Hi-Sci-Fi

by Irma Arkus

With revival of Star Trek come news of gaming spinoffs, including the long awaited MMORPG by Cryptic Studios.

The game production company behind City of Heroes and City of Villains, will work on generating the first MMORPG based on Gene Rodenberry’s Star Trek universe. Moreover, the first glances reveal Captain Pickard’s ship, Enterprise NCC 1701-E, which begs the following question: how are we going to be dealing with timelines between different generations of StarTrek franchise, or are we going to see some but not all?

by Irma Arkus

The latest news on the case of the Missouri mother who impersonated a teen on myspace in order to harass her daughter’s friend is the response of EFF, urging the prosecution to drop charges currently based on misrepresentation of her myspace registration.

The idea that Lori Drew registered as “Josh Evans,” a teen boy, according to prosecutors, constitutes fraud and violation of myspace terms of usage.

EFF however, points out that establishing criminal charges for online impersonation would quite likely establish a new set of criminal charges for millions of users, eliminating any shred of anonymity available to users.

Currently, defense is requesting complete dismissal of charges.

by Irma Arkus

Now that the novelty of comic books to silver screen productions wore off, every executive of anything ever produced is aiming to get a piece of the theatrical release action. Introducing “Dragon Ball Z” on silver screen!

Quite possibly the last cartoon you would envision in a live action form, “Dragon Ball Z” promises to bring the heroes you’ve loved as a child, and turn them into something horrifying, glossy and made by Hollywood.

“You must be mistaken Irma,” you think to yourself. “This cannot be! I mean, this must be one of those projects that are sitting on some pile of to-be-approved paperwork, only to be forgotten.” And you’d be wrong.

It seems that we’ve been a bit slow on the uptake, as production on the film, aimed for 2009 release date, is already on its way. Between names like Emmy Rossum, who plays Bulma, James Marsters (one of our favorites) as Piccolo, Yun-Fat Chow as Master Roshi, and Justin Chatwin as Goku (I think the last one made me throw up a little).

Director James Wong is helming the project. Wong is better known for his work on The One (2001) and Final Destination films.

The most interesting part of this production is the response of the fans, as many are astounded that the film is a) being made into live action production, and b) that most have only recently found out that it is being made.

It seems that 20th Century Fox forgot the basic rule of nurturing and expanding the fan base of its upcoming production. Hopefully, they won’t repeat the Idiocracy experiment, and forget to tell us when the film is completed and ready for release.

This week Irma and Greg get to sit with Adam Gold, writer of Greg Milne’s upcoming feature film Without Light. We start off well, but quickly descend into feelings of elated success, promote the film shamelessly and giggle a lot.

That and news. Hold on to your seats. Time for HiSciFi

Check out Without Light HERE
Or just outright buy it and support our Greg Milne, indie filmmaker, savant and radio personality - to get a copy click HERE

Music provided by James Reyna aka melodywhore - Reyna is the composer for Without Light and you can find more of Melody Whore HERE

Love us? Have comments? Email us at hiscifi@gmail.com

by Irma Arkus

Dollhouse is the latest Whedon creation, and a highly anticipated show by millions of fans who have been left on hold for the last few years. After the wrap-up of Buffy, Angel, Firefly and Serenity, the only thing left with Whedon’s hands in it was Buffy comic book, and a failed screenplay for Wonderwoman. Now he’s back with Dollhouse.

Starring Eliza Dushku, the series is centered on lives of subjects who are reprogrammed to assume identities and functions required for variety of missions. There is a great deal of confusion in whether these are artificial beings, or just people who have had some cybernetic work “done.” In fact, the shadowy origins of the characters make up a great deal of the plotline itself, as the subjects slowly gain self-awareness through the process.

Dushku is the primary focus of the program, stretching her acting abilities to full extent. She is the wanton hotbod, a la Alias, who is to delight us, a la Quantum Leap, or even better yet, Pretender.

Whedon’s Dollhouse is a dip into Blade Runner, an homage to a predicted new world order. Just like Whedon, JJ Abrams’ Fringe, deals with aftermaths of privatized science experiments kept behind the corporate curtains.

