Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk

Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk is a comic book miniseries, published by Marvel Comics. The series is set in one of Marvel's shared universes, the Ultimate Universe. It was written by Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof, and illustrated by artist Leinil Francis Yu and colorist Dave McCaig. The title characters square off after Wolverine is contracted by Nick Fury to assassinate the Hulk, who is known to be residing in Tibet. Lindelof has revealed that neither Wolverine nor the Hulk will die, their powers will be shown in new ways, there will be cameos by other Ultimate characters, and at least one new major Ultimate character will be introduced (currently believed to be Ultimate She-Hulk), excepting the introduction of Ultimate Wendigo. [1][2] It was originally planned as a six-issue, bimonthly series. But after only two issues, the publication of the remainder of the series was indefinitely postponed. The series takes place between Ultimate X-Men issues 69 and 71 and before Ultimates 2 issue 11.

• In Ultimate X-Men # 97 after a fight with Colossus in which he rips one of Wolverines legs off. The two heroes are in the X-Men's sick bay talking over their fight when Wolverine makes reference to when he and the Hulk fought. He explained to Colossus that the Hulk had ripped the lower half of his body off. He said to Colossus "after I healed from that you should have seen what I did to the Hulk... it was epic."

• The Ultimates 3 #5 makes an oblique reference to the series' unfinished status when Wolverine is caught in combat with Ultron's android copy of the Hulk in the Savage Land. During the fight, Wolverine comments "I kinda wish you were the real Hulk. Me and him got unfinished business."
  
  

Found Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Wolverine_vs._Hulk

MARS SATELLITE IMAGE ILLUSIONS

The Art of Misdirection & The Unreal

Report #126

September 15, 2007

Joseph P. Skipper

The above first image and the next three below are from the MRO HiRISE #PSP_003694_1800 science data image. As you can see, it is a wide-angle context view inclusive from one side of the strip to the other. The scene is beautifully clean and clear looking with a silky quality to it and that is so typical of the very high resolution current MRO camera system images. The MRO stats on this image indicate that this scene is located in Terra Sabaea south of Janssen Crater but that really isn't important to us here.

As you can also see, the darker streaks relative to the lighter color background are the scene's most eye catching feature. In the more current MRO data these are described as "slope streaks" which is a rather neutral identifying moniker in relation to the previous characterizations of this evidence. In previous science data, these have been consistently officially described as dust slides down slopes. The theory is that the upper soil material slides downslope revealing darker geological material underneath. These characterizations of course reinforce the official position that Mars in general is a super dry, dusty, dead world.

You should perhaps also know that some lay researchers in the field have identified these as water weeps but of course that, as you might well imagine, didn't get far in the traditional mainstream science communities who rarely deviate from evidence official designations once they are made. Now in the over seven years I've been doing this, you might note that I haven't reported on this type of evidence. Why? Well I usually don't report on geological evidence because most of the time I leave that to the geologist unless I believe they are too far off base. However, that's not my reasoning here. I haven't reported on this simply because I don't buy into this evidence at all.

For example, in the above beautifully clear scene, note all the smoothed textures on everything giving it that silky look. This isn't the way geology looks and particularly not in satellite imaging with the very high fine resolution touted in the MRO imaging. When it comes to rough geology, we should be seeing many times the geological detail we are seeing here. Any professional worth his salt who has examined satellite images of Earth's geology even in 10 and 20 year older satellite camera technology will have to admit that and it isn't because this is super dry dusty Mars either where geology is covered by dust.

All one has to do is take a brief look at the Spirit and Opportunity rover imaging when the surfaces of the rovers are shown. After many months and even some years trekking around on the Mars super dry "dusty" surface, the rover hardware surfaces including all of the onboard great many nooks and crannies and dirt catchers are pristine clean. Either the rovers in these particular images are not on Mars or, if one argues that they are, then Mars just clearly isn't all that dusty, at least not to the degree as portrayed here in this MRO image. You just can't have your cake and eat it to as the saying goes.

In my opinion, what we are looking at in this scene is a demonstration of the art of misdirection and illusions of the unreal. We are looking at everything being covered by map type smudge image tampering from one end and side of the strip to the other. It is applied thin enough in places so that the rougher natural terrain can print through a bit to the surface giving the scene the vague washed out look of geology. The streaks are added for effect as eye candy for the researcher's eye to lock onto rather than be faced with image after image devoid of any such detail and thereby slowly raising inconvenient questions.

The above second image with its view to the left and the third image with it view to the right from the same MRO strip provide a closer of the areas with the primary streaks in the scene. As you can see, the illusion continues to hold up very well in these substantially closer views. That's because the much greater camera resolution has enabled and allowed the tampering applications to now occur at a much closer and finer level relative to the past and then the scene is drawn back to the distance you see here for the desired effect.

