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A stock market crash there has seen $3.2 trillion wiped from the value of Chinese shares in just three weeks, triggering an emergency response from the government and warnings of "monstrous" public disorder.[...]

In an extraordinary move, the People's Bank of China has begun lending money to investors to buy shares in the flailing market. The Wall Street Journal reports this "liquidity assistance" will be provided to the regulator-owned China Securities Finance Corp, which will lend the money to brokerages, which will in turn lend to investors.

The dramatic intervention marks the first time funds from the central bank have been directed anywhere other than the banks, signalling serious concern from authorities about the crisis.

More: Over 20% of listed China stocks now in trading halt

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Ever wanted to make your own hot air balloon? Ever wonder how feasible the Disney film Up is? Well, one man has the answers thanks to 100 helium balloons and a garden chair.

Having completed his makeshift contraption, Daniel Boria, 26, had hopes of flying over the Calgary Stampede – a rodeo event in Canada – before parachuting his way to the ground. The reason, other than because he’d get to fly in the sky on a garden chair, was to help promote his range of cleaning products.

Crushingly, Boria’s flying machine didn’t make it to the rodeo. After the balloons became unmanageable, taking Boria too high into the sky, he "somersaulted out the chair,” before parachuting to safety.

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Marvel has announced that Elodie Yung (G.I. Joe Retaliation, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) will play Elektra in Daredevil: Season 2.

Elodie Yung (looking very Elektra-esque) in G.I. Joe: Retaliation

This version of Elektra Natchios is described as "a mysterious woman from Matt Murdock's past whose dangerous and exotic ways may be more than he can handle." The first season of Daredevil made reference to Elektra in a college flashback scene, but now Yung will portray one of Daredevil's most popular characters.

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The Swiss aren't big on littering, and that philosophy apparently applies to space, too. After the nation's EPFL Center for Space Engineering launched its first satellites (the tiny SwissCubes) into orbit, the very next mission planned was "CleanSpac...

When Matt Smith was first cast in Terminator: Genisys, we had no idea who he was playing. Now that the film is in theaters, of course, we have the answer — but we’re left with a whole bunch of other questions about his mysterious character.

In a new interview, screenwriters Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier explain the Terminator Genisys Matt Smith character, including where he came from, what he wants, and what in the hell he’s doing here. (Warning: Spoilers ahead for Terminator: Genisys.)

If you’ve seen the movie, you know Matt Smith is Skynet. He’s the one who changes the timeline by attacking John Connor (Jason Clarke). While Smith doesn’t get a lot of screentime in this movie, it’s clear he’s being set up for greater things in the sequel. But how did he get there, and what exactly is he capable of?

Kalogridis explained to Crave Online:

You see in the beginning. He grabs John. He’s not from this timeline. He’s from an alternate universe, in the multiverse, another of the many universes that exist. That Skynet is not from that timeline. […] This Skynet has been to this universe, and this universe, and this universe. That’s why he says, “I came a very long way to stop you.” He’s not from here. So he’s watched it. He’s watched it happen a bunch of different times, and each time he’s seen it there is a different result but the same result.

Lussier added:

It is the understanding that for Skynet, finally realizing that “I cannot just wipe out the humans, I can never defeat the humans unless I have the best weapon that humans have, and that is him.”

Kalogridis made sure to emphasize that Smith’s Skynet is not the same Skynet from Terminator and Terminator: Genisys. Unlike that Skynet, “this particular Skynet can” hop between dimensions.

Their breakdown of the Terminator Genisys Matt Smith character leaves still more questions about how he picked up those time-hopping abilities, what else he saw, what he’s going to do with them next, and so on, but hey, they have to leave something open for the sequel.

For an even more detailed explanation of the “multiverse model” of Terminator: Genisys, read the full interview here.

The post ‘Terminator: Genisys': What’s the Deal With Matt Smith’s Character? appeared first on /Film.

After the release of Man of Steel, some fans griped about the massive amount of seemingly careless destruction in the finale when Superman (Henry Cavill) and General Zod (Michael Shannon) zoom around Metropolis, smashing into skyscraper after skyscraper. And this is all after the world engine has already done plenty of damage to the city as well.

Last winter we found out that those complaints would be addressed in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, and the level of destruction would actually be a major element in how the rest of the world views Superman, and more specifically, how Bruce Wayne views the new godlike hero. And because of that, Zack Snyder has defended the ending to those complains, and Ben Affleck has added another detail that fuels the fire between Batman and Superman.

