Fan theory links Seven and The Usual Suspects onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Fan theory links Seven and The Usual Suspects

It's very possible that Kevin Spacey was playing the exact same character in The Usual Suspects and Seven. Then again, it's also possible that Kevin Spacey was playing two very similar characters in two movies that liked to call him the devil. But you decide.

Vimeo user Tony Stark has a theory that Kaiser Soze and John Doe are the same person. It's intriguing, but we're not so sure. One thing we do know, the year of 1995 was absolutely insane for murder thrillers!

[Via FearNet]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Fan theory links Seven and The Usual Suspects

​The Walking Dead's Carl is so bad at the zombie apocalypse, you guys onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com ​The Walking Dead's Carl is so bad at the zombie apocalypse, you guys

S

Carl-haters got a special treat tonight, as the sheriff-hat-wearing lad managed to be awful to and at pretty much everything — he's shitty to Rick and shitty at dealing with zombies. But his general ineptitude is the highlight of The Walking Dead's mid-season four premiere, a quiet episode that didn't offer much else.

First, a caveat. In my recap of The Walking Dead's mid-season finale last year, I may have gushed (I totally gushed) about the action-packed, high stakes, immensely jaw-dropping finale, calling it the greatest achievement of the human race. I now realize I was a bit overexcited at finally seeing The Walking Dead reach its full potential, and give us what was easily the best episode since the premiere, and surpassing it in a great many ways. Did it make TWD great? No, but it was excellent and gave me a great deal of hope for the show's future.

I feel like AMC's habit of splitting up seasons did not do last night's episode, "After," any good; it was a quiet episode, focused only on Rick and Carl and Michonne, with lots of silence, a few character moments, but mostly the basics of survival that Rick et al. had hoped they'd left behind when they moved into the prison. Had it aired the week after "Too Far Gone," it would have been far more palatable; three months later, it just seems slow.

Rick and Carl flee the prison. Rick is fucked up — and this isn't me and my regular penchant for profanity, I'm pretty sure his condition is medically known as "fucked up." He can barely walk or breathe. Carl, meanwhile, is angry. He's angry at the loss of Judith, he's angry at the loss of Herschel and everyone else, he's angry at the loss of his life at the prison, he's angry because his life is terrible, and because he has no one else to focus this anger on, he takes it out on his dad.

Rick handles this anger by basically passing out for two days once they find a home they can break into. It's a good call, because he doesn't have to see Carl get into two preposterously dangerous zombie situations, both thanks to his stupidity and panic under pressure: the first time he decides to lure two zombies away from their house and immediately backs into another one; the second is a zombie bursting from a door he opened that he was ostensibly expecting a zombie to pop out of. He barely avoids getting bitten both times.

Being unconscious, Rick also doesn't have to hear Carl berate him for failing to protect everyone, for failing to take care of the Governor earlier, for bothering to farm when he should have prepared for war. He even yells "I'd be fine if you died." It's the most normal thing in the world for a hormonal teenage boy with any kind of problem to blame his parents, and what Carl has endured has earned him all the temper tantrums in the world. However, his petulance makes him seem far more childish than his years, as does his massive, repeated incompetence in this episode. He's got plenty to be legitimately upset about, but he could also be a little realistic about his situation and his skills, and this episode could have featured this conflict without it being so shallow or Carl being so horrible.

The cherry on Carl's delightful sundae of wretchedness is when Rick finally wakes up and does his best zombie impression. The panicked Carl picks up his gun as his father crawls towards him (and to be fair to Carl, Rick should probably know better than to crawl slowly towards anybody while wheezing and not speaking) until Carl cries and fails to shoot his dad and Rick finally mutters something intelligible. There's no way Rick was going to die, which robs all the drama out of the moment — so we know Carl may be about to shoot his living dad, which isn't dramatic as much as it makes Carl look even dumber.

S

The other member this episode follows is Michonne, who had a bit of a meltdown after the events of the prison. After getting two more pets — i.e., zombies whose arms and lower jaws she's chopped off, rendering them more or less docile and which keep other zombies from noticing her for some reason (and by the way, why doesn't EVERYBODY have some of these now) — she sets off, but not before stabbing Herschel's decapitated, zombified head on her way out.

Basically, she just wanders around in the middle of a zombie herd, while taking a long enough break to go to sleep and have a nightmare about her pre-apocalypse life, including her brother, her lover, her young child (the men being her original two "pets," and her child being very conspicuously gone). It's a nice look at Michonne's origins, but the dream sequence is so obvious and weird — they keep talking about how some movie (art show?) was too pretentious, but they sound really pretentious about it themselves, and it makes it hard to get too worked up about what Michonne has lost, even though they show — with help from a Michonne soliloquy later on — that her "lover" killed himself because he couldn't handle it anymore.

Eventually, Michonne kind of snaps out of her fugue state and realizes she's walking in the middle of a herd of zombies, and kills them all (including her pets), and heads back to some footprints she passed by a day or two ago. These are actually Rick and Carl's tracks, and she follows them almost directly to the house Rick and Carl stopped at and rings the doorbell. Rick looks through the peephole — because a guess a zombie could have bumped into it — and laughs, and tells Carl, "It's for you."

There's not much going on here, but some of it works. Seeing Rick and Carl scramble to survive like they did before Herschel's farm is a great reminder of the life they lost with the prison, and really emphasizes the consequences of the last episode. Watching Carl discover a flatscreen TV that won't turn on and videogames he can't play — a brief second of joy when he thinks about his old life, then the crushing realization that it's gone for good — is fantastic. I never mind the basic survival stuff — that's what this show is, about how people survive and they choose to survive (or not) but Rick is unconscious, Michonne is practically unconscious, which leaves Carl to carry the episode, and he seems like he's trying for Joffrey's crown as Most Unlikable Boy on TV.

