updating my mio

I stick them here so that I’ll find them back once I can wactually work for this.

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the whole of today and tomorrow I’ll be working on my move. See you soon.

Fly Me to the Moon

Here’s a movie to keep an eye out for: Three young houseflies stow away aboard the Apollo 11 flight to the moon.

starring Nicollette Sheridan, aka Edie Britt in Desperate Housewives (I found this movie looking for other things about her, after I saw her committing suicide in the series). Sad, she was one of my favourite characters.

Technorati link up.

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A World Without America

No, I am not advocating anything political, here.

I did some thinking, yesterday. I read some time ago this short tale (forgot by whom – may be stephen baxter?) where Europe wasn’t there. it got removed by aliens during the sixties, to avoid an incipient nuclear war between USA and URSS. It isn’t quite alternative history, such as in the years of rice and salt – the focus is on how this sudden removal, unnoticed by humans who have had their memories modified ad hoc by the creatures, affects the culture – for example, to explain the fact that americans, australians and south africans speak the same language, a theory of confluence emerges whereby all languages are thought to tend toward a form similar to english, with time. It’s a nice divertissement, good for a short story but I somehow doubt it would hold for a full novel – like Asimov’s Nightfall, which did suck when extended (by Silverberg).

Anyway, another interesting tale is A World of Difference by Harry turtledove, the current master of alternate reality, where Mars is replaced by an earth-like planet (Minerva) and humans get there and find life.

but what if another big discovery of our past had never been done? What if Colombo had never come back, and there never was any America? How would have the world shaped up? What if instead than America, they had found a different continent, inhabited by a more advanced culture, able to withstand the Europeans’ rough game? Or what if Europe itself had been discovered?

So, my question is? Do you know of any book telling such a story? if so, please drop me a line. Thank you.

and googling I found out this: http://www.alternatehistory.com/. check out their forum, where you can actually post your Alternative Timeline. For example, a longer lasting Roman Empire, owing to caesar not being assasinated. Or a present where Brits rule Space.

The Boss of It All

Here’s another movie, more low key, but which looks quite interesting to watch.

The NY Times describe it as “acidic corporate comedy” or , as “‘The Office’ Viewed Through the Looking Glass“

Have no time to detail now, but I’m really tempted to get hold of it… Never seen anything from Lars Von Trier – hopefully I’ll get it in english rather than danish.

Again, Spiderman 3.

This movie was high in my expectations. I was looking forward to see Spidey (il ragnetto, as they call it in italian) in a black tight suit. And the sand-man did look gorgeous in the trailer. Yet, it seems destined to disappoint me. I am not a fan of the world’s most favorite wall-crawler, by any stretch. Yet, sometimes it is nice to just sit down and relax, let your mind be transported in an alternative reality where you don’t cringe at bad things. that was the sensation the Matrix gave me, until, that is, Morpheus pulled out a duracell and started bashing the laws of thermodynamics. That absolutely ruined it. Once again, is it that hard to pay some REAL writer with some scientific knowledge to draw these plots? I mean, it’s not like there’s any shortage of sci-fi writers, at the moment. Just look up Stephen baxter’s or Greg Egan’s number in the white pages, pick up the phone, and hey! presto!, a new sci-fi movie with guts and idea which would blow your mind away. But I realize this does not necessarily apply to comic book-inspired movies. They do not have to obey to those rules, being children of another media. So I was happy at watching the first Spidey, although the goblin sucks as an enemy. I just can’t fathom why one would want to enclose himself in that kind of crappy metal suite, all while hovering in precarious equilibrium on that kind of flying SegWay. May be the Osborne father was an allegory of Dean Kamen? Who knows? Anyway, the other point that really ennoyed me was the matrix-style special effects. But enough with the old spidey.

A friend wrote me yesterday, to let me know that the third one really sucks. here are his words: una trama indecente, che sembra costruita con la tecnica del patchwork, ma di quello più marchiano, con il collage di tante storie insignificanti senza vero collante, insomma 2 ore e mezzo di puro niente…

which, once translated, sounds like: An indecent plot, built with like a patchwork, but a very low quality one, with no glue to keep the various stories together, meaningless when taken one-by-one. In conclusion 2 hours and a half of pure nothingness.

