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.
Pierre Boulez Gone
Pierre Boulez: an all-purpose iconoclast
The death of Pierre Boulez at the age 90 robs the classical music world of one of its most talented, and controversial, characters
by Neil Norman
French composer Pierre Boulez conducts the Paris Orchestra at the Louvre Museum, Paris, 2011 ©Christophe Ena/AP/Press Association Images
It is hard to exaggerate the impact of Pierre Boulez on contemporary classical music. A musical polymath, Boulez was a composer, a pianist, a conductor, an essayist, critic and all-purpose iconoclast.
He was a modernist but his classical roots were unimpeachable. He saw music as a living, breathing art form that must challenge what came before, while building on earlier forms. For him, stasis was anathema. Musical museum pieces did not belong in a modern concert hall. And yet, Boulez was one of the greatest conductors and interpreters of classical composers ranging from Mahler to Wagner, Bach to Beethoven.
Boulez was born on 26th March in 1925 in Montbrison, France. From the age of six, he was educated at the local Catholic school, where he spent 13 hours a day. He prayed in the chapel every day for 10 years. The gruelling schedule instilled an iron discipline, though his religious faith suffered—“the Catholic God was the God that failed,” he said many years later. He enjoyed mathematics and took piano lessons, demonstrating aptitude in both. He studied mathematics at Lyon and then music at the Paris Conservatory, where his teachers included Olivier Messiaen and René Leibowitz. From them, he learnt the principles of 12-tone technique, a compositional method invented by Arnold Schoenberg and the flexible backbone of much contemporary music.
Donny Osmond In Your Vagina
Sonic youth: vaginal speaker lets you play tunes to foetuses
Hit me baby one more time: The Babypod opens up so many possibilities … Photograph: Babypod
Does anybody else remember when a Donny Osmond poster was found up a woman’s vagina? Because I do. I’ve never forgotten it, and I never will.
Now, there’s another means of smuggling Osmond into one’s insides – a vaginal speaker. Spanish company Babypod has invented a speaker that is designed to be inserted into the vagina, stimulating foetal development.
“Babies learn to speak in response to sound stimuli, especially melodic sound. Babypod is a device that stimulates before birth through music. With Babypod, babies learn to vocalise from the womb,” reads the blurb on the company’s website.
There has been plenty of research on the effect of sound on foetuses, and evidence suggests that unborn babies do respond to music in the womb. There are already multiple speakers available on the market (“prenatal speakers”) which are fitted around a pregnant woman’s stomach.
Babypod, however, cites research from a gynaecological clinic, the Institut Marquès, that babies hearing external noise clearly is “solely possible via the vagina”, because the abdominal wall muffles sounds.
Robert Stigwood Gone
Robert Stigwood, Impresario of Rock, Film and Stage, Is Dead at 81
Robert Stigwood, the Australian-born producer, personal manager and music executive whose blockbuster hits with the Bee Gees and work on the films “Saturday Night Fever” and “Grease” made him one of the most successful impresarios of the 1970s, died on Monday. He was 81.
Spencer Gibb, a son of Robin Gibb, one of the three brothers who made up the Bee Gees, confirmed the death in a Facebook post, calling Mr. Stigwood his godfather and “the longtime manager of my family,” but not saying where he died.
For most of the 1970s, Mr. Stigwood had a golden touch in music, theater and film, recognizing early on the cross-promotional power of pop music and theatrical spectacle. He managed the Bee Gees and Eric Clapton, had producing credits on “Saturday Night Fever” (1977) and “Grease” (1978), and released multiplatinum soundtracks to those films on his label, RSO.
Of the 19 singles that reached No. 1 on Billboard’s pop chart in 1978, eight were released by RSO —including several from the “Saturday Night Fever” album, among them the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” and “Night Fever” and Yvonne Elliman’s “If I Can’t Have You.”
RSO’s symbol, a red cartoon cow, became a ubiquitous pop-culture brand of the time, and Newsweek called Mr. Stigwood “the Ziegfeld of the disco age.” Sandy-haired and ruddy-cheeked, he lived his success as one of the music industry’s classic high-flying entrepreneurs, conducting business by yacht or from his homes in Bermuda, Beverly Hills and elsewhere around the world.
