J.J. Abrams is now producing a movie about the topic of this article. Basically some crazy NY architect designed an apartment ala’ Da Vinci Code/National Treasure with secret panels, clues, furniture, walls, and the works.

But some of that furniture and some of those walls conceal secrets — messages, games and treasures — that make up a Rube Goldberg maze of systems and contraptions conceived by a young architectural designer named Eric Clough, whose ideas about space and domestic living derive more from Buckminster Fuller than Peter Marino.

This is some weird floating city that is being built as a prototype for people who have to flee their native lands due to environmental changes.

It is a true amphibian half aquatic and half terrestrial city, able to accommodate 50,000 inhabitants and inviting the biodiversity to develop its fauna and flora around a central lagoon of soft water collecting and purifying the rain waters. This artificial lagoon is entirely immersed ballasting thus the city. It enables to live in the heart of the subaquatic depths. The multifunctional programming is based on three marinas and three mountains dedicated respectively to the work, the shops and the entertainments. The whole set is covered by a stratum of planted housing in suspended gardens and crossed by a network of streets and alleyways with organic outline.

Time has an article about how “Super Soldiers” may no longer be science fiction:

Imagine bad guys able to fight without sleep. Or enemy soldiers with hardware implanted in their brains that makes them better able to target U.S. troops than U.S. troops are able to target them. How about future foes able to outfox GIs thanks to the “pharmaceutical intervention” that has improved their “brain plasticity”? Or American soldiers rendered flat-footed and lethargic because a crafty nemesis has been slipping lead into their food.

Lucky Charms is adding a magical hourglass to their cereal. The new charm will be yellow and orange.

For the first time in more than 10 years, Lucky the Leprechaun is adding a new permanent charm to his delicious Lucky Charms(R) cereal, a magical hourglass. The hourglass charm will join seven other signature charms and be just as powerful, giving Lucky the power to control time.

The Vatican says says it’s ok to believe in aliens and God. Seriously. I’m not making this up:

The Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, says that the vastness of the universe means it is possible there could be other forms of life outside Earth, even intelligent ones. In an interview published Tuesday by Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, Funes says that such a notion “doesn’t contradict our faith” because aliens would still be God’s creatures.

As if McDonalds wasn’t already unhealthy, they are no longer server tomatoes on their sandwiches because apparently they’ve been making people sick.

Spokeswoman Danya Proud said Monday the world’s largest hamburger chain has stopped serving sliced tomatoes on all of its sandwiches in the United States as a precaution until the source of the salmonella is known. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said at least 23 people have been hospitalized, and no deaths have been reported.

This skit from “The Daily Show” is soooo my view on politics.

A college has allowed a professor to teach classes through “Second Life” because the teacher feels teaching with interacting avatars is more effective than regular online education methods:

Silicon Valley’s San Jose State University has opened a simulated campus 16 acres large in the virtual world of Second Life. Why? Some educators find that teaching in a virtual environment with avatars, so students can see one another, is more valuable than your average Internet teaching experience.

Take-Two Interactive, publisher of — among other things — Grand Theft Auto IV, is taking legal action against the Chicago Transit Authority regarding an issue with an advertising campaign. Apparently the Transit Authority, who works with Titan Worldwide Chicago for advertising, prematurely pulled ads that featured GTA IV for an unconfirmed reason and thus infringed on Take-Two’s free-speech rights. As a result, Take-Two is suing the Chicago Transit Authority and is asking that a federal judge stop the CTA from pulling the GTA ads. The lawsuit was filed in Manhattan.

The world’s largest Lego tower has been built. It’s almost 100ft high!

There is a project in NYC to turn hydrant no-parking zones into mini parks. It seems like an interesting concept and if it works (meaning the plants don’t just die) then it might be a green-thing I support.

NoPark returns “no parking zones”—mostly those associated fire hydrant placement- -to low growth mosses and grasses. These micro engineered green spaces prevent storm water run off, use foliage to stabilize the soil, and to provide a durable low maintenance surface cover. These microparks continue to provide emergency parking space for fire trucks and exasperated Fresh-direct delivery persons.

NASA has shared some night photos of the earth taken back in 2003 to show how “bright” the globe has become. Tokyo, the U.S. East Coast, the major cities of the U. K. and Ireland, Tokyo, the Loop in Chicago, and the brightly-lit docks of Long Beach, CA are among the bright spot. But NASA awards the dubious distinction of the Brightest Spot on Earth to the Las Vegas Strip (that’s Vegas in the pic above).

