The Last American Jaguar
Video shows ‘El Jefe,’ only known wild jaguar in US
By: Brent Corrado
TUCSON, Ariz. (KSAZ) – Video of the only-known wild jaguar living in the United States was released on Wednesday.
Conservation CATalyst and the Center for Biological Diversity released the video, which shows ‘El Jefe’ roaming the remote areas of the Santa Rita Mountains near Tucson. This is the first ever publicly released video of the jaguar.
Crackhead Bob Gone
‘Crackhead Bob,’ a recurring guest on ‘The Howard Stern Show,’ dies at 56
ROGER KISBY/GETTY IMAGES
“Crackhead Bob,” a fan-favorite recurring guest on “The Howard Stern Show” in the late 1990s and early 2000s, has died at 56.
Bob, whose real name was George Harvey, regularly appeared on Stern’s show for parts of seven years as a member of the Wack Pack — an eclectic group of guests who typically had something unusual about them.
Harvey earned his nickname after revealing on air that smoking crack led to a series of strokes that hindered his speech and left part of his body paralyzed, according to an announcement on Stern’s website on Monday.
His good-natured sense of humor and willingness to partake in bits such as singing song covers or making prank phone calls made him one of the more popular members of the Wack Pack.
“He was a huge champion of our show,” Stern said Monday.
Oldie But Goodie From The Prank Archives
St. Cloud homeowners find catfish in mailboxes
Residents trying to determine if it is fishy prank or something sinister
ST. CLOUD, Fla. – Several residents in Osceola County have found catfish in their mailboxes and yards, prompting questions whether it’s a prank or something more serious.
Maddison Fertic said she received an unusual delivery Monday morning when her postman discovered a large, dead catfish inside her mailbox.
“I was honestly in shock because it doesn’t make any sense,” Fertic said. “It’s just one of those things where it’s, just, ‘Why?'”
Fertic said the fish was 12 inches long, and she had to use a stick to pull it out.
Eagle vs. Drone – Eagle Wins
Dutch Police Training Eagles to Take Down Drones
No matter how many regulations are put in place, drones are cheap enough now that frequent misuse is becoming the norm. There’s no good way of dealing with a dangerous drone: you can jam its radios to force it to autoland, or maybe try using an even bigger drone to capture it inside a giant net. In either of these cases, however, you run the risk of having the drone go completely out of control, which is even more dangerous.
Or, you can be like the Dutch National Police, and train eagles to take down drones for you.
The video, as you probably noticed, is in Dutch, but here’s what I’ve been able to piece together: the Dutch police (like police everywhere) know that drones are going to become even more of a problem than they already are, so they’ve been testing ways of dealing with a drone in an emergency, like if a drone is preventing an air ambulance from landing. The police are looking into electronic solutions, but also physical ones, including both nets and trained eagles.
The Dutch police have partnered with Guard From Above, a raptor training company based in The Hague, to determine whether eagles could be used as intelligent, adaptive anti-drone weapon systems. The eagles are specially trained to identify and capture drones, although from the way most birds of prey react to drones, my guess is that not a lot of training was necessary. After snatching the drone out of the sky, the eagles instinctively find a safe area away from people to land and try take a couple confused bites out of their mechanical prey before their handlers can reward them with something a little less plastic-y. The advantage here is that with the eagles, you don’t have to worry about the drone taking off out of control or falling on people, since the birds are very good at mid-air intercepts as well as bringing the drone to the ground without endangering anyone.
The Pluot’s Baby-daddy
Luther Burbank, The Maker of Modern Agriculture
BY AMY GLYNN
A lot of people, even self-proclaimed foodies, do not know who Luther Burbank was. I find this odd not only because of his legacy, an almost supernaturally prolific career in plant breeding that gave us many of the foods we eat today, but because in his lifetime the man was the horticultural equivalent of a rock star, and counted among his admirers Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, John Muir, and Helen Keller. Burbank was charismatic, brilliant, tireless, and despite an elementary school education, possessed of an almost mystical ability to conjure plant life. Everyone knew who he was.
Burbank was born in Lancaster, Mass., in 1849. He was the 13th of 18 children. After the death of his father he used his inheritance to purchase a few farm acres and went to work on developing a potato that would have a natural resistance to the blight that sparked the catastrophic crop failures in mind-19th century Ireland. The result was the Idaho or Burbank Russet, which is now one of our dominant agricultural crops and the source of practically every French fry you have ever eaten. He moved to northern California, where the growing season was longer, with the money he made selling the rights to the Burbank Russet.
