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A CNN article this week addresses “11 Political Myths and Conspiracy Theories” — how can a guy like me not click that shit? The 11 myths “debunked” are Presidential in one form or another, with a single exception: Gary Condit and the murder of Chandra Levy.

The list is mostly a warmed-over retread of other squibs CNN has published over the years — they seem to trot this stuff out in time for every presidential election. But one aspect of it really bugs me this time.

They’re doing a crappy job of debunking at least a few of these myths. Let’s start by putting a few 6.5 mm Carcano slugs in some barrel-grown Presidential salmon, shall we? Here’s CNN:

#9 The theory: Someone besides Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK.

The facts: Decades after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, the shooting and the events that followed continue to fascinate many Americans.

Much of that interest rests on the theory that the assassination was the result of a conspiracy — not the act of a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald.

Theories include that Kennedy “was killed by CIA agents acting either out of anger over the Bay of Pigs or at the behest of Vice President Lyndon Johnson,” by the KGB or by “mobsters mad at Kennedy’s brother for initiating the prosecution of organized crime rings,” according to Time magazine.

But the Warren Commission, established to investigate the assassination, found that Oswald was the lone gunman — and that there was not a second shooter.

 

Ba-da-bing! Zing! Hibbity-skibbity-yow! Who knew it was that simple? Read more…

Having cut my teeth on Kathy Acker’s Blood & Guts in High School, I find it difficult to believe the film version of Pride & Prejudice & Zombies will ever be able to beat the judge demanding of Hester Prynne, “Now pretty please tell us who you fucked?”

Nonetheless, I think it’s Hollywood’s Jane Austen craze as much as its zombie craze that has led the film version to get pushed along. There’s been a fever to make the perfect date movie by adapting this “novel,” which added text by Seth Grahame-Smith to Jane Austen’s original, based on an idea by QuirkBooks editor Jason Rekulak. The infectious desire to make P&P&Z has been been infecting Hollywood almost as much as the drive to completely fuck up World War Z.

Signed on now is director Craig Gillespie, of Lars and the Real Girl fame, who “finalized” a deal yesterday, which in Hollywood means virtually nothing at all, since people leave projects they’ve “finalized” constantly.

But just in case not everyone understands how thoroughly dead Hollywood is, note that:

“Gillespie recently wrapped a remake of the ’80s cult classic Fright Night, with Colin Farrell as the unfriendly neighborhood vampire.”

…which would probably hurt my brain to think about even more than it does, if I could remember who the hell Colin Farrell is, other than the scary face in my nightmares.

Gillespie “plans to begin shooting Pride & Predjudice & Zombies at the end of the summer,” which in Hollywood is a bit like saying you plan to have “Marty” over for dinner at your loft the next time he’s in L.A. Gillespie did an interview with Entertainment Weekly in which EW, as usual, really kicked out the jams when it comes to asking thought-provoking questions: Read more…

I’m a little bit late to the nail-painting party on this one, but it’s just so much fun to be pretty that I really can’t help myself. Just in case you missed it:

Last week, Fox News manufactured a controversy on Monday the 11th to punish J. Crew for gracing a newsletter with a photo showing J. Crew president and creative director Jenna Lyons painting her son’s toenails pink. As Jon Stewart would later observe, this was clearly intended to be a fun bonding moment between mother and son. But Fox’s columnist Keith Ablow, MD saw it — no, I’m not kidding — as a “clear attack on masculinity.” Abelow claimed young Mr. Lyons’s pink nail polish just goes to show what happens when you let the whippersnappers social-network and stuff. Said Ablow:

In our technology-driven world—fueled by Facebook, split-second Prozac prescriptions and lots of other assaults on genuine emotion and genuine relationships and actual consequences for behavior—almost nothing is now honored as real and true.

