Conner Flynn at Technabob suggests that this movie be entitled Batman and Captain Picard Fight Aliens: Prometheus: First Contact Rises. That is an outstanding idea!
I propose that Patrick Stewart play the role of Batman and Ben Affleck play Picard. The xenomorphs would require multiple actors, but Robin Williams should play the Queen.
To flesh out the supporting characters, bring in Gilbert Gottfried to play Alfred Pennyworth and the current Lassie to play Commander Riker.
Artist Jimsmash has the story concept ready to go. Hollywood, get to work.
In 1927, Dorothy Gerber was straining vegetables through a seive to make them edible for her baby daughter Sally. Her husband, Daniel Gerber, owned a canning factory. He said that machines in the factory could carry out that process a lot faster. Dorothy proposed that he do precisely that.
Thus was born the Gerber baby products commercial empire.
To market his products better, Gerber held a contest to compose an image of a baby that could serve as a logo. Dorothy Hope Smith, an artist, made a charcoal sketch of a baby who lived nearby. This baby was Anne Turner Cook. Smith won the contest and Cook went down in advertising history at the Gerber Baby.
Cook is now 87 years old and every bit as lovely as she was eight decades ago. CBS News interviewed her about her life as the Gerber Baby. You can watch the video here.
A food truck is a mobile kitchen where you go to get food. A reverse food truck is a place to go and donate food and money. Finnegans, a brewery in Minneapolis, made one in order to help feed hungry people in the Upper Midwest. Martin Williams, the company's pro bono ad agency, proposed the idea and Jacquie Berglund, the founder and CEO of Finnegans, ran with it.
The truck travels wherever people congregate in Minneapolis. Sometimes people mistake it for a regular food truck and try to place orders. Organizer Angie Lee says:
They'll try and order a hamburger or a taco and we say no, we're actually taking food. And then they're like, oh my gosh, this is the coolest thing ever.
Finnegans hopes to collect $50,000 worth of food over the summer using the truck.
"What time is it?" You may say that question at work or hear it from your co-workers. But this question is really asking something else: "Can we go home yet?" This wall clock by M&Co will answer that question one way or another. Until we have a "yes," the minutes will drag on.
Pictured above is a scene from Parade, an interactive art installation by Laurent Craste at the Chromatic art festival in Montreal. We've previously seen his whacking on porcelain sculptures. Now he's being a bit more gentle. His porcelain candlesticks look fairly ordinary. But introduce a swinging work lamp, and they become elegant dancers.
They remind me of Lumière from Disney's Beauty and the Beast.
In the beginning, after focus group testing, God created the heaven and the earth. Unfortunately, being an inexperienced designer, he did not understand that clients do not always express their desires in a clear manner.
On the seventh day, he rested from his labors. Mike Lacher, having examined the preliminary design, sent a lengthy email to God about what he saw so far:
Hi God,
Thanks so much for the latest round of work. Really coming together. Few points of feedback:
1 – Really liking the whole light thing but not totally sure about the naming system. “Day” and “night” are OK but we feel like there’s more we can do here. Thoughts? Definitely need to nail this down ASAP.
2 – Re: the “sky”… not really feeling the color here. Would like something that pops more. Please send additional options. […]
6 – Seas teeming with life is fine, but again, we need to reduce the sea. This is a showstopper for us.
7 – Are the winged birds final, or placeholder? Some kind of weird stuff going on with those. Just want to get some clarification before giving more feedback.
8 – Can we get more livestock and wild animals that move along the ground according to their kinds? Again, the passion points for our target users (slide eighteen) are ground and animals that move along the ground. Whatever we can do to increase the amount of ground will go a long way toward converting our users from passive consumers into brand evangelists. […]
Realize it’s Saturday and you were planning to be OOO tomorrow to admire your creation and everything, but I’m hoping you can keep rolling on this through the weekend. Need to get this in front of my exec team by EOD Monday so hoping to sync up EOD Sunday. Will be around all weekend via email and chat if anything comes up. Looking to you and your team for a big win here.
Thanks!
Mike
Please consider the environment before printing this email
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is, of course, a majestic tale of one man's struggle against the looters who seek to rob him of the fruits of his genius and to break his will and desire to be an individual. Mallory Ortberg quotes at length from it in The Toast:
“Malfoy bought the whole team brand-new Nimbus Cleansweeps!” Ron said, like a poor person. “That’s not fair!”
“Everything that is possible is fair,” Harry reminded him gently. “If he is able to purchase better equipment, that is his right as an individual. How is Draco’s superior purchasing ability qualitatively different from my superior Snitch-catching ability?”
“I guess it isn’t,” Ron said crossly.
Harry laughed, cool and remote, like if a mountain were to laugh. “Someday you’ll understand, Ron.”
At Hogwarts, Harry teaches the other students how to be free. He does this not for their sake, but for his own:
Professor Snape stood at the front of the room, sort of Jewishly. “There will be no foolish wand-waving or silly incantations in this class. As such, I don’t expect many of you to appreciate the subtle science and exact art that is potion-making. However, for those select few who possess, the predisposition…I can teach you how to bewitch the mind and ensnare the senses. I can tell you how to bottle fame, brew glory, and even put a stopper in death.”
Harry’s hand shot up.
“What is it, Potter?” Snape asked, irritated.
“What’s the value of these potions on the open market?”
“What?”
“Why are you teaching children how to make these valuable products for ourselves at a schoolteacher’s salary instead of creating products to meet modern demand?”
“You impertinent boy–”
“Conversely, what’s to stop me from selling these potions myself after you teach us how to master them?”
“I–”
“This is really more of a question for the Economics of Potion-Making, I guess. What time are econ lessons here?”
“We have no economics lessons in this school, you ridiculous boy.”
