Psi Phi is crashing the SAO’s Activities Fair Monday August 22nd. We will be where ever we put our table, so come find us and hang out! We have a poster and candy!
Archive for the 'News' Category
(Sep. 22, 2010) — Aviation history was made when the University of Toronto’s human-powered aircraft with flapping wings became the first of its kind to fly continuously. The “Snowbird” performed its record-breaking flight on August 2 at the Great Lakes Gliding Club in Tottenham, Ont.
Two remarkable new species of horned dinosaurs have been found in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, southern Utah. The giant plant-eaters were inhabitants of the “lost continent” of Laramidia, formed when a shallow sea flooded the central region of North America, isolating the eastern and western portions of the continent for millions of years during the Late Cretaceous Period. One of the dinosaurs has 15 horns on its head.
The rumors around a new Godzilla movie have been swirling for years, but it wasn’t until recently that they began to look realistic. Starting in August of last year, talk began that Legendary Pictures was rebooting the franchise after Roland Emmerich’s disastrous take on the character back in 1998. The rumor was then confirmed this past March and then concept art for the creature appeared back in July. To say that development of the project has been moving at a snail’s pace would be an understatement, but perhaps it’s a good sign that they’re taking their time with it.
Gavin Hood, the director of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, may be directing a film version of the extemely popular sci-fi novel, Ender’s Game. Don’t despair yet. For those who enjoy Orson Scott Card’s work and do not think that it will be improved by a spiral-sliced nuclear reactor, there is a difference between the production of Ender’s Game and Wolverine. Card wrote the script to the movie, and Hood re-wrote it.
Level Up and Unlock Achievements By Skiing in Colorado. Starting this November five popular ski slopes in Colorado, Utah and California will start tracking powder time to award skiers achievements pins and the ability to level up. Every time you use your pass or ticket your stats will automatically be captured and uploaded to the EpicMix website.
Turning the solitary world of PlayStation 2 classic Shadow of the Colossus into a movie, as some people are attempting to do, is a tricky prospect. How to turn a series of 16 battles against giant furry foes into a two-hour film? According to a recently published interview with Kevin Ping Chang, production exec at the company adapting Shadow of the Colossus, the filmmakers are taking lessons learned from movies like WALL·E and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World into account during the big screen adaptation process.
America might be Halo and Civ obsessed now, but there’s a brand new Pokémon out in Japan. It’s already been beaten, the ending uploaded for all to see.
Marvel announced a while back that they’re planning on making films starring some of their B-list characters, and Internet wonks went bonkers trying to imagine who’d get the nod. Luke Cage? Shang-Chi? Man-Thing? Colleen Wing and Misty Knight? No, it looks like it’s gonna be Black Widow. “We’ve already started discussions with Scarlett Johansson about the idea of a solo movie and have begun putting together concepts,” said Feige. “But The Avengers comes first.”
Ever seen an awesome prop on your favorite sci-fi tv show and thought, “Can I haz that?” Well, your wish is about to be granted—IF your favorite show happens to be Stargate SG-1, that is. On September 25th and 26th, Stargate Artifacts will hold an auction at the Experience Music Project | Science Fiction Museum in Seattle of 50 original props from the show, including an ACTUAL Stargate from the pilot episode.
A woman from Michigan is accused of traveling to Amherst to illegally have sex with a teenager she met while playing an Internet video game called “World of Warcraft.” Law enforcement officials called the arrest of Angie L. Jenkins, 35, highly unusual, because she is believed to be the first woman to be charged in Western New York with the crime of using the Internet to entice an underage person into sexual activity.
Close to half of Apple Inc iPhone users in the United States would be “very interested” in dumping AT&T Inc for Verizon Wireless as a service provider, according to a study from professionals service firm Deloitte. “If another carrier were to pick up the iPhone, you would probably see a number of defections,” said Ed Moran, director of insights and product innovation at Deloitte.
Are you ready for films to stop being made in 3-D? Well you are in luck The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn will reportedly not be filmed in 3D. Speaking to Gossip Cop, a representative for studio Summit Entertainment confirmed that the final two films in the series would not be produced using 3D cameras or technology.