He was a producer of the 1975 film “Tommy,” based on the Who’s concept album of the same title, and in 1971 produced “Jesus Christ Superstar” on Broadway, establishing its longhaired creators, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, as emergent auteurs of the rock-opera era.
CHAINSAW Is Back
Eli Roth presents CHAINSAW
@CulpritCreative @CryptTV
Directed by David Dinetz & Dylan Trussell
Produced by: Andrew Alter
Executive Producer: Eli Roth & Jack Davis
Cinematography: Colt Seman
culpritcreative.com
crypttv.com
Online Star Registry, Cool.
The Life Changing Magic of Not Giving a F†ck by SARAH KNIGHT
Minimalist Emotions: The Life Changing Magic of Not Giving a Fuck
By
A parody of Marie Kondo’s decluttering bible, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Sarah Knight’s new humor book provides tips on how to cut down on unwanted obligations and feelings. It’s also small and white.
This post is from Observer Short List—an email of three favorite things from people you want to know. Sign up to receive OSL here.
Moon Base Race
The World Is Racing to Build a Moon Base — Here’s What It Could Look Like
By Max Plenke
The ESA’s concept art for a lunar base. Source: ESA
The European Space Agency just reminded the world that it wants to build a base on the moon by 2030, using 3-D printed parts made from materials found on the lunar surface.
The ESA has some competition. Earlier this month, Congress passed a spending bill that would give NASA $55 million to build a space habitat for deep-space exploration, including both the space within the moon’s orbit and, eventually, Mars. The only catch: NASA has 180 days to show what it’s going to be.
It’s a global space race to live on the moon. Around 26 nations want to figure out what that’s going to look like.
In the past, NASA has been a big fan of expandable, inflatable modules, like the ones made by Bigelow Aerospace. The ESA’s concept art shows buildings made out of the natural elements found on the lunar surface. This idea isn’t far-fetched; product designers have used sand to print in the past.
[ click to continue reading at .Mic ]
The End Of An Amazing Comedian (and creator of the greatest hot rod bit ever). Sad.
Lemmy Is Gone
Motörhead frontman, founding member Lemmy Kilmister dead at 70 after short battle with cancer
BY ALFRED NG
Motörhead frontman Lemmy Kilmister died at 70, just two days after being diagnosed with an “extremely aggressive cancer.”
The rock icon found out he had cancer on Dec. 26, and was at home with his family when the news broke, the band said.
“We cannot begin to express our shock and sadness, there aren’t words,” Motörhead said in a statement.
The rockstar lived a fast and wild lifestyle, claiming to have had sex with about 1,000 women by the time he turned 63.
In 2014, Lemmy told The Guardian he was “indestructible,” and personified the mantra of “sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.”
The bass player’s longevity was a running joke among fans, alluding to the rockstar’s immortality with the phrase “Lemmy is God.”
Mark Twain Shot By Thomas Edison
Stonehenge Yields
Stonehenge Begins to Yield Its Secrets
Discoveries in the past decade have revealed more about the people for whom Stonehenge and nearby monuments held great meaning.
AMESBURY, England — About 6,300 years ago, a tree here toppled over.
For the ancients in this part of southern England, it created a prime real estate opportunity — next to a spring and near attractive hunting grounds.
According to David Jacques, an archaeologist at the University of Buckingham, mud was pressed into the pulled-up roots, turning them into a wall. Nearby, a post was inserted into a hole, and that may have held up a roof of reeds or animal skin.
It was, he said, a house, one of the earliest in England.
Last month, in the latest excavation at a site known as Blick Mead, Mr. Jacques and his team dug a trench 40 feet long, 23 feet wide and 5 feet deep, examining this structure and its surroundings. They found a hearth with chunks of heat-cracked flint, pieces of bone, flakes of flint used for arrowheads and cutting tools, and ocher pods that may have been used as a pigment.
“There’s noise here,” Mr. Jacques said, imagining the goings-on in 4300 B.C. “There’s people here doing stuff. Just like us. Same kids and worries.”
About a mile away is Stonehenge.