It wasn't great, that's for sure. I assume next week focuses on other survivors, so let's see how a Carl-less episode is before we start panicking.

S

Assorted Musings:

• Tonight's episode was written by TWD's comic creator Robert Kirkman. I really haven't read any of Kirkman's comics other than Marvel Zombies, but I wonder how many of Carl's terribleness came from the script. I mean, Chandler Riggs isn't exactly Laurence Olivier, but I don't know how much Olivier could have done with two scenes of gross zombie-fighting incompetence.

• Tonight was the motherlode of obnoxious Carl lines. "Shane taught me. Remember him?" "I'd be fine if you died." "I was careful." NO YOU WEREN'T, CARL. I WAS WATCHING.

• Michonne had a doppel-zombie in her herd. I thought that was clever.

• The scene of Carl eating a 112-oz. can of pudding desperately needed a scene following it of Carl vomiting up 105-oz. of pudding.

• Nothing sums up this episode better than this gif of Carl completely failing to shove open a door. It was also the episode's highlight.

S

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com ​The Walking Dead's Carl is so bad at the zombie apocalypse, you guys

Flappy Bird on Phone for 99.900$ on Ebay onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Flappy Bird on Phone for 99.900$ on Ebay

How low can you go, Idiocracy… here we come: „I’m surprised someone that stupid has 90,000 dollars to bid.“

Several auctions have popped up on the online marketplace eBay featuring iPhones that included an installed copy of Flappy Bird, which was removed from app stores by its developer after it skyrocketed to the top of the Google Play and Apple App Store.

Some listings for the smartphones feature bids reaching hundreds and thousands of dollars, including one with a top bid of $99,900. We’ve reached out to eBay to determine whether this listing and some of the other high-price auctions are legitimate.

Phones with ‘Flappy Bird’ app fetching big bids on eBay

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Flappy Bird on Phone for 99.900$ on Ebay

Zoo kills "surplus" giraffe in front of children, feeds it to lions onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Zoo kills "surplus" giraffe in front of children, feeds it to lions

Did this giraffe really need to die? A Danish zoo shot and killed Marius, a healthy giraffe in their care, before feeding him to their lions... in front of a group of school children.

Saying that Marius' genes were "over-represented," The Copenhagen Zoo, which also has seven other giraffes, announced plans to put down Marius. Before they did so, however, they fielded a number of offers from other zoos to take him in and one offer from a private individual to buy the giraffe for $680,000. All of the offers were turned down, saying that the space should be used instead for what the zoo's Scientific Director Bengt Holst called a "genetically more valuable giraffe," and that sometimes zoo breeding programs resulted in "a surplus animal."

Inviting children was also a controversial move, which Copenhagen Zoo spokesperson Tobias Stenbaek Bro defended to the AP, saying "I'm actually proud because I think we have given children a huge understanding of the anatomy of a giraffe that they wouldn't have had from watching a giraffe in a photo."

So, what do you think? What should the zoo have done? What's the best way to cope with inbreeding problems among small populations of animals in captivity? And what do you think about the zoos decision to open it up to the public?

Images: AP Photo/POLFOTO, Peter Hove Olesen.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Zoo kills "surplus" giraffe in front of children, feeds it to lions

Eliminating scarcity won't stop us from being jerks onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Eliminating scarcity won't stop us from being jerks

One thing nearly all utopian societies have in common is the elimination of scarcity. For them, limited resources are usually an antiquated concept, because everyone has enough. Unfortunately, one study shows that people in utopia might very well be the same grasping, avaricious jerks we know them to be right now.

Zero-Sum Thinking

Zero-sum thinking isn't particularly attractive, but in many situations it's appropriate. Every one person's gain is another person's loss. There's only so much food, money, or space in the world, and people are competing for as much of it as they can get. When I eat an apple, I'm taking it out of the hand of another person who could eat it. When I lose my house, another person gets it. What I pay out, another person earns. There's one big pie, and it's just a matter of how the pieces are distributed.

S

Now, there are those who argue that there is already enough pie, and if we could just accept that and get ourselves organized, everyone would get enough. That's a philosophy that may eliminate hunger or homelessness, but it's not quite getting away from zero-sum. In utopian societies, there is no pie, no pool of resources, no question of divvying anything up. There is just more of whatever is needed, whenever more is needed. Unfortunately, those doing the needing are still human.

The Experiment

One experiment was meant to determine whether people could let go of zero-sum thinking. Participants were asked to predict the grade of a group of students. Until the last pencil on Earth is snapped in frustration, grades can be an unlimited resource. Participants were told that the groups of students — who had to give presentations — were graded based on an absolute system. No one was being graded on a curve, and everyone in the class could have gotten an A.

The study participants were then shown the grades of a few past presentations. One group of experimental participants had every reason to believe that the entire class did get an A, as the grades were always on the high side. Another group was shown the grades of either an exacting teacher, or a dishearteningly incompetent body of students. They all had relatively bad grades. If you were told by a fellow student that nearly everyone walked out of Mr. Smith's class with an A, while almost everyone barely scraped a C- out of Mr. Jones, you would quickly reason out which class you wanted to take if you wanted an easy A.

S

The experimental participants did not come to that conclusion. They predicted that the group in the "easy" class were about to run into an A scarcity. Not everyone could possibly get good grades, right? It was only when another experiment was performed, and the group was directly reminded as they were predicting the grade for the hapless students, that there were an unlimited number of As to be given, that they slightly modified their predictions. Even then, the lower grades, the Ds and Fs, were most effected. Students stopped believing that the group would fail, but they didn't tend to believe that the students would get As.