It sold for $150. If that sounds wild to you, don’t worry—it did to him, as well. As it turns out, there are serious difficulties with making money as an inventor when your inventions are living, reproducing plants. More on that in a minute.
A lot of scientists will tell you that horticulturalist Luther Burbank was not one. In a way, I think that’s probably right—and he might not have minded the exclusion, though it bothered him when people called him a “wizard.” (He felt it smacked of “hocus-pocus,” which he’d have hastened to note was not his thing either.) A devoted acolyte of Darwin, he happened to be a non-scientist who developed over 800 varieties of plants in a 50-year career. Many of them never went to market, some became unfashionable and faded away, some—like the white blackberry and the spineless prickly pear—were flops. But he’s the man you can thank not only for Idaho potatoes, but also for the pluot, most of the plums you’ve ever eaten (including the ubiquitous Japanese hybrid Santa Rosa), rainbow Swiss chard, red sorrel, and a huge number of apples, pears, peaches and nuts.
Bad Human, Good Dog
Dogs may have evolved to handle our bad tempers
A new study tracked the eyes of dogs when shown the photos of humans and other dogs. (University of Helsinki/PlosOne)
Man’s best friend has a clear strategy for dealing with angry owners — look away.
New research shows that dogs limit their eye contact with angry humans, even as they tend to stare down upset canines. The scientists suggest this may be an attempt to appease humans, that evolved as dogs were domesticated and benefited from avoiding conflicts with humans.
To conduct the tests the University of Helsinki researchers trained 31 dogs to rest in front of a video screen. Facial photos — showing threatening, pleasant and neutral expressions — were displayed on the screen for 1.5 seconds. Nearby cameras tracked the dogs’ eye movements.
Dogs in the study looked most at the eyes of humans and other dogs to sense their emotions. When dogs looked at expressions of angry canines, they lingered more on the mouth, perhaps to interpret the threatening expressions. And when looking at angry humans they tended to avert their gaze. Dogs may have learned to detect threat signs from humans and respond in an appeasing manner, according to researcher Sanni Somppi. Avoiding conflicts may have helped dogs — which are the most popular pet in the United States — develop better bonds with humans.
Earth 2x
Earth is actually two planets, scientists conclude
The early Earth was mixed with a baby planet called Theia following a head on collision 4.5 billion years ago, scientists have found
By Sarah Knapton, Science Editor
Earth is actually made up from two planets which came together in a head-on collision that was so violent it formed the Moon, scientists have concluded.
Initially it was believed that the Moon was created when a smaller planet called Theia grazed the Earth and broke up, sending a smaller chunk into space where it was caught in Earth’s gravity.
But if that was the case the Moon would have a different chemical composition to the Earth, because it would be made up, predominantly, of Theia.
However, after studying Moon rocks brought back by astronauts on the Apollo missions, scientists at the University of California have found that their oxygen isotopes are the same as on Earth.
It means that the collision between Their and the early Earth was so violent that the two planets effectively melded together to form a new planet, a chunk of which was knocked off to form the Moon.
Astronomy Babylon
Clay tablets reveal Babylonians discovered astronomical geometry 1,400 years before Europeans
Text A. (Trustees of the British Museum/Mathieu Ossendrijver)
The medieval mathematicians of Oxford, toiling in torchlight in a land ravaged by plague, managed to invent a simple form of calculus that could be used to track the motion of heavenly bodies. But now a scholar studying ancient clay tablets suggests that the Babylonians got there first, and by at least 1,400 years.
The astronomers of Babylonia, scratching tiny marks in soft clay, used surprisingly sophisticated geometry to calculate the orbit of what they called the White Star — the planet Jupiter.
These tablets are quite incomprehensible to the untrained eye. Thousands of clay tablets — many unearthed in the 19th century by adventurers hoping to build museum collections in Europe, the United States and elsewhere — remain undeciphered.
Virginia Madsen to AMERICAN GOTHIC
Virginia Madsen to Co-Star in CBS’ ‘American Gothic’ (Exclusive)
Courtesy of CBS
‘Fargo’ and ‘The Good Wife’ alum Matt Shakman will direct the pilot for the summer 2016 drama.
CBS’ American Gothic is adding to its cast.
The straight-to-series drama has enlisted Virginia Madsen to co-star, The Hollywood Reporter has learned, with Matt Shakman set to direct the pilot.
