Two pathologists at the Medical University of Vienna – Professor Karl Grossschmidt and Professor Fabian Kanz – have spent much of the past five years painstakingly cataloguing and forensically analysing every single bone for age, injury and cause of death.
They found at least 67 individuals, nearly all aged 20 to 30. One striking bit of evidence is that many have healed wounds.
To Kanz and Grossschmidt, this suggests they were prized individuals getting good and expensive medical treatment. One body even shows signs of a surgical amputation.
As the father of a superhero / Star Wars obsessed 3.5 year old, I’m glad the new FF movie looks fun. He’s been talking about Spider-Man for months now, but Jill and I think Venom may be a bit too much for him to see, in the theater at least. Just last night I was showing him some preview and he said he didn’t want to watch the scene where Toby Maguire turns into Venom, so I covered his eyes.
Just a few minutes before, he laughed out loud at the part in the FF trailer Johnny and Ben switch powers and he said “the Thing’s got hair!” So, with Spider-Man 3 looking a little too intense (same for Transformers), I’m glad that Fantastic Four is a movie we can both see and geek out over together.
Speaking of geeking out, check out the image above. It looks that Johnny won’t just be switching powers, but he’ll be pulling a Super-Skrull and wield the powers of all 4 members of the FF. The image shows Johnny with a flaming Thing hand (which later stretches in the trailer).
This is easily one of the best photos of the year. Absolutely a great idea and a well executed photo. Be sure to head on over to the Flickr page to see the full size photo and leave a comment on Flickr if you like it.
I’m usually not a big fan of movie websites. I can’t stand all the crappy interactive Flash features and nonsense. I usually opt for the Apple.com trailers page and that’s it. Sometimes I’ll grab a desktop image if it’s a movie I especially like, but very rarely do I dig around inside.
Some books improve with age–the age of the reader, that is. Such is certainly the case with Philip Pullman’s heroic, at times heart-wrenching novel, The Golden Compass, a story ostensibly for children but one perhaps even better appreciated by adults. The protagonist of this complex fantasy is young Lyra Belacqua, a precocious orphan growing up within the precincts of Oxford University. But it quickly becomes clear that Lyra’s Oxford is not precisely like our own–nor is her world. For one thing, people there each have a personal dæmon, the manifestation of their soul in animal form. For another, hers is a universe in which science, theology, and magic are closely allied:
Not that Lyra spends much time worrying about it; what she likes best is “clambering over the College roofs with Roger the kitchen boy who was her particular friend, to spit plum stones on the heads of passing Scholars or to hoot like owls outside a window where a tutorial was going on, or racing through the narrow streets, or stealing apples from the market, or waging war.” But Lyra’s carefree existence changes forever when she and her dæmon, Pantalaimon, first prevent an assassination attempt against her uncle, the powerful Lord Asriel, and then overhear a secret discussion about a mysterious entity known as Dust. Soon she and Pan are swept up in a dangerous game involving disappearing children, a beautiful woman with a golden monkey dæmon, a trip to the far north, and a set of allies ranging from “gyptians” to witches to an armor-clad polar bear.
In The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman has written a masterpiece that transcends genre. It is a children’s book that will appeal to adults, a fantasy novel that will charm even the most hardened realist. Best of all, the author doesn’t speak down to his audience, nor does he pull his punches; there is genuine terror in this book, and heartbreak, betrayal, and loss. There is also love, loyalty, and an abiding morality that infuses the story but never overwhelms it. This is one of those rare novels that one wishes would never end.
The comparisons to Harry Potter are out there and having never read the Harry Potter books, I won’t choose a side either way. Regardless, I was fascinated with the book and managed to read the second book, The Subtle Knife, in between reading all my other books for that same class. I then had to wait for the final book in the series to be published, but when The Amber Spyglass was released, I read it within the first week.
Having said all of that, I guess you could say I’m predisposed to like the movie website. I think it does a great job of explaining dæmons and the Alethiometer (a magical/scientific device that only Lyra can use). The working replica of the Alethiometer itself can waste hours of your time if you were to read every bit of info available. As you can see above, the site will generate a personal dæmon for you. Why mine is a spider, I’m not sure. I’m like spiders as much as Indiana Jones likes snakes. I can’t wait to see a trailer for this movie and I’m sure I’ll be there later this year when it’s released to check it out.
