"Entourage" has featured dozens of celebrity cameos over the course of its seven seasons, and it hopes to land one more big (and potentially newsworthy) one before it ends later this year.
Creator Doug Ellin is hoping to land Charlie Sheen for a guest spot on the show. "I called his manager and was told maybe I'd get him," Ellin tells TV Guide. "But I'm still waiting for Charlie to call me back. I'd come up with something good."
If a Sheen appearance is to be, it will have to happen in the next month or so: "Entourage" is scheduled to finish shooting its eighth and final season in mid-June. Season 8 will also feature cameos from Christian Slater and "The Big Bang Theory's" Johnny Galecki, who plays a client of Eric (Kevin Connolly) and Scott's (Scott Caan). A quartet of New York sports stars -- Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira of the Yankees and Amar'e Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony of the Knicks -- will also make appearances.
"Entourage" is scheduled to premiere July 24 on HBO.
I just don’t have the heart to make fun of this boy. He truly believes that he’ll make a real life hulk one day. The boy posted his question up on Yahoo Answers to find some help. And I believe he really got the most accurate answer.
One more winner answer from the same Yahoo Answers page:
No it is not. Real life HULK is not possible. Comics writers are creative when they wrote or drawing action heroes out of them. I too was curious about Hulk character when someone is angry and in rage his whole metabolism change and get bigger and bigger and he turn himself into a green monster. Very unlikely, that this one could happen in real life. I too have another theory, what if you have one watch in your wrist. If you like to stop the time for a split second it will. And put this one in a wrong hands, they could easily rob different banks in just one day. Another one is being invisible. Is it also possible just by drinking a potion, you become totally unseen? All of these theories belong to a wrong person or wrong hands is diabolical in nature.
You already told us yourself real life HULK is a long shot so why bother to think about it. The writer who wrote the HULK character is out to entertain us and amuse us nothing more nothing less. Create a super soldier who never die? IMPOSSIBLE. Soldiers die because they can be replace that is the idea of it. But soldiers who will be there for many years? I doubt no soldiers will ever want to live forever. Create a super soldiers for what? Create new wars? People donot like wars anymore, we have enough wars that could last us a thousand years. What we need are solution to our problems like poverty and battle for medicine that eradicate the up coming virus that could wipe out the entire race. WE DONOT NEED SUPER SOLDIERS, you are reading too much comic books.
Because one screen is never enough! We set our sights on finding the best multiscreen setup for gaming
Three of the more hardcore gamers on staff served as our intrepid testers.
Last month’s review of Samsung’s MD230X6 six-screen Eyefinity display got us thinking big. We were awestruck by the majesty of so much screen real estate—particularly in games, where a screen config of massive proportions provides a level of immersion that a single screen, or even two screens, can’t come close to matching. But the MD230X6 wasn’t perfect, as our review revealed. This got us wondering: Would just three of the 23-inch displays side-by-side make for a more satisfying all-around experience? Would it be as encompassing in games? What if we could take three large displays and turn them vertical? And hey, while we’re imagining the possibilities, what would gaming be like on three gigantic HDTVs? What, after all, could be more maximum than that?
We knew of no better way to answer these pressing questions than with a Maximum PC Challenge. We grabbed three of the more hardcore gamers on staff to serve as our intrepid testers: Online Associate Editor Alan Fackler, Senior Associate Editor Nathan Edwards, and Senior Editor Gordon Mah Ung. We had each editor play three distinctly different game types—Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, Call of Duty: Black Ops, and World of Warcraft—on our four test setups: Samsung’s MD230X6 with all six screens, the MD230X6 with just three screens, three of NEC’s new PA301W 30-inch screens vertically oriented, and three NEC E461 46-inch HDTVs.
We were looking for the perfect combination of screen real estate, game immersion, and functionality across multiple game types. Which config would prevail? We needed to find out—even if it took hours and hours of gameplay (oh, how we toil!).
While our primary objective in this challenge was to identify the most awesome screen setup for games, we also include a sidebar on which GPUs will produce the best frame rates and quality settings in each multiscreen scenario.
Now, with that out of the way… Game on!
Configuration 1: Six 23-inch Panels
Samsung’s MD230X6 is nicknamed "the Beast," but is it the Best?
Samsung’s MD230X6 is particularly suited to a six-screen setup, with super-slim bezels that minimize disruption between screens and a solid setup. While the Beast (our pet name for the monstrous display) isn’t hard to screw together, it’s a pain to keep track of all the wires coming out of the back. It also takes up significant desk space, and its weight makes it susceptible to some wobbling. Intended for the über-productive user or the intense gamer, the Beast earned a 7 verdict in last month’s review—in large part because of the horizontal bezel running through the middle of the display, which made aiming in first-person shooters (such as Call of Duty) frustrating and difficult. While bezel correction is an option in the Catalyst Control Panel, we were unable to enable it with this setup, since the monitors had varying display identification data. Unable to aim or see his team or user tags, Gordon declared first-person shooters on the MD230X6 a “waste of time.” And while Alan said he felt “enveloped” by the display, he also declared it nearly impossible to aim. Nathan said straight-out he’d prefer a smaller screen.
Samsung’s MD230X6 brings a whopping 5760x2160 resolution to the table.
The Beast fared much better in WoW, where the bezels didn’t interfere with gameplay but did cut our avatars oddly in half. Surprisingly there was almost too much screen real estate—both Alan and Gordon found it difficult to swing the mouse through six screens to get to the menu icons, and Nathan disliked having to turn his head to view the chat window and controls—although all agreed that the “panoramic view of the world was encompassing.”
All three editors found the MD230X6 most gratifying in a racing game. Nathan summed it up best during his Need for Speed test with the declaration, “This I can get behind!”
Configuration 2: Three 23-inch Panels
Is half a Beast twice as nice?