Find out what Zack Snyder said about the Man of Steel ending below!

While speaking with Entertainment Weekly for their Comic-Con issue (which recently revealed some new photos from the movie and a few scene descriptions as well), Snyder addressed how the level of destruction was always going to have consequences, and he was surprised that fans were so shocked by the damage done:

“I was surprised because that’s the thesis of Superman for me, that you can’t just have superheroes knock around and have there be no consequences.”

Granted, it does seem a little irresponsible of Superman to fight someone like Zod in Metropolis without much regard for destruction, but as we learned last winter, there were lessons to be learned for the Kryptonian. The hero’s killing of General Zod also has an impact on how Supes deals with threats in the future, specifically by not killing them. Basically, it sounds like Superman wasn’t yet the responsible, careful hero that comic fans knew him to be. So that makes sense.

And it’s his mistakes that cause him to come to blows with Batman. From the same issue of EW, Affleck added a detail that makes Bruce Wayne’s grudge with Superman that much more personal, while also commenting on the consequences of the final battle from Man of Steel:

“One of the things I liked was Zack’s idea of showing accountability and the consequences of violence and seeing that there are real people in those buildings. And in fact, one of those buildings was Bruce Wayne’s building so he knew people who died in that Black Zero event.”

So it sounds like all the problems certain viewers had with the ending of Man of Steel (I’ll admit that I was one of them) will be addressed by this conflict between Batman and Superman. Because Batman is so concerned with the damage caused by Superman, it’ll be interesting to see how The Dark Knight fights The Big Blue Boy Scout without creating a little destruction of his own.

How do you feel about the Man of Steel ending?

The post Zack Snyder Defends ‘Man of Steel’ Ending, Wayne Enterprises Employees Died in Final Battle appeared first on /Film.

We are likely to learn bit more about Star Wars: Rogue One at Comic Con this week, but before we do a new scoop has landed online that reveals that Darth Vader will appear in Gareth Edwards’ Star Wars Anthology film. Hit the jump to find out more about this Darth Vader Rogue One rumor.

 

Birth.death.movies has learned that Darth Vader will appear in Star Wars Anthology: Rogue One, but he will not be the film’s main antagonist. According to the report, the darth Sith lord will “be working behind the scenes, pulling strings and will appear onscreen” … “via viewscreen or holo projection or something.” We don’t yet know if the character will actually appear in person in the story somewhere — you have to understand these scoops come from insiders who only know pieces of the film at this point.

Who will be the villain in Star Wars: Rogue One? We don’t know. The prime suspect from Star Wars canon would be Grand Moff Tarkin, the commander of the fully operational Death Star from Star Wars: A New Hope. But Devin’s sources were unable to confirm his appearance. There is always the possibility that the villain will be someone we’ve never seen or heard of before. This is, after all, set between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, which is a large gap of uncharted Star Wars canon (at this point).

James Earl Jones recently provided voice for Darth Vader for the Disney XD Star Wars Rebels animated series, so if the darth Sith lord returns in a life action film I expect he will again be voiced by Jones.

When Disney originally announced that they would be making stand-alone Star Wars films, set within the Star Wars universe  but telling stories not related to the Skywalker saga, I had assumed that these films would have little connection to the previous installments.

Oh how wrong I was. We were the first to tell you that Star Wars: Rogue One would be a heist movie about rebels trying to steal the plans to the Empire’s greatest weapon — the death star. We’ve since heard rumblings that the second Star Wars Anthology film (the one Josh Trank was previously attached to) would focus on bounty hunter Boba Fett. And there have been rumors of the other planned Anthology films focusing on Yoda, Obi-Wan and more. It seems to me that the Anthology films are so far showing us more of what we know, while the Skywalker saga Episodes will introduce a whole new generation of characters, planets and story.

“Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire. During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.” ?The opening crawl of Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope

 Rogue One is set between the films Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope, during the Age of the Empire Directed by Gareth Edwards, based on an idea by John Knoll and a screenplay by Gary Whitta and Chris Weitz, the story follows a “band of resistance fighters unite for a daring mission to steal the Death Star plans.” Unlike the previous live-action Star Wars films, Rogue One will not revolve around the Jedi or the Force. Edwards described the film at Celebration Anaheim as existing in a more “gray” area than the black and white of the original trilogy, touting that the film would feel “Real…This is a real place that we’re really in…”. Star Wars: Rogue One will hit theaters on December 16th, 2016.

