The Asteroid Belt: Life in space, The Hobbit, and snipers

Scientists forecast the next 50 years. It looks like quite a few scientists believe that we’ll be finding alien life in the next 50 years. What do you folks think? I personally think there’s life out there somewhere, but I don’t know when we’ll be finding it.

11 Web Claims. A few that really made me chuckle:

“We’re still in stealth mode, but you can sign up for an exclusive Alpha-tester invite” = “We’re figuring out what to do with this domain name, but it was too expensive to just let go.”

“We use semantic clustering to enhance results relevancy” = “Our results are taken from another search engine, but will anyone buy us? Please?”

A couple of short films that a friend of mine emailed me about: Animator vs. Animation, and then the sequel, aptly titled Animator vs. Animation II. These ooze with creativity and fun. I really liked when the My Computer icon blocked the fireball from the stick figure man with a brick wall that said “FIREWALL”. Cute.

WEBoggle. Word game, with lots and lots of other folks. It’s quite addicting. After playing four or five rounds, it’s clear that my vocabulary is rather weak. I was getting 30-40 points where the winners were getting 150!

Find that mystery linguist woman. A linguist, after teaching a class and using chalk during it, goes to the post office to mail some bulky packages. The post office workers notice white powder on the packages, as well as on the lady’s clothes. It is clearly weapons-grade anthrax. The post office is shut down, with people being ran out of the place, and police and specialist teams are called in. All of that for a bit of chalk dust. Oops?

At this point in time, Peter Jackson won’t be directing The Hobbit. What a bummer. Ever since the release of Lord of the Rings, all of the Tolkien fans have been clamoring for a movie adaptation of The Hobbit by Jackson and Co. Now it looks like New Line Cinema may get a different director and move on with the movie, due to Jackson suing them. (I can certainly understand them not wanting to work with him for that reason.) I’m guessing that if they get a new director, The Hobbit will fall on its face. Who knows, though. Maybe even if they get a different director, if they nab the previous cast (Ian Holmes, Ian McKellen, etc.), it might work. However, if they don’t get Jackson, they won’t be getting WETA, WETA Digital, etc.; would they have to totally recreate Gollum? What about Andy Serkis? Andy Serkis is Gollum. No one else will suffice.

A rather old MTV commercial about Günter the German. It’s kind of cheesy, but I love it. For those who are just dying to have the full song that’s in the background, it’s Die schwarze Barbara by Heino, master of German kitsch music.

Sniping: The perfect killing method, but clear targets are few. I thought this was an interesting article. It’s about Marine snipers in Iraq. As the war has progressed, the effectiveness of sniper teams has declined, for a variety of reasons. For one, the Iraqi insurgents, after four years of war, know where all of the best sniper spots are. Marines have also been given rules as to when they can engage:

Potential targets must be engaged in a hostile act, or show clear hostile intent.
The marines say insurgents know the rules, and now rarely carry weapons in the open. Instead, they pose as civilians and keep their weapons concealed in cars or buildings until just before they need them. Later, when they are done shooting, they put them swiftly out of sight and mingle with civilians.

A 92 year old woman was killed in a shootout with police. While it’s sad that it happened, it’s amazing that she actually shot three of them before she was killed:

One was hit in the arm, another in a thigh and the third in a shoulder. The officers were taken to a hospital for treatment, and all three were conscious and alert, police said.

Pretty good shot for a 92 year old, wouldn’t you say?

Bush screws America [video]. Not safe for work, or mixed company. A bit tasteless, sure, but still hilarious.

Don’t wait for the muse. Cool post about why you shouldn’t sit around waiting for the muse. Instead, jump in and start doing something. The muse will show up eventually. The article makes me think of NaNoWriMo a lot. Now I just need to follow the article’s advice and get back to writing…