Most people are amazed by the power of the marine predators that are most sharks. While it is often difficult to cacth them in the act, there are a few occasions where it is possible to see impressive animals. Recently I found some that I wanted to share with you.
A zoo cheetah cannot be released in the wild if it is not able to hunt. And this is the fastest running hunter - if trained. So, how do you exercise a cheetah in order to prepare it for possible wild life?
One of the greatest minds and authors of the 20th Century just died. Arthur C. Clarke was very well known for some of his highly acclaimed books (think about 2001: A Space Odyssey and the collaboration with Stanley Kubrik on the movie with the same name). Some of them were only known to Science Fiction fans (Rendez-vous with Rama, The Fountains of Paradise, for example).
But Sir Arthur C. Clarke was also the author of significant steps for science like the observation that geostationary satellites would be the practical solution to many telecommunication issues. I can vividly remember my reading of Interplanetary Flight; an introduction to astronautics, where in 1950 he stated very clearly concepts like the multi-stage rocket or the geostationary satellite and why they should be prefered to other technical solutions.
The old man (born on 16 December 1917) was living in Sri Lanka where he appreciated the leisure of all-year-long scuba diving.
Science Fiction can no longer be the same after he left us.
Arthur C. Clarke died at the age of 90 from respiratory complications linked to the post-polio syndrome that forced him into a wheelchair for his last years.
If the hero starts dancing, suddenly, everybody around knows the steps and dance with them.
Any car hit by a bullet immediately explodes in a cloud of flames, a mere rivulet of oil turns into a fire ball.
An ugly girl only has to remove her glasses and untie her hair to transform herself into an iridescent beauty queen.
If you look languorously into the eyes of a woman, music always starts to play (even if there is no stereo in the room). Ain’t it handy?
In car pursuits, you only have to zip through crossroads for all others to halt in tire shrieks. No need to check the traffic lights…
In car pursuits, you just need to speed up to fly over wide gaping spaces (gravity seems nullified provided that you can push the pedal hard enough!)
The first truncheon hit systematically sends the bad guy either to sleep or flying through the room like a ball on a pool table.
The hero will only yield to baddies after dozens of hits by a large group of hulking champion weight-lifters.
All computers are fifteen years ahead of current technology and blinkingly beautiful (no dull grey boxes, but nice blinking lights or impressive 3D graphics interface).
Baddies are always easy to recognize in a crowd. They are ugly, dirty and grimacing (if not with a scar on the face). Why doesn’t the police use this kind of clue in movies while the same kind of profiling is used routinely in our streets?
When the hero enters an unknown derelict space ship, he has no difficulty finding and operating the door lock, the ship’s controls and the hyper-space radio.
When we see a distant explosion on screen, the sound is never late (is speed of sound as fast as speed of light in movies?).
Radio-activity makes objects glow in the dark (it’s useful since we wouldn’t see it - Many scientists including Pierre and Marie Curie would have wanted to know that they just had to switch off the light in their laboratories!)
In the void of empty space, sounds are deafening: Shrieking spaceship rockets can be heard from the other end of the galaxy despite the total lack of atmosphere to transmit it.
A detective cannot solve a case before he has been suspended for insubordination
Even when the road is straight, if you drive a car, you must continuously swing the wheel right and left
The wounds of the hero will not make him even wince, except when a gorgeous woman is trying to clean them
As everybody is starting to understand that Blu-Ray won the Hirez battle for the next generation DVD format, the other contender is seeing its products dumped en masse on eBay. If you (still) want to buy a HD-DVD player, it’s your lucky day. Go to eBay auction outfit and you’ll find dozens of players for unbelievable prices.
The only catch (and the main reason): Nobody in their right mind would want to get stuck with HD-DVD technology while its father (Toshiba) is expected to be ready to announce its demise.
If like me your a photographer who wouldn’t dare making a video, you still can think about doing a decent time-lapse sequence out of your photographs. However, this cannot happen just by taking images and loading them into a software.
When you think that you’ve mastered the technique, you can think again and look at the following example created by Lucas Oleniuk, photographer of the Toronto Star. Taking 20,000 of his still photographs, he built a 20-days sequence re-hashing the issue of global warming for us.
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