-Sir Ian McKellen now says he will definitely be back as Gandalf, and the movie will hopefully start shooting in January, which tallies nicely with some other recent rumors. This still shouldn’t be considered official confirmation, but considering how frustrated McKellen has seemed with the project previously, his sudden optimism is probably based on something at least somewhat tangible. So um… that’s a thing, I think
-At Capcom’s event in Tokyo, there was a candy maker on hand to whip up confectionary treats. Besides Mega Man, Ailu from Monster Hunter, Amatersau from Okami and the Umbrella Corporation logo from Resident Evil.
-Ryan Reynolds is busy working on the upcoming DC superhero film Green Lantern, but he’s also still on track to play Marvel’s antihero in the proposed Deadpool movie, a character he previously portrayed in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Reynolds told Heroes Complex the Deadpool movie won’t be beholden to the events in Wolverine and in fact, it’s not going to be like any superhero movie you’ve seen before. “It goes in such a different direction than a superhero movie usually goes. It’s a nasty piece of work. It’s just based in so much emotional filth, completely. It’s like Barfly if it were a superhero movie. It sort of treads into the world of an emotionally damaged person. I always say that Deadpool is a guy in a highly militarized shame spiral. … It’s so different than the superhero movies to date, it departs so far from that.”
-It’s a hoodie that’s just got a seemingly ordinary giant hand on it when it’s zipped up. But zip it down a bit and suddenly you’re giving everyone around you a mega-sized Vulcan salute (and transforming into a big geek … but you already knew that). It’s called the “Traditional Greeting,” and it was designed by Paulo Bruno. It’ll run you a logical $40 at Threadless.
-If you like Jewel Staite as Kaylee from Firefly and Serenity and Dr. Jennifer Keller from Stargate: Atlantis, you’ll love the REAL Jewel Staite! She’s agreed to join Blastr.com to answer your questions and share whatever happens to be on her mind.
How would YOU have wanted Firefly to end?
Well, I wouldn’t have, now would I? But in my perfect imagination, it ends a little something like this: Nine glorious seasons later, Kaylee and Simon have had several beautiful brunette babies, a couple of which have turned out to be crazy geniuses like their Auntie River (Firefly: the Next Generation?), and one who mysteriously looks a lot like Matthew Fox, who became a regular cast member in season six. River has finally found her marbles and is now captaining her own ship with her loyal second-in-command, Jayne, who claims that River is the best captain he’s ever known. Saffron is now their mercenary, and Jayne’s lover. And because this is the future and vast discoveries have been made in the world of medicine, Jayne is pregnant with their first child. Inara and Mal finally profess their undying love for each other while Inara is, well, dying in his arms (something gruesome, lotsa blood), and Mal finally realizes that life is short. And promptly confesses his (other) undying love to Zoe. And she promptly punches him in the face.
-See through Aluminum. Stronger than glass, various military and commercial applications for this remarkable material are already being tested. What was once used in the science-fiction Star Trek movies, see-through aluminum is now something that – through test mixing with rubies, sapphires and more – is now being tried out in all kinds of ways to create transparency where strength is also required.
For now, it is used in static-free transparent aluminum wrapping for computer parts and other electronics. It is also being tested in otherwise-conventional see-through soda cans and military shielding for vehicles where windows once were. At over ten dollars per square inch, however, it is still not cheap enough for mainstream everyday use – but may be someday soon.
-Jupiter is cozying up to Earth this month. At its closest approach, the giant planet will swing closer and shine brighter than at any time between 1963 and 2022. It will be brightest in the second half of September. The gas giant’s closest approach will be at a distance of 368 million miles on Monday, September 20. Its previous swing-by in August 2009 was 2 percent farther, and the next approach in October 2011 will be a little less than 1 percent more distant. Jupiter is also brighter than usual by about 4 percent because one of its brown cloud belts is hidden.
-Buzz Aldrin has walked on the moon, survived 66 combat missions over Korea and even appeared as a contestant on “Dancing With the Stars. For his lifetime of achievements, the 80-year-old was given a 600-pound cake. This was not your typical terrestrial cake, it was a moon cake that featured a large replica of a lunar lander as the centerpiece, The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. The creation even included an electric-powered Earth that revolved around the giant cake. But the man who should know found a technical glitch with the direction of the rotating Earth, according to The Review-Journal . “Small detail,” he said. “Wrong way.”