Ablow, incidentally, is a psychiatrist — so he knows all about the genuine emotion and genuine relationships, I’m sure, not to mention the Prozac prescriptions. Ablow further claimed it’s attitudes like this that are to blame for rampant teen sex, girls dressing slutty, and…um…guys doing crunches, I guess. And a bunch of other stuff, like the imminent end of war: Read more…

Reading Pravda still messes with my mind. For the first half of my life (so far) this Soviet publication was a Cold War joke — something a righteous American couldn’t read without feeling resoundingly superior and possibly humming The Star-Spangled Banner. But the days of Steel Joe and Nikki Boy Kruschev are long passed. Now, when I want information about the “emerging disease” Morgellons, I go to Pravda.

But lest you think reading Pravda is no longer an exotic experience laced with Siberian weirdness and plenty Huh!?, just check out the first graf of the Pravarama’s 13.04.2011 article on today’s 10 Most Mysterious Diseases:

There is a great deal of illnesses, which can be cured easily. However, there is a list of well-known illnesses to which scientists still have not found a clue. They are still incurable.

I will grudgingly admit that scientists still have not found a clue, but they are far from incurable. Just loudly express your opinion on the Pentagon cover-up of the proof of intelligent design, and whenever you say the word “science,” be sure to put it in air quotes — and sometimes say “western science” for additional clinical impact. That should get rid of any scientists in the vicinity. For post-eradication maintenance, a blank stare is mandated, though that will not protect you against the frequently co-morbid affliction, “pseudo-scientists.”

Regardless, though, it’s only Pravda that has the massive babushkas to take on the dreaded Morgellons Disease, which they place at #10 on their list:

The symptoms of this mysterious ailment remind a scene from a sci-fi thriller. Patients say that they can feel something crawling underneath their skin. The condition is characterized by a range of skin symptoms including crawling, biting, and stinging sensations; finding fibers on or under the skin; and persistent skin lesions (e.g., rashes or sores). Most doctors, including dermatologists and psychiatrists, regard Morgellons as a manifestation of known medical conditions, including delusional parasitosis. Read more…

If you’ve ever received by email a desperate plea for help from the 90-year-old widow of the Sultan of Nigeria to “please to allow as desperate assistance forthwith transfer the sum of US20000000000000000 into your bank account for which you will kindly be entitled to a fidners fee of 23.74% ass establish under INTERPOL and the funds of the legal European Union, praise be God and find you well,” then perhaps you’ve visited Snopes.com. I certainly hope so.

Snopes, as you then probably know, catalogs and debunks (or in some cases verifies) urban legends. Run by a husband-and-wife team, it started out as a way to investigate whether a teenage girl in the ’50s really had her brain eaten by spiders, or whether AIDS Mary was really trolling bars in your neighborhood wickedly seeking to infect you by taking a sip from your Captain Morgan’s and Coke. In the years since its launch, Snopes has migrated into a sort of bullshit-cop role, tracking down and debunking the completely jackass tickets to looneyville that people seem to send out on the internet for God Knows Why. Read more…

I am kind of late to the Honey Badger parade, apparently. The video above showed up, like, earlier this year or something, and has been making its don’t-give-a-shit rounds throughout the internet, leaving a trail of cobra parts and half-consumed honeybee larvae.

It missed me before now, however. I finally stumbled across Honey Badger and said “WTF!?!? Whoa! What’s that?” and Honey Badger responded by cheerfully chewing a hole through my midsection and beating my face in. You think Honey Badger gives a shit? No. Honey Badger doesn’t give a shit. A few choice observations by the Marlon Perkins of slaughter:

Ew! AND it eats snakes? Oh my god! Ew, it’s nasty. It’s so nasty. You think Honey Badger cares? It doesn’t give a shit. How disgusting is that? It eats larva. Oh, what a crazy fuck!

The drama of Honey Badger’s fight with the cobra must be watched and re-watched to be appreciated, as must its venom-induced post-combat nap. “Look at that sleepy fuck!”

Honey Badger is my hero.

And you know what? Honey badger would probably smack me for saying that. And you for reading it. And everyone else for being on the web in the first place. Honey badger would just smack us all upside the head for being there to smack. Did I mention Honey Badger is my hero?

And you know what I say to Honey Badger?

I say, “Thanks, stupid, thanks for the post, see you later!”