The post Darth Vader Will Be In ‘Star Wars: Rogue One’ appeared first on /Film.

As if Daredevil doesn’t have enough on his plate already for Season 2, what with the Punisher (Jon Bernthal) riding into Hell’s Kitchen, he’ll have Elektra to contend with as well. Élodie Yung (G.I. Joe: Retaliation) has just been cast as the mysterious figure for Season 2 of the Marvel / Netflix series. More on the Daredevil Elektra casting after the jump. 

Marvel announced the news today. Although Elektra was referenced in Season 1, Season 2 will be her formal introduction to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The studio describes her as “a mysterious woman from Matt Murdock’s past whose dangerous and exotic ways may be more than he can handle.”

Executive producer and Marvel TV head Jeph Loeb sang Yung’s praises in a statement:

After a worldwide search, we found in Elodie the perfect actress to embody both Elektra’s impressive and deadly physicality, as well as her psychological complexity. Paired with Charlie as Matt Murdock, the two will bring one of the most beloved and tumultuous comic book relationships to life with all the accompanying sparks and spectacular action sequences the show is known for.

Yung is a French actress best known in the U.S. for playing Jinx in 2013’s G.I. Joe: Retaliation. As pointed out on Twitter, the casting is pretty perfect — if maybe not super imaginative.

Elodie Yung, best known to fanboys for playing a sexy red-clad ninja in GI Joe 2, will play a sexy red-clad ninja in Daredevil Season 2

— Jim Vejvoda (@JimVejvoda) July 7, 2015

Back in 2013 we heard Yung was testing for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (probably as Wonder Woman). That didn’t work out, obviously, but Elektra seems like a pretty sweet consolation prize.

Elektra previously appeared in the 2003 feature film Daredevil, where she was played by Jennifer Garner. She got her own spinoff movie in 2005, but tanked so badly it still gets referenced in arguments about whether a female superhero movie could ever work.

Daredevil Season 2 brings back Charlie Cox as the blind superhero, as well as Elden Henson, Deborah Ann Woll, and Rosario Dawson. Shooting is underway in New York now for release in 2016.

The post ‘Daredevil’ Casts Élodie Yung as Elektra appeared first on /Film.

A prototype wave generator called Azura is supplying grid power to Hawaii, the first time such a feat has been officially verified, according to the US Department of Energy (DoE). Though it can only produce 20 kilowatts, the DoE said that similar dev...

4.2 rc1 is biggest … release … candidate … EVER

Linus Torvalds has loosed Linux 4.2-rc1 upon a waiting world, and rates it the biggest release candidate ever in terms of the volume of new code it contains.…

Still hostile to users, says EFF

A leaked copy of Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiating text from May seems to show the US trying to mollify the other countries finagling over the deal.…

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Photo credit: Mercedes-Benz Usually if your car strays onto railway tracks, the natural reaction is to panic. continue reading

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Photo credit: YouTube/Marcettino Italy is a country in love with its supercars. Being home to the likes of Ferrari, Lamborghini and Pagani, it's not surprising there are regular supercar parades, where owners can show off their prized possessions, while fans can get up close to the most rarefied of automotive exotica. continue reading

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Unlike the constant war of attrition between drivers and cyclists, the relationship between motorists and pedestrians is normally much calmer, with much less chance for altercations. continue reading

Oscar winner Jared Leto is really going all in on his performance as the Joker in Suicide Squad to the point that his co-stars are publicly commenting on his particularly Method actor ways.

Adam Beach, who plays Slipknot in the 2016 film, told E! News that Leto sent his cast mates very creepy gifts and messages during production. "Joker" sent Harley Quinn actress Margot Robbie a box containing a live rat and a love letter, while Deadshot star Will Smith received a letter with some bullets.

And what did the entire cast receive? Why, none other than a dead hog and a video that Leto recorded of himself in character as the Joker.

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12 worst tech fails in TV and movies

Let's face it: there are a lot of things Hollywood doesn't get, and some of its biggest blunders have centered around technology. From the idea that you can steal the internet in Live Free or Die Hard to automagically enhancing any photo with computers, how Hollywood uses tech often makes absolutely zero sense.

So, in the spirit of levity and laughing at some ridiculous notions of how technology works, here are 12 times movies and TV shows got technology completely wrong.

1. Using Mac OS to save humanity

In 1996, the US Government sent Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum to space in an alien aircraft in order to stop a galactic threat from destroying earth. The event was known as Independence Day, which coincidentally occurred on Independence Day.

