This is quite neat: Channel 4 in the UK has recreated the set of Stanley Kubrick's horror film The Shining - complete with crew and cast-member look-a-likes - for a TV ad:
Viewers get Kubrick's point of view as he walks through the set, ending up in his director's chair as the crew prepare to shoot the famous scene of Danny Torrance, the son of Duvall and Jack Nicholson's characters, riding round and round the deserted corridors of the Overlook Hotel.
The promo, filmed as a single tracking shot with a cast of 55 actors, was meticulously researched to "remain as faithful as possible to the period in which it was shot and the culture of the British studio in the late 1970s".
Link | If the video didn't work for you, check out the clip at The Fire Wire - Thanks Larry!
Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is so iconic that her smiling face has even shown up on graffiti. WebUrbanist has a neat post about 8 such unauthorized appearances by La Gioconda in the streets all over the world.
This one above is the RPG Mona Lisa, by the British street artist Banksy in Soho London.
http://weburbanist.com/2008/07/05/8-postmodern-appearances-of-the-mona-lisa-classic-subject-resurfaces-in-urban-street-artworks/ - Thanks Jon Jason!
Just because earlier attempts of lawnchair ballooning went so well (the first one by Larry Walters, ended up with an arrest, fame, lost of fame, and then suicide; the second one by Brazilian priest Adelir Antonio de Carli ended up with him missing and presumed dead), Kent Couch decided to try it himself.
Couch (I know, I know) rode a green lawnchair with 150 helium-filled party balloons from central Oregon all the way to Idaho:
Couch kissed his wife and kids goodbye, and patted their shivering Chihuahua, Isabella, before his ground crew gave him a push so he could clear surrounding light poles and a coffee cart.
Then, clutching a big mug of coffee, Couch rose out of the parking lot of his gas station into the bright blue morning sky, cheered by a crowd of spectators. [...]
Said his wife, Susan: "He's crazy. It's never been a dull moment since I married him."
We've posted about Harry Potter's author J.K. Rowling's commencement speech to Harvard grads before on Neatorama - this time it's Conan O'Brien's turn.
Here's a clip and transcript to Conan's commencement address for Harvard's Class of 2000:
I've dwelled on my failures today because, as graduates of Harvard, your biggest liability is your need to succeed. Your need to always find yourself on the sweet side of the bell curve.
Because success is a lot like a bright, white tuxedo. You feel terrific when you get it, but then you're desperately afraid of getting it dirty, of spoiling it in any way.
I left the cocoon of Harvard, I left the cocoon of Saturday Night Live, I left the cocoon of The Simpsons. And each time it was bruising and tumultuous. And yet, every failure was freeing, and today I'm as nostalgic for the bad as I am for the good.
So, that's what I wish for all of you: the bad as well as the good. Fall down, make a mess, break something occasionally. And remember that the story is never over.
Can you imagine a language without any word for "one" or any other numbers? Aren't numbers so important that life would be nearly impossible if you don't have words to express them?
Apparently not, as scientists found one such number-less language:
The team, led by MIT professor of brain and cognitive sciences Edward Gibson, found that members of the Piraha tribe in remote northwestern Brazil use language to express relative quantities such as "some" and "more," but not precise numbers.
It is often assumed that counting is an innate part of human cognition, said Gibson, "but here is a group that does not count. They could learn, but it's not useful in their culture, so they've never picked it up."
The study, which appeared in the June 10 online edition of the journal Cognition, offers evidence that number words are a concept invented by human cultures as they are needed, and not an inherent part of language, Gibson said.
Here's an unexpected side effect of the economic downturn in the U.S.: more and more illegal immigrants are going back to Mexico!
According to informal surveys by the Mexican consulate in Dallas, most of those wanting to return to Mexico cite the sudden scarcity of jobs, fear of deportation and uncertainty about obtaining legal resident status any time soon.
In the last few years, and particularly the last few months, Mr. Sánchez struggled to find work. His earnings dwindled as his children grew up and their needs multiplied.
"People like me, if you don't work one day, you worry about how to feed your family the next day," he said. "We as immigrant workers never have stability, even if the economy is doing well. Imagine how things are now."
Also, he said, there is growing anti-immigrant sentiment that he would rather not experience anymore.
"Those of us who live here live depressed all the time, in hiding," he said. "They don't like us here, and those who love us and whom we love are far away. I prefer to go back, even if it means living in poorer conditions."
Octavia Rivera López of the Dallas Morning News reports: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/070508dnmetimmigrants.24395628.html
Image: Zettl Research Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California at Berkeley
Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and UC Berkeley (my alma mater, yay!) have just created the world's smallest radio: from a single carbon nanotube!
The single nanotube serves, at once, as all major components of a radio: antenna, tuner, amplifier, and demodulator. Moreover, the antenna and tuner are implemented in a radically different manner than traditional radios, receiving signals via high frequency mechanical vibrations of the nanotube rather than through traditional electrical means. We have already used the nanotube radio to receive and play music from FM radio transmissions such as Layla by Eric Clapton (Derek and the Dominos) and the Beach Boy's Good Vibrations. The nanotube radio's extremely small size could enable radical new applications such as radio controlled devices small enough to exist in the human bloodstream, or simply smaller, cheaper, and more efficient wireless devices such as cellular phones.
When it comes to gas prices, Tanforan Shell gas station (in San Bruno, California - I used to live near there!) owner Bobak Bakhtiari feels your pain. So he installed a dunk tank to let his customers vent their frustration on a man dressed as in Shell uniform!
Here's an interview with Bobak (who also happens to be an anger management counselor) by Weekend America's John Moe:
Moe: Gas prices are high everywhere -- what are you doing about it that's unique?