On the other hand, the experimental participants who saw that terrible grades were handed out to group after group were much more likely to judge realistically the chances of the group they observed. The zero-sum bias, then, doesn't come into play in every scenario. People will believe that disaster comes to everyone — it's only when they see good things handed out that they start thinking that there's a limited quantity of potential happiness in the world.

Can We Get to a Post Zero-Sum Society?

When we can extract transportation from matter and antimatter, as well as food and clothing from replicators, will we finally stop biting and clawing at each other to get things? Quite possibly not. For one thing, there will always be something that's comparatively rare. If it's not gold, silver, food, or shelter, it will be the attention of the other jumpsuit-wearing miracles of dentistry that share the same utopia. People might claw each other for fame, or number of spouses, or anything else that they see as not being ubiquitous enough.

More importantly, the urge to worry that the "best stuff" is running out will always be there. There couldn't possibly be enough As; there are only enough Ds. Therefore, if we want to avoid chaos in our future utopias, we'll have to downgrade what we worry about now — education, health care, food, and shelter — from As and Bs to Ds and Fs. So the people of the future might live in a utopia with food, and water, and stretch-cotton. And although they'll have perfect teeth, I won't see their teeth because they won't be smiling. All the necessities we worry about now will be worthless, and therefore not worth fighting over.

[Via Zero-Sum Bias: Perceived Competition Despite Unlimited Resources]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Eliminating scarcity won't stop us from being jerks

These maps show where species will have to go as climate changes onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com These maps show where species will have to go as climate changes

As our planet warms, certain plants and animals will no longer be able to live in their accustomed locations. By tracking a half-century's worth of data, scientists from CSIRO have determined where these species will need to go to find new homes.

The new research, which was just published in Nature, shows how fast and in which direction local temperatures have shifted over the past 50 years. The researchers are hoping to create a simpler way of looking at climate changes and their likely effects on biodiversity.

S

"Our changing climate is creating new thermal environments in some areas and in others existing environments may disappear," write the CSIRO researchers in a blog post. "Over the past few decades numerous fish and invertebrate species living in the southern hemisphere have already shifted their geographic distribution towards cooler regions. On land, species have started to seek relief from warmer conditions by moving closer to the coast, to higher elevations, to shaded hill aspects or further from the equator."

S

The research was primarily focused on the Australian situation. The new maps show where species are moving to find their optimal temperature. At the same time, other species are faced with potential extinction if they're unable to move. Geographic features such as coastlines and mountain ranges can act as barriers, or magnets, in influencing migration patterns.

More from CSIRO:

Species migration can have important consequences for local biodiversity. For example, warming waters and a strengthening of the East Australian Current have mobilised the Long-spined Sea Urchin (Centrostephanus rodgersii), previously only found as far south as southern NSW, to invade the eastern Tasmania coast. This has resulted in the decline of giant kelp forests with knock-on effects for commercially-fished rock lobsters.

What's more, along the east coast of Australia the direction of the climate pathways coincides with the direction of flow of the East Australian Current, therefore increasing the potential for dispersal of climate migrants. It is not surprising that some of the first evidence of climate change affecting marine species' distributions in Australia has come from south-east waters, with range shifts observed in around 30% of coastal fish species.

Images: CSIRO/Nature.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com These maps show where species will have to go as climate changes

Japan's insane Marvel Super Heroes anime/disk game is hilariously awful onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Japan's insane Marvel Super Heroes anime/disk game is hilariously awful

We've told you about Marvel Super Heroes: Disk Wars, the anime series and about its Pokémon-esque, accompanying collectible disk game, that it's basically just a commercial for. But did you know the game itself is basically pogs?

Bandai has released this promo for the anime along with instructions on how the game, called Bachicombat, works, and hoo boy. Here's how Anime News Network explained it:

To start a game of Bachicombat, each player assembles one to three Smash DISKs and sets up four Defense DISKs on his or her side of the playing field. After deciding who should attack first, the battle starts. Player 1 chooses one of the Smash DISKs, calls out the DISK's character ("Smash with Iron Man's Tech Lv. 2!! D-Smash!!"), and throws down the DISK against Player 2's Defense DISKs.

The objective of the game is to flip the other player's Defense DISKs. It is hard to flip a Defense DISK by striking its center, so the video advices players to aim for the corners. A player loses a DISK if it is flipped over. A player wins if his or her opponent has no more DISKs.

Literally the only differences between Bachicombat and pogs are that you don't stack Bachicombat disks before you start slamming them, and the discs are engineered to flip a bit easier than if they were just cardboard.

So it's clear that Marvel Super Heroes: Disk Wars is for little kids, but I don't know — I have a hard time imagining that even four-year-olds in this day and age are going to be too excited about playing a game whose pieces look like they weren't good enough to be the prize in a box of cereal.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Japan's insane Marvel Super Heroes anime/disk game is hilariously awful

The easy way to "prove" that zero is one and -1 is infinity onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The easy way to "prove" that zero is one and -1 is infinity

So you've been set a task: prove something which is clearly not true. That sounds much tougher than it is. All you need is basic math skills, an infinite series of numbers, and a playful spirit. Take a look.

We're going to look at how easy it is to "prove" impossible things if you can write a few whole numbers, juggle them around, and add them together. To be fair, there need to be a lot of numbers for you to be able to do this, but you don't have to write them all. You can just write a few terms in a series, an infinite series, and people will get the idea.

For example:

1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + . . .

That series will go on to forever, and you understand how it will go. You also understand what the sum of all those infinite terms will be. As the number of terms increase, the series will add up to a number that gets closer and closer to one. Because it adds up to a definite number, it's called a series that displays "absolute convergence." It converges on a single, unchanging number.

Not all infinite series will do the same. And if you work with series that don't absolutely converge, you can use simple tricks to prove all sorts of things. For example, let's look at a series that proves that one is equal to zero.

1 - 1 + 1 - 1 + 1 - 1 + . . .

Adding and subtracting one is the simplest possible thing to do in math, so how is this series going to prove an impossible thing? Well, first let's say the series adds up to a number that we'll call N. Then, let's group the numbers just the right way.

1 - 1 + 1 - 1 + 1 - 1 + . . . = N

(1 - 1) + (1 - 1) + (1 - 1) + . . . = N

All I've added are parentheses, and those don't make a difference if all we're doing is adding a series of terms, but this makes the explanation of the series obvious. All of those grouped (1 - 1) terms are equal to zero, and even if you add an infinite number of zeroes together, you'll get zero.

1 - 1 + 1 - 1 + 1 - 1 + . . . = (1 - 1) + (1 - 1) + (1 - 1) + . . . = (0) + (0) + (0) + . . . = 0 = N

That's simple enough. But let's look at another way to group the pairing.

1 + (-1) + 1 + (-1) + 1 + (-1) . . . = 1 + (-1 + 1) + (-1 + 1) + (-1 + 1) . . . = 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 . . . = N

Since N is equal to N, and both zero and one are N, then one is equal to zero. Here's an even simpler one.

1 + 1 + 1 + 1 . . . = M

It's pretty obvious that M is infinity, right? Well, what if we change it around a little? What if we look at terms that are equivalent to one? (-1 + 2) is equal to one, right? And (-2 + 3) is also equal to one. Here's another pattern you could use to write this series:

(-1 + 2) + (-2 + 3) + (-3 + 4) + (-4 + 5) + . . . = M

This can be re-written like this:

-1 + (2 - 2) + (3 - 3) + (4 - 4) + . . . = M = -1

In this way, we've "proved" M is equal to infinity and M is equal to negative one. So negative one is equal to infinity. Meaning you only have to go slightly into debt to have an infinite amount of money.

[Via Magnificent Mistakes in Mathematics]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The easy way to "prove" that zero is one and -1 is infinity

Nipple Psychics of Japan onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Nipple Psychics of Japan

Anscheinend gibt es in Japan Wahrsager, die die Zukunft aus Nippeln (genauer: dem Warzenhof) vorhersagen. Oder anders gesagt: Natürlich gibt es in Japan Wahrsager, die die Zukunft aus Nippeln vorhersagen. Meine eigenen Nippel sind eher so untere Reihe in der Mitte, also eher blaubeerig, was nach japanischer Nippelwahrsagerei soviel heisst, wie: René is’n Poser. Pff, Nippel.

Here are some of the different shapes: dart target shaped, Gayla kite shaped, mango shaped, crabapple shaped, blueberry shaped, and blue mountain coffee bean shaped. And what do these shapes say about your personality type?

According to areola reading, dart target shaped means you go easy on yourself and are wound up. Kite-shaped means you like bettering yourself. Mango-shaped mean you are family-oriented, nice, and a hard worker. Crabapple-shaped mean you are smart and put importance on happiness. Blueberry-shaped means you are a show-off. And blue mountain-shaped means you are slow to show strong emotions to your lover.

Nipple Fortune Telling Exists, It Seems

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Nipple Psychics of Japan

Curiosity has successfully crossed over the Dingo Gap dune onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Curiosity has successfully crossed over the Dingo Gap dune

S

Fantastic news, everyone: NASA's Curiosity mega rover has successfully crossed over the perilous Dingo Gap sand dune — opening the gateway to the science rich targets in the "Moonlight Valley" and Martian mountain beyond.

"I'm over the moon that I'm over the dune! I successfully crossed the 'Dingo Gap' sand dune on Mars," Curiosity tweeted overnight Thursday.

"Moonlight Valley" is the name of the breathtaking new locale beyond Dingo, Curiosity Principal Investigator John Grotzinger, of Caltech, told Universe Today. Curiosity drove westward over the 1-meter (3-foot) tall Dingo Gap dune in stellar style on Thursday, February 6th, on Sol 535.

S

Curiosity scans Moonlight Valley beyond Dingo Gap Dune. Curiosity's view to "Moonlight Valley" beyond after crossing over 'Dingo Gap' sand dune. This photomosaic was taken after Curiosity drove over the 1 meter tall Dingo Gap sand dune and shows dramatic scenery in the valley beyond, back dropped by eroded rim of Gale Crater. Assembled from navigation camera (navcam) raw images from Sol 535 (Feb. 6, 2104) Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer- kenkremer.com/Marco Di Lorenzo.

Dramatic before and after photos reveal that the rover passed over the Red Planet dune without difficulty. They also show some interesting veins and mineral fractures are visible in the vicinity just ahead.

"Moonlight Valley has got lots of veins cutting through it," Grotzinger told me. "We're seeing recessive bedrock."

The Martian dune lies between two low scarps sitting at the north and south ends.

"The rover successfully traversed the dune in Dingo Gap," wrote science team member Ken Herkenhoff in an update. "The data look good."

S

Curiosity Crosses 'Dingo Gap' sand dune – Looking forward and back on Sol 535. Hazcam camera images. Credit: NASA.

Since arriving at the picturesque "Dingo Gap" sand dune about a week ago, Curiosity's handlers had pondered whether to breach the dune as an alternate pathway into the smoother terrain of the valley beyond as a work around to avoid fields of rough rocks that have been ripping holes into the robots six aluminum wheels in recent months.

