Sunday Evening Cinema: Coming Soon (2008) Thai Horror

Plot: Shane (Chantavit Dhanasevi) is a theater projectionist who has promised to bootleg a Thai horror film which had been getting a lot of hype. While sitting in the theater with his DV-cam, he begins feeling that something is not quite right. When the movie is over, a sense of deja vu overtakes him. The events just depicted in the film are happening again, and this time it is no fantasy.

Alien Planet | Full Documentary

Explore the possibilities as we take a look at what could be an alien biosphere extrapolated by Earths best minds.

Analytic Thinking Affects Religious Belief

People who are intuitive thinkers are more likely to be religious, but getting them to think analytically even in subtle ways decreases the strength of their belief, according to a new study in Science.

The research, conducted by University of British Columbia psychologists Will Gervais and Ara Norenzayan, does not take sides in the debate between religion and atheism, but aims instead to illuminate one of the origins of belief and disbelief. "To understand religion in humans," Gervais says, "you need to accommodate for the fact that there are many millions of believers and nonbelievers."

One of their studies correlated measures of religious belief with people's scores on a popular test of analytic thinking. The test poses three deceptively simple math problems. One asks: "If it takes five machines five minutes to make five widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?" The first answer that comes to mind—100 minutes—turns out to be wrong. People who take the time to reason out the correct answer (five minutes) are, by definition, more analytical—and these analytical types tend to score lower on the researchers' tests of religious belief.

How to make a ghost box clearer for EVP

"I thought I would just show you a simple way on how to make the ghost box clearer using a simple cardboard box and aluminum foil to block radio waves. I apologise for the look of it as it does look like my packed lunch lol, but I can assure you it does work on dampening a lot of radio signals. This method will make any feint EVP's a lot more audiable. Blocking the airwaves does have its benefits but it also has it drawbacks, but fine tuning things to find an optimal amount of noise is what I am trying to do at the moment."

Obiwan Kenobi Charge With Hit and Run

A California man who legally changed his name to “Obiwan Kenobi” was released from jail yesterday after spending five days in custody following his arrest on a hit-and-run count.

Kenobi, 37, has been charged with leaving the scene of a five-car accident last month in Roseville. According to cops, Kenobi’s reckless driving triggered the chain-reaction collision.

After investigating the March 19 accident, the Roseville Police Department busted Kenobi Saturday on a felony hit-and-run charge and booked him into the Placer County jail, where the adjacent mug shot was snapped. At the time of his arrest, Kenobi was wanted on an outstanding warrant charging him with misdemeanor petty theft.

Kenobi was released from custody yesterday and placed “on electronic monitoring,” according to a spokesperson for the Placer County Sheriff’s Office.

Formerly known as Benjamin Cale Feit, Kenobi changed his name in 1999 in response to a radio stunt tied to the release of “Stars Wars: Episode I.” A California station offered $1000 to the first listener to legally change their name to that of the fictional Jedi master.

Kenobi is due to appear April 30 for a status conference in Placer County Superior Court.

[The Smoking Gun]

56 Episodes of Star Trek at the same time, with sound

If you wanted to re-watch the classics but couldn't find the time, here's your chance. 56 episodes, the full first 2 seasons, simultaneously, and with sound! You'll be finished in no time ;-)

Done with a little bit of python, avisynth, and a lot of time. I replaced the season 1 episode 1 pilot by the first episode of the third season, because it was too long.

DIY Star Trek phaser pops balloons and makes a cool noise

Is that phaser set to kill or stun only?

New tomb for ghost of Chernobyl

Last week, on the 26th anniversary of the world's worst nuclear disaster, work began on a gigantic structure that will entomb the remains of the stricken reactor building, a task that should be completed by 2015. April Yee reports from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine...

Related

■ Ukraine marks Chernobyl's anniversary
■ Lithuania's nuclear dreams
Topic Nuclear energy

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At the exit of one of Chernobyl's administrative buildings on to the strip of land outside the infamous nuclear plant, a red ticker above the door flickers with three real-time readings: the time, the temperature and the radiation level.

The fluctuating working conditions at the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster, where radiation levels at times rise high enough for workers to withdraw mid-shift, complicate even routine tasks such as mowing the lawn or supplying cement.

Consider the task now at hand.

On Thursday, the 26th anniversary of an explosion and start of a meltdown at Chernobyl's reactor unit 4, construction began on a 24,000-tonne steel structure to replace the patchwork shell that today covers the remains of the destroyed reactor.