You have to understand that we aren't dealing with a home computer here or even some huge commercial computer and some commercially available software that does nothing more than what the user tells it to. I have always been satisfied from the beginning that we are dealing with super fast computers run by cutting edge proprietary state of the art and steadily evolving AI (artificial intelligence) technology capable of learning and making its own extrapolations and decisions (with a little help from its support group) and using proprietary cutting edge and steadily evolving combination object recognition and mapping type graphics software to implement its actions in processing and "fixing" the incoming data.

I wouldn't be a bit surprised to learn that in these more modern times a master system and its redundant backups control many other systems in this process including systems reviewing and checking behind systems and redoing images that need it. The raw specially encrypted so it can't be intercepted data comes in under strict secrecy to this location first, is processed, then encrypted again to match the original design science encryption, and then likely bounced back off of the Mars satellite to come into the normal and waiting Earth computers systems appearing for all the world like the true raw science data but isn't really and no one is the wiser.

That's because the straight well meaning scientists thinking simply doesn't track along this slippery line as those do in military, security, and intelligence work. We're exploration scientists associated with university systems and here is the science data just as we expected it and from the source we expected to come in from, even if a little disappointing in lack of hoped for detail. So what's the problem? They just ignore the very obvious fact that NASA and JPL and so many others associated with this science are riddled with people right to the very top that either have direct military security and/or intelligence backgrounds or are civilians that have long worked with military security and/or intelligence developing a "cooperative" relationship with it.

No, it just can't be, it's just too fantastic and, like Scarlet's character in the movie Gone With The Wind, I can't think about that right now or I might add ever! So a pattern of ignoring it develops that communicates down through the subsequent generations of otherwise bright and intelligent scientists conditioning and corrupting them thoroughly in this manner. Meanwhile, over decades the true raw data and its very important and useful information is retained in secret somewhere for only an elitist few to have knowledge of and try to figure out a way to capitalize on while the general science and academic communities and through them the public get the nice safe appearing sanitized placebo material to float along with thinking everything is okay and well in hand.

The process necessarily conditions ignorance and non thinking into the populations to keep them passive and non interfering so that subsequent generations focus more and more on shallow matters and become more and more detached from reality and even recognizing what that actually is. The process also conditions the subsequent generations of secrecy elitists more and more into isolation so that eventually they have no feelings of commonality with the general populations and come to regard us more and more as merely a resource to be capitalized on, manipulated without qualm, and perhaps even expendable. Does this sound like a good thing to you? It doesn't to me.

In any case, the above fourth image from the same MRO strip is the site a little lower down in the first presented context image. The only thing this scene tells us beyond what we are suppose to see is that some spot tampering applications as represented by the yellow text in the above image were applied after the streaks were applied and on top of them ever so slightly overlapping the tops of the streaks and very subtly only in that way revealing themselves in the process. This demonstrates that first the basic tampering was done applying what becomes the smudge general background, next the darker streaks were applied on top of this background as the eye candy to catch and misdirect the eye, but something was still coming through in these spots on follow-up and so secondary spot applications of matching smudge labeled in yellow text were applied.

Unfortunately these few very subtle clues are all that we have now as evidence of the presence of the map type tampering and obfuscation of this newer MRO imaging. One has to understand that the tampering technology has had a chance to evolve and fix its mistakes over the years and become much more effective and particularly with respect to creating illusions and thereby misdirection. Further, this tampering progress is significantly enhanced by the ability to make the applications down at minute size scales never admitted to so that when the image is drawn back to the publicly released much more distant scale, such applications are very difficult to detect as you can see above.

As for true color images, they are of course more difficult to obscure because it makes evidence stand out familiar to the eye. That means it can't be allowed and any future substitute to pass off as original must be very good and well beyond the ESA artificial colorized imaging. Rather they use the real color imaging to gather data for their own secret purposes as well as stock pile hundreds of thousands of color images into a database that will go into making the next generation of tampering using color as effective as needed to pass off as real.

As this map type tampering technology progresses, the colorizing aspect will soon reach the level, if not already, where they will feel confident that artificial color can be applied with a sufficiently realistic effect and then that addition more easily passed off as the real thing in future imaging. You can count on it! I'm satisfied that the real unobfuscated true satellite imaging raw data held in secret somewhere has been in color since at least before the MGS MOC data probably at least as far back as the Clementine Moon data and most definitely includes the current MRO data. We are never going to see it unless they feel that they have no choice but to allow it.

That is where the Planetary Truth Project will eventually come into the picture to do something about this. Meanwhile, I digress. We've seen the slope streaks in the MRO imaging, now lets see some of the same type of evidence in the older MGS MOC imaging as appears below for comparison purposes.

Found Here: http://www.marsanomalyresearch.com/evidence-reports/2007/126/image-illusions.htm

The Sun Dagger of the Chacon Valley

The Sun Dagger site, near the top of Fajada Butte, revealed the changing of the seasons to Anasazi astronomers a thousand years ago. Its secret was lost around 1250 AD, when the ancient people abandoned Chaco Canyon. Then in 1979, an artist was studying petroglyph art at Chaco when she noticed that a slender beam of sunlight passing between two rock monoliths bisected the center of a spiral-shaped symbol on the exact day of the summer solstice.

