...
Anyway, Pluto might be a planet again.

Well that might be a bit hasty, but according to the Yahoo News article that Tim sent in Pluto has become the largest body in the outer solar system. It seems that with further observation, Eris (the body that caused all this trouble with Pluto.) has had it's size placed at somewhat smaller than Pluto. Not by much mind you, they are so close as to be almost the same size. That is precisely what makes many astronomers uncomfortable. With the discovery of Eris, it became clear that the outer reaches of the Solar System contain many Pluto class bodies. If Pluto was a planet then the very real possibility arose that instead of nine planets we would have literally hundreds of them. If Eris was not a planet then smaller Pluto could not be one either.

It makes sense. The smallest recognized planet in the inner system is Mercury which is only 3,000 miles in diameter, Pluto is less than half that at about 1400 miles. Also all the inner planets have basically circular orbits all in the same plane. Kuiper objects like Pluto and Eris have eccentric orbits that are tilted to the normal planetary plane.

But it is not only size that determines a planet. One of the criteria says that a planet must be able to clear all other bodies in it's orbital plane. All the planets out to Neptune have done just that. The thing is that as you move away from the sun your orbit becomes much larger. It becomes much harder, only gas giants are capable of the job that far away from Sol. The curious thing is, according to the Yahoo article, that if Earth were moved to Pluto's orbit, it could not clear it's orbit and therefor would not be a planet, which is clearly ridiculous.

So the argument still goes on it would seem. Check out the article at Yahoo News for the pros and cons of Pluto's planethood. HERE

Review: Tenth Orbit and Other Faraway Places

Tenth Orbit and Other Faraway Places
Gustavo Bondoni
22 stories 269 pages
published by Altered Dimensions
paperback $14.95 Ebook $7.00
http://www.sciencefictionpaperbackbooks.com/

I really like the option that many publishing houses are using now. Quite often you are given the choice of buying the print or an electronic only version of a given book. Don't get me wrong, I love books. The look and feel of the pages not to mention the smell of opening a brand new book or for that matter a book that has been on a shelf for years. There really isn't any comparison to that. When I first started reviewing books it was so exciting to have someone SEND you a book. However that rapidly changed to oh plead no, don't send me any more books! They were stacked everywhere. With the e-book I could have all the books in my office available on my laptop drive. Certainly has it's attraction.

So, needless to say when I saw that Altered Dimensions was releasing Gustavo Bondoni's new collection Tenth Orbit and Other Faraway Places I was there! Bondoni is one of those writers that just surprise. When I first started reading his works I really thought that here is a competent writer but not great. Well instead of falling down when he first stumbled he just started moving his legs faster so by the time he was upright he was moving at blazing speeds!

The first story I read that I thought was exceptionally good was Evasion. Gustavo made an aging station in the distant reaches of the Solar System breathe. You buy right into his characters and the plot line moves fast and steady. Plus to realize that he had sprung a mystery story on me without being aware he was doing it was a real treat. So you can imagine how finding this story as part of his collection just tells me that this is going to be a fun read.

Tenth Orbit starts out with a melancholy tale that just breathes age and loss followed by a gut wrenching post war tale of a mother's love. Yep, there are certainly some gems in Tenth Orbit. Mixed into the balance are short pieces, funny, light and decidedly dark.

Bondoni is one of the rare writers who are honestly interested in honing their craft and its a rare treat indeed when we are invited along to witness the process.

Tenth Orbit and Other Faraway Places is certainly worthy of a look. Bondoni is a writer that we will be seeing a great deal of in the future. Tenth Orbit is certainly a laudable effort.

Review: How to Train Your Dragon Blu-ray

How to Train Your Dragon

Directed by Chris Sanders, Dean DeBlois

Produced by Bonnie Arnold, Doug Davison, Roy Lee, Michael Connolly, Tim Johnson

Story by Cressida Cowell

Narrated by & Starring Jay Baruchel
Also Starring Gerard Butler, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Jonah Hill, America Ferrera, Craig Ferguson

98 minutes rated pg released March 26, 2010

So why am I talking about, for all intents, a children's fantasy movie on a science fiction program? Well mainly I was fascinated by the early trailers showing the high level of sophisticated animation. And I mean that with all sincerity. Lighting, textures and the flight sequences are a treat for any aficionado. The milieu and the environment are so well done that you have no problem suspending belief in the world you are seeing on screen.

