When I read this article about BP defending its response to the Gulf Oil spill, for some reason my mind went to the scene in “A Few Good Men” when Colonel Jessep (played by Jack Nicholson), gives his famous “You can’t handle the truth” speech:
BP, for all of their pompous arrogance, is just like Colonel Jessep. Replace a few words in that speech with words like Oil, and it might as well be BP’s position right now.
There are over 5,000 offshore oil rigs. Forget the “accidents”…what happens when Terrorists, or North Korea or…worse… starts torpedoing them?
Last month, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the regulator in charge of the futures markets, approved the applications of the Cantor Futures Exchange and Media Derivatives (MDEX), to serve as contract markets to trade futures in the media market.
Now the CFTC is holding hearings to discuss whether the commission should approve Cantor’s and MDEX’s first contracts involving futures and options based on the opening weekend revenues for the film “Takers,” a movie about bank robbers starring the hip-hop music star Tip Harris (T.I.), and Hayden Christensen (whiny Darth Vader).
These “synthetic contracts” allow traders to bet on the amount of money the movie would make. If the movie makes more or less money than the initial revenue level set by the contract, one side would collect money and the other would lose money. These would be so-called synthetic contracts, meaning that the traders would not own the revenues they were betting on, so they would be purely speculative.
Thought I’d share some of my favorite items in this list compiled by by Phil Pirrello and Scott Collura.
In this the original draft of the script, the Empire does not attack the rebel base on Hoth. Instead, Wampas attack and infiltrate our heroes’ icy compound.
Once Luke is taken captive and turned into a frozen Wampa snack, the original draft deviates from the movie we all know and love. How so? Gone is the Jabba-Han subplot and the bounty hunters, and in its place is Solo going after his stepfather, a man named Ovan Marekal. Ovan is a huge political bigwig who’s carefully aligned himself with Darth Vader to protect the people of the galaxy. The Rebels believe that if Han can get to him, he may be able to convince him to fight against Vader, giving the otherwise helpless Rebel Army a fighting chance. Some of Ovan’s backstory would find its way into the character of Lando in the final film.
Cheers barfly and frequent Pixar voice actor John Ratzenberger had a cameo as Alliance field officer Major Bren Derlin, stationed at Hoth’s Echo Base. You may remember him as the trooper who tried to talk Han Solo out of riding off in search of a missing Luke Skywalker. “Your Tauntaun will freeze before you reach the first marker!,” he shouted. To which Solo replied, “Then I’ll see you in Hell!”
Alec Guinness is said to have shot all of his scenes in six hours.
The scene in which a swamp creature grabs R2-D2 was filmed in George Lucas’ unfinished swimming pool.
After the swamp creature spits out R2, Luke – in the original theatrical cut – says, “You’re lucky you don’t taste very good.” In the Special Edition, the line was changed to “You’re lucky you got out of there.”
When he’s not producing, directing, writing and starring in movies about Wolves, and when he’s not dating Elle MacPherson, not singing in his rock/country band, or running his casino Kevin Costner is an avid environmentalist, fisherman, and greentech entrepreneur.
While making Waterworld in 1995, Costner was troubled by oil spills like the Exxon Valdez and started developing a system to cruise the surface of the sea and clean oily water. His business partner, John Houghtaling, says:
“The machines are essentially like big vacuum cleaners, which sit on barges and suck up oily water and spin it around at high speed,” Houghtaling said. “On one side, it spits out pure oil, which can be recovered. The other side spits out 99% pure water” [Los Angeles Times].
BP and the U.S. Coast Guard plan to test six of the massive devices next week.
Japanese carmaker Toyota Motor Corp is taking a $50 million stake in California electric carmaker Tesla Motors, which will take over a closed San Francisco-area Toyota plant for its all-electric sedan, the companies said on Thursday.
Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk (of Paypal and Space-X fame) described the investment as a “gesture of support” from Toyota Chief Executive Akio Toyoda, who approached him and struck a deal in a whirlwind corporate romance that included dinner at Musk’s house and a test ride around Los Angeles in a pricey electric Roadster sport car.
“The relationship seems to change, as any human relationship would, and with any living thing. Sometimes I think that if this is a living organsm maybe it’s more along the lines of a cyclops. Sometimes I think that if it is a living organism it’s more along the lines of a scintillating mermaid who sings to me at night. “ – Timothy ‘Speed’ Levitch
This is a touching documentary about NYC as told by an eccentric NYC Bus Tour guide. It’s as much about his life philosophy, which he calls “The Cruise” as it is about the city.
“The anti-cruise is an attempt to imprison us. At every level of living it exists. Younger cruisers have asked me, “Why?” “Why is the anti-cruise so avaricious and constant in its attempt to stop the cruise? And I have no answer. There is no answer. I mean, it’s gravitational, it’s a relationship that’s made up of reciprocals and pulling gravities. It simply exists. Where there is cruise there is an escort of anti-cruise. But even in a bastion of anti-cruise fodder… there is cruise. Somewhere in there is a sparkle of cruising energy. Deeply sublimated, within the bellowing belly of the beast.”
If that sounds like a load of crap to you…I strongly suggest not watching this film. But if you love New York, you might love this film too.
I know it doesn’t sound too exciting, but I really enjoyed this documentary by two college buddies who happened to be from the same small town in Iowa.
Following a chemical test that determines that the carbon content in their hair follicles predominately comes from corn, Ian Cheney and Curtis Ellis visit their home town to farm an acre of corn, following its path through America’s food processes and into our bellies in the form of Happy Meals.
Roger Ebert just posted this about his efforts to recover his ability to communicate orally. When I first heard that he lost his ability to speak, I immediately thought of Stephen Hawking’s Speak-n-Spell robot voice.
But they’ve made huge leaps forward in computer-generated speech synthesis. Roger realized that, using professional-grade audio recordings of how his voice used to sound, some audio-engineers might be able to re-synthesize his own voice.
Wednesday, May 26
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or if you have Netflix it’s available right now for instant view.