Returning time after time to continue her observations, she found that at the winter solstice the same "sun dagger" sliced through a smaller petroglyph nearby, and that two parallel daggers bracketed the larger spiral at the spring and fall equinoxes.

The discovery touched off a flurry of controversy. Scholarly experts scoffed. The sun, they pointed out, was not known to be represented by a spiral in any Anasazi petroglyph art. If the strange markings had actually served as a tool of prehistoric astronomy, they argued, would not the ancients have chosen a more appropriate symbol?

Further study revealed that the larger spiral's shape tracked an 18-1/2-year lunar cycle--an astronomical feat unheard of among North American Indians, though well known to the Toltecs of Mexico and the Maya before them. The sun dagger thus tended to confirm the prevailing academic hypothesis that Chaco Canyon was located at the end of a Toltec trade route, evidenced by such treasures as mother-of-pearl far from the sea and macaw feathers equally far from the jungle. The more the seemingly simple rock carvings were studied, the more mysterious they became.

Fajada Butte stands like a pyramid 480 feet above Chaco Canyon's broad, level floor. It used to be a quick, hard climb-steep and shadeless, crawling with rattlesnakes. But all that changed when a PBS television show about the sun dagger phenomenon, narrated by Robert Redford, captured viewers' imagination. In 1982, with tourists flocking to Chaco Canyon in record numbers, the National Park Service declared the butte and the area surrounding it off-limits to all but scientific researchers.

Yet there was no shortage of scientists trudging up the butte's steep trail with their heavy photographic equipment, then scrambling up the staircase of loose boulders to the site itself. In fact, more people began climbing Fajada Butte for officially sanctioned research purposes than had previously climbed it just because it was there.

Formerly faint, the trail wore deeper. Summer storms made a gutter of it. Disaster struck in 1989, when erosion of the clay and gravel around the base of the stone monoliths caused them to slip. As the slabs inched down the steep slope of the butte, the sun dagger vanished. Having unobtrusively marked the passage of seasons for many centuries; it lasted only ten years after its discovery before it was lost forever.

The loss of the sun dagger prompted the World Monuments Fund to add Chaco Canyon--now known as Chaco Culture National Historical Park--to its Most Endangered Monuments list in 1996. In a remote part of northwestern New Mexico's arid San Juan Basin, the canyon contains the ruins of the largest pre-Columbian "city" in what is now the United States.

The site's nine "great houses," the largest of which stood five stories high and had 650 dwelling rooms and 37 ceremonial kivas, along with some 3,500 smaller structures in and around the canyon, may have housed up to 10,000 people at a time. Chaco was the hub of a network of roads-at least 20 of them, each nearly 30 feet wide-that radiated in all directions for distances of up to 100 miles, suggesting that the site may have been a part-time home to pilgrims from other Anasazi settlements who came here for religious ceremonies, trade, or both.

Often, those who most treasure Chaco Canyon's silent mysteries unwittingly contribute to its slow destruction. As early as the mid-1970s, when an average of twelve people per week visited the site, environmentalists adopted the slogan "Don't pave the road to Chaco Canyon," and emblazoning it on T-shirts and bumper stickers. Though treacherous when it rains, the 30 miles of dusty washboard road into the monument remain unpaved to this day, but the Save Chaco Canyon campaign drew attention to the ruins and boosted the number of visitors annually from hundreds to thousands. In 1990, when spiritually aware pilgrims identified Chaco Canyon as one of the key sacred sites of the Harmonic Convergence, widespread publicity helped increase the number of visitors to nearly 20,000 a year, a rise that continues today. Looting has become a problem at outlying sites, and within the park visitors find themselves subject to ever more stringent backcountry hiking restrictions.

Besides human visitors, the World Monuments Fund reports, Chaco's ruins are threatened by natural phenomena: rains that seep into masonry joints; snow accumulations that melt and trickle down into walls, then freeze and expand, widening cracks; windstorms; livestock; even weeds. Protected for centuries by the windblown sand that covered most of the surviving stone walls, the ruins became vulnerable to erosion when archaeologists excavated them. Today, National Park Service officials report, the deterioration of the ruins far exceeds the government's financial ability to maintain them.

The World Monuments Fund recently received grants from American Express and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation sufficient to protect some, but not all, of the sites on their Endangered Monuments list. But on May 23, 1996, the World Monuments Fund announced its decision: Chaco Canyon was not selected in the first round of grants.

Undaunted, grassroots groups are organizing workshops and conferences to promote plans for Chaco Canyon's salvation. Public concern, all agree, is the key. It does not seem too much to hope that citizen activists can find the ways and means to preserve the vestiges of this once-great civilization while there is still time.

