Time travel is fiction, unless you are referring to traveling ahead in time at the rate one one minute per minute. As fiction, you can do pretty much what you want with temporal displacement, so science fiction stories treat that ability in many different ways.
What causes a paradox doesn't necessarily cause a paradox in a different story. Our friends at Minute Physics gives us an overview of how time travel varies between stories. -via Geeks Are Sexy
The 1981 film Nighthawks pitted cops Sylvester Stallone and Billie Dee Williams against terrorist Rutger Hauer. Typecasting, right? While the movie was a hit, it was a long and troubled road getting it to theaters. For example,
7. Hauer was injured twice while filming his death scene.
The squib that was meant to simulate a gunshot burned him when it exploded on the wrong side and the cable used to pull him back when he was ‘shot’ strained his back. Unfortunately this was done on Stallone’s order.
4. The movie was originally supposed to be the French Connection III.
After seeing the original script Gene Hackman backed out of the production and it was then reworked into what became Nighthawks.
Read more trivia about Nighthawks at TVOM.
According to tradition, it was on October 31st, 1517, that a priest named Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany, and began the Protestant Reformation. The movement gave Europe Christian sects outside the supervision of the Pope, a doctrine of salvation by faith alone, and Bibles in common languages. In short, the idea of religious freedom was born out of the Reformation. But as the 500th anniversary of his protest approaches, you might be surprised to learn that there is no evidence that Luther ever nailed his theses to the church door. He merely sent them to the archbishop.
If the Ninety-five Theses sprouted a myth, that is no surprise. Luther was one of those figures who touched off something much larger than himself; namely, the Reformation—the sundering of the Church and a fundamental revision of its theology. Once he had divided the Church, it could not be healed. His reforms survived to breed other reforms, many of which he disapproved of. His church splintered and splintered. To tote up the Protestant denominations discussed in Alec Ryrie’s new book, “Protestants” (Viking), is almost comical, there are so many of them. That means a lot of people, though. An eighth of the human race is now Protestant.
The Reformation, in turn, reshaped Europe. As German-speaking lands asserted their independence from Rome, other forces were unleashed. In the Knights’ Revolt of 1522, and the Peasants’ War, a couple of years later, minor gentry and impoverished agricultural workers saw Protestantism as a way of redressing social grievances. (More than eighty thousand poorly armed peasants were slaughtered when the latter rebellion failed.) Indeed, the horrific Thirty Years’ War, in which, basically, Europe’s Roman Catholics killed all the Protestants they could, and vice versa, can in some measure be laid at Luther’s door. Although it did not begin until decades after his death, it arose in part because he had created no institutional structure to replace the one he walked away from.
In honor of the anniversary, the New Yorker has a relatively short biography of Martin Luther, warts and all, and a simple explanation of the beliefs that led him to revolt against the Catholic Church. -via Digg
Jack Williams of WBZ in Boston had a news story with a ridiculous punch line back in the 1970s. It took him a split second to picture what he was reading, and then he cracked up and could not stop laughing. Eventually, he was laughing at his own laughing on air. It wasn't that funny! But it is a classic. -via Boing Boing
Look at this little darlin' in her first Halloween costume! Three-month-old Macie is Rapunzel, and her dad is her tower. Macie's mother Megan made the costume, and tells us about it here. The there's amberilyn, who played Secret Service agent to her son's POTUS last year.
You can see eight pages of great Halloween costumes that incorporate a baby in a carrier at Bored Panda. -via Metafilter
Young people used parlor games for fortune-telling at every holiday, but Halloween is when the spirits are closest to the material world. In centuries past, many games and rituals surrounding Halloween were used to determine who one would marry, or whether one would marry at all. Evidence of these rituals survives in postcards, and many of them had to do with apples. We bob for apples for fun, and for the enjoyment of seeing others completely soaked, but at one time, apples could tell your fortune. Peel one and toss it; the shape it falls into will be the first initial of your true love. Mark apples before bobbing for them; which one you retrieve will tell you your future. And trying to bite swinging apple on a string could seriously lead to a kiss when you're competing with the opposite sex. Even stranger was the use of the produce most often associated with Halloween: cabbages. Read about the bygone fortune-telling rituals of Halloween at Messy Messy Chic, and see of collection of vintage Halloween greeting cards that tell the stories.
