Hi-Sci-Fi

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Not that it’s related to anything, but these are hillarious! Tag lines such as: “Such tragedy could have been easily avoided” are appropriately placed together with images. Designed by HanTang Communications Group for Quzhou Seezo Trading. [TheDieline]

Thanks to Genevieve for the tip.

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by Irma Arkus

Spike & Mike’s begins tonight with some amazing animation. Usually, the festival contains things that will make you sweat, barf, laugh, and then make you do all those again, as you are confronted with outrageous amounts of violence, mysogeny, gore, and all other inappropriate content.

That’s kind of the point of the entire exercise too: the festival showcases short animated films that will never reach your TVs (oh no, think of the children!), and are just deemed too inappropriate for people in general.

Vancouver’s Spike & Mike’s begins tonight, but you can check out the venues and see where the festival is featured in city near you. Moreover, the festival is actively seeking submissions, so if you ever had the urge to explore the darker side of animation, this just may be the place to showcase your, um, art.

by Irma Arkus

This week the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is finally opening its doors to seeds collected across the globe. This incredible and first-of-its-kind public facility will be serving to collect and store seeds. The facility located in deserted northern part of Norway will be a technologically sophisticated complex that will for the most part be unmanned. Think of it as a giant deep freezer for world’s plant life.

One of the biggest criticisms of mainstream media is for its capacity to undermine and ignore some very important events, especially when it comes to now increasingly relevant food-related issues. Monsanto, an agricultural company famous for its use of science to improve on well known foods, is less known as villainous body responsible for copyrighting well, foods you eat, or for that matter, not often depicted as an agricultural magnate that sued and bankrupted many independent farmers because they own copyright on some stuff that flew into their back yards from neighbouring fields.

Even less known is the subject of large agricultural conglomerates, of which Monsanto is a prime example, whose growing influence has contributed to creating worldwide agricultural monocultures.

It is this creation of monocultures that is the crux of the matter. Not only has worldwide spread of agricultural monocultures translated into loss and extinction of certain valuable plant species, but their impact on human diet has been correlated to a slew of health problems brought on by changes in nutrition.

For one, the growing use of monocultures has resulted in continuous decline of vitamins and minerals in particular plants. In other words, broccoli you ate as a child had more vitamins and antioxidants than the broccoli you eat today. Nutritionist estimate that vegetables and fruits found across markets today, have less than 30% of nutrients than same vegetables and fruits served in the early part of 20th century.

Vitamins, minerals, antioxidants…lack thereof is just a tip of the iceberg when considering the health of the population that is becoming increasingly densified. Various cultural groups, with unique genetic profiles now reside in same geographic areas and eat of the same globalized plate of foods. Yet, North American corn is not the same as South American corn, and North American rice is not the same as rice grown in regions of Africa. As it turns out, South American bodies are not equipped to digest North American creamy corn, and Africans lack the enzymes to digest rice found on most shelves in North America. Small, imperceptible genetic variations have developed efficient ways of utilizing local foods. In global economy, however, these have been mostly left on the wayside, to be ignored by food producers. McDonalds, after all, has become internationally ubiquitous.

These subtle differences in genetics determine how our bodies derive required nutrients from available foods. Change in foods is associated with variety of diseases plaguing immigrant populations eating completely foreign foods, which their bodies are not necessarily predetermined for. This makes introduction of widespread agricultural monocultures an insane, costly and dangerous business, one that may affect health of many generations to come.

Furthermore, agricultural multi-nationals have, by expanding their choice brands of monocultures, endangered the very thing they sell, as monocultures have been proven to be more susceptible to diseases. Bananas, cocoa, famed potatoes of Irish famine…all known cases of monocultures who were severely endangered by a single occurence of disease or a parasite. One case of a foreign insect, parasite, or fungus can bring the entire food supply to a halt.

And that is just the start…Let’s not forget the doomy signs of disappearing bees and other pollinating insects create. World’s food supply is evidently in danger. And we can’t all live on McDonalds, even if we wanted to. And we don’t want to.

That is why the start of Svalbard Global Seed Vault is one significant, yet under-reported event. Because it represents the recognition that our global village needs a little help with its plate.

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For those wondering what Chuck Norris is doing today, look no further - Chuck Norris Facts. Now go you puny humans and pray that Chuck Norris does not smite you!