Interestingly enough, the comparisons flying between JJ Abrams’ “Fringe,” and that of Whedon’s “Dollhouse” have been mostly dismissed by insiders, as well as themselves, as JJ Abrams explained that he too, is but a Whedon fan.

Another pertinent question is Fox. Rupert Murdoch network known for its tug-and-pull history with Whedon, may be the most curiuos choice for Whedon’s next project. Let’s face it, we’ve all been anticipated for Whedon to be adopted by a different, perhaps more interesting network. After all, as we speak, protests are lining up in front of Fox News network, with accusations of racism. Buffy + racism = odd choice.

Yet, Whedon assures us that this is all working out, somehow. He recently confirmed that yes, Fox is a curious home full of crazy people, but the people are different then the ones he dealt with before.

This also may provide an explanation for the current remarkable efforts by Whedon, to promote the show. It seems that, unlike in the past, this time around Whedon isn’t leaving anything to chance, having a far greater involvement with marketing of the show.

Whedon’s plan is to use the power of the net - not only is he to release the pilot, but will create a series of approximately 12 (number to be confirmed) prequel episodes to be widely distributed online.

Meanwhile, Whedon’s side project, “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” an online-musical featuring Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion is striking all the right chords by reintroducing Whedon to both old and new audiences. Harris, a beloved youth icon, and a great comedic talent, plays an incompetent, yet likeable villain. Fillion, on the other hand is Captain Hammer, a dreamy, yet mildly annoying superhero.

I was always of the opinion that “the more Whedon the better,” and thus far my wish is coming along.

For Dollhouse trailer see HERE

by Irma Arkus

Now that Codex Sinaiticus has proven that religious scribbles are good for one thing, and one thing only - recycling - we also got this amazing report via Slashdot, of (wait for it!) paper-based transistors!

In essence, the Portugese researchers use paper as an interstrate layer, instead of commonly used silicone or glass substrate.

The technology is so successful that tests indicate “hybrid FETs’ performance outpace those of amorphous silicon TFTs, and rival with the actual state of the art of oxide thin film transistors.”

The research was conducted at CENIMAT and led by Elvira Maria Fortunato and Rodrigo Martins.

For more information, visit Roland Piquepaille’s blog.

by Irma Arkus

The fourth century bible written between year 300 - 350, and the oldest known example of Christian scriptures in Greek, will be available for public viewing as the British Library is to make the valuable pages widely available online.

The bible contains scriptures omitted from the KJ version, including Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas. Additionally, scans show that the text has been heavily amended over centuries.

The version of the Book of Psalms and the Gospel of Mark will be available as of July 24th, with subsequent release of the remainder.

The effort to release the text into public domain view is an initiative to make the text internationally available to scholars. Until now, the Codex was only available for viewing to select clerics.

One interesting fact about Codex Sinaiticus is that one of Christian cornerstone beliefs, the story of resurrection of Jesus is not mentioned. Instead, the story simply describes disciples finding an empty burial tomb, and leaving in fear. This implies that the “resurrection” was addended by later generations of followers.

View the Codex Sinaiticus HERE.

by Irma Arkus

The comic books-to-movie are currently the latest trend in “sound financial planning” by film studios.

Now, of course, they will do something horrible and produce so much material that we’ll start hating the uber-powerful and damn handsome superheroes that used to reside on paper, only to resemble insanely rich and annoying celebrities (*btw I am sick of hearing about Vanessa Huydgens or whatever her name is…she is a teen who took her clothes off?! Why am I surrounded by stupid quotes from stupid people.)

For now, however, we are all still salivating at the thought of 2+ hours of heartwrenching thrills with some of our favorite heroes catapulted onto silver screen. The latest and greatest announcement is that Witchblade is to be made into a movie.

Michael Rymer is named as the director who will helm the project and bring his vision of turning one of my favorite characters into flesh and bone.

Rymer is well-equipped to deal with Witchblade, as a director of oh-so-pretty-yet-pretty-irrelevant Perfume (2001), Queen of the Damned (2002) - which happens to be an unforgivable creation - and many Battlestar Galactica episodes, including BSG: Razor (2007).

His track record may not be stellar, but is promising enough for Witchblade to shine again.

