Via Wikimedia Commons OMNIMAX Uh… it looks cooler on the inside. There’ve been rumblings about big changes for OMSI’s Omnimax theater for a few months—I never heard anything quite solid enough to report, but they usually went along the lines of either (A) OMSI replacing their dome IMAX theater with a smaller, flat screen, or […]
Science!
Posted inFood and Drink
Don’t Look at Anything Under a Microscope Unless You’re Ready to Be Schooled in How Gross It Is
Case in point: Chicken McNuggets, which have always seemed prohibitively gross just from their outsides, and which reportedly bloom into the stuff of nightmares when placed under a microscope. As Mike Adams of Natural News reports (bolds mine): Earlier today I purchased a 10-piece Chicken McNuggets from a McDonald’s restaurant in Austin, Texas. Under carefully […]
Posted inScience!
Majestic and Beautiful, the Powerful and Graceful Leonardo DiCaprio Floats Above Earth’s Petty Constraints, All But Walking on Water
Alight upon the Mediterranean sea like some kind of lordly ocean god, some kind of whimsical sea sprite, some kind of immensely powerful merman, or some kind of—dare we say it? we do—savior, behold Leonardo DiCaprio, who is not bound by our pathetic physical laws. Leonardo DiCaprio does as he pleases, and he pleases to […]
Posted inTV
Trailer for Carl Sagan’s Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos
The best thing that television has yet produced aired on PBS in 1980. Carl Sagan’s Cosmos: A Personal Voyage is, still, a remarkable thing to watch—ambitious, humane, and fascinating, it covers life, the universe, and everything with grand scope and impressive detail. Much of its appeal—massive at the time, and still enduring today—is due to […]
Posted inArtsy
Mad Science PDX: An Art Show To Remember
Last Saturday, I met Brandon Thornton and Justin Morris, two of the producers for the art show Mad Science PDX, opening tomorrow night at Gallery 135. I am no stranger to these two gentlemen; I know them as Wieden +Kennedy employees, tastemakers around town (they’ve both been featured on my blog), and art show producers […]
Posted inMovies & TV
A Modest Proposal, and Also a Brief History of Movie Theater Air Conditioning
MONSTERS UNIVERSITY Aww! This was my favorite child at the movie! He was not real. I made the mistake of going to see Monsters University at Century Eastport last weekend. I say “mistake” not because of the particular film (as Denis pointed out, Monsters University is charming), but because UGH, CHILDREN. The half-formed creatures were […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Chatum to Become Half Human and Half Wolf, Also Half Albino
CHANNING TATUM This is from White House Down, but look how lupine he already is! I really like the Wachowskis, which I realize is not a super popular position given the amount of whining that still happens whenever the Matrix sequels come up, but hell: The Wachowskis are crazy ambitious, at this point pretty much […]
Posted inPolitics
We Are Winning The War On Honeybees
From my essay on the eerily similarities between the climate change deniers of 2013 and the AIDS deniers of 1983: Now every time I read about fires in Colorado or rising seas or Canadian tar sands or Native villages already being washed away in Alaska or preparations for the next hurricane that slams into New […]
Posted inTech
If You Think NSA Snooping Is Bad Now, Wait Until We Can Upload Our Brains to Computers
A top futurist at Google says it’s going to be possible by the year 2045: In just over 30 years, humans will be able to upload their entire minds to computers and become digitally immortal – an event called singularity – according to a futurist from Google. Ray Kurzweil, director of engineering at Google, also […]
Posted inScience!
Bill Nye: The Science Activist Guy
There was an interesting article in yesterday’s NYT about Bill Nye (the science guy!) and how he’s gone from science booster to science advocate—and what the difference is. (Though he’s still very booster-y.) Here’s an excerpt: [Young people] have gone from watching him explain magnetism and electricity to defending the scientific evidence for climate change, […]
Posted inScience!
Man vs. Penis-Drawing Machine
In the eternal battle of “Man vs. Science” (we beat the shit out of “nature” decades ago), robots are continually trying to best us in one way or another. Now they think they’re better than us at “penis drawing.” OH YEAH? WELL, LET’S SEE YOU DRAW A PENIS, MACHINE! After the jump, my HUMAN depiction […]
Posted inNews
“Tin-Foil Hat Parade,” at City Hall Tonight, Celebrates Fluoride Defeat
One of the organizers of Portland City Hall’s nearly 18-month-old camping-ban protest, poet and activist Kernel Loose-Nut, is looking to mark Tuesday’s fluoride shellacking with a themed party meant to tweak fluoride supporters here and across the country who made it clear they considered (victorious) fluoride foes a bunch of conspiratorial kooks and science deniers. […]