The obvious solution to the bezels running through the center of the MD230X6 was to remove the top three displays and rerun our gaming tests on just the bottom three displays—essentially making it an MD230X3. Scaling back to just the three displays—for a combined resolution of 5760x1080—provided a whole new set of challenges. Nathan thought they seemed too low and said the setup felt "squat,” and that there was still too much horizontal real estate. “I still have to look too far to the right or the left to see vital information.” While the aiming in the FPS was easier, as the bezel issue had been removed, the images being displayed were problematic. The settings in Call of Duty seemed off, as though the aspect ratio was incorrect, and the character models and weapons were oddly expanded across the screens. Gordon kept saying, “Something is not right here,” and despite lots of fiddling with the aspect ratio and field of view, never quite got it tuned to his liking.
By far the least outrageous configuration of our challenge, three 23-inch LCDs are hardly pedestrian.
These issues were characteristic of the first-person point of view and cropped up to a lesser extent in Need for Speed. World of Warcraft, on the other hand, elicited a positive response from all the editors. While Gordon lamented that the three panels weren’t as “in your face” as the six-display setup, he preferred the three screens to a single display and found WoW to be “totally playable” and “a better experience than racing or FPS," adding that a nice wide peripheral view of the world is much better suited to a third-person perspective.
Configuration 3: Three 30-inch Panels
Let’s try this one more time with feeling (and portrait mode)!
Despite the pitfalls of the MD230X3, we weren’t convinced that multiscreen bliss couldn’t be found with three monitors. Enter NEC’s spanking-new PA301Ws—professional-grade 30-inch screens with a price tag to match at $2,300 each. Besides each boasting a 2560x1600 native resolution, the PA301Ws offer the unique ability among 30-inch monitors to pivot into portrait mode. Set side-by-side in this fashion, you’re looking at a wall of 4800x2560 unabashedly color-accurate pixels. True, the PA301Ws lack the Samsung screens’ dainty bezels, but that didn’t prove to be a problem, as the bezels didn’t cross our primary focal point. As it happens, we were able to enable bezel correction with this setup, but we had mixed feelings about the results. Images appeared less “split” by the bezels, but a great deal of information was lost in the process.
NEC’s PA301Ws professional-grade 30-inch monitors overshadow a triad of 23-inch LCDs in resolution, image quality, and girth.
Either way, the editors unanimously found this setup to be unequivocally awesome. Gordon quickly declared it the “best of both worlds” between the previous six- and three-panel setups, and “a superior experience.” Alan called his Call of Duty testing “intense, crazy immersive,” and Need for Speed “freakin’ sick.” Nathan said of World of Warcraft, “Rad! It’s like I’m peering through a window to another world.”
All were in favor of the “vertical improvement” over the other three-panel config and the lack of a horizontal bezel. Gordon was impressed by the details during his Call of Duty run, and he called Need for Speed “ideal,” stating that the PA301Ws were “in all ways better than the six panels.”
Configuration 4: Three 46-inch TVs
Time to go big or go home!
So far, so good. So… what else? Three big HDTVs! The idea started as almost a joke by Gordon, but then germinated into a why-the-hell-not proposition. After all, if we want to be immersed in gameplay, what better way than by planting ourselves within a fortress of three giant 46-inch LCD screens. We turned to NEC’s E461s, and we got busy. After some (pretty extensive) troubleshooting, we were ready to press Play.
The E461's obviously eat up huge amounts of space, and while this was easily the most unrealistic of the configs we tested, we had to see how it would play out. Like the three 23-inch panels, the HDTVs, which are 1920x1080 each, had a combined resolution of 5760x1080. But unlike the 23-inch panels, no one was complaining that the display felt too squat. Unfortunately, the aspect ratio and field of view issues that arose in Call of Duty with the other 5760x1080 setup remained.
NECs E461s offer a standard 1920x1080 resolution with a 120Hz refresh rate.
Need for Speed was the biggest hit on this setup. Nathan’s initial impression in the game summed it up nicely: “This is madness.” Alan felt similarly, declaring that the peripheral view of the road rushing past made the game feel faster. Gordon, actually preferred Need for Speed on the TVs to the 30-inch screens, saying it felt like he was really driving and that the horizon appeared as large as in life.
World of Warcraft produced some complaints about the extensive screen real estate: “Turning my head to view data on the side screens destroyed the feeling of immersion and also took my eyes off my character,” said Nathan. Gordon wasn’t bothered by that so much, but did find WoW’s relatively low-res textures to be unusually noticeable on the all-encompassing displays. During Alan’s testing of World of Warcraft, Nathan declared it “more impressive looking” from further back. In fact, one of the drawbacks to using such large screens is that it’s difficult to find a position that’s close enough to feel immersed but not visually overwhelmed; Call of Duty caused dizziness during one portion of our testing.
Seeing Is Believing
Our pick for the best multiscreen setup for gaming
In the end, the PA301Ws won the votes of all three of our testers—the combination of pristine images spread across increased vertical landscape was just too good. Hey, anything that makes curmudgeonly Gordon utter “ideal” or “bingo” is definitely noteworthy. It’s also one of the more practical setups (while the models themselves might be prohibitively expensive, the configuration is what impressed us); the sheer space that six panels or three HDTVs take up already puts both into the realm of fantasy for most users.
With a combined resolution of 4800x2560, three 30-inch LCD monitors offer grandeur and detail without requiring an outrageous amount of desk space.
But this challenge wasn’t about being realistic; it was about putting our fantasy multiscreen configurations to the test in games—and in that respect, the PA301Ws were the overall winner. While the three E461s did well in World of Warcraft and excelled in Need for Speed, they left us cold during Call of Duty. The six-panel MD230X6 display tripped over its own toes with the bezel issue, and its three-panel sibling wasn’t grand enough to fulfill our desires and struggled with first-person point of view.
While all of the configurations required a considerable amount of setup and troubleshooting, the three vertical displays were ready to go with the fewest difficulties.
Additionally, the three vertical displays could easily be utilized for any other productivity task—from web design and photo and video editing to PowerPoint and Excel, it’s hard to imagine a task this setup couldn’t tackle with ease and aplomb.
What Video Card Do I Need?
A multiscreen setup calls for robust graphics. Here's a quick guide
Gaming on three or more monitors is no easy feat. Pushing that many pixels is hugely demanding on a GPU. So if you want to get the most from your multiscreen setup, you’ll need to pair it with adequate graphics power. Using our challenge scenarios as examples, we examine what kind of GPUs you will need to achieve adequate frame rates and quality settings.
