India is suffering a new bird flu outbreak, in Imphal, the capital of the state of Manipur in the northeast of the country. Health and poultry workers in the area are now taking Tamiflu and are inspecting 80,000 households. They’re expecting to kill more than 150,000 commercial and domestic birds after 133 chickens recently died on a poultry farm.

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Richard Kelly’s apocalyptic new film “Southland Tales” finally has a release date: November 9, 2007. Kelly’s previous film “Donnie Darko” became a cult favorite and would likely have been a hit had it not had the misfortune of portraying an airplane accident so close to September 11th.

Southland Tales stars Sarah Michelle Gellar (who you might remember from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” , Seann William Scott and “The Rock” in a near-future US which has suffered a pair of nuclear attacks and which is damaging the “fabric of space and time” with new power generators (some articles say it takes place in 2008, some in 2005).

The original 164 minute cut was poorly received at Cannes; the final release cut is 137 minutes and will hopefully find a good audience.

I’m really looking forward to Southland Tales… Donnie Darko was a huge surprise and confounded me throughout the film. I hope that someday the original cut becomes available as well as the theatrical version; I’d love to see the original.
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The topic of how climate change may affect New England is near and dear to my heart, not the least because I live there.

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Since the “nuts” campaign saved Jericho for at least seven more episodes, CBS has put mildly renewed effort into promoting it, including rerunning it skipping most of the slow first part of the season and making the pilot available for free at the iTunes Store.

CBS Entertainment’s president, Nina Tassler, has also admitted that the long winter hiatus for Jericho likely contributed to its decline. I still think that if the episodes preceding this break had been stronger, the break wouldn’t have hurt it as badly. Being scheduled against American Idol couldn’t have helped much, either. She remains clear that if fans want CBS to continue running the show that they need to bring in more viewers.

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Or - the end of the world isn’t a useful solution for solving problems.

[update: I didn't make this up! Check out Jamais Cascio's link below and his blog in general]

Via: Open the Future: Solving Problems by Getting Away From It All
[tags]jamais cascio, apocalypse, rapture, singularity, exit strategy[/tags]

Researchers in the British Royal Society have concluded that neither the sun nor cosmic rays can be blamed for current warming trends around the planet. Given it’s nature one would think we’d point the finger at the sun first, but a recent paper published in “Proceedings A” shows that the sun’s energy output has actually dropped over the last 20 years, while global temperatures have risen.

The cosmic ray hypothesis holds that cosmic rays create clouds as they’re absorbed by the earth’s atmosphere. Some clouds lock heat in; others bounce solar radiation off the planet. Research shows that levels of cosmic rays seem to be completely statistically irrelevant to global temperature trends.

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Apple’s iTunes Store has made the pilot episode for Jericho available for free download. Just follow this link to get it.

Free downloads on iTunes don’t stay free forever, and I can’t predict how long this one will stay free, so you might want to grab it while you can.

If you’re not familiar with downloading from iTunes, the first thing you’ll need is iTunes itself. You can download iTunes for free from Apple. It runs under MacOS X or under Microsoft Windows, and you don’t need an iPod or any other Apple hardware in order to use it to play music or watch videos.
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Yes. Yes, you’ll see in the links for this article that today I’ve fallen to the level of pointing at TV Guide.

Live Earth aired this weekend, from 7, 8 or 9 cities, depending on what you read. Were you part of the 2 billion people who were supposed to have seen it? Did it change your lifestyle?

TV Guide ran a pair of articles this morning talking about the concert’s generally tepid reception by the media, barely being mentioned by the New York Times or major British newspapers.

A major issue was the impact of the concerts themselves… how do you run a series of 7 (or 8 or 9) concerts for 2 billion people without any environmental impact? You simply can’t. Some of the stars came under criticism, as well; Madonna in particular was estimated as having roughly 100 times the the carbon footprint of the average Brit, as well as being an investor in some major polluters.
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Just a note that reruns of Jericho begin tonight, Friday July 6th on CBS. Tonight CBS airs the first episode of Jericho, followed next week by the recap episode that summarizes the boring first half of its season, followed wisely by the less boring second half of its first season. If you want CBS to run more Jericho after its seven-episode second season order, watching it (and buying it on DVD when it comes out will probably make more of an impression than continuing to send them nuts.

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Filed under “Signs of the Apocalypse”, India has a five-legged mutant cow. It took a while for me to spot the fifth leg. It’s not really where you’d normally expect a leg. Apparently the village where the cow is charges you for shaking its, um, leg.

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