Found Here: http://www.angelfire.com/indie/anna_jones1/lost_dagger.html

Acorn's Outlandish Characters | Erratic Phenomena

At Thinkspace's "Ink Advance" show Friday night, I discovered Acorn, a street artist who's been showing with GhostpatrolMiso in Melbourne, Vienna and Berlin. Together, the three of them have created a limited edition book of drawings titled Ink Advance, which was released earlier this year. Acorn, a.k.a. Scott Kennedy, originally hails from Vancouver, but has been living in Edinburgh recently and now seems to be traveling so much I imagine he's not sure exactly where he lives at the moment. Reports are that he's settling back down in Vancouver for a while. Apparently Acorn has only been drawing seriously for about four years (he's just 21), but he's already developed a really singular style and a cast of intriguing characters.

Acorn is a true street artist who's getting up all over the world. He says that this first character's arms are unfinished because he was caught while painting it in Bucharest. I want to stress that this intricately detailed piece was painted with brushes, and is not a pasteup. I think that's pretty amazing!





Fortunately, Acorn hasn't limited himelf to painting graffiti in places beyond the reach of most of us artizens. His insanely detailed drawings, which span the realms of pen, pencil and watercolor, are loaded with cryptic symbolism and feature a cast of characters that include (in my interpretation) Icelandic ninjas, a cat army, tree-eating Chinese dragon wood-processing stills, futuristic fashion-forward Yakuts with winged chandelier headdresses, children inside cumbersome robotic exoskeletons styled after ancient Japanese armor, and a host of strange rubbery monsters.

Acorn gave some insight into his work in a recent interview:

"Usually when I start a drawing, I don't have much of an idea what I'm going to do until I get halfway into it.

I think mixing cultural influences has really helped me progress when it comes to style. I guess I was first into Japanese stuff, but then I got really into Mexican and Aztec patterns and such. Also Russian costumes and stuff like that from the east are really inspiring. I guess that got me more into it, because it seems more like fantasy than just fashion.

I think imagination is far more fulfilling than reality. If someone can look at my work and make up their own story for it, then that makes me happy."

Some of my favorite Acorn drawings are in his forest series. I guess it makes sense that someone named Acorn would have an affinity with trees. (Though to be fair, he says he started out as Acornlique and shortened it to Acorn for convenience in tagging, and not due to any particular affinity with oaks.)

You're going to need to click into these to see how cool his detail work is. Keep in mind that the originals are small drawings... the linked images are just about actual size.

Found Here: http://commandax.blogspot.com/2008/05/acorn.html

Prometheus at Rockefeller Center, sculpture by Paul Manship, 1933

Paul Manship's highly recognizable bronze gildedPrometheus recumbent, bringing fire to mankind, features prominently in the sunken plaza at the front of 30 Rockefeller Plaza. The model for Prometheus was Leonardo (Leon) Nole, and the inscription from Aeschylus, on the granite wall behind, reads: "Prometheus, teacher in every art, brought the fire that hath proved to mortals a means to mighty ends." Although some sources cite it as the fourth-most familiar statue in the United States, behind the Lincoln Memorial, Mount Rushmore and the Statue of Liberty, Manship was not particularly fond or proud of it.

statue of the Greek legend of the Titan


Found Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_Center

[edit] Prometheus in other arts

Prometheus: Poem of Fire, Opus 60 (1910) by Alexander Scriabin.

Prometheus, Symphonic Poem No. 5 (S.99) by F. Liszt.

Prometheus, opera using Aeschylus's original Greek by Carl Orff, 1968.

Prometheus' torment by the eagle and his rescue by Heracles were popular subjects in vase paintings of the 6th-4th c. BC. He also sometimes appears in depictions of Athena's birth from Zeus' forehead.

There was a relief sculpture of Prometheus with Pandora on the base of Athena's cult statue in the Athenian Parthenon of the 5th century BC.

[edit] Cults of Prometheus

Prometheus had a small shrine in the Kerameikos, or potter's quarter, of Athens, not far from the Academy. The Academy had its own altar dedicated to Prometheus. According to the 2nd-century AD Greek traveler Pausanias, this site was central to a torch race dedicated to Prometheus.

Pausanias also wrote that the Greek cities of Argos and Opous both claimed to be Prometheus' final resting place, each erecting a tomb in his honor.

Finally, Pausanias attested that in the Greek city of Panopeus there was a cult statue claimed by some to depict Prometheus, for having created the human race there.^[13]

[edit] Prometheus and liver regeneration

The mythological story that Prometheus was chained to a rock in the Caucasus mountain and his liver was eaten every day by an eagle only to "regenerate" in the night has been used by scientists studying liver regeneration as an indication that ancient Greeks knew that liver can regenerate if surgically removed or injured^[20]. Because of the association of Prometheus with liver regeneration, his name has also been associated with biomedical companies involved in regenerative medicine.^[21]

Sculpture of Prometheus in front of the GE Building at the Rockefeller Center (New York City, New York, United States).

Found Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus

Mandarin Princess swinging over dc

Swinging Empress: Of all the photos I have posted over the years the one that generates the most email is a photo of a painting. The title of the painting is Above Washington, D.C. It currently hangs in the lobby of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Washington D.C. The only background I have found on it is from the hotel website:

"A large signature painting, 'Above Washington, D.C.', commissioned by Chinese/Canadian artist Zhong-Yang Huang, depicts the last empress of China, Empress Dowager, on a swing over D.C., blending Eastern and Western cultures. She lived in the 'Forbidden City' and had a fascination with the West. The artist has created a painting that is historical and metaphorical."

