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Showing posts from 2012
July 18th: Meet the New Captain Marvel (and her writer!)
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The Marc Kane (Angela) really likes the edgy haircut! Okay, this is my equivalent of taking you in my pocket to San Diego Comic Con International 2012! (Mind the half dollar there next to you)! So, as I was saying in the Spider Panel post (which I pick up here and in the next): Cullen Bunn had just filled us in on Flash Thompson’s adventure in the Microverse (along with Scarlet Spider) in “Minimum Carnage” and we got to see the preview covers. The room’s buzzing over Dan Slott’s phone-conference discussion of Amazing Spider-Man as it builds up to #700, with the wall-crawler’s 50th anniversary and birthday (complete with more Lizardmania. Now, we sing “Happy Birthday” to Kelly Sue De Connick, as she tells us about CAPTAIN MARVEL, announced at this year’s Wonder Con. Air Force pilot Carol Danvers is a classic Type-A personality; this high-achievement-oriented approach was inherent in her pro-feminist conception back in 1977’s MS. MARVEL: a career woman who excelled while
Bonsai, it's a long and lonely climb (Post 400)
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Shang Chi here, at 47 days, is the only survivor from our pine seeds. Shang Chi appears a little lighter in some photos due to camera flash. He's grown with a curve about half way up his trunk, then continuing upwards, to a present height of nearly three inches. You can see the early plants retain the seed over their budding branches for a few days (the "hat" falls off or can be eventually removed by spraying or light grooming). Here we see the cutting has drawn the water successfully enough to sprout a leaf! We believe that the transplanting process, from the germination container to pot, was too much for the plants. With six of them sprouting successfully, the safe transplanting of each one became problematic. I later included an attempt to cultivate a magnolia from a cutting; it has remained green but has not shown root development. We keep it in a coffee mug. Shang here was taken up as an entire "root ball" fro
Baby Lyuba: Woolly Mammoth Meets the World
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Lyuba has become the world's best-preserved woolly mammoth, and an exhibition in Hong Kong has brought the creature out to the public eye! As mentioned in the Huffington Post, this find actually dates back to 2007, when a reindeer herder found the one-month old baby's body---frozen for 42,000 years. The frigid river muck kept the mammoth so well preserved that during its Chicago exhibition in 2010, one observer remarked it "is almost perfectly intact, right down to its baby fat." All moisture is now removed from the body by means of specially designed "dessicative packaging." Another mammoth named Yuka, with strawberry-blonde hair was found recently as well, frozen after a cliff fall, apparently, in Siberia. This one is about 11,000 years old. Its body contains signs of being cut upon by ancient people. If well-preserved sperm can be recovered, it's possible scientists will be able to clone this long-extinct creature. The Russian reindeer herder fou
First new Bonsai sprouts
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Marc is overjoyed: the five seeds germinated for three weeks yielded a sprout noticed Easter Day! For thirty two days, these seeds were planted and kept in the refrigerator. Cold stratification is the process of activating a seed's germination. The process feeds the seeds the information that they have experienced season hibernation; by bringing it into warmth, sprouting occurs quickly. The condensation of the greenhouse gave her much excitement; the plant is taking root. She asked me what to name it; I was in the mood to sing the words "Monster River" like an imitation of "Old Man River" I suppose. This was the ninth day of results after taking the soil into sunlight. But then, a nice surprise. Monster River has two siblings! Since the Rising and Advancing of the Spirit is making Marc Kane so happy, I thought I'd call one "Shang Chi"; the other's called "Zeitgeist" for now. Here they are, noticed today.
Devil Slayers!
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This is the second scene preview to my Mystic Order of Defenders pitch coming up this summer at Comic Con. I'll link to the first scene last summer. http://integr8dfix.blogspot.com/2011/06/cold-open-devil-slayer-in-mystic-order.html Scene two Devil-Slayer steps from his swirling Shadow Cloak into a well-kept, modestly-furnished office. His clothing becomes a simple dress shirt and pressed pants, and with a flourish, he snaps the cloak once, revealing a doctor’s coat, which he dons. “Blessed toothache,” he thinks, as he puts his hand to his jaw. “No reason I couldn’t heal this, myself…but there’s just been no time to stop between my secret war…” “and my responsibilities.” He stands in profile beside a plaque, certifying Eric Simon, Psychiatric Doctor. He closes his eyes, focusing his energies inward to cease his pain. “There really is little time for pain…and less so for Eric Simon Payne…that lost soul…” He touches a calendar page, featuring a Matisse flower. “…who would cele
Spread your wings and fly. Really!