For Mr. Jacques, the house is part of the story of Stonehenge, even though the occupants of the Blick Mead home never saw that assemblage of massive stones. The beginnings of Stonehenge were more than a millennium in the future.
But Blick Mead, he said, helps fill in the sweep of hunter-gatherers who became farmers and then built Stonehenge and other prehistoric monuments dotting the English countryside.
“This is the first unknown chapter of Stonehenge,” Mr. Jacques said.
Pagan Cults In Rome
Secret pagan basilica in Rome emerges from the shadows after 2,000 years
An underground chamber that was a place of worship for a mysterious cult 2,000 years ago has opened to the public for the first time
By Nick Squires, Rome
Stucco figures Photo: Chris Warde-Jones/The Telegraph
A mysterious Roman basilica built for the worship of an esoteric pagan cult and now lying hidden more than 40ft below street level has opened to the public for the first time.
The basilica, the only one of its kind in the world, was excavated from solid tufa volcanic rock on the outskirts of the imperial capital in the first century AD.
Lavishly decorated with stucco reliefs of gods, goddesses, panthers, winged cherubs and pygmies, it was discovered by accident in 1917 during the construction of a railway line from Rome to Cassino, a town to the south. An underground passageway caved in, revealing the entrance to the hidden chamber.
A painstaking restoration that has been going on for years has now reached the point where the 40ft-long basilica can be opened to visitors.
The subterranean basilica, which predates Christianity, was built by a rich Roman family who were devotees of a little-known cult called Neopythagoreanism.
Originating in the first century BC, it was a school of mystical Hellenistic philosophy that preached asceticism and was based on the writings of Pythagoras and Plato.
Rome Is Evil
How Ancient Rome Killed Democracy
by Bridey Heing
Public Domain
It didn’t take all that much to tip a great civilization into the shackles of empire.
But in his latest book, Richard Alston wants us all to think a little more critically about our beloved Rome.
Alston is a Professor of Roman History at the University of London’s Royal Holloway, and the inspiration for Rome’s Revolution: Death of the Republic and Birth of the Empire came from his own dissatisfaction with the existing body of work on Roman politics. He saw how the idealized vision of Roman culture that these works present influenced the way his students thought about Rome. “Somehow,” Alston writes in the preface, “it was all too nice … but the Roman accounts of their revolution are anything but nice. They were shocked and shocking.”
Lettuce is Evil
Lettuce is ‘three times worse than bacon’ for emissions and vegetarian diets could be bad for environment
Common vegetables ‘require more resources per calorie’ than many people realise, according to a team of scientists at the prestigious Carnegie Mellon University
Eating a healthier diet rich in fruit and vegetables could actually be more harmful to the environment than consuming some meat, a US study has claimed.
Lettuce is “over three times worse in greenhouse gas emissions than eating bacon”, according to researchers from the Carnegie Mellon University who analysed the impact per calorie of different foods in terms of energy cost, water use and emissions.
Published in the Environment Systems and Decisions journal, the study goes against the grain of recent calls for humans to quit eating meat to curb climate change.
Researchers did not argue against the idea people should be eating less meat, or the fact that livestock contributes to an enormous proportion of global emissions – up to 51 per cent according to some studies.
But they found that eating only the recommended “healthier” foods prescribed in recent advice from the US Department of Agriculture increased a person’s impact on the environment across all three factors – even when overall calorie intake was reduced.
[ click to continue reading at The Independent ]
CRISPR Is Evil
Can CRISPR Avoid the Monsanto Problem?
Because it makes manipulating genes so much easier, CRISPR offers researchers the ability to rapidly accelerate studies of many types of illness, including cancers, autism, and AIDS. CREDITPHOTOGRAPH BY MAX WHITTAKER/THE WASHINGTON POST/GETTY
It is distressing, but a fact, that the more rapidly any technology is adopted by scientists the more likely it is to leave people confused, anxious, and suspicious. This week, I wrote an article for the magazine about just such a revolutionary technique, called CRISPR, that permits scientists to edit the DNA of plants and animals with an ease and a precision that even a decade ago seemed inconceivable.