There are other works by the same artist at a gallery in Saskatchewan, Canada. I’ve also found other background on the artist.

Note to self: next time in DC get a better, higher res photo. It really is quite a stunning painting.

Found Here: http://www.damsite.blogspot.com/

Paul Laffoley

As of 2004, Laffoley claims to have executed over 800 works. His work over the last forty years is a dizzying mix of precise architectural-quality painting and ideas (both societally accepted and far on the fringe) from ancient times to the present. Laffoley has called his work a blend of the purely rational, Apollonian impulse and the purely emotional, Dionysian impulse.

British writer Michael Bracewell, in his collection of essays, when surface was depth, has made some particularly eloquent observations about his work, such as:

"If Laffoley's work within the Boston Visionary Cell can be said to have one principal preoccupation - a common denominator of his eclectic scholarship and practice - then that preoccupation would be to understand the process by which one goes from becoming to being."

And:

"The Boston Visionary Cell, as a concretized manifestation of its inhabitant's work and preoccupations, describes the way in which a chaos of data - no less than a chaos of marble - can be sculpted by research to release the perfect forms within it."

He works in many types of media, including oil, acrylic, silkscreen, and pen and ink, and include both images and text. Lately he has concentrated on large paintings with sculptural and mixed media elements.

Found Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Laffoley

Double-Headed Eagle

The double-headed eagle is a common symbol in heraldry and vexillology. It is most commonly associated with the Holy Roman Empire and with the Byzantine Empire. In Byzantine heraldry, the heads represent the dual sovereignty of the Emperor (secular and religious) and/or dominance of the Byzantine Emperors over both East and West. Several Eastern European nations adopted it from the Byzantines and continue to use it as their national symbol to this day, the most prominent being Russia. However, the design was in use in the East for centuries before it was officially adopted by the Byzantines, and was independently adopted as the symbol of several other historical states, such as early medieval Armenia and the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm^{[citation needed]}.

Double-headed eagles have been present in imagery for many centuries. The two-headed eagle can be found in archaeological remains of the Hittite civilization dating from a period that ranges from the 20th century BC to the 13th century BC.

Cylindric seals discovered in Bogazkoy, an old Hittite capital in modern-day Turkey, represent clearly a two-headed eagle with spread wings. The aesthetics of this symmetrical position explains in part the birth of this religious figure. It probably dates from the 18th century BC, and was used in a tradesman background. It can also be seen in the same region in two monumental settings: in Alacahöyük around 1400 BC and in Yazilikaya before 1250 BC. Here the context looks different and totally religious: the eagle becomes a divinity symbol. The two-headed eagle slowly disappears during the last Hittite period, from the 9th century BC to the 7th century BC, and totally disappears after the end of the empire.

The double-headed eagle was also in use by the Arsacid Dynasty of Armenia and the Mamikonian family^[1] in the 3rd to 9th centuries.

Found Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-headed_eagle

Charles Gilchrist: Sacred Geometry

This Gilchrist Mandala combines geometric and representational symbolism. This is a classical Mandala in the sense that it emphasizes the four directions and the squared circle. The major geometric element is a Solar Cross with four rays at each of the cardinal directions. This form is an ancient icon appearing all over the world. The Solar Cross is a tremendously powerful meditational archetype.

In this Mandala we look through the Solar Cross. The outer corners the Mandala make abstracted reference to the four elements, Earth and Fire below, Water and Air above. These abstracted outer sections blend into a stylized landscape inspired by the Reo Grand gorge located in northern New Mexico.

This Mandala was created in 1992, requiring hundreds of hours of open-eyed meditation.

Through his own studies, spanning three decades, Gilchrist discovered the classical concepts of open-eyed meditation and began to create Mandalas as a path to self-discovery. This led him to create hundreds of fine art Mandalas over the past 25 years.

Found Here: http://www.eso-garden.com

Bronze Kate Moss in knots? That’ll be £1million

Seven sculptures of Kate Moss in yoga poses could fetch up to £1 million when they are sold in New York.

The bronzes, which include one of her with her legs stretched behind her head, went on display at the Mary Boone gallery in Manhattan.

The statues are on display until the end of June

They are by Marc Quinn, famous for his sculpture in Trafalgar Square of Alison Lapper, a woman without arms and fully developed legs, and are estimated to fetch £137,500 each.

The white-painted bronzes are part of the ?Sphinx? exhibition - socalled because of Moss?s mysterious persona.

The model appears in a variety of yoga poses

Although highly realistic, the sculptures are not portraits.

Quinn said they represent "an image, and the way it is twisted and sculpted by our collective desire".

He said the yoga pose sculpture showed Moss as "a knotted Venus of our age".

Heavy metal: Kate Moss has been immortalised in a series of sculptures

A polished bronze named "Sphinx (Road to Enlightenment)," shows Moss sitting in the lotus position.