The script is penned by Australia’s Everett De Roche, who has more than shown his brilliant side when writing Cybergirl and Parallax.

All that is of course, nice and dandy, however, Witchblade drama does not stop at Detective Sara “Pez” Pezzini and her getting acquainted with the greatest weapon in existance. The plot in comics has thickened over the last few years. For one, we have a few Witchblade wearers, and then there are Spears of Destiny and all that jazz…so, I guess the most interesting part of seeing Witchblade produced for live action film will be to see what part of the myth of Witchblade will De Roche choose as his focal point.

More to come…

by Irma Arkus

E. Paul Zehr, a movement researcher, estimated the qualifications of Batman, and stated in his Q&A session on Scientific American, that you too can be Batman…in merely 10 to 15 years time.

Since Batman does not wield any real super powers, rather only years of martial arts training honed by incessant practice, Zehr suggests “decathlon” as a primary training ground for future Batmans: “most of what you see there is feasible to the extent that somebody could be trained to that extreme. We’re seeing that kind of thing in less than a month in the Olympics.” Zehr has a point. We’re slobs who “watch” sports, not “do” sports.

In Zehr’s opinion, Bruce Wayne’s physical qualities can be summarized as following:
“Bruce Wayne started off at about six-foot-two and 185 pounds. I gave him a body fat of 20 percent (slightly below average) and a body mass index of 26. Let’s say after 10 or 15 years, after he’s become the Batman, he’s weighing about 210 pounds and has a body fat of 10 percent. He’s probably gained 40 pounds of muscle. His bones will actually be more dense, kind of the opposite of osteoporosis.”

Apart from physical prowlice, there is also the question of gear. Bruce Wayne, as we all know, is a multi-millionnaire. So, technically, in order to become Batman, you too would need gillions of dollars, and a great R&D team.

Wanna become Batman? Your conditioning starts HERE.

by Irma Arkus

Spectrum auctions have resulted in some major cash grabs. Apparently, the CRTC pertains that funds from the auctioning of the wireless spectrum will be reinvested into growth of infrastructure in Canada.

Infrastructure? Excuse me? Hmmm. Is that not why we Canadians have been paying exorbitant amounts for our Telco services? So the Telcos can “reinvest” them into infrastructure? Am I mistaken? Sadly, no.

The infuriating news that have rattled the cages came on the heel of release of Canadian iPhone. Inflated pricing finally became the straw that broke the camel’s back, as most have winced at the opportunity to spend hundreds of dollars more a month for the luxury of having the amazing iPhone. iPhone which, I may add, is neither amazing, nor qualifies for such high fees.

To top it off, text messages, traditionally seen as a viable way of reducing traffic and giving something gratis to customers in most EU, North American and Asian nations, are now to fall play to additional fees.

Interpreted as an unmistakeable cash grab, this move struck a cord with most Canadians. For one, text messaging traffic is so comparativel small to that of voice apps, that its usage does not strain existing infrastructure.

Secondly, it is worthwhile pointing out that the fees indicated for text messaging are incredibly high for no particular reason, except for Telcos wanting to make a higher margin of profit, and possibly recoup funds spent on auctions (and fast!). 15 cents per text message is an incredibly high fee. If fees were to be raised to a flat fee of a few dollars, for unlimited text usage, the news would have gone over comparatively well.

Finally, we are faced with 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, BC. Only a year ago has the Vancouver City Council faced a flabbergasting question - what about availability of WiFi coverage during Olympics?

They had no answers, but everything seems to indicate that WiFi should and will be a public service established across the city, provided as a simple public utility, rather than some fandangled privately-owned enterpreneurial abyss of funds and desperation.

We are stuck a la Groundhog Day with our service providers, because we rely on private companies to provide public services. We keep on paying higher fees because we rely on private corporations to develop for-profit services. We keep on building infrastructure that keeps on being handed over to private companies, instead of building accessible and affordable public services. How is Canada going to build an information society, a nation of professionals and enterpreneurs, if the very access to information is being narrowed and excessively growing in costs? This is what I ask. And I would text our politicos too…if I had the money.

