Alien Megastructure, Egad!
‘Alien megastructure’ could surround giant star baffling scientists looking for new planets
BY KIRSTIE MCCRUM
A series of mysterious objects surrounding a giant star millions of miles away could be an alien megastructure, experts believe.
Planet spotters examining data from the Kepler Space Telescope were startled by an unusual light pattern orbiting a star called KIC 8462852.
When they studied the star, which sits some 1,480 light years from Earth, they noticed a swarm of objects surrounding it in an usual pattern.
At first it was thought to be comets, shrapnel from an asteroid impact or even a mistake in the data.
But astronomer Jason Wright from Penn State University offered a more science fiction explanation.
He believes it could be an ‘alien megastructure’ designed to harness energy from the star.
He said: “Aliens should always be the very last hypothesis you consider, but this looked like something you would expect an alien civilization to build.”
Spielberg & Frey Do AMERICAN GOTHIC on CBS
Steven Spielberg, James Frey Murder Mystery ‘American Gothic’ Gets Series Order From CBS
By
CBS has given a straight-to-series order for 13 episodes of “American Gothic,” a new one-hour murder mystery from Steven Spielberg‘s Amblin Television and author James Frey‘s Full Fathom Five, TheWrap has learned.
The series, which will be broadcast during summer 2016, centers on a prominent Boston family that is attempting to redefine itself in the wake of a discovery that links their recently deceased patriarch to a string of murders spanning decades, and amid the mounting suspicion that one of them may have been his accomplice.
“American Gothic” is produced by CBS Television Studios in association with Amblin Television. Justin Falvey and Darryl Frank of Amblin Television, James Frey of Full Fathom Five and “The Good Wife’s” Corinne Brinkerhoff, who is writing the script, will serve as executive producers.
Emilia Clarke Game of Sexy
‘Game of Thrones’ star Emilia Clarke named Esquire’s 2015 ‘Sexiest Woman Alive’
Emilia Clarke is the Mother of All Dragons on “Game of Thrones,” and now she has a new title: Esquire’s Sexiest Woman Alive.
“Half pal, half dominatrix. Half kid sister, half sexy queen,” the magazine’s cover story gushed about the star.
The magazine chose Clarke for her “gorgeous balance” of sexy siren and girl next door. But the 28-year-old said when she was a drama student, she wasn’t anyone’s “favorite.”
“I was a keen bean,” she described her studious younger self.
But Clarke was transformed into a sex symbol after landing the role of Daenerys Targaryen on the hit HBO series.
The actress said that she got the part even though she didn’t fit the description of the dragon queen from George R. R. Martin’s books.
ENDGAME Gold Won – Congratulations to Froylan Moreno del Rio!
Claiming Gold
By Robin Leach
The first puzzle in the “Endgame: The Calling” high-stakes apocalyptic book trilogy brought to life by bestselling authors James Frey and Nils Johnson-Shelton was solved just 24 hours before today’s deadline.
To win “Endgame,” the winner had to solve an interactive puzzle comprised of clues leading to a real-life $500,000 cash prize. Froyal Moreno del Rio solved the puzzle and this afternoon unlocked the gold vault at Caesars Palace for the big payoff.
Book 2, “Sky Key: An Endgame” was published Tuesday. The New York Times bestselling authors were on hand at Caesars to autograph copies of both books. No word yet on the title of Book 3 or its publication date, but more puzzles and cash prizes await.
Algorithming Alzheimer’s
Memory loss breakthrough: New implant can reverse Alzheimer’s damage
By ANIL DAWAR
GETTY
Scientists have developed an electronic implant to help brains damaged by Alzheimer’s retain memories.
They hope it will be used to take over certain areas of diseased brains to help “translate” a short-term memory into a permanent one.
The project is funded by the US military as a way of helping injured soldiers overcome memory loss.
But researchers say the astonishing technology could also help to treat brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
Alzheimer’s causes the brain to degenerate and the damage interferes with the formation of new long-term memories while old ones survive.
The new US technology has already been tested on nine people with epilepsy who had electrodes implanted in their brains to treat chronic seizures.
Researchers read the electrical signals created in the patients’ brains as they conducted simple tasks.
The results were then used to create a computer program which could predict with 90 per cent accuracy how the signals would be translated.