Set to air in the summer, American Gothic centers on a prominent Boston family attempting to redefine itself in the wake of a chilling discovery that links their recently deceased patriarch to a string of murders spanning decades, amid mounting suspicion that one of them may have been his accomplice.
She joins a cast that also includes Justin Chatwin, Megan Ketch, Antony Starr, Juliet Rylance, Stephanie Leonidas and Gabriel Bateman.
Corinne Brinkerhoff (The Good Wife) will pen the script and executive produce alongside Amblin’s Justin Falvey and Darryl Frank (The Americans, Under the Dome, Extant), James Frey and Todd Cohen.
The Bull Jism Gang Rides Again
Nearly $50,000 In Bull Semen Stolen From Turlock Truck
TURLOCK (CBS13) — Tanks filled with thousands of dollars worth of bull semen were stolen out of a truck in Turlock, and it could cause trouble in the wrong hands.
The bulls are the cream of the crop and have been selected for their genetic value.
“The genetics that these Bulls have in them is out of the top 1 percent of the world population,” said farm owner John Azevedo.
The bulls’ highly valued semen is collected two to three times a week and shipped to farms in California and across the world for the purpose of impregnating cattle.
“Over 70 to 75 percent of all cattle in the U.S. is inseminated artificially,” he said.
Turlock resident Anthony Reis spent months of his time and labor collecting top of the line bull semen for distribution only to half it stolen.
“You get to your first dairy and you’re missing half your inventory,” he said.
Three tanks and a transfer tank with nearly 3,500 units of sperm were stolen from the back of his work truck late Sunday night, enough to potentially impregnate more than 1,000 cattle.
Climate Change Killed The Aliens. Stupid Humans.
Why Can’t We Find Aliens? Climate Change Killed Them
BY IAN O’NEILL
As we look deeper into our galaxy for signs of extraterrestrial life, we keep drawing a blank. Does this mean life on Earth is unique and we’re the only ones out here? Or could it just mean that all the aliens are dead?
Fresh on the heels of the recent news surrounding the increasingly dire climate forecast for our planet, comes a possible warning from the cosmos: climate change in extraterrestrial environments is inevitable and, should life on hypothetically habitable worlds not act as a stabilizer for their environments, it serves as a “sell-by” date for all burgeoning lifeforms.
In new research published in the journal Astrobiology, astronomers of The Australian National University (ANU) pondered this scenario and realized that young habitable planets can become unstable very quickly. What once was a life-giving oasis becomes a hellish hothouse or frozen wasteland very quickly.
“The universe is probably filled with habitable planets, so many scientists think it should be teeming with aliens,” said Aditya Chopra, lead author of the paper. “Early life is fragile, so we believe it rarely evolves quickly enough to survive.”
“Most early planetary environments are unstable. To produce a habitable planet, life forms need to regulate greenhouse gases such as water and carbon dioxide to keep surface temperatures stable,” he said.
PHOTOS: How Aliens Can Find Us (and Vice Versa)
Unlike Earth, most worlds will likely not find this balance, ultimately succumbing to being cooked by a runaway greenhouse effect (like Venus) or frozen by a thinning atmosphere (like Mars). Life will often not be fortunate enough to win the race against environmental fluctuations to become a stabilizing factor.
The First Eyeteur
This filmmaker replaced his eyeball with a camera
Rob Spence lost eyesight in right eye from a shotgun accident when he was nine. Photo: Brian Zak
As a kid, Toronto filmmaker Rob Spence played with a “Six Million Dollar Man” action figure. At 43, he’s turned himself into a real-life version of the bionic hero.
A shotgun accident at age 9 (he held the gun incorrectly, against his eye, while shooting a pile of cow dung) left him legally blind in one eye. Twenty-six years later, Spence had the eye removed and got the idea to replace it with a camera.
“Literally everybody [said] it as a joke — people doing the surgery say, ‘Oh, you should get an eye camera.’ The idea is so out-there in pop culture and science fiction,” he tells The Post.
Spence — who calls himself the Eyeborg — is featured in Thursday’s episode of the new Showtime true-life series “Dark Net,” which examines the fringes of society where virtual and physical lives collide. In Spence’s case, as a documentarian, his eye-cam gives him the ability to conduct intimate interviews without the intrusion of bulky lenses or camera crews.
“It’s the same deal as ‘Taxicab Confessions’ — you get amazing footage if you get the release form after you do the interview,” he says.