Simply things I do that may or may not help the planet.

• Use reusable grocery store bags.
• Have only put gas in my car 3 time since Christmas (that’s including the two times I did when traveling to Cleveland).
• Use washable containers instead of ziplock bags.
• Recycle paper, plastics, and cans.

See I’m realistic (i.e. cynical) but I still make an effort. It just really irks me when someone who is obsessed with being green brags about how they only take 3 minute cold showers or how they make a difference by keeping their heated pool at 78 instead of 80 degrees.

I learned yesterday about a movement to make filming more “green.” To do so it was said that people should use lights with lower wattage, not shoot on film, and several other ridiculous ideas. I understand the desire to “save the world,”but filmmaking is an art-form. You paint a movie with light and to do so you need big ass lighting set ups. If poorly lit they look like crap. There is no way around that. You wouldn’t ask

Then as to the whole not using film mentality because it means less bad chemicals are used when developing the film— that’s just silly too. Yeah digital technology has come a long, but it still isn’t as pretty as good old 35mm film. Also, shooting digitally means you’re using DV tapes or hard drives. Things that still will have to be disposed of and aren’t really biodegradable.

So the whole Green Filmmaking concept of making a movie without leaving a “foot print” is stupid.

Plants in moondust?
An Esa-linked team has shown that marigolds can grow in crushed rock very like the lunar surface, with no need for plant food. Some see growing plants on the Moon as a step towards human habitation.

Until today I had no real beef with President Bush or Pope Benedic. However they both pissed me off when at 7:35a.m. they decided to drive down Wisconsin Ave with a progression of over 20 cop cars (each car had a siren blaring). There were definitely more than 20 cops, 20 was just the number I counted after I finally got out of bed and looked out the window to see what th heck was going on.

Was looking for a picture of an Escher painting for a reference on a project and I stumbled onto these Lego versions.

These little light-orb-things are on sale from Moonlight USA and are just weird!

The 64 box of Crayola crayons is 50 this year. So here are a few odd facts:

• Forget red and white, Americans are a blue nation — at least when it comes to crayons. According to the Crayola Color Census of 2000, blue finished No. 1 in popularity and six shades of blue finished in the top 10.
• The box of 64 made its debut in 1958 on an episode of the “Captain Kangaroo” show.
• More than 200 million boxes have been sold, totaling some 12.8 billion crayons. That many crayons could circle the Earth 24 times.

The Military misfired some artillery and it crashed into a girl’s bedroom killing her cat.

A piece of artillery that was apparently misfired by the military crashed through the roof of a New Jersey home miles away Friday and injured a young girl’s cat, which had to be euthanized. No people were injured when the two-pound piece hit the home about two and a half miles away from where it was fired. The piece landed in a girls bed, hitting her sleeping cat, officials said.

“Project Runway” diva judge Nina Garcia has been given her walking papers from her post at Elle magazine. You are out! No word on if she will be back for “Project Runway” when it returns on Lifetime.

This cartoon from Time made me laugh simply because of the Rocky reference.

As long as you’ve seen the real version then you should get a kick out of this.

Can you guess which of the odd animals above is real? (Read on …)

It’s a tad scary when the Pentagon basically says “Um… are we sure we know where all our nukes are?”

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has formally ordered the Air Force, Navy and Defense Logistics Agency to conduct an inventory of all U.S. nuclear weapons and nuclear weapon-related materials to make sure all items are accounted for, according to a Pentagon memo released Thursday.

Until now I couldn’t figure out why Eliot Spitzer looked so familiar. Then I remembered he played Golumn in “Lord of the Rings.”

An ice-shelf 7 times the size of Manhattan broke off antarctic in February.

The Wilkins Ice Shelf is a broad plate of permanent floating ice on the southwest Antarctic Peninsula, about 1,000 miles south of South America. In the past 50 years, the western Antarctic Peninsula has experienced the biggest temperature increase on Earth, rising by 0.5 degree Celsius (0.9 degree Fahrenheit) per decade. NSIDC Lead Scientist Ted Scambos, who first spotted the disintegration in March, said, “We believe the Wilkins has been in place for at least a few hundred years. But warm air and exposure to ocean waves are causing a break-up.”