Coding The Mind From Scratch
Thought process: Building an artificial brain
Paul Allen’s $500 million quest to dissect the mind and code a new one from scratch
Paul Allen has been waiting for the emergence of intelligent machines for a very long time. As a young boy, Allen spent much of his time in the library reading science-fiction novels in which robots manage our homes, perform surgery and fly around saving lives like superheroes. In his imagination, these beings would live among us, serving as our advisers, companions and friends.Now 62 and worth an estimated $17.7 billion, the Microsoft co-founder is using his wealth to back two separate philanthropic research efforts at the intersection of neuroscience and artificial intelligence that he hopes will hasten that future.
The first project is to build an artificial brain from scratch that can pass a high school science test. It sounds simple enough, but trying to teach a machine not only to respond but also to reason is one of the hardest software-engineering endeavors attempted — far more complex than building his former company’s breakthrough Windows operating system, said to have 50 million lines of code.
The second project aims to understand intelligence by coming at it from the opposite direction — by starting with nature and deconstructing and analyzing the pieces. It’s an attempt to reverse-engineer the human brain by slicing it up — literally — modeling it and running simulations.
Made up of 100 billion neurons, each one connected to as many as 10,000 others, the human brain is the most complex biological system in existence. When you see, hear, touch, taste or think, neurons fire with an electrochemical signal that travels across the synapses between neurons, where information is exchanged.
Somewhere within this snarl are patterns and connections that make a person who he is — his memories, preferences, habits, skills and emotions.
Building on the work that Allen accelerated through his philanthropy, governments around the world have launched their own brain initiatives in recent years. The European Commission’s Human Brain Project, which began in 2013 with about $61 million in initial funding, aims to create an artificial model of the human brain within a decade. President Obama announced the United States’ own BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) effort in 2014 to great fanfare, comparing it to the Human Genome Project that led to the current genetic revolution. BRAIN was launched with initial funding of $110 million.
Some futurists even believe that the brain, not the body, may be the key to immortality — that at some point we’ll be able to download our brains to a computer or another body and live on long after the bodies we were born in have decayed.
Allen’s own interest in the brain began with his love of tinkering.
He always has been interested in how things were put together, from steam engines to phones, and as he grew older he became fascinated with the brain.
“Computers are really basically computing elements and a lot of memory,” he said. “They are pretty easy to understand, as compared to the brain, which was designed by evolution.”
But it wasn’t until his mother, Faye, a former elementary school teacher, became ill with Alzheimer’s that Allen’s brain philanthropy took shape.
Aliens could ‘conquer and colonise’ our planet, warns Stephen Hawking – whilst assuring us he’s not one of them.
Advanced aliens could ‘conquer and colonise’ our planet, warns Stephen Hawking
BY JEFF PARSONS
Stephen Hawking believes that aliens visiting Earth might not turn out well for us
Stephen Hawking has tackled the mysteries of the universe his entire life.
Now the world-renowned scientist has some new things to say about a potential alien invasion .
“If aliens visit us, the outcome could be much like when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans,” Professor Hawking told El País .
“Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach,” he said.
The physicist, who has suffered from motor neurone disease since his twenties, explained that the existence of aliens is beyond doubt.
Three-fer for Frey
Author James Frey Sells Three TV Projects (Exclusive)
As CEO of Full Fathom Five, Frey reupped his UCP deal and sold projects to E!, Syfy and NBC.
by Lacey Rose
AP Images
James Frey is nothing if not prolific.
His Full Fathom Five, the 5-year-old outfit behind best-sellers I Am Number Four and Endgame: The Calling as well as Frey’s just-published Endgame sequel, Sky Key, has sold three TV projects through its newly extended Universal Cable Productions deal.
There’s KissnTell, originally an e-book from the transmedia company’s digital imprint, which began releasing a book a week last fall. The Marc Halsey-penned comedy, now set up at E!, follows two young women who start an anonymous gossip blog. Before long, they find themselves living double lives — average single girls by day, life-of-the-party scenesters at night
At Syfy, FFF sold Haunted from Noga Landau, about the four adult children of self-proclaimed paranormal experts who are reunited following their parents’ sudden and mysterious deaths. Together under one roof for the first time in years, they must overcome their issues with each other in order to solve the mystery of what happened to their parents and ultimately survive the literal ghosts from their past. Dan Halsted and Nate Miller of Manage-ment are on board as producers.
