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Adventures of Superman #1

Comics| Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, expressed dismay about the backlash to DC Comics hiring sci-fi author, and outspoken gay-rights opponent, Orson Scott Card to write Adventures of Superman. Card is a board member of the organization, which works against the legalization of same-sex marriage. “This is completely un-American and it needs to be stopped,” Brown said. “Simply because we stand up for traditional marriage, some people feel like it’s OK to target us for intimidation and punishment.” NOM last year launched boycotts of Starbucks and General Mills because of their support of same-sex marriage initiatives. [The Huffington Post]

Retailing | Gabi Shepherd, owner of Olympic Cards and Comics in Lacey, Washington, talks about the importance of courting teenagers, who are often not welcome in other retail stores: “I have found that if I am going to make this the community center that I want to make it then the kids are a big part of that. It makes them feel good when they come in and someone knows who they are. It’s important. It’s respect.” [ThurstonTalk]

Mark Waid

Creators | Mark Waid delivered the closing keynote address at the Tools of Change conference in New York City, sketching out the economic reasons for starting his Thrillbent digital comics site and some of the issues of digital vs. print comics. [Good E-Reader]

Creators | Gail Simone talks about the joys of meeting her fans and writing strong women characters, and how Batgirl was an inspiration to her as a child: “I had red hair and my mother had red hair,” Simone said. “But no one else I knew had red hair. And I was teased, called names. Then there’s Batgirl. She has red hair. And she’s a hero.” [News-Record]

Creators | Scott Snyder talks about bringing back The Joker in the “Death of the Family” arc in Batman. [Comics Alliance]

Gun Machine

Creators | Warren Ellis discusses his new prose novel The Gun Machine and the difference between writing prose and writing graphic novels. [The Morton Report]

Creators | Bill Baker talks to Gary Scott Beatty about his horror anthology Tales of Fear. [The Morton Report]

Comics | Nathan Harmon looks at Arthurian themes in Hellboy. [Sequart]

Manga | Jason Thompson takes a look at Cipher, which he dubs “very probably The Most ’80s Manga Ever.” [Anime News Network]

Graphic novels | Working with faculty from the University of South Carolina, a group of incarcerated teenagers have put together a graphic novel about how to avoid getting AIDS. [WLTX]

Microsoft is launching a new Video Messages feature for Skype this week. The company has been working on the feature for a number of months, having previously revealed it a little early, and it debuts on iOS, Android, and Mac. Designed for online and offline messaging, Video Messages lets Skype users send up to three minutes of video to each other. Although it won't initially be available for Windows users, those using the Skype for Windows desktop client will receive the messages with a link to view them online.

The feature works on Android and iOS by using the font facing camera, with an option to switch to the rear. You can send up to three minutes of video to users who are either online or offline and the video will be delivered in the chat part of Skype. The Mac client is very much the same, but there's an optional to download the video messages you receive. It's certainly no Vine rival as the feature doesn't let you record in loops, but Skype tells us that it's an early beta still in testing.

"We’re pleased that there’s interest for Video Messaging to come to Skype for Windows and Skype for Windows 8," says a Skype spokesperson. "We’ll let you know when we expand the service to the platform." We tested the feature out on all available platforms and it seems to sync the video messages just as you'd expect. If you want to download the messages on the Mac side, they're available in MP4 format. The Video Messages feature is available to all US and UK Skype users initially, with a rollout to other countries expected in the future.

Skype Video Messages hands-on pictures

• Related Items video mac feature android ios skype video messages

Google Maps is now offering photo tours of NFL stadiums. Having already given similar treatment to thousands of landmarks throughout the world, a move into sporting venues seems like a natural progression of sorts for the Maps team. First on the list is Lucas Oil Stadium — home of the Indianapolis Colts — and football fans can expect what Google is calling a "VIP" 360-degree look at the venue. Best of all, you're not limited to the gridiron. Google's tour promises a unique experience that users normally wouldn't have access to without visiting Indianapolis and paying $10 for a guided stadium tour. But tours at Lucas Oil Stadium are limited to an hour in length; with Maps, there's no limit on the time you can spend exploring.