To illustrate the cost analysis of text messages, none is better than this one provided by Globe and Mail’s Sarah Schmidt, which clearly illustrates that 15 cents charges are something we could potentially see if we were to communicate with our loved ones…on Mars:

“The consultant with the Toronto-based firm Heavy Computing said that while 45.3 million text messages sent daily sounds like a lot, the amount of space this takes up on a network and related costs to a telecom company are minuscule.

A text message sent via mobile phone can be no more than 160 characters, and each character is about a byte. If 45 million text messages are sent throughout Canada every day and each message is about 100 characters, this totals 4.5 gigabytes. This amounts to about the same amount of gigabytes required to download two or three high-resolution movies from the Internet.

And in comparison to the cost of transmitting a voice call on cellphones, text messaging chews up far less space on a network. “For most cellphones, a voice call is five kilobytes a second to get an average quality call. That’s the equivalent to 50 or 100 text messages,” said Chase.

Chase pointed to a recent study by University of Leicester space scientist Nigel Bannister as a useful reference to show the proposed 15 cent fee is “absolutely ridiculous.”

Bannister compared the cost of sending a text message with the cost of obtaining a megabyte of data from the Hubble Space Telescope. He calculated that if companies charged customers 10 cents per text message, that would translate into a cost of about $734 per megabyte, about 4.4 times higher than the ‘most pessimistic’ estimate for Hubble Space Telescope transmission costs (of $166 per megabyte).”

“Hubble is by no means a cheap mission, but the mobile phone text costs were pretty astronomical,” Bannister concluded in his study.”

For full Sarah Schmidt article please visit Globe and Mail HERE

This week we got to interview Joseph Romm, who is a “big cheese” gnawing at “bigger cheeses” in Washington. Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, Joseph Romm runs the blog, ClimateProgress.org, and is an expert in field of environmental sciences.

That, and we get really into Dr. Who and adventures of the fourth season, which is, in my humble opinion, the best one thus far.

by Irma Arkus

Love when Nature indulges in wearing the futorology hat? Well, look no further than Helen Pearson’s intriguing question of human procreation in the decades to come. Similar to that of great biologist and novelist Joan Slonczewski’s predictions, Davor Solter, developmental biologist at the Institute of Medical Biology (IMB) in Singapore predicts artificial wombs.

Production of germ lines (sperm and eggs) from pluripotent stem (iPS) cells has already been accomplished (for now, only in case of sperm) allowing for creation of embryos for people of all ages, or better yet, as Solter says: to “give children to those who can’t have them and remove children from those who don’t want them.” Awww, the joys of the great game of life.

Alan Trounson, IVF pioneer and director of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine in San Francisco on the other hand, touts extension of the fertility period - something that only recently occured on the science news radars, as apparently, there is no reason for women to be infertile after certain age (or at least, we still can’t think of one). Also, he proposes genetic engineering, an insertion of “genetic casettes” meant to correct genetic abnormalities, such as Huntington’s.

Susannah Baruch, director of reproductive genetics at the Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC, has a far more conservative view of the future pondering whether “designer babies” will be feasible. Baruch, don’t doubt - I want one. And if I want one, everybody else does too. I’m a trendsetter, you see.

Miodrag Stojkovic, stem-cell biologist at the Prince Philip Centre of Investigation in Valencia, Spain explains (I kid you not): “humans are getting more and more lazy when it comes to reproduction. Male fertility is declining and parents are deciding to have their first child at 40.” My first inkling is to assume that Stojkovic visited the local dating pool - lazy and poor at communication, I might add! But then there is the whole “in order to be a viable member of economy you must finish school, make millions of dullars…and then….only then….maybe you’ll have babies too” - I think he may be right. He too proposes uses of artificial wombs, which, apparently as research goes, is kept hush hush.

I encourage you to read through the article, and think of babies…of the future. And do tell us what the choice of future procreation is for you?

by Irma Arkus

The first signs of surveillance to detect “copyright infringement” are showing. A US federal judge recently ruled that Google is to hand over the records of all videos users have watched on YouTube to Viacom, as Viacom is suing Google for failure of censoring posted videos legally owned by Viacom.

