Category: Uncategorized

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TRAILER REVIEWKeep its In Your head, ‘ Cause Indies don’t have the budget.I’m going to skip over the politics that jumps right out at me. Illegal aliens in Central America? The Mexicans are trying to keep them out? And the US border is some kind of safety zone? Wait a minute! In this flick’s universe, did Arizona win? Stop! These may be inadvertent references, totally unintended. The flick poster does say,”After six years, they’re no longer aliens, they’re residents. Now it’s our turn to adapt.” And the leading man is wearing a gas mask. And there is a big old sign that says, “Infected Zone!” Maybe not so unintended? At least with the marketing dudes?This flick has a great premiss for a sci-fi / horror flick. The producer’s synopsis:”Six years ago NASA discovered the possibility of alien life within our solar system. A probe was launched to collect samples, but crashed upon re-entry over Central America. Soon after, new life forms began to appear and grow. In an effort to stem the destruction that resulted, half of Mexico was quarantined as an INFECTED ZONE. Today, the American and Mexican military still struggle to contain the massive creatures… Our story begins when a jaded US journalist begrudgingly agrees to find his boss’ daughter, a shaken American tourist and escort her through the infected zone to the safety of the US border.”Now what is this flick? “District9?” “Cloverfield?” From the trailer, and remember I am working from the trailer, this seems to be a cheapo independent scary monster movie, with blood and gore, and keeping the monster hidden, except for a quickly dark glance, because looking at him directly won’t scare anybody. Indies don’t have the budget for anything better.The flick is due out in October. Its director is Gareth Edwards. The cast includes Whitney Able and Scoot McNairy.

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If one needs proof of the existence of Heaven, one only needs to look to the Internet. If the gods did not invent the net, then who did? I am talking of the web and all that comes with it: Chat and video file sharing, email and of course Twitter. Does one need specifics? Well — last night, the annual Perseid meteor shower, which as the AP video shows lit up the sky and Twitter.”Meteor watchers logged on to tweet as the annual Perseid meteor shower reached its peak,” sharing the communal experience. NASA astronomers calculated that at least 80 meteors per hour were visible during the peak display. Twitter had what? 80 zillion meteor watchers tweets?!The web — the almost instant connection that it provides to watchers, gazing from thousands of points under the night sky, giving a wide community of watchers the opportunity to share, not only what they see, but what they missed, and what to watch for, is to borrow the phrase, “truly priceless.”And the sleepy heads, and the ones who have to get up and go to work this morning, and the ones who peered through cloud covers, can watch the spectacular light show on web video.

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Kevin Yates of Britain is watching for asteroids. Maybe for a wandering planet too? If one unfortunately comes along?65 million years ago, earth got smacked by a large piece of an asteroid and among other things the dinosaurs were obliterated. Scientists are saying, theorizing, that every one hundred million years such a planet disrupting asteroid comes this way, and thus another isn’t due for thirty five millions years. Of course, the scientists could be wrong, couldn’t they? One could be due next week, huh? Or one could drop in on us unexpectedly tomorrow morning, right?I hope not. See the video.Earth gets feather punched by pieces of asteroids called meteors almost all the time. Mr. Yates spends his days monitoring and tracking asteroids, and predicting when one may come this way. He has counterparts in this country and I’m sure in others.The U.S. Space Command. and NASA also are watchful for known and unknown passing asteroids. The space command, which is part of the Air Force, is working on ways to defend the planet from dangerous asteroids.

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Something’s Really Out There Says UFO expert.The British government has released a new batch of its once secret UFO files. Among the revelations revealed today is that Winston Churchill covered up reports of UFO sightings, so not to cause mass public panic.So all those recent “Dr. Who” episodes with the late Sir Winston paling around with the good doctor may have been inspired by a little more than the muse of fiction.Most of the reported UFO sightings, the Brit government files say, were misidentified objects, normal terrestrial and / or pedestrian things like aircraft lights or meteors, and yes, as always, a small proportion of the sighting could not be explained.Nick Pope, the former MoD UFO chief, who worked for twenty five years at the British Ministry of Defense, says these latest reports prove that something is really out there. Aliens? Visiting us? He says, he doesn’t think so. And he believes there’s is alien life. He hedges.Well, no aliens have formally checked in — yet, as far as the public knows. See the videos.The new Brit UFO files are on-line at  nationalarchives.gov.uk/ufo, and can be viewed, download, for free, for the first month. After that there will, what the site says, a small fee. The first batch of Brit MoD UFO files can be assessed for the fee.