Finally, NBC bought FFF’s Michael Golamco-written supernatural kung fu drama Middle Kingdom, which is set in San Francisco, the “Middle Kingdom” between Asia and America, East and West, heaven and hell.
Post-apocalyptic ‘beaver’ cool.
Post-apocalyptic ‘beaver’ thrived after dinosaurs died
By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The world had been wrecked. An asteroid impact in Mexico compounded by colossal volcanism in India 66 million years ago had killed about three-quarters of Earth’s species including the dinosaurs.
But relatively soon afterward, a plucky critter that looked like a beaver was thriving, exemplifying the resilience of the mammals that would arise from the margins of the animal kingdom to become Earth’s dominant land creatures.
Scientists on Monday announced the discovery in northwestern New Mexico’s badlands of the fossil remains of Kimbetopsalis simmonsae, a plant-eating, rodent-like mammal boasting buck-toothed incisors like a beaver that lived just a few hundred thousand years after the mass extinction, a blink of the eye in geological time.
Kimbetopsalis, estimated at 3 feet long (1 meter), would have been covered in fur and possessed large molar teeth with rows of cusps used to grind down plants.
Asked what someone’s impression of Kimbetopsalis might be, New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science curator of paleontology Thomas Williamson said, “They would probably think something like, ‘Hey, look at that little beaver!”
ENDGAME: SKY KEY (Second novel in Endgame Series – Available Today!)
Courtesy of Harper CollinsBustle’s Alien 8
8 Awesome Books About Aliens To Celebrate The Discovery Of Water On Mars
Our world may have just turned into a science fiction novel because Monday morning NASA announced that it found water on Mars. This major scientific announcement was teased Thursday when NASA sent out a press release stating “Mars Mystery Solved” using information from the NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This isn’t the first time scientists have found water on Mars — ice has been found at the poles — but it is the first time liquid water has been discovered. It marks a turning point in the study of the planet and whether it could be hospitable to life.
“Our quest on Mars has been to ‘follow the water,’ in our search for life in the universe, and now we have convincing science that validates what we’ve long suspected,” said John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, in the NASA announcement. “This is a significant development, as it appears to confirm that water — albeit briny — is flowing today on the surface of Mars.”
I Am Number Four by Pittacus Lore
Rather than through the eyes of space explorers or humans on Earth, I Am Number Four is told by an alien. Teenage John Smith and eight other Loric aliens have sought refuge on Earth, hiding from their enemies of the Mogadorian aliens. But one by one, the Loric aliens are being picked off. And now John, the fourth person on the list, seems to be up next. He’s awaiting his emerging magical powers, which he’ll need to use to fight against his enemies to save himself, his alien friends, and the entire human race on Earth.
La Boom
On Sunday Nights, New York’s Busboys Become Cowboys
Mexican immigrants flock to La Boom, in Queens, once a week to dance to songs of the outlaw life.
Kirsten Luce for The New York Times>
On a Sunday evening, just after dark, hundreds of cowboys are lined up outside a nightclub called La Boom in Woodside, Queens. They are not usually dressed like this; they are Mexican immigrants, waiters, cooks, dishwashers, deli workers, gardeners, handymen. But on this night they wear hats and pointy boots. Their shirts are tucked in, to show belt buckles in the shapes of cow skulls and roses. The women wear short dresses, leather vests and high-heeled boots.
Sundays nights are Mexican Nights at La Boom. “So many of them work in restaurants,” said Pedro Zamora, the club’s owner and a Latin music promoter. “They rest on Mondays.” The bands go on around midnight, so fans can come after their shifts end.
On this summer Sunday, two popular bands are playing. For weeks, posters have hung in Mexican shops around the region, and by midnight about 2,000 people have climbed the stairs to the cavernous space.
When the lights swivel over the room, it looks like a barn dance. And when the 16-piece group Banda Los Recoditos appears onstage, it looks like an old-fashioned beer hall band, with trumpets, trombones and a tuba. But as they begin to play, the lead singers slap the air like rappers. And the lyrics are hardly pastoral: “Pour some cocaine and a shot of Buchanan’s on me” — name-checking the whiskey that is the unofficial drink of this scene.
In the V.I.P. section, men in silk blazers and cowboy hats nuzzle women in tube dresses. They pull on hookahs and pour shots of, yes, Buchanan’s.
