Total Solar Eclipse

total solar eclipse seen from ISS
As you probably know, there was a total solar eclipse today,

first darkening the eastern tip of Brazil, and then moving across the Atlantic Ocean to make landfall in Ghana, Africa. It [continued] moving northeast through Niger, Nigeria, Libya, Egypt, across the Mediterranean and into Turkey.

The amazing picture above is the Moon’s shadow on the Earth as seen from the International Space Station.

Update: I came across this nice gallery of solar eclipse images taken around the world at Cynical-C.

Heat Vision and Jack

Heat Vision and Jack is a Fox TV pilot from 1999 almost too surreal to believe:

Written by Dan Harmon and Rob Schrab, directed by Ben Stiller, this series was passed over by Fox despite critical acclaim from those who’ve been lucky enough to see it.

The 30 minute pilot is about an astronaut (played by Jack Black) with a medical secret who is on the run from the evil Ron Silver and the rest of NASA, with the help of a talking motorcycle called Heat Vision (voiced by Owen Wilson).

Someone was kind enough to post the entire pilot episode to YouTube, which you can view in the embedded player below. I had heard of this but never seen it, so this was quite a find…

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Harrison Ford: Wife Force One

Check out the video Harrison Ford: Wife Force One:

An awful lot of Harrison’s non-Lucasian output has been, shall we say, fucking identical to itself. Here’s a mashup of Harrison’s singular acting approach from various movies which serve as a grim affirmation of that old wives tale about how if you keep doing that, your face will stay that way.

I hate to say it, but they might have a point…

The Movie Timeline

The Movie Timeline is “a timeline of all the events that occurred in many, many films, from 4,000,000 BC to 865,427,810 AD” “taken from one simple premise – that everything you see in the movies is true.” There’s lots of fun stuff here, like:

Who’d have thought that while Gangs of New York’s Amsterdam Vallon was killing Butcher Bill, down the road Abraham Lincoln was being kidnapped by Bill & Ted…

And lucky Al Capone – he was sent to Alcatraz by Eliot Ness just in time to miss King Kong rampaging around New York…

Andy Dufresne was wrongly sentenced to Shawshank a few short months before someone else was framed – Roger Rabbit…

Definitely worth a long visit…

South Dakota Indian Reservation Steps Up

In response to South Dakota’s recent draconion law banning most abortions, a South Dakota Indian tribe decided to take action:

The President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Cecilia Fire Thunder, was incensed. A former nurse and healthcare giver she was very angry that a state body made up mostly of white males, would make such a stupid law against women.

“To me, it is now a question of sovereignty,” she said [to reporter Tom Giago] last week. “I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction.”