To get the best gaming experience on a six-screen setup, you need two Radeon HD 6990 videocards—if you can find them.
The Wall of Six
AMD likes to tout the ability of its GPUs to handle up to six LCD panels simultaneously. You’ll need a special Eyefinity Edition card, complete with six Mini DisplayPort connectors, if you want to drive six panels with one card, based on the previous-generation Radeon HD 5870.
The problem is that the HD 5870 doesn’t really have enough gas to drive six 1080p panels with decent frame rates in many games. You’ll either have to significantly dial down the eye candy or reduce resolution—which defeats the purpose of having six panels. You’ll see better performance if you pair up two Radeon HD 6970s. Even then, you’ll need to sacrifice some high-end features. If you want to go all out and drop in a pair of Radeon HD 6990 dual-GPU cards (assuming you can actually find them), then you can get pretty decent frame rates.
You can theoretically drive six panels with Nvidia-based cards, but you’d need either three cards in triple-SLI mode or two GTX 590 dual-GPU cards. It’s unclear, however, whether driver support is really there to deliver the same level of experience.
Triple HD Desktop Monitors
For more practical gaming, three 1080p LCD monitors is probably the sweet spot right now. You can drive three 1080p monitors with a single high-end, single-GPU card like the Radeon HD 6970 and get decent frame rates at the full 5760x1080 resolution. You will need to sacrifice some detail settings in some games. And there will be a few titles, like Metro 2033, that won’t be playable at these resolutions with a single card.
If you’re willing to go with two cards or a dual-GPU card, the field opens up. Either Nvidia or AMD can run a triple HD desktop display with either dual-GPU cards or two discrete cards. If you’re willing to go with the high midrange—Radeon HD 6950s for AMD or GeForce GTX 560 Tis for Nvidia—then you can probably get decent frame rates.
The 30-inch Solution
Assuming you have the monitors and the necessary stands, you can get an awesome experience from three 30-inch panels in portrait mode. That translates to 4800x2560 resolution, or 12.3 million pixels. You can go with a single AMD card, but don’t expect a good gaming experience. What you really want is a pair of high-end, dual-GPU cards. If you’ve got the cash, you might be able to hit good frame rates with two Radeon HD 6990s. That’s a lot of cash, but then you’re driving a lot of pixels. Remember, three of these 30-inch panels are really only about 150,000 pixels less than six 1080p panels. So in terms of GPU horsepower, you need about the same performance for a three-panel, 30-inch setup as you’d need for six 1080p panels—but it will probably look better.
Triple HDTVs
What if you want to hook up three HDTVs? That’s the same resolution as three 1080p desktop panels, and the performance requirements are the same. However, unique problems exist. For one thing, you’ll want three HDMI connections. That’s not as hard as it sounds, though. If you’re going with Nvidia, you’ll need two cards (or a single GTX 590) and three DVI-to-HDMI cables. With AMD cards, you’ll want DisplayPort-to-HDMI adapters. Both of these solutions exist, thankfully.
The other issue you’ll run into is overscan—where the signal extends beyond the visible boundary of the display—although this problem crops up less with the newer HDTVs. If you’re hooking up older TVs, however, overscan can be enough to make you tear out your hair. In that case, you’ll definitely want a third-party solution, like PowerStrip ($29.95 for a single license). But that’s not a solution for the faint of heart.
Lessons Learned
There’s more to using a multiscreen setup than just plugging in the displays
So you’ve cleared off a huge swath of desk space, and you have your multiple large screens arranged just so. Now what? If you’re using an AMD graphics card, you need to pay a visit to the Catalyst Control Center. Getting your displays to work in concert isn’t a totally obvious process. You’ll see all your monitors represented by icons, but no standard menu option for extending the desktop. Rather, you need to select one monitor, then use a drop-down arrow in the upper-right corner of the icon to span a group of your choosing.
In the Nvidia Control Panel, you might think you can take care of the job in the “Set up multiple displays” tab, like you would with two screens. But if you’re using more than one GPU—in either a single- or double-card config— you actually need to go into the “Manage 3D settings” tab to get three or more screens working together.
With Widescreen Fixer, you can adjust the aspect ratio of select games for improved playability across multiple screens.
While gaming can be glorious across three or more large screens, some games are more adaptable to that format than others. In our tests, for example, we found that Call of Duty: Black Ops assumed an unnatural aspect ratio and field of view when we ran it on three 1080p LCDs (with a combined resolution of 5760x1080). But there is a way to compensate for these issues. A free third-party app called Widescreen Fixer (www.widescreenfixer.org) will adjust the aspect ratio to suit your screen setup. It requires that you install a separate plugin for each game you want to adjust—plugins are available for many popular FPS titles, including the Battlefield and Call of Duty franchises, BioShock, and Ghost Recon.
Another issue we encountered involved the placement of various maps, menus, toolbars, etc. in a massively multiplayer game, such as World of Warcraft. By default, this information occupies the far edges of your display, out of the way of the action. But when using an array of large screens, you find yourself having to crane your neck from side to side to access that information. Fortunately, there are a ton of custom interfaces that move those elements to alternate parts of the display. A multitude of custom UIs for WoW can be found at Wowinterface.com.
In 19th century Japan, a form of theatre known as Utsushi-e, which used light from lanterns to project stories and images onto rice paper screen, was hugely popular.
Now Disney has used this pre-cinema artform as its inspiration for a modern equivalent: a projector for your smartphone.
Many cellphone sold in Japan and Korea already have tiny "pico" projectors embedded in them -- handy for catching a film on your hotel room wall. Disney appears to be thinking ahead for western smartphones and is already developing game applications for such phones, which it will reveal for the first time at CHI 2011 conference.
Led by researcher Karl Willis and Ivan Poupyrev at the Disney Research labs in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the MotionBeam project explores the use of hand-held projectors to interact and control projected characters in games played as the images are thrown onto a wall.