The technology raises ethical questions, however — just as it did with Google Glass, which failed to gain traction due to privacy and safety concerns about the ability to record anyone and everyone within eyesight.
“The two reactions are, ‘Wow, that’s so cool’ — and, after a few moments’ reflection, ‘but that’s so creepy,’ ” Spence says. “I’ve actually started wondering, do we want to have constant video of our lives? It’s just another data set. And I don’t know the answer, but I think no, we don’t want that. But it’s coming anyway.”
Once Upon A Long, Long Time Ago….
Fairy tale origins thousands of years old, researchers say
Researchers found Beauty and the Beast was about 4,000 years old / PA
Fairy tales like Beauty and the Beast can be traced back thousands of years, according to researchers at universities in Durham and Lisbon.
Using techniques normally employed by biologists, academics studied links between stories from around the world and found some had prehistoric roots.
They found some tales were older than the earliest literary records, with one dating back to the Bronze Age.
The stories had been thought to date back to the 16th and 17th Centuries.
Durham University anthropologist Dr Jamie Tehrani, said Jack and the Beanstalk was rooted in a group of stories classified as The Boy Who Stole Ogre’s Treasure, and could be traced back to when Eastern and Western Indo-European languages split more than 5,000 years ago.
Analysis showed Beauty And The Beast and Rumpelstiltskin to be about 4,000 years old.
And a folk tale called The Smith And The Devil, about a blacksmith selling his soul in a pact with the Devil in order to gain supernatural abilities, was estimated to go back 6,000 years to the Bronze Age.
Good Drone, Bad Drone
When Good Drones Go Bad
GETTY IMAGES
LATE IN THE summer of 2014, surveillance footage of Syria’s Tabqa air base showed up on YouTube. That it was taken by ISIS forces is unremarkable. That it was shot with a DJI Phantom FC40—a popular consumer drone at the time, the kind you might have found under the Christmas tree—certainly was.
In the intervening year and a half, small quadcopter drones have become even more affordable and more broadly available. That’s enabled them to find all sorts of positive new purposes, from agriculture to inspecting cell towers. That increased accessibility, though, has also inspired a proportionate amount of concern about the misuse of drones. A new report (PDF) from the non-profit group Open Briefing lays bare just how far the threat from hobbyist drones has evolved, and how seriously we should take it.
The Threat Abroad
Let’s start with a healthy dose of perspective. Consumer drones aren’t currently a major part of the ISIS arsenal. There aren’t roaming packs of DJI Phantoms or Parrot Bebops terrorizing the streets of Ramadi. Even that first public incident, the 2014 Tabqa footage, “appeared to be for propaganda purposes only,” according to the Open Briefing report.
That perspective need also include, though, the swift evolution of the uses ISIS forces have found for these quadcopters. “The range of scenarios that threat groups have or are likely to use drone in can be broadly divided into two types of threat: intelligence gathering or attack,” says Chris Abbott, founder and executive director of Open Briefing.
His group’s report details multiple instances of the former. ISIS used a hobbyist UAV in April of last year to help coordinate its attack on Iraq’s Baiji oil refinery complex. The following month, Kurdish forces shot down an ISIS drone that had been monitoring their positions. And these are just the times they’ve been caught.
AMERICAN GOTHIC Casting Call (Toronto)
AMERICAN GOTHIC – CASTING FEMALE TWINS (4-7yrs) (Toronto)
Looking for female twins aged 4-7 for CBS’ new television series!
Open call this Friday 3pm-6pm – Send pictures for location details and sides.
Thanks!
The Origins of War
Stone-age massacre offers earliest evidence of human warfare
Researchers say remains of 27 murdered tribespeople in Kenya prove attacks were normal part of hunter-gatherer relations
by Maev Kennedy
Part of a man’s skeleton found lying in the lagoon. The skull has multiple lesions on the front and left side consistent with wounds from a blunt implement. Photograph: Marta Mirazón Lahr
Some 10,000 years ago a woman in the last stages of pregnancy met a terrible death, trussed like a captive animal and dumped into shallow water at the edge of a Kenyan lagoon. She died with at least 27 members of her tribe, all equally brutally murdered, in the earliest evidence of warfare between stone age hunter-gatherers.
The fossilised remains of the victims, still lying where they fell, preserved in the sediment of a marshy pool that dried up thousands of years ago, were found by a team of scientists from Cambridge University.
