Currently set at 5 minutes to midnight, the Strangeloveian-sounding Doomsday Clock is about to see its first movement in 3 years.  No one’s sure if it’s going to be a tick up (yikes!) or a tick down (whew!), but, thanks to the streaming at TurnBackTheClock, we’ll be able to watch it live as it happens, this Thursday at 10:00 AM EST (barring, of course, entirely possible Wednesday cataclysms like meteor strikes, sudden pole shifts, etc.).

The factors influencing the latest Doomsday Clock change include international negotiations on nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation, expansion of civilian nuclear power, the possibilities of nuclear terrorism, and climate change.

In December 1945, University of Chicago scientists who had helped to develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project created “The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.”  The Bulletin’s board of directors then in 1947 came up with the idea of a Doomsday Clock to symbolize these threats.  The message is that humans are “a few minutes to midnight,” where midnight represents destruction by nuclear weapons, climate change and emerging technologies in the life sciences.

 
Doomsday Clock To Change This Week

 
(Possibly) coming soon to the UK’s Channel 4, a documentary which will show the process of mummification on a terminally ill volunteer:

Channel 4 and production company Fulcrum TV have advertised in magazines for possible candidates.  The advert reads: ‘We are currently keen to talk to some one who, faced with the knowledge of their own terminal illness and all that it entails, would nonetheless consider undergoing the process of an ancient Egyptian embalming.’  An English scientist claims to have unlocked the secrets of mummification.  His efforts at recreating the work of Egyptians will be the subject of the documentary.

And while this may only yield a doc in the UK, given the rising unemployment and costs of health care here in America, I could easily see this kind of thing taking off as a weekly series.  Let’s see…Embalming the Underinsured?

Channel 4 Seeks Terminally-ill Volunteer To Be Mummified In TV Documentary

 
Julie Newmar: Catwoman, Mayflower descendant, and now, it seems, collector of erotic fantasies.  Meow!

I WANT YOUR STORY
Who was your first turn on?
How old were you two, four, six?
What did he look like?
What was she doing exactly that stopped you dead in your tracks?
That secretly affirmed your romantic future, your love life, the person you married?

Sit down, write one page, re-inspire yourself.

Be part of an exciting book series I’m putting together.

Get to the keyboard and email: Julie Newmar

(Note to myself readers of Dangerous Minds: while Julie Newmar is OK with using Catwoman as “your object of desire,” she’d prefer your fantasy involve something more than claws, whips and leather.)  Ms. Newmar’s very first appearance in the role that came to define her follows below:

 
(via Julie Newmar)

Deerhoof @ Northsix from Jeremy Arambulo on Vimeo.

Here’s a wonderful half hour of high-quality footage from one of the greatest bands of the last decade: the mighty Deerhoof. Compiled from a few shows at Northsix in Brooklyn circa ‘04-‘05, it’s a sweaty good time for all. Greg Saunier has to be the most riveting drummer since Keith Moon and the dual guitar workouts are right up there with Beefheart, Television and uh, Bubble Puppy !

 
A report on the LA Now blog indicates that police in So Cal are dealing with a group of criminals who “think different”:

The suspects sought by Manhattan Beach police had a specific method of operation, Brown said. They stake out an Apple store and choose their target. Then they follow their prospective victims when they drive to another shop or a parking spot near their home. If computers are left unattended inside the vehicle, the thieves strike.

His department issued a warning to consumers Tuesday not to leave computers or other expensive items in their vehicles in plain view.

“It’s a highly preventable crime if people don’t leave computers in their cars,” Brown said.

But law enforcement officials said despite the arrests in Orange County, they believe these follow-away burglaries are the work of a larger ring that has taken more than 100 computers in Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties.

I was trying to come up with a punchline about Justin Long, but couldn’t and you just don’t want to force these things.

 
Square America has a delightful series of stereo animated gifs titled “The Bar Mitzvah and Other Tales of Living in Stereo.” Totally worth a look.

 
“I do not have a single constructive proposal.”

This is hilarious. It’s poetry, too. This man is a genius. Give him his own TV show!

Here’s what it says about him on WIkipedia:

Koichi Toyama (?

 
It may take 10 minutes for you to see it, but it’s there. Trust me.
 
(via The World’s Best Ever)

 
The cannabis prohibition dominoes keep falling. One by one, they’re falling. This just in from Bloomberg:

New Jersey lawmakers approved a bill that would make it the 14th U.S. state to allow doctors to prescribe marijuana for patients suffering from cancer and other debilitating diseases.

