Where did this summer go? Seriously. Even as we near the dog days of August, some of us still look pasty white — on purpose. Yeah, we know a tan’s a great accessory to a sundress, but cancer? We’re not really into that. That’s why we’re serious about how we protect ourselves. (Besides, we don’t want to have to reevaluate our term life insurance policy or start having regular checkups to get that weird mole checked out; we’re busy enough as it is.) So check out these tips, spread on the sunblock, and enjoy that margarita guilt-free.

Written by jeremyz

Sci-fi is a genre that you either love or hate, and since it’s a niche market movie studios often release sci-fi films with less fanfare than they deserve. Even if you’re a sci-fi fan, it can be easy to miss some solid films in the category. To right this wrong, here’s a list of great sci-fi flicks that you might have missed. Of course, if we missed any, please let us know in the comments!

10. Equilibrium

(2002)

Christian Bale stars in this sci-fi action flick about a future where all forms of emotion have been outlawed. There are a couple points where some of the supporting cast seems to forget that they’re not supposed to feel, but even so Equilibrium has some great ideas and cool scenes. It’s best known for its “gun-kata,” a martial art based entirely on the science of gunfights.

9. eXistenZ

(1999)

A creepy, gloppy film from David Cronenberg about the testing of a new virtual reality game, eXistenZ is certainly not a film for everyone. It’s twisty and filled with lots of shifts between different planes of reality and has several moments of Cronenberg’s trademark “body horror,” including a pretty disturbing biological gun. But there’s an even bigger reason many people haven’t seen it. It was released less than one month after another virtual reality movie you may have heard of: The Matrix.

8. Sunshine

(2007)

Sunshine isn’t a perfect film, but it’s got some great ideas and an interesting visual style that make it worth checking out. On a voyage into space to reignite the dying Sun, a team of scientists encounter disaster that could spell death for them and, in turn, the rest of humanity. You’ll never think about sunlight the same way again.

7. Pitch Black

(2000)

Forget the junky sequel The Chronicles of Riddick. Pitch Black transcends its Aliens­ rip-off roots, thanks to great characters, especially the magnetic murderer Riddick, played by Vin Diesel. He’s a bad guy who’s called up to protect a group of stranded space travelers from killer aliens, if only because they increase his own chances for survival. The spin-off video game is also great, but seriously, the sequel is crap.

6. The Hidden

(1987)

There’s an FBI agent on the trail of a brutal criminal, and each one has a secret: they’re both aliens in human bodies. The Hidden is a little dated by today’s standards, but it’s still got some great ideas and great performances, especially professional weirdo Kyle Maclachlan as the FBI agent/intergalactic hunter.

5. A Boy and his Dog

(1975)

Based on a novella by sci-fi master Harlan Ellison, A Boy and his Dog stars Don Johnson as a kid in a post-apocalyptic world who has a telepathic link with his dog. Together they stumble into an underground society that has sexy and sinister ideas in mind for the Boy. Why aren’t you watching it right now?

4. Primer

(2004)

Created by a small team of filmmakers with a budget of around $7000, Primer is one of the most intelligent, mind-bending sci-fi movies in decades and one of the most complex time-travel films ever. Writer/director/producer Shane Carruth is a former mathematician and engineer, so to say that Primer is a thinking man’s sci-fi film is probably underselling it. It’s a tough film to follow, but you can’t have a list of vital sci-fi movies without Primer.

3. Moon

(2009)

A sad, smart film from David Bowie’s son Duncan Jones, Moon is a film that works entirely because of the performance of Sam Rockwell. As someone about to end a three-year stint working on the moon, the main character Sam discovers a secret that changes everything about his job and his life, but to say more would be to do a disservice to the movie.

2. Silent Running

(1972)

In the future, all of Earth’s plant life has died. The only remaining flora is stored in a fleet of greenhouse ships in space. But when protagonist Freeman Lowell is ordered to destroy the forests he’s so passionate about protecting, his disobedience puts him in direct conflict with the rest of his crew. Check it out and discover why it’s considered one of the all-time gems of the sci-fi genre.

1. Gattaca

(1997)

One of the most respected sci-fi films of the last couple decades, Gattaca paints an all-too believable portrait of a permanent underclass of humans based on their “inferior” genetic material. Faking genetic tests with borrowed DNA, protagonist Vincent is days away from his dream of traveling to space. But can he maintain his charade long enough to make it to the launch? Watch it and find out.

