Daily Links

• Alex Trebek Had A Heart Attack! Source (D-Listed)
• IESB.net has gotten hold of something called “the Black List”, a compilation of suggestions by over 150 film executives and high-level assistants. Each of these folks gave the names of up to ten of their favorite scripts written in 2007, and one of these scripts was Parker and Stone’s upcoming Paramount project, GIANT MONSTERS ATTACK JAPAN! The movie has been announced for release next year, and all anyone knew up till now is that it would be PG-rated. Source (IF Magazine)
• RIAA files supplemental brief in Atlantic v. Howell; argues personal copies ripped to computer are unauthorized. Source (Recording Industry vs. The People)
• Nasa says its robot rover Spirit has made one of its most significant discoveries on the surface of Mars. Scientists believe a patch of ground disturbed by the vehicle shows evidence of a past environment that would have been perfect for microbial life. Source (BBC News)
• NASA's fleet of THEMIS spacecraft, launched less than 8 months ago, has made three important discoveries about spectacular eruptions of Northern Lights called "substorms" and the source of their power. The discoveries include giant magnetic ropes that connect Earth's upper atmosphere to the Sun and explosions in the outskirts of Earth's magnetic field. Source (NASA)
• The new Super Mario Power Up! Energy Drink is a Nintendo marketing executive’s most delicious fantasy. Source (Coolest Gadgets)

Finally, here's a video of a commercial from 1982 featuring a young Jack Black plugging the Atari game Pitfall. It's really funny to see him so young.

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Daily Links

• RIAA is forcing a charity organization to pay fees so children can sing Christmas Carols. Source (Torrent Freak)
  
• Hollywood superstar Will Smith has revealed he has his eye on the greatest role of his life – to become President of the United States. Source (Daily Mail)
• Less than three months after it began, the 2007-08 television season is basically over -- and nobody won. Source (Variety)
• Fantasy movie The Golden Compass has shot straight to the top of the U.S. box-office chart, ending Enchanted's fairytale two-week stay at number one over the weekend. Source (Star Pulse)
• Big Brother U.S. Government Subpoenaed Amazon.com to Obtain Book Purchasing Records of Customers. Source (News Target)
• The cast of The Golden Compass - which stars Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig - have received death threats from religious zealots. Source (Now Magazine)

Finally, here is a video of an Indian song that they did a la Thriller. The ridiculous part of this video is someone added subtitles, not of the English translation but of what it sounds like the singer is saying phonetically. The video alone is hilarious, but the subtitles just add on to the comedy.

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Daily Links

• Jack Black (who is barely recognizable these days thanks to modern day inventions such as bleach and razors) was apparently not thrilled about the gratuitous use of his ass in his new film, Margot At The Wedding. Source (Webster's Is My Bitch)
• A teenage suspect who secretly recorded his interrogation on an MP3 player has landed a veteran detective in the middle of perjury charges, authorities said Thursday. Unaware of the recording, Detective Christopher Perino testified in April that the suspect "wasn't questioned" about a shooting in the Bronx, a criminal complaint said. But then the defense confronted the detective with a transcript it said proved he had spent more than an hour unsuccessfully trying to persuade Erik Crespo to confess - at times with vulgar tactics. Source (My Way)
• Congress Creates Copyright Cops. Source (Slashdot)
• A Citi Investment Research analyst warned Wednesday that Netflix Inc. could be hurt by a recommended surcharge on online media rental services, whose return mailers often require manual processing. Source (CNN Money)
• With few clear signs that the five-week writers strike will end soon, the WGA faces the daunting prospect that the majors will lose patience with the slow pace of negotiations and make a take-it-or-leave-it offer as early as next week. Source (Variety)
• Sen. Whitehouse Reveals Secret DoJ Legal Memos: Bush Determines What Is Constitutional. Source (Think Progress)
• An Icelandic teen, MSNBC reports, figured out President Bush’s private phone number, and called it recently, leaving a message saying he was the president of Iceland and wanted him to call him back. Source (Big Head DC)
• Simon Pegg is an Englishman in New York for his next comic adventure, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. Source (The Sun)

Finally, here's an old video, but it's a damn funny one. It's called "My New Haircut". The language in it is NSFW but 100% hilarious.