-Paramount Pictures has inked a deal with Shawn Levy’s 21 Laps Entertainment to make “Deadliest Warrior” for the big screen. Pic, based on the original TV series from Spike TV (Paramount’s sister shingle), marks the first time that the shingle and Par, both owned by Viacom, have worked together. Storyline for feature version is being kept under wraps but the TV series follows the story of world-class warriors battling against one another to see who reigns supreme. Levy and 21 Laps prexy Dan Levine will produce the pic, with the possibility that Levy may direct. 21 Laps is the shingle behind “Night at the Museum” franchise and current action pic “Real Steel” starring Hugh Jackman for DreamWorks. Announcement of the project comes after the show’s Season 2 finale wrapped. Spike TV has renewed the series for a third season.
-Using only light, Australian researchers say they are able to move small particles almost five feet through the air. It’s more than 100 times the distance achieved by existing optical “tweezers,” the researchers say.
Not quite a simple grabby tractor beam, the new system works by shining a hollow laser beam at an object and taking advantage of air-temperature differences to move it around.
-This is one of those ideas that’s either going to be crazy successful or an epic failure. NBC Universal just made a deal to turn Stephen King’s The Dark Tower saga into three films and a TV series, a lot of which will be written by Akiva Goldsman and directed by Ron Howard.
-By using high tech scanners, researchers have mapped the location of thousands of termite mounds in Africa. Their newly-released map of these insect civilizations gives us clues about the future of weather on the savannas. The movement of termite mounds is a distant early warning system of the encroaching dryness of the savannas.
-On Sept. 8, 1966, NBC aired the first episode of what it touted as a science fiction series for adults. Star Trek went on to air for only three seasons, but grew into a towering TV and film franchise and a cultural touchstone that transcends generations. The first episode aired on a Thursday night and was called The Man Trap, and TV viewers were introduced to characters who would become iconic. The episode that aired 44 years ago was actually not the original pilot. The Cage had a substantially different cast – the captain of the Enterprise was Christopher Pike, played by Jeffrey Hunter – and was initially rejected by the network as being “too cerebral”: A second pilot was commissioned, this time with William Shatner playing Captain James T. Kirk, but that installment – Where No Man Has Gone Before – became the third episode of the first season.
-Comic artist Brendan McCarthy has claimed that Disney and Pixar are considering a CGI Doctor Strange movie. Earlier this year, Marvel commissioned McCarthy to create a new take on Doctor Strange. The finished article appeared in Spider-Man: Fever in April.
-Production studio IM Global has revealed further details of the upcoming Judge Dredd adaptation. According to the firm’s website, the movie has been renamed Dredd and will draw heavily from John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra’s comic books. “Dredd takes us to the wild streets of Mega City One, the lone oasis of quasi-civilisation on Cursed Earth. Judge Dredd (Karl Urban) is the most feared of elite Street Judges, with the power to enforce the law, sentence offenders and execute them on the spot – if necessary,” read a synopsis. Filming on Dredd is expected to commence soon. The movie is slated for release in 2012.
-After launching a four-issue miniseries based on “Darkwing Duck,” a superhero parody spun off from “DuckTales,” Boom! Studios is returning to the Disney Afternoon once again with an ongoing “Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers” comic that launches this December. “Rescue Rangers” will be scripted by Ian Brill, the writer of the “Darkwing Duck” miniseries, and artist Leonel Castellani.
-Using the world’s most powerful particle accelerators and sophisticated detectors, physicists are searching for traces of the Higgs boson, the particle that could help us understand how the universe got its mass. Fermilab’s Tevatron and CERN’s Large Hadron Collider are the front-runners for finding this last missing member of the particle family, as described by physicists’ Standard Model of the particle world. In July 2010, the Tevatron found another clue, narrowing the expected range of the hypothetical Higgs boson’s mass. Meanwhile, researchers at the LHC, the younger but more powerful of the accelerator pair, announced that it rediscovered in just months particles that previous detectors had taken decades to find. CERN’s Director-General Rolf Heuer said: “Rediscovering our ‘old friends’ in the particle world shows that the LHC experiments are well prepared to enter new territory…. Now it is down to nature to show us what is new.”