The model did not get into the contortions herself - Quinn used her head and face but drew the positions from a yoga expert.

Found Here:

Jean Giraud (Moebius, Gir) (b. 8/5/1938, France)

Jean Giraud lives one of the most interesting double lives in comics history. Under his own name, he is the artist of the legendary 'Blueberry' western series, and under the pseudonym of Moebius, he is one of the most innovative artists of the 20th century. After having followed several art studies since a very young age, like at the School of Applied Arts in Paris, Giraud drew his first comics and illustrations for Far-West ('Frank et Jérémie'), Sitting-Bull, Fripounet et Marisette, Âmes Vaillantes and Coeurs Vaillants in the mid-1950s. He served his military service in Algeria, where he collaborated on the army magazine '5/5 Forces Françaises'. Back in civil life, he learned the finer points of the comics profession from Jijé, whom he assisted on the episode 'La route de Coronado' of the western series 'Jerry Spring' in Spirou. He additionally worked with Jean-Claude Mézières on the collection 'L'Histoire des Civilisations' of Hachette in 1961-62.

Found Here: http://lambiek.net/artists/g/giraud.htm

Denge sound mirrors

By the mid-1930s, a vast and varied network of listening devices had been envisaged, enclosing the Thames Estuary and the south-east coast in what Paul Virilio (writing of the German defenses which would later loom along the other side of the English Channel) has called “a carpet of trajectories.” The remnants of this doomed project, the architectural remains of a technology gradually overcome in the late 1930s by experiments with radar and a generalized eruption of the acoustic realm, are still to be seen at certain points along the coast. These long-decaying but still startlingly sculptural structures are monuments to both past and future, their eerie archaeology also a reminder of the whole panoply of technologies of the immaterial that have proliferated in the military sphere, the space of war now dominated by the grotesque intersection of implacable abstraction and fragile flesh.... (more)

Found Here: http://web.ncf.ca/ek867/2007_07_01-15_archives.html

Spectacular remnants of a dead-end technology, the three "listening ears" at Denge near Dungeness in Kent are the best known of the various acoustic mirrors built along Britain's coast. A forerunner of radar, the sound mirrors were intended to provide early warning of enemy aeroplanes (or airships) approaching Britain.

The mirrors did work, but the development of faster aircraft made them less useful, as an incoming aircraft would be within sight by the time it had been located. Increasing ambient noise made the mirrors harder to use successfully, and then radar rendered acoustic detection redundant.

There are three different designs of sound mirror at Dungeness;
from the left are the 200', 30' and 20' mirrors.

Found Here: http://www.ajg41.clara.co.uk/mirrors/dungeness.html

Tim Biskup Skulls

Tim Biskup (b. Santa Monica, CA. 1967- ) is a Southern California fine artist whose work has been shown worldwide, including galleries and museums in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, Kyoto, Barcelona, Berlin, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires and Melbourne.

Long recognized for his complex color and design theories and a decidedly populist aesthetic, Biskup has amassed a cadre of loyal fans and collectors. Recent years have seen the artist tend towards more complex, personal and conceptual work while maintaining a commitment to visual experimentation.

With a consistent output of original artwork, prints, sculptures, books and other editions Tim Biskup has produced a body of work that extends into the far reaches of the art and design worlds. In 2004 he opened Bispop Gallery, a small retail shop and exhibition space located in the Old Town section of Pasadena, California.

Noodle Dance | Gorillaz

At age 10, Noodle arrived on the Gorillaz' doorstep in a FedExNME. She could not speak any English beyond the word "Noodle", thus earning her the alias. She quickly got settled in England with the Gorillaz, and was accepted as the fourth member of the band. crate, in response to the ad they placed for a guitarist in the

In Rise of the Ogre, it is revealed that during the band's hiatus in November, 2003, Noodle went back to Japan to find out the truth about her past after being haunted by strange nightmares while on tour. Upon her return to Japan, Noodle regained her memory after hearing the code-phrase 'ocean bacon' at a restaurant. There she coincidentally met with her creator/mentor, Mr. Kyuzo, who was working as the head chef in the restaurant, and who explained the memories she had regained. It turned out that she was one of the test subjects in a secret government super soldier project, but she was trained specially as a musician. As a result, she is a master of many weapons, languages, and musical instruments, but her specialty is the guitar, both as a musical instrument, and an instrument of destruction. Out of the 23 children created for the project, Noodle was the only one to survive; the others were all destroyed by the government. Mr. Kyuzo had smuggled her to safety in England after reading the aforementioned ad placed by the other three Gorillaz members in the NME; he had specifically chosen the Gorillaz because he was aware of the usual international success of English bands and he believed that Noodle could enjoy success in relative obscurity. The other two code-words (one to erase her memory and the other to turn her into a frenzied killing machine) are known only to Noodle and, presumably, Mr. Kyuzo, though Murdoc has a very keen interest in finding out what they are.

