Which Hollywood blockbuster has the heart of a cult movie? onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Which Hollywood blockbuster has the heart of a cult movie?

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We celebrate cult movies for their subversiveness and willingness to defy your expectations by throwing gonzo shit at the screen. But the line between cult films and mainstream Hollywood blockbusters is never solid, especially with so many directors going back and forth. Which huge Hollywood tentpole film is really a cult movie at heart?

Please include a picture, poster or clip for your chosen movie. And please include the name and why it's really a cult movie at heart, in the following format.

Name: Total Recall (1990)

Why it's a cult movie at heart: Once and future cult auteur Paul Verhoeven goes kind of nuts in this adaptation of a Philip K. Dick story. From the exploding eyeballs to the stomach mutant to the three-breasted sex worker, this movie isn't afraid to go completely over the top, and then jump off from there. Plus Schwarzenegger is at his most manic and weird, chewing lines like "Give the people air" as if they were steak.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Which Hollywood blockbuster has the heart of a cult movie?

Over 120 spoof papers withdrawn from major journal publishers onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Over 120 spoof papers withdrawn from major journal publishers

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The publishers Springer and IEEE announced they would remove the papers from their subscription services after French researcher Cyril Labbé demonstrated the works were not original scientific work at all, but rather "computer-generated nonsense."

Top Photo via robotlab

Via Nature News:

Among the works were, for example, a paper published as a proceeding from the 2013 International Conference on Quality, Reliability, Risk, Maintenance, and Safety Engineering, held in Chengdu, China. (The conference website says that all manuscripts are "reviewed for merits and contents".) The authors of the paper, entitled 'TIC: a methodology for the construction of e-commerce', write in the abstract that they "concentrate our efforts on disproving that spreadsheets can be made knowledge-based, empathic, and compact".

It's still unclear who submitted the papers, or why, but they're easy to spot according to Labbé, who has built an applet that users can use to upload papers and determine whether they've been generated using SCIgen, so it's unsettling to think that they could make their way to such esteemed publications (and in their subscription offerings, no less).

Labbé developed a way to automatically detect manuscripts composed by a piece of software called SCIgen, which randomly combines strings of words to produce fake computer-science papers. SCIgen was invented in 2005 by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge to prove that conferences would accept meaningless papers — and, as they put it, "to maximize amusement" (see 'Computer conference welcomes gobbledegook paper'). A related program generates random physics manuscript titles on the satirical website arXiv vs. snarXiv. SCIgen is free to download and use, and it is unclear how many people have done so, or for what purposes. SCIgen's output has occasionally popped up at conferences, when researchers have submitted nonsense papers and then revealed the trick.

Read more about Labbé's revelation at Nature News. Curious if you can distinguish between a spoof paper and the real deal? Have a go at arXiv vs. snarXiv (I managed to get 7 out of 10 on my last go, but I'll admit I've scored much lower in the past).

[Nature News]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Over 120 spoof papers withdrawn from major journal publishers

The Great Lakes Experience Their Deepest Freeze in 20 Years onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The Great Lakes Experience Their Deepest Freeze in 20 Years

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For the first time since 1994, 88% of the surface of the Great Lakes has frozen solid.

The image above, like the image of the lakes we posted earlier this week, is a true-color image, which can make it difficult to discern ice from snow and clouds. In the image below, NASA's Aqua – an Earth-observing satellite that maps the planet's water – has photographed the lakes using infrared filters that make these features easier to tell apart. As Phil Plait explains over on Bad Astronomy:

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Different wavelengths (colors, if you will) of infrared light are absorbed and reflected differently by the features below, making it easier to tell them apart. In this case, water is deep blue, ice is pale blue (where it's thicker it looks brighter), snow is blue-green, and clouds are blue-green or white.

As you can see, a lot of water is covered, some of it in pretty substantial ice sheets. If they hadn't labeled Lake Erie, I would've missed it.

"Persistently low temperatures across the Great Lakes region are responsible for the increased areal coverage of the ice," said Nathan Kurtz, cryospheric scientist NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. According to NASA Earth Observatory, cold air and winds remove heat from the fresh water until it reaches the freezing point, at which point ice begins to form on the lakes' surface. "Low temperatures are the dominant mechanism for thickening the ice," said Kurtz, "but secondary factors like clouds, snow, and wind also play a role."

[NASA Earth Observatory via Bad Astronomy]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The Great Lakes Experience Their Deepest Freeze in 20 Years

Where armor meets corset onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Where armor meets corset

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These are by Andrew Kanounov. And while it would obviously require a ton of time, measurements, and money to get one, don't you just wish you could?

There are a bunch of influences at work here (anyone else getting a strong art nouveau feel?), but mostly it all adds up to awesome.

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via liz-libeth.tumblr.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Where armor meets corset

These official exoplanet drawings are the next best thing to visiting onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com These official exoplanet drawings are the next best thing to visiting

Chances are, none of us will live long enough to travel to a planet in another star system. But at least, we can gaze upon dozens of exoplanets right now — thanks to official artworks created by NASA and some of the world's greatest high-tech observatories. Check out our favorite official exoplanet art below.

We already showed you some beautiful exoplanet conceptions by Internet artists — but this time around, we're sharing official exoplanet images from the major space agencies and scientific institutions. Check 'em out below.