One of the first Motion Beam games lets the user control a small yellow character which scampers across the wall collecting stars as it goes. The user guides the figures by gesturing with the handheld projector itself as if it was a torch, and interacting with the game as it is projected onto a white wall.
The prototype combines an iPod Touch, a laser projector, and a microcontroller-sensor unit. The attached sensors include an accelerometer and gyroscope to detect the smartphone's movements as well as an ultrasonic distance sensor to work out how far the projector is from the viewing wall.
Disney says it was inspired by Utsushi-e as well as the European belt-mounted magic lantern from 1823 that was used to give a sense of movement to still images of the time.
It's about the lesser of two evils, isn't it? But when push comes to shove, how different is sugar from high fructose corn syrup (HFCS)?
The Western Sugar Cooperative is claiming that the two are in fact very different. It recently filed suit against sugar refiners for misleading consumers in calling HFCS corn sugar, according to the Des Moines Register and as discussed on Food Politics. "The lawsuit names as defendants Archer Daniels Midland Co., Cargill Inc., and other major corn syrup processors as well as the Corn Refiners Association."
So, is it fair to call HFCS sugar? Not according to the Western Sugar Cooperative.
"This suit is about false advertising, pure and simple," said Inder Mathur, president and CEO of Western Sugar Cooperative, the grower group that filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles federal court along with the Michigan Sugar Co. and C&H Sugar Co. Inc. "If consumers are concerned about your product, then you should improve it or explain its benefits, not try to deceive people about its name or distort scientific facts."
Corn Refiners Petition to Be Called Corn Sugar
I wrote in March that the Corn Refiners Association had asked the FDA to change the name HFCS to corn sugar. The Corn Refiner's Association lobbied hard for the name change because more and more people are refusing to buy products containing HFCS. As a result, many food manufacturers have stopped using HFCS and, instead, have replaced it with sugar. The sky rocketing price of corn, which has shot up nearly 50 percent in the past couple of months, has also been a factor. But it turns out that an existing FDA regulation makes the name change difficult. Marion Nestle wrote on Huffington Post that the name was already taken:
The Corn Refiners have just petitioned the FDA to be allowed to use the name "corn sugar" to apply to both glucose/dextrose and high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). But the existing definition seems to exclude HFCS. While HFCS is about half glucose, it is also about half fructose, and its manufacture from corn starch requires one more enzyme.
Here's the FDA regulation . But even still, HFCS has been using the name in its new advertising push, which is no small campaign. Corn Refiners spent nearly $30 million on advertising in 2008.
But how different are HFCS and sugar? Let's be clear: sugar and HFCS share the same biochemistry. Marion Nestle defines:
Sucrose: a double sugar of 50% glucose and 50% fructose linked together HFCS: a syrup of about 45% glucose and 55% fructose, separated
However, HFCS goes through highly unnatural processing. The process starts off with corn kernels. The corn is spun at a high velocity and combined with three other enzymes: alpha-amylase, glucoamylase, and xylose isomerase, so that it forms a thick syrup that's way sweeter than sugar.
But in the end it's all about market share. Each group wants a bigger piece of the economic pie and as public perception of these ingredients evolves, so too does the name by which each group would like to be referred.
A new iPhone app called LeafSnap is a field guide for tech-friendly naturalists. It can identify a tree’s species by analyzing a photograph of its leaf.
Point your smartphone’s camera at one of nature’s solar cells (laid out flat on a white piece of paper) and the app will go to work. It separates the leaf from the background, and then analyzes the leaf’s shape.
If it isn’t completely sure, it will show you an entire collection of possible leafy matches. You can then look at more information on those trees — finding out where they grow, what time of the year their flowers bloom and pictures of their fruits, seeds and bark — to make a proper decision on what type of leaf you’ve got in front of you.
The app also has a dabble in citizen science. Once you’ve correctly labeled your leaf you can tap “label,” which uploads your data to a community of scientists. Your data will be geo-tagged to your current location, letting flora experts map and monitor the ebb and flow of different trees.
Unfortunately for nature geeks (or shape recognition nerds) in the U.K., you’ll probably have trouble getting the app to identify Britain’s native leaves. LeafSnap currently includes the trees of just New York City and Washington D.C. A full rollout covering the United States is planned, but there are no promises for overseas trees.
Android and iPad versions of the app are planned for this summer. In the meantime, download the free iPhone app.
The world’s largest miniature airport is now open to the public in Hamburg, Germany. This $5 million masterpiece, six years in the making, captures every detail of the real thing. You have to watch this video to believe it.
In what must be the world’s most intricate and detailed gadget, the model includes realistically crafted and painted airplanes that appear to be landing and taking off, cars, trucks and buses parking and driving around, and lit-up runways that look almost real.
It’s part of the Miniatur Wunderland, an astonishing model and tourist attraction that replicates a variety of landscapes and landmarks around the world, and it’s the world’s largest model of its kind.
Construction of the Lilliputian world began in 2000, and before this airport was added, the original model took up 16,146 square feet of space with more than 10,000 train cars running around its 6.8 miles of HO-scale track. The original construction cost $10 million, and plans are in the works to double the size of the layout by 2014.
This video will give you an overview of this spectacular tourist attraction:
So this goes guy goes up to the bar, slams his fist down on the counter top and says in a gruff tone “give the strongest shit you got…and make it double!!”. We’ve all seen this scene played out in movies but have you ever thought “the strongest shit you’ve got” is really a very relative statement and would really depend on where in the world “this bar” is located? Every country, state, region or culture has their own favorite “mother of all cures” or most potent alcoholic beverage of choice to drown ones sorrows, bond over, party with, have a meaningless conversation over and then develop a hangover with the next morning. What you get at the local bar or liquor store as the most alcoholic or potent drink poured up for you depends on where you are.