In response to this ruling, Ann Cavoukian, Ontario’s Privacy Commissioner sent an open letter to Fleischer and Brin of Google. Cavoukian encourages Google to challenge the request, as it advocates surveillance of public in order to enforce copyright laws, chipping away at privacy of its users.

Copyright issues (in Canada - Bill C61, and in US, an already approved Digital Millenium Copyright Act), are very much pertinent to issues of surveillance. As previously mentioned, if Bill C61 is to be approved in Canada, and all these various ways of enjoying, using and exchanging media are to become illegal, the question begs: how are these “illegal activities” to be verified?

In other words, if your computer holds various mp3s suddenly charged to be illegal as of 2008, how are these mp3s to be “found” by authorities in the first place? This implies severe invasion of privacy and increased surveillance of members of public at large.

Most critics have duly pointed out that Bill C61, as frightening and as ridiculous as it may be, is solely serving corporate enterprises rather than the Canadian public. The implementation of the US Digital Millenium Copyright Act seems to already indulge corporate interests at the expense of personal privacy.

What further complicates things, is the undeniable fact that due to blurring of private and public spaces, such as in case of google, myspace, and facebook, our personal information is very much owned by private companies, and thus legally bound by corporate laws and interests.

What about the public Internet spaces? Do we have them? Should we have them?

This is Jevon in Europe again, somewhere in the Bay of Biscay or the Atlantic or whatever. They all tend to clash into one another after a while. Last time I was writing about the comic and manga availability over in the Euro neighbourhood, and in trying to get back to that comic shop in Barcelona that was right by the old seat of the Catalan Royal family, I ended up wandering the Gothic Quarter. All around are castle walls that could be mistaken for something out of Castle Greyskull, and up I went to La Ramblas and it reminded me of the Joseph Virek character in William Gibson’s “Count Zero.” In the novel, Virek projects himself to Marly within the Barcelona of her Art School days and there is the wonderful description of the many famous images of the city. Gaudi in particular, who is a genius IMHO. I love Gibson’s use of place and setting in his novels and they are always unbelievably evocative and being within that image was particularly evocative for me as I am a big admirer of Gibson’s work. Nevertheless, from what I learned about Barcelona as a city, and especially in terms of its growth, is a pretty apt choice of a place considering the idea and the setting of the Sprawl, which of course is where the trilogy of novels that “Count Zero” gets its name from is a part. Barcelona was originally Barcino, and was developed by the Romans as a trading port. The Romans put walls around the city as defenses, and it was those walls that were added to, enlarged, shaped and enlarged through out the centuries, which can be seen in the old Gothic Quarter, which is the part of the town that lied behind those city walls. Once the 19th Century began, Barcelona’s city planners began a plan of enlargement that finally knocked down the centuries old city walls. The city expanded outwards in earnest; swallowing up what were once autonomous villages and towns and incorporating them into the fold, much as the Sprawl in Gibson’s novels did. The tour guide I had that day described this process of enlargement as the smacking down of man made barriers and undergoing the process of enlargement into more natural ones. Those natural ones are the mountains and hills that hem in the current day Barcelona. However, with the Olympic games and with some recent building, the process of enlargement outwards onto those mountains is seeing the city even sprawling out onto those natural barriers that the tour guide described. The Olympics for example, saw the building of park space, stadiums, and facilities on top of Montjuic, which had served as a spot of fortifications for the military through much of Barcelona’s history. It had also been the site of an old Jewish settlement, but the Jewish population flocked down into the walled city and into that same man made enclosures and barriers that had previously kept the city contained. The point is that even these so-called natural barriers are now becoming conquered, and the city is able to sprawl outwards even more. Monaco has also done something similar in that they have piled rocks into the sea in order to expand their land outwards as they have been faced with the problem of even less space. Of course with the current problem with gas prices and the environment, movement becomes an issue, as it was speed of movement coupled with an expanding population that facilitated sprawling cities, as it did in Gibson’s novels. The question is now about the sustainability of these sprawling metropolises that is again imposing a barrier upon us. Will we continue sprawling outwards, overcoming the barriers that Barcelona has overcome? Or will we like a stretch elastic, grow outward to a state in which the band can no longer take the stress, and collapses, and breaks apart into fragments? Of course it is what becomes of those fragments and how they join back together again through interstitial communities that is apart of another one of Gibson’s trilogies, but perhaps I will write about that another time. Barcelona as a city though does offer a bit of a solution in that everything is kept useable. For example, even here in the old Gothic Quarter, people still live, work, play, and lounge about amongst what by all rights is an pen air museum. Even as the city has sprawled outwards, swallowing up cities and villages and stretching out as far as the eye can see, there is still a sense of keeping things, but also keeping them for usage. Just as the people in the Bridge Trilogy, another of Gibson’s series, would do with the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Anyways, I am starting to ramble and I really should get back to work, as that is what I am technically on this floating hunk of pollution to do. In the meantime though, merci beaucoup.