Google Maps Lucas Oil Stadium photo tour

"You can march out of the tunnel and down the field towards the end zone, just like Andrew Luck did all season," the Maps team writes in a blog post detailing the new project. Maps can take you directly inside the Colts home locker room, where Peyton Manning hung his helmet for so many years. All three stadium concourses are also included for anyone that'd like to get a lay of the land ahead of a real-life visit to Lucas Oil. Finally, you'll be able to check out three suites normally reserved for top-dollar celebrity and corporate guests. So what if you'll never be able to walk into the Quarterback Suite? At least now you can brag to friends that you know exactly what it looks like.

Google says "Lucas Oil Stadium" and "Colts Stadium" are the two search terms that will get you started on the tour from a desktop browser or compatible Android / iOS hardware. You can also find it by visiting Google's Street View Gallery.

• Related Items nfl stadium indianapolis colts colts google maps national football league tour sporting venue photo tour Google

Representative Cohen Says Woman Is His Daughter NewsChannel5.com MEMPHIS, Tenn. – U.S. Representative Steve Cohen said a woman who he sent a seemingly flirtatious tweet during the State of the Union Address is actually his long lost daughter. He said he only found out about 24-year-old Victoria Brink three years ago. and more »

Feb 14th 2013 By: Joseph Hughes

If you had asked me 15 years ago, I probably would have told you that "Frank Miller directed a Gucci commercial" was possibly the very last sentence I ever expected to type. And yet, here we are. Inspired by the look of his Sin City films, the ad is for a new line of fragrances titled Gucci Guilty Black. It stars Evan Rachel Wood and a leather clad, motorcycle riding Chris Evans who, judging by the look on his face, is taking this role very seriously. Miller also makes a cameo appearance.

Gucci has posted the director's cut of the commercial online, and you can check it out after the cut.

After my first few moments playing with Graph Search I immediately recalled Advanced Search, a feature Facebook dumped back in 2008. As a Freshman at the University of Michigan in late 2007, Advanced Search let me easily see which Freshman girls were interested in Scottish twee pop and Stanley Kubrick movies. No dates or hookups ensued, but I was nevertheless captivated by the ability to perform such granular searches for people by interest — drilling down by class year, gender, age, and even by where a person was from. Facebook generated dozens of results in response to any query I inputted. In part this was because at the time people, especially college kids, used to religiously fill out all their profiles with all their favorite bands, books, and movies. The social network had only been around for a couple years, and everyone was still giddy about having a "clean" place to post things about themselves online, since MySpace had become a messy junkyard of auto-playing music embeds and party promoter spam.

Regardless of how many people gain access to Graph Search over the coming months, these results will not change

In 2007, clicking the Starship Troopers link on my profile populated a list of other nerds who loved the movie. No Facebook landing pages existed for movies and interests. Today, however, clicking Starship Troopers takes you to a page operated by social media gurus at Sony Pictures Entertainment. Over time, Facebook turned over all band pages to the bands, and all movie pages to the studios. Before you knew it, posts from these pages turned up in the News Feed, and soon these posts evolved into "ads." This means Sony now fills me in on upcoming Starship Troopers sequels right in my News Feed, and when you’ve liked dozens of pages over the years, it all adds up. Likes have become so commoditized that I, a self-professed Facebook fanatic, have become stingier with them, and so have many of my friends. When I like Nike or a restaurant nearby, I am acutely conscious that I'm signing up for News Feed updates for life.

Fast forward to today, where Graph Search decides what’s important in large part based on Likes. If you search for "sushi my friends like in New York City," Facebook returns sushi restaurants friends have liked or checked in to. The restaurant recommendations from friends are few and far between, and in the case of sushi restaurants, are completely empty for me. Each restaurant recommendation is accompanied by the friend(s) who liked it, but since none of my friends have liked a single sushi restaurant in New York City, no results appear. Regardless of how many people gain access to Graph Search over the coming months, these results will not change. If you search for the more general "sushi restaurants in New York City," the results are better, but still not anywhere close to Google, Zagat, or Foursquare’s caliber of recommendations. The top suggestion is Kumo Sushi, a restaurant known not for its great sushi but for its $32 all-you-can-eat sushi and sake bombs deal. The deal has likely drawn a higher than usual number of young patrons and thus Facebook check-ins, which ranks it higher in Graph Search. It ranks higher than Nobu.