Deflecting Didymoon
Plan to save the world from Armageddon
Space mission will deflect asteroid in practice to avoid doomsday destruction
SCIENTISTS are planning a space mission to nudge an asteroid out of its orbit in a practice run for saving the world.
IN a project reminiscent of 1998 movie Armageddon, the joint European-US Asteroid Deflection and Assessment mission will crash a probe into the space rock to test a possible doomsday-stopping scenario.
Nasa and the European Space Agency plan to plough a device into the 525ft Didymoon to test the principle that a much larger asteroid threatening the Earth could be deflected.
Two spacecraft, one to smack into the rock and the other to monitor the effects of the impact, will launch in October 2020.
They are due to get to Didymoon and its 2,460ft-wide partner Didymos in May 2022.
Dr Patrick Michel, lead investigator for the European Space Agency, said: “To protect Earth from potentially hazardous impacts, we need to understand asteroids much better.
Changing The Subject
‘Changing the Subject,’ by Sven Birkerts
By
Photo by MARA PARKS
Sven Birkerts is an anxious man. By turns he is frightened, terrified, alarmed, filled with dread. On one occasion he shudders in his core; mostly he is just plain worried. What concerns him, a concern he is eager to transmit to us, is the rapid spread of computer, Internet and telephone technologies and more specifically what those technologies are doing to our minds. Forever glued to screens of one kind or another, clicking compulsively on the links others provide for us, we are losing the ability to concentrate, growing more itchy and agitated by the day, allowing our consciousness to be fragmented and dispersed. Our very selfhood is under threat as we are invited to think of achievement as a collective, rather than individual goal, a contribution to Wikipedia rather than a distinctive personal statement. At every step the Internet or GPS navigator puts us at a remove from the world and from our fellow human beings, deprives us of the agency we enjoyed when we had to go out and find things for ourselves rather than have them suggested to us. “Rewired,” as neuroscientists have now demonstrated, to adapt to the fitful back and forth of the web, our brains are no longer fit for the sustained attention that literature requires. Fewer young people are choosing to study the humanities. Fewer great works of art are being produced. There is a real risk of individuality being submerged in system. To make matters worse, a vast majority of people seem entirely happy with this state of affairs, to the point that anyone questioning the value of the new technologies is immediately deemed a Luddite if not a dinosaur.
The Master Strikes!
Exceedingly Ballsy 200-MPH Wingsuit Racing
The Excruciating, 200-MPH World of Wingsuit Racing
by ALEX DAVIES
Photo by TRAVIS MICKLE
JOE RIDLER HAS jumped out of an airplane nearly 700 times in his life, but when he makes the leap later today, the goal will be about more than reaching the ground safely. It will be to fly through the air faster, farther, and for longer than anyone else in the sky.
Ridler’s competing in the National Championships of Wingsuit Flying in Chicago, also known as wingsuit racing.
Ridler’s loved the idea of flying since he was a kid in northwest Minnesota, looking for a way to get away. Barred from a commercial or military flight career by eye problems, he was intrigued by BASE jumping, but abandoned the idea as too dangerous. So now he jumps out of planes and races through the sky at 200 mph.
Ridler’s first wingsuit flight was two years ago. It would have been sooner, but the US Parachute Association requires you complete 200 skydives before allowing you to exit a plane dressed like an amped up flying squirrel. “The one thing I was the most nervous about,” he says, was “strapping myself into a straight jacket and throwing myself out of a plane.”
The championships, hosted by the US Parachute Association, test competitors on three disciplines, each measured in a window between 3,000 and 2,000 meters of altitude: average speed, distance covered, and time spent aloft. Each flyer gets three jumps in each category, and is tracked via a GPS module on their helmet. They’re rated on a curve—whoever goes fastest, farthest, or stays in the window the longest gets a 100, everyone else a percentage of that—and scores are averaged to find an overall winner.
Ai’s And Anish’s Digits
Two artists. Three fingers. News: Weiwei and I join hands to walk. We will walk out of London. We will each carry a single blanket. A symbol of the need that faces 60 million refugees in our world today. We welcome those who wish to walk with us. Bring your blanket. We will repeat this action in cities worldwide over the coming months. At 10am on Thursday 17th September we will walk from The Royal Academy of Arts we will walk east out of London. Route details will be announced. #AnishKapoor
#Aiweiwei
#RoyalAcademy
#AnishAndWeiweiWalk
@aiww
@dirty_corner
Mr. Amazon Robot
Amazon Prime Acquires USA’s ‘Mr. Robot’
by
Virginia Sherwood/USA Network
USA’s hacker drama Mr. Robot is headed to Amazon.