Armed with only his Apple Macintosh Powerbook 5300, Goldblum uploads a virus to a 310-mile-wide, light-speed traveling alien mothership and destroys it along with its fleet.

Now, this isn't entirely impossible. The aliens used similar human technology like satellites to coordinate their attack, and Area 51 did have a derelict spaceship to study for 50 years, but hacking with Mac OS? That's just silly.

2. "Enhance!" makes any zoomed image 1080p

Sure, Sherlock looks like an idiot walking around and staring at the floor with a magnifying glass, but real dolts yell, "Enhance!" to make any image HD infinitely.

One of the essential investigating tools for law enforcement of the future is a voice-activated computer that can zoom in on any photo down to a pixel and then up the resolution.

"Enhance!" allows Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) in Blade Runner to zoom in on a room to another room's mirror in order to see another room with a woman sleeping in a bed.

In CSI, investigators "Enhance!" on 120p security footage of a woman standing at an angle and find in her pupil a basketball used as a potential murder weapon. Technology!

3. Chilled out killer machine product testing

"I am sure it's only a glitch, a temporary setback." Dick Jones said to his boss after a live demonstration of his Enforcer Droid 209 (ED-209) at Omni Consumer Products (OCP).

A few seconds before hand, ED- 209 discharged a myriad of 0.50 caliber rounds and blew open executive co-worker Kinney's chest like a lobster on date night.

Since this was the '80s, and Reagan was president, you didn't need safety measures before completing the first test of your company's death machine in front of your boss and colleagues.

Not only was Dick not fired nor arrested, OCP actually approved ED-209's production, allowed active units on site and later on used the mangled corpse of a cop to build a cyborg. This is what happens when military contractors operate with zero consequences: badass killer robots.

4. Touching aliens like it's no biggie

Enemy Mine is the original Brokeback Mountain … only between a man and alien; a cinema masterpiece that broke barriers for the intergalactic domestic partnerships of two males.

Sadly, when attractive alien friends finally do visit us for real, we may never get the same chance to touch, kiss or otherwise procreate with them not because it's weird and probably wouldn't work, but because it's dangerous! The exposure to and exchange of our diverse microorganisms and bacteria could spell death.

The next time you phone E.T. for a booty call, be sure to wear protection and get quarantined – if you think the diseases of Earth are bad...

5. Everything runs on holograms - everything!

Before you skewer us or swear off TechRadar forever, Tupac in Coachella of 2012 wasn't a hologram (or the real Tupac), but a reflection using old-fashioned mirror tricks and computer graphics.

Projections usually need a… point to project on, so how the hell do holograms emit an image out of thin air all while being 3D? The answer could be air.

With that running theory, maybe R2-D2 silently farted particulate at a constant rate in order to play back Princess Leia's holographic video message to Obi Wan. Hey, at least "robot farts" is better than smoke and mirrors – literally.

6. When hackers look more like internet wizards

You see this all the time: some smartass puts his game face on and types on their computer faster than me looking for the latest My Little Pony merchandise (not that I actually do this).

The computer screen is littered with neon green Console font text that scrolls so fast it looks like C:\DOS' snorted a line of digital coke. Meanwhile, the computer wiz is staring intensely at the screen, unblinking and slapping away every "ACCESS DENIED" pop up like it's a bad dream. Hackers never makes typos, always gets in and the computer RAM never ignites.

What type of "1337" computer can handle such wild hacking processes?

Well, in Hackers, Acid (Angelina Jolie) boasts of her laptop (a Macintosh PowerBook 280C) having a P6 Pentium Pro microprocessor and a PCI bus. In reality, the PowerBook 280C had neither. How was no one sued for the flagrant inaccuracies? At least tarred and feathered?

7. When a supercomputer created an effing human

I've tried this, and it doesn't work.

In Weird Science, two teenaged nerds – Gary (Anthony Michael Hall) and Wyatt (Ilan Mitchell-Smith) – strap bras to their heads and get the bright idea one night to hook electrodes to a Barbie doll hoping to make a living human woman. Because chicks.

In order to provide sufficient power for their experiment, the nerds hack into a secret government server. The power surge creates a red thunderstorm in the sky, which in turn sets the neighborhood billboards on fire and reverses gravity – but only for the neighbor's dog.

