Back To The Well

Conditions: Not too bad, I guess.

Meanwhile... In Space

Recently some footage was captured of the sun, where something quite odd seemed to be happening that had a lot of people screaming UFO refueling! Of course the scientists said it was just a filament, but...

NASA says a filament is a "large, bright feature extending outward from the Sun's surface. [Filaments] are anchored to the Sun's surface in the photosphere, and extend outwards into the Sun's hot outer atmosphere, called the corona."

But NASA can't explain why the object is cooler than the energy around it, and therefore remains dark when viewed from NASA’s telescope.

A NASA astrophysicist says the image is completely normal.

"Filaments appear to be dark because they're cooler in relation to what's in the background. When you look at it from the edge of the sun, what you see is this spherical object and you're actually looking down the tunnel."

NASA says it is rare for a prominence to form as such a distinct shape however.
Generally, a prominence comes in the form of a violent outburst, rather than the sphere seen in the video above.

- au.news.yahoo.com/

So, generally the filaments that come off the sun do not end in a disc-like shape, so that's a little weird. But seriously, if aliens were using our sun to refuel - wouldn't they at least operate on the other side of the sun to us? That way, we wouldn't see them? Or are we so inept as a species that aliens wouldn't even bother taking simple precautions like that?



Film Review: Contraband

Mark Whalberg stars in yet another bad/good guy film where a guy with a shady past is dragged back into the game for one last score. He plays Chris, a former legendary smuggler along with his old partner Sebastian. Both have gone legit now with their own businesses, but wouldn't you know it - Chris's brother in law tried to follow in his footsteps, and is now in debt to bad guy Giovanni Ribisi. And Ribisi wants his money, and doesn't care who is going to get it for him. So Chris hatches a plan for one last run, joining the crew of a cargo ship to Panama, where he will buy millions of dollars of fake currency and smuggle back to America. I guess hurting the already-bleeding economy of the U S of A is seen as a "cool" and victimless crime. However, setbacks crop up and Chris has to scramble to pull off the job without getting killed, caught, or just buying some cocaine instead.

You know, I am getting sick and tired of these movies where we're supposed to cheer for the least-bad guy on the screen. Yes, Ribisi forces Chris back into one last job, but really at no point in the movie do we see Chris really having second thoughts, doubts or regrets about what he's doing. In fact apart from the whole missing-the-wife thing, he seems to be enjoying himself throughout, although it can be hard to tell with Whalberg's general all-purpose grimness. Are we simply not caring that he's committing a fairly hefty crime, and taking part in a few others? His wife, played by Kate Beckinsale, fares much worse. Menaced by thugs, beaten up, and threatened by pretty much everyone, Chris makes it home just in time to have to go save her life as well. At no point does she seem to be having fun. Kate Beckinsale deserves a lot better than this.

So in the end the bad guys are taken care of, the wife is saved, and Chris actually has become a millionaire thanks to a totally different robbery he just happened to fall into while in Panama. Of course there's no hint of an idea that they'll give back the stolen property, or even get the cops involved in the whole affair. No, no. Because this is how these kinds of films work now, you take everything you can get and give nothing back. No wonder we're up to our asses in piracy. One anchor out of five.


- Peace out