The premise of the film. Hiccup son of the Viking chief Stoick the Vast wants nothing more than to be a dragon killer like his father. However Hiccup is small and slight and no one takes his seriously. During a dragon attack, Hiccup manages to bring down a Night Fury, but no one is witness to the feat. Tracking down the beast to prove that he did indeed manage to down a dragon, Hiccup finds the animal alive and injured. What's more he can not bring himself to kill the dragon. Instead he heals and befriends it. Because of the dragon's injuries it can no longer fly and during an attempt to repair the damage, Hiccup learns by accident that he can fly the dragon and eventually help control the flight. Hiccup names the dragon Toothless. Hiccup is eventually found out by his father who takes Toothless to track down the dragon's lair. But the ending is a complete turnaround. Some is expected as it IS a pg children's movie, but the film creators hold back so fairly crucial information which finally leads Hiccup's father to reassess his relationship with his son.

And here is even more good news about How to Train Your Dragon

On April 27, 2010, DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg told The Hollywood Reporter that they were planning a How to Train Your Dragon 2; DreamWorks is targeting a release date of the sequel sometime in the summer of 2013.

On October 11, 2010, it was announced the voice cast—Baruchel, Ferguson, Ferrera, Hill, Mintz-Plasse, Miller, and Wiig—would return for the sequel

So what did I think? Well if you are looking for hard hitting adult level entertainment, you are not going to get your wish here. But that is hardly the point. The kids will certainly love this film. If you are into top notch animation then you can't help but feel the same. The extras on disk go even further in describing how the film was made and the film commentary section is a true treat. It's clear that the extras were added as a nod to the adults watching. Everyone involved with the film obviously had a great time and it certainly comes through on the extras.

the movie itself is a good solid 9.5 I have seen better animated films as far as plot goes, but this is head and shoulders above anything to date in the quality of animation. As for extras? BRAVO This disk is one of the kid in me enjoys the animation but the adult in me appreciates all the extras! 10 all the way for a 9.75 out of 10 overall. Am I being generous? yes, but this IS an animated feature and one of the best out there. Good entertainment for the children or young at heart and a wealth of info for the enthusiast.

Sha'Daa: Last Call

Nano Technology

CERN Scientists Capture Anti-Mater for the First Time in History

Ok here is something else weird to think about. Recently we have been hearing some murmurings in the media about anti-matter. We are all up to speed as to what anti-matter is right? For every atomic particle and atom there is a theoretical mirror image opposite that possibly exists. Should a normal and an anti particle meet, they will annihilate each other.

For years, researchers have had great success at trapping anti-electrons and anti-protons. However in 1995 CERN took a giant step into the future when it succeeded in trapping an anti-hydrogen atom and in 2002 began producing large amounts of the anti-matter atoms.

What is weird about anti-matter is there isn't any of it to be found in the universe. Well not much at least. If we understand the dynamics of the big bang there should have been just as much anti-matter as matter in those first few moments. The given wisdom is that when anti-matter meets normal matter each are totally destroyed - completely. Ok, so why is there all kinds of normal matter and no anti-matter? Well it seems that maybe in the weirdness of quantum physics the total annihilation may be tilted in normal matter's favor. So when all was said and done and all the anti-matter had destroyed all the normal matter, there was an infinitesimal fraction of normal matter left over. Yes, the total matter in the universe was left. Does that twist your head a bit?

Here is more then. Why is everyone so interested in anti-matter? Well it seems that when matter and antimatter meet they release a fantastic amount of energy. How fantastic? Well in orders of magnitudes, antimatter is a mind numbing 10 magnitudes greater than chemical reactions and an order of 4 magnitudes greater than nuclear fission reactions and 2 magnitudes greater than fusion! For comparison, 1 kilogram of antimatter with an equal amount of normal matter would release almost the same amount of energy that was ever created by the biggest nuclear bomb ever detonated, Tsar Bomba with a yield 50 mega-tons! Tsar Bomba used hundreds of kilos of nuclear material! Antimatter is a great power source and it is perfectly clean.