Any contributions of such FACTS are welcome.

by Irma Arkus

Almighty dollar of US and A appears to have been murdered by Canadian Loonie. The Bird has started to gnaw at the US and A dollar, biting its head off and devouring its still beating heart. From now on, US and A dollar shall be known as the dollar with a hole in the middle, The American Yen. Now 50% lighter! Still, Canadians feel screwed out of their hard-earned pennies, as the pricing of goods is still merciless in comparison to our poor little southern neighbours. Loonie has never looked so golden. mmmm.

Economists are screaming murder. Something about ‘adjustment of dollars’ and “recession.” That last one seems to be a whisper.

Even though the initial travelogues of Hollywood film crews coming to BC were justifying their Northern migratory patterns by saying things like: “you can film rain here because rain drops in BC are the size of a human head,” or “you can’t find more depressing background for X-files,” and my favorite: “our mighty dollar stomps your bird dollar and eats it for breakfast…served with Canadian Bacon,” but now that the accounting reason is gone, they are still not leaving. The reason for staying? For the Sushi of course. So, let’s look at the state of affairs in Vancouver, BC.

The Bionic Woman has wrapped up its tent-acles because of the writer’s strike. Good riddance I say. The show is crap. Maybe the writers can take this strike as a mental vacation and come up with some better show ideas. Although, I suspect that a lot of shows will have plot lines plucked directly out of these ‘experiences’ - we’ll see a lot of following elements in the months to come: waiting lines, protesters, fat-cats, strikers, unions…oh, yes. Every show will have a plot about sympathetic strikers. Finally, the socialist edge American TV needs.

On the other hand, Higher Form of Learning, a gem from Steven Segal factory has just wrapped up its shoot. I bet it will be “highly educational.” You can just imagine Segal reading a history book, a kind of Patch Adams in school, bringing smiles to grandmas and kiddies, until all hell breaks loose.

The Day the Earth Stood Still is starting its production. I am crossing my fingers on sitting in Keanu Reeves’ lap during rush-hour SkyTrain ride. I can’t wait. I bet all superstars take SkyTrain to their humble Burnaby /Surrey abodes. Just like they do in New York. Keanu is doing the role of Klaatu, by the way.

Zack Snyder’s “Watchmen” is also being filmed here. You may remember him as the guy who brought us 300 to the big screen. Set in alternate universe, where it is perfectly normal for all to wear latex and lycra pants, but only when you work for USA government. Yes, a world chock-full of superheroes, in a cold-war period, where American superheroes dream of kicking ass of Russian superheroes, a plot of killing all superheroes is uncovered. Pheew, that was just a tad long. Anyways, read the lines - 1985, men in tights, conspiracy, Ruskies, and a whole bunch of capes flying around. Cool.

Battlestar Galactica: Season 4 announced two days ago that they might prematurely wrap their shoot, as they “be ‘runnin out of words on paper.” This bodes badly for my favorite show, but I still can’t be pissed off at the writers striking. And let’s not forget the Razor…mmmm, delicious.

The other shows expected to suffer a little due to the strike are Reaper and Supernatural, which are small budget production with a certain amount of dedicated humour. Both highly enjoyable…. Oh and Kyle XY, but who watches that show anyways? It has Parental Figures in it *yawn*.

Now back to Sushi…

by Irma Arkus

What used to be taboo is no longer so? Highly debatable, but when it comes to sex, it seems that the new generation has grown up. Few blame the Internets, and the series of tubes that bring us truckloads of pr0n. I, on the other hand, would like to think of us as exposed to such variety and intricacy of human relations, desires and preferences, that we are OK being ourselves, and we are fine with others being themselves too… You know, maybe Iranians don’t have homosexuals, but if they did (*insert sarcasm here), they would probably realize that there isn’t much to feel odd about. Nothing dangerous, strange or devious about having two guys or girls being a couple. Certainly, no more strange than coupling a guy and a woman in a body-bag.

But the ideas of sexuality are intriguing, curious and time consuming (just think how much time you spend thinking about it. there, point made.) Thus we bring you two events that should tickle your mind, and possibly give you inspiration to write many MA papers.

The first is Arse Electronica conference on pr0n - see HERE.

And then there is the magic of Wired, with their coverage of first Adult Show in Japan.