The übergothest of übergoth comic books may be the latest victim of remake fever.

Variety reports that 28 Weeks Later director Carlos Fresnadillo has “signed a deal” with Relativity Media to remake The Crow. What’s absolutely hilarious is what comes after that:

Though no talent is attached yet, Relativity is looking to put “The Crow” into production this fall. Fresnadillo will collaboratively develop the screenplay once a writer is attached to adapt the script from James O’Barr’s comic book series, which has sold more than a quarter-million copies worldwide.

 

Look…I’m not the sort who rains on anyone’s parade. I mean…gay caveman? I’m on board. Dopamine? Dope-a-ME. Mutants-from-Japan? Word up!

But “no talent is attached yet” and “looking to put The Crow into production this fall” are two statements that go perfectly together in exactly one location on Earth: Hollywood. The rest of us aren’t buying it.

Or should I say that “the rest of us ARE buying it,” because I’m sure fansites worldwide will report this development rapturously as a guaranteed money shot from the man who brought you the pretty-good sequel to one of the 36 greatest zombie movies of all time.

Meanwhile, “signed a deal” means, if you’ll allow me to translate, “ba-da-bing,” “ba-da-boom,” “ba-da-bang,” “He wants to talk.” Which is to say, it means nothing without specifics. Reports like this go out all the time, with vapid empty quotes from executives talking about what hot shit the director they just hired is.

But more about the personnel, for what it’s worth:

Studio CEO Ryan Kavanaugh will produce along with original “Crow” producers Edward R. Pressman and Jeff Most, as well as Apaches Entertainment’s Enrique López Lavigne and Belén Atienza. Relativity’s Tucker Tooley will exec produce, while co-producers include Pressman Film Corporation’s Jon Katz and Apaches’ Jesús de la Vega, as well as José Ibáñez.

[Link.]

What’s really creepy is how Variety refers to Fresnadillos as “Helmer,” as if it’s his name — as in:

“Helmer received an Oscar nom in 1997 for directing the live-action short film ‘Linked’ received an Oscar nom in 1997 for directing the live-action short film ‘Linked’…”

That’s kinda creepy, but then, it’s Variety.

Anyway, in case you are fifteen minutes late to the Goth Parade, the 1994 film The Crow was scripted by two kickass writers, John Shirley (one of the O.C.’s — original cyberpunks, later a prolific horror novelist) and David J. Schow (author of Gun Work, which may be the most violent crime thriller ever written). They did not work together, but consecutively — as I recall, Shirley left the project and then Schow was hired.

It was, as I seem to recall, Shirley’s idea to adapt it from the srsly amazing comic series by James O’Barr, an orphan and veteran of the foster-care system, who wrote the comic book while serving with the U.S. Marines in Germany, to deal with his pain after his fiancee was killed by a drunk driver. O’Barr, from Detroit, made The Crow one of the relatively few comic books, and the adaptation one of the few films, set in that inspiring, evocative, moody and spooky as hell city.

The 1994 film inspired four more films, along with tie-in novels from the likes of Poppy Z. Brite and Norman Partridge.

Associated Press photo from the Daily Mail.

In San Francisco, I’m afraid we’ve got a touch of the Space Madness.

What else is new, you ask? Okay, I’ll admit that Buh-buh-buh-Baghdad By the Bay has been high on the venom of the Moon Maidens since that fateful day in five-five when the G-man funked with the bongos. Allen sauced us with a does of that juicy contagion, cool cats, and we’ve been, like, cuh-raaayzee, man, ever, like, since.

But this week’s different. Y’see, it’s just been announced that the new Terminal 2 at San Francisco International Airport (SFO), opening on April 14, will be the nesting point not just of Virgin America, but Virgin Galactic, the outfit planning to operate SpaceShip 2 SpaceShip Enterprise, the first commercial passenger spaceship.

As the Daily Mail reported (with some stunning photos, of which the above is but a thumb-tasting), the first two planes to arrive at the terminal yesterday were the new Virgin American Airbus 320 arrived in San Francisco yesterday (April 6) and its bestest bud, Virgin Galactic’s Scaled Composites-built White Knight 2 VMS Eve, named after Richard Branson’s mother. VMS Eve had the SpaceShip 2 Enterprise tucked under its wing.