So what is all the excitement? Well for the first time Cern has not only able to produce anti-hydrogen but they are able to store it! According to the article sent in by Dan from the Los Angeles Times: The amount of anti-hydrogen stored so far is 38 atoms and were held for just about 1/5 of a second.



wiki anti-hydrogen Wiki on Cern Gizmodo article

The Planet From Another Galaxy.....

Take everything you thought you knew about planetary formation - oh - and what happens to a star's planets when it wanders off main sequence and drifts into it's expansive phase such as a red giant. OK? Now throw it all in the trash. Why? Well it all has to do with the discovery of a very odd gas giant planet orbiting an ancient red giant. Commonly held theories hold that old red giant stars do not form planets. If anything once they start to expand, these old stars absorb their satellites. Plus stars that are metal poor often lack the materials needed to even form stars.

You can understand that when astronomers discovered a planet circling an ancient, metal poor, red giant, (From an article in Science that Dan sent me, the star is called HIP 13044 and is 2000 light years away from us.
) they were fairly well perplexed. The planet's very orbit virtually assures that it would be absorbed when the star became a red giant. And you got to know that is not the weirdest thing about this pair. Oh no - here is the weird part from the IO9 article:

• This star is part of a group that was once part of a satellite galaxy apart from the Milky Way, which was ... assimilated into our galaxy several billion years ago. In all likelihood, this planet predates that merger, meaning it's technically the first planet we've discovered that's from another galaxy.

And you thought things couldn't get any weirder.....

IO9 article on extragalactic planet

Yahoo news article thanks to Tim Sayell

wiki article on Extragalactic planet

Gustavo Bondoni's Tenth Orbit collection now out!

Cyberwizard Productions just sent in a note concerning Gustavo Bondoni's newest collection Tenth Orbit and Other Faraway Places. Here is what was said:

• Tenth Orbit and Other Faraway Places, Gustavo Bondoni's debut collection, has just launched from Altered Dimensions press. This is a collection of amazing, thought-provoking, and most of all entertaining science fiction stories from this modern master of short fiction. These stories have been published all over the genre - from mags to anthos to websites - and are together in book form for the first time. Also included are new stories written specifically for this collection, making this book a must-have for all fans of short-form SF.

Gustavo last appeared on BMU with The Elcano Syndrome which played in episode 193, Evasion is an excellent exciting story that is on the schedule and we hope to have more of his great stories to read in the very near future!

View of Earth from the ISS

Here is a pic that I saw while reading through the Dvice blog entries. Yes, I think we can all be envious.

Astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson shown here gazing down at Earth from the International Space Station. The station is apx 217 miles above Earth and, orbits once every 90 minutes apx.

Dyson is pictured here in the module called the Cupola. It is acording to the Wikipeda

• an ESA-built observatory module of the International Space Station (ISS). Its seven windows are used to conduct experiments, dockings and observations of Earth. It was launched aboard Space Shuttle mission STS-130 on 8 February 2010 and attached to the Tranquility (Node 3) module. With the Cupola attached, ISS assembly reached 85 percent completeness. The cupola is the largest window ever used in space.

Youngest Black Hole Discovered

Dan points out a recent NASA discovery. In 1979 something very rare took place. In the galaxy M100 approximately 50 million light years from Earth, a star exploded into a super-nova. A black hole was born in the remnant of the star, SN 1979C. Am I saying that black holes are rare? No, however, having one form in our neighborhood, practically speaking at out front door, is though.

What makes this explosion so very unique is best explained by the NASA science news article.

• Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have found evidence of the youngest black hole known to exist in our cosmic neighborhood. The 30-year-old object provides a unique opportunity to watch a black hole develop from infancy.

That's right, most black holes that have been discovered are fantastically far removed from our local group and even the Milky Way galaxy. Even more astounding is that most are millions and millions of years old. To uncover evidence of one so close and younger than a human lifespan is stupendous good luck! Plus the first one we have been able to study from birth!

The singularity is still very small, but it is busily consuming the remnants gasses of the exploded star or, stranger still, has a binary companion that it is feeding off. In any case, in the past 30 years it has absorbed about the mass of Earth, which is right in line with what would be considered as much as it possibly could in so short a period.