"We're guessing it will be softer on the wheels," Grotzinger informed me.

Before giving the go ahead to move forward, engineers took a few days to carefully assess the dune's integrity and physical characteristics with the rovers science instruments and cameras to insure there wasn't the potential to get irretrievably stuck in a deep sand trap.

The team even commanded Curiosity to carry out a toe dip by gently rolling the 20 inch (50 cm) diameter wheels back and forth over the crest on Tuesday, February 4th, to insure it was safe to mount.

They won't take any chances with safety, recalling that rover Spirit's demise occurred when she because mired in a hidden sand trap in 2010 from which there was ultimately no escape. She froze to death during the bitter Martin winter – more than six years into her 90-day mission.

Opportunity also got wedged at the seemingly endless dune field at "Purgatory Dune" that nearly doomed her early in the now decade long trek. Engineers spent weeks on the extrication effort.

S

Curiosity does a "toe dip" wheel motion test at Dingo Gap sand dune on Sol 534, Feb 5, 2014 before crossing dune on Sol 535. Hazcam image linearized and colorized. Credit: NASA/JPL/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer- kenkremer.com.

Since last summer, Curiosity has been traveling on a southwestward route to the breathtaking foothills of Mount Sharp, her ultimate science destination.

The westward route though Dingo will soon lead Curiosity to a spot dubbed "KMS-9" where the team hopes to conduct the first rock drilling operations since departing the Yellowknife Bay quadrant in July 2013, into areas of intriguing bedrock.

"At KMS-9, we see three terrain types exposed and a relatively dust-free surface," said science team collaborator Katie Stack of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.

The missions science focus has shifted to "search for that subset of habitable environments which also preserves organic carbon," says Curiosity Principal Investigator John Grotzinger, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. But first, with the dune now safely in the rear view mirror, the team plans a busy weekend of research activities. A big science program using the X-Ray spectrometer and high resolution MAHLI camera on the robotic arm is already planned for this weekend.

"The arm will be deployed to investigate some interesting veins or minerals filling fractures in front of the rover," says Herkenhoff. "ChemCam will search for frost early on the morning of Sol 538 (Saturday), then analyze targets Collett and Mussell along the vein/fracture fill later in the day."

Thereafter Curiosity will continue on its journey across the floor of Gale Crater, taking images and atmospheric measurements along the way to the sedimentary layers at the base of Mount Sharp.

Curiosity has already accomplished her primary goal of discovering a habitable zone on Mars that could support Martian microbes if they ever existed.

To date Curiosity's odometer stands at nearly five kilometers and she has taken over 118,000 images. The robot has about another five km to go to reach Mount Sharp.

Meanwhile, NASA's sister Opportunity rover is exploring clay mineral outcrops by the summit of Solander Point on the opposite side of Mars at the start of her second Decade investigating the Red Planet's mysteries.

This article originally appeared at Universe Today and is republished here with permission.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Curiosity has successfully crossed over the Dingo Gap dune

Such New School. Next Gen Internet Language. Wow. onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Such New School. Next Gen Internet Language. Wow.

Schönes Posting von Linguistin Gretchen McCulloch, die ausgehend von der Doge-Meme Newschool-Webspeak untersucht. Im Gegensatz zu LOLCats oder 1337speak, die vor allem syntaktische Sprachmutation betreiben („HAZ“, „1337“), greift die Doge-Meme sprachlich korrekter in Grammatik ein und stellt da eigene Regeln auf („Such X. Wow.“) Netzsprache geht also von beinahe schon grafischen („H4X0R“), einfachen Syntax-Spielereien weg, wird gleichzeitig „komplexer“ und erwachsener, sort of. Wow, such interesting.

The second factor that goes into doge is the general principle of internet language these days that the more overwhelmed with emotions you are, the less sensical your sentence structure gets, which I’ve described elsewhere as “stylized verbal incoherence mirroring emotional incoherence” and which leads us to expressions like “feels,” “I can’t even/I’ve lost the ability to can,” and “because reasons.” Contrast this with first-generation internet language, demonstrated by LOLcat or 1337speak, and in general characterized by abbreviations containing numbers and single letters, often in caps (C U L8R), smilies containing noses, and words containing deliberate misspellings. We’ve now moved on: broadly speaking, second-generation internet language plays with grammar instead of spelling. If you’re a doomsayer, the innovative syntax is one more thing to throw up your hands about, but compared to a decade or two ago, the spelling has gotten shockingly conventional.

In this sense, doge really is the next generation of LOLcat, in terms of a pet-based snapshot of a certain era in internet language. We’ve kept the idea that animals speak like an exaggerated version of an internet-savvy human, but as our definitions of what it means to be a human on the internet have changed, so too have the voices that we give our animals. Wow.

A Linguist Explains the Grammar of Doge. Wow. (via Bruce Sterling)

Vorher auf Nerdcore:

You can haz Linguistic Study of LOLSpeak

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Such New School. Next Gen Internet Language. Wow.

Could Independence Day 2 really happen without Will Smith? onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Could Independence Day 2 really happen without Will Smith?

S

One of those crazy Fantastic Four rumors was true after all... but which one? There's a pretty definitive answer to the Baby Judith question on The Walking Dead. And Arrow's not done with Nyssa yet. Plus, new photos from Captain America and Amazing Spider-Man 2!

Fantastic Four

Start speculating: Director Josh Trank said that he's lied once about a rumor being false. According to his Twitter account:

All of the rumors I've debunked so far were really false, except for one of them.

