No turning back, no way out, and nowhere else to go…
And that’s where we were left with last week’s episode of Doctor Who as the Doctor, Amy, River Song, and Father Octavian and his clerics were surrounded by the advancing Weeping Angels. The cliffhanger was deadly and our characters were down so low that they had only one way left to go… Up.
Hello! And happy Tuueessday. A bit late, but two things to bring to your attention…
First up: “The Man who lived through Doomsday!”
I’ll let other sites explain it best…
From io9:
On May 8, 1902, Mt. Pelee in Martinique erupted, destroying the city of St. Pierre and instantaneously killing more than 30,000 people. The city’s sole survivor was Ludger Sylbaris, a felonious drunk who was rotting in this cell.
On the night of May 7, Sylbaris was arrested for fighting and was thrown in the pokey. His cell was tiny, stone, partially underground, and contained only a tiny slit for air. Sylbaris had picked a prime night to act rowdy, as hell would come to St. Pierre the next morning.
And from Atlas Obscura:
Mt. Pelee exploded and a cloud of smoke darkened the sky for fifty miles around. A cloud of superheated volcanic gas and dust rolled out of the volcano at hundreds of miles per hour destroying everything in an eight mile radius. Within a single minute the 1,075 degree pressure wave had flattened every building in the city of St. Pierre and anyone unlucky enough to be in its way instantly caught fire and burned to death. Even those in shelter were suffocated as the wave of gas, hotter than fire, burned up the oxygen and replaced it was deadly gases. People lungs were burnt to a crisp form taking a single breath, and after the eruption the city burned for day. The explosion instantly killed the over 30,000 residents of the island.
Except that it didn’t, not quite. Ludger couldn’t have been more lucky. He was found four days after the eruption by a rescue team who heard his calls. Despite being in the safest place on the island was horribly burned as the air in his room had flash heated to over 1000 degrees. Ludger described the experience of seeing the light coming through the slit grow dark, and then the superheated ash flying in. He peed on his clothes and stuffed them in the slit, but it didn’t stop the heat.
I would highly recommend that you read the rest of both articles because, well, they’re just absolutely fascinating. The io9 one is written by Cyriaque Lamar, who heavily references the Atlas Obscura one, where the pictures come from.
And secondly:
from here.
“We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach.”
-says Stephen Hawking in Into The Universe, his upcoming documentary series on the Discover channel.
He feels that attempts at alien contact, SETI and the like, are “a little too risky” and compares it thusly: “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”
from here.
Related topics:
The launch of secret US space ships and weapons.
The Thorne/Hawking/Preskill bet.
The Wow! signal.
Eruption Volcanique a la Martinique by Georges Méliès, 1902.
Monserrat’s city of ash.
Scientists eager to climb on and study Iceland’s volcano.
Is there life on Mars?
Mad linkage:
A visual representation of Ice-T telling Aimee Mann to eat a hot bowl of dicks in their recent twitter spat.
The entire archive of Twitter is going into the Library Of Congress. Seriously.
Think gene patents are controversial now? Just wait.
Steampunk Indiana Jones French hotties.
Psychedelic information theory.
Steven Seagal sued for allegedly keeping sex slaves.
Mel Gibson is splitting with his new girlfriend and Larry King is cheating on his wife with her sister.
Street Art pictures from here.
Conan O’Brien going to TBS. “Very funny.”
Does our universe live inside a wormhole?
“Everything in the universe has rhythm. Everything dances.”
-Maya Angelou.
“If I can’t dance to it, it’s not my revolution.”
The Dancing Couple, Jan Steen, 1663.
“Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.”
-George Bernard Shaw.
The trailer for the long awaited Scott Pilgrim movie came out yesterday. It’s based on the much loved six part graphic novel series by Bryan Lee O’Malley and stars Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Chris Evans (the new Captain America), Anna Kendrick, Aubrey Plaza, Mae Whitman, Jason Schwartzman, and like a thousand other people as well.
The film, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is directed by Edgar Wright, of Shaun Of The Dead and Hot Fuzz fame. Haven’t seen Hot Fuzz but Shaun Of The Dead left me flaccid. Only saw a few episodes of Spaced. I guess Wright’s not terrible, but a little overrated, and seems to be a junior member of Tarantino’s homage trapper league. I pray that he doesn’t end up directing the next Mission: Impossible movie.
And I should point out that while I’ve only read the first entry in the Scott Pilgrim comics series, is not Michael Cera horrible casting?