The legislation passed the Assembly 48-16 with one abstention. The measure already cleared the state Senate, which voted 25-13 to approve restrictions in the Assembly version, including a list of ailments for which the drug can be prescribed and a prohibition on the growing of marijuana by patients.

“This is a wonderful beginning,” said Nancy Fedder, 62, of Hillsborough, who spoke outside the Assembly chamber and said she has been illegally smoking marijuana for more than a decade to alleviate pain from multiple sclerosis. “It’s something that needed to happen a long time ago; sometimes I have to go to bed and stay there for days, and when I smoke marijuana the pain comes right down.”

The plan was among 100 today that went before both houses of the Legislature in the final day of its session. The Senate and the Assembly, which are both controlled by Democrats, are getting ready to share power with the first Republican governor elected since 1997.

Tara and I used to live in NJ (don’t ask) and it’s a pretty state, to be sure, but it’s not exactly cool there. When we were living there, just a few years ago, it was still a zero-tolerance state! So this is big news.

Creepy cave-dwelling sword guy teaches the wee ones to become teenage ninja masters. Just think, if you had been this well ninja-trained that young, how awesome would your life be today?

(Via Everything is Terrible)

 
Ian Dury, lead singer for British New Wave act Ian Dury and The Blockheads, had his warts-and-all life story open up on UK screens last weekend.  Back in the day, Dury, who passed away from cancer a decade ago, was by no means my cup of musical tea (I much preferred his Stiff label-mate Wreckless Eric, or —thanks, Richard!—Jilted John), but with Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, and Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick, there was no denying his ability to craft a hooky song.

And while biopics of a musical nature typically leave me cold (I’m Not There), or incensed (What We Do Is Secret), I’m looking forward to catching Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (trailer below).  It stars the fantastically expressive Andy “Gollum” Serkis, and, as Dury’s father, that Sexy Beast himself, Ray Winstone. 

It’s no stretch to imagine Ray Winstone playing domineering authority figures, but I still remember his slim, punk-rock self costarring with Diane Lane in one of that era’s best musicals, Ladies And Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains.  A.K.A., the film with the forever-humbling line, “You’re just an old man living in a young girl’s world!”

 
(via The Guardian)

 
Since Michael Jackson and the Beatles are, respectively, the best and third best-selling artists of the decade (with music that wasn’t even recorded this millennium in Jackson’s case and that is four decades old in the case of the Fab Four) the record industry seems to have realized that (Taylor Swift aside) most people actually want good music rather than bland, marketing department driven ditties. Or is that the reason? Of course there is also the old music biz adage that “the only good artist is a dead artist” (lookit Elvis, for f’s sake, to say nothing of Tupac and Biggie Smalls). There’s big money in death, it’s a great career move (although one difficult to enjoy), so it comes as no real surprise that the Jimi Hendrix estate announced today that they’d be releasing a 40 year old bunch of recording Jimi made with Billy Cox and others back in ‘69, called Valleys of Neptune. There has been a fair amount of posthumous Hendrix material ranging from great to not so great. Who knows, this Band Of Gypsys era material seems like it may actually be pretty good.

From Geoff Boucher’s cover story in today’s LA Times:

South African native Eddie Kramer was the lead producer on the album, and he was also the engineer in the studio with Hendrix during the original sessions. Kramer spent months using vintage analog approaches and the latest digital tools to excavate the material. “I felt like an archaeologist using a brush who finds, underneath the dust, this marvelous gold artifact,” he said.

Kramer said the music of “Neptune” comes primarily from 1969, a time of “both frustration and real excitement” for Hendrix as he pushed his way toward “a new direction.” The guitarist had brought in an old friend, bassist Billy Cox, to play on some of the tracks; on Friday, Cox, now living in Nashville, said he is giddy at the prospect of hearing the results of his work with Hendrix.

“I can tell you that Jimi was on his way to a powerful new thing, a new direction completely, he was going back to his roots and he wanted a sound with more soul,” said Cox, later in Hendrix’s Band of Gypsys. “Who can say where it would have led him if he hadn’t died?”

 
Jimi Hendrix fans have a new experience in store (Los Angeles Times)

 
Here’s a Japanese television reenactment of a Usain Bolt running victory.  Watch and try to not have your head explode as you tease out the possible cultural meanings of the “runner up’s” wearing of what appears to be a Michael Jackson mask.

 
(via JapanProbe)

 
Found inside a long-neglected international railway timetable from the ‘70s, eight etchings by British artist and mystic, William Blake.  Tate Britain, which purchased the etchings for ?Ǭ