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My new Facebook friend Jarno is all up in the air over his latest project. As of this past December, Jarno Smeets, a mechanical engineer from the Netherlands who enjoys outdoor activities, has created his own set of WINGS, and they have taken him over 100 yards. To be specific, he's created a "wing-suit," which he's tested and developed on over 500 jumps. He's in a three man "wing suit" team called FlyLikeABrick; flight formation group jumps are called "flocking". Each team member drops down into his or her "slot" one at a time, in a process that calls for "awareness," as pilots describe it: awareness of the time of the flight, surrounding conditions, one's own limits, the relative height, and other factors. He's been consulting wing-suit pilots at drop points since his inaugural 2003 flight. Jarno writes: "there is a famous saying, that 'with great power comes great responsibility' (I've heard t
Casimir Effect: the secret of real levitation
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Photo from UK Telegraph article, listed but not linked here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1559579/Physicists-have-solved-mystery-of-levitation.html Can a hidden effect that causes things to stick together like dry glue on a tiny scale be the secret to levitation---of objects...even people? Consider the gecko, walking on the ceiling---how? There's a molecular force that creates a friction allowing the feet to adhere without incident. (We could just as easily be excited here about the possibilities of scaling the wall like Spider-Man!) ON the tiny level, one might construct nano machines, with parts invisibly small to the naked eye. These microelectrical machine systems, however, can encounter friction. When you are building circuits at the micro-chip level, it's here the Casimir effect becomes a problem to be studied. This is probably a major factor in the evolution of processors, which were doubling in speed every eighteen months by the turn of the millenium. Great. So
Richard Rorty, philosopher
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I was just reading about Richard Rorty's critique of analytical philosophy and the continental school--chuckling over the possibility Steve Gerber had him in mind when he selected a name for his disc jockey and friend of swamp dwellers, Richard Rory. I came to Dr. Rorty's views through looking up Quietism, and got THERE from Discursive Meditation, which is not the same thing but is apparently elided with it historically. Let me share with you this from his last essay, Life with Fire (2007)
Kudzu Mountain Gypsy Cave Makes the News
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Article: http://rn-t.com/bookmark/17384012 Two new looks for Valentine's! Cave Spring's newest original art contribution made the Rome newspaper! The wine bottles, repurposed into evocative canvasses, make great room show pieces to enliven your mantle, desk or shelf. Contact them at kudzumountaingypsycave@gmail.com or if you're in Rome, stop by Imagine Hair Salon and Art Gallery on Broad Street!
Opening the human story with science!
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There's more knowledge in this little girl's pinkie than some people have in their entire head! Your body is full of information: about your environment, about your daily routines and habits, and about your parents. Pains and scars tell about experiences---even if we're not sure just WHY we have a particular hurt, like my friend Rick and his mysterious ache in his side, which the doctor couldn't illuminate. So what is a 40,000 year old pinkie tip able to tell us about the human race---long before any written record? http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/science/gains-in-dna-are-speeding-research-into-human-origins.html?_r=1&smid=fb-nytimes&WT.mc_id=SC-E-FB-SM-LIN-DTH-013112-NYT-NA&WT.mc_ev=click
HTML: beginning the code journey (a tutorial)
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HTML has not been around for many years. November 1990 marks the day of the first web page and back then there were little to no HTML standards to be followed. A group called the World Wide Web Consortium was then formed and have since set the standards that are widely accepted and we will base our teachings around them. Since my initial plan to get into my own integr8dsoul.com was foiled for now by a lost password, I took up Semeicardia's idea: go to Tizag.com and try programming tutorials there on notepad. Mostly, I copied code and pasted it into the notepad, saving my changes. Tizag has a link straight to a notepad; you can also access your computer and search for "notepad" and you'll get one. My next option was to download something called "Crimson Editor" as a more sophisticated substitute for the notepad, which I can also continue to use. My next lesson told me two things about code: is a necessary command, and so is . I was asked to examine these