CRISPR research has already begun to transform molecular biology. There have been bold new claims about its promise and powers nearly every day. Yet, for the past fifty years, at least since Watson and Crick demonstrated that DNA contained the blueprints required to build everything alive, modern science has been caught in a hype trap. After all, if we possess such exquisitely detailed instructions, shouldn’t they be able to help us fix the broken genes that cause so many of our diseases?
The assumption has long been that the answer is yes. And for decades, we have been told (by the medical establishment, by pharmaceutical companies, and, sadly, by the press) that our knowledge of genetics will soon help us solve nearly every malady, whether it affects humans, other animals, or plants.
It turns out, however, that genetics and magic are two different things. Deciphering the blueprints in the three billion pairs of chemical letters which make up the human genome has been even more complex than anyone had imagined. And even though the advances have been real, and often dramatic, it doesn’t always seem that way. This has led many people to discount, and even fear, our most promising technologies. Somehow, we take lessons more readily from movies like “Jurassic Park” and “Gattaca” than from the very real, though largely incremental, advances in medical treatments.
Yeah, right – you’re not going to sucker me into turning myself into some kinda monkey-man.
FLOAT HOPES: The Strange New Science of Floating
STORY BY MANDY OAKLANDER
They started late one night, the tremors that shook Michael Harding’s whole body when he lay down to sleep. “A bit weird,” thought Harding, then a 23-year-old Australian soldier stationed in Afghanistan. Just days before, he’d been in an hours-long siege in which his second-in-command was shot and killed.
Harding soon started shaking so much that he had to ask a friend to light his cigarettes. He couldn’t drink water from a bottle without pouring it down his shirt, and in the mess hall, his twitches got so spastic that he’d sometimes flip his tray.
He was medically discharged from the army in 2012 with severe PTSD and left with a new personality: withdrawn and unemotional. His sleep suffered, too. He had nightmares and night sweats.
To handle his worsening symptoms, Harding tried two kinds of talk therapy, four kinds of medication, and large nightly doses of scotch and Coke. When each of those failed, he turned to yoga, juicing, meditation and medicinal pot. That helped a little, but Harding’s anxiety and muscle spasms still hadn’t abated.
Around that time, his wife did what any desperate person would: she started poking around in online forums for something else that may help with his PTSD. She found glowing testimonials for floating, the practice of lying belly-up in a tank filled with warm water so salty you float.
STAR WARS: Episodes I-VI
Tail-Sitter Drone
US military developing radical ‘tail-sitter’ drone that lands anywhere
PHOTO: US Navy and US federal government/ Mail Online
The design for a flying-wing tail sitter drone which lands on its tail, has been revealed by the Northrop Grumman Corporation in the United States.
The drone, which the company says does not require a runway to land, has the ability to land anywhere on its tail.
The design is part of Northrop’s proposal for the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Tern programme.
According to FlightGlobal, DARPA plans to ink a contract in January to build and fly a full-scale prototype from a barge or decommissioned navy ship, says Chris Hernandez, senior vice-president of research, technology and advanced design for Northrop.
Northrop’s tail sitter design includes a set of large counter-rotating propellers covering almost two-thirds of a roughly 9.14m (30ft)-diameter wingspan and it carries weapons and sensors as stores underneath the wing, reveals Hernandez.
I Had No Idea That Kim Kardashian Ate Her Placenta
I ate my placenta like Kim Kardashian, and you should too: Brooklyn mom
Eating your placenta sounds like something only Kim Kardashian would do – but Prospect Heights mother Jennifer Mayer, 32, has been encapsulating the afterbirths of hundreds of New York mothers to treat postpartum depression and boost energy for the past five years. Here’s her personal experience eating the fruit of her labor, in her own words.
My first baby was born a year ago, and I prepared my own placenta the day after his birth.
It doesn’t taste like anything in capsule form. I slice it, dehydrate it and fill it into a capsule about the size of a vitamin, and place the pills in a blue glass bottle. If anything, it might smell a little metallic. You know, like blood.
So far the science on eating placenta is mostly anecdotal; women sharing their personal experiences of it helping with their baby blues. My clients say it increases their energy. Taking a capsule gives them a boost equal to a cup of coffee or a green juice — which, if you have a newborn, is pretty awesome. And there are studies from the turn of the century that show dehydrated placenta did increase milk supply in breastfeeding moms.