— Josh Trank (@josh_trank) February 6, 2014

Let's hope one of the accurate denials is the one about that awful, awful synopsis. [Slashfilm]

---

Independence Day 2

It looks like Will Smith has decided against appearing in the sequel. Deadline's hedging its bets a little, saying that he's gone back and forth a few times before this. However, it's also reporting that it's pretty certain. In terms of affecting the film, Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin apparently wrote two scripts last fall: one with Will Smith and one without. Chances are that they're pulling out the latter at this point. [Deadline via First Showing]

---

Batman Vs. Superman

Producer Michael Uslan's the latest to put the Ben Affleck casting into some sort of context:

It starts with this, I've lived this in the past before and I'm speaking now really more as a Bat-fan than as the Bat-producer. We went through it all with Michael Keaton. I lead the charge from the first time I heard Tim (Burton) was thinking of hiring Michael Keaton to play Batman. I'd go, 'Oh my god, all the work, I've put in all these years to do a dark and serious Batman, he's going to hire a comedian!' I could envision the posters: 'Mr. Mom is Batman,' but then he explained his vision, he had a vision, and he was right. This is all about Bruce Wayne, it's not about Batman, it's all about Bruce Wayne. If you're trying to do a serious, dark superhero, people have to believe in Bruce Wayne as that obsessed driven guy, to the point maybe of almost being psychotic. A guy who would get dressed up as a bat and do what he did. So we went through the hoopla with Michael Keaton. The fans were the same reaction that I had initially, except I had the benefit of hearing a vision right away. Then when they actually went to see the movie they never wanted to anyone else to play Batman, never.

[Coming Soon]

---

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Here's a TV spot. [Slashfilm]

Also, a new poster's been released, featuring Robert Redford as Alexander Pierce. [Slashfilm]

S

---

Amazing Spider-Man 2

Go here for more photos of Spidey. [Coming Soon]

S

---

The Walking Dead

Showrunner Scott Gimple hinted at Judith's fate, saying that it's only unknown because it couldn't be seen on television:

I'm going to start with the not awesome thing: Judith was a baby in a place with free-roaming walkers, so the math isn't very good there. On top of that, there's things we wouldn't show on television…so there's that. But the awesome thing is that the answers to a lot of these questions come sooner rather than later. These answers will come quite quickly.

Not coming quickly, according to Gimple, are answers about the rat/zombie feeding. In better news than Judith's, Tara's return is likely:

When anybody doesn't die onscreen, I assume it's possible that we will see them again. Judith is a different thing — her fate most likely cannot be shown on television. I will say there are some eagle-eyed people on the internet out there who have scoured the advertisement and pre-released things and they believe they have spotted Tara. People on the internet are smart, so I'd say we'll probably be seeing Tara.

Gimple also said that while Morgan (Lennie James) will return, it won't be this season. The second half of this season will be showing the aftermath of Rick's exile of Carol:

Absolutely, [the exile is] one of the biggest things that has happened in these characters lives and it's going to be a bigger part of these characters stories. That will be answered and played out. I think most, if not all, of the questions from the first half of season 4 will be answered. Some more questions will be posed too. We're telling the whole story. The second half of the season completes the stories from the first half of the season. That sounds really silly. But it all adds up to something in the end.

[Entertainment Weekly]

Steven Yeun described how Hershel's death will continue to resonate for Glenn:

Glenn doesn't actually know that Hershel is dead. He's probably the only one who doesn't know. And for him, where he last left off with Hershel is…a lot of people have helped shaped Glenn into the person he is at this point and he's taken bits and pieces from all of them, but none more than Hershel. And the last episode, where Glenn almost dies, the action that happens between Hershel and Glenn kind of solidifies that relationship and solidifies Hershel's legacy as being passed on to Glenn. Just as easily as the symbolism of the watch was, just passing it onto him saying, "You are now part of this family. I accept you," it's that same thing. Glenn really felt like things were over. He was in dire straights and kind of subjecting himself to the negative portions of that. He was saying, "Hey, what's the point of living? We're going to get taken out by a glorified cold," and Hershel is the one that keeps hope alive for him. Hershel is the one that instills in him to sacrifice himself for others, for the sake of life and love and for the sake of doing all that you could to help your fellow person. And I think that episode definitely drilled home all of that for Glenn. I think that now, even though Glenn doesn't know, he's taking it upon himself to keep that part of Hershel alive.

[Entertainment Weekly]

---

Arrow

EP Andrew Kreisberg says that last week's episode was not Nyssa's only appearance this season:

This was not Katrina's only appearance of the season. Part of the reason we did this episode was to free Sara, at least for the time being, from the threat of the League of Assassins, and allow her to fully be the Black Canary, and come home, and all the delicious implications that brought. Part of the reason we did this story from the beginning was having this dead woman come back, and the effect it was going to have on everyone's lives. I think you got a glimpse of how some people are happy, and some people are very upset. In the next bunch of episodes, you're really going to see how Sara's return affects everybody. I think people will be surprised by the reaction.

Kreisberg and fellow EP Marc Guggenheim explained how they'd be tackling the Birds of Prey:

Guggenheim: We gave ourselves room to grow and evolve that. The whole show is about evolutions — it's about the evolution of the Arrow to the Green Arrow; we've talked about in terms of Black Canary and Deathstroke. The whole show is in terms of evolution. Birds of Prey is very much the same thing. You're not going to end up with the holy trinity of Oracle, Black Canary and Huntress right out of the gate. But the hope is, again, we're doing a multiyear, multiseason epic. We'll get there.