Here are some of the most potent alcoholic beverages of choice around the globe:
Poitin From Ireland
Those who have been brave enough to try and down this potent home-distiled, once illegal grain alcohol drink have stories about feeling their throat set on fire or feeling like they swallowed a fire-breathing dragon. Listed as having an alcohol content of 60% to 90% this could easily be considered one of the world’s most alcoholic beverages by far! Commonly refereed to as Irish Moonshine, this drink distilled from potatoes, malted barley, sugar and yeast this ancient version of the drink is still considered illegal for the most part with only two distilleries in Ireland still legally allowed to produce it. Available with alcohol contents ranging from 40% to 90% ABV, Poitin is the closest you can get to having something so alcoholic it’s almost clinical grade.
Spirytus Vodka From Poland
In the world of spirits (not the ghosts and ghouls one) Vodka is regarded as perhaps one of the strongest alcoholic beverages for those looking for something serious. In fact if you find yourself in a bar in Russia, Ukraine or Poland, you’ll find Vodka on your table. Ask for anything else and you’ll find eyebrows going up. If your drinking in this part of the globe, you’re drinking vodka and there will be no two ways about that. Surprisingly the purest distilled Vodka with the most mind boggling alcohol content by volume is made in Poland. The Spirytus brand Vodka sports a label which says it contains…now brace yourself….95% ABV!!! Rumor has it this kind of stuff needs to be handled very carefully and responsibly since the human body doesn’t do very well with these kind of levels. Risks include going blind (if you drink straight up) and a host of other….side effects. It’s almost strange it doesn’t come with a nuclear label or something more befitting. It comes in a simple plain bottle but don’t let that fool anyone.
Everclear 190 From The United States
That’s right! Just when you thought nothing as insanely alcoholic as the drinks above could ever be legally sold let alone manufactured in the USA…we present Everclear neutral grain alcohol. Although not among the most readily available off-the-shelf drink, Everclear comes in two flavors (strictly speaking the drink itself is flavorless and neutral) the 151 proof which has 75.5% alcohol by volume and then the meaner 190 proof which has 95% alcohol by volume. Needless the say the 190 version is banned in several states across the US where the 151 is still available but that won’t stop us from tooting our horns about distilling some of the most potent hard liquors in the world! If you’re in one of the states where it’s legally available and go up to a bar asking for the strongest stuff they’ve got…be prepared for a bottle of Everclear coming your way.
River Antoine Royal Grenadian Run From Grenada
Rums are one of those drinks you take seriously and know pack a serious punch (no pun intended) with alcohol contents hovering near 40% ABV. That is till you’ve been to Grenada and sampled their local “firewater” rum. The River Antoine Rum Distillery has seen more than it’s share of tourists being on the tour map of everyone there and why not? They make one of the meanest brands of rum you’ll ever find anywhere. Supposedly, what they offer tourists is a sugarcane based rum with up to 75% ABV!!! However, the have the 69% bottles which tourists can take home because the 75% one is just so inflammable, the airlines won’t allow it. Rumor has it among circles that the locals get another version of the rum sold exclusively to them which goes way beyond the 75%ABV mark. Now that world make a lethal rum punch!
Bruichladdich X4 Perilous Scotch Whiskey From Scotland
If it’s Scotland….it’s Scotch Whiskey ….enough said! This however isn’t your everyday 40% ABV Scotch, Whiskey or single malt. This is the result of a record breaking attempt by a Scottish distillery to distill a single malt whiskey four times to come up with a finished product that will have 92% alcohol by volume. With just 5000 bottles produced and left to age for 10 years in oak casks, this is perhaps not going to be served up at every bar and more of a prized possession among Scotch lovers. Nevertheless, it makes our list of most potent beverages and rightly so!
Ouzo & Raki From Greece & Turkey
Raki, the national drink in Turkey is loosely translated as lion’s milk (milk for the brave) owing to the milky color the otherwise clear liquid takes on when you dilute it with water. When that’s a how a drink gets it’s name …you know you’re dealing with some serious stuff and the scores of tourists will tell you about their hangovers following a night out on the town in Turkey. With a distinct aniseed flavor similar to Absinthe, most popular brands of Turkish Raki are sold with an ABV of about 45% and going by our list so far, that may not seem a lot. However, the process of making Raki distills the alcohol all the way up to about 94% and then moderates the “lion’s milk” to sell-able proportions before it gets to the stores. Ouzo which is traditional in Greece and Cyprus also starts of with 96% alcohol then added to flavorings of anise seed, star anise, cinnamon and other spice flavorings. While Ouzo is also mostly sold at a 40% alcohol content level, both these drinks are not for the faint hearted.
Care to share something else that should make it to this bar menu of throat scorchers?
MYSTERY OF THE YEAR: How did a picture of Michael Jordan, DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince, and Kid n Play all together remain hidden from the internet until 2011? We may never know, but the only thing that could possibly make this picture any more “90s” would be a Sega Genesis and pair of Reebok pumps.
In fact, I’ll just pretend the Reeboks & games were just cropped out because somebody didn’t appreciate how to use The Print Shop on his 100MHz computer.
Scottish distilleries will power 9,000 homes with electricity and heat from bioenergy plants using waste matter from the industry. Photograph: Murdo Macleod
It is the spirit that powers the Scottish economy, and now whisky is to be used to create electricity for homes in a new bioenergy venture involving some of Scotland's best-known distilleries.
Contracts have recently been awarded for the construction of a biomass combined heat and power plant at Rothes in Speyside that by 2013 will use the by-products of the whisky-making process for energy production.
Vast amounts of "draff", the spent grains used in the distilling process, and pot ale, a residue from the copper stills, are produced by the whisky industry each year and are usually transported off-site. The Rothes project, a joint venture between Helius Energy and the Combination of Rothes Distillers (CoRD) will burn the draff with woodchips to generate enough electricity to supply 9,000 homes. It will be supplied by Aalborg Energie Technick, a danish engineering company. The pot ale will be made into a concentrated organic fertiliser and an animal feed for use by local farmers.
Environmentalists have expressed concern that some of the wood used in the process may not be locally sourced, but say the 7.2MW project – the equivalent output of two large wind turbines - is a good scale and a valuable addition to Scotland's renewables industry. Green energy has been a key issue in the run-up to Thursday's Holyrood elections. The SNP leader, Alex Salmond, has pledged to produce 100% of Scotland's electricity through renewable energy by 2020, a claim dismissed as "fantasy" by Labour.
