from Sky News

Life On Earth Started On Mars, Say Scientists

There is growing evidence we are really Martians and that “life started on Mars and came to Earth on a rock”.

Images from NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars

Life on Earth may have started millions of miles away on Mars, according to scientists.

An element believed to be crucial to the origin of life would only have been available on the surface of the Red Planet.

These “seeds” of life probably arrived on Earth in meteorites blasted off Mars by impacts or volcanic eruptions, Geochemist Professor Steven Benner claims.

Prof Benner, from The Westheimer Institute for Science and Technology in the US, said: “The evidence seems to be building that we are actually all Martians; that life started on Mars and came to Earth on a rock.”

[ click to continue reading at Sky News ]

from BBC News

US chimp Brent wins Humane Society art competition

Brent, 37, created a delicate, vibrantly coloured work featuring daubs of violet, blue and yellow on paper.

The entries were judged by noted primate researcher and conservationist, Jane Goodall.

The prize in the contest, sponsored by the Humane Society of the US will benefit Chimp Haven, Brent’s sanctuary in the US state of Louisiana.

Cheetah and Ripley won second and third prizes in the competition that garnered 27,000 votes.

Brent is a retired laboratory animal, and the Humane Society says he is protective of an elder companion, named Grandma, and “loves to laugh and play”.

[ click to continue reading at BBC News ]

from edible geography

The Pickle Index

IMAGE: Two heads of whole zha cai with chilli paste; photograph by Sjschen via Wikipedia.

Chinese officials, charged with moving 250 million rural farmers into cities over the next decade under the central government’s sweeping “National Plan for Promoting Healthy Urbanization (2011-20),” have developed a “pickle index” for measuring the movement of migrant workers.

According to the South China Morning Post, the country’s National Development and Reform Commission has found that sales of zha cai, a pickled mustard tuber, provide a better guide to population flows than often unreliable provincial statistical data. As an unnamed planner explained to the Economic Observer:

Under normal circumstances, urban consumption levels of convenience foods such as instant noodles and pickled mustard is essentially constant. Therefore, we can assume that volume changes are mainly caused by a city’s floating population.

[ click to continue reading at ediblegeography.com ]

from The NY Times

Riding Away From a Bar Crawl With Citi Bikes

By SHEILA MARIKAR

Casey Kelbaugh for The New York Times

It started as a normal date night: Shawn, a bearded graduate student who favors lumberjack plaid, went to Williamsburg for dinner and drinks with his girlfriend. But instead of taking the L train from their Chelsea apartment, they decided to ride Citi Bikes there and back.

A couple of cocktails at the Wythe Hotel led to beers at Mable’s Smokehouse and a nightcap at Post Office, a dive-like whiskey bar. After four or five drinks, they undocked a pair of blue bikes and rode home over the Williamsburg Bridge.

As usual, Shawn sped ahead, and as they ascended over the East River, he turned around to see where his girlfriend was. That’s when he lost his balance, kicked his foot into a bridge railing and broke his toe.

“I really wasn’t that drunk,” said Shawn, 30, who uses the bike-share program about 20 times a week. (Shawn, like many of the people interviewed, asked that his full name not be used; drinking and cycling is not really something to toot your bike horn about.) “I’ve never blackout Citi Biked.”

[ click to continue reading at NYTimes.com ]

from Paste Magazine

Dentist Who Bought John Lennon’s Molar at Auction Wants to Use the Tooth to Clone the Late Singer

BY NICK PETRILLO

 It looks like the plot has thickened in the never-ending tale of John Lennon’s decayed tooth. In an interview with The Sun, Canadian dentist Michael Zuk announced his intentions to extract and sequence the late Beatle’s DNA from his molar, a tooth that has become the most, erm, sought-after dental relic in rock music.

You may recall a peculiar enough story from a couple years ago, in which the dentist and avid tooth collector paid over $30,000 at auction for Lennon’s molar. The fabled tooth had been passed along for decades prior to Mr. Zuk’s purchase, first as a memento in the hands of Lennon’s housekeeper and later as an artifact resigned to the dreary existence of making publicity appearances at charity events. The tooth is currently in the possession of Kirsten Zuk, the dentist’s wife, who displays it alongside her art projects to raise awareness for cleft-palate surgery.

