- Salman Rushdie has always been an extremely compelling
figure, the same way anyone would be if they were a world-famous author with a
price on their head courtesy of an Iranian religious foundation.
Rushdie has lived in seclusion since Ruhollah Khomeini sentenced him to death
in 1989, for basing a fictional character on the Prophet Muhammad in his novel
“The Satanic Verses.” The question for Rushdie now becomes whether or not it
makes a difference that in light of Rushdie’s new memoir, the price on his head
has been raised to a robust $3.3 million. According to the foundation,
Rushdie’s murder would stop others from disrespecting Islam’s founder. Never
mind the fact that many younger people who oppose Islam have little or no idea
who Rushdie is and wouldn’t give a second thought to his death, because if this
group of radical kooks says it, it must be so. Rushdie, who was born in India,
released his new book, “Joseph Anton,” describing the nine years he spent in
hiding after Khomeini sentenced him to death. The author resurfaced for a radio
interview last week and addressed he parallels between the anger at his novel
and the past week’s violent protests by fundamentalist Muslims offended at the
trailer for a crude film mocking the prophet posted on YouTube in July. Rushdie
came out of hiding in 1998 after a reformist Iranian president, Mohammad
Khatami, announced that his government had no intention of carrying out the
death sentence. However, certain ass-hatted hardliners in Iran insist that
Ayatollah Khomeini’s religious edict, or fatwa, cannot be rescinded. Ayatollah
Hassan Saneii, an Iranian cleric whose foundation first offered millions for
Rushdie’s murder, isn't backing down either. “As long as the exalted Imam
Khomeini’s historical fatwa against apostate Rushdie is not carried out, it
won’t be the last insult. If the fatwa had been carried out, later insults in
the form of caricature, articles and films that have continued would have not
happened,” Saneii said. Whatever you need to tell yourself, Hassan. Continue
raging against Rushdie and anyone else you think has insulted your religion
because as we all know, nothing screams, “You should follow my religion because
it’s the best” quite like murdering anyone who disagrees with it and says so.
As for Rushdie, he tweeted a suggestion over the weekend that his followers
read an essay by William Saletan headlined, “Internet Videos Will Insult Your
Religion. Get Over It.” It’s reassuring to know that someone has a bit of
perspecitve in this situation………
- How could “Jurassic Park” been worse and more of a
monstrosity? If James Cameron had directd it, that’s how. Cameron, speaking at the
Titanic Museum in Belfast, claimed he was nearly selected to direct the
big-budget dinosaur flick and consdiering what unwieldy behemoths his recent
projects have become – “Avatar,” “Terminator 2” and the utterly unwatchable
four-hour disaster that was “Titanic” – the thought of him taking the
“Jurassic” concept to those lengths is terrifying. Cameron said he attempted
the rights to the Michael Crichton novel but was beaten out by Steven
Spielberg. “I tried to buy the book rights and he beat me to it by a
few hours. But when I saw the film, I realized that I was not the right person
to make the film, he was. Because he made a dinosaur movie for kids, and mine
would have been aliens with dinosaurs, and that wouldn't have been fair,”
Cameron said, presumably with a straight face. Where the aliens in the story
would have come from is unclear, but leave it to Cameron to mix in absurd plot
elements and ideas and come away with a truly ridiculous film. “Dinosaurs are
for 8-year-olds. We can all enjoy it, too, but kids get dinosaurs and they
should not have been excluded for that. His sensibility was right for that
film, I'd have gone further, nastier, much nastier,” Cameron added. Spielberg
not only cranked out the first “Jurassic Park” film, but also directed its
disastrous 1997 sequel “The Lost World.” After that disaster, he turned the franchise
over to Joe Johnston for “Jurassic Park III,” the third and most recent
installment in the series. Amazingly, sadly and inexplicably, there will also
be a fourth film made because two mind-numbingly bad sequels were not enough.
