From Neatorama: “According to several commenters, the images used in this animation are from The Visible Human Project and were taken from a deceased body, using MRI and CT scans and cryogenic cross sections. That body belonged to 39-year-old Joseph Paul Jernigan, who was executed for murder and had donated his body to science.”
Heroes returns to NBC tonight for its fourth series and I am ashamed to admit I’ll probably I’m going to watch it.
The first series was great but the second and third seasons really sucked. And the writing… wow was the writing shit last season. AND the one before it. None of it makes any fucking sense, it’s unashamedly repetitive and confused. Hell, Heroes even rips itself off!
The Heroes story bible probably doesn’t even exist. It often feels like the writers themselves have no idea what happened the week before or will happen the week after. Killed off the guy who could paint the future, when this would have come in handy to resolve something plot-wise? MAKE ANOTHER CHARACTER ABLE TO DO IT!
AND WHY DOESN’T ANYONE EVER DIE ON THIS SHOW?!?!? Claire’s powers are the ultimate “Get Out of Jail Free Card” for the writers, one they never seem to tire of whipping out…Even if you apply comic book logic—or simply go with it—they’ve pulled the “he’s dead, no he’s alive again” trick way, way too many times—like when Peter briefly had Claire’s regenerative powers, conveniently right before he blew up; when Nathan came back alive and when Ali Larter returns as the twin sister of her offed character—ENOUGH WITH THIS! Puh-leeze. It’s like they hired a new crop of writers who never even watched—or asked any questions about—the first season before they wrote series two and three. If they even had writers at all for the last two seasons. Maybe they fired them all. Now it all makes sense!
So why do I keep watching Heroes you ask? I’m not altogether sure I can answer this question. Not to you, not to my wife, not to myself. It’s like a friend of mine once said to me about a Yoo-Hoo soda. I’d never had one before and I asked “Are these any good?” He dryly replied “You won’t like it, but you will drink it all anyway.” I guess that’s why I watch Heroes, if that makes ANY sense whatsoever. I started watching it, then I just… um… kept watching it.
Is it loyalty? Am I expecting it to get any better?
Not really, no.
But it does have a great cast. I think that’s why it’s so watchable in the final analysis, it has a great ensemble cast. The chemistry, the charisma and all of the things the actors bring to the show haven’t changed since the first series, it’s the writers and show runner Tim Kring who have let the actors down.
So I plan to tune in tonight and even if it is bad—which I half expect—I will probably still watch it next week and the week after that to see if it gets any better. Before you know, I’ll have drunk the whole Yoo-Hoo.
PS Tara and I saw Heroes hottie Hayden Panettiere at the West Hollywood branch of the Pleasure Chest. She and her girlfriend were laughing their asses off at the “novelty items” for sale there. Sadly, we left before we saw what she bought. I kept expecting this to show up on Perez Hilton or TMZ but it never did.
Today is the 143rd birthday of H. G. Wells, the author of The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, The Island of Dr. Moreau and dozens of other lesser known works. Though he’s responsible for inventing many of the most-known tropes of the genre, Wells thought of himself not as a genre writer but as a social commentator. This National Geographic article, for instance, quotes a telescope maker as saying “One of the jobs of science fiction writers is not so much to predict the future as to prevent the future. In that regard, Wells did a very good job.”
Apparently, and mind-bogglingly, H. G. Wells is also the man responsible not only for modern science fiction but also for table-top wargaming, which eventually led to the creation of things like Dungeons and Dragons, Warhammer 40K and World of Warcraft. No sh*t!
Let us salute one of the fathers of all nerddom!
This very cool web art project from the Tenement Project’s Digital Arts in Residence Program follows a young Chinese woman’s effort to connect with her heritage and history by exploring traditional Chinese shrines in and around Manhattan. Explore with her through the interactive browser. Great concept, great design.
This visualization shows stacked time series of reported occupations in the United States Labor Force from 1850-2000. The data has been normalized: for each census year, the percentage of the polled labor force in each occupation is shown. The data is originally from the United States Census Bureau and was provided by the University of Minnesota Population Center.
Shun Akiba, a former high-level foreign reporter, has identified hundreds of kilometers of Tokyo tunnels whose purpose is unknown and whose very existence is denied.
During the Gulf War in 1991, Shun Akiba was one of only two foreign journalists reporting from Baghdad, along with Peter Arnett of CNN. With such experience and expertise, it would be reasonable to imagine him in great demand right now. Wrong.
Shun is on some kind of invisible blacklist. His book “Teito Tokyo Kakusareta Chikamono Himitsu” (“Imperial City Tokyo: Secret of a Hidden Underground Network”), published by Yosensha in late 2002, is already in its fifth edition. Yet Shun has found it impossible to get the media to take serious note, write reviews or offer interviews.
France Gall was a French pop singer who failed to achieve the fame she wanted in France in the first half of the Sixties, and later resurrected her career in Germany in the latter half. This is one of those songs?
All my Facebook page would reveal is that I know a lot of freaks…
Two students partnered up to take on the latest Internet fad: the online social networks that were exploding into the mainstream. With people signing up in droves to reconnect with classmates and old crushes from high school, and even becoming online ?
Fascinating article about the “genetic flaws” if you will of the capitalist system. It’s actually kind of amazing to read an article like this in a major newspaper—and of course, there are others these days—but a decade ago, even five years ago, opinions such as the ones reported here never would have gotten mainstream exposure. Maybe in The Nation or Harper’s or the Atlantic, but not in a daily paper. It’s about time the public wakes up to the facts about “the system” we exist in… and seeks a better one. Capitalism sure ain’t the best we can do, people… It’s not the only—and it’s certainly not the smartest—choice for the greater good.
Since the global financial system started unraveling in dramatic fashion two years ago, distinguished economists have suffered a crisis of their own. Ivy League professors who had trumpeted the dawn of a new era of stability have scrambled to explain how, exactly, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression had ambushed their entire profession.Amid the hand-wringing and the self-flagellation, a few more cerebral commentators started to speak about the arrival of a ?
When you read something like this—of course you suspect and even expect the CIA and governmental intelligence agencies to lie, it’s A GREAT AMERICAN TRADITION—it really hits home that the fucked up state of the world didn’t arrive overnight. Is the mess we’re in now all George Bush’s fault? The blame can go back a lot further than Bush, truly, but you have to ask yourself what this country would be like today without the bank-breaking—and pointless—military build-up of the Reagan administration. Would the national debt be where it is today if not for the fact that the CIA systematically LIED about the Soviet threat? Would we, f’rinstance, already have national health care like every other major democracy????
They deliberately and consistently lied to the nation, as if it was for our own good? What infuriating nonsense!
A recently declassified study on Soviet intentions during the Cold War identifies significant failures in U.S. intelligence analysis on Soviet military intentions and demonstrates the constant exaggeration of the Soviet threat.
The study, which was released last week by George Washington University?