A Dickens of a New Park
From signonsandiego.com:
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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,†Charles Dickens famously opened “A Tale of Two Cities.†He also wrote, a line or two later: “It was the age of foolishness.â€
Was the age of foolishness? If only Dickens could see what his greatness has wrought, 137 years after his death.
Today in Chatham, England, about an hours drive from London, a $125 million theme park called Dickens World opens to the public. It has boat rides, a haunted house, animatronic characters and costumed characters walking around the Dickensian streets some of them snow-crested re-created out of the pages of “Nicholas Nickelby,†“Oliver Twist†or “Great Expectations.â€
The price of admission: $25 for adults, $15 for kids. Cheap by the standards of some theme parks — are you listening, Disney?.
(Note from Mark to the author: That entire park doesn’t even cost as much as Expedition Everest alone — Disney is more than worth the price of admission)
Sony develops film-thin, bending display
From nwsource.com:
In this photo released by Sony Corp., the company’s new 0.3 millimeter (0.01 inch) display is shown at Atsugi Technology Center in Atsugi, southwest of Tokyo May 21, 2007. In the race for ever thinner displays for TVs, cell phones and other gadgets, Sony may have developed one to beat them all, a razor-thin display that bend like paper while showing full-color video. (AP Photo/Sony Corp., HO)
TweetTOKYO — In the race for ever-thinner displays for TVs, cell phones and other gadgets, Sony may have developed one to beat them all – a razor-thin display that bends like paper while showing full-color video.
Sony Corp. released video of the new 2.5-inch display Friday. In it, a hand squeezes a display that is 0.3 millimeters, or 0.01 inch, thick. The display shows color images of a bicyclist stuntman and a picturesque lake.
Although flat-panel TVs are getting slimmer, a display that’s so thin it bends in a human hand marks a breakthrough.
Disney CEO discusses future of media
From nwsource.com:
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“I got myself in the headlines a couple years ago by making comments about making DVDs available at the same time that movies were available in movie theaters. What I really meant was I thought that we had to listen to the consumer and make content available more aggressively, which meant that I thought at the time that the window, meaning the time that movies are in theaters, would probably collapse and should collapse.
“I actually believe that the movie-going experience, when you go into a theater with a number of other people and see it on a big screen, is a good experience and an important experience for the business, and I dont think that should go away. And I believe it actually should be protected in a few ways. One, we should all be working as an industry to make the product more compelling, which means everything from digital theaters, digital cinema to just a better movie-going experience.
“But I also believe that the window to when its available in the next form ought to be maybe a little shorter than it has been in the past, and weve seen some of that compression. It ought to be designed to continue to maintain value for both windows — for what Ill call the home-video window and for the theatrical window. I dont think were going to get to a point where everything is available at all times, but you will see, thanks to technology, a lot more available than ever before.”
“Please keep your arms in the vehicle.”
From nationalgeographic.com:
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Seoul, South Korea Photograph by Michael Nichols
Hungry tigers stand on display atop an SUV in Seoul, South Koreas Everland Resort amusement park. The parks tigers are fed chunks of meat dangled from a tour bus so sightseers can view the staged carnage up close.
Alligator Captured, Transferred to LA ZOO
From myfoxla.com:
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Authorities on Thursday captured an alligator believed to be the elusive “Reggie” who lived for two years in a murky lake in a city park for two years.The alligator was spotted on dry land near Harbor Regional Park’s Lake Machado around 3:30 p.m.
Park officials put a fence around the animal and, with the assistance of firefighters, it was loaded into a truck for transport to the Los Angeles Zoo, said Fire Department spokeswoman D’Lisa Davies.
Reggie was an illegal pet allegedly tossed into the 50-acre lake by a former policeman when it got too big.
When the 7-foot reptile was first spotted in the murky waters of the lake in 2005, he became a sensation as crowds gathered to catch a glimpse of it.
Locals named it Reggie, though it’s not clear whether the reptile is male or female.
(photo:nationalgeographic.com)
