Seriously, I was amazed. A friend tweeted this to me. If these guys ever come to Boston I will see them in concert. I have a feeling they’d do well performing at Berklee.
I have to admit, I do feel sorry for their bows.
After digging through their YouTube channel there’s some really great stuff. The video with Steve Vai is pretty amazing, too. You should check it out. Preferably with the sound system turned up to 11.
~Kelly
…I worked for a church as a wedding coordinator. I worked with people who wanted to get married in the church to arrange the details of their big day. I also attended and sometimes ran their wedding rehearsals. We had one couple who were making their arrangements from overseas and who were, apparently, HUGE Star Wars fans.
Kelly found an article recently that she knew would interest me.
One of the things about zombies that is commonly accepted within the genre is that they are dead and rotting.* And in the normal world, all dead flesh is eventually broken down and picked apart by Mother Nature, leaving only bones, which will also one day disappear. Everything from bacteria to bugs to birds to bears, all feast on whatever carrion they can find. And so one scientist finally asks, how would zombies fare in the real world? Pretty poorly, apparently. As the author puts it:
Relax. Next time you’re lying in bed, unable to fall asleep thanks to the vague anxiety of half-rotten corpses munching on you in the dark, remember this: if there was ever a zombie uprising, wildlife would kick its ass.
-Geoff
*There are notable exceptions. The zombies in films like 28 Days Later and Zombieland, as well as the zombies in the Left4Dead video games, are technically alive, but have been turned into rabid/feral monsters due to some nasty disease.
I try to not rant too often on our blog, because I prefer to talk about things that are interesting and beautiful and even uplifting. But sometimes I just feel compelled to do so because the absurdity and stupidity of something really gets to me. This is one of those times. So I ask your forgiveness as I indulge my anger a bit.
Continue reading “Denial, or where science and belief collide”
This story is just amazing. It still seems like one of those things that happens in after-school specials or in one of those Hallmark channel movies.
Miles Scott, who at age five has already been fighting cancer for three years, lives in California and like many kids his age he loves superheroes. He especially loves Batman and would apparently wear the costume quite a bit. So the Make-A-Wish Foundation decided to turn Miles’ dream into reality by transforming San Francisco into Gotham City for a day.
But the most amazing part to me is how many people, many of them random strangers, became involved. Literally thousands of people.
One of Batman’s creators drew the little boy a comic featuring villain Bane retreating from Miles as Batkid. The mayor, the chief of police, the TV news, the San Francisco Chronicle, even President Obama, all got involved. And thousands of strangers (many of them carrying Batkid signs and such) showed up to cheer him on as he “rescued” people from villains that included the Riddler and the Joker.
The links I included have a lot of good photos and video. Watch, read, and try not to tear up. I dare you.
-Geoff
Nathaniel Philbrick is one of my favorite historians. I especially love his superb maritime history books. And it turns out that one of his books is being made into a movie. Heart of the Sea is based on his book In the Heart of the Sea, in which Philbrick recounts the story of the Essex, a whaleship that was rammed and sunk by a sperm whale in 1820, far out in the Pacific Ocean. Its crew was stranded in small boats for several months until they were rescued and in the meantime they had been forced to commit cannibalism. The disaster served as inspiration for Herman Melville, who used it and his own experience on a whaler to help him create the novel Moby Dick.
The film, directed by Ron Howard, is set to be released sometime in 2014. And there are at least three actors from Game of Thrones that are also in this film: Joseph Mawle (Benjen Stark); Donald Sumpter (Maester Luwin); and Jamie Sives (Jory Cassel). Good Northmen all, and all dead, sadly.* So that frees them up to be in this film. I am looking forward to it.
-Geoff
*Technically, Benjen Stark is missing, but let’s just say that it isn’t looking good for him to be alive at this point.
Wow.
The new cover of Sports Illustrated talks about this amazing World Series win and features Big Papi and the three Boston police officers from some of the most iconic photos on the day of the Boston Marathon bombing. Those same three officers had been on a previous cover shortly after the bombing.
Geoff and I have been dealing with a pile of bureaucratic red tape so high that 1) we’re tired and 2) I know now how to spell bureaucratic without looking it up or using spell check. So, in lieu of real content I present you with More things you should be reading right now. All links are, as always, SFW.
Continue reading “More things you should be reading right now”
So Shakay sent us a link to Mental Floss. This is a website I’d heard of but not spent much time on. After reading a couple of things, one of which was about Bronies in the Air Force, I think I’ll be visiting there more regularly.
I have never heard of this particular species of turtle before, but there’s something strangely appropriate about a turtle from the Lone Star State being called a Texas cooter.
Continue reading “The best thing to come out of TX since Wendy Davis”
The Books are Taking Over... 