News & Not News Megathread

New Horizons will make its fly by of Pluto around 7:50 AM (Eastern) on July 14 and is expected to be less than 7,800 miles above the planet's surface - to put that into perspective, if the probe was to view Manhattan from the same distance, its lens would be able to capture ponds in Central Park. So, exciting times! Hoping to see really detailed images of the planet.

Latest Images of Pluto from New Horizons

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/latest-images-of-pluto-from-new-horizons

nh-pluto-bw-series-7-6-2015.jpg


nh-pluto-color-7-6-2015_0.png


These are the most recent high-resolution views of Pluto sent by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, including one showing the four mysterious dark spots on Pluto that have captured the imagination of the world. The Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) obtained these three images between July 1 and 3 of 2015, prior to the July 4 anomaly that sent New Horizons into safe mode.

The left image shows, on the right side of the disk, a large bright area on the hemisphere of Pluto that will be seen in close-up by New Horizons on July 14. The three images together show the full extent of a continuous swath of dark terrain that wraps around much of Pluto’s equatorial region. The western end of the swath (right image) breaks up into a series of striking dark regularly-spaced spots, each hundreds of miles in size, which were first detected in New Horizons images taken in late June. Intriguing details are beginning to emerge in the bright material north of the dark region, in particular a series of bright and dark patches that are conspicuous just below the center of the disk in the right image. In all three black-and-white views, the apparent jagged bottom edge of Pluto is the result of image processing. The inset shows Pluto’s orientation, illustrating its north pole, equator, and central meridian running from pole to pole.

The color version of the July 3 LORRI image was created by adding color data from the Ralph instrument gathered earlier in the mission.

Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI

Last Updated: July 6, 2015
Editor: Tricia Talbert
 

Kompozinaut

Sylph Sword
US occultation ceremony set for August 21, 2017. :femto:

solar-eclipse-2017-usa.jpg


As it stands, I live in the path of the total eclipse, but I don't know if I'll still be living here in 2 years.
 
Wes Craven, Horror Maestro, Dies at 76.

Wes Craven, the famed writer-director of horror films known for the Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream movies, died Sunday after a battle with brain cancer. He was 76.

Craven, whose iconic Freddy Krueger character horrified viewers for years, died at his home in Los Angeles, his family announced. Survivors include his wife, producer and former Disney Studios vp Iya Labunka,

Craven claimed to have gotten the idea for Elm Street when living next to a cemetery on a street of that name when growing up in the suburbs of Cleveland. His five Nightmare on Elm Street films were released from 1984-89.
Similarly, Craven's Scream series was a box-office sensation. In those scare-'em-ups, he spoofed the teen horror genre. The movies frequently referenced other horror movies.

Craven’s first feature film was The Last House of the Left, which he wrote, directed and edited in 1972.

Here invented the youth horror genre again in 1984 with the classic A Nightmare on Elm Street, which he wrote and directed.

He conceived and co-wrote Elm Street III as well, and then after not being involved with the three more sequels, deconstructed the genre a decade after the original, writing and directing Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, which was nominated as best feature at the 1995 Spirit Awards. His own Nightmare players, Robert Englund, Heather Langenkamp and John Saxon, played themselves in the film.

In 1996 Craven reached a new level of success with the release of Scream. The film, which sparked the phenomenal trilogy, grossed more than $100 million domestically, as did Scream 2 (1997).

Between Scream 2 and Scream 3, Craven, offered the opportunity to direct a non-genre film for Miramax, helmed Music of the Heart (1999), a film that earned Meryl Streep an Academy Award nomination for best actress.

That same year, in the midst of directing, he completed his first novel, The Fountain Society, published by Simon & Shuster.

Craven again pushed his genre boundaries with the 2005 psychological thriller, Red Eye, starring Rachel McAdams, Cillian Murphy and Brian Cox. And in 2006 he wrote and directed a romantic comedy homage to Oscar Wilde featuring Emily Mortimer and Rufus Sewell as a segment in the French ensemble production, Paris Je T’aime.

Craven then produced remakes of The Hills Have Eyes (2006) and The Last House on the Left (2009). Craven’s most recent written and directed film, My Soul to Take (2010), marked his first collaboration with Labunka, who also produced Scream 4.

Craven had recently signed an overall television deal with Universal Cable Productions and had a number of TV projects in development including The People Under the Stairs with Syfy Networks, Disciples with UCP, We Are All Completely Fine with Syfy / UCP, and Sleepers with Federation Entertainment.

He also was executive producing the new Scream series for MTV.

Craven had recently written and was to direct the Thou Shalt Not Kill segment for The Weinstein Co.'s Ten Commandments miniseries for WGN America.
 

Vampire_Hunter_Bob

Cats are great
I was at a comedy show last night when I learned he had passed. The bar held a moment of silence.