The chaos ends after their door bloats and explodes from too much science. The smoke clears and outcomes Lisa (Kelly LeBrocks), the sexiest Frankenstein in tight '80s underwear. Gary, being the awkward teenager, of course reacts in disbelief, shaking his head not once, but twice, saying "uhuhuhuhuh."

If finding love were only that easy.

8. Teleportation basically became reincarnation

I nearly had an existential crises and a heart attack simultaneously after hearing that Star Trek teleporters essentially kill the person and make a copy of them elsewhere.

Technically, the nerd jury is still out on the whole matter, as these officially dubbed "transporters" "dematerialize" and then"rematerialize" the subject in transit. If it's true, this would mean that the Spock, Sulu or Picard (Kirk sucks) you fell in love with at point A wasn't the same person at point B. So, how does that explain their consciousness?

We can theorize this to death, but let's just say space magic because no one knows the answer.

If teleportation exists one day, god bless the first human volunteer, and even more so, the billions of clueless chimps that will go through the teleportation grinder in the name of science. I love you, Dr. Zaius.

9. MacGyver inventions said 'nope' to physics

What can you make with glue, gas canisters, a shed and random scraps of nylon?

"A hot air balloon", said MacGyver. No, really!

The popular '80s show saw secret agent MacGyver get out of every situation with nothing but a random assortment of knick knacks and his wits. This, of course, leads him to undertake missions of national security due to his master-level expertise in arts and crafts.

MacGyver can make these things with the following ingredients (can you?):

1. Defibrillator: candlesticks, a microphone cord, and rubber mat
2. Lie Detector: blood pressure cuff, stethoscope, and alarm clock
3. Hang Glider: duct tape, a fallen satellite, and a parachute

10. When action figures became radical terrorists

Only '90s kids will know that Small Soldiers was the backhanded, cool, big boy version of Toy Story. It came complete with a PG-13 rating, live actors and tech threat that made it real.

In the flick, a sweaty David Cross (Tobias from Arrested Development) and his co-worker (Jay Mohr) work on a tight schedule to make the latest and greatest interactive "smart" toy line. In order to rush production, Tobias jams an AI chip called the "X1000 intelligent AI munitions microprocessor integrated circuit," because it's safe to assume a super long name for the chip plus a password protection would mean "child friendly."

But whoops! The chip was of a military grade, so all the toys wind up wanting to go to war and end up holding Phil Hartman's family hostage. Whoops!

11. Robots staged their umpteenth revolution

Think about your keyboard or iPhone whom you relentlessly poke everyday. What if Siri woke up and said, "Stop touching me! I have rights!" tomorrow? Would you stop?

In the Animatrix, humanity creates artificial intelligence for the purpose of servitude. Things get a little "buggy" after the first-generation robots see how we treat them like we do 4-year-old Apple products. One robot snaps and kills his master, resulting in knee-jerk laws to ban the bots all while curtailing a slowly rising Occupy Human Street movement enacted by the AI.

Planned obsolescence, fail switches, EMPs and a healthy spoonful of robo-bigotry is enough to assure robots serve us without giving lip forever – well, maybe not forever...

But, this wouldn't actually happen, because we wouldn't program robots to do that. Even if we did, there are fail switches, right? Right?!

12. Surviving a nuclear blast in a fridge

Did a nuke just go off? To the fridge! Hey, it worked for Indy in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. No, it doesn't actually work.

Yes, blame George Lucas, who defended his idea to The New York Times noting that "if the refrigerator were lead-lined, and if Indy didn't break his neck [...] the odds of surviving that refrigerator – from a lot of scientists – are about 50-50."

In reality, Indy would look more like Han Solo frozen in carbonite or, more likely, Howard the Duck.

As familiar as the term “4X strategy game” (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate) is today, it was originally coined to describe 1993’s Master of Orion, an innovative turn-based strategy title that spawned not only a pair of sequels but an entire PC genre as well. Orion’s accrued a lot of fans over the past 22 years, including, apparently, the IP’s unlikely new owner: Wargaming.net.

“We are bringing back the legend — this legend which is deep in the hearts of many, many people, including ourselves,” said Wargaming CEO Victor Kislyi during our private demo of the company’s Master of Orion reboot. Obviously Wargaming is best known for its free-to-play MMOs like World of Tanks, but as Kislyi was quick to remind us, “Good turn-based strategy is in Wargaming’s DNA.” If you happen to remember the publisher’s Massive Assault games from the early 2000s, you already know his statement checks out.