Noodle regained the ability to speak English, along with her memories, and was the first member of Gorillaz to return to Kong Studios. She was alone at Kong studios for nearly six months, during that time she was composing the majority of the Demon Days album. Her composition of the album crafted a specific message, which would explain the more 'crafted' sound to that album, as opposed to the debut which was composed by Murdoc and 2D, which had a grimier, more spontaneous sound. She is probably the least vocal of the band, but became the most vocal of the band when it came to describing the album, its themes, and what it means.

Found Here: http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=13700208&albumID=353332&imageID=3281603

& Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noodle_(Gorillaz)

Firefox - Animated Gif (1)

October 6, 2008

Firefox - Animated Gif (1)

Filed under: Animated GIF, Movie, Retro, Sci-Fi — Sci-Fi-O-Rama @ 8:43 am

Here’s something a bit different that’s pretty certain to send my Bandwidth cost’s through the roof - an animated Gif loop - as made popular by FFFFound.com! This is taken from the 1982 Clint Eastwood Cold War / Sci-Fi Thriller “Firefox”

Found Here: http://www.sci-fi-o-rama.com/category/genre/movie/

Barry Windsor-Smith - Thoth Amon

Scan Taken from Paper Tigers 1977 release“The Flights of Icarus”.

Barry Windsor-Smith is a British comic book illustrator and painter whose best known work has been produced in the United States. His international acclaim came as the original artist for Marvel Comics’ Conan the Barbarian from 1970 to 1974, where he rapidly evolved a sophisticated and intricate style, introducing elements from diverse artistic influences to graphic storytelling…Read more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Windsor-Smith

Barry also has his own extensive portfolio site at: http://www.barrywindsor-smith.com/

Found Here: http://www.sci-fi-o-rama.com/

I Know What You Didn't Do Last Summer | Blu

You didn't do what Blu did. While we might have spent our summers painting, partying, enjoying the warm weather, and travelling I doubt many of us were able to approach the level that our friend here takes it. His work is contstantly developing, growing, mutating, and pushing things to a new level. The update of his website from this summer proves it. He has also released MUTO, his unreal wall animation, in high quality for download on his website.

Make sure to check out Blu's website:
www.blublu.org

And to download MUTO in High Quality (under noncommercial common creative license!)
Go to:
http://blublu.org/sito/video/muto.htm

Found Here: http://blogmodart.rebelmobile.de

Key Molecule for Life Found in Habitable Region of the Galaxy | Space Sugar's a Sweet Find

A sugar molecule linked to the origin of life was discovered in a potentially habitable region of our galaxy.

The molecule, called glycolaldehyde, was spotted in a large star-forming area of space around 26,000 light-years from Earth in the less-chaotic outer regions of the Milky Way. This suggests the sugar could be common across the universe, which is good news for extraterrestrial-life seekers.

"This is an important discovery as it is the first time glycolaldehyde, a basic sugar, has been detected towards a star-forming region where planets that could potentially harbor life may exist," Serena Viti of University College London said in a press release.

Previously, glycolaldehyde had only been observed toward the center of the galaxy, where conditions are thought to be too extreme to host habitable planets.

Glycolaldehyde is a key ingredient for life. It helps to build Ribonucleic acid (RNA), which is thought to be the central molecule involved in the origin of life on Earth. Glycolaldehyde is a monosaccharide sugar, the basic unit of carbohydrates. It can react with the chemical propenal to form ribose, the building block of RNA.

"The discovery of an organic sugar molecule in a star forming region of space is very exciting and will provide incredibly useful information in our search for alien life,” said Keith Mason, chief executive of the England’s Science and Technology Facilities Council.

The finding, made with the IRAM radio telescope in France, was announced Tuesday and will be published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

First detection of glycolaldehide outside the Galactic Center / arXiv:0811.3821v1

See Also:Biologists on the Verge of Creating New Form of Life

• Forgotten Experiment May Explain Origins of Life
• Life on Earth - and Other Planets - May Have Originated in Space

Images: 1) Serge Brunier; 2) Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF

Found Here: http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/11/sugar-molecule.html

Space Sugar's a Sweet Find

02.07.05

When people take a sabbatical, they often joke that they are going to ponder the meaning of life. In 1998, Jan M. Hollis, a senior scientist in NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Computational and Information Sciences and Technology Office, chose a different focus for his sabbatical. He decided to study the molecular origin of life in the universe. "There are some researchers, like those in the SETI effort, who hope that E.T. phones home," Hollis says. "What I am doing is investigating whether the conditions for the molecular origins of life as we know it exist in space." His recent discoveries have provided new clues to this age-old mystery and offer support for an alternate theory about how life began on our planet.

Image to right: Artist's rendering of the sugar molecule, glycolaldehyde. Credit: Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF

Scientists generally hypothesize that life must have begun with the evolution of simple molecules into the more complex molecules such as sugars, amino acids, and other "pre-life" molecules that are regarded as life's molecular building blocks – the so-called biomolecules. Hollis, an astrophysicist, decided to conduct a search in space for these key molecules that are necessary for the origin of life. He concluded that the most likely class of molecules to search for in our galaxy would be simple sugars in the giant molecular clouds from which stars and planets form. Because sugars are associated with both metabolism and the genetic code, two of the most basic aspects of life, Hollis rationalized the discovery of any sugar in space would increase the likelihood that life may exist elsewhere in our galaxy.