The evidence of their deaths was graphic and unmistakable: the remains, which include at least eight women and six children, show skulls smashed in, skeletons shot through or stabbed with stone arrows and blades, and in four cases, hands almost certainly bound.
Juliet Rylance, Stephanie Leonidas to AMERICAN GOTHIC
The Knick‘s Juliet Rylance, Defiance‘s Stephanie Leonidas Join CBS’ Summer Mystery Thriller American Gothic
Getty Images
CBS is rounding out the cast of its 13-episode summer series American Gothic, adding The Knick‘s Juliet Rylance and Defiance‘s Stephanie Leonidas as series regulars, TVLine has learned exclusively.
Gabriel Bateman, best known as Dylan McDermott’s son on Stalker, has also boarded the mystery thriller.
The trio join the previously cast Antony Starr (Banshee), Justin Chatwin (Shameless) and Megan Ketch (Jane the Virgin).
From Good Wife/Jane the Virgin scribe Corinne Brinkerhoff and Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television, the drama — which bears no connection to the short-lived, Shaun Cassidy-produced American Gothic series that aired on CBS in the mid-’90s — centers on a prominent Boston family that is attempting to redefine itself in the wake of a chilling discovery that links their recently deceased patriarch to a string of murders spanning decades, all amid the mounting suspicion that one of them may have been his accomplice.
Robots To Destroy Mankind
The Terminator could become REAL: Intelligent AI robots capable of DESTROYING mankind
FREE-THINKING AI robots could end up destroying mankind or even completely change what it means to be human if we let them think for themselves, a scientist has warned.
By JON AUSTIN
Arnie as the Terminator in the film series and a nuclear mushroom cloud | YouTube•GETTY
Dr Amnon Eden said more needs to be done to look at the risks of continuing towards an AI world.
He warned that we were getting close to the point of no return in terms of AI, without a proper understanding of the consequences.
Dr Eden said: “The New Year needs to see this ill-informed controversy replaced by a better informed analysis of the potential impact of AI and of its applications.
“In 2016 expert risk analysis must gain a far greater role in the thinking of policy and decision makers, of governments and corporations.”
Dr Eden is principal of the Sapience Project, a think-tank which has been formed to look at the potential disruptive impact of artificial intelligence AI.
Science fiction has regularly explored whether robots could destroy mankind, most famously the Terminator films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Dr Eden’s stance comes after Oxford Professor Nick Bostrom said that super intelligence AI may “advance to a point where its goals are not compatible with that of humans”.
Razors Are For Girls
Beards boom, and so do businesses catering to them
by Denise Garcia | @denisejaeg
Javier David | CNBC
Politicians sometimes wear them, and so do a few chief executives. Urban hipsters have become synonymous with them, yet rugged outdoorsmen have been sporting them for years.
Beards — having become so popular that they’ve even had an annual movement (“no shave November,” now more or less a year-round display) named after them — are part of a growing category of the male grooming market, which sees more than $6 billion in sales annually, according to Euromonitor data.
The slow decline of clean-shaven faces has given rise to a new male archetype, one that’s becoming a coveted market demographic in its own right and spurring the rise of small businesses that cater to pampering hairy faces.
The movement to “kill the shave” has had the added effect of overshadowing razor blade sales. In a 2015 research report, Euromonitor said men’s toiletries — which include new products such as beard balms, oils, shampoos and conditioners — grew by 4 percent to $3.4 billion. Meanwhile, shaving grew at half that rate, to $2.9 billion. In recent years, some analysts have also attributed stagnating razor blade sales to the rise of beards.
Chauvet Explained
Scientists Unlock the Mystery of Chauvet Caves Paintings in France
by Henri Neuendorf
The abstract red daubs were previously thought to be abstract paintings. Photo: JEFF PACHOUD/AFP/Getty Images
Following a new discovery, the abstract details in France’s Chauvet Caves paintings, created by early humans 36,000 years ago, are thought to depict a volcanic eruption, scientists say.
Although the paintings were discovered back in 1994, a recent geological survey conducted in the Bas-Vivarais region in France, where the cave is located, has led to a new interpretation of the paintings.
Scientists discovered that a volcanic eruption took place in Bas-Vivarais at around the same time as the paintings were created between 30,000 and 40,000 years ago.
The findings give new significance to the abstract daubs of red and white pigment which were found next to figurative depictions of lions, woolly mammoths, and other animals, and provide new insights into the level of understanding that early humans had of their surroundings.