(Image credit: Flickr user Dave)
The flu pandemic of 1918 killed between 50 million and 100 million people across the globe -more than died in World War I combat. But no one took it seriously at the beginning, because it was just flu, and few of the people who contracted it died. That's why it was able to spread so fast and so far. It was called Spanish flu, but it probably originated in the United States. After the fact, the outbreak was traced to Haskell County, Kansas, where many people became sick in January of 1918. The local doctor reported the outbreak, which meant it particularly worried him, since influenza was not a reportable disease.
Several Haskell men who had been exposed to influenza went to Camp Funston, in central Kansas. Days later, on March 4, the first soldier known to have influenza reported ill. The huge Army base was training men for combat in World War I, and within two weeks 1,100 soldiers were admitted to the hospital, with thousands more sick in barracks. Thirty-eight died. Then, infected soldiers likely carried influenza from Funston to other Army camps in the States—24 of 36 large camps had outbreaks—sickening tens of thousands, before carrying the disease overseas. Meanwhile, the disease spread into U.S. civilian communities.
The influenza virus mutates rapidly, changing enough that the human immune system has difficulty recognizing and attacking it even from one season to the next. A pandemic occurs when an entirely new and virulent influenza virus, which the immune system has not previously seen, enters the population and spreads worldwide. Ordinary seasonal influenza viruses normally bind only to cells in the upper respiratory tract—the nose and throat—which is why they transmit easily. The 1918 pandemic virus infected cells in the upper respiratory tract, transmitting easily, but also deep in the lungs, damaging tissue and often leading to viral as well as bacterial pneumonias.
The flu ravaged Europe, then abated in July, leading to a false sense that it was over. When it roared back, it was deadlier than ever. The disease was exacerbated in the US, where government officials refused to acknowledge it, fearing it would hinder the war effort. The lack of information only fueled panic. Smithsonian magazine tells us about the spread of the 1918 flu pandemic.
The good news is that Simon Tofield has given us a full-color 12-minute Simon's Cat cartoon. The bad news is that that cat has been stung by a bee, and must go see the veterinarian.
The cat does not want to go, so the struggle to get there is half the fun. This plays out like every cat owner's experience, from getting the cat into a carrier, to the waiting room full of strange animals, to the painful bill, to realizing that when a cat is asleep in your lap, the TV remote will be out of reach. While the film has just been uploaded to YouTube, it has already been shown at film festivals and won the McLaren Award for Best British Animation at the Edinburgh International Film Festival 2016.
Just as actors become typecast after their first big hit, so do directors. Mention Martin Scorsese or David Lynch or Steven Spielberg, and you know what kind of movie to expect. But also like actors, directors want to experiment, to stretch their abilities beyond what is expected of them. And that's where this list comes in. For example, the 2011 movie Thor was directed by Kenneth Branagh, which was quite a departure for him.
Sir Kenneth Branagh is best known as a Shakespearean actor and director. He has accolades for film adaptations of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing and Hamlet. He was one half of the golden couple of British cinema in the 1990s as the husband of Emma Thompson and represented something quintessentially British. It came as a surprise to most people to learn that Branagh was to direct Thor, a Marvel comic franchise movie. However Branagh’s crack effort at Thor has received wide critical acclaim and launched the career of the young Tom Hiddelston. Chris Hemsworth, who stars as the God of Thunder himself has said that he learned so much from the British director.
Branagh's next movie is Murder on the Orient Express, out November 9. Read about the other movies with what might be considered unlikely directors at TVOM. With video evidence.
Where's the best place to celebrate Halloween? In the land of the original Gaelic festival of Samhain, which is where Halloween originated, of course. The city of Derry, Northern Ireland, revived Halloween in a big way in 1986, and today the annual festival is one of the biggest Halloween parties in Europe. Last year, 75,000 people showed up.
The only remaining fully walled city in Ireland, Derry looks the part for Halloween. The massive stone walls that girdle the city and the Gothic Revival Guildhall just below the ramparts could be a set from a 1960s Hammer Film Productions horror flick. Families were walking about in full ghoulish makeup that would have made George Romero (“Night of the Living Dead’’) proud. We had stumbled into a Renaissance Faire crossed with a nightmare — in the best possible sense, of course.