The company has acquired Universal Cable Production’s first-year critical darling, it was announced Friday.
Under the pact, Amazon Prime will become the exclusive subscription streaming home for Mr. Robot beginning this spring. All 10 episodes of the series will be available for Amazon Prime members in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Austria and Japan.
From creator Sam Esmail, Mr. Robot stars Rami Malek as an antisocial hacker hoping to overthrow society and Christian Slater as the leader of the hacker group hoping to help him to do just that.
“Mr. Robot is one the most compelling new dramas on television,” said Amazon vp digital video content acquisition Brad Beale in a statement. “Rami Malek delivers a mesmerizing performance and leads a great cast with an intriguing story full of dark twists. Prime members are going to love binging on this awesome show.”
This marks the latest deal between UCP and Amazon Prime, which is also home to Syfy’s Defiance and Warehouse 13 as well as USA’s own Suits.
Extra Super Double Armageddon Blood Moon Tonight
‘Blood Moon’ seen as sign of end times by some Mormons
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A rare confluence of a lunar eclipse and a supermoon set to happen this weekend has prompted such widespread fear of an impending apocalypse that the Mormon Church was compelled to issue a statement cautioning the faithful to not get caught up in speculation about a major calamity.
Sunday night’s “blood moon” and recent natural disasters and political unrest around the world have led to a rise in sales at emergency preparedness retailers. Apocalyptic statements by a Mormon author have only heightened fears among a small number of Mormon followers about the looming end of time. The eclipse will give the moon a red tint and make it look larger than usual. It won’t happen again for 18 years.
It’s unclear how many Latter-day Saints buy the theory, but Mormon leaders were worried enough that they took the rare step this week of issuing a public statement cautioning the faithful not to get carried away with visions of the apocalypse.
Leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints told its 15 million worldwide members that they should be “spiritually and physically prepared for life’s ups and downs,” but urged them not to take speculation from individual church members as doctrine and “avoid being caught up in extreme efforts to anticipate catastrophic events.”
The Mormons preparing to hunker down Sunday night aren’t alone. Some from other religions also fear a doomsday scenario. A Christian pastor in Texas has written a book predicting a world-shaking event.
Storing away enough food and water in case of disaster, job loss or something worse is part of the fundamental teachings of the religion. Many homes in Utah are equipped with special shelving for cans of beans, rice and wheat. The belief that regular history will someday end, bringing a second coming of Jesus, is embedded in the minds of Mormons and the church’s official name.
The Raw-crafting of A Book
Watch the Intensive Process of Book Printing
Though many have embraced e-readers, it’s hard to beat the look and feel of a real print book. In fact, there are some who prefer to make books the old-fashioned way: By printing with letterpress and stitching everything together by hand. San Francisco-based Arion Press does just that—and in his show Raw Craft, Anthony Bourdain followed its artisans through the process, revealing just how much work goes into making a book almost entirely by hand. From proofreading the copy aloud to hand-sewing the binding, each tome assembled at Arion gets an enormous amount of attention and care. The result is a volume that’s also a work of art.
Paralyzed except for your eyes…
Sleep paralysis: the waking nightmare where you can’t move or speak
by Brian Sharpless and Karl Doghramji
When most people hear the word ‘nightmare’ they think of a scary dream that may involve a person’s teeth falling out, public humiliation, or being hunted by a scary monster. In these sorts of nightmares it is easy to know when the dream ends, as we are jarred awake and find ourselves surprisingly safe and secure in the comfortable confines of our bedroom. The original nightmare, however, was a different beast entirely.
This older conception was much more frightening and, in certain cultures, even believed to be life-threatening. Nightmares in this more archaic sense consisted of being:
(1) paralyzed except for your eyes
(2) oppressed (or feeling a weight on your chest)
(3) mute (i.e. unable to call out for help)
These three experiences all took place while you were clearly awake and, not surprisingly, also led to strong feelings of terror. Making matters worse (or at least scarier), nightmares usually had visual and tactile elements just as vivid as anything experienced in daily life.