Zentai Cool
Zentai: Japanese dress in full-body suits to escape pressures of modern life
University student Yukinko dresses in the lycra suit once a week and says she only feels totally liberated and free in her “second skin”. (ABC News)
Japanese professionals, office workers and pensioners are dressing in full-body lycra suits to escape the pressures of modern day life.
According to experts, the craze called Zentai, provides welcome relief from a society that demands conformity.
University student Yukinko spends most of her time in the library or at choir practice by day, but she is also a member of the secret Zentai club.
“My family is conservative. They like me to be quiet and feminine but in secret I wear all over tights and let loose,” she said.
Yukinko dresses in the lycra suit once a week and said she only feels totally liberated and free in her “second skin”.
“I’m a different person wearing this. I can be friendly to anyone and I feel as if I can do anything,” she said.
The Wow! Signal
Famous Wow! signal might have been from comets, not aliens
To appear in the Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences
On 15 August 1977, radio astronomers using the Big Ear radio telescope at Ohio State University picked up a powerful signal from space. Some believe it was our first interception of an alien broadcast. Now it seems something closer to home may have been the source: a pair of passing comets.
The signal – known as the “Wow! signal” after a note scribbled by astronomer Jerry Ehman, who detected it – came through at 1420 megahertz, corresponding to a wavelength of 21 centimetres. Searchers for extraterrestrial transmissions have long considered it an auspicious place to look, as it is one of the main frequencies at which atoms of hydrogen, the most common element in the universe, absorb and emit energy. What’s more, this frequency easily penetrates the atmosphere.
But in the 40 years since, we’ve never heard anything like it again. Analysis of the signal ruled out a satellite, and a reflected signal from the Earth’s surface is unlikely because regulations forbid transmission in that frequency range.
The signal’s intensity rose and fell over the course of 72 seconds, which is the length of time that the Big Ear could keep an object in its field of view due to the rotation of the Earth. That meant it was clearly coming from space. So what was it?
El Chapo Barabas
LA store’s shirts flying off shelves after drug kingpin El Chapo wears design
Before he was captured, Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán was photographed wearing a paisley shirt from the Barabas boutique. Now ‘sales are skyrocketing’
A most-wanted shirt after a most-wanted man was caught wearing it. Composite: REX FEATURES and Handout
Vito Corleone had a tuxedo, Al Capone a cigar and overcoat, and Pablo Escobar a white blazer and blue tie. Their spiritual successor in organized crime, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, has chosen a style inspired by Eleanor Roosevelt and Coco Chanel, and designed by two Jewish Iranian brothers from Los Angeles.
El Chapo, a Mexican cartel lord so wealthy that he landed on Forbes’ list of billionaires in 2009, was recaptured last week in part because actor Sean Penn visited him for the magazine Rolling Stone.
The shirt was, apparently, a design from the Barabas boutique in Los Angeles’ Fashion District.
“It’s not about that he’s an international criminal,” store owner Shawn Esteghbal told the Guardian. “But we’re excited because he could buy anything, he could buy Versace, any other brand, but to choose our brand, our designs!
Interplanetary Gold Rush Looming
New US space mining law to spark interplanetary gold rush
by Luc Olinga
Illustration of a water-rich asteroid – a new US law legalizes the extraction of minerals and other materials, including water, from asteroids and the moon
Flashing some interplanetary gold bling and sipping “space water” might sound far-fetched, but both could soon be reality, thanks to a new US law that legalizes cosmic mining.
In a first, President Barack Obama signed legislation at the end of November that allows commercial extraction of minerals and other materials, including water, from asteroids and the moon.
That could kick off an extraterrestrial gold rush, backed by a private aeronautics industry that is growing quickly and cutting the price of commercial space flight.
The US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015 says that any materials American individuals or companies find on an asteroid or the moon is theirs to keep and do with as they please.
While the Space Act breaks with the concept that space should be shared by everyone on Earth for scientific research and exploration, it establishes the rights of investors to profit from their efforts, at least under US law.
Christopher Johnson, a lawyer at the Secure World Foundation, which focuses on the long-term sustainable use of outer space, said the law sets the basis for the next century of activity in space.
“Now it is permissible to interact with space. Exploring and using space’s resources has begun,” he said.
The US move conjured visions of the great opening of the United States’ Western frontier in the 19th century, which led to the California Gold Rush of 1849.