Dr. Zuk has even gone so far as to issue a press release on the matter, in which he declares that his ambitious dream might just be one of the “best decisions of his life.” More information on Dr. Zuk’s noble pursuit can be found on his new website, the eloquently titled and SEO-friendly johnlennontooth.com.

[ click to continue reading at Paste ]

from ESPN

The Match Maker

Bobby Riggs, The Mafia and The Battle of the Sexes

by Don Van Natta Jr.

“HELLO AGAIN EVERYONE, I’m Howard Cosell. We’re delighted to be able to bring you this very, very quaint, unique event.”

On Thursday night, Sept. 20, 1973, 50 million Americans, fatigued by Vietnam and Watergate, tuned in to see whether a woman could defeat a man on a tennis court. Dubbed “The Battle of the Sexes,” the match pitted Billie Jean King, the 29-year-old champion of that summer’s Wimbledon and a crusader for the women’s liberation movement, against Bobby Riggs, the 55-year-old gambler, hustler and long-ago tennis champ who had willingly become America’s bespectacled caricature of male chauvinism.

Before 30,472 at the Houston Astrodome, still the largest crowd to watch tennis in the United States, the spectacle felt like a cross between a heavyweight championship bout and an old-time tent revival. Flanked by young women, Riggs, in a canary yellow Sugar Daddy warm-up jacket, was imperiously carted into the Astrodome aboard a gilded rickshaw. Not to be outdone, King, wearing a blue-and-white sequined tennis dress, sat like Cleopatra in a chariot delivered courtside by bare-chested, muscle-ripped young men. Moments before the first serve, King presented Riggs with a squealing, squirming piglet. “Look at that male chauvinist pig,” Cosell told viewers. “That symbolizes what Bobby Riggs is holding up. …”

[ click to continue reading at ESPN ]

from Entertainment Weekly

See the trailer for the next ‘I Am Number Four Novel’, ‘The Fall of Five’ — EXCLUSIVE

By Stephan Lee

The countdown is ending … The Fall of Five is coming on Tuesday, and Pittacus Lore has beamed over a new trailer for fans. It’s told from the point of view of Sam’s father Malcolm, and recaps the last three novels and gives a few clues as to what’s going to happen in The Fall of Five. See it below:

In the newest installment, the Garde have always believed in strength in numbers, but after facing off with Mogadorian ruler Setrákus Ra, they realize they are hopelessly outgunned. So it’s back to Nine’s penthouse to perfect their legacies and emerge stronger than ever before. And when they find a crop circle in the shape of a Loric symbol, they think that might have found Number Five… unless it’s a trap.

[ click to read at Entertainment Weekly ]

from The Los Angeles Times

‘Star Wars’ cinematographer Gilbert Taylor dies at 99

“Star Wars” cinematographer Gilbert Taylor died Friday at the age of 99, leaving behind a rich cinematic legacy.

Over the course of an impressive, decades-long career, Taylor amassed a lengthy résumé that included a number of landmark films, including Roman Polanski’s “Repulsion,” Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” and Alfred Hitchcock’s “Frenzy.”

He also served as the cinematographer on the Beatles’ film “A Hard Day’s Night,” Richard Donner’s horror film “The Omen” and 1979′s “Dracula” starring Frank Langella and Laurence Olivier, in addition to working with George Lucas on the original “Star Wars” film.

– Gina McIntyre

[ click to read full article at LATimes.com ]

Placebo // Too Many Friends (with Bret Easton Ellis) from Saman Kesh on Vimeo.

from The Daily Mirror

Queen’s swan found barbecued near Windsor Castle riverbank

WARNING: Graphic image. The bird was butchered and cooked before its remains were dumped close to the river

By Barrie White

One of the Queen’s swans has been found killed and barbecued on the riverbank near to Windsor Castle.

The cooked swan’s carcass was dumped near Baths Water, and was discovered by Wendy Hermon, 46, a volunteer for charity Swan Lifeline, which cares for sick and injured birds.

She described the scene as ‘sickening’, and admitted she would have been distraught if her young son was with her when she made the grisly discovery after being called out by a council warden last Sunday.

“We could see that whoever did this had taken the breast out.

“It was done neatly, presumably to get at the meat. We have no idea how it was killed, it could have been shot or beaten.”

It is considered an offence to kill a wild mute swan as it is believed they are the property of the Crown, though centuries ago, their meat was considered a delicacy.

The birds are now protected under under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 and killing or injuring a swan used to be classed as treason under a law dating back to the 12th century.