I’m so not one into art or big art displays, but I think these stairs are awesome.

Today’s Washington Post did a spread on comics in their Book Section. It includes two articles. The first entitled “The Fantastic One” and is a feature about Jack Kirby. The second is called “Horror! Suspense! Censorship!” and is a review about book about an anti-comics movement in the 50’s (The picture above is clickable so you can read the articles that way or click the links which will make you register at the newspapers site before you can read the articles).

It’s always nice to see comics in the mainstream media, but nether article was really about how comics changed America, which is what the front cover of the book sections suggest the articles are about. As a result, I was very disappointed and wish The Washington Post had actually done a feature on the topic it claimed it was featuring.

Freaking-A! Went and bought a copy of “The Washington Post” and it turns out this week for whatever reason has no coupon inserts! That’s just wrong. I should be able to return this stupid thing!

What’s funny about the whole NYC governor and his love of hookers, is that all the mainstream media have been running MySpace pictures with their articles.

On my birthday, Sarah and I did a very geeky thing. We went around to all the real Cleveland locations that appear in Brian K. Vaughn’s “The Escapist” graphic novel. Unfortunately, the memory card on my camera somehow got corrupted. I know someone who says they may be able to recover the photos and if so I’ll definitely post them. However I did find stored on my server the above pics from the blizzard that hit.

There were two political skits on SNL last night. One bashed the media for giving slant coverage on the Obama & Hilary. The other involved an appearance of Mike Huckabee, who after the skit ended he metaphorically overstayed his welcome. So which skit did CNN mention on it’s front page and which they did they avoid completely???

Playboy is launching an energy drink and had a recent sponsor party in Massachusetts crashed by the cops. It wasn’t because of drugs or anything nefarious. The police closed down the event because Playboy hired midgets to dress as oompa loompas while bartending and apparently that’s illegal in Massachusetts:

Chapter 272: Section 33. Exhibition of deformities
Section 33. Whoever exhibits for hire an albino person, a minor or mentally ill person who is deformed or a person who has an appearance of deformity produced by artificial means shall be punished by a fine of not more than five hundred dollars.

It’s not “Super Tuesday” but Maryland, DC, and Virgina are having their presidential primaries today. Of course it took me a while to figure that out because EVERY freaking news show has a different name for it. Locally everyone seems to be calling it the “Potomac Primaries” but I’ve heard the national news refer to it as the “Chesapeake Primaries” “Crab Cake Primaries” “Mid Atlantic Primaries” “Trifecta Tuesday” “Capitol Tuesday” and “Bayside Tuesday.”

While we are dealing with 70’s degree weather here in DC (Boooo!) Wisconsin got almost two feet of snow yesterday. It was so bad that just about everywhere, including Neptune Comics, had to close (the pics above are from their local FOX affiliate).

There was one county that had the freeway declared impassable In fact, they just said on the radio that three counties have taken their snow plows off the road because the visibility is so bad that it’s not even safe for them. Yeah, it’s that bad.

Everyone and their mother is talking about super Tuesday. Politics, issues, blah blah blah… since I’m not really an issues type of guy this had me wondering, “hmmm I wonder what TV shows or comics the candidates would consider their favorite.” That thought led me to compile the list below. Answers with links in them are actual answers, the ones without links are my guestimation on what the candidate would say.

Hilary Clinton

• Favorite Sitcom: “30 Rock” because she relates to the very corporate/power-hungry Jack Donaghy
• Favorite Drama: “Big Love” because it’s just like her life.
• Favorite Comic: “Spider-Man: One More Day” because she vicariously lived through it while reading it.
• Favorite Super Hero: Scarlet Witch because of her ability to re-write continuity and to reshape reality is the power Hilary truly covets.
• Favorite Late Night Host: David Letterman because he makes less fun of her pant suits than anyone else. (Read on …)

Holy crap. So we all know how ridiculous gas prices are and we’ve been told that this is because of shortages, refinery problems, inflations, and all that jazz. Well I say “bullshit” because Exxon Mobil made over 11 Billion in profits in 2007, which is a new U.S Record.

Exxon Mobil made history on Friday by reporting the highest quarterly and annual profits ever for a U.S. company. Exxon, the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, said fourth-quarter net income rose 14% to $11.66 billion, or $2.13 per share. That’s up from $10.25 billion, or $1.76 per share, in the year-ago period.