Somebody, please, enlighten me on that one. I’ll probably see this movie, it seems fresh and not totally horrible, but like Where The Wild Things Are, something designed to appear magical and lure in and then capture hipsters or whatever we’re calling them these days and those who want to seem cool.
Also, will this be the film adaptation by which people have to go out and read the original material, like Watchmen, and act like they were always down with it?
And, honestly, all of that’s fine with me as long as I don’t have to endure Michael Cera fingerbanging somebody again.
Mad linkage:
“Music is replacing religion,” says academic.
Will Broken Social Scene be able to “recapture the magic?”
13 year old prodigy is being discriminated against because of his age. Geek.
Possible explanation for ghosts: The “Stone Tape” theory.
The ten worst jobs in science.
The most beautiful death of Aldous Huxley.
David Mamet sends a memo to his writers on The Wire.
The world’s most feminist country? Motherfucking Iceland, yo.
Chicago architects to design the world’s tallest building to be built in Saudi Arabia.
Brie Larson, who plays Envy Adams (the character based on Emily Haines) in the Scott Pilgrim movie.
See?
Are serials losing forward momentum with television audiences?
Speaking of which, 24 is officially cancelled.
Obama tells the GOP to suck his dick, re: health care reform.
Roger Ebert producing new movie review show. RIP At The Movies.
China’s female astronauts must be married mothers. That wouldn’t be the case in motherfucking Iceland.
John Kerry’s regrets about John Edwards.
Du Pacque “Walk Straight“
“And this I know, his teeth were as white as snow.”
The postal service is moving closer to a five day delivery schedule.
Only slightly related, I don’t think the other Postal Service will ever put out a second album.
How to get chatroulette girls to flash their boobs.
Ben Lyons raped and killed a girl and her name was Pauline Kael.
Peter Biskind, Steven Spielberg, Jaws and “Bruce.”
Is it better to cheat with normal girls or “trashy girls?”
Extinction events that almost wiped out humans.
The night time you say forever…
Carrying a gun increases your risk of getting shot and killed.
Finally have something in common with Peaches Geldof.
Psychologist invents butt bra.
Kid Cudi “Pursuit Of Happiness” (feat. MGMT, Ratatat)
Oral sex to blame for rise in head and neck cancer?
Vienna boy’s choir sex scandal, by Roger Boyes.
Interview with Atom Egoyan.
Butch returning for a sequel, minus Sundance.
The hubble telescope confirms that the universe is getting bigger, faster!
from here.
“Truth is something which can’t be told in a few words. Those who simplify the universe only reduce the expansion of its meaning.”
and
“It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”
“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.”
-Niels Bohr.
Wal-Mart vs Target: No contest in the recession.
How to Tweet your way out of a job.
And you probably shouldn’t liveblog all the nitty gritty from that jury you’re on either.
The laughter epidemic of 1962.
The Unfinished: David Foster Wallace’s struggle to surpass Infinite Jest.
Two new novels by Robert Bolaño have been found in papers left after his death, as well as a possible continuation to 2666.
A nice interview with Charlie Kaufman about Synecdoche, New York.
“How Jon Stewart Went Bad” by Tucker Carlson, the man that Stewart pretty much ruined.
Canada’s science minister won’t answer questions about whether or not he believes in evolution because he’s a Christian and he feels that such questions about one’s religion is inappropiate.
Josef Fritzl changes his plea to guilty on all charges in what has to be one of the most sick and fascinatingly bizarre “true crime” stories of the last few years.
Twenty graphic novels you should go read (after having seen Watchmen).
The Nuclear Pedophile.
And talk about some incredibly nerdy shit, this is by far the most wondrously nerdy I’ve seen: The Ocarina Of Rhyme!
Have you been growing up on Facebook? Or, are you more of the down with Facebook type? Either way, you should look me up on facebook.
I would highly recommend that you go enjoy more FAIL Blog and Married To The Sea if you have the time and inclination, and if you like Married To The Sea, I would recommend a few of my other favorite online strips like The Perry Bible Fellowship and especailly Achewood:
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”
-Albert Einstein.
As you see, it’s a slow day here at ye olde Counterforce, but before we, we’re going to drop a little history on your ass (from here and here):
As you can see, the original cowboy President, Ronald Reagan, visiting Moscow back in 1988 and greeting tourists. That kid looks so happy to be shaking the hand of the leader of the free world, doesn’t he? Now look at the guy standing just behind the boy, with the camera around his neck. See him? That’s undercover KGB agent (and later Russia’s President and currently their Prime Minister) Vladimir Putin. Good times.
Oh, and one last thing:
Breakfast pizza
Lesbian Holocaust memorial