Kreisberg: Helena's gone. All that's left is the Huntress — she's become consumed by this vengeance that she has for her father. It's the big final confrontation between she and her father, and Laurel gets caught in the crossfire. The Canary has to go into the rescue. It's a fun episode in that you get a lot of Laurel with the Canary, not realizing that it's Sara. The Canary is all too eager to kill the Huntress if it means protecting Laurel. It's really an episode about Sara realizing where she's at in her evolution as a hero.

[Comic Book Resources]

And here's the promo for episode 2.14, "Time of Death." [via SpoilerTV]

---

The Vampire Diaries

As far as Candice Accola is concerned, there's no way for Caroline and Tyler to get over Caroline sleeping with Klaus:

Do I think they can come back from Caroline's time with Klaus? I don't think so. On paper, no one did anything wrong. They were broken up. No one cheated. But it's personal. When you cross those lines and those boundaries, I would find it pretty impossible to be in a relationship and then be able to come back from that.

What about just as friends?

Accola: Caroline needs this idea of perfection and for no one to be mad at her and for everyone to be happy at all times, so we'll see a lot of great scenes coming up between Caroline and Tyler with her struggling to find a friendship, but also release some of the guilt she's been holding onto because she knows she made a mistake. The one thing to remember is that they're 19 and 20. If Caroline was my age it's like, you know better. At 19 and 20 and it's your first boyfriend and you're high on hormones and haven't fallen down a lot in relationships, it's an opportunity to learn a lesson, just the really hard way. That's how I looked at Caroline's choice of being with Klaus and that's why I don't necessarily see her and Tyler reconciling their relationship, but I think there's possibility for them to be friends.

[TV Guide]

And here's the extended promo for episode 5.14, "No Exit." [via SpoilerTV]

---

The Flash

Greg Berlanti spoke about what we'd be seeing from the new show:

Barry (Grant Gustin) is different from Oliver (Stephen Amell). He's a man of science and has more of a scifi bent, whereas Arrow has a bit more of a crime bent...We often talk about how Oliver comes off like a pessimist, but deep down he's an optimist and has hope. Barry lost his mother at a very young age, his father was sent to prison for murdering his mom, he went through a lot of stuff — on the surface he's bubbly and upbeat and seems like an optimist, but deep down maybe there's no hope left....So they're a really nice contrast to each other and the show functions in that way, I think. Certainly in the pilot script Barry has an effervescence and a lightness, but there's still a dark well beneath that.

We've talked a lot on Arrow about the particle collider and Harrison Wells and S.T.A.R. Labs and so you'll see S.T.A.R. Labs as an active part of the show.

Even if the pilot doesn't get them a series, we won't have seen the last of Barry Allen:

Fingers crossed we don't screw it up and he gets his own show! If he didn't, I don't think we would ever want to let Grant go. He's too valuable. That would be our hope, I think - no matter what, to keep Barry part of the universe.

[Digital Spy via Coming Soon]

---

Game of Thrones

We're getting more signs that Daenerys' story is going to be getting a boost come season 5. On the heels of announcing that Michiel Huisman (Daario Naharis) will be a season 5 regular, comes the announcement that Nathalie Emmanuel, who plays Daenerys' translator Missandei, will likewise be a series regular. Of course, all this assumes that there will be a season 5, but that's a pretty good bet. [Entertainment Weekly]

---

Grimm

Philip Anthony-Rodriguez (The Secrect Life of the American Teenager) will play Marcus Ruspoli, a member of Verrat (the servants of the royal families) in three episodes, starting with Episode 17. [TV Line]

---

The Tomorrow People

Here's a preview for episode 1.14, "Brother's Keeper." [via SpoilerTV]

---

Supernatural

Here's the promo for the rest of season 9. [via SpoilerTV]

---

Star-Crossed

Here's an interview with Malese Jow, who plays Julia in the upcoming CW series. [via SpoilerTV]

---

Penny Dreadful

Here's a behind-the-scenes video from the show. [via SpoilerTV]

Additional reporting Charlie Jane Anders and Jason Krell

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Could Independence Day 2 really happen without Will Smith?

Sea Orbiter: Super-Ocean-Explorer onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Sea Orbiter: Super-Ocean-Explorer

Architekt Jacques Rougerie hat die Finanzierung seines Sea Orbiters gesichert, eine schwimmende/tauchende Science-Plattform, die die Meere erkundet. Das Teil ist seit 30 Jahren in Arbeit, mit dem Bau des 60 Meter-Designer-U-Boots soll nun im Frühjahr begonnen werden. Ich bin gespannt, wie sie mit den Riesenkraken, Haien und Meer-Monstern umgehen, die in jedem der Tiefsee-Alien-Ripoffs von Leviathan über Jaws 3 bis Deep Star Six solche Dinger angreifen.

Slightly over half of the structure will be submerged, and as you can see the core of the design is a sort of eight-story building housing a variety of labs and living quarters for the crew. The underside of the structure houses dive pits, special pressurized living quarters and “underwater garages.” Human divers living at atmospheric pressure can get down to 50 meters below the surface, while “saturation divers” living in the pressureized chambers can get down to 100 meters; beyond that, the SeaOrbiter will deploy exploration vehicles that can travel down to 1,000 meters, and will also deploy a bad-ass diving drone that can descend to 6,000 meters.

Rougerie was able to secure some 70% of the €35 million required for construction, then turned to a Kickstarter-lookalike crowdfunding site called KissKissBankBank for the remaining 30%. The target was finally reached just last week, and construction is scheduled to begin shortly.

Crowdfunding Pushes Sea Architect’s Exploration Platform Over the Top, So It Can Get to the Bottom

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Sea Orbiter: Super-Ocean-Explorer

Here's your official 15-minute, Game of Thrones season 4 preview onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Here's your official 15-minute, Game of Thrones season 4 preview

You want new Game of Thrones? Well, you'll have to wait until April 2nd. But you can get a taste with HBO's 15-minute preview of the new players and places of season four, new characters, new relationships, new situations, new dangers, and the most new footage we've seen so far.