Scotty, raise the shields.A huge solar storm is expected to strike tonight and to put on a light show in the Northern sky, visible tor those in the Northern part of the Northern Hemisphere — “from Maine to Michigan and anywhere farther north around the globe — may see unusual northern lights.”. Too bad for me, I’m too further South, will have to settle for Internet pictures. of the event.The storm is the result of the shock wave and plasma ejections from a major eruptions on the sun surface. The Associated Press reports, “The federal Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colo., said the plasma will likely arrive late Tuesday night or early Wednesday.”.The storms are not expected to be a threat to satellites or power grids..We don’t have to worry about Scotty raising the shields, because the shields are already up — Earth’s natural barrier, its magnetic field, is expected to protect the earth from most of the storm impact. This is the first major Earth-directed eruption in quite some time..The solar eruption, called a coronal mass ejection, was spotted by NASA.

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Think our universe is just so vast and endless—much like a bowl of soup during the lunch rush at a bar and grill—to imagine? Think you’ll never get to see what the whole thing looks like with your puny, stuck-on-Earth eyes? You’re in luck! The first ever picture of the entire universe has been photographed—and I don’t mean photo shopped, either. A telescope in Europe, launched in 2008 by the European Space Industry, has taken a photograph of the entire universe. According to the UK Telegraph, the satellite was sent to “record the origins of the universe.” Aside from the results of the mission, that sounds pretty deep, does it not? Many people, after all, would imagine that “recording the origins of the universe” would mean bringing a TalkBoy along to an interview with God. Of course, that would be the American standpoint, anyhow; and given that nearly half of our country doesn’t believe in evolution—something that never ceases to make my jaw drop, given that, like air and gravity, I don’t consider it to be one of the things you “believe” in but instead just something that is—many wouldn’t trust whatever findings the satellite captured, anyway. And if little green men or reptilian giants or any other life forms were found, I’m sure a biblical explanation would be provided. But I digress. Did the satellite indeed find the origins of the universe? The Plank travelled for a million miles to find it, and we’ll likely have to travel that far in our minds—or at least in time—to interpret the results. The photo has given scientists plenty of food for thought, however, and is only the first of more anticipated images yet to come. One scientist says that the photo does tell us quite a bit about the way galaxies form, which is definitely a step in that direction. The team’s prerogative is to study the age, contents, and evolution of the universe through this and the rest of the photos that they will be receiving. I definitely hope that some answers will be provided—though the mystery is always fun, too—to help stop this whole “Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs nonsense” that I have to grind my teeth against on a daily basis in the Midwest; however, I fear that even if found, people will still shake their heads at it, declaring it to be blasphemy against the Bible. Hey, a girl can dream. Meanwhile, lead on, European Space Industry! I can’t wait to hear more.

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After taking a big hit from the imploded economy and several technical problems with the planned shuttle follow up, NASA was all but certain to see the end of the shuttle program and manned space flight; however, officials have been hard at work trying to come up with a plan to save the space program and to keep the shuttle out of retirement. The new plan from the NASA Oversight Committee would stave off the planned retirement of the space shuttle and build a new US based launching system. The plan would be funded in part by the historic change of undertaking commercial development for a space taxi program in partnership with the private sector. The move would save the space shuttle program which has been one of the staples of the NASA program since it became a focal point in the 1970’s and 1980’s. So what will this mean for the future of NASA and space flight? Currently, the arrangement that was passed by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation will allow for one additional flight sometime next year to the International Space Station and while it had intended to retire the shuttle and cancel flights, it will leave the infrastructure and personnel in place for an additional flight should the need arise. Additionally this new plan will allow for a new vehicle and capusle. The heavy launch vehicle will come equipped with a capsule and will be designed to transport astronauts to various locations in deep space such as asteroids which could open up an entirely new chapter for space exploration. Both would rely heavily on already well established NASA programs including the existing shuttle program as well as the Constellation Moon program that is on the current administration’s hot list for discontinued programs. Work on the new heavy lift space rocket is scheduled to begin sometime in 2011.  Because of the addition of using the private sector to help pay for NASA programs, much of the federal funding originally proposed by the Obama administration has been reduced. For example, the original $6 billion that was requested to develop commercial space flights over a 5 year period of time was reduced to just $1.6 billion over three years. The new plan also keeps intact the yearly funding for the International Space Station and the original sum for scientific study and unmanned space exploration that has been a crucial part of the NASA program. The new plan will go along way towards insuring the future of NASA and American space exploration without making an even bigger dent in the national economy.