The jet-powered mothership ferries Enterprise for Earthbound flights, and also serves as its launch platform. Rather than blasting off from the ground like the Space Shuttle, Enterprise launches from a carrier vessel, like the X-15 used to launch from the B-52.

There’s also video here, which I got from a Wired Story about it, which says in part:

“For the first time we’ve brought the spaceship and WhiteKnight to a commercial airport…. It’s just a fantastic, exciting day,” says an obviously amped-up Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides. Before he was the company’s CEO, Whitesides was one of the first people to sign up for a $200,000 ticket to ride on the space plane.

Commercial flights will begin in a year or two, Whitesides added.

The spaceship/mothership combination landed at SFO in formation with a more typical Virgin vehicle, an Airbus A320, which carried celebrity passengers such as Virgin founder Richard Branson (seen peering out the window in the video above) and pioneering astronaut Buzz Aldrin.

A handful of lucky schoolchildren who are part of a Virgin-backed nonprofit foundation’s effort to get students interested in science, math and entrepreneurship, also got to ride, plus a passel of journalists….It’s just one of the public relations benefits Virgin enjoys as a result of operating both a domestic air carrier and a suborbital spaceflight operation.

[Link.]

 

Aldrin, of course, is no ordinary astronaut. His mention in project is accompanied around Techyum Towers by the same giddy Hamster Dance that accompanies a Bigfoot sighting or a political endorsement from Chuck Yeager. Aldrin is one of the biggest personalities in modern weirdness, though all told most of the weirdness seems to swirl around him; I get the sense he’s actually fairly normal.

The second man on the moon and the first one to hold a religious ceremony there, Aldrin is the astronaut probably most beloved by wingnuts, for his account of a UFO spotted during the Apollo 11 mission.

But he’s also, reputedly, a thirty-third degree Scottish Rite Mason. His name springs first to the lips of conspiracy wonks as proof that the Apollo program was a hotbed of spooky-ookie X-ness. Much has been made of his reported mischief of taking a Masonic flag to the moon and returning it to the shady secret society to, I don’t know, hang it up somewhere or something.

Though unattributed misinformation often identifies Aldrin as a right-winger, he’s actually been friendly with Democrats for years and is an adviser to the Obama Administration on space matters. Last year he went toe-to-toe against his former moonmate Neil Armstrong, Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell (yeah, Tom Hanks played him in the movie) and Apollo 17 commander Eugene Cernak, in supporting Obama’s decision to cancel NASA’s planned return to the moon with the Constellation mission. The astro-trio thought the cancellation was guaranteed to torpedo America’s race to conquer the stars, while Aldrin says that specific program ran counter to what he felt should be U.S. space aims, which he felt should be (among other things) establishing a permanent colony on Mars. Armstrong, Lovell and Cernak disagreed strenuously. Astronaut fight in the Cream-of-Wheat pit!!!

Speaking of which, Aldrin once punched a guy in the teeth for claiming the Moon landing was faked. Aldrin believes the key to establishing U.S. hegemony in space is permanent, sustainable colonies on other planets. To that end, he went on Dancing With the Stars and recorded a rap song with Snoop Dogg and Quincy Jones.

Kyodo News March 23, 2011 photo of Fukushima I, from security gate of #1 and #2 reactors.

The Associated Press reported about 20 minutes ago as of this writing that a magnitude 7.4 quake hit off the coast of Japan’s Miyagi prefecture, about 90 miles from Fukushima. The quake generated a tsunami warning. Kyodo News reports that as of 11:50 Japan time (about 30 minutes ago as of this writing), there was “no extra abnormality” reported at the Fukushima nuclear site, where they’ve been injecting nitrogen into the #1 reactor to decrease the chance of a hydrogen explosion.

