Super Hero Film Festival – May 18-21 – from the Los Angeles Times

Friday, May 18

7:00 pm – Dawn of the Dead (2004)
Special guests: Zack Snyder and Robert Kirkman

10:00 pm – Shaun of the Dead
Special guest: Edgar Wright

 

Saturday, May 19

12:00 pm – RoboCop
Special guest: Peter Weller

4:00 pm – A Clockwork Orange
Special guest: Malcolm McDowell

8:30 pm – SUPER
Special guest: Rainn Wilson

 

Sunday, May 20

2:00 pm – WALL-E
Special guest: Andrew Stanton
Includes a special preview of Disney/Pixar’s ‘Brave’

6:00 pm – Serenity (SOLD OUT)
Special guest: Nathan Fillion

 

Monday, May 21

7:30 pm – An Evening with Stan Lee
Screening: X-Men

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General Info

An angry math blog sparked a scientific revolution

It began with a frustrated blogpost by a distinguished mathematician. Tim Gowers and his colleagues had been grumbling among themselves for several years about the rising costs of academic journals.

They, like many other academics, were upset that the work produced by their peers, and funded largely by taxpayers, sat behind the paywalls of private publishing houses that charged UK universities hundreds of millions of pounds a year for the privilege of access.

So, in January this year, Gowers wrote an article on his blog declaring that he would henceforth decline to submit to or review papers for any academic journal published by Elsevier, the largest publisher of scientific journals in the world.

He was not expecting what happened next. Thousands of people read the post and hundreds left supportive comments. Within a day, one of his readers had set up a website, The Cost of Knowledge, which allowed academics to register their protest against Elsevier.

The site now has almost 9,000 signatories, all of whom have committed themselves to refuse to either peer review, submit to or undertake editorial work for Elsevier journals. “I wasn’t expecting it to make such a splash,” says Gowers. “At first I was taken aback by how quickly this thing blew up.”

keep reading – Academic spring: how an angry maths blog sparked a scientific revolution

Why are lifelong surfers trading in their boards for swim fins?

Why are all these lifelong surfers trading in their boards for swim fins? Board builder and alternative surf craft artisan Jon Wegener had this to say:

“As surfing becomes more complicated, futuristic and radical, there’s a backlash of people who just want to go and have fun. You want to find something simple, and it’s just easy to go and have fun with a handplane. We don’t have Pipeline and waves like that. We have mediocre beachbreaks, and this stuff is really fun in waves like that. You don’t need a lot … you get your best tube view on a head high wave when you’re bodysurfing, so it gives you some exhilaration in our waves.”

Ed Lewis of Enjoy Handplanes added, “We all grew up going to the beach, jumping in the water and playing around. For me, getting back into bodysurfing brings me back to being a kid, and you just kind of need that.”

keep reading – Shawn Parkin’s full article on ESPN.com

 

Handplanes - used for bodysurfing - made by a growing number of companies

 

// Photo by Shawn Parkin

Geeks on-stage modeling clothes – Geek 2 Chic comes to Los Angeles

Confession: Before Geek 2 Chic, I had never been to a runway fashion show. Shocker, right? I’m not totally fashion challenged. I can play dress-up when the occasion arises. But as someone who has ordered over a dozen of the same pair of olive green cargo pants off the internet for the past three years…I’m no fashionista. And yet, two years ago in DC, I fell in love with Geek 2 Chic, the charity-fundraiser conceived by Dr. Mark Drapeau (also known as @cheeky_geeky), Director of Innovative Engagement for Microsoft’s Office of Civic Innovation. “Geek” models, from diverse walks of life, strutting the runway in Wellies, and houndstooth, and distressed leather. Now Geek 2 Chic is making its way across the country, taking LA by storm on May 10th and raising funds for The Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE). via Pacific Punch

Tickets are still available for $25. The event starts at 6:30 PM on Thursday, May 10th, at Bloomingdales in Santa Monica, and runs until 9 PM for the after-party.   // Photo – Geek2Chic

Olympic Update – Muslim women can play beach volleyball with new uniform rules

The International Volleyball Federation has made a change to the bikini rules in beach volleyball. In a nod to Muslim countries, the uniform requirements have expanded to include short-shorts and long-sleeve shirts.

Lausanne, Switzerland – The FIVB Board of Administration approved a key change to women’s beach volleyball uniforms with immediate effect.

The Board approved to apply the modified women’s uniform rule for all beach volleyball tournaments, including the Olympic Games. This is to respect the custom and/or religious beliefs.

Previously there were two uniform choices for female players, a one-piece bathing suit or a bikini with a maximum side width of 7cm while full body suits could also be used under the bikini in cold weather. Now, there are three extra choices. Players can wear shorts of a maximum length of 3cm above the knee with sleeved or sleeveless tops or a full body suit.

via FIVB

Not to worry, though, as few players plan to make the change:

“It’s something I really feel comfortable with,” said Kerri Walsh, who with Misty May-Treanor won the gold medal in Athens and Beijing while wearing the standard beach volleyball uniform: a two-piece bathing suit. “It’s something I feel empowered by, not distracted with. I’m not a sex symbol; I’m an athlete. I want to be streamlined out there.”

Still, she applauded the change.

“I think it’s fantastic,” she said. “I don’t want anything as trivial as a uniform to keep anyone from chasing their dreams.”

via Sports Illustrated

Alfred Hitchcock’s definition of happiness

“A clear horizon — nothing to worry about on your plate, only things that are creative and not destructive… I can’t bear quarreling, I can’t bear feelings between people — I think hatred is wasted energy, and it’s all non-productive. I’m very sensitive — a sharp word, said by a person, say, who has a temper, if they’re close for me, hurts me for days. I know we’re only human, we do go in for these various emotions, call them negative emotions, but when all these are removed and you can look forward and the road is clear ahead, and now you’re going to create something — I think that’s as happy as I’ll ever want to be.”

 

// Thx – Paul Ringger, Jr.

Throne Clones – the British royal family compared to their ancestors

P.S. The last one is the best 🙂

 

…see several more at – The Royal Watcher

A broken-down inner city overrun by giant trees

“This is a short story told on a big wall at Village Underground in Shoreditch, London”

it’s a harmless-enough depiction of a broken-down inner city overrun by giant trees. The neat part is that Peel decided to make the process of painting the mural a work of art in itself, using time-lapse shots taken over the course of three weeks.

From the first frames, it’s obvious that this is no ordinary mural. A butterfly flits across a blue background then disappears from the frame, leaving no trace of its presence on the wall. Towering cranes sprout up and begin to build a city, loading bricks in rows from the ground up like a regular construction crew. At times, debris from the painting, like orange rubble, seems to fall out of the wall, becoming its three-dimensional equivalent on the sidewalk. At another moment a real plastic bag flying in the wind is sucked into the mural and locked in painted stasis.

via Atlantic Cities