Hanna Arendt Story to Hit Cinemas in 2007

In further filmic news, hot on the heels of New Line's "Inferno" announcement, Revolution Pictures has announced a "prestige" biography of philosopher Hanna Arendt (1906-1975). The story will focus on the "turgid" love affair betweeen Arendt and fellow philosopher Martin Heidegger, the author of "Being in Time," in the era leading up to World War II.

Leads will be Kate Winslett and Jim Broadbent, who also portrayed literary lovers Iris Murdoch and John Bayley in 2001's "Iris."

It's a "Go" for "Inferno"

According to Daily Variety, New Line Pictures has announced that "The Divine Comedy: Inferno," an updated version of the classic comic poem by Dante Alighieri, will begin production in June 2005 for a summer 2007 release.

New Line likened the project to "The Lord of the Rings," saying this property offered even greater scope and depth. The approach, like the "Rings" series, will be a faithful retelling of the original story, with some story tweaks and updates to enable it to appeal to the modern audience.

The identity of the director was withheld due to the potential controversy inherent to the project. Elijah Wood is rumored to be associated with the project, but is not in the lead role of the planar traveller, Dante. All casting is reportedly in place but has not been announced.

If the film is a success, fans can look forward to part 2, "Purgatorio", and part 3, "Paradiso" in 2009 and 2011, respectively.

Budget is reportedly in the 100 to 150 million USD range.

Comment: This Life-Form Will Self-Destruct in Five Minutes

Biologists are puzzled, but clearly this is a strikingly elegant evolutionary solution to the problem of avoiding predators. We advise keeping close tabs on this important story.

Exploding Toads

NASA Considering Opening Hubble to Commercial Use

The Hubble Space Telescope project, beset by budget woes in recent years, has floated the idea of bringing private financing to the project by allowing marketers to use the telescope's visualization capabilities, images, and other "project identity" resources.

Among the companies reportedly considering deals are Norelco, Inc., maker of electric shaving systems, the William Wrigley Company, maker of various brands of chewing gum, Sony Entertainment, producers of the program Jeopardy!, and the Ohio Discount Merchandise company, toymakers who were recently sued by Arnold Schwarzenegger over a purportedly unlicensed "bobble-head" toy with his likeness.

A number of academic scientists have expressed dismay about the prospect of Hubble-themed merchandise, and have called for revisions to the NASA budget to permit survival of the telescope.

Pope Declares Linux Heretical

In a stunning move, Pope Benedict XVI has issued a bulla declaring the current Linux operating system heretical, in addition to excommunicating a number of programmers who developed the OS and dealing anathema to the operating system's creator, Linus Torvalds.

In a statement, Torvalds and other Linux developers vowed to fight the edict "to the utmost of our ability." It is believed they will utilize a two-pronged strategy to contest this declaration. First, they will attempt to prove the OS itself, and all its antecedents, is free from heretical content. Secondly, they will use the ecclesiastical courts system to prove that the Pope's edict was not, strictly speaking, made ex cathedra. The operating system's case is hampered somewhat by its origin in Finland, which is predominantly Evangelical Lutheran, and by Torvalds' history of anti-church statements.

Existing church law is unclear regarding the extent of papal infallibility on matters of computing and software.

This marks the first intervention by the church into software development, although in the 1980s, a sermon by Pope John Paul II reminded the faithful to beware of taking shortcuts in life, including keyboard shortcuts.

Link: What a personal shopper you have in Jesus

For the latest in trendy fetal merchandise and religiously themed underwear.

Before visiting this site, please ensure your monocle is securely lodged on your nose, to prevent it dropping to your lap, and that your moustache is attached firmly to your face, to prevent it twirling.

Miss Poppy

A Commentator's Discontentment

Disenchanted with the authorial integrity vested in traditional journalistic reportage, a commentator recently proclaimed, "News ... is worthy of nothing but society's collective disgust."

Outraged readers have written into various outlets to defend the primacy, and constant relevance, of news. Editors of the embattled site where the errant view was expressed have cautioned the curmudgeon to "cool down" or risk being canned.

Comment: Is Comment "News"?

One must question whether the addition of opinion articles to the content here is in any way newsworthy.

With all the newsworthy activity around the world, and the web, and the ill effects of increasing storage needs, is it worthwhile to post news about comment? The answer is a resounding "No."

One may wish to inquire further, is it even worthwhile to post comment about news about comment? To be sure, news about comment is worthy of nothing but society's collective disgust. If the appearance of commentary is newsworthy, its value would be self-evident, and does not need to be noted; but if it needs noting, it's obviously not notable!