Bakhtiari: We've installed a dunk tank about 10 days ago and every Saturday, there's live music and dunking going on.
Who is in the dunk tank? Who do the customers have an opportunity to dunk?
A Shell employee -- someone dressed up either as a corporate Shell employee or a typical cashier.
And what are the rules to that? Do you get a free softball toss with every fill-up? Or can anybody just walk up to the gas station and do it?
Well it's been going well with anybody just walking up to the station and doing it. They each get three tosses. If that doesn't help, we also offer an express rant, where if they can creatively rant about gas prices they can receive a free express car wash. Cashiers are trained to really encourage all forms of expression during the rant. Well, except for throwing a chair through the window.
A couple of days ago, I posted about Replate, a movement in San Francisco to help feed the homeless that stirred an interesting discussion on Neatorama.
San Francisco, bless its heart, spends hundreds of millions of dollars trying to help and house the extremely poor - but it ignores a large segment of its population who committed the big mistake of ... getting a job.
C.W. Nevius, a columnist for San Francisco Chronicle, wrote:
A family of four that makes more than $24,850 - which is 30 percent of San Francisco's average median income - will be unable to find any subsidized housing, according to local experts. Instead, the family can either cram into a tiny studio or flee the city - along with the better-paid teachers, firefighters and police officers who have already done so.
Unfortunately, all of these people made a single, critical mistake: They got a job.
In a system set up to lend a hand to those well under the poverty line, someone forgot to factor in the price of living in San Francisco. The San Francisco branch of ACORN, a national grassroots organization of low- and moderate-income people, says that 80 percent of those who receive subsidized housing in the city are making $17,400 or less for a one-person household.
So if a person finds a job at the city's minimum wage ($9.36 an hour) he's almost certainly out of luck when it comes to the city's vaunted housing assistance programs. Working a 40-hour week for 52 weeks a year, he will make over $19,000. Too much to get help.
Ask Jackie Phillips, a lifelong Bayview-Hunters Point resident whose son's family, including three children, recently moved in with her. Their problem? Both her son and his wife work.
"Their income is not low enough to qualify for the programs, but not high enough to buy at market rate," Phillips said. "So we're saying: Be all you can be, but don't be too much, or you will have to move out."
Thomas Beatie, the transgendered "Pregnant Man" has just given birth, ABC reported:
The birth, at St. Charles Medical Center in Bend, Oregon, was natural, according to a source, who added that reports that Beatie had had a Caesarean section are false.
This one fits today's Independence Day celebration to a tee: You are looking at the remnant of a stellar explosion that occurred more than 1,000 years ago. The red stripe, called the SN 1006 Supernova Remnant, is actually a ribbon of gas that floats in our galaxy as captured by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope: Link - via Newslite.tv
Max P. Sander's eBay auction ended with 0 bids ... and 1 felony charge! The 19-year-old University of Minnesota student is charged with selling his vote in the Presidential Election (it was a joke, he said):
"The rules are simple, the highest bidder will tell me who to cast my vote for in the election," he wrote. "I will vote for any candidate of any party, as long as they are on the ballot."
He also said that to prove he'd carried out the winning bidder's wishes, "i will photograph myself inside the voting booth with my filled out ballot."
"Good luck!" he wrote. "You're country depends on You!"
He got no bids, and an investigator for the county attorney's office said Sanders told him the whole thing "was a joke." Minnesota Statutes Chapter 211B.13, Subdivision 2, however, calls it "Bribery, Treating, and Soliciting," and it's punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Most people agree that a homeowner has got an intrinsic right to protect himself in his home if attacked - but the case of Joe Horn sparked a furious debate whether that right extended to shooting unarmed burglars in the back:
Moments later, Horn saw two burglars leave his neighbor's house, one of them carrying a bag filled with cash and jewelry.
"I'm gonna kill him," Horn said. "Stay in the house," the dispatcher said. "They're getting away," Horn replied. "That's all right," the dispatcher said. "Property's not worth killing someone over. OK?" "---damn it," said Horn, who then defied the dispatcher.
"Well, here it goes, buddy, you hear the shotgun clicking, and I'm going," he said.
"Don't go outside," the dispatcher warned.
Self-Defense? Horn says he came out his front door, down his porch and confronted the two burglars. The next sounds heard on the 911 tape are Horn ordering the two men to stop & and then shooting them both.
"Move you're dead," he said, and fired his shotgun three times.
"Both suspects were shot in the back," Pasadena Police Captain A.H. "Bud" Corbett said. "Not at the same angle, but both suspects were hit in the back."
The Texas grand jury cleared him for the killing, citing the "Castle Doctrine" that gives Texans unprecedented authority to take action against intruders: Link
A caller called the 999 emergency line in South Wales to report a mysterious bright stationary object in the sky. And when the police checked it out, they found that it was ... the moon!
Control Room: "South Wales Police, what's your emergency?"
Caller: "It's not really. I just need to inform you that across the mountain there's a bright stationary object."
Control room: "Right."
Caller: "If you've got a couple of minutes perhaps you could find out what it is? It's been there at least half an hour and it's still there."
Control: "It's been there for half an hour. Right. Is it actually on the mountain or in the sky?"
Caller: "It's in the air."
Control: "I will send someone up there now to check it out."
Caller: "OK."
The mystery was soon solved, as the exchange between control and an officer at the scene, makes clear.
Control: "Alpha Zulu 20, this object in the sky, did anyone have a look at it?"
Officer: "Yes, it's the moon. Over."
Ah, you've got to love the Welsh: Link - Thanks Phil!
Tearin' its way through the InterWeb right now is an unsolicited script by Michael Bay (Director of Transformers, Bad Boys, and so on) for Batman's The Dark Knight that was rejected by Warner Bros.