The £50m Rothes project is the latest bioenergy venture from the Scotch whisky industry, but it is believed to be the first to provide electricity for public use. A bioenergy plant at Scotland's largest distillery in Fife is close to completion. The project by Diageo will provide 98% of the thermal steam and 80% of the electrical power used at the Cameronbridge distillery. And last year, scientists at Napier University announced they had developed a method of producing biofuel from the by-products of the whisky distilling process which could power cars and even aircraft. The new fuel, they said, could be available at petrol pumps within a few years.
Of Scotland's 100 whisky distilleries, 50 are based in Speyside, and Frank Burns, general manager of CoRD, said it was an ideal location for the new bioenergy plant which will be built on an existing industrial site.
"It is very well supported in the local community. Up here in Rothes and in Speyside in general we have a lot of strong links," he said. "We had zero objections at the planning stage and we have done a lot of work within the community on the progress of the project."
Waste products from around 16 of the area's 50 distilleries will be used at the site, including well-known brands such as Glenlivet, Chivas Regal, Macallan, and Famous Grouse. None will come from further than 25 miles away.
Burns acknowledged, however, that some of the wood for the process may not be locally sourced. "Some of it will be local and some of it will be shipped in," he said. "It is down to the supplier. They may source it locally." Most of the fuel, he added, will be comprised of the draff.
Sam Gardner, climate policy officer for WWF Scotland, said:
"From the information we have, the project looks to be a very welcome addition to Scotland's renewable industry. It is using waste products from our whisky industry which is eminently sensible thing to do, and is producing heat both for whisky production and for the local community. We would want to see assurances, however, that the biomass was sustainably sourced."
DisneyPirates 4: Johnny Depp, left, and Geoffry Rush return as Capt. Jack Sparrow and Captain Barbossa for a ride on stranger tides.
Hollywood's summer movie season officially kicks off Friday, and I don't even have my spray-on tan yet. The first Friday in May is happy time for theater owners who hope to see streams of fans pouring into potential blockbusters for the next four months. And what creative wonders have the movie wizards prepared?
What else? Sequels, prequels, reboots and remakes.
The biggest trend is not content, but format: Several films arrive in pricier 3-D. Also on the horizon, new movies from Terrence Malick, Jodie Foster, John Lasseter and Jon Favreau, who has combined two of our favorite genres for "Cowboys & Aliens." A sneak peek at the next 16 weeks of cinema:
MAY
Friday, May 13
"Bridesmaids"
Cast: Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Rose Byrne, John Hamm.
Buzz: A longtime single woman watches her best friend walk down the aisle and must find a new life. Plugged as the "female 'Hangover,' " but with more sex. "Saturday Night Live's" Wiig co-wrote and stars.
"Everything Must Go"
Cast: Will Ferrell, Rebecca Hall, Laura Dern.
Buzz: After a man loses his wife and his job on the same day, he moves into his front yard. Based on Raymond Carver's short story "Why Don't You Dance?"
"Priest"
Cast: Paul Bettany, Karl Urban, Maggie Q, Christopher Plummer.
Buzz: An angry warrior priest battles vampires in a post-apocalypticworld. And in 3-D. Homilies will never be the same.
Friday, May 20
"Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides"
Cast: Johnny Depp, Penelope Cruz, Geoffrey Rush.
Buzz: The third one was kind of lame, or was it the second one? Oh, well. Capt. Jack Sparrow returns to find the Fountain of Youth and battle Blackbeard (Ian McShane) in 3-D.
Thursday, May 26
"The Hangover Part II"
Cast: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis.
Buzz: The first "Hangover" was sharply made, hilarious and, refreshingly, not your typical bawdy comedy. No. 2 is already beset by semicontroversy (Mel Gibson was denied a role after some cast members objected, PETA objected to the treatment of monkeys, and Mike Tyson's tattoo artist is suing), but prospects are good for giggles. The main cast remains intact, and this time the lads are headed for trouble in Bangkok.
"Kung Fu Panda 2"
Cast: Voices of Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Dustin Hoffman, Jackie Chan.
Buzz: Po and the Furious Five take on a new villain in the not-so-aptly named Valley of Peace.
Friday, May 27
"The Beaver"
Cast: Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster, Anton Yelchin.
Buzz: A deeply depressed man communicates through a beaver hand puppet with a British accent. Gibson's various offending-everyone antics delayed the release of this film for months. The classy Foster alsodirects.
Also in May: Michelle Williams shakes things up on the rugged Oregon Trail circa 1845 in "Meek's Cutoff" . . . "Super Size Me's" Morgan Spurlock dissects branding and marketing in "POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold" . . . A veteran New York Times photographer is celebrated in "Bill Cunningham New York" . . . and the struggles of a 14-year-old are explored in the World War II drama "Winter in Wartime."
JUNE
Friday, June 3
"X-Men: First Class"
Cast: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, January Jones.
Buzz: McAvoy, as Charles Xavier, has a gift for turning potentially predictable roles into memorable turns, so there may be hope for the latest "X-Men," an origins story that takes us back to 1963 and the Cold War. Jennifer Lawrence ("Winter's Bone") plays Mystique.
Friday, June 10
"Super 8"
Cast: Gabriel Basso, Kyle Chandler, Joel Courtney.
Buzz: A hybrid of home movies and alien horrors from writer-director J.J. Abrams. Strange things start happening in a small Ohio town in 1979. (Set but not shot here.)
Buzz: Megan McDonald's book series comes to the screen with Beatty as Moody, a third-grader determined to beat the summer blahs.
Friday, June 17
"Mr. Popper's Penguins"
Cast: Jim Carrey, Carla Gugino, Angela Lansbury.
Buzz: In this family comedy, Mr. Popper's problem is a shipment from Antarctica that includes six slap-happy penguins. Cue the cuteness.
"Green Lantern"
Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, Peter Sarsgaard.
Buzz: The superhero is re-imagined with Reynolds as Hal Jordan, the dude with the special ring and intergalactic responsibilities.