Yet comment about news is always relevant. It poses crucial questions about journalistic integrity, self-awareness, and teleology. It speaks truth to power; it opens the window to truth, and sheds much-needed light into the benighted newsroom, and may even, once in a while, change minds at a time like today, when they are in direst need of changing.

Therefore I proclaim: Ecrasez le news; vive la commentaire!

News: "Comment" Content to be Added

In addition to the regular "news" content posted here at http://obversity.blogspot.com, which is confined to simple journalistic reportage, the site's architect, Avenarius, hereby announces plans to add additional content that provides commentary upon a variety of topics.

To date, the site has never admitted opinion upon any news taking place.

Opinion or commentary articles will have the tag "Comment:" prefixed to the headline to allow readers to distinguish between these and regular news content.

Reaction to this development is still fomenting.

Everest expeditions reach all-time highs

A recent expedition to Mount Everest, let by Guy Rasconceile of France, has measured an all-time high on an expedition concluded Tuesday. The summit of Everest rises approximately 1/4 inch each year due to the motion of the Earth's tectonic plates. Rasconceile's GPS measurement recorded a result that was nearly two feet higher than the previous confirmed height from 1999, of 29,035 feet (8,850 meters).

In related Everest news, the number of expeditions made each year continues to climb. A record 47 separate teams have applied for permission to reach the summit this year, raising concerns about scheduling.

One team, denied permission but still preparing for a scheduled November 2005 attempt on the peak, has stated that one of its goals is "having a toke" at the summit, which if accomplished in the thin air of the peak, would constitute another record. The group has raised over 150,000 USD for its expedition, most of which has gone toward equipment.

The peak was named after Sir George Everest, British Surveyor General of India from 1830-1843, who mapped the Indian subcontinent. In Tibet it is known as Chomolungma, and in Nepal its name is Sagarmatha.

Words Made Flesh in Nebraska

Scientists at a privately funded research laboratory in Nebraska have discovered a way to turn words into actual flesh, anonymous sources have reported.

The test words, which according to insider accounts were the obscure adjective "autochthonous" and the Chinese word for deer, pronounced "lu" (Chinese characters were used), became flesh for a period of around fifteen minutes on Monday, April 11th. The words, written in large letters on a single sheet of 8 1/2" x 11" paper in black ink by a Sharpie marker, became dull gray in color, were obtruded slightly from the page, and were warm to the touch. When probed with a sharp object they recoiled slightly. They were translucent with a reddish internal hue when viewed in front of a bright light. Their fleshly form did not appear to extend through the page to the opposite side of the paper.

The experiment ended when scientists attempted to remove the letters from the sheet of paper with a scalpel to determine whether they could exist independently of the paper and each other. Although a fair margin of about 1/2 inch was maintained around the letter outlines, after a few moments the letters began to writhe, emitting faint whining sounds, while hemmorhaging massively.

The blood, which amounted to about 2 fluid ounces, was collected for followup experiments. After about 8 hours the words appeared to have returned to an inky state, although the appearance of the lines was faded and smeary.

Sources, fearing controversy, refused to identify the location of the lab, the identity of the scientists involved, or the source of funding for the experiments. The method used to transmute the words likewise remains undisclosed.

New Mexico Flu Virus Send Was Attempt at Germ Warfare

Sources connected deep within the CIA have acknowledged that an employee of Meridian Bioscience Inc. in Cincinnati has been taken into custody in connection with the recent delivery of highly contagious samples of H2N2 Asian flu virus to 28 labs in New Mexico.

The sources indicate that the virus distribution was an attempt at germ warfare on Mexico by the employee, who may be mentally ill. Connections to terrorist organizations are also being investigated. National Institutes of Health spokesmen refused comment.

The virus, if released into the general population, could have caused a flu pandemic of incredible lethality.

New Mexico is the 47th state admitted into the U.S., and is not part of Mexico.

Roots of Compassionate Conservatism in Fossil Skull

The toothless skull of an early human ancestor, discovered in the U.S. State of Georgia, may attest to humanity's oldest known example of compassionate conservatism as it affects the elderly and handicapped in society, scientists are reporting today.

Other experts agreed that the discovery was significant, but cautioned that it might be a stretch to interpret the fossil as evidence of anything resembling modern compassionate conservatism.

The well-preserved skull belonged to a female Homo sapiens about 40 years old. All her teeth, except the left canine, were missing. The teeth appeared to have been forcibly removed from their sockets, the scientists said, indicating that the woman had been made toothless for at least two weeks before she died of starvation at what was then an old age. (The discoverers call her "Gran.")