The restaurant recommendations will not improve until Facebook finds a way to incentivize users to check in, like, and rate restaurants. Users provide Facebook with plenty of data about where they live and who they’re friends with, but hardly any for stuff they like to do. Ironically, in its efforts to encourage restaurants to advertise on the site, Facebook unwittingly discouraged users from inputting the critical data Graph Search relies on. This conundrum is critical to the future of Graph Search. Without data from friends about what they like, Graph Search’s most overtly monetizable aspect is useless. But the game isn’t over yet.

Check out DATING FAILS for more Valentine's fun!

LoL by: Unknown

Tagged: connecting , horses , kissing , love , pun , relationship , stable Share on Facebook

Actress Kelly Chen from the movie  Empress and the Warriors (2008).

Awkward Valentine of the Day…: 

sekra:

For all your traumatic pick-up lines this valentine’s day: Cry harder

Submitted by: Unknown

Tagged: physics , wtf , Movie , gif , School of FAIL Share on Facebook

polarbearsarebrilliant:

Russian Meteor Strike, February 2013

[x] [x]

It’s getting real in Russia.

thefrogman:

Falcon facts.

Russian Urals: UFO - First Image Of The Meteorite Crater Cheljabinsk Russia Meteor (15/02/2013) (by TheAmazingViral)

“Dubbed the “Kanye West of walrus training,” Philip Demers says he’s more than ready to defend himself against the $1.5 million lawsuit a Niagara Falls theme park has brought against him for allegedly plotting to steal a walrus.”

- ‘Kanye’ of Animal Training Battles Lawsuit | ABC News Blogs - Yahoo!

superdames:

J. Jonah Jameson hires Carol Danvers as editor of the Bugle’s new women’s magazine.

—Ms. Marvel #1 (1977) by Gerry Conway & John Buscema, inked by Joe Sinnott

matthen:

Draw some random points on a piece of paper and join them up to make a random polygon. Find all the midpoints and connecting them up to give a new shape, and repeat. The resulting shape will get smaller and smaller, and will tend towards an ellipse!  [code] [more] [bigger version]

This a fun demonstration. Try it on paper! Or with code if that’s your thing.

How the Star Wars Kessel Run Turns Han Solo Into a Time-Traveler

In what may be my favorite Star Wars-themed science article ever written (and that’s saying a lot), Kyle Hill analyzes Han Solo’s oft-criticized description of completing the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs … and discovers he was probably a time-traveler.

The problem arises because a parsec is a unit of distance, not time. So Han’s statement implies that he found a Kessel Run shortcut. In the Star Wars universe, this famous smugglers’ route skirts dangerously close to some black holes. So if the Millennium Falcon can keep from being sucked in, it must be really fast. 

And that’s where it gets cool:

So for the purposes of calculating the Kessel Run, let’s say the Millennium Falcon is the fastest ship ever. Somehow able to withstand the forces involved (perhaps it has something to do with that sweet tractor-beam tech), we can calculate what happens when Han and his baby go 99.9999999 percent the speed of light, or 0.999999999c.

Funny things happen to time when you start traveling close to the speed of light. Time runs normally for you, but everyone else moves forward at an increased rate, covering years while you only experience minutes. What does this time dilation mean for Han?

Because the shortened Kessel Run spans 12 parsecs (39.6 light-years), a ship traveling nearly light-speed would take a little more than 39.6 years to get there. Factoring in time dilation, anyone watching the Kessel Run would see Solo speeding along for almost 40 years, but Solo himself would experience only a little more than half a day.

If you haven’t picked out the potential pitfall for the Star Wars timeline I’ll spell it out: In the time it takes Han to complete just one Kessel Run, the rest of the galaxy battles, negotiates, and force-chokes its way through almost 40 years — and pushes the date of Solo’s birth 40 years further into the past.

It gets better. Go read the rest at Wired.com.

Double Amputee Proves He Is Capable Of Anything

Youtube Direktmario

Ich hatte schonmal in den Comments aufgeschrieben, warum ich Harlem Shake für eine fast perfekte Meme halte: Es ist ziemlich leicht, mitzumachen (zwei Videosequenzen und genau ein Schnitt), hat aber trotzdem ein gewisses kreatives Einstiegslevel, so dass das Teil nicht mit schlechtem Scheiß vollgemüllt wird (Rage-Comics o.ä.), obendrein ist der Remix quasi in die Meme eingebaut, Tanz ist universelle Sprache und Harlem Shake fiel zeitlich günstig nach dem Gangnam-Quatsch. Doch, ich mag den Harlem Shake. Oben Freddy Wongs Daft Punk Mario feat WTF.