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Maybe… maybe not!  A ton of images and video purporting to show a rash of UFOs over China last week have gone through a flurry of internet activity.  Debunked!  Bunked!  Re-debunked!  It’s missiles!  It’s a counter-missile system!  It’s an optical illusion!  It’s UFOs and China doesn’t want to admit it!Here are the facts: something happened to shut down Xiaoshan Airport.  To quote CNN, “Eighteen flights were delayed or rerouted and operations shut down after twinkling lights were spotted above the terminal around 9 p.m. July 7.”  Some people thought it was a private aircraft which had gone astray.  Others thought it was something military – an experimental aircraft, perhaps, or who knows what.What CNN describes as “twinkling lights” has been described by other sources as “a glowing object hovering in the afternoon sky.”  The next day, a UFO was reported hovering over the city of Chongquing for over an hour.  And then all hell broke loose.  I can’t even count how many UFO reports have come out of China this month.  Dozens!  Hundreds!  How many of them are just Photoshop trickery?  A lot, probably!The Chongquing UFO is described as a formation of four glowing lights in a diamond shape, which floated over a park for over an hour.An MIT weapons analyst has taken a look at the evidence for the airport UFO and – perhaps unsurprising, given his specialty – decided that it was probably a ballistic missile headed for the Gobi desert.  Chinese officials have – even less surprisingly – not been very forthcoming with the information.According to MSNBC it was the work of a missile test.  Why China would be testing missiles by firing them over its own people and airports is left as an exercise for the reader.  Also according to MSNBC the missile was “fired to intercept another missile in flight.”  Which is it?  Was China really testing their missile-on-missile system over its own population?  Or were they firing against someone else’s missile?  And if so, whose?MSNBC’s report is based largely on a one-line statement given by the Xinhua news agency.  No great surprise that the Chinese government would claim that “oh yeah, it was all on purpose.”  Considering the secrecy and lies espoused by the Chinese government on a regular basis, it’s no surprise that the UFO-hunting community is going nuts over this.It’s worth contemplating that if the government is telling the truth about this being a military thing, this doesn’t exactly spell “good news” for Chinese travelers.  Imagine if a United States Air Force missile wandered over LAX and shut down air traffic while Air Traffic Control tried to figure out what the heck it is.  The sheer volume of incompetence and confusion in this scenario is clearly a bad sign!Frankly, it probably would have made the government look better if they had just come out and said “Yep, it was aliens.”

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What is it with the UFOs? It seems like they are popping up everywhere. Two UFOs have popped up in China: The first seven days ago over Xiaoshan Airport. This sighting shut the air port down. A second one, yesterday,  in Chongqing in eastern China. The second is reported to really have folks in China worried, and expressing their anxiety. These UFOs were photographed and allegedly captured on radar. Allegedly, because the Chinese government isn’t releasing any information about them.Witnesses to the second sighting told Shanghai Daily they saw “four lantern-like objects forming a diamond shape that hovered over the city’s Shaping Park for over an hour.”The Chinese government is following the examples set by the other major and minor governments of the world. The U.S., the Russians, the Europeans keep pretty much mum about these things. Sure, the US and the Europeans have released a dump load of stuff debunking every sighting that can be debunked, but as to the ones that can’t be, the governments of the world are silent.

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Now that the cold war is over, despite the fact that the U.S. arrested a zillion deep, depth, undercover, alleged Russian spies yesterday, President Obama called for international cooperation in space. Cooperation with the Russians and everybody else who is launching junk into space, because what the world need besides peace, is less space junk.From a news report on the big announcement — “President Obama underscored his desire to turn space into a place for peace on Monday, releasing a policy paper that advocated international science missions and opened the door for future treaties that could limit space junk and weapons above Earth. But administration officials said the push for international cooperation did not mean the U.S. necessarily would ask its allies to join Obama’s proposed mission to send NASA astronauts to an asteroid by 2025, which he outlined during a visit to Florida’s Kennedy Space Center in April, or immediately seek a treaty that would ban space-based weapons.”Of course not! The NASA mission to the asteroid is a jobs program for NASA engineers. Can’t let the foreigners in on that gravy train. And we can’t go and have a treaty banning space weapons, or new space weapons, until we have all ours in place. This is too keep little countries from sending all the junk they can think of into space, spy satellites, communications satellites — same difference!And yes, the new U.S. policy calls “for greater cooperation with space-faring nations, including Russia and China.” But don’t expect much to change. But! Since there is over 500,000 pieces of space junk in space already, creating a potential hazard for satellites and astronauts, and to the earth bound, if some or a piece of it would fall down on an unsuspecting person’s house or head, something must be done.