In a report in today's issue of the journal Madroit, the discovery team said the 770-year-old skull "raises questions about alternative subsistence strategies in early Americans."

Specifically, how could the woman have survived that long, if her offenses were so great as to warrant such an extreme punishment, in a mainly meat-eating society?

In interviews, the paleoanthropologists said caring companions might have helped the toothless woman in finding soft plant food and hammering raw meat with stone tools so she could "gum" her dinner. If so, they said, this was evidence of a kind of compassionate conservatism that had been absent in the ancestral fossil record since Biblical times, 4,000 years ago.

In the survival of the old woman, Dr. John Awachoo said in The International Journal of Paleoethics, "We're looking at perhaps the first sign of truly moral behavior in some of our ancestors. Whether we agree with the actions, right or wrong, is of course a matter for us all to decide independently, but our anthropological objective is to understand them."

Dr. Awachoo, director of the Xenophon State Museum in Atlanta, led the international team that made the discovery at Scopesta, a site that has already yielded several fossil skulls and skeletons that are the oldest clear evidence of human ancestors living outside England. They have been identified as Homo sapiens, an immediate predecessor of Homo sapiens sapiens, but appear to be at an early stage of that species, leading some experts refer to it as Homo europeus.

Dr. G. Thomas Rahtgyel of Brigham Young University, a team member who specializes in fossil record research, said in an interview that if the toothless individual had lived in the colder climate of the northeastern United States, where tribes were in close proximity and presumably could rely on the kindness of strangers, her chances of surviving unaided would have been better. But in Georgia, where people had less need or opportunity for contact with others, ancient humans presumably subscribed to a live-and-let-live philosophy.

The old woman, Dr. Rahtgyel said, might have been able to take care of herself by hoarding resources when she was younger or by defending herself with stone hammers also found at the site.

The ease with which the teeth were extracted, signifying either disease or advanced age, suggested ongoing malnutrition. Dr. Rahtgyel suggested that she might have benefited, in today's world, from processed food, especially in the summer months.

"The old woman is indeed a very interesting specimen," said Dr. Cathleen Antham of New York University, who has not conducted research at the Scopesta site but was involved in the current report. "It makes the Georgian population particularly important for looking at variability in populations, and especially for age vulnerability."

She noted that paleoanthropologists digging there had now recovered skulls and skeletons of juveniles, young adults and now older adults.

But Dr. Antham, an editor of The Journal of Social Evolution, said that "going from the clear signals of tooth loss before death to envisioning compassionate conservatism or mistreatment of the individual at the hands of others in the group is something of a leap."

Dr. Antham added that "having no teeth does not necessarily mean that the individual was helpless in other ways." She cited examples of toothless males surviving without assistance in the wild.

"Did this old woman have to do things slightly differently than others in their group?" Dr. Anton asked. "Yes. Did that mean that the others were providing care or food or compassion by alternative means? There's no way to know. Of course I would say, probably."

Paleoanthropologists and archaeologists plan to return to Scopesta in June to resume excavations, financed in part by the National Archive. Dr. Rahtgyel said the team planned to widen research to detailed examinations of bones below the skulls, especially those of arms and legs. One objective will be to determine the body size and mass of these early human ancestors, and judge how close to modern humans they were in their abilities to cogitate.

Increased Storage Needs Increase Danger of Mutagenic Radiation

Due to the increasing number of electrons pushed and pulled into coherent patterns in information storage, scientists have noted that computer equipment, especially storage media, are exhibiting strange behavior. It has been theorized that this behavior, as noted below, is caused by the propensity of electrons to exist in a more or less randomized quantum state. When they are aligned into patterns such as used in processors and information storage, their states are forced to become relatively more static. The energy released when they re-enter a quantumly randomized state, the theory goes, may cause local atoms to break free of molecular bond structures and/or the emission of radiation.

- Some chips have shown signs of matter sublimation from processor cores outwards. Affected chips include IBM Transmeta, AMD Opteron, and PowerPC 970. In most cases damage is not extensive enough to cause the chip to cease functioning, as most chips have billions of microcircuits. However, damage can manifest as processor slowdowns.

- Storage Media, including hard drives, CD-ROM and floppy disk media have been found to emit measurable amounts of thetasigma radiation, which has a profoundly mutagenic waveform. While danger to computer users has not been determined, cautionary protective measures, such as wearing of lead undergarments, are advisable.

More details will be posted as they are reported.