Bonustracks: Peanuts Edition, Speedboat Edition

Panzer Front.

1999, Sony PlayStation, Japan ver.

I was thinking how I don't care about balance of group vs the bad guys.

Like, then what do I care about?

I just need to know it's possible--I just need to know that someone, somewhere, with some thinking and nothing but thinking could do it.

Not by knowing the rules, not by guessing right, not by rolling exactly the right thing, not by the raw elbow-grease of pixelbitching, not by guess-what-I'm-thinking-thinking--but like actually imagining the situation and really thinking it out. And that's enough.

Because if someone, somewhere could do it, you can.

If there's way a first level party could kill that T Rex--go ahead and put it in the adventure. That's balance. If it can be done by humans: put it in.

Allegedly there are GMs who won't give you the chance to puzzle it out and who won't agree with you about what's a good idea. When I meet one I'll start worrying.

Happy Valentine's Day.


-

Frozach Submitted

1.3M views

Gangnam Style

Recently The Gordon Parks Foundation discovered over 70 unpublished photographs by Parks at the bottom of an old storage box wrapped in paper and marked as “Segregation Series.” These never before series of images not only give us a glimpse into the everyday life of African Americans during the 50′s but are also in full color, something that is uncommon for photographs from that era.

You know the saying. It’s the economy, stupid.

Thursday’s numbers show that weekly jobless claims in the US fell below 350,000, again. The data is choppy. But this has been happening a lot lately:

Traditionally, the 400,000-level is thought to be the limbo bar under which jobless claims must pass to prove  the US is creating  sustainable job growth. Claims fell 27,000 to 341,000 in the freshest data. That’s more than expected. And it looks downright rosy considering where we’ve been over the last five years:

So next time someone expresses astonishment that US stocks are where they are—despite Europe, the looming sequester, Washington incompetence and the massive US debt—you know what to say.

We sent Cara Ellison to EA to play some Crysis 3. We would like to formally apologise to Crytek and EA for having sent Cara Ellison to play some Crysis 3. Here is why:

(more…)

In June of 1945, Arline Feynman — high-school sweetheart and wife of the hugely influential physicist, Richard Feynman — passed away after succumbing to tuberculosis. She was 25-years-old. 16 months later, in October of 1946, Richard wrote his late wife the following love letter and sealed it in an envelope. It remained unopened until after his death in 1988. 

 

October 17, 1946

D’Arline,

I adore you, sweetheart. 

I know how much you like to hear that — but I don’t only write it because you like it — I write it because it makes me warm all over inside to write it to you. 

It is such a terribly long time since I last wrote to you — almost two years but I know you’ll excuse me because you understand how I am, stubborn and realistic; and I thought there was no sense to writing. 

But now I know my darling wife that it is right to do what I have delayed in doing, and that I have done so much in the past. I want to tell you I love you. I want to love you. I always will love you.

I find it hard to understand in my mind what it means to love you after you are dead — but I still want to comfort and take care of you — and I want you to love me and care for me. I want to have problems to discuss with you — I want to do little projects with you. I never thought until just now that we can do that. What should we do. We started to learn to make clothes together — or learn Chinese — or getting a movie projector. Can’t I do something now? No. I am alone without you and you were the “idea-woman” and general instigator of all our wild adventures.

When you were sick you worried because you could not give me something that you wanted to and thought I needed. You needn’t have worried. Just as I told you then there was no real need because I loved you in so many ways so much. And now it is clearly even more true — you can give me nothing now yet I love you so that you stand in my way of loving anyone else — but I want you to stand there. You, dead, are so much better than anyone else alive.

I know you will assure me that I am foolish and that you want me to have full happiness and don’t want to be in my way. I’ll bet you are surprised that I don’t even have a girlfriend (except you, sweetheart) after two years. But you can’t help it, darling, nor can I — I don’t understand it, for I have met many girls and very nice ones and I don’t want to remain alone — but in two or three meetings they all seem ashes. You only are left to me. You are real.

My darling wife, I do adore you. 

I love my wife. My wife is dead.

Rich.

PS Please excuse my not mailing this — but I don’t know your new address.

 

(lifted entirely from the indispensable letters of note)