We followed the throngs to the plaza in front of the Guildhall, where the Haunted Harvest Market was in high gear. We found vendors selling jewelry for every imaginable piercing, face painters who were creating the sunken eyes and random gashes to fit any type of undead character, and the street food vendors of “Hell’s Kitchen.’’ Band after band provided a soundtrack that ranged from traditional Irish music to Irish country to heavy metal rock.
And that was just the first day of the festival. Read more about Halloween in Derry at the Boston Globe. -via The Week
See also: The official website for Derry Halloween.
(Image credit: Flickr user Greg Clarke)
Kimberly White and the rest of her family were there at the bus stop to see her eldest daughter get off the school bus. Can you imagine what the rest of the students had to say? They'd say that's really weird, but at the same time, they'd wish their families were that much fun.
"My family and I decided to dress up in costumes as our oldest daughter came home from school. We encourage our children to work hard, play hard, and not take life too seriously as shown clearly in this video."
This definitely shows Brooklynn that even dinosaurs will band together to watch your back. -via Digg
HoydenCaulfield posted a picture of a fox that found a soft spot for a nap in his garden in London. The fox didn't wake up as the picture was taken. In fact, it came back the next day and napped on the roof of the shed. This cute picture inspired Firefox puns, including the title. Firefox is updating, Firefox has merged with Napster, Firefox is not responding, etc. Sure, he's adorable, but to those who would like to make a wild fox into a pet, remember they are nervous, destructive, and smelly compared to regular dogs. -via reddit
Here's a delightful stop-motion animation in which the frames are carved pumpkins. Sean Ohlenkamp and Rob Popkin carved hundreds of pumpkins over several years (in their free time) to make this video. They made many sequences and discarded most of them, some because the idea didn't work, and some because the finished sequence wasn't great. What's left is a brightly colored pumpkin that dances as its carvings change.
The thumping music in the background? That's also made with pumpkins, in process they called "pumpkin orchestration" under the guidance of Igor Correia. You'll get to see what that looks like at the end of the video. -via Laughing Squid
Simone Giertz is famous for building robots that aren't good at anything besides entertaining us. This time she attempts a robot that serves soup. Pumpkin soup, which she hates for reasons she will explain. But the robot stole the show, once it was finally in service. It did its job.
Giertz needs to try some really good pumpkin soup. My daughter made pumpkin soup from my mother's recipe and it was nirvana. Lots of onions, heavy cream, and a bit of curry powder. Then she turned vegetarian, and the next time she made it from vegetable broth instead of chicken broth, and coconut milk instead of cream. It was not that good. I noticed Giertz using coconut milk, so she may have the same problem. -Thanks, Edward!
See more of Simone Giertz's projects.
In the 1820s, Japanese artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi illustrated a series of prints called Water Margin featuring warriors covered in artful tattoos. The characters were based on historic fiction, but the colorful full-body tattoos were a detail that he added. Other artists continued the practice. Later, people started getting their bodies inked in this manner. You might have thought that art imitates life, but in this case it's the other way around. While there may have been Japanese men with large, colorful tattoos before Kuniyoshi, evidence shows that most tattoos were small and discreet before Water Margin became so popular. Sarah E. Thompson, a curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is the author of the new book Tattoos in Japanese Prints. She talked to Collectors Weekly about Kuniyoshi's tattooed warriors.
Collectors Weekly: What types of tattoos did Kuniyoshi depict?
Thompson: Lions and peonies were very common, and this gave the warriors a mildly exotic look since, of course, there were no lions in Japan, or in China either, for that matter. You see them in Buddhist art because that ultimately came from India where there are real lions, but for the Japanese at this time, they were almost imaginary animals used as symbols of courage.
Dragons were also very popular, and other mythical creatures like giant snakes. Often a hero is depicted fighting a monster. There’s another story that crops up a lot about a diving woman who steals a jewel back from the Dragon King, and you see her swimming along, being chased by water creatures. Occasionally, you see something like a courtesan in her full elaborate costume, parading down the street, but that is a bit unusual. Usually, it’s something more violent, something with a lot of action.
Read the rest of the interview with Thompson and learn about the rise of full-body tattoos in Japan at Collectors Weekly.