And here is an article from Newsy.com sent in by Brandon Twichell

Multisource political news, world news, and entertainment news analysis by Newsy.com

One Way Manned Mission to Mars?

Tim Sayell & Dan sent in an articles from Yahoo News & the BDN in which scientists have suggested that to save money and to spur exploration of the red planet, that a one way manned mission to Mars be mounted.

With a one way trip, a much smaller ship is needed as well as less fuel and supplies if the explorer was not expecting to return. More of a colonist than anything. Dirk Schulze-Makuch, a Washington State University professor and co-author of the paper said that older people are a possibility as explorers. Schulze-Makuch said, "That's because the mission would undoubtedly reduce a person's lifespan, from a lack of medical care and exposure to radiation....."

Ed Mitchell of Apollo 14, president Obama and NASA spokesman Michael Braukus have all responded coolly to the idea however. Braukus was quoted saying "We want our people back"

Read the rest of this rather bizzare proposal here

Fan Made Ender's Game Trailer

Wow! fans of Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game will enjoy this fan made Ender's Game movie trailer. IO9 blog writes: Steven Davis mashed together clips from some of our favorite science fiction films.
You can see some of the clips from previous films and TV shows but it's pretty seamless. I would definitely go for this one.

Huge Gama-ray emitters Found Extending from MilkyWay's Core

From the IO9 blog - Astronomers working with data from the Fermi space telescope, which detects gamma rays, were able to see two enormous structures extending 25k light years above and below the galactic plane. These bubble shaped structures are extremely strong gamma ray emitters invisible to the eye but extremely bright to gamma ray detecting equipment.

Though not fully understanding the dynamics behind what formed the huge globes of gamma rays, scientists speculate that the globes might have been formed by matter infalling onto the super-massive black holes at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Though there isn't any evidence of a gamma - ray jet now, when the Milky Way was much younger and denser, such a jet may have been much more likely. Here is a NASA film on the discovery.



IO9 article NASA article

Science Fictionish video for You Say Party's Lonely Lunch

Here is the official music video for the band You Say Party's Lonely Lunch. The video was done by Sean Wainsteim and is set sometime in the near future, but the environment is pure early 21st century India which with it's warren of streets, press of humanity adds a very sciencefictiony feel. The security personnel are the weirdest thing going. Worth watching the video for that action!

AntipodeanSF Issue 149 is now online

AntipodeanSF editor that issue 149 is indeed online, he was just a bit behind getting the mail out to let us know. Well considering the great lineup this month ION has nothing to apologize about! Here is a run down of this month's issue.

• Women By Guy Hasson
• What Is Your Destiny? By Scott James Smith
• The Last Australian Hero By Natalie Sutherland
• The Bucket By Eleni Konstantine
• Lost By Michael Schaper
• Idiot Servant By Shaun A. Saunders
• Invasion By Giulio Zambon
• Little Frustrations of Daily Life By Julie Wornan
• Giant Mushroom Envelops Small WA Town By Sean Monaghan
• Unanswered Questions By Kevin J. Phyland

Another great lineup of flash fiction, for AntipodeaSF

Issue 149 here

DARPA to Have World's Fastest Computer by 2018

DARPA in co-operation with Intel and the San Diego Supercomputer Center are setting their sights very high indeed. DARPA plans on having an exaflop capable computer by 2018.

What is truly amazing is just how fast this system will be. From the physorg blog:

• An exaflop is a thousand times faster than a petaflop, itself a thousand times faster than a teraflop. Teraflop computers —the first was developed 10 years ago at Sandia — currently are the state of the art. They do trillions of calculations a second. Exaflop computers would perform a million trillion calculations per second.

That's right, DARPA's computer would be 1 million times faster than present day super computers!

The project is the brain child of Institute for Advanced Architectures, formed cooperatively at Sandia and Oak Ridge national laboratories which are researching some of the drawbacks to the ultrafast machines. The one major problem that the super computers face is, the faster they operate, the farther the data has to travel, effectively slowing the machine down. This slow down comes from the huge amount of processors used. A single processor may call for data that may be stored in a processor tens of thousands processors away.