Earlier we told you about Patagonia ambassadors Nicolas Favresse and Sean Villanueva, and their current climbing trip: Greenland Vertical Sailing 2010. Nico and Sean, along with Olivier Favresse and Ben Ditto have stowed aboard Captain Bob Shepton's boat to sail the west coast of Greenland looking for virgin big walls to explore. We thought their last trip to Baffin Island was wild (check out the DVD) but this one is already off the hook. So far it seems like part Liz Clark Voyage and part 180° South, with plenty of boat hijinks and surprises along the way. Let's get you caught up on their trip. [Ben Ditto getting started out of the boat on "Seagulls Garden." Photo: Nico Favresse]

June 26 - Bob & Dodo’s Delight
We finally met our reverend captain Bob! He’s the perfect man for the job: he seems even less organized than us. He’s 75 years old, not 65 like we communicated earlier, and in great form. In all his years of experience he only sank one boat! He used to be a fanatic rock climber before he was sailor.

The boat is floating ... barely. With 600 kg of food and rock climbing gear, and 400L of water, we never thought everything would fit in. However, with some stuffing we managed to push everything into the boat and there is just about enough space left for four and a half humans.

The boat has a few technical issues we are trying to solve before we launch into the wild.

[The band plays the first gig of their Greenland tour with a guest piano player in the Sisak Teknik boat yard on Greenland Day. Photo: Ben Ditto]

[Bird's eye view of the Dodo Delight as we prepare her for the sea. Photo: Ben Ditto]

[Reverend Captain Bob Shepton aboard the Dodo Delight in Aasiaat, Greenland. Photo: Ben Ditto]

July 1 – Sailing Time
We unleashed the boat from the harbor deck of Asiaat and set off to our first target: the Impossible Wall. But first we had to sail 300 miles. Just to make things more interesting Bob threw a wrench into the motor breaking it instantly, forcing us to travel by fair means and continue our voyage by sail alone. This made for some interesting situations sailing against the wind and gave us plenty of time to practice our musical skills to the rhythm of the rocking boat.

This passage was Sean and Ben’s first baptism under sail. Needless to say it was a full experience and some of our delicious dinners were wasted over the side. Long periods of no wind turned the three days of expected sailing time into five, but fortunately we were well prepared for it with all the training tools to sharpen our body for the Impossible. The sailing atmosphere across an iceberg-littered ocean felt like steering a spaceship trough a field of meteoroids. Here we are now very close to the big walls in a small Inuit village called Upernavik. As soon as the motor is fixed we’ll finally be getting into business.

[Nico Favresse, Olivier Favresse, Reverend Captain Bob Shepton, Sean Villanueva-O'Driscoll, Ben Ditto]

[Sean tries his luck pushing the boat along during a time with low winds and a motor that won't start. Photo: Ben Ditto]

[The team all getting sea sick together on a nice sunny morning heading into Upernavik. Photo: Ben Ditto]

[Reverend Captain Bob takes the wheel for five minutes in five days.]

[Training hard. Got to keep them fingers strong! It is the Impossible Wall.]

[At the look out for pirate ships.]

[Land ahoy!!!!]

[Some big walls at last!]

[The Reverend says, "Go climb that rock!!!!"]

July 6 – The little paradise of the black hole fjord
With the motor half fixed, Bob brought us on a committing tour through the labyrinth of iceberg-filled fjords. We finally reached our main target: the little paradise of the black hole fjord, with all its spectacular big walls. We were able to analyze the Impossible Wall from really close. Really close, “Ahem, that’s close enough Bob.” He almost sank a second boat in the Greenlandic fjords.

We then decided to go for a warm up on the seagull-filled red wall. We hoped it was red rock and not lichen that gave it this color ... it was thick lichen. This in addition to the grass-filled cracks, the bird shit, and the laughing birds made for some pretty adventurous climbing. We split up into two teams: Ben and Nico, and Oli and Sean. Starting the climb was one of the most incredible beginnings we’ve ever done! Bob brought Dodo’s Delight right up against the base of the wall where we had to jump on to the rock, with the intimidating black abyss of the deep sea below us. About 20 hours of climbing later we walked down the other side where Bob was waiting for us anchored next to a Bahamas-like beach. The two new routes, about 400m long, are called Seagull’s Garden and Red Chili Cracker. Now we are back in Upernavik trying to fix the second half of the motor. Hopefully soon enough we will get back to the fjords for some more adventures.