[ click to continue reading at The Daily Mirror ]

from The Hollywood Reporter

Elmore Leonard Dies at 87

by Hilary Lewis, Andy Lewis, Duane Byrge

Elmore Leonard, considered by many to be the greatest crime writer of modern times, has died due to complications of a stroke. He was 87.

He wrote 45 novels, many of which were adapted for movies or TV over the years.

His most recent TV hit was the FX series Justified, starring Timothy Olyphant as Raylan Givens, which was based on his short story “Fire in the Hole.”

Films based on his work included Hombre, 52 Pick-Up, Out of Sight, Get Shorty and Jackie Brown.

The film version of Leonard’s The Switch, starring Jennifer Aniston, Mos Def, Tim Robbins and Isla Fisher, will premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. At the time of his death, he was at work on another novel, which was set in the world of competitive bull riding.

[ click to continue reading at THR ]

from The Washington Post

Oldest globe to depict the New World may have been discovered

By Meeri Kim

An Austrian collector has found what may be the oldest globe, dated 1504, to depict the New World, engraved with immaculate detail on two conjoined halves of ostrich eggs.

The globe, about the size of a grapefruit, is labeled in Latin and includes what were considered exotic territories such as Japan, Brazil and Arabia. North America is depicted as a group of scattered islands. The globe’s lone sentence, above the coast of Southeast Asia, is “Hic Sunt Dracones.”

“ ‘Here be dragons,’ a very interesting sentence,” said Thomas Sander, editor of the Portolan, the journal of the Washington Map Society. The journal published a comprehensive analysis of the globe Monday by collector Stefaan Missinne. “In early maps, you would see images of sea monsters; it was a way to say there’s bad stuff out there.”

[ click to continue reading at WaPo.com ]

from Deadline New York

Fox Paid $70M For 5% Stake In Vice Media

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Financial Editor

The deal just came to light although it was made before the end of June when News Corp split into separate entertainment and publishing companies. But it gives 21st Century Fox a foothold in a trendy digital media, TV, and publishing company that has captured the imaginations and financial support of former MTV chief Tom Freston, WME’s Ari Emanuel, WPP, and The Raine Group as well as comedian Bill Maher. Vice plans to use the cash and connections with Fox to expand overseas, especially India. “We get to make all the content we want? With the best platforms in the world? Grow our brand exponentially? Become the next global media brand? And all the while own the vast majority of the company and vote 95% of the board? Where-do-we-fucking-sign?!” Vice founder and CEO Shane Smith says.

[ click to continue reading at Deadline.com ]

from tumblr

Sharks Make Movies Better

[ click for more Shark movie one-sheets at tumblr ]

from Kickstarter

A Legendary 19th Century Lens. Reinvented For Use With All Nikon F & Canon EF Mount Analog & Digital SLR Cameras.

In the 19th Century, the vast majority of photos were shot with the extremely popular Petzval lens. The lens was invented by Joseph Petzval in Vienna in 1840 and had a huge impact on the development of photography. Photos shot with a Petzval lens are immediately recognizable for their sharpness and crispness, strong color saturation, wonderful swirly bokeh effect, artful vignettes and narrow depth of field. The totally distinctive look of Petzval photos is all about the fantastic lens design that gives you the satisfaction of the instant optic experience that goes far beyond using photo editing software and filters.

For this Kickstarter project, we are reinventing the Petzval Lens for 21st century photographers and videographers. It doesn’t matter whether you shoot analog or digital; the brand new Lomography Petzval Portrait Lens is designed to work withCanon EF and Nikon F mount cameras. So, for the first time, you can easily get the fantastic Petzval photographic look with 35mm analog cameras and DSLR cameras too. This will bring with it a whole new world of possibilities; from shooting Petzval photos with your 35mm SLR or DSLR, to creating amazing DSLR movies with the lens!

[ click to continue at Kickstarter ]

from Crain’s

Famed piano maker Steinway sold for $499M

After a last-minute bid canceled a planned sale to Kohlberg & Co., Steinway is selling itself to Paulson & Co. for a $3-per-share premium over the earlier offer.

(AP) — The famed piano maker Steinway is being sold for $499 million.

The company terminated an existing sales agreement with Kohlberg & Co. after it was outbid by another investment firm, Paulson & Co.

Paulson topped Kohlberg’s offer by $3 per share.