This week we are joined by Stanley Hyde, North American leading experts on…(wait for it)…Godzilla!

Get ready for the “man in rubber suit” extravaganza, as we get Stanley to tell all live from G-Conference (yes, that would be the Godzilla conference *nod*), and gives us the goods on past and future of the greatest of monsters - Godzilla.

by Irma Arkus

Shyamalan’s latest flick “The Happening” has been panned by critics and audiences alike. Despite the somewhat inventive premise, the plot involving plants as villains, did not go over so well with North American viewers.

Nontheless, it is fascinating to glance at Shyamalan’s filmmaking that has lately been taking a dive to the bottom. Shyamalan rose to top with The Sixth Sense in 1999. The film, featuring Haley Joel Osment, one of the creepiest child actors to ever appear on film, period, was centered on a boy who has the ability to detect and see ghosts who tend to cling to their usual haunts. Bruce Willis as Dr. Malcolm Crowe, is a child psychologist who is trying to help little Cole Sear. A seemingly straightforward, textbook case of psychosis, turns quiet little Cole into a child with a real connection to the supernatural.

The Sixth Sense was outrageously popular. It fueled the next wave of less-than-entertaining shows dedicated to paranormal and supernatural. And let’s not forget the sudden increase in use of psychics by police forces everywhere.

Shyamalan for a while had the dream job of being a director who got to make things he wanted. His consequent films, Unbreakable (2000) and Signs (2002) were a delight to watch, but not equally for everyone.

Unbreakable is, and will be for a long time, a penultimate story of a superhero coming to terms with his superpowers and weaknesses. Bruce Willis plays David Dunn, an average man who is struggling to come to terms with his own self. A sole survivor of a train crash, David is seemingly impervious to physical injuries. Approached by Mr. Glass, a physically fragile comic book artist who sees himself as the exact opposite of David, the two slowly develop a deeper understanding of David’s powers.

The film was dark, tender, insightful with an unprecedented character development. A superhero film like no other, Unbreakable garnered either verocious fans, or entirely uninterested glances.

Signs (2002) starring Mel Gibson, was equally half-heartedly received. Gibson, a man struggling to connect with his children and faith after an accidental death of his wife, is no less than staving off an alien invasion. Character development extraordinaire is met by deeply flawed script - even though Shyamalan shows us what an average Joe in a corn-cob-town middle of nowhere would do during an alien invasion, even if we got to see the aliens…the plot still pends on aliens being a race of retarded invaders who have the technology and the numbers to invade an entire planet, yet fail to recognize their weakness to H2O?!!! Really? On Earth? The very “Blue Planet”? Water?!

The Village (2004) was vehemently rejected by audiences, and Lady in Water (2006) despite its complexities, interesting story-telling and charms, failed to entertain, as numbers of Shyamalan fans plummeted.

The Happening (2008), his latest project, is reviled by those who have seen it, and ridiculed by critics. What starts as a mysterious epidemic, a case of mass hysteria, quickly devolves into Mark Wahlberg’s dialogues with plastic flora. The plot twist is “the plants did it,” as humanity itself is in peril. The real twist, however, is that the film opening was going head to head with The Incredible Hulk. And everyone knows that Ed Norton beats Wahlberg any day.

That is the story of Shyamalan’s film. I am sure that there is a lot more to it. For one, I enjoy his films for their incredible pace, the kind of time it takes to tell a real story, with characters you grow to like, suspend your beliefs for, even if they are ridiculous.