The Miyagi quake is far from the first aftershock — there have been hundreds of them, with some of them even topping magnitude 7.0. This one occurred at a depth of 25 miles, which is very deep; shallower quakes tend to cause much more damage and are more likely to cause tsunamis.

Kyodo news also reported before the newest aftershock that the government pleaded for objective reporting of the crisis, noting not only sensationalistic reporting but also, sometimes, out-and-out misreporting (like the five deaths of Fukushima plant workers — not true):

State Foreign Secretary Chiaki Takahashi told a press conference that Tokyo believes some reports by foreign media on the Fukushima crisis were ”excessive” and has urged the organizations responsible for the stories through Japanese diplomatic missions abroad to correctly and objectively disseminate information.

Ministry officials said some foreign media, including tabloids, emphasized the danger of radioactive materials leaking from the Fukushima nuclear plant by focusing on extreme projections, while erroneously reporting that the plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. has hired homeless people to tackle the ongoing crisis.

Other examples include a report that five nuclear workers had died at the site, giving the impression that they perished due to high-level radiation amid efforts to bring the crisis under control.

In fact, the reported casualties consisted of workers who died shortly after the quake and tsunami hit the plant and those who were missing in Ibaraki Prefecture, south of Fukushima, the officials said.

[Link.]

Carl Safina, for his part, expressed the view in CNN that the radioactive seawater found leaking from the Fukushima plant (and finally stopped a couple days ago) will probably have virtually no effect on human health — especially in light of all the other crap humans do to the environment:

Some higher-end sushi bars do get their fish from Japan, but they’re likely to play it safe on this issue and get fish from elsewhere (or tell you they have; fibbing is a constant issue in the seafood business). The bigger issues with sushi is that top predators such as tuna already have relatively high mercury, and most are overfished and in decline.

Moreover, theoretical models do not predict that hazardous levels of radiation will reach the U.S. coast. However, the most scientifically accurate statement is that while any radiation can pose some health risk, in many cases, including this one, the human health risk is infinitesimally low. Driving a car is certainly much more dangerous.

Radioecologist F. Ward Whicker told National Geographic that the concentrations of iodine and cesium “would have to be orders of magnitude larger than the numbers I’ve seen to date to cause the kind of radiation doses to marine life that would cause mortality or reductions in reproductive potential. I am very doubtful that direct effects of radioactivity from the damaged reactors on marine life over a large area off the coast of Japan will be observed.”

[Link.]

Update: While I was sleeping, Popular Mechanics did a nice interview with Hartman back on March 17th.

About a month ago, I spotted a video of a guy named Troy Hartman going almost 50 miles an hour using a jet pack on skis. I thought it was awesome then, and tracked Hartman down and talked to him a little about it. Unfortunately, I had just read a couple of books about nuclear reactors, and when one started getting uppity over on the East Side, I got sidetracked into writing about that for a while. Mea culpa.

But no amount of “zenon gas” crossing the Pacific could distract me indefinitely from the world of jet packs, and to jet packs I return.

Anyway, the rig Hartman wears in the above video was built by him from the jet engine of a small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, which he adapted to use in a backpack configuration. Hartman says the jet exhaust blasts out behind him at about 1,500 Fahrenheit, and he had to wear protective gear on his ass, basically, to keep from becoming a rump roast. At one point he’s going about 47 miles an hour, which is far from the fastest downhill skiing possible, but is still pretty fast (especially for fairly level ground). The jet pack is controlled (visibly, in this footage) by a device Hartman holds in his right hand.

As someone who knows very little about aviation physics but completely loves jet packs, I was immediately fascinated by the invention itself and how exactly it all worked. The information on that count was sketchy, because Hartman plans to sell this thing as a commercial product if he can — it’s a pretty ingenious invention, and calls to mind at least one apocryphal Darwin Award.

The footage was posted in many different venues, usually without too many details and few comments other than “LOL KEWL!!!” But some commenters questioned whether the footage was a hoax, for various reasons — and just because if you look at cool videos people post, everything seems like a hoax except Roomba Cat Slapping a Pit Bull.

Since about the only thing I love more than jet packs is debunking crap, I was intrigued. Read more…