Physorg article Wiki on FLoating point OPerations per Second (flops)

Revew: Restored Metropolis

Finally got a chance to catch the restored version of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. I didn't get a chance to see it on some of the theater screens showings, but did catch it when TCM premiered it Sunday the 7th.

As I wrote July of 2008 The full-length version of the Fritz Lang film had been seen only once, at its 1925 premiere in Germany and many of the scenes in the original were never seen in America and were considered vital to understanding the film. A full quarter of the film was missing.

Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and explores the social crisis between workers and owners in capitalism. What I had seen up to this point was a confusing mish mash of disjointed scenes and plot holes which bore little resemblance to the description.

So when I saw that it was showing for the first time on TCM I decided to sit through almost 2 and a half hours of black and white silent film. A weird thing happens. First off the movie plot and scenes hold up very well. Many of the plot devices are still very much prevalent today. Second I was floored by how many contemporary science fiction films pay homage to Metropolis. It is interesting in hindsight to note how fast that it being black and white and silent stop being a distractions.

The restoration is not perfect. Many of the scenes are either completely made up of the restored 16mm film or just the odd frame here and there. The 16mm film was obviously heavily damaged and do not contain the same aspect ratio. As such it's clear when the restored sections are playing because of the grain, lines from missing sections of the film. But that aside, if you get a chance to see the complete film you will not be disappointed.

wiki article

Review: How to Train Your Dragon

How to Train Your Dragon

Directed by Chris Sanders, Dean DeBlois

Produced by Bonnie Arnold, Doug Davison, Roy Lee, Michael Connolly, Tim Johnson

Story by Cressida Cowell

Narrated by & Starring Jay Baruchel
Also Starring Gerard Butler, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Jonah Hill, America Ferrera, Craig Ferguson

98 minutes rated pg released March 26, 2010

So why am I talking about, for all intents, a children's fantasy movie on a science fiction program? Well mainly I was fascinated by the early trailers showing the high level of sophisticated animation. And I mean that with all sincerity. Lighting, textures and the flight sequences are a treat for any aficionado. The milieu and the environment are so well done that you have no problem suspending belief in the world you are seeing on screen.

The premise of the film. Hiccup son of the Viking chief Stoick the Vast wants nothing more than to be a dragon killer like his father. However Hiccup is small and slight and no one takes his seriously. During a dragon attack, Hiccup manages to bring down a Night Fury, but no one is witness to the feat. Tracking down the beast to prove that he did indeed manage to down a dragon, Hiccup finds the animal alive and injured. What's more he can not bring himself to kill the dragon. Instead he heals and befriends it. Because of the dragon's injuries it can no longer fly and during an attempt to repair the damage, Hiccup learns by accident that he can fly the dragon and eventually help control the flight. Hiccup names the dragon Toothless. Hiccup is eventually found out by his father who takes Toothless to track down the dragon's lair. But the ending is a complete turnaround. Some is expected as it IS a pg children's movie, but the film creators hold back so fairly crucial information which finally leads Hiccup's father to reassess his relationship with his son.

And here is even more good news about How to Train Your Dragon

On April 27, 2010, DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg told The Hollywood Reporter that they were planning a How to Train Your Dragon 2; DreamWorks is targeting a release date of the sequel sometime in the summer of 2013.

On October 11, 2010, it was announced the voice cast—Baruchel, Ferguson, Ferrera, Hill, Mintz-Plasse, Miller, and Wiig—would return for the sequel


So what did I think? Well if you are looking for hard hitting adult level entertainment, you are not going to get your wish here. But that is hardly the point. The kids will certainly love this film. If you are into top notch animation then you can't help but feel the same. The extras on disk go even further in describing how the film was made and the film commentary section is a true treat. It's clear that the extras were added as a nod to the adults watching. Everyone involved with the film obviously had a great time and it certainly comes through on the extras.

the movie itself is a good solid 9.5 I have seen better animated films as far as plot goes, but this is head and shoulders above anything to date in the quality of animation. As for extras? BRAVO This disk is one of the kid in me enjoys the animation but the adult in me appreciates all the extras! 10 all the way for a 9.75 out of 10 overall. Am I being generous? yes, but this IS an animated feature and one of the best out there. Good entertainment for the children or young at heart and a wealth of info for the enthusiast.