Friday, June 24
"Cars 2"
Cast: Voices of Owen Wilson, Larry the Cable Guy, Bonnie Hunt.
Buzz: Pixar genius John Lasseter returns to put pedal to metal with LightningMcQueen and Mater traveling overseas for a big race and super spy-jinks thanks to new cars Finn McMissile (Michael Caine) and Holley Shiftwell (Emily Mortimer).
"Bad Teacher"
Cast: Cameron Diaz, Justin Timberlake, Jason Segel, Lucy Punch.
Buzz: As the title suggests, Elizabeth (Diaz) is a crummy educator. She does, however, have a plan to marry a meal ticket and escape the classroom. Former love buddies Diaz and Timberlake buried the breakup hatchet and agreed to co-star.
Also in June: Terrence Malick's long-awaited, "The Tree of Life" with Brad Pitt, Sean Penn and Jessica Chastain . . . Freddie Highmore and Emma Roberts in "The Art of Getting By" (formerly titled "Homework") . . . Mike Mills' "Beginners," with Ewan McGregor and Christopher Plummer . . . and the adaptation of Joe Dunthorne's novel, "Submarine," about a 15-year-old trying to save his parents' marriage.
Buzz: Megan Fox was dumped for Huntington-Whiteley, but LaBeouf is back for No. 3 as the Autobots discover a lunar secret. The first "Transformers" was an absolute blast. No. 2 was a mammoth drag. Director Michael Bay, the master of excess, owes us one.
Buzz: This summer's lots-of-cute-guys movie is aimed squarely at the young-girl demographic. A romantic comedy in which a teen is mistaken for an heiress and reaps the attendant high-life benefits.
"Larry Crowne"
Cast: Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts.
Buzz: It's the first feature film Hanks has directed since "That Thing You Do" in 1996, and he's in good company. He co-wrote the script -- about a recently fired guy who heads to community college -- with Nia Vardalos ("My Big Fat Greek Wedding"), and cast Roberts as his love-interest teacher.
Friday, July 8
"Zookeeper"
Cast: Kevin James, Rosario Dawson, Leslie Bibb.
Buzz: A romance-challenged zookeeper discovers a scary secret about his animals: They talk. A mixture of live-action and CGI, with the voices of Cher, Adam Sandler and Nick Nolte.
"Horrible Bosses"
Cast: Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis.
Buzz: The universal fantasy of ousting awful employers is played out by three working stiffs who have a diabolical idea for getting rid of Jennifer Aniston, Colin Farrell and Kevin Spacey.
Friday, July 15
"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2"
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint.
Buzz: Did they really need to mess with a good thing by adding 3-D to the Hogwarts equation? There's plenty to delve into in Harry's world without added gimmicks, but Warner Bros. is going all out as it says farewell to the wildly profitable series. Hard to believe it all began in November 2001, four years after J.K. Rowling published her first Harry book in England. What a ride.
"Winnie the Pooh"
Cast: Voices of Jim Cummings, Craig Ferguson, Tom Kenny.
Buzz: Disney returns to A.A. Milne's Hundred Acre Wood for new adventures with Pooh, Tigger, Rabbit and the gang. Created using the old-fashioned method: hand-drawn animation.
Friday, July 22
"Captain America: The First Avenger"
Cast: Chris Evans, Tommy Lee Jones, Hugo Weaving.
Buzz: Marvel hopes for more marvelousness as Steve Rogers (Evans) is transformed into a supersoldier to take on the Red Skull (Weaving).
"Friends With Benefits"
Cast: Justin Timberlake, Mila Kunis, Patricia Clarkson.
Buzz: Didn't Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher just make this movie? They did, except it was called "No Strings Attached." Timberlake and Kunis are the new comely duo. Two friends share a bed. Issues ensue.
Friday, July 2
"Cowboys & Aliens"
Cast: Daniel Craig, Olivia Wilde, Harrison Ford.
Buzz: Things get a little weird in the OldWest of 1873when outer-space interlopers arrive.
"Crazy, Stupid, Love"
Cast: Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone.
Buzz: Recently separated Cal (Carell) becomes the wingman for a real player (Gosling) and learns the ways of modern romance.
"The Smurfs"
Cast: Neil Patrick Harris and the voices of Katy Perry and Jonathan Winters.
Buzz: The blue brigade lands in New York City in a blend of live action, animation and 3-D.
Also in July: Kristin Scott Thomas plays a journalist in "Sarah's Key" . . . 19th-century China is seen through the eyes of two young girls in Wayne Wang's "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan" . . . "The Devil's Double" charts 1980s intrigue in Baghdad . . . and "Another Earth" ponders the discovery of a duplicate planet.
AUGUST
Friday, August 5
"Rise of the Planet of the Apes"
Cast: James Franco, Freida Pinto, John Lithgow.
Buzz: The umpteenth rendering of man and primate defying evolutionary and cultural codes. The apes are CGI and not played by Roddy McDowell.
"The Change-Up"
Cast: Jason Bateman, Ryan Reynolds, Olivia Wilde.
Buzz: Bateman and Reynolds switch bodies. See: "Freaky Friday," "13 Going on 30," "Like Father Like Son," "The Hot Chick," "17 Again" et al.
Friday, August 12
"The Help"
Cast: Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Bryce Dallas Howard, Octavia Spencer.
Buzz: Kathryn Stockett's best seller about improbable friendships and black housekeepers in early 1960s Mississippi comes to the screen in the hands of Tate Taylor (an old friend of Stockett's). The terrific cast includes Cicely Tyson and Sissy Spacek.
"30 Minutes or Less"
Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Danny McBride, Aziz Ansari.
Buzz: A pizza-delivery dude is kidnapped and forced to rob a bank in this action-comedy from "Zombieland" director Ruben Fleischer.
Friday, August 19
"One Day"
Cast: Anne Hathaway, Jim Sturgess, Patricia Clarkson.
Buzz: Glimpsed on July 15, on and off for two decades, the friendship/love of Em and Dex evolves. Director Lone Scherfig's ("An Education") take on David Nicholls' novel.
"Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World"
Cast: Jessica Alba, Jeremy Piven, Joel McHale
Buzz: A couple of 10-year-olds (Rowan Blanchard and Mason Cook) are needed to save their mom, the world or both.
"Conan the Barbarian"
Cast: Jason Momoa, Rachel Nichols, Stephen Lang.
Buzz: No Arnold this time. It's Jason Momoa (from "Game of Thrones") as the Big C, fighting to save the nations of Hyboria from supernatural evil.
"Fright Night"
Cast: Anton Yelchin, Colin Farrell, Christopher Mintz-Plasse
Buzz: Another night, another remake. Yelchin stars as Charlie Brewster, a high school senior who has some bloodsucking suspicions about his mysterious new neighbor.
Also in August: Katie Holmes and Guy Pearce scream in "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" . . . Elizabeth Banks and Paul Rudd look for laughs in "Our Idiot Brother" . . . Emma Bell and Nicholas D'Agosto go thrill-seeking in "Final Destination 5" . . .Juno Temple and Jeremy Dozier star in "Dirty Girl" . . . and the space mission saga "Apollo 18" arrives early from its previously announced 2012 release date.
This one's for the pop-culture junkies. For those who, like us, are tickled by all forms of pop media, whether it be literature, film or music... this list encompasses them all. A surprisingly high quantity of bands have named themselves after books, songs, and films; some are obvious, some took a little digging, and (many) others simply urged us to seek out myriad (evidently) highly inspirational low-budget horror films.
Duran Duran: Drawing inspiration from the 1968 steamy sci-fi film Barbarella, the New-Wave pioneers borrowed their name from the movie's mad scientist, Dr. Durand Durand, whom Barbarella (Jane Fonda) is assigned to retrieve from planet Tau Ceti, in order to save the earth.
Veruca Salt: This '90s (partial) female powerhouse fancied Roald Dahl's bratty creation so much, they named their band after her. Of course, Veruca Salt the character, from Dahl's beloved book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and 1971 film adaptation Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, was a "bad egg," but her name - and attitude - live on in the band, which continues making music despite front woman Nina Gordon's 1998 departure.
Titus Andronicus: One wouldn't guess these gritty hard rockers would draw inspiration from the most floral of flowery wordsmiths - Shakespeare - but leave it to them to choose their namesake based on the poet's gooriest of tragedies, (The Lamentable Tragedy of) Titus Andronicus, penned in the late 16th century.
Mogwai: These Scot-rockers, who play Warehouse Live May 17, have released albums on some of indie-rock's hippest labels (Sub Pop, Matador, etc.), but they borrow their name from one of the cutest beings of '80s filmdom. Not to be confused with actual Gremlins, Mogwai musn't get wet, be exposed to sunlight, or be fed after midnight. The cute ones are always high-maintenance.
Modest Mouse: Despite a rumor we heard years ago, that Modest Mouse frontman Isaac Brock chose his alliterated band name based on a speech-therapy exercise he was forced to repeat as a child, Brock actually chose the name "Modest Mouse" via a passage from Virginia Woolf's "The Mark on the Wall," rearranging words from the line "the minds of modest, mouse-colored people."
The Fratellis: In homage to perhaps the single best movie of the '80s, The Goonies, the gleeful Glasgow rockers named their band after the film's dimwitted villains.
Mudhoney: The Seattle grunge pioneers named their band after a 1965 Russ Meyer film, which was based on the novel by Raymond Friday Locke. The band had allegedly never even seen the film when they chose their name in 1988.
Black Sabbath: The heavy-metal Brits aptly named their band after the 1963 Italian horror film of the same name.
Jim Bricker
Lady Gaga: Whether it's accurate or just a thoughtful PR story, Lady Gaga, aka Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, attained her stage name via producer Rob Fusari, who, via a text to the singer, recommended the Queen song "Radio Ga-Ga" as her new moniker. Evidently, Fusari's phone auto-corrected the name into "Lady Gaga," and the rest is history.
Radiohead: It's hard to believe these innovators borrow from anyone, but they did, and early-on. After forming in the mid-'80s under the original name "On a Friday," the day the band rehearsed in the music room of Oxfordshire's Abingdon School, where they met," they soon after changed their name to Radiohead, inspired by Talking Heads' 1986 True Stories track of the same name.
Save Ferris: Perhaps the most iconically recognizable of bands' pop-culture loans, this late '90s Orange County ska band took their name from '80s teen classic Ferris Bueller's Day Off, an expression on a water tower forever etched in our minds.
Say Anything: Speaking of iconic '80s teen films, "like the origin of any unlikely hero, Say Anything was forged from conflict," reads the band's Web site bio... which could almost double as a character description of the stereo-holding, trenchcoat-wearing, hopeless romantic Lloyd Dobler, from Cameron Crowe's 1989 film and clear inspiration to the band.
White Zombie: Leave it to Rob Zombie to name his band after a 1932 "evil voodoo" horror film.
The Doors: The band suitingly took their name from Aldous Huxley's 1954 book The Doors of Perception, a hazy tale detailing the author's psychedelic mescaline-induced trip.
My Bloody Valentine: The Dublin shoegazers adopted their romantically gory name from a low-budget 1981 Canadian slasher film of the same name.
Goldfinger: Easy enough; these pop-punks borrowed their name from the third film in the James Bond series, 1964's Goldfinger.
The all-in-one PC has a rugged build with fold-out, spill-proof keyboard, touchscreen and WiFi, together with options like a TV tuner. Plus, as you can see from this picture, just one touch makes ladies very happy.
The Smart-Leaf debuted at CES 2008 as a concept; it seems that Originatic have been doing some market research since then. Both home and business users are being targeted, with Originatic believing the former want an “out of the way” machine for kitchens while the latter desire “cost-effective, space efficient” alternatives to the usual information kiosks.
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All you art collectors out there. Here is a chance to get a Giclee copy of some of Ian M Sherwin work. Ian is planning on doing a whole series of Marblehead, Massachusetts paintings. His work is amazing.
"Entourage" has featured dozens of celebrity cameos over the course of its seven seasons, and it hopes to land one more big (and potentially newsworthy) one before it ends later this year.
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