The Magic Dance Is Over
TRAGEDY. Bowie is Gone
Legendary Artist David Bowie Dies at 69
by Mike Barnes, THR Staff
David Bowie / by Jimmy King
The singer-songwriter and producer dabbled in glam rock, art rock, soul, hard rock, dance pop, punk and electronica during his eclectic 40-plus-year career.
David Bowie has died after a battle with cancer, his representative confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter.
“David Bowie died peacefully today surrounded by his family after a courageous 18 month battle with cancer. While many of you will share in this loss, we ask that you respect the family’s privacy during their time of grief,” read a statement posted on the artist’s official social media accounts.
The influential singer-songwriter and producer dabbled in glam rock, art rock, soul, hard rock, dance pop, punk and electronica during his eclectic 40-plus-year career.
Bowie’s artistic breakthrough came with 1972’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, an album that fostered the notion of rock star as space alien. Fusing British mod with Japanese kabuki styles and rock with theater, Bowie created the flamboyant, androgynous alter ego Ziggy Stardust.
Three years later, Bowie achieved his first major American crossover success with the No. 1 single “Fame” off the top 10 album Young Americans, then followed with the 1976 avant-garde art rock LP Station to Station, which made it to No. 3 on the charts and featured top 10 hit “Golden Years.”
Other memorable songs included 1983’s “Let’s Dance” — his only other No. 1 U.S. hit — “Space Oddity,” “Heroes,” “Changes,” “Under Pressure,” “China Girl,” “Modern Love,” “Rebel, Rebel,” “All the Young Dudes,” “Panic in Detroit,” “Fashion,” “Life on Mars,” “Suffragette City” and a 1977 Christmas medley with Bing Crosby.
Coleman Francis v. Ed Wood
Coleman Francis: The Real Worst Director in Film History
BY JIM VOREL
It’s a safe wager that if you gathered up, say, 100 film fans and surveyed them on the identity of “the worst director of all time,” the answer would probably come back as Edward D. Wood Jr. And they would be wrong.
Ed Wood, for all his ineptitude and naivete, is simply the most infamous bad director of all time. That’s what happens when you have a film like Plan 9 From Outer Space on your resume, which was first enshrined with the “worst movie ever” title in semi-official fashion when it appeared prominently in Michael and Harry Medved’s Golden Turkey Awards in 1980. It actually helps that despite all their flaws, Wood’s movies are, by and large, amusing viewing experiences that lend themselves to cult screenings because watching them really doesn’t hurt that much. They’re the sort of classic, z-grade, no-budget shlock that is saved by their harmlessly earnest and generally sincere attitudes—just try listening to the alien dialog of Plan 9 without cracking a smile.
The films of Coleman Francis, on the other hand, do not provoke smiles. They don’t provoke laughs, either. Coleman Francis is the real owner of the “worst director of all time” distinction, but it’s not surprising that his work isn’t as well known, because once you’ve seen a Coleman Francis movie, the last thing you’ll want to do is see the others. What you’ll want is a time machine, so you can step inside and warn your past self not to engage in a terrible mistake.
With that said, the career of Francis is a fascinating one, with a surprising number of parallels to that of Ed Wood. I’m not sure if the two icons of bad cinema ever managed to meet each other in ‘50s/’60s L.A., but if they had, the resulting collaboration and combination of their acting stables would have been a momentous event in bad movie history, akin to the Yalta Conference between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin. Likewise, I feel we should note that to really be “worst director” material, you need to have a multi-film career that received some kind of professional distribution. Thousands of would-be auteurs have shot handicam “features” from the comfort of their garages before disappearing off the face of the earth. “Worst” implies a greater determination—the ability to fail miserably, learn nothing from the experience, and then promptly fail again.
Ultimately, though, the reason that any of us still remember the works of Francis today is thanks to Mystery Science Theater 3000. As it did for Manos: The Hands of Fate, MST3k also injected fresh perspective into the filmography of Francis. The classic movie-riffing show featured all three of Francis’ feature films: The Beast of Yucca Flats, The Skydivers and Red Zone Cuba. It’s telling that they chose Francis—rather than the better-known Wood, MST3k tormented its captive satellite crew with films that were much, much worse.
Relationship Status: Milo Ventimiglia, James Frey & Verizon’s Go90
Milo Ventimiglia, James Frey to Debut New Series on Verizon’s Go90 (Exclusive)
by Natalie Jarvey
Milo Ventimiglia
Courtesy of Warner Bros. TV
‘Relationship Status’ follows the lives of 30 young people in New York and Los Angeles as they navigate love and friendships.