But I do have friends who get a little grossed out about it. I have one friend in particular who asks me, “Jen, any time you have to talk about eating placenta, can you just say ‘polenta?’”
In The Valley Of The Gold Metal Bikini
Return of the fans: New ‘Star Wars’ film sparking tourism in Arizona city
PHOENIX — While the world may be ramping up for the newest chapter in the “Star Wars” saga, one Arizona city is enjoying a jump in tourism thanks to its part in the series’ origins.
“Within the last six months or so, I’ve gotten a substantial uptick in the number of folks looking for photos and so forth,” Ann Walker with the Yuma Convention and Visitors Bureau said.
Part of “Return of the Jedi,” the third film in the saga, was filmed in the sand dunes in the desert west of Yuma. As the excitement for “The Force Awakens” builds, some fans are heading to the city where the nearby battle on Jabba the Hutt’s barge was filmed back in 1983.
Go Alex!
Alex Morgan Gets Real About Her Goals: I Want to ‘Become the Best Player in the World’
BY
Alex Morgan in SELF magazine / JACOB SUTTON
At 26, soccer superstar Alex Morgan has already scored so many of her lifelong goals – she made the U.S. women’s national team, won an Olympic gold medal, and won the World Cup. But the striker, who’s easily one of the fastest players on her team, shows no signs of slowing down.
“I’ll play for as long as my body can last at this level,” Morgan says in her cover story for the January/February issue of SELF magazine. “My goal is to become the best player in the world.”
So far, she seems to be on the right track. At 22, Morgan became the youngest member of Team USA. Since then she has landed 52 goals in 91 international games. At the 2012 Olympics, she scored the game-winning goal in the last 45 seconds of the semi-final. And last July, she helped lead her team to a stunning victory against Japan in the World Cup final.
Now she’s got her eye on a different prize – empowering young female readers and athletes through her new book series The Kicks.
“I want young girls to dream about being professional soccer players instead of just watching the boys go out and play,” she says. “It’s about seeing girls be confident in what they want to pursue.”
Go Amblin!
Steven Spielberg and DreamWorks Studios in Deal to Form New Company
LOS ANGELES — Steven Spielberg said on Wednesday that he and his DreamWorks Studios would join Participant Media, Reliance Entertainment and Entertainment One to form an entertainment company called Amblin Partners to produce movies, television shows and digital content.
At the same time, Universal Pictures said it would distribute films from the new company, beginning with “The Girl on the Train,” to be directed by Tate Taylor with Emily Blunt in a lead role, in October 2016.
The new venture, which will be based on the Universal lot, appears poised to absorb and redirect the creative output of DreamWorks Studios, which has distributed its films under a deal with the Walt Disney Company since 2009. That distribution arrangement was set to expire next August.
Amblin Partners also will become an exclusive vehicle for Mr. Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment, including a television division that is already making 13 episodes of the series “American Gothic” to air on CBS next summer. Further, the new company will produce many, though not all, of the films, television shows and other projects developed by Participant Media, an issues-oriented media company owned by the entrepreneur Jeff Skoll.
Warhol’s Montauk for $50million
Andy Warhol’s Hamptons Estate Sells for a Record $50 Million
J.Crew CEO Mickey Drexler owned the Montauk property, which housed famous figures like the Rolling Stones
By CANDACE TAYLOR
Andy Warhol bought the estate in the 1970s.PHOTO: GAMMA-RAPHO/GETTY IMAGES
The former Andy Warhol estate in Montauk—a collection of white-shingled cottages overlooking the ocean—has sold for $50 million, believed to be a record for the former fishing village.
The buyer of the roughly 5.7-acre oceanfront compound, called “Eothen,” was Adam Lindemann, founder of the gallery Venus Over Manhattan. The property had been listed together with a 24-acre horse farm for $85 million, but Mr. Lindemann wasn’t interested in the horse farm, and it is still available, said Paul Brennan of Douglas Elliman Real Estate, who listed the property with Sotheby’s International Realty. The seller was J.Crew CEO Millard “Mickey” Drexler, who bought the property for $27.5 million in 2007, according to public records.