If you wanna eat at one of the Best Restaurants in the World (as determined by Restaurant Magazine), you’d better be prepared to shell out. The cheapest fare on the 10-best list rates at $165; the most expensive meal starts at $375.
(via WPR: “50 Best Restaurants in the World 2004”; based on Restaurant Magazine list)
https://www.swordbilled.com/haughty-cuisine/
Remember the 1908 explosion above Tunguska, the one that inexplicably flattened like 800 square miles of trees?
Well, okay, you don’t remember it—but you’ve heard of it, right? It’s fairly mysterious, though the general consensus seems to be that it was caused by some form of meteorite or other exploding in the air. Of course you have your “alternate” theories: it was a black hole, it was antimatter, it was some top-secret government project, etc., etc. And sure, the whole “it was aliens” meme has surfaced a few times (not least of all in the X-files TV show).
And now a group by the name of the Tunguska Space Phenomenon foundation (or Tunguska Spatial Phenomenon foundation) has led an expedition to prove that aliens were the culprits.
Aha.
This was back in August; doubtless, fearless leader Yuri Lavbin and his team at the TSP Foundation are going to bring further evidence of alien involvement to light, cementing their place in history.
Via Persian Journal/WorldNetDaily:
“I am fully confident and I can make an official statement that we were saved by some forces of a superior civilization,” Yuri Lavbin said. “They exploded this enormous meteorite that headed towards us with enormous speed,” he said. Now this great object that caused the meteorite to explode is found at last. We will continue our research, he said.
The whole basing-a-profound-new-theory-on-Star-Trek is truly slick.* You gotta admit, it adds a nice touch—it has real panache, it does.
More on this as it develops.
If it develops.
It probably won’t.
Note:
* Assuming the Wikipedia article is in fact correct on this point. I can’t speak from memory, but there seems to be some corroborative evidence that this was in fact an idea used somewhere in the Star Trek franchise/universe.
(Yahoo! News/Space.com: “Russian Alien Spaceship Claims Raise Eyebrows, Skepticism,” by Robert Roy Britt [August 12, 2004]; WorldNetDaily: “Did aliens save planet in 1908?” [August 12, 2004]; Wikipedia: “Tunguska Event” [last edit September 6, 2004])
https://www.swordbilled.com/tunguska-your-secrets-are-mine/
Nancy Cartwright is not a comedienne. Neither, strictly speaking, is she an actress, although she once went through a phase of wanting to be Holly Hunter. She is what is known as a “voice artist”, a distinction made evident at auditions, when, instead of doing a scene from A Street Car Named Desire, say, she will make the sound of a dripping tap or do what she calls “elephant sneezing”.
(Guardian: “That’s my boy,” by Emma Brockes [August 2, 2004])
https://www.swordbilled.com/thats-my-boy/
…
After entering the network through a drain next to the Trocadero… officers came across a tarpaulin marked: Building site, No access.
Behind that, a tunnel held a desk and a closed-circuit TV camera set to automatically record images of anyone passing. The mechanism also triggered a tape of dogs barking, “clearly designed to frighten people off,” the spokesman said.
Further along, the tunnel opened into a vast 400 sq metre cave some 18m underground, “like an underground amphitheatre, with terraces cut into the rock and chairs”.
There the police found a full-sized cinema screen, projection equipment, and tapes of a wide variety of films, including 1950s film noir classics and more recent thrillers. None of the films were banned or even offensive, the spokesman said.
A smaller cave next door had been turned into an informal restaurant and bar. “There were bottles of whisky and other spirits behind a bar, tables and chairs, a pressure-cooker for making couscous,” the spokesman said.
“The whole thing ran off a professionally installed electricity system and there were at least three phone lines down there.”
Three days later, when the police returned accompanied by experts from the French electricity board to see where the power was coming from, the phone and electricity lines had been cut and a note was lying in the middle of the floor: “Do not,” it said, “try to find us.”
(via The Guardian: “In a secret Paris cavern, the real underground cinema,” by Jon Henley [September 8, 2004])
See also:
Related:
https://www.swordbilled.com/innocent-underground-picnics/
(2003) Quentin Tarantino – w/ Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu, Vivica A. Fox, Daryl Hannah, David Carradine (kind of), Michael Madsen, Julie Dreyfus, Chiaki Kuriyama, Sonny Chiba, etc., etc., etc.
Synopsis: Uma Thurman is The Bride, a would-be escapist from a life of stealthy assassinations, who, (amidst her would-be wedding) is beat up and gunned down by her own ex-team (a mostly-female team of world-class assassins, each of whom takes her code-name from a deadly snake). The Bride’s code-name is Black Mamba, and when she wakes up from her coma, she’s itchin’ for revenge. Bill’s the head of this team of assassins. The Bride wants to, in typical movie assassin revenge-fashion, kill him. Hence the title of this flick. Kill Bill. (The “Vol. 1” is because it’s the first of two parts.) Style, violence, and hilarity ensues.
Review: What’s to say? Characteristic Tarantino, ‘Kill Bill: Vol 1’ is all about style, style, style. By my reckoning — admittedly not anywhere near the most insightful you might find — KBv1 is an exercise in entertainment. Homage to martial arts, whatever; it’s a fun piece of action. There’s witty banter, off-the-cuff narration, slick music, and dazzling colors; there’s action, revenge, and blood. What more could you want? The word picaresque comes to mind, but it’s probably slightly off-the-mark. KBv1 doesn’t quite match the brilliance of Pulp Fiction, but it’s not clear that that’s what it set out to do, really. (It’s hard to say what Vol 2 will do to this assessment, so I won’t even try to hazard a guess.) All in all, a good time to be had.
Rating: [••••] out of [•••••]
https://www.swordbilled.com/kill-bill-vol-1/
https://www.swordbilled.com/animal-vegetable-video/
The Smithsonian Institution brings you North American Mammals, which is all well and good; a searchable database of mammals in North America, what’s not to like?
What makes this wicked cool, however, is that the site lets you make your own customized field guide.
You can click on a map, or input your latitude/longitude, and get a PDF-format field guide of all the mammals living in that area. Incredible!
It doesn’t provide the most detailed information or give the best illustrations, but with the ability to custom-build a field guide, what more can you really ask?
https://www.swordbilled.com/field-guide-to-anyplace-usa/
Florin Carcu, 54, had even taken the precaution of asking his boss for permission not to go to work on the inauspicious Friday, the police in Cluj, central Romania, said in a statement.
“It was the strangest request I’ve ever received but I ended up giving him permission to stay at home because he seemed to be really scared of something bad happening to him on that day,” Carcu’s boss Gheorghe Domsa told the press.
Doctors from the emergency services in Cluj said Carcu had been making coffee when he was stung by a species of wasp nicknamed “the wolf”, which is very rare in Romania and whose sting is very poisonous.
He died on the spot.
(AFP/USA Today: “Avoiding work on Friday the 13th proves deadly for man” [August 18, 2004])
https://www.swordbilled.com/bye-aliens/
Hogzilla, as it turns out, isn’t the only giant feral pig in town. (Well, country.)
(Lancaster New Era: “Our very own Hogzilla,” by Ad Crable [August 11, 2004])
https://www.swordbilled.com/im-so-proud/
(You’ll need duct tape [surprise!], a utility knife, a ruler, and background music.)
https://www.swordbilled.com/duct-tape-the-saga-continues/