Different times and cultures made sense of the nightmare in their own ways, and wove these experiences into many rich folklore traditions.
Some people believed that the nightmare was an actual nocturnal assault (by demons, ghosts, vampires, witches or extraterrestrials). This resulted in attempts to prevent further attacks, like placing crosses in the bedroom, or even go on the offensive, i.e. sleeping with knives or other weapons.
Learn To Love Your Germ-Cloud
‘Germ clouds’ containing millions of bugs surround EVERY human – and they show where you have been
BY JOHN VON RADOWITZ
Cloudy day: The millions of bugs surround us at all times
Every human on earth has a cloud of germs surrounding them at all times – and it is almost as distinct to that person as a fingerprint.
The “microbial cloud” contains millions of bugs that are put out from various pores and points in our bodies.
According to experts, the cloud hangs around a person’s body at all times and each individual cloud has a signature that could be read by carrying out genetic analysis of the bacteria.
Scientists were able to identify individuals from a group of volunteers just by sampling germs from the air around them.
The noxious nimbus consists of combinations of microbes emitted from our bodies that vary from person to person.
Scientists who tested 11 volunteers identified thousands of different types of bacteria in 312 samples of air and dust taken from a chamber in which each participant was asked to sit alone.
Most of the chamber occupants could be identified within four hours by matching them to their bugs.
Coolest Vehicle Hack Ever (And thank you VW, for making our cars not suck!)
The tech behind how Volkswagen tricked emissions tests
By Andrea Peterson and Brian Fung
(Odd Andersen/AFP/Getty Images)
Volkswagen isn’t hiding from its emissions cheating scandal, which the company now says affects some 11 million diesel cars worldwide.
“Let’s be clear about this: Our company was dishonest with the EPA and the California Air Resources Board and with all of you,” Volkswagen U.S. chief Michael Horn said Monday night. “In my German words, we have totally screwed up.”
Thanks for finally coming clean, VW. But how exactly did the technology behind Volkswagen’s so-called defeat device actually work?
Regulators allege that Volkswagen installed software into its cars that allowed the autos to circumvent EPA tests. But that still doesn’t explain how VW vehicles were able to determine when they were being subjected to an emissions test in the first place.
To understand more about how Volkswagen cheated, we have to know a bit about the EPA’s testing process. When carmakers test their vehicles against EPA standards, they place a car on rollers and then perform a series of specific maneuvers prescribed by federal regulations. Among the most common tests for passenger cars is the Urban Dynamometer Driving Schedule (UDDS), which simulates 7.5 miles of urban driving. Here’s what that looks like, expressed as a speed profile.
Mercury Retrograding Again – Lie Low
Why smart people actually believe Mercury retrograde ruins lives
By Tim Donnelly and Robert Rorke
If you spilled a whiskey all over your computer or signed a lease for a bedbug-filled apartment, relax! It’s probably not your fault; it’s probably Mercury retrograde.
The astrological phenomenon, which started Thursday and goes until Oct. 9, is the hottest scapegoat in town, the juice cleanse of the cosmos, if you will.
According to astrological hucksters (and the flocks who follow them), the three periods each year when Mercury appears to be moving backward are total pandemonium, a time when the stars are liable to wreak havoc on technical devices, morning commutes and official documents.
Too bad it’s total nonsense. Mercury retrograde isn’t responsible for the G train being late or your iPhone freezing up, any more than that black cat that crossed your path gave you bad luck.
And yet, belief in “Mercury retrograde” is getting stronger and stronger. My social media feeds are filled with comments from otherwise logical, educated people who take the phenomenon seriously.
Motion City Soundtrack
Motion City Soundtrack – ‘Panic Stations’ (album stream)
By Sarah Murphy
The Minneapolis-based emo kids in Motion City Soundtrack are all grown up and ready to return with Panic Stations next week. But before the nautically-themed set of songs washes ashore, Exclaim! is giving you an early listen to the album in its entirety.
In addition references to water and the ocean, the new record grapples with “an overarching idea of letting go and not being immobilized by your own thoughts.” Inspiration was also taken from works like James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.
McDonald’s Discriminates With McRib
Another McDonald’s Bummer: The McRib Is Coming Back, But There’s a Tragic Downside
David Paul Morris/Getty Images
Maybe McDonald’s should change its name to the Chicago Cubs, because it keeps breaking hearts left and right.