The one thing that Shyamalan has is an incredible ability to tell a short story and spin it into a whole feature film. No other director has managed to do so, with such unparallel success. Yet, the fans hate things Shyamalan loves. They hate his superheroes, his aliens, his giant eagles scooping Nerfs from ground. Even if I happen to love them, his climb to the bottom is obvious.

Shyamalan is evidently in need of something new. A kind of film he hasn’t tried out for a size yet. Something sunnier and faster-paced, and with action. This is why the announcement that Shyamalan will be directing a live action version of “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” based on Hayao Mizahaki’s same name animated feature, is a welcome change. “Avatar: The Last Airbender” tells a story of a young hero who will inherit the power to control water, air, fire, and earth amongst warring nations.

by Irma Arkus

Hayao Miyazaki, master of all Studio Ghibli, is in thralls of a new animated feature, “Gake no ue no Ponyo.”

Roughly translated as Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea (I can totally envision the loss of the “by the sea” bit, no?), film is centered on a princess of the goldfish kind, yearning to become human. Ponyo, the goldfish, meets a little boy, Sōsuke, who helps her in her grand adventure.

The inspiration for the film is of course, Little Mermaid, the tale of the goldfish and Japanese folklore.

The first trailer is available HERE

by Irma Arkus

Summer is here and you don’t want to read the news because, lets face it, they are depressing. What to do with your hands? I could tell you a lot, but for now, let us settle on making toys of your own - introducing Cubeecraft - a cube for everything. Make a cube version of Dr. Venture, Kirby, Mario, Grendel and more. And stop running with scissors!

For a full link to cubes you ♥ visit Cubeecraft.

by Irma Arkus

On the heels of announcement by Mercedes to cease manufacturing petroleum-powered cars by 2010, ITM Power, a small UK-based outfit released its first household hydrogen fueling station.

Unusual, fridge-size gadget, meant to be stored in periphery of an average domicile, is to contain an electrolyser producing hydrogen directly on the premise. The fuel can then be transferred into your vehicle at home, as well as used for alternate applications, including cooking.

Some taut the benfits of a household hydrogen-producing appliance as a solution to an existing problem with hydrogen fuel - namely, that traditional large-scale manufacturing and mass distribution processes are complex, expensive and even dangerous. Appliance such as this would introduce hydrogen-powered cars to greater number of individuals, and create accessible fueling stations.

Of course, having a fridge-size hydrogen generator is not necessarily all that great. For one, traditional pumps eliminate the need for everyone to invest in a personal appliance, instead spreading the cost across an entire region. Costs of developing fueling station technology would be directly transferred onto each and every household, and yes, it would be very expensive.

Also to consider is that such fueling stations would be great for home owners far removed from urban centres. Condo owners in high density areas do not have the resources or the space for individual ownership of such an appliance, quickly having to deal with a communal fueling station or a “mini-pumping station” for their hydrogen needs. If communal fueling stations would function well, then why have individual ones at all?

The questions of safety and handling procedures are aplenty. Hydrogen is considered highly flammable, and unstable. To be manufacturing hydrogen on the spot is a valid solution for a next generation of hydrogen-fueled cars. As for the individual ownership of such appliances, the costs seem high, unreasonable, and less than suitable for populations in urban areas.

by Irma Arkus

Watching Boston Dynamics’ Big Dog, a quadruped robot resembling only bottom half of a mule, as it struggles to maintain its balance (and succeds!) on an icy ground is nothing short of amazing.

Big Dog runs, walks and climbs on rough terrain, as its slender legs, similar to that of a dog or a deer (or something alive and organic) allow it to carry heavy loads while absorbing shocks. It maintains its balance in situations that not even yours truly, an average biped could.

The loads it can carry go up to 340lb, and it can succesfully climb inclined terrain of up to 35 degrees.

The really amazing part of Big Dog is its leg structure. Meant to copy what works best in nature, Big Dog’s legs combine multiplicity of joints regulated by an intricate sensor network, allowing it to maintain balance and navigate across variety of terrain including ice and rubble.

See for yourself: Big Dog walks on ice, hillside, and navigates through rubble.