Wiki article

LEGO Star Wars Trilogy

Here is a LEGO short that totally lampoons the Star Wars Trilogy. Here however the star is of all people Jar Jar and the results are just plain funny!



Thanks to IO9 for the heads up

New Implant allows Blind to See

I know, we have done this one to death, but in truth, most "blindness reversing technology" is still in the experimental stages and years away from implementation. That's what makes this new tech from developers in Germany so exciting. But as this Dvice article states a sub-retinal chip has

• already given sight back to three individuals who have a previously incurable form of blindness.

The tech is not perfect and the implant only works on those who suffer from retinal dystrophy. But even so, patients who have received the implant were able to find objects placed on a table in front of them, walk independently around a room, read a clock and other abilities that they were previously incapable of doing.

read the complete Dvice article here

Amazing Realistic New Robot 2010

Is it fascinating or just plain creepy? Here is an amazingly realistic, short demonstration of the humanoid platform, Actroid-F. According to the Wiki article

• An Actroid is a humanoid robot and android with strong visual human-likeness developed by Osaka University and manufactured by Kokoro Company Ltd. (the animatronics division of Sanrio). It was first unveiled at the 2003 International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo, Japan. Several different versions of the product have been produced since then.

Deep Impact Still Making History / UPDATE!!!

For only the fifth time in the history of the space program, a spacecraft will fly close enough to image a comet. The probe Deep Impact first made history when it launched an 800 pound impactor into the comet Tempel 1, July fourth of 2005 totally changing what we thought we knew about the makeup of the comet.

That impact was supposed to be the end of the spectacularly successful 300 million dollar mission. However NASA gave mission controllers permission to go for another close encounter with a comet and JPL decided that a comet discovered 24 years ago was a good candidate. This comet was Hartley2 discovered by Malcom Hartley using the Schmidt Telescope in Australia.

At 7:00am on Thursday November fourth, Deep Impact Extended investigation ( DIXI) will approach the comet within apx 400 miles, taking pictures along the way.

NASA's Goddard Space Center article Wiki Deep Inpact and DIXI mission

And here are some spectacular photos from Comet Hartley 2

Great apes might be just as smart as humans

hooooooooo boy, you want to really get a heated discussion started...start with that statement. And until recently the belief was supported by scientific results. Intelligence is very difficult to quantify. Many scientists can not even agree on what intelligence is let alone how to measure it. One of the strongest indicators of overall cognitive development, appears during infancy. This ability is known as joint attention. To put it simply it is the ability to get another person to focus on something simply by pointing at it. Humans have always out performed the great apes at this ability and there for these results were used as proof that humans were more intelligent. Recent studies however have questioned these results. Researchers may have been tilting the tests in favor of humans. Test subjects were often whatever was available. For apes, these were always laboratory grown animals where as humans were almost always from western countries with strong family ties. That seems to be what could have twisted the results. Psychologists at the UK's University of Portsmouth hope that new research will fix the errors of earlier researchers.

IO9 article
wiki on inteligence

Kill your Co-Workers from Flying Lotus

Ever wonder where those weird bumps on Adult Swim come from? Well according to this post in IO9 they arise from electronic musician Flying Lotus. Here we have a robot on robot apocalypse titled Kill your co-workers!

Flying Lotus - Kill Your Co-Workers from beeple on Vimeo.

Robonaut due for launch to ISS

Dan brought in an article reminding me that NASA's new robotic platform Robonaut is due for launch to the International Space Station November 3 2010. The station already has robust robotic arms from Canada and Japan, but what makes Robonaut different is that it can carry out tasks without human intervention where the present robotic equipment requires trained operators to operate them at all times. Another milestone for the platform is that it is the first humanoid robot ever sent into space. The "R2" unit, weighing in at apx. 300 pounds is just the upper half of a complete system, however with two arms and two five finger hands, it is very well suited for space operations. The unit has 350 sensors throughout its body. The gold visored head contains 4 nomal light cameras and an infra-red camera behind the forward facing grill. NASA hopes to have a reliable leg sub-assembly delivered sometime next year which will bring Robonaut to complete functionality.

Robonaut will fly on Discovery's 39th mission which is the next to last shuttle mission (although NASA is reserving one additional flight if needed) .

Wiki site