We celebrated the fact that McDonald’s was finally going forward with all-day breakfast, only to be brought back down to earth when we realized that it would be a limited menu. And then we realized that the McRib is coming back, but unfortunately, there’s yet another catch that the fast food chain has for us.
This roller coaster of emotions must be stopped! We want to get off this ride!
VIDEO: This is how McDonald’s actually makes its iconic McRib sandwich
CNBC is reporting that locations were just given the option of selling the iconic McRib sandwich, and it seems that this year a staggering amount of restaurants opted out.
In fact, the McRib is now so elusive that you probably had no idea it was back on the menu already, and that’s because so few locations are actually selling it. In fact, according to CNBC, only 8,000 of the 14,350 McDonald’s in the U.S. will sell the McRib. That’s 75 percent less than last year!
The Saddest Day In Television History – Sábado Gigante Gone
For more than 50 years, Univision’s ‘Sábado Gigante’ was truly a giant
By Carlos Harrison
DORAL, FLA. — An electric excitement surges through the crowd gathered in the Univision studios in this city just west of Miami. As Mario “Don Francisco” Kreutzberger steps out of the wings, the fans in the bleachers who’ve traveled here from Guatemala and Chile, California and Kansas City and beyond erupt in cheers and wild applause.
These lucky folks are experiencing history: They’re the last members of the general public to be the studio audience of “Sábado Gigante” (“Giant Saturday”), the hugely popular — and longest-running — variety show that has dominated Spanish-language television for more than half a century.
And like audiences before them for the past 53 years, they’re eating up the corny antics of Kreutzberger, the show’s creator and only host for its entire run. They laugh as he mugs in a variety of goofy hats during the signature talent competition, “El Chacal de la Trompeta” (“The Trumpet Jackal”) and howl at the sexual-innuendo-laden comedy sketches. When the first comedian’s mike gives off a static buzz, Kreutzberger hands him his own. “Since the show’s ending,” he deadpans to laughter, “they only give us half as many working microphones.”
Yes, sadly, the glitzy, zany hodgepodge that is “Sábado Gigante” — part game show, part talent show, part comedy show, part musical entertainment and, often enough, serious interview show with newsmakers and world leaders — ends Saturday, leaving mourning viewers in its wake.
Maybe Banksy did it…?
Warhol’s Famous Jews Stolen from L.A. Movie Studio and Replaced with Fakes
Andy Warhol, Sigmund Freud, from from “Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century,” 1980. Photo via TMZ.
Nine of Andy Warhol‘s prints of Jewish icons like Sigmund Freud and Gertrude Stein valued at $350,000 have gone missing from the walls of a movie editing studio in Los Angeles. An industrious thief reportedly created fake versions of the works and installed them in place of the originals, according to TMZ.
The switcheroo came to light when a member of the family business took the works to a framer because he noticed that they were sagging. The framer tipped his customer off that they were fake, leading to a police investigation.
E.T. Phone Earth
Giant Radio Telescope Could Detect E.T.’s Call
Credit: SKA Organisation
A huge telescope array will allow scientists to conduct the most sensitive and exhaustive search for signs
of alien civilizations to date when it comes online, the project’s backers say.
The Square Kilometer Array (SKA), currently planned to begin construction in 2018, could enable the search for intelligent alien life to piggy-back on other scientific observations, scouring the galaxy with unprecedented precision.
“A unique aspect for the search of life in the universe is the question of whether advanced lifeevolves intelligence,” Andrew Siemion said at the Astrobiology Science Conference in Chicago in June. [13 Ways to Hunt Intelligent Alien Life]
422 Trees For Every Person On The Planet
The Earth has 3 trillion trees, study finds
(CNN) – The good news: A new study finds that there are 3.04 trillion trees on Earth, 7½ times more than previous estimates.
That’s more than 3,000,000,000,000. A whopping 12 zeros. Roughly 422 trees — a tiny forest! — for every person on the planet.
The bad news? Researchers estimate that the total number of trees has plummeted by roughly 46% since the dawn of human civilization. And we’re mostly to blame.
An international team of researchers employed satellite imagery, forest inventories and supercomputer technologies to map tree populations worldwide at the square-kilometer level. The resulting study, led by scholars at Yale University, was published this week in the journal Nature (PDF).