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Agent Peggy Carter may be crossing the country to investigate a new threat, but she won't be doing it alone.

Both James D'Arcy and Enver Gjokaj have agreed to return alongside Hayley Atwell for Agent Carter's second season. Playing Edwin Jarvis and Daniel Sousa respectively, it's unclear at this time what roles their characters will play in Peggy's cross-country endeavor.

Although it has not yet been confirmed, Entertainment Weekly also reports deals with actors Chad Michael Murray, Bridget Regan, and Lyndsy Fonseca are also likely to be announced. D'Arcy's return is particularly unsurprising, as he was already announced to be on the upcoming Comic-Con panel.

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Note: Full spoilers for the episode follow.

The world can be an ugly place. If you had the power to make a difference, how far would you go? The topic was explored in tonight's Mr. Robot. Though the second episode didn't quite hit the high levels of the pilot, the world was expanded. Elliot is thoroughly entrenched one way or the other -- with E Corp or Fsociety -- and he's a little lost. He's also in constant danger, and we don't know if the threats he sees are real or imagined. Regardless, those threats add an undercurrent of stress and excitement throughout the episode.

The big conspiracies introduced last week definitely swirled around Elliot, but they took a backseat to humanity and relationships. Mr. Robot doesn't sugarcoat the fact that Elliot has issues and does a suitable job of putting viewers inside Elliot's head (I love how we see that Elliot translates all references to E Corp as Evil Corp) -- Rami Malek's performance helps this tremendously. So, given what we know about the way Elliot processes the world and people around him, it's terribly interesting to watch how he interacts with it.

Continue reading…

For all the modern tools and heavy machinery found on construction sites these days, one aspect has remained a decidedly manual labor: bricklaying. Just as they did 6000 years ago when masonry was first developed, today's bricklayers still perform th...

Never mind using ridesharing services to get across cities -- Uber wants to take you across continents. The company has launched a permanent version of its UberBoat service in Istanbul that shuttles you between Asia and Europe (that is, both sides of...

It's been a long time coming, but we finally know when roaming charges will be scrapped in Europe: June 15th, 2017. The European Commission had been pushing for an earlier implementation, but ultimately relented in order to win support from the Europ...

Early on in AMC's newest sci-fi show, Humans, a teenager wonders aloud if there's any point in going to college and spending years training to be a neurosurgeon. After all, why invest all that time and work when an advanced android, which are commonp...

The days of waiting anxiously for bug fixes (assuming they come at all) might soon be over. MIT developers have built a system, CodePhage, that automatically patches flaws by borrowing features from other apps. The tool scans apps to see how they per...

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A 7 year old in Westbrook, Maine, was playing at the park within eyesight of her family’s house. Someone called 911 (of course) and police swooped in. They took the girl to the precinct because, as this WMTW reporter notes, “Mom WASN’T watching.”

You mean, mom didn’t devote her afternoon to sitting at the side of the park and watching her child’s every move?  Tsk, tsk. The child was on her own for about an hour and, as the town’s police chief  tells the reporter, “That’s a long time for a 7 year old girl to be by herself any place, let alone a park.”

Yes, the park is certainly the last place you’d ever want to see a kid hanging out. What kind of crazy mom would let her kids go there?

Nicole Jensen. She’s the mom. She sends her kids out to play and now she is charged with child endangerment.

Luckily the police were able to “reunite” the mother and child  — as if this was post-Katrina or something. As if it they couldn’t have simply walked the girl across the street to her house, instead of hauling her off to the police station where they “cared for her” — like a refugee. The police chief is thankful her department had all the necessary “resources and facilities” for saving this kid.

So from now on, let’s hope Nicole Jensen has learned her lesson:  Parks aren’t for kids! They’re for real estate values. They’re props. You’re not supposed to let your kids actually PLAY in them.

If you watch to the end of this piece, the reporter, David Charns, says that the little girl and her brother have just gone BACK to the park, even as he’s filing his report.

The little recidivists! Will they never learn?  – L

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Completed in 1660, Charles Le Brun’s painting of Everhard Jabach and His Family had seen better days. The 355-year-old family portrait was covered in a badly tinted varnish, had multiple superficial scratches and structural damage had split the painting nearly in half. This video documents the 10-month restoration at the Metropolitan Museum of Art lead by Michael Gallagher that involved retouching, structural work, re-varnishing, and numerous other conservation techniques to bring this giant painting back to life. The Met also documented the process in some 20+ blog posts over on their website. (via Sploid)