Hollis chose for the search the simplest sugar, glycolaldehyde. A molecule comprised of two carbon, two oxygen, and four hydrogen atoms, it is an important component that can react to form more complex sugars such as ribose. Ribose is a building block of nucleic acids such as RNA and DNA – the carriers of the genetic code in living organisms.

Hollis formed an observing team, requested time on a radio telescope, and waited for more than a year before the experiment was finally scheduled. In 2000 the research efforts of Hollis' team were rewarded. In the star-forming region near the center of our galaxy they found glycolaldehyde – the first evidence of an interstellar sugar molecule.

Molecules rotate end-for-end, and as they change from one rotational energy state to another, they emit radio waves at precise frequencies. The "family" of radio frequencies emitted by a molecule forms a unique set of "fingerprints" that scientists can use to identify that particular molecule. Hollis' team detected glycolaldehyde by observing faint radio emissions from a large ensemble of the molecules in the interstellar cloud. However, while glycolaldehyde was identified, there was no information in the original experiment regarding where and how much of the molecule was found in the gaseous cloud.

Images above: Graphic panels illustrating processes that may produce complex molecules in cold interstellar space. Click on each panel to enlarge. Credit: Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF

In 2001 Hollis and collaborators conducted a second experiment using a multiple radio telescope system, called an interferometer, which permits spatial imaging of molecular emission. The interferometer experiment showed that, unlike most other large interstellar molecules, glycolaldehyde is not confined to the hot core of the gaseous interstellar cloud. In fact, during the second experiment the team found glycolaldehyde in an area where temperatures were only 8 degrees Kelvin above absolute zero (which translates to minus 445 degrees Farenheit!) All molecular motion stops at absolute zero. Moreover, they found evidence that these molecules are very widespread.

Hollis and collaborators again probed the same interstellar cloud in 2002 and discovered the sugar alcohol of glycolaldehyde known as ethylene glycol, the primary ingredient of automobile antifreeze. The importance of finding two sugar-related molecular species together indicates that the synthesis of more complex sugars is likely occurring in interstellar clouds. Hollis and his team further discovered in 2003 that the source containing these interstellar sugar-related molecules is centered on a star-forming region that contains enough mass to make approximately 2,600 new stars as massive as our Sun.

Such large molecules are first produced on surfaces of dust grains when an interstellar cloud of gas and dust experiences a shock wave. This can easily happen during the collapse phase of star formation when material collides. The dust grains are typically about a micrometer in size and are coated with a variety of ices that contain simple molecules. The resulting shock of the colliding material provides the energy required to produce glycolaldehyde from simpler molecular species that reside on the grains. In turn, the ethylene glycol is produced from the glycolaldehyde when two hydrogen atoms successively react with a glycolaldehyde molecule. The shock also serves to free molecules from the dust grains, distributing glycolaldehyde and ethylene glycol into the gas on a widespread spatial scale. After the shock wave passes, the glycolaldehyde and ethylene glycol that have been released into the gas phase rapidly cools, forming the so-called post-shock gas.

Sugar formation, as with much of the complex molecular chemistry in space, occurs in the solid phase on or in a variety of ices that coat interstellar grains. Most land-based chemistry occurs in the liquid phase, primarily with water, thus the widely accepted theory that life on Earth began in a "primordial soup." While these two chemistry scenarios are very different, the end results can be very similar. The possibility of early impacts from comets bringing both the water supply and the sugars and other compounds that are life's building blocks to the Earth's surface has been a scientific theory for years. Once those sugars were free from their interstellar freezer and were steeped in the Earth's warm waters, they could have easily combined with other carbon compounds and eventually formed RNA and DNA.

"One thing is clear – a lot of prebiotic chemistry occurs in an interstellar cloud long before that cloud collapses to form a new solar system with a central star and orbiting planets and comets," Hollis says. "This suggests that the molecular building blocks necessary for life to arise on a newly formed planet get a head start in interstellar clouds." Planetary formation is such a hot process that biomolecules would be destroyed in the process. However, comets are formed in a much colder process within the same interstellar cloud, and are frequent space visitors that can supply fresh molecules to a new planet that has finally cooled down. Supporting the notion of complementary theories for the molecular origins of life, Hollis maintains, "Many of the interstellar molecules discovered to date are the same species detected in laboratory experiments specifically designed to synthesize prebiotic molecules. This fact suggests a universal prebiotic chemistry."

Whether the sugars formed here on Earth or in an interstellar frozen nursery, one thing is certain: this discovery was an important one in trying to trace the origin of life on Earth. So much so that Discover Magazine named it one of the 100 most important discoveries in 2004, number 26 to be exact.

Found Here: http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/starsgalaxies/interstellar_sugar.html