Now, it’s only one person. but the most important thing is that we ususally don’t like the same movies, so I think I’ll go and see it. Cheers!

At World’s End

Here it comes, the NY Times review of Pirates of Caribbeans‘ third installment, with a name vaguely reminiscent of Asimov to me (Star’s End) – I didn’t see the second yet, since I heard that the two were kind of collated together, like Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Reboot or whatever. Hopefully, the will not suck like those two. This one seems allright, with an 8.6 based on 1600 votes to date. even counting that those are fans, it can’t be that bad.

Compared with Matrix, which went from 8.6 to 7 to 6.3. This franchise seems to be holding its grounds, starting at <a
href=”http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0325980/”>8.0, then 7.4, and settling for 8.6 – which will probably change in the next few months, as votes from more people build up.

The Review is quite ambiguous, in fact, pointing out many good things, but also many more not so good ones, if not outright bad. I guess I’ll see it anyway, once the two or three are in a watchable format on the pirate bay – Irony?
Or may be I will not, I have developed a kind of allergy toward Jonny Depp, since he was my ex’s preferred actor. Silly I know, but that’s life: I guess I didn’t like him too much to start with. After all, she introduced me to Scrubs and I still watch it every week.

Study Finds Hurricanes Frequent in Some Cooler Periods

Ouch! even when the ocean has been warmer, in the past five thousand years, strings of hurricanes managed to ravage the Atlantic Caribbean… This is the conclusion of some analysis performed by some scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Here’s their press release. Apparently, variation on the intensity of El Niño and monsoon intensity in West Africa influence the Caribbean hurricane season.
Should we trust them? Are we sure they are not some kind of fake research institute funded by republicans? As a matter of fact they’re not, and they state their position on real warming quite clearly in the paper, saying that more than one mechanism may be at play in determining the weather patterns in the area – Global warming effect seems to be ascertained, and if it were to compound with one of these cold-pacific, rainy-Africa periods, effects might be even more devastating than expected. No Hurray for global warmers denialist, then. Quite the opposite. But then they will probably laugh at the idea that one can obtain reliable sampling of past hurricane intensity from the muddy bottom of lagoons. Their intelligence, unfortunately, can’t grasp that much. In the mud, they simply live…

a funny news from their website: Vitamin B12 Is Also an Essential Vitamin for Marine Life
The vitamin has impacts on the marine food web and Earth’s climate – reading it like this, it looks like we should dissolve big-ass pills of vitamins in the oceans, to keep it healthy. But don’t worry, those scientist haven’t gone mad…

in the words of the authors: The presence or absence of B12 in the ocean plays a vital and previously overlooked role in determining where, how much, and what kinds of microscopic algae (called phytoplankton) will bloom in the sea, according to a study published in the May issue of the journal Limnology and Oceanography.

These photosynthesizing plants, in turn, have a critical impact on Earth’s climate: They draw huge amounts of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, from the air, incorporating carbon into their bodies. When they die or are eaten, carbon is transferred to the ocean depths, where it cannot re-enter the atmosphere.

Many more news to discover in their website… go and check it out!

Chimera, Grifon, Laelaps…

Which one is NOT a mythical creature?

Laelaps introduces us a really intelligent alternative to visiting the Creation Museum, some damn piece of crap put up by some pice of crap-ass creationist in the american untellectual junkyard.

So, you should rather go, Laelaps suggests, to the American Museum of Natural History’s exhibition on Mythical Creatures, where fantasy is certainly better used than in thos bible stories – I think desert shepherd should have been just that, without attempting to compete with science fiction with their “Bible”.

(I will admit though that I read the bible in comic version, where I was a child – it was given to me by a nun aunt, and I didn’t know better. drawings were ok, too, although I found the stories strangely anticlimatics. Also, I believe the Apocalyps wasn’t include. The only decent part, probably. Pity.

Luckily, I have the Gaiman and Pratchett version of it.

Kate, I hate you!!!

How could you possibly throw mud on my idols? how do you dare to put dinosaurs’ purity and chastity in discussion? I know you’re just pointing at words uttered by someone else, but shame on you for propagating such infamous lies!!!

[irony hat off] now, I can enjoy reading the discussion itself. thanks a lot for showing me the light…

I guess this picture may be interpreted as a carnosaur leaving a love byte on another?