Harry Potter stood up bravely. “We do now. Come with me if you want to learn about market forces!”
The students poured into the hallway after him. They had a leader at last.
The thrilling anime series Attack on Titan has been a huge hit. Fans around the world have found the story of humans standing against annihilation to be compelling. We've previously seen some of the fan art and tattoos that these fans have made. Now let's look at amazing works of cosplay.
Yuki Goddess a professional cosplayer in Thailand with an impressive portfolio of work, including many costumes inspired by Attack on Titan. Here's a particularly clever one that shows the hero Eren Yeager in battle.
Here's one of the most ingenious, original costumes that I've ever seen. Drabblemeister uses a hoop skirt to show Carla Jaeger being eaten by a titan. (via The Mary Sue)
He's not out of diapers yet, but this toddler is ready to defend humanity. Here's a very young Captain Levi of the Survey Corps. His father, TOMY_papa, made the costume.
It's Christmas time at the Survey Corps' headquarters. Everyone got into the spirit of the season at a cosplay shoot in northern California last year.
One Week Friends (Isshuukan Friends) is a currently-airing anime series that Kotaku's anime critic Richard A. Eisenbeis calls one of the "Five Anime of Spring 2014 You Should Be Watching."
My rule when encountering anime recommendations like that is to try a series for one--and only one--full episode. I did and was immediately hooked.
It's a sweet, romantic tale that is quickly becoming one of my favorite anime series. You can watch it for free on Crunchyroll.
I'm not the only person to find One Week Friends appealing. It's inspired a lot of fan art, the best of which I've rounded up here. Warning: spoilers.
One Week Friends is a high school romance. Yūki Hase, the lead male character, is a typical if somewhat dorky and awkward teenager. He notices that a girl in his class, Kaori Fujimiya, always seems sad. She never talks to anyone and appears to have not a single friend. Karn Wongprasert shows her pain in this digital image.
One Week Friends is so captivating in part because it's so realistic. The characters are flawed people. Hase doesn't know how to approach Fujimiya. He's not suave. He simply walks up to her at the end of class one day, bows politely, and asks if they can be friends. Hase's approach, as shown by Yogi Park, is direct and clumsy. It's also successful.
I had never considered it before Daniel Feit tweeted this photo, but now it's obvious: Robert Picardo, who played the Doctor on Star Trek: Voyager, would do an excellent job of playing the Doctor on Doctor Who. He has no name and already has the job title!
And who should be his companion? Jeri Ryan, who played Seven of Nine.
On the right is David Good, a man from Philadelphia. One the left is his mother, Yarima of the Yanomami people of Venezuela.
How this relation came to pass is a long story told in detail at the New York Post. David's father, Kenneth Good, was an anthropology student at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1970s. In 1975, Kenneth went on an expedition to a remote jungle area on the border of Venezuela and Brazil. Arrogant and stubborn, he separated from the group he was travelling with and set out on his own into the unknown.
There Kenneth found the Yanomami tribe. He befriended them and made further visits. On one visit in 1978, the tribe gave Kenneth a young girl as a wife. Her name was Yarima.
Kenneth went in and out of the jungle and did not provide the protection that a husband owes his wife in the Yanomami culture. By 1986, she was pregnant with his child, so he brought her back to the United States. It was impossible for her to adjust:
In November 1986, within a week of arriving in Bryn Mawr, Pa., Yarima went into labor and was panicked by the American hospital: the gurneys, the monitors, the machines, the needles. Once admitted, she sprung herself out of bed and attempted to give birth by squatting in the corner of the hospital room.
“It was so unnatural to her,” Kenneth says. “It went against everything she ever learned.” […]
Meanwhile, his wife was becoming ever more isolated and desperate. While Kenneth was teaching, Yarima would take the $20 he left every morning and go to Dunkin’ Donuts, then the $10 store, where she never knew how much she could buy. She had to adapt to wearing clothes every day and thought that running cars were animals on the attack. She had no friends.
“I miss my family,” Yarima told People magazine. “I want to go home.” Kenneth was her translator.
In 1991, Yarima went back to her people, leaving her young son, David, with his father. Two decades later, David journeyed into the jungle to find her:
He arrived in August 2011, the tribe expecting him. When his mother emerged, he recognized her immediately. She wore wooden shoots through her face and little clothing, and he felt immediately that he was her son in every way.
He’d thought a lot about whether to hug her — he wanted to, but he was too nervous, and the Yanomami don’t hug — so he put his hand on her shoulder and told her what he’d wanted to for years.
“I said, ‘Mama, I made it, I’m home. It took so long, but I made it.’ ” Yarima wept.
And it's certainly an improvement over that other R2 unit which had a bad motivator and too much fondant. This cake by Cakes Cove has vital calories for the survival of the Rebellion. Also chocolate.
Cakes Cove makes custom cakes priced at $2.50 a serving, which means that this one probably cost about $8. I'd like to order a life-size rancor cake, please.
Fear not, underappreciated artists! Some day, your sculpture may be used as a bludgeon. You sketches may become fire starters. Your performance art demonstrations . . . well, they will actually be lost forever. But that's probably a good thing.
Miyo Koba, 89, owns Frank’s Superette--a convenience store in Moses Lake, Washington. On Sunday, a man entered and demanded all of the money from the cash register. Koba refused and threatened to stab him with a pair of scissors. The thief pulled out a 3-foot sword and swung it around. Koba was unperturbed: “It just looked like a toy to me, so I didn’t feel threatened.” In fact, she was ready to fight. Koba grabbed a golf club and struck him in the legs.
Desperate to escape, the man ripped the cash register off the counter and fled the scene on a bicycle. Police later discovered the cash register, the sword, the bicycle, and the man’s clothes some distance away.
