Tony Stephens / Simian Design

Wow. I’m a fan of Dune, both the books and the movie, but this blows me away.   I was not aware that this ever was conceived.

Alejandro Jodorowsky worked at creating a truly amazing Dune movie in 1975.  He worked with H.R.Giger (!!), Jean Giraud, Chris Foss, Pink Floyd (!!) to do the score.  Funding stopped the process, and it’s a shame.

Casting, sound, art, it was all planned out to be a beautiful, weird movie (and yes, I know Lynch’s was the same, but go look at the art and tell me that this wasn’t going to be magic.)   I mean, check out his description of Emperor Padishah Shaddam IV.

The Emperor of the galaxy is insane. He lives on an artificial gold planet, in a gold palace built according to not-laws of antilogical. He lives in symbiosis with a robot identical to him.

 

 From his summary of the script:

Already 20,000 years ago
        that the Earth burst…
Man conquered the Galaxy,
        but he realizes
        that he still lives on an Island:
the Galaxy itself is encircled by
        an insuperable Magnetic Wall.
No one could cross it.
Not having anything more
        to discover,
        to conquer,
Man delivers himself completely
        to the pleasure,
give his capacity to machines
        and degenerates in the luxury.

Oh how I wish this was made.  The imagery just brings the books to life, just so much more in line with the books tones.

Two groups of astronomers have taken the first pictures of planets going around other stars.   This is just astounding.  We’re now able to view OTHER PLANETS.  This just makes me giddy. 

Dr. Christian Marois is with a team from the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in Victoria, British Columbia that recorded three planets circling a star (HR 8799) that is 130 light-years away in the constellation Pegasus.

Paul Kalas, leading a team from UC Berkeley, photographed a planet orbiting Fomalhaut, which is 25 light-years away in the Piscis Austrinus constellation.

Granted, if you go look at the photos, they are scratchy, grainy images with little pixels jumping around.  But if you’re an astronomer, you see this and you see planets.  Kepler himself would feel right at home looking at these images. 

Now we’ve discovered 300 extrasolar planets out there, but based on indirect observation.  This is mostly done by measuring dips in starlight as the planet passes in front of it.

“Every extrasolar planet detected so far has been a wobble on a graph,” said Bruce Macintosh, an astrophysicist from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and a member of Dr. Marois’s team. “These are the first pictures of an entire system.”

These new planets are HUGE.   Just to put this into perspective, Jupiter is two and a half times larger than ALL the other planets in our solar system combined.  It’s 318 times more massive than Earth (it’s diameter is equal to 11 Earths.)  And we’re GREATLY expanding this size with these planets.  Hell, Jupiter is so big it’s barycenter is actually above the Sun’s surface. (A barycenter is the point between two objects where they balance each other. In other words, it is the center of gravity where two or more celestial bodies orbit each other.)

The three planets orbiting HR 8799 are roughly 10, 9 and 6 times the mass of Jupiter, and orbit their star in periods of 450, 180 and 100 years respectively, all counterclockwise.

The Fomalhaut planet is about three times as massive as Jupiter, according to Dr. Kalas’s calculations, and is on the inner edge of a huge band of dust, taking roughly 872 years to complete a revolution of its star.

I feel strongly that we, as a race, need to move to the stars.  We need to find other planets, other places where we can expand and grow.  These sort of studies and findings are crucial to that sort of growth.  That’s why I get so excited.

He-Man was a cartoon I am very familiar with.  Grew up with He-Man, the show, the toys, all of it.  Having a little brother allowed me to be more than familiar with a lot of toys and cartoons, longer than I might have normally.

Marko Djurdjevic created a series of He-Man designs.  They are just beautiful.  I want to see the entire case redesigned.  He-Man, Teela, Battle Cat, Castle Grayskull, all of it.  He has a very nice collection, I just crave MORE.

AskMen has a great listing of 10 things you might not have known about James Bond. Now, I love James Bond, the books and the movies.  A number of fascinating tidbets can be found in here.

Now I knew that Ian Flemming wrote the James Bond books at his estate (called Goldeneye).  I didn’t know that he negotiated two months of vacation a year (nice deal, I’m jealous) when he got a job at Kemsley Newspapers.  It was during those two months he banged out the next Bond book.  So you really got a new Bond book a year, which is impressive in itself.  I couldn’t write a book in two months under any circumstances.

In regards to the name James Bond, Ian Flemming has been quoted as saying

“I wanted the simplest, dullest, plainest-sounding name I could find, ‘James Bond’ was much better than something more interesting, like ‘Peregrine Carruthers.’ Exotic things would happen to and around him, but he would be a neutral figure — an anonymous, blunt instrument wielded by a government department.”

Peregrine Carruthers. Thank God that didn’t come about.

I also didn’t know aobut there only being 7 00’s.  We’ve seen the deaths of 002, 003, 004, and 009.  006 was killed as the villian in GoldenEye.  008 is the only one we don’t see die, and he is mentioned to be Bond’s replacement.   001 and 005 never are mentioned. 

Ian Flemming wrote the following books:
1953: Casino Royale
1954: Live and Let Die
1955: Moonraker
1956: Diamonds Are Forever
1957: From Russia with Love
1958: Dr. No
1959: Goldfinger
1960: For Your Eyes Only (short stories)
1961: Thunderball
1962: The Spy Who Loved Me
1963: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
1964: You Only LIve Twice
1965: The Man with the Golden Gun
1966: Octopussy (short story)
1966: The Living Daylights (short story)

The books are all fantastic, and worth reading if you’re a fan at all. It’s a totally different take on Bond from the movies, yet just as enjoyable.  I haven’t read much of the other authors Bond books, but have thoroughly enjoyed Ian Flemmings works.

Ray carves pumpkins.  Really amazing pumpkins.  He shows you how to carve your own amazing face on a pumpkin.  Something worth-while to try.

Just a quick break to show you this brilliance. He also does Aliens,  Cthulhu, Predator and more.

Wow. What a great collection of photos. There are so many excellent photos that I’m so in love with. I could easily have a Star Wars-type shrine with photos and paintings like these.

Waterfall in Banff, Canada.

Generally you think of caves as places for bears to sleep, bats to poop and Balrogs to slumber.  While this certainly is the case the majority of the time, there is also incredible beauty to be found.

Since it’s generally pretty dark underground (I know, go figure), you have to light up the place pretty well to see the beauty, but when you combine caves, water and good lighting….. beauty happens.

Environmental Graffiti has collected 10 great pictures from 10 great underground rivers and lakes, well worth checking out.

The 50 Best Pun Stores is a great collection of seriously brilliantly named stores.  If I saw a store named “The Merchant of Tennis” I’d pretty much go in.  Even though I don’t really play tennis.

Thank you NASA, for making this possible.