In other news: Alabama Fisherman Rescue Kittens from the Warrior River (video in link).
http://www.al.com/news/birmingham/index.ssf/2015/08/watch_alabama_fishermen_rescue.html

Jason Frost, who lives in Hueytown, and his friend Brandon Key were out on the Warrior River near Bluff Creek Saturday morning when they heard a splash and saw something swimming across the water toward them. They weren't sure exactly what it was until they heard the meows.
 

Griffith

With the streak of a tear, Like morning dew
http://www.mediaite.com/online/msnbcs-live-tour-of-sbshooting-killers-apartment-is-most-awful-thing-ever/

HOLY SHIT! For reporters, these people sure lack the inquisitiveness to ask themselves compelling questions like, "Am broadcasting morbid and potentially sensitive information about dead killers and their living children, let alone trampling a potential crime scene like the day after a mass murder that's currently under investigation? Should I maybe double check with the authorizes about this? Naaaah, the slumlord let me in for a 1000 bucks, so it's kosher."

Walter, I need a journalist's perspective here! Is this insanely tenacious, or just insanely salacious? Give me a professional's outrage level.

Parting Thought:

"Kent Brockman here, the Judge isn't allowing cameras inside the courtroom... *whispers* so we'll have to be real quiet." *door slams in his face*
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
It was a terrible editorial decision, likely done without any consideration of the implications.

In other words, it's cable news.
 
Physicists Detect Gravitational Waves, Proving Einstein Right - http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/12/science/ligo-gravitational-waves-black-holes-einstein.html?_r=0
 
Johnny Apples said:
Oh my God, that's awful :judo:
Out of all the icebergs melted by global warming, why couldn't it have been particularly this one?!
Yeah, pretty screwed up incident. From 160,000 to 10,000, just like that. Global warming is a real b!tch.
 
JMP said:
This happens a lot here in Greece. There are a lot of goverment buildings that havent got anyone working there. In case you need something, there is someone telling you that said person is on an errand and that he should be back in around half an hour. That person, then calls the other fella who then starts to get to work. I encountered many problems when i tried to get my work permit. The person incharge was on "holiday" for quite a while and all the other people didnt know what the hell they were doing.
 
Joe Chip said:
This happens a lot here in Greece. There are a lot of goverment buildings that havent got anyone working there. In case you need something, there is someone telling you that said person is on an errand and that he should be back in around half an hour. That person, then calls the other fella who then starts to get to work. I encountered many problems when i tried to get my work permit. The person incharge was on "holiday" for quite a while and all the other people didnt know what the hell they were doing.
That is crazy and sounds very frustrating! :mozgus:

http://www.space.com/32546-interstellar-spaceflight-stephen-hawking-project-starshot.html
This just seems so impossible, tiny crafts the size of postage stamps traveling such an enormous distance. It would be pretty amazing. :isidro:
 

Griffith

With the streak of a tear, Like morning dew
AIM Going Offline

https://aimemories.tumblr.com

*breakglass.wav*

Like everyone else, I haven't used it in years, but do have a lot of fond memories communicating with everyone from my buds in high school, Wally and Aaz, to my wife. Going to miss those old "Direct Connect Wars" with Wally most of all (Barret: "My name is Albert Wesker." *ominous strings*)
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
Re: AIM Going Offline

Griffith said:
Like everyone else, I haven't used it in years, but do have a lot of fond memories communicating with everyone from my buds in high school, Wally and Aaz, to my wife. Going to miss those old "Direct Connect Wars" with Wally most of all (Barret: "My name is Albert Wesker." *ominous strings*)

Yeah man, it sure takes us back. And are we even really better off now?
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
Re: AIM Going Offline

Aazealh said:
Yeah man, it sure takes us back. And are we even really better off now?

No, we aren't. The tech behind chat platforms has become more streamlined, but features have regressed. I know people really love certain platforms like Slack and Discord. I've used them both extensively, but they lack basic features that made AIM such a crazy, weird thing. With F12 you could record 10 seconds of whatever sound was running through your PC. It was nominally for recording short voice clips, like a conversation. But me and Griff made it into a fucking artform by finding abstract/hilarious combinations of music/sounds + images. Every other chat platform since has been a disappointment...
 
Used to use AIM a lot in the early to mid 2000's alongside Yahoo Messenger. AIM was better than Yahoo or MSN back then. Remember ICQ? It was big for us my first year in college but the mania slowly died down. I haven't logged into AIM since 2009 and hearing this news, I kinda regret it. I moved to GChat ever since.

Walter said:
I know people really love certain platforms like Slack and Discord. I've used them both extensively, but they lack basic features that made AIM such a crazy, weird thing.

We recently got Slack at work and after much protest (from me because it didn't make much sense for the inner workings of my firm on a day to day), I signed up for it. Now ironically, I'm the only one actually logged on to it every day and using it. Everyone else is signed off or just not interested.
 
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