Please don't kid yourselves, though — you know that this "Ice and Fire: A Foreshadowing" isn't 15 straight minutes of new footage. In fact, it's mostly behind-the-scenes footage, some interviews that dance around specifics, and way too many banal fan questions. But there is definitely new stuff in here, including a shot of one of Daenerys' dragons near the very end that'll make you pee your pants. From one who knows.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Here's your official 15-minute, Game of Thrones season 4 preview

The Nine Planets Imagined as One onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The Nine Planets Imagined as One

S

This oil painting by Steve Gildea combines the planets of our solar system (including Pluto) into a single globe, celebrating the variety of the planets.

This nine-panel piece is part of the collection Merrimack College, where Gildea teaches digital design.

Planetary Suite [Suite 3D via Katie Mack]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The Nine Planets Imagined as One

Autumn leaves transform into origami animals in this magical animation onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Autumn leaves transform into origami animals in this magical animation

S

As autumn comes to a close, the dead leaves are bagged and ready to go. But instead of heading to the landfill, these leaves undertake one final transformation before winter comes.

Alain Vu, Barbara Fisinger Skorjanc, and Mylène Cominotti made Binman as their graduation film for LTAM in Luxembourg. Now there are many folks across the Northern Hemisphere who are ready for a similarly mystical transition into spring.

[via Everything Animated]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Autumn leaves transform into origami animals in this magical animation

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

The Enterprise tries to save an Orion slave girl in a fan-made episode onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The Enterprise tries to save an Orion slave girl in a fan-made episode

The fan-made web series Star Trek Continues is set immediately after the end of the original Star Trek series, following the Enterprise through the rest of its five-year mission. In this episode, the crew encounters a troubled Orion slave girl—but can they rescue her without causing an interstellar incident?

We were impressed by the visual and sound design of the first episode of Star Trek Continues, but the acting and writing have greatly improved in this episode, "Lolani." We're looking forward to seeing more from this team of fan filmmakers.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The Enterprise tries to save an Orion slave girl in a fan-made episode

What if velociraptors survived into the Victorian era? onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com What if velociraptors survived into the Victorian era?

Poor Jane. All she wanted was to marry a virtuous young man. But her mother, treated so poorly by her husband, claims there is no such thing and sabotages all suits for Jane's hand. By eating the suitors.

After seeing this, good luck not wondering what Victorian literature would have been like if it included dinosaurs. Jane Eyre? Dinosaur governess. Oliver Twist? Dinosaur Fagin. Tess of the d'Urbevilles? ALL DINOSAURS.

Prompted with the letter "V," artist Adam Mazur came up with "Victorian Velociraptor with Violets." And it's hard to argue with a mind like that. Or its results.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com What if velociraptors survived into the Victorian era?

Crowdfund shark research and a cyberpunk film by Larry Hama onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Crowdfund shark research and a cyberpunk film by Larry Hama

S

The man who built up GI Joe's mythology in comics has a new story to tell about Homeland Security's Cyber Crime Division. You can also help fund documentaries about women in comics and Batman collaborator Bill Finger—or send your dollars toward research into the feeding habits of sharks.

Marine biologist David Shiffman has worked tirelessly to educate the public about shark conservation (including through an appearance on the io9 show We Come From the Future), and he is currently raising funds for a study of the feeding habits of threatened shark species by the RJ Dunlap Marine Conservation Program. The research involves using stable isotope analysis to study what these sharks are eating in a way that isn't lethal to the sharks. You can read more about the research and help fund it at the scientific crowdfunding site Experiment.

While Bob Kane is the name most frequently associated with Batman, it is important to remember the contributions of Kane's uncredited collaborator Bill Finger. The Comic Arts Council wants to shine a light on a forgotten piece of Dark Knight history with a documentary spotlighting Finger. For a $10 pledge, backers can receive a downloaded of the completed documentary.

Another comics-themed documentary looking for a bit of financing help is She Makes Comics, the latest project from the Sequart Research & Literacy Organization. Part study and part celebration, the documentary will look at the history of female creators in comics, including first-person accounts from prominent women in the industry, and examine the place women hold and the challenges they face in the traditionally male-dominated world of comics. For a $20 pledge, backers can receive a digital download of the full film.

We loved Kelly Thompson's novel The Girl Who Would Be King, about two superpowered girls destined to destroy each other, and now she's back with another intriguing premise. Storykiller centers on Tessa Battle, a young woman who discovers that all stories are real—including every supposedly fictional hero and monster. Thompson pitches it as "classic Fiction meets Buffy The Vampire Slayer." For a $10 pledge, backers will receive a digital copy of the book, and they can nab the Kickstarter-only illustrated hardcover edition for a $35 pledge.

Comic book writer and artist Larry Hama (best known for his GI Joe comics) and director Mark Cheng are teaming up for the cyberpunk film Ghost Source Zero. The documentary-style film will be released in 12 installments, the first of which you can watch below:

Here's the pitch:

The Artificial Intelligence Revolution is happening, and America is watching it on their Living Wall flat screens and Genius Phones. Homeland Security's Cyber Crime Division is the only thing trying to stop the 'bots and 'borgs from taking over. The unit is so underfunded they have to allow a reality show crew to film them just to meet payroll. And what the cameras capture will stun the world.

For a $10 pledge, backers can get a digital download of Ghost Source Zero in 720p.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Crowdfund shark research and a cyberpunk film by Larry Hama