Steinway, which is being taken private and operates a flagship store on West 57th Street in Manhattan, will have to pay a termination fee of about $6.7 million.

[ click to continue reading at Crain’s ]

from The Telegraph

Unfinished Orson Welles film found in Italy

A long-lost film directed by Orson Welles in 1938 has been found in a warehouse in a small town in north-eastern Italy where it will be shown for the first time in October.

from io9

10 Cinematographers Who Turned Science Fiction Movies into Great Art

SEXPAND

5. Guillermo Navarro (All of Guillermo del Toro’s movies, I Am Number Four, Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Night at the Museum)

The Oscar-winning cinematographer told an interviewer a while back: “I want to design and create images as opposed to working on a contemporary piece where realities exist right outside your window and all you have to do is register them… I believe in [Guillermo del Toro] as a filmmaker. He is a very visual director and someone that understands the contribution that cinematographers offer is important not only for the creative process, but as a film language.”

[ click to check out full list at ion.com ]

from BON APPÉTIT

Tiger Salad

This cooling and refreshing salad—with cilantro standing in for the lettuce—is great alongside spicy foods, like our Sambal Chicken Skewers.

Recipe by Alison Roman / Photograph by Peden + Munk

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon unseasoned rice vinegar
• 2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
• 1 teaspoon toasted sesame seeds
• 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
• 1 bunch cilantro leaves with tender stems, cut into 2 inches pieces
• 4 celery stalks, thinly sliced on a diagonal
• 2 small cucumbers or 1/2 large, thinly sliced
• 6 scallions, thinly sliced on a diagonal
• Kosher salt, freshly ground pepper

Preparation

• Whisk vinegar, oil, sesame seeds, and red pepper flakes in a large bowl. Add cilantro, celery, cucumbers, and scallions. Season with salt and pepper and toss to combine.

[ click to continue reading at BON APPÉTIT ]

from SPACE.com

A coterie of aspiring Martians will descend on Washington, D.C. on Saturday (Aug. 3) for the first Million Martian Meeting.

The group consists of applicants for the Mars One mission, a one-way trip to establish a colony on Mars. The meeting will feature talks by Mars Society president and founder Robert Zubrin, Mars One CEOand co-founder Bas Lansdorp, and five Mars One applicants.

Lansdorp announced plans for the Mars One mission in May 2012. The nonprofit Mars One Foundation, based in The Netherlands, plans to land humans on Mars in 2023. Teams of four people will be launched to the Red Planet every two years, and anyone over the age of 18 is eligible to apply.

As of May 7, about 78,000 people had applied for the one-way trip.

[ click to continue reading at SPACE.com ]

Is This the Most Interesting Opening Paragraph Wikipedia’s Ever Published?

Posted By Elias Groll

Most Interesting Man in the World, meet your match.

On Sunday, Twitter user Matthew Barrett created something of a sensation by linking to the obscure Wikipedia biography of the British army officer Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart. His tweet — “This guy surely has the best opening paragraph of any Wikipedia biography ever” — has been retweeted more than 3,200 times over the past several days.

So who was this man of extraordinary valor? A Daily Mail profile last year relays much of the same information contained on Carton de Wiart’s Wikipedia page: By the end of his life, the British soldier had been awarded his military’s highest honor for bravery during World War I and served in the Second Boer War and World War II, commanding troops in a daring World War II raid in Norway. He wore a black patch to cover a missing eye, and had been wounded in the skull, groin, ankle, and stomach. A missing hand betrayed a grisly backstory — he had once chewed off his own wounded fingers. He had tunneled out of an Italian prisoner-of-war camp, and had wound up there after crashing his plane in the Mediterranean. To top it all off, he had also served as Winston Churchill’s special representative to China’s Chiang Kai-shek. He had indeed remarked that he “enjoyed” World War I, going on to add that “it had given me many bad moments, lots of good ones, plenty of excitement and with everything found for us.” (Readers in the U.K., you may want to go check out Carton de Wiart’s 20-bore, double-barreled shotgun, which just went on display in Leeds.)

[ click to continue reading at ForeignPolicy.com ]

from Showbiz 411

Beloved Actress Karen Black (Nashville, Five Easy Pieces) Dead at 74

by Roger Friedman

UPDATE: Karen Black has died at age 74. She ran with a cool crowd when she burst onto the movie scene– Fonda, Nicholson, Hopper, DeNiro, Altman. She was a unique talent. God bless.

