February | 2009

Archive for February 2009

Special effects crew gives a mermaid her tail

Posted by: Kat on: Thursday, 26 February 2009

In: Uncategorized
Leave a Comment

Nadya Vessey lost her legs as a child and thought it would be cool to be a mermaid. Who wouldn’t?

Ms Vessey’s mermaid tail was created by Wellington-based film industry wizards Weta Workshop after the Auckland woman wrote to them two years ago asking if they could make her a prosthetic tail. She was astounded when they agreed.

Ms Vessey told a little boy: “I’m a little mermaid” when he asked what happened to her legs and the idea stuck.

Weta Workshop director Richard Taylor, more used to winning Oscars for visual effects from movies such as Lord of the Rings, was delighted to make it happen.

The suit was made mostly of wetsuit fabric and plastic moulds, and was covered in a digitally printed sock. Mermaid-like scales were painted by hand.

Richer kids, richer vocabularies; catch up by gesturing to baby

Posted by: Kat on: Friday, 13 February 2009

In: Uncategorized
Leave a Comment

clipped from www.time.com

children’s socioeconomic status tends to correlate with their language facility. The better off and more educated a child’s parents are, the more verbal that child tends to be by school age — and vocabulary skill is a key predictor for success in school. Children from low-income families, who may often start school knowing significantly fewer words than their better-off peers, will struggle for years to make up that ground.

wealthier, educated parents talk to their young children more, using more complex vocabulary and syntax, than parents of lesser means

High-income, better-educated parents gestured more frequently

14-month-olds from well-off families used an average of 24 meaningfully different gestures, researchers found, while children from lower-income families used an average of just 13

study shows only an association, not a causation, among socioeconomic status, gestures and vocabulary ability

Vote for Hubble’s next object!

Posted by: Kat on: Friday, 13 February 2009

In: Uncategorized
Leave a Comment

clipped from youdecide.hubblesite.org

You’re In Control! In 1609, Galileo turned his telescope on the night sky for the first time. Now, 400 years later, your vote will help make the momentous decision of where to point modern astronomy’s most famous telescope.

“Hubble’s Next Discovery — You Decide” is part of the International Year of Astronomy (IYA), the celebration of the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s observations. People around the world can vote to select the next object the Hubble Space Telescope will view. Choose from a list of objects Hubble has never observed before and enter a drawing for one of 100 new Hubble pictures of the winning object. The winning image will be released between April 2 and 5, during the IYA’s 100 Hours of Astronomy, a global astronomy event geared toward encouraging as many people as possible to experience the night sky. Vote by March 1 to swing Hubble toward your favorite target.

YouTube comments in standard English

Posted by: Kat on: Tuesday, 3 February 2009

In: Uncategorized
Leave a Comment

More at the source.

clipped from www.delsquacho.com

as a public service to regular folks who appreciate lofty grammatical ideas such as punctuation and spelling, we thought we’d translate some of the more outlandish comments into standard English. We should also point out that in many cases, we just had to guess. And no, we didn’t make any of them up; they are all pasted verbatim.

Subject: Slipknot is Emo?

o, gawd…ya dont kno how retarded you ar do you!!??haha…emo…maybe tats wat you ar and tats why yur sayin tat…yur jus tryin to deny it huh!? im surprised you even kno the word 2000!!! haha!!! n00b!!! SLIPKNOT PWNZ and MAGGOT 4 LIFE!!!!!

I further theorize that you could be described to by today’s youth as “emo”, and by calling out others as such, I have concluded that you are in denial about this “emo” lifestyle, subject to the cultural stigmas and stereotypes associated therewith.

Tala Ko