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Daily Links

• Either this confirms that the US Government is hiding the fact that UFOs exist, or Bush is just looking for another way to waste US tax payers money. Source (Funnbee)
• Their strike isn't over, but some Hollywood writers put down their picket signs last night at the request of Elizabeth Taylor. Taylor performed in A.R. Gurney's play "Love Letters" with James Earl Jones at the Paramount Pictures studio in Hollywood to benefit World AIDS Day. Source (WBIR)
• Jay Leno received criticism after most of his non-striking staff was laid off and given shitty ass holiday bonuses. Jay and NBC are apparently on damage control. Jay has agreed to pay 80 laid off workers for at least the next week out of his own pocket. It could be extended if the strike goes beyond that. Source (D-Listed)
• The state Attorney General's office (Oregon) this week filed an appeal in U.S. District Court in Oregon calling for an immediate investigation of the evidence presented by the RIAA when it subpoenaed the identities of 17 students at the University of Oregon who allegedly infringed music copyrights. Source (PC World)
• Japan's latest invention: The dental training robot that can 'feel pain'. Source (Daily Mail)
• I hate to use the “C” word, but there is no other way to say it. There is a national conspiracy to prevent renewable energy from becoming the primary energy source in the United States. Source (Op Ed News)
• File this under "straight out of left field" -- Activision, the publishing powerhouse behind the Call of Duty and Tony Hawk series; and Vivendi Games, owner of Blizzard Entertainment, which you probably don't need us to tell you is behind the Warcraft and Starcraft series, are coming together to form "the world's most profitable games business," cleverly named Activision Blizzard. Source (Joystiq)
• There has been no shortage of books chronicling the dystopia that is the Bush Administration. And in this job, I’ve read quite a few of them. None of them have made as powerful an impact as Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine. Source (Crooks and Liars)
• A partially mummified hadrosaur discovered by a teenager in the US may be the most complete dinosaur ever found, with intact skin that shows evidence of stripes and perhaps soft tissue, researchers say. Source (ABC News)

Finally, here is the newest episode of The Guild, a quirky online series, starring Felicia Day. If you like this one, check out the other episodes on their YouTube Channel.

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Daily Links

• Windows is notorious for having useless features and CPU resource hogging programs/services enabled by default. Today’s post is about removing some of the useless services. Source (Mark Sanborn)
  
• Catholics getting their panties in a twist over "anti-religious messages" in the new Philip Pullman movie The Golden Compass. Source (BBC)
• Google investing in solar power to fuel their massive server farm. Source (Gizmodo)
• Tolkien's great-grandson arrested in the UK for possession of £3,000 worth of marijuana. Source (The Sun)
• 9 Legendary Cartoon Voices (and where else you may have heard them). Source (Mental Floss)
• British music industry major EMI wants to cut its funding to the industry's trade bodies, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters on Wednesday, which could deal a blow to the fight against music piracy. Source (Yahoo News)
• In the November 15 episode of NBC's "30 Rock," Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey, in their roles as Jack Donaghy and Liz Lemon, sang the praises of Verizon Wireless before Fey looked right into the camera and asked, "Can we have our money now?" At least in this case, art did indeed imitate life. Verizon said it handed over an integration fee to NBC, in addition to some marketing support, for the mini-commercial within one of the network's hottest shows. Source (Yahoo News)
• How to improve your concentration. Source (Life Hack)
  
• A 400-year-old book covered in a sheet of wrinkled human skin is going under the hammer in a bizarre auction. It is thought the skin was cut from the corpse of one of Guy Fawkes' fellow conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Source (Sky News)

Finally, here's an awesome video that was on Gizmodo today. It's a commercial from Norway promoting growth in the Engineering field, and it uses some sweet special effects, too bad trains don't normally do this, it would make riding on them a lot more entertaining.