-Telltale Games, creators of Sam & Max and Monkey Island episodic games, are hard at work on all-new Back to the Future games chronicling the time-traveling adventures of Marty McFly and Doc Brown. Today, they bring good BTTF news. The developer has tapped the talents of Christopher Lloyd to voice ol’ Doc Brown, with Back to the Future screenwriter Bob Gale coming onboard to “consult” on the creation of the episodic game series. Telltale’s Back to the Future games are timed to hit later this year, after the Back to the Future 25th Anniversary Trilogy hits Blu-ray and DVD. Telltale’s Back to the Future series has also secured the likeness of Michael J. Fox’s Marty McFly and the iconic DeLorean time machine, so expect authenticity to assault your eyeballs later this year.
-Gravity, the 3D film that Warner Bros is mobilizing with director Alfonso Cuaron and Robert Downey Jr., is suddenly in danger of falling back to earth after Angellina Jolie said no to a full court press and a big money offer to star in the film. It has put Warner Bros in a bind. The studio needs an actress who can hold the screen and draw an audience to an $80 million film. Much like Tom Hanks’ role in Cast Away, the Gravity heroine is the only person onscreen for a large part of the movie.” This was first announced back in March, but today Syfy said production is going to start next week on its 4-hour Peter Pan prequel called Neverland. It’s being written and directed by Nick Willing, who worked on Syfy’s Tin Man and Alice, which were reimaginings of The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland.
-Here’s an interesting statistic: There are 4,700 freshwater fish species in South America right now. On average, over 100 species per year have been discovered. This year alone, 69 new species have been described thus far. These numbers show very clearly that we are far from knowing the number of freshwater species in South America. And oh, scientists have found a new species. An armored, Amazonian catfish. That eats wood from fallen logs — and, when desperate, the feces of its fellow catfish. With teeth shaped like spoons to make the eating easier. The largest one is about 65 centimeters, the other two are half that size.
-Seth Green is about to let the world take over someone’s life for six weeks. In the show, “Control TV”, the central twentysomething figure, who has yet to be cast, will take orders, in real time, from viewers on every aspect of his life — from what he wears and eats to where he works and whom he dates. The human puppet will drive Ford’s new small Fiesta and receive calls and texts using the HTC EVO 4G phone. “‘ControlTV’ places the audience in complete control of a show for the first time ever, and we are eager to learn what they will decide for our protagonist,” Green said.
-In the last year, Ghostbusters 3 has gone from “someday, maybe” to “getting more and more likely.” They’re writing a script, Ivan Reitman’s involved, and even Bill Murray says he’s interested. Now it looks like Sigourney Weaver is ready to get on board. “I’ve also been contacted,” Weaver said in an interview on Aug. 27 in Beverly Hills, Calif., where she was promoting the comedy You Again. “All I said was I really think my little boy Oscar, who went through that traumatic kidnapping, should be a ghostbuster. So I think that might happen.” Weaver said the next step for a new Ghostbusters movie is just getting a good script done.
-NASA has created the clever Space Rock program that lets the public vote on what song shuttle astronauts flying on mission STS-133 will wake up to. As they put it, “The wakeup song has been a part of the space program since the days of the Apollo missions, and now NASA is giving you two chances to be a part of this history! We need your help selecting wakeup songs to be played during the final missions of the Space Shuttle Program!” To what should be exactly no one’s surprise, the Star Trek theme song by Alexander Courage is leading the pack with nearly 400,000 votes. What’s actually somewhat surprising though is that lagging behind in a distant sixth place is the theme from Star Wars, written by John Williams, which had an insignificant 12,661 votes the last time we checked.
-The goal is to get humans to Mars by the mid-2030s, but what are the stepping stones that will get us there? Returning to the Moon gets a lot of publicity, but the better test might be a near-Earth asteroid. Space.com columnist Leonard David has an intriguing feature on Lockheed Martin’s research into sending astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid by the mid-2020s. Nicknamed the “Plymouth Rock” mission, landing on an asteroid wouldn’t only be a great dress rehearsal for the long trip to Mars; it could also allow us to set up planetary defenses against asteroid impacts. (Armageddon is turning into a documentary so slowly, no one’s even noticing.)