Early Monday morning, while the US East Coast was making coffee, dropping kids off at school, and cursing in traffic, a space rock as big as a 10-story building slipped past Earth.
The asteroid, dubbed 2017 AG13, was discovered only Saturday by the University of Arizona’s Catalina Sky Survey, according to an email from Slooh, a company that broadcasts live views of space.
It’s between 50 and 111 feet (15 to 34 meters) long, and when it swung by Earth, 2017 AG3 was moving at 9.9 miles per second (16 kilometers per second). The near-Earth object, or NEO, came within about half the distance that the moon is from Earth, according to Slooh.
The roughly 100-foot-long space rock was about the same size of the meteorite that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia in 2013.
East coast and north east.. be forewarned. Some sort of storm–whether it be rain or snow–appears likely to form in time for Valentine’s Day weekend.. this map is a forecast of January 15..
From the national geographic photo contest in 2011. This picture illustrates relativity. (Source)
There are basic scientific notions, premises, hypotheses, that just baffle me. Simple things.. Like evolution.. gravity.. the big bang.
Okay. Maybe most of those concepts, while accepted, aren’t ‘simple.’
But that is why I love this photo from NAT GEO, just to showcase a little about how relativity works. The speeding bus.. and inside? Still as a calm night..
Tech has been moving fast.. but I think 2017 is the year it zooms by like the blink of an eye. Get ready to say goodbye to the old times. The age of Aquarius is here
Score another one for Russian hackers! First Trump! Now Nintendo!
From TechCrunch:
The hack appeared in the forums of Russian retro gaming community GBX in the form of a YouTube video and step-by-step instructions — in Russian, of course. The r/NESClassicMods subreddit picked up on it right away and valiantly subjected their devices to the code, with great success. (u/zenmechanic showed Battletoads working, above.) It must be said that this is not a simple process — not yet, at least. It involves booting the Linux-based NES into FEL mode, hacking the kernel, and injecting ROM files using a special tool. A GUI has already been created to make things easier and tutorials are being made, but we warn readers not to attempt this unless they know about things like MD5 hashes and config files. Bricking your device with a single wrong click is definitely a possibility.
Today’s old piece of news.. from a long bit ago, last century actually, parts of the Ashland Pioneer Tunnel Coal Mine being erected.. the newspaper said it would become the ‘new attraction’ …
“She loved it, and it was in her house, and Billie and I felt it was where she’d want to be,” he said.
Carrie Fisher struggled for years with substance abuse before being diagnosed with bipolar disorder in the late 1990s.
In her later years, Fisher became an outspoken advocate for mental health, and was honoured by Harvard University last year with an Annual Outstanding Lifetime Award in Cultural Humanism for her activism.
Other than Carrie Fisher’s cremation and unique urn, nearly no details were revealed about the ceremony, or about what form the two women’s graves took.
I get gallows humor.. I get the notion.. but can we finally have a serious discussion about whether it a good thing that a vast majority of the united states is affected to pain killers…? That mind altering drugs are given to kids at an early age…? And that an opiad addiction—assisted by drugs like Prozac to kids–is creating a toxic nightmare …?
May God rest the souls of Carrie Fisher and her mother. But can someone finally say that anti depression drugs have some very serious consequences along with their worth? Please ?? But
The move would make the women’s apparel chain the latest big-name retailer to be hurt by shoppers’ growing preference for online shopping and fast fashion.
Recently I was able to view the movie the RING with a few people.. one of those in the viewing party was someone born slightly before the original movie came out.. She had no idea what was scary about a VHS cassette tape. Probably didn’t even understand what a VHS tape even was. And even with the creepy nature of the movie the RING, and then visually appealing horror symbolism and dark colors presented in the film, the movie ended up not being very scary for her.
I realized then.. 13 years has really moved out society along quickly.
The things that were scary in the 90s were lampooned in the early 2000s by SCARY MOVIE.. the creepy gore films of the mid 2000s are old news. The new horror is visceral. It’s real. Gone are the campy films of teenage sex but here are the new modern days of birth defects, mental illness, war, and poverty. They are the themes of horror – the scary movies are just elements of the real fear of society.
I say all of this because there is a new movie coming out this year called RINGS. You can view it here:
You are looking at that right. It’s a sequel. Sequel-ish..
The description:
A new chapter in the beloved RING horror franchise. A young woman becomes worried about her boyfriend when he explores a dark subculture surrounding a mysterious videotape said to kill the watcher seven days after he has viewed it. She sacrifices herself to save her boyfriend and in doing so makes a horrifying discovery: there is a “movie within the movie” that no one has ever seen before
I am going to give this a chance.. It will be interesting to see how a video tape themed horror film will be changed and made modern for the new century.. A part of me actually thinks the original movie presents a problem for getting an audience in the new age. Kids of today, seriously, just don’t like the original RING. And that dislike and scorn because of the late 20th century technology in the RING could cause people to turn away from this movie just as easily.
Or .. they can pander to the modern age and made things really, really tech-centric. And then.. insult the 30 somethings like me who loved the RING when it originally came out.
Split (January 20) In the middle of his career, M. Night Shyamalan abandoned his horror roots and started making movies for kids — The Last Airbender, After Earth — that weren’t up to his previous standards. It’s fine, everyone is allowed to go on a creative walkabout, but thankfully, Shyamalan returned to his roots with 2015’s The Visit, which confirmed that the director had not lost his masterful puzzle-box brain. Split is his next thriller, and it follows a man (James McAvoy) whose head is full of competing split personalities, all of whom work in the service of a dark beast that forces them to abduct a trio of teens. The great thing about Shyamalan is that he always swings big, and trusts his imagination. Keep a close watch on the strange and intriguing young talent Anya Taylor-Joy, who broke out in The Witch last year and continues to take offbeat genre roles.
I am also Night biased. I liked even Lady in the Water and the Village .. And my favorite movie perhaps of all time, SIGNS, was made by him as well..
SPLIT looks really really good.. I am thankful he continues to use his imagination..
I know I am in the minority as of late in the horror community.. they have virtually shunned Night..
I have written about the coal region’s decline over the years.. I have also explored a bit about the drug epidemic in the area, as well. But not enough. That will change in 2017.. It is beyond a problem.. it is beyond a crisis.. it is a complete breakdown of certain societal functions that bond friends and families together in a community..