Earlier: This is a terrible story. But beloved actress Karen Black is dying of cancer. Her husband has posted a blog and a video updating her deteriorating condition.  http://karenblackactress.blogspot.com/2013/08/august-7th-update-from-stephen-karens.html?m=1 Black is living in a nursing facility and the situation sounds pretty dire. If you’re too young to know, Karen Black made a name for herself in the 70s in “Five Easy Pieces,” “Nashville,” “Easy Rider,” and other classics.

[ click to read at Showbiz 411 ]

from NPR

George Duke, Legendary Jazz Keyboardist, Dies

from The Los Angeles Times

Citrus growers use predator wasp to fight disease threat

BY RICARDO LOPEZ / PHOTOGRAPHY BY DON BARTLETTI

Invasive species expert Mark Hoddle coaxes a vial of predatory wasps to the tip of a citrus branch infested with psyllids. The tiny wasps become parasites to a species of psyllid that has been spreading a deadly bacteria in citrus trees throughout the Southland. More photos

California citrus farmers import a parasitic wasp from Pakistan to battle citrus greening, a disease threatening their groves.

Pesticides haven’t worked. Quarantines have been useless. Now California citrus farmers have hired an assassin to knock off the intruder threatening their orchards.

The killer-for-hire is Tamarixia radiata, a tiny parasitic wasp imported from Pakistan.

Its mission: Rub out the Asian citrus psyllid, which has helped spread a disease that turns citrus fruit lumpy and bitter before destroying the trees.

The pest is wreaking havoc in Florida’s 32 citrus-growing counties. In California, it’s been detected in nine counties, most of them south of the commercial growing areas in the Central Valley. Farmers are hoping the Tamarixia wasp can help keep it that way.

The wasp, which flew coach in a carry-on bag from Pakistan’s Punjab region, is a parasite half the size of a chocolate sprinkle. But it kills psyllids like a horror movie monster, drinking their blood like a vampire. The female wasp can lay an egg in the psyllid’s belly. When it hatches, it devours its host.

The wasp “is going to be our number one weapon to control to Asian citrus pysllid,” said Mark Hoddle, an invasive species expert at UC Riverside, who, over several trips, brought legions of wasps to California.

“We have no other choice except to use this natural enemy or do nothing. And the ‘do nothing’ option is unacceptable.”

[ click to continue reading at LATimes.com ]

from The LA Times

Review: A city’s unrealized ambitions in ‘Never Built Los Angeles’

By Christopher Hawthorne, Los Angeles Times Architecture Critic

Los Angeles has never been big on regret.

check out this exceptionally cool reading list…

[ click for complete list at AYearOfReadingTheWorld.com ]

from New Canaan News

New Canaan’s fledgling filmmakers attract funds, star power

Tyler Woods

Two young New Canaanites picked up $70,000 in funding and the surprise aid of a best-selling novelist in their pursuit of filming a feature-length movie in town.

The pair, writer Abigail Schwarz and producer Nico Scandiffio, both 20, have been working on the film for more than a year. “Those Who Wander” is a coming-of-age story about a group of friends’ spring break road trip to rural Georgia. Schwarz and Scadiffio have made the project a community-based one by choosing to shoot in New Canaan and by getting friends and peers from New Canaan High School involved in acting and musical roles. All they needed was money to finance the project.

On June 20, they started a page on Kickstarter.com, which allows people to request a specified amount of money to fund a project over a certain number of days. If the goal is not met, donors get their money back and the project doesn’t get made. Schwarz and Scandiffio, who have already raised funds through their friends and family, asked for $70,000. They had 30 days to meet that amount.

In support of their Kickstarter, the pair interviewed with local media, printed 1,500 cards advertising their project which were placed near the cash registers of 20 to 30 stores in town, put up 70 posters around town, and relentlessly made phone calls to potential donors, they said.

One person who heard about the project is bestselling author and New Canaan resident James Frey. Frey said he learned of the film when a friend sent him a link to a news story profiling the duo, and it struck a chord with him. He contacted the pair and said he’d come on board to help however he could.

“I was in their position once, young and ambitious and trying to raise money to shoot film. I think it’s good to pass the type of support I received on to the next generation of storytellers,” he wrote in an email. “New Canaan is a beautiful place and will look great on film. And it will be fun to see a crew out shooting.”

[ click to continue reading at NewCanaanNewsOnline.com ]