Posted on Friday, 3rd September 2010 by Interloper
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Posted on Wednesday, 1st September 2010 by Interloper
Shere Khan, the villanous tiger from Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book was named after Sher Shah Suri, an Afghan who rose to prominence within the Mughal army and eventually became an Emperor. Renowned for his courage and strength, it was told that Sher Shah Suri once killed a tiger with his bare hands.
In 1537, Sher Shah Suri assumed control of Bengal and established the Suri empire, which controlled a vast area including Afghanistan, most of what is now Pakistan, as well as northern India.
Shere Khan, Kipling’s fictional tiger, was popularised by Disney’s adaptation of The Jungle Book, which was released in 1967. But that would not be the last time that Sher Shah Suri would exert his influence on Walt Disney Pictures.
Suri’s bravery and military achievements earnt him the title of “The Lion King”, a name that Disney would use to create an entirely new franchise some 27 years after The Jungle Book was released.
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Posted on Thursday, 26th August 2010 by Interloper
There’s no doubt that we’d be in trouble without the moon. There’d be fewer tides, the weather would be more unpredictable and the day shorter. And that’s not even mentioning all the confused werewolves.
It makes sense then that scientists would want to understand more about our closest celestial companion, a rocky ally–if you will–against the inhospitable darkness of space. As it turns out, that’s what NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is for.
Launched last year, the LRO’s objective is to orbit the moon in order to take high-resolution pictures of its surface, as well as performing number of other functions including measuring lunar radiation levels and looking for deposits of ice or water.
Now, scientists associated with the program have claimed that the moon appears to be shrinking, based on the presence of several faults, called lobate scarps, that have been detected on the surface. Scientists believe the scarps were formed as the moon cooled from its original, molten state. Over millions of years the cooling process caused the moon to contract and the faults formed on the surface as a result.
Evidence suggests that some of the scarps may be relatively new, which indicates that the moon may still be shrinking. It’s unlikely that lobate scarps will be the death of Earth’s favourite satellite though, as the process will slow down further as the moon continues to cool.
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Posted on Wednesday, 11th August 2010 by Interloper
As I so often like to do after an update about dinosaurs… it’s time to talk about Britney Spears.
It has been confirmed that Britney will appear on an upcoming episode of the hit show Glee. There’s no word yet on what specific role Britney will play in the episode, which will be entirely devoted to her own music.
Britney’s songs are likely to be experienced as the hallucinations of several of the show’s characters when they are anaesthetised during a visit to the dentist. So maybe that means Britney will play the role of a sexy dental hygenist?
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Posted on Wednesday, 11th August 2010 by Interloper
Apparently the ankylosaurus had eyelids made out of bone. Also, it seems like the triceratops isn’t real.
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Posted on Wednesday, 4th August 2010 by Interloper
It seems that human beings and locusts might not be so different afterall: with a new study revealing that desperate locusts will eat each other if no other food is readily available.
This mildly disturbing information suggests that locust swarms move on to new locations so that they don’t have to eat each other… or get eaten themselves.
It might not only be desperation that drives locusts to resort to cannibalism though, with one professor involved with the research claiming that “locusts are constantly nibbling on each other”.
Umm, eww?
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Posted on Monday, 26th July 2010 by Interloper
The Chicxulub crater is largely regarded by scientists to be the remnants of collision that caused the mass-extinction of the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago.
The crater is located beneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico and has a diameter of more than 180 kilometres (that’d be around 110 miles). When the Chicxulub asteroid crashed into the Earth it released the equivalent energy of about 100,000,000 megatons of TNT, making the impact around 2 million times more powerful than the most powerful man-made explosion.
After the collision, scientists believe that a number of changes occured on the Earth. These would have included megatsunamis with waves thousands of feet high and hot clouds of dust and ash that spread across much of our planet’s surface.
Pieces of the asteroid would have been ejected out of the Earth’s atmosphere, burning up as they rose into the sky and causing the Earth to broil, igniting world-wide bushfires and causing acid rain.
Shock waves from the impact would have triggered a countless number of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions as the Earth watched the demise of the thunder lizards and began to prepare for the arrival of mankind.
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Posted on Thursday, 22nd July 2010 by Interloper
Kickpuncher, the superhero whose punches have the power of kicks, is set to star in his own 12-page comic book adaptation, written by Greendale Community College student, Troy Barnes.
Barnes was once set to have a successful pro-football career, receiving a scholarship while playing as quarterback at Riverdale High School, before a freak injury in which Barnes dislocated both shoulders ended his football career forever.
While attending Greendale (where you don’t get what you expect, you get what you deserve), Barnes has been learning to cultivate new artistic talents under the mentorship of comic-book artist Jim Mahfood.
Breaking the fourth wall with punches that have the power of kicks, Barnes himself will appear as a character in the comic, along with fellow Greendale Community College students Abed Nadir, Annie Edison and Britta Perry.
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Posted on Tuesday, 20th July 2010 by Interloper
From scientists to poets, few would deny the simple pleasure of witnessing a rainbow. It is unsurprising then that rainbows appear throughout mythology and in legend, weaving themselves into our cultural history like colourful strands of thread.
In the Epic of Gilgamesh, rainbows are said to be the necklace of the Goddess Ishtar and they represent her promise to remember the mythical deluge that wiped out much of human civilisation. This tale was later appropriated by Christian mythologians, who claimed that the rainbow was a sign of God’s promise to Noah that there would be no further floods.
In Hindu mythology, the rainbow represents the bow of the mighty storm-god Indra and in Nordic mythology a rainbow named the Bifröst Bridge is said to connect the realms of Ásgard and Midgard.
But there is another story about rainbows that is told far more frequently than any of the examples I’ve given above: a story about a leprechaun and an ellusive pot of gold.
In Irish folklore, it is said that greedy leprechauns to hide their gold “at the end of the rainbow” to keep it safe.
If you stop to consider that rainbows are actually an optical phenomena that varies depending on the location of the viewer, making it impossible to ever actually reach the “end” of one—hiding your gold at the end of the rainbow begins to seem like quite a brilliant idea… if you’re a leprechaun, that is!
But something about this story seems a little wrong to me. Upon hearing it I’m certain that many children immediately stop caring about the rainbow itself and instead become obsessed with a pot of gold that they’ll never be able to find. It is as though rainbows aren’t valuable enough without inventing the idea that we should be able to exploit them for material gain.
This strikes me as a cunning act of misdirection (I blame the leprechauns), an artifice designed to stop us from realising that the “pot of gold” isn’t at the end of the rainbow; it’s the rainbow itself.
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