The Big Picture

Inspired by Gardner’s riddle and earlier Slinky studies while putting together his paper, Kolkowitz calculated that the bottom of his metal Slinky would remain suspended for approximately three-tenths of a second. And only recently he made a surprising realization: the levitation time of the toy would be exactly the same if it were dropped on the moon, Jupiter or Mars, even with their vastly different gravitational fields. [full article]

A few years ago I made the conscious decision to stop watching trailers. Avoid them at all possible cost. For me, the state of movie advertising has gotten so bad, that by the end of watching a trailer, chances are, you’ve already seen over half the movie’s plot*.

Thanks, but fuck off, no thanks.

That has been the norm for years up until this very week, where I just clicked that I’ve watched the trailers for The Hobbit, The Dark Knight Rises and now Ridley Scott’s Alien-esque prequel Prometheus.  Granted that they’re all teasers, yeah it’s just images and impressions of what the final film will be like, and hells yeah do I feel excitement for all of them, but man, do I feel very wrong in watching trailers again like that.

Anyhow, here’s the one for Prometheus, definitely more and more becoming my most anticipated flick for 2012.

* best example is the trailer for Drive. DON’T watch the trailer for Drive before you see Drive.

Shawn Smith

Hubert Blanz

Rob Bailey

Boston.com’s The Big Picture has finally started the first of their end of year round up pictures and as always, it’s great and you should check it out.

So the big news is that North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-Il is dead and that has South Korea is on full alert as his son Jong-Un takes the reigns and a whole nation weeps in mourning.

Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s a good thing he’s gone (though trepidations on the son).

And while I’m gonna miss making jokes about the world’s last gag-safe caricature asian (for now), I can’t really make fun or even criticise these people who have been subjected to decades of propaganda to behave like this.

Nope, not when there was this bollocks just a few months ago.

Fucking hipsters.

Commissioned by E4 to create Christmas idents for them, these 5 shorts by British animation group Treat are short, snappy and unexpectedly awesome.

Moses Bridge

David Kracov

Nadav Bagim

The Milky Way’s black hole may spring to life in 2013
Astronomers have spotted a cloud of gas with three times the mass of the Earth on a near-collision course with the Milky Way’s central black hole. [full article]

Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane Oscar up for auction
The Oscar Orson Welles won for Citizen Kane 70 years ago will go up for auction online this month, a Los Angeles auction house announced Monday. [full article]

We all lose when ‘healers’ take everything from the sick
There is a legitimate role for a variety of complementary therapies such as yoga, meditation, mindfulness, a balanced diet and moderate exercise. The problem arises when the generic multivitamin tablet from the chemist morphs into weekly intravenous injections costing $1000 a shot. Or when the notion of cleansing the body of toxins is exploited with sham diets and enemas that land patients in the very hospitals they are determined to avoid. [full article]

Lego Houses by Mike Doyle

Peter Andrew’s Freeway Interchange series

A nuclear explosion, less than 1 millisecond after detonation