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Daily Links

• Hollywood screenwriters have returned to the negotiating table, three weeks after beginning strike action. Source (BBC)
• Well, as if the Screenwriter's Guild hasn't suffered enough with the recent strike in the US, Sean Connery has come along and reduced the writers to tears by loftily announcing that he will never make another film again. Source (Holy Moly)
• The major fall update slated for the Xbox 360 now has a set release date and its first significant feature, Microsoft said today. The upgrade is now set to launch on December 4th and will incorporate Find Old Friends, a new service that will let users browse the friend lists of other gamers on the Xbox Live service. Source (Electronista)
• Collegiate Quidditch takes off — figuratively, at least. Source (USA Today)
• Earlier this month, the RIAA announced that it had sent off yet another wave of prelitigation settlement letters to college campuses across the US. This time, the recording industry targeted 16 schools, including almost the entire membership of the Ivy League. There was one notable Ivy school missing from the roster, one that has failed to appear in any of the RIAA's press releases: Harvard. Source (Ars Technica)
• HARRISON FORD is getting sick of the growing number of STAR WARS fans camping outside his doorstep. The Hollywood actor - who plays Han Solo in the hit sci-fi franchise - claims he is hounded by a group of wacky film fanatics praying to him as the leader of the Star Wars-inspired Jediism religion outside his Wyoming, U.S. home. Source (Contact Music)
• Republicans, taking a play out of the Democrats playbook, threaten to cut war funding if better progress is not made by the Iraqi government. Source (Charleston)
• The Federal Communications Commission is scheduled to vote whether or not to extend their gestapo rule on the airwaves to cable television. Source (Washington Post)
• Universal Music Group's CEO is like your cranky, out-of-touch grandpa who happens to run a huge record label. Source (Gizmodo)
• New York's "Vulture" section comes to the correct conclusion about the music biz -- but for the wrong reason. In commenting on the Wired profile of "Universal Music Group CEO/supervillain Doug Morris," the folks at "Vulture" have a yuck-fest over Morris' inability to come to grips with modern technology. Source (Huffington Post)

Finally, here's an old, but highly amusing video accompanied by the acoustic version of Radiohead's "Creep"

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Daily Links

• The reason there's a "Cult of Mac". Source (Bill Clementson)
• Scientists have discovered that chocolate was invented at least 3,100 years ago in Central America and not as the sweet treat people now crave, but as a celebratory beer-like beverage and status symbol. Source (Daily Mail)
• JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, sues another author for penning and attempting to publish a new book installation revolving around a character from the end of Book 7, The Deathly Hallows. WARNING - Do not read if you have not finished the series, as there are spoilers to the end of the movie inside. Source (Scotsman)
• Silent Movie version of Star Wars. Source (YouTube)
• Looking for a new TV on Black Friday? Yahoo has the low-down on all the newest deals. Source (Yahoo)
• A school in England has adopted a new organizational format for their school, modeled after Harry Potter's Hogwarts School for Magic and Witchcraft with surprisingly positive results. Source (Yahoo News)
• A bad-ass, self reloading shot gun with the problem of lubrication and cleaning thrown out of the window. Check out the specs on Gizmodo as well as the video. Source (Gizmodo)
• Honda is releasing a limited number of their new line of cars running on Hydrogen Cells, the Honda FCX Clarity in LA. Check the specs and review out on Gizmodo, if only these were more widely available, but this is a good step forward. Source (Gizmodo)
• The Second Avenue subway projet in NYC has just gotten approval for 1.3 Billion in federal funding. Source (CBS)
• Super Mario Galaxy is quickly becoming dubbed the best video game ever, though it's only been out a week. Here is yet another article singing its praises, pushing me further to get a Wii and this game. Source (411 Mania)
• Not quite completing the trifecta, CBS news writers go on strike after working for 2 years without contracts. Since they're not writers on Heroes or Scrubs, I don't really care, but here's the article if you do. Source (Reuters UK)
• In Arista v. Does 1-19, a case brought against 19 George Washington University students by the Big Four record labels, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly has ordered the RIAA to show cause why the ex parte subpoenas issued to GWU shouldn't be quashed. Source (Ars Technica)
  

Finally, here is a disturbing and equally hysterical video found on YouTube. It's a live-action spoof of Duck Tales. The plot? The little girl duck goes on Myspace and finds out the dangers of meeting with strangers, especially online. Featuring people in costumes doing things that are NSFW

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