Sort of.
The (terribly informal) verdict:
Believable: Iron Man, Batman
Unbelievable: The Incredible Hulk
Quote:
Now, many people are aware that the most incredible thing about the Hulk is the way his pants always stay on when he expands to ten times his original volume.
But did you also know:
The good superhero stories require only one miracle exemption from the laws of nature.
Oh. You did? Well then.
(via SciFi Scanner)
https://www.swordbilled.com/scientists-tell-us-what-we-already-know/
(via MAKE)
https://www.swordbilled.com/finally-humans-can-rest-easy/
https://www.swordbilled.com/weirdly-addictive/
(via Consumerist)
https://www.swordbilled.com/and-then-theres-the-unlucky-10/
Airline menus through history (plus a steamship menu or two), at the Northwestern University Library Transportation Archives.
(via ResearchBuzz)
https://www.swordbilled.com/ill-have-the-veal-birds-with-pine-nuts/
(via Crooked Timber)
https://www.swordbilled.com/life-on-mars-rendered-by-ukulele/
Forget the Golden Gate Bridge and House of Nanking and Zeitgeist on a summer night — the heart of San Francisco beats loudest on the carpeted second floor of that South Van Ness building you thought was Bank of America.
…
“Thank you for calling San Francisco 311, this is Kyle speaking, how may I help you?”
Kyle Sutton is one of 50 or so customer service representatives, or CSRs, asking this question 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The free service launched in March not just to funnel 2,300 government phone numbers into a single line, but to give the city more of a service orientation. About 6,000 calls come in every day, and program director Ed Reiskin says 311 is on track to answer 2 million a year.
Officially, the purpose is to supply a handy route to non-emergency government services and information. Unofficially, it’s a glimpse into the funny inner mind of the city.
“Hello, how long does it take to build a cable car?”
“There’s cocaine all over my clothes! There’s cocaine everywhere!”
“My roommate has been passed out for two days.”
“There’s pig balls on the street.”
Ideally, every call would be like these and our city would have the best dinner parties ever. In fact, most people call about the bus. How do you get to Justin Herman Plaza? I’m on Clement and 8th Avenue, where’s the 2? My driver didn’t stop for me.
(SFGate: “Pig balls and stuck skunks: A 311 customer service rep has a window onto San Francisco’s secret heart,” by Chris Collin [4 Sept 2007])
https://www.swordbilled.com/what-people-ask-when-they-can-ask-anything/
No child should touch a gun or pistol, or on any account present one at another person. We behold a little boy shooting his sister dead!
And:
Here we see the danger of playing with lighted candles. One little girl has set the bed-curtains on fire, and the other her hair; and both are in great danger of being burnt to death, unless someone grants them speedy assistance.
From The Book of Accidents (1831), with excellent woodcut illustrations.
(via Ectoplasmosis)
https://www.swordbilled.com/useful-information-by-any-standard/
https://www.swordbilled.com/sheep-are-not-meant-to-have-six-legs/
I’d always assumed the criteria were loose (at best), but I didn’t realize that the only necessary condition of stating that a movie is “Based On” the book is a cursory glance at the book’s cover and a $150 million budget.
No, really; that’s it.
And I know “the book” is traditionally supposed to be better than the movie — but Darwin’s On The Origin of the Species has more in common with AVPR than Will Smith’s (and Francis Lawrence’s, or whoever’s responsible) “I Am Legend” does with Matheson’s.
The result is so unrecognizable, and so irredeemably awful, that–well, there’s nothing to say. The only tension in the movie was the hope, the slightest glimmer of possibility, that the filmmakers were bright enough to use the book’s best elements in a good way, or even a bad way.
Instead, they didn’t use them at all. They used a name, and a title, and a scary thing in the darkness.
https://www.swordbilled.com/i-am-legend/