Verizon’s go90 will become the home of a new scripted series about love and friendships from digital network StyleHaul and executive producers James Frey and Milo Ventimiglia.
Relationship Status will premiere this spring exclusively on the streaming video app. The dramedy will use the lens of social media to follow the interweaving lives of 30 some young people living in New York and Los Angeles. Among those starring are Shawn Ashmore (X Men: Days of Future Past) and Ventimiglia (Heroes).
Elizabeth Allen Rosenbaum (Mistresses) will direct from a script by Celine Geiger (The Lying Game). Full Fathom Five’s Frey and Todd Cohen and DiVide Pictures’ Ventimiglia and Russ Cundiff are producing alongside StyleHaul.
Ventimiglia explains that the series has a fluency in digital and delves into what it’s like to connect with people in the modern age of online dating, mobile phones and social networking. “There was a moment when I first read the script where I honestly felt like Celine had a window into my own life,” he says. “The stories she was telling and the interwoven moments were plucked out of my different relationships and my own digital life.”
The expansive cast also includes Emma Bell (The Walking Dead), Molly Burnett (Days Of Our Lives), Patrick Carlyle (A To Z), Emrhys Cooper (Vanity), Brant Daugherty (Pretty Little Liars), Brett Davern (Awkward), Willa Fitzgerald (Scream), McKinley Freeman (Hit The Floor), Andy Gala (New Girl), Michael Galante (Aquarius), Evan Gamble (The Vampire Diaries), Mimi Gianopulos (Baby Daddy), Nicholas Grava (The Mentalist), Julianna Guill (Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce), Kristen Gutoskie (Containment), Christine Ko (BFFs), Zoe Levin (Red Band Society), Alexa Losey (How To Survive High School), Missy Lynn (Vanity), Jes Macallan (Mistresses), Mekenna Melvin (Chuck), Tony Oller (The Purge), Alexis Rhee (Dr. Ken), Adam Rose (Veronica Mars), Brandon Mychal Smith (You’re The Worst), Karrueche Tran (Vanity), YouTube star Sam Tsui, Rita Volk (Faking It) and Ray Wise (Twin Peaks).
Added Frey: “The effect the digital era has had on all of our relationships — how it conveniences them, complicates them, confuses them — is something I’ve wanted to explore through story for some time, taking full advantage of the very tools the story examines to tell the tale.”
Antony Starr, AMERICAN GOTHIC Star
Antony Starr lands another big US TV role
Antony Starr as Lucas Hood in Banshee (supplied).
Kiwi actor Antony Starr has landed another big role in an American television series.
The former Outrageous Fortune star will appear in American Gothic, a new series for CBS being produced by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television.
Starr is ending his acclaimed run as Lucas Hood the lead in crime series Banshee in the US show’s forthcoming fourth season.
American Gothic is about a prominent Boston family rocked by scandal when it is discovered their recently deceased patriarch is linked to a string of murders.
Starr plays Garrett, the eldest son in the family who fled the city years before only to return after this father’s death.
[ click to continue reading at NZHerald.co.nz ]
[ DEADLINE – ‘American Gothic’: Antony Starr Cast In CBS Drama Series ]
Jonathan the Tortoise – World’s Oldest Living Animal
World’s oldest living animal, Jonathan the Tortoise, gets a new lease of life after vet puts him on a healthy diet… at the age of 183
Jonathan in 1900 with a Boer war prisoner on the remote island of St Helena. Jonathan was thought to be around 50 years old when he arrived on the small island in the south Atlantic from the Seychelles in the 19th century. The tortoise was given as a gift to the governor of St Helena from the Seychelles
The world’s oldest living animal has been given a new lease of life after a vet put him on a healthy diet – at the age of 183.
It was feared Jonathan the giant tortoise was on his last legs after his health seriously declined due to losing his eyesight and sense of smell.
The afflictions meant Jonathan, who lives on the British outpost of St Helena Island, was left grabbing at insubstantial twigs, leaves and dirt for food.
His plight was spotted by the island’s vet, Dr Joe Hollins, who immediately put him on a high-calorie and nutritious diet of a bowl of apples, carrots, cucumber, bananas and guava.
Since the change Jonathan has gained weight, redeveloped his sharp-edged beak to help him eat grass and become more active.
The famous reptile can be seen happily plodding the grounds of Plantation House, the home of the governor of St Helena where he has lived since coming to the island in 1882.