The dark magenta-colored GJ504b in the constellation Virgo, approximately 57 light-years from Earth, with a mean temperature of about 480 °F (250 °C). It's the lowest-mass discovered exoplanet ever.

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(Photo by NASA/Godard Space Flight Center/S. Wiessinger)

The CoRoT-2b, an extrasolar planet and its sun, 930 light-years from Earth in the constellation Aquila. The hot (2306 °F or 1263 °C) planet is 1.43 times bigger than Jupiter and 3.3 times as massive.

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The Earth and planet Kepler-78b, which is in the Cygnus constellation hundreds of light-years away.

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The Kepler-78b is roughly 20 percent larger and 1.8 times heavier than our planet. Due to its extremely close solar orbit, the planet's surface is at a temperature of 3,680 °F (or 2,030 °C).

(Photo by AP/Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics/David A. Aguilar)

HD 189733 b, a huge and warm gas planet, close to a hot star, with an average daytime temperature of 1770 F (965 C) and a nighttime 1250 ºF (650 ºC).

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But how does the back side of the planet stay so warm? NASA has an explanation:

The answer is wind: insanely fast, dangerous wind that whisks heat from day-side to night-side at a speed of 4,500 mph, nearly six times the speed of sound. In fact, astronomers estimate that wind speeds might top out at 22,000 mph, conditions that make hurricanes on Earth look like a breezy day at the beach.

(via NASA)

The snow line in TW Hydrae showing water ice covered dust grains in the inner disc and carbon monoxide ice covered grains in the outer disc. The transition from blue to green marks the carbon monoxide snow line. The snow helps grains of dust to adhere to each other by providing a sticky coating, which is essential to the formation of planets and comets.

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The Gliese 667 Cd, an ice planet (it's only -202 °F or -130 °C) in the constellation of Scorpius, about 22 light-years from Earth. It could have an ocean under the ice.

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(via ESO/M. Kornmesser)

HD 189733b, 63 light-years from us, with a temperature of over 1800 °F (1000 °C), glass rains and howling 4350 mph (7000 kmh) winds

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HD 209458b, a hot gas planet in the constellation Pegasus, 150 light-years from Earth

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Infrared view of the free-floating planet CFBDSIR J214947.2-040308.9, the closest such object to the Solar System. It does not orbit a star and hence does not shine by reflected light; the faint glow it emits can only be detected in infrared light.

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The methane-free GJ 436b, where the average temperature is about 980 °F (527 °C), about 33 light-years from us

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The Moon-sized Kepler-37b, the smallest known exoplanet, 210 light-years from Earth. It has a quite high mean temperature (800°F or 425°C), but no atmosphere, so it cannot support life.

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OGLE-2005-BLG-390L b, 21,500 ± 3,300 light years away from Earth, the chillest known exoplanet yet discovered: the average temperature is only -370 °F (-223 °C)!

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The ocean-like Kepler-22b, 620 years away in the constellation of Cygnus. It was the first known transiting planet to orbit within the habitable zone of a Sun-like star.

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The pulsar planets PSR B1257+12 b, c, and d are all that remains of a dead solar system. They are constantly beamed with intense radiation.

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UCF-1.01, an exoplanet candidate, orbits a star called GJ436, which is 33 light-years away.

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onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com These official exoplanet drawings are the next best thing to visiting

A webcomic fairytale about a princess who keeps worries in her hair onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com A webcomic fairytale about a princess who keeps worries in her hair

In Isabelle Melançon short webcomic Knot, a group of wizards is sent to figure out what is wrong with a perpetually sad princess. The humblest among them discovers the cause of the princess's troubles, and comes up with a sweet solution.

Melançon is also the artist behind the longform webcomic Namesake (which is partially set in the Land of Oz), along with writer Megan Lavey-Heaton. She will be selling printed copies of Knot as well, which she has available for preorder online.

Knot [via Olympus Overdrive]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com A webcomic fairytale about a princess who keeps worries in her hair

Did the Russians love the '80s too? Some revealing photos onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Did the Russians love the '80s too? Some revealing photos

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The '80s weren't a great time for those living in the U.S.S.R., although those living in Moscow had it better than most. As the rest of the country dealt with bread and meat rations, those living in the capital had access to fruit (sometimes), soda (a treat) and could even see a movie (if you had the money). Here's a look at the "good life" offered by the Soviets during the '80s.

A Bus Station

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A Ferris Wheel

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An orange was a rarely-seen exotic fruit in the '80s Soviet Union.

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Block Housing

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Fashion

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Building Propaganda

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Market Hall

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Street Cleaning

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A Flower Seller

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Lomonosov State University

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Roadside Fruit Stand

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(Via English Russia)

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A Fanta Soda Kiosk

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The Melodiya Record Store

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Insoles Store

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The GUM (a.k,a, the State Department Store), facing the Red Square.

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Waiting in Line

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The Mir Cinema in Zagorsk (now Sergiyev Posad).

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"Glory to Labor!"

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(Via English Russia)

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A Dairy Store

(Via Patrick Murphy/PBase)

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A Theatre

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Limousines in Front of the Kremlin

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The Lenin Mausoleum

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The photos were taken by Aad van der Drift in 1984 and 1988, except when noted otherwise.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Did the Russians love the '80s too? Some revealing photos