The new seven-layer cladding, 20 metres thick at some places, includes a positive-pressure void designed to keep radioactive dust from escaping.

The cladding is to come from Turkey; the 600,000 bolts from Italy; and the workers from Lebanon, Syria, Ireland, India, the Philippines and farther afield.

By the time of its scheduled completion in November 2015, when it will be rolled like a railway car over the old reactor sarcophagus, the structure will be as heavy as three Eiffel Towers and roomy enough to contain a stadium or a Statue of Liberty. The total cost for the project is estimated at €1.2 billion (Dh5.84bn).

"It's a prototype, and it does not exist anywhere else in the world," says Nicolas Caillé, the project director at Novarka, the contractor involved in the project. "You have to do a perfect job."

The quest to entomb Chernobyl's remains has been a matter of urgency since the accident on April 26, 1986. After a fire broke out at the reactor, the former USSR deployed helicopters to drop 5,000 tonnes of boron, sand and lead on to the site to combat the blaze and contain radioactive materials.

Soon, an estimated 60,000 workers from around the Soviet Union began cleaning the site and erecting a concrete structure to seal the remains of the plant.

The workers, known as liquidators, received varying doses of radiation depending on how soon they were deployed and whether they worked in critical areas such as on the roof.

Because of decay and fears that the hastily built structure would collapse, it has been repaired over time while Ukraine tried to raise funds to build a more permanent structure.

The new arch - designed to last for 100 years - will include a massive red crane imported from the United States that will allow Chernobyl's workers to dismantle the plant beneath the protective shell.

The hope among Chernobyl's management is that by the time they are done with the work about half a century from today, Ukraine will have found and prepared a deep underground site for the long-term storage of highly radioactive waste.

The shell will also help to forward the plans of politicians in Ukraine and Belarus to resettle some of the areas that were contaminated by the radioactive fallout that also spread across parts of Western Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Mykola Azarov, the Ukrainian prime minister, said in a speech last week that he hoped to "revitalise" some of the areas where, 26 years later, radiation levels have fallen.

Last Wednesday, workers repainted a kerb white and mowed a lawn to prepare for a visit from Viktor Yanukovych, the Ukrainian president, who was to arrive the next day for the ceremony to start the shell construction and honour Chernobyl's legacy.

"Before 26 April, 1986, the world had an illusion of security," Mr Yanukovych said during his visit that day. "After this date, no one and nowhere can be sure of a safe future. And the events at Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant have only confirmed this bitter truth of life."

Chernobyl's existing sarcophagus looks like an industrial interpretation of a cathedral.

Did a UFO Sighting Cause Pakistani 737 Crash?

Unconfirmed reports indicate that the crash of a 737 in Pakistan last Friday may have been caused by a UFO sighting by the pilot minutes before the accident.

In the Russian news report below, rumors that air traffic controllers received a report from the pilot of the Bhoja Air Boeing 737 minutes before the crash on approach to the Islamabad airport included an account of being buzzed by a triangular-shaped unidentified flying object.

Pakistani officials have initially blamed the crash on a combination of extremely bad weather, pilot error and aging equipment. Eyewitnesses have stated that the jet was already consumed by fire as it approached the airport and was too low and traveling too fast.

Whether or not a UFO actually interfered with the flight or not is pure speculation at this point. It is whether the pilot believed an unidentified aircraft was interfering with the flight which is important, because of the resulting distraction and confusion.

Here is how Russian TV is reporting the incident. The video is in Russian, obviously, but enough information can be understood by the English language words used and the images inserted to understand what is being said. Anyone who can provide a translation is asked to leave a comment below.

[Gather.com]

Artist Makes Life-Size Mummy Out Of $200 Of McDonald's Food

Artist Ben Campbell stumbled upon a connection between modern society and ancient Egypt: we're all yearning for immortality. Whether through mummification and pyramids or Botox and preservatives we all just want to live forever, don't we? Campbell then embarked on a way to connect the ancient and the modern in the most disgusting way possible, eventually constructing a life-size Mummy out of mushed up McDonald's food.

Campbell went into the details of the process in an e-mail to HuffPost Arts: "First I dried the food out and ran it through a blender. Next I mixed it with a clear epoxy resin that's used primarily for marine applications and poured it into rubber molds of the mummy form that I had prepared earlier." He continued, "The last part was using the mixture to stick the cast parts to each other and cleaning the sculpture up." Although he said it "wasn't disgusting," we are not sure we agree.