Jumblerant: Wikipedia

Showing posts with label Wikipedia. Show all posts

Monday, May 9, 2016

A Long Time Ago In A Galaxy Far, Far Away...

The latest Star Wars film has come and gone. As far as I am concerned, it was just a poor revamp of previous episodes; someone lost in the desert, an orphan with no friends, an alien bar and a resulting fight, a death star. Nothing new there then, heck, the X-wings weren't even updated!

The three components of the opening sequence: the phrase "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....", the Star Wars logo and the opening crawl, from the beginning of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

But what if they changed the opening to be more like a Bond film? Would it lose it's cachet?

The video below is an awesome interpretation of what that may have looked like if they had done it for The Empire Strikes Back.

Star Wars - Episode V "The Empire Strikes Back" Homage (Title Sequence) from KROFL on Vimeo.

kthanxbai! Jumblerant

Sunday, February 15, 2015

Star Wars or Star Trek?

'And yea, for the internet was created. Thusly the Geeks and the Nerds did celebrate. And they asked, forsooth, one timeless question; Star Wars or Star Trek?'

Its the age-old question that still needs answering! So where can we get answers? We can go to Wikipedia, the place where all answers are stored, with the page 'Comparison of Star Trek and Star Wars', or if the World's Encyclopedia doesn't give you the answer, we can go to Business Insider, and their article about why supremacy goes to Star Wars.

Still not satisfied? Gizmodo.com has a great article about the different warring abilities of each side. I think the real answer is actually in each of us, and that is where Science Fiction wins!

Some awesome fan fiction video footage that sheds a visual light on the argument:

Personally, I'm off to read MHI another time, its may not be Star Wars or Star Trek related, but it is awesomeness in print.

kthanxbai!

Jumblerant

Friday, April 18, 2014

Storytelling in 2014

Chaucer wrote the Canterbury Tales in the end part of the 14th century. The stories (mostly written in verse, although some are in prose) are presented as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The prize for this contest is a free meal at an inn on their return.

Storytelling is a way of sharing and interpreting experiences and are universal, insofar as they involve the sames basic tenets - hero + goal - baddie = story.

English: The Boyhood of Raleigh, 1871 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sketch of "The Story of the Bunyip", an Aborigine telling the story to two European children (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

According to Wikipedia;

Human knowledge is based on stories and the human brain consists of cognitive machinery necessary to understand, remember, and tell stories. Humans are storytelling organisms that both individually and socially, lead storied lives. Stories mirror human thought as humans think in narrative structures and most often remember facts in story form. Facts can be understood as smaller versions of a larger story, thus storytelling can supplement analytical thinking. Because storytelling requires auditory and visual senses from listeners, one can learn to organize their mental representation of a story, recognize structure of language, and express his or her thoughts.

So there you go. Man was made for stories, and stories were made for man.

But where does this leave us in 2014 when technology means that we can be told stories 24/7? Well, StoryCorps has come up with a great way of combining oral storytelling and video imaging. And I think it hits the nail right on the head;

Why there have only been 370,000 views at the time of this going live, I do not know, but what a story and what a great vehicle for telling it.

kthanxbai!

Jumblerant

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Team Rubicon are back

When Haiti got hit with the horrid earthquake all the way back in January I spoke about Team Rubicon - here and here.

Chile has been hit by an earthquake which hit 8.8 on the Richter scale. Please note that a 5.0 earthquake is 10 times stronger than a 4.0 earthquake. According to Wikipedia today's earthquake occurs anywhere on the planet only once a year, and has the equivalent of 15.8 gigatons of TNT exploding at the same time.

Haiti's earthquake was a 7.0 so therefore Chile's earthquake has many times the amount of energy that Haiti's had. There are numerous factors that effect the final effect that the release of that energy has on a country but nevertheless, Team Rubicon are ready to roll:

Ladies and Gentlemen:

As you hopefully by now know, Chile has been rocked by a magnitude 8.7 earthquake off it's coast. This earthquake is over 1000x more powerful than the one that struck Haiti over one month ago.

Initial reports from the Chilean government are casualties hovering near 200, however, communication is down with outlying villages and towns on the coast, and that toll is expected to rise sharply in the coming days.

Team Rubicon has assembled a 6 man recon element to fly into southern Chile to assess casualties near the coast, where large aid organizations will not concentrate their efforts. We expect bottlenecks to occur in Santiago, where the airport is shut down for 24 hours, and concentrated efforts to be focused on Concepcion. This leaves a critical gap in medical attention on the coastal towns.

Team Rubicon is asking you to help us offset the cost of this mission. If you can donate $10 or $15 to our website, we can ensure that thousands of Chilean citizens on the coast will receive the care they need.

http://teamrubiconusa.org/donate/

Thank you.

Jake Wood
President, Team Rubicon

kthanxbai!