Cameron is busy with his own unnecessary and outlandish sequels as he is in
pre-production on “Avatar 2” and “Avatar 3.” The films will be shot
consecutively, although neither has a scheduled release date. Maybe there’s
still time to add alien, mutated dinosaurs to the story………
- Dorks of the world, raise a juice box in celebration and
revel in this moment. The term “maximum warp” has long existed in
the lexicon of “Star Trek” fanboy losers, but thanks to a NASA scientist who
never gave up the dream, it is one step closer to reality. Although Miguel
Alcubierre, a physicist from Mexico, figured out how a warp drive would work
back in 1994, Alcubierre believed the concept was simply too costly and would
require far too much energy to actually be viable. Nearly two decades later, NASA
scientist Harold White has revisited the idea and claims he has figured out a
feasible way to make a warp drive work. He has improved upon Alcubierre’s
version of warp drive, which involves a football shaped space craft, which
would be attached to a ring made out of a collection of odd materials. The ring
would theoretically compress space in front of the craft and expand space
behind it, allowing whoever is in the spaceship to travel faster than the speed
of light, without actually breaking the speed of light. It may sound
complicated and it is, but the bottom line is that the ship would remain in a
bubble of unchanged space time, so a passenger would not go through all the
issues someone would go through as they are exceeding the speed of light. White’s
version succeeds by overcoming a major problem with Alcubierre’s model, which
would require an amount of energy comparable to that of the mass-energy of the
planet Jupiter. To combat this, White has changed Alcubierre’s flat ring into
something more donut shaped. This redesign would greatly reduce the amount of
energy required and the ship could be powered by the sort of technology that
NASA used on space shuttle missions decades ago. White presented his findings
at the “100 Year Starship Symposium,” where the future of space travel was
discussed. He is currently working out his theory in a NASA laboratory and
presently has built only a mini-version of the drive. A real warp drive is
still light years away……….
- Claims of great geological finds, scientific discoveries
or miracles of any order are dubious when coming from Russia. Skepticism is the
proper response when Russian scientists
claim that a gigantic deposit of industrial diamonds were found in a huge
Siberian meteorite crater during Soviet times and that these stones could
revolutionize industry. The Siberian branch of Russian Academy of Sciences is
touting the find in the Popigai crater in eastern Siberia as a treasure trove
containing "many trillions of carats" of so-called "impact
diamonds.” Even though these diamonds are used for technological purposes, not
for jewelry, their value is still high and if the Russians are being truthful,
the diamond find would be a boost for the country’s economy. The supply of
impact diamonds vastly exceeds the currently known global deposits of
conventional diamonds. Nikolai Pokhilenko, the head of the Geological and
Mineralogical Institute in Novosibirsk, theorized that the minerals could lead
to a "revolution" in various industries. He said the impact diamonds
from the crater could be twice as hard as conventional diamonds and therefore
have superlative industrial qualities, but insisted they pose no threat on the
global diamond market. “They can't upset a diamond market because it is shaped
by diamonds for jewelry purposes,” he said. The hardness of the diamonds has to
do with the fact that they include other molecular forms of carbon, along with
high temperatures at the moment of explosion when a giant meteorite hit the
site. As the Russians tell the story, the Popigai deposit was discovered by
Soviet scientists in the 1970s, but was left unexplored as the Soviet
leadership opted for producing synthetic diamonds for industrial use…….
- In case anyone has missed it, the NFL’s replacement
officials are still a joke after two weeks of game action. Whether it’s a side
judge assigned to work a New Orleans Saints game being revealed as a Saints homer
after a media outlet checked his Facebook page or Eagles running back LeSean
McCoy revealing that one of the officials for his team’s game Sunday telling
him on the field that he had McCoy on his fantasy football team and needed him
to play better, the comedy of errors has been both funny and infuriating. The
circus hit new heights Monday night, when the crew working the game themselves
to be completely incapable of keeping a game moving and keeping up with the
fast-paced world of professional football. On the Monday Night Football stage
in front of a national audience, this band of misfits were one giant brain fart
throughout the game. There was the six-minute delay late in the first quarter
while they attempted to straighten out what happened when Broncos running
back Knowshon Moreno fumbled and players on both sides were pushing and shoving
in a pileup. In a scene more likely to be seen in a baseball game, players came
off the bench to get into the scrum and coaches came off the sideline to get
involved. Players were screaming in officials’ faces from inches away and a few
even put their hands on the men in stripes. Rather than assert control over the
situation, the officials seemed rattled, overwhelmed and overmatched. They had
no clue how to restore order and afterward, only one penalty was issued, to Falcons
defensive end Ray Edwards, who was identified as only “93 red.” No one was
ejected for the melee, not even Broncos center J.D. Walton, who grabbed an
official and pulled him away from the pile. Normally, the officials are the
ones yanking players off the pile, not the other way around. Oh, and the
officials appeared to have botched the call and awarded possession to the wrong
team, so factor that in as well. The rest of the night wasn’t much better, as Broncos
coach John Fox screamed at the officials and appeared to get a flag for
unsportsmanlike conduct at one point, only to have the officials pick up the
flag and act like it never happened. There were other instances where the
officials seemed rattled and influenced by screaming players and coaches on the
sidelines. Hopefully commissioner Roger Goodell was watching the debacle and it
inspired him to increase his offer to the league’s regular officials, who
remain locked out………..
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