[The ummm, interesting start of Seagull's Garden. Photo: Olivier Favresse]

[Sean and Oli heading up the start of their new route, Red Chili Cream Cracker. Photo: Nico Favresse]

[Ben Ditto gettin' into the mean cracks of Seagull's Garden. Photo: Nico Favresse]

[Reverend Captain Bob, worried about his crew.]

[Ben Ditto enjoying one of the finest pitches of the Seagull's Garden. Photo: Nico Favresse]

[Olivier cleaning the last pitch of Red Chili Cream Cracker. Photo: Sean Villanueva]

[After a long day/night, getting back to the Dodo Delight. Photo: Nico Favresse]

[The Red Wall's new routes: Red Chili Cream Cracker on the left and Seagull's Garden to the right.]

July 12 – Big Wall Island
The motor problems kept coming so we got our hands dirty to attempt repairing it. We were desperate and ready to try about anything to resolve this failure. We came to the final resolution that our last hope was in the hand of a good mechanic. Instead of waiting several days in Upernavik, we asked Bob to drop us off on a wild island for a few days. The main attraction was a beautiful 400m virgin rock face and the challenge to put all our survival skills to the test. Five days later we were happy to see Bob with Dodo’s engine purring smoothly, plus we bagged an amazing new route – Brown Balls – and a bunch of fat cod fish. We are living it up!

As usual, the climbing here doesn’t cease to amaze us: adventurous climbing on super quality lines. Perhaps the best way to describe it is to say it’s like climbing Yosemite classic cracks but with vegetable picking along the way. We love it!

As we are about to launch on a main course kind of climb that could take us a while, you may not hear from us very soon. Let's see!

[Ben Ditto in the midst of some dirty mechanical action on the Dodo Delight.]

[The boys doing some fundraising for motor repair on the dark streets of Upernavik. They will do anything for a few coins.]

[The last we saw of Reverend Captain Bob and the Dodo Delight for five days while we lived on our island paradise like wild animals.]

[Nico leads into the Brown Balls' splitter corner cracks.]

[The crux of the Brown Balls route: a chicken wing dyno to a fist full of grass.]

[The Brown Balls Wall, scene of our latest all night party ascent.]

[Ben showing off his big cod.]

[Which would you rather wake up to?]

[Sean trying a new experimental fishing technique.]

[Olivier testing the emergency exit system.]

[By the time you see this photo we will be on this wall!]

Courtesy of ...

NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me

(download)

Collected by shmoop

Introducing a story to a reader is a lot like dropping a pickup line on someone: do it the wrong way and they’ll wind up under the covers with a different… book.

Here to show you how it’s done are the top twenty-five cold openings in Western literature. For some additional insight, we’ve included speculations as to the thought process that might have influenced each author’s writing. Enjoy!

1. Ice, Ice Ba—Whaaat?

Opener: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

Book: One Hundred Years of Solitude

Author: Gabriel García Márquez

Creative Thought Process: Before getting into that whole “ice” thing, unceremoniously mention that Buendía eventually has to stare down a firing squad. That’ll buy at least a hundred pages of curiosity.

2. A Real Page-Burner

Opener: “It was a pleasure to burn.”

Book: Fahrenheit 451

Author: Ray Bradbury

Creative Thought Process: Juxtapose the anarchic verb “to burn” with an alluring noun like “pleasure.” Hope a major cigarette company doesn’t steal the phrase some forty years down the road.

3. April Cowers

Opener: “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”

Book: 1984

Author: George Orwell

Creative Thought Process: To properly set the mood for a futuristic dystopia, combine the elements of springtime, coldness, an unlucky number, and bells tolling. Then, watch people fight over the feasibility of a clock that can strike thirteen.

4. Post-Partum Possession

Opener: “124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom.”

Book: Beloved

Author: Toni Morrison

Creative Thought Process: Make the subject of the sentence an obscure sequence of numbers to get the reader’s attention. In case that doesn’t work, follow up with a terrifying, baby-related metaphor.

5. F. M. L.

Opener: “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.”

Book: Metamorphosis

Author: Franz Kafka

Creative Thought Process: Ease the reader into Gregor Samsa’s misfortunes by describing his nightsweats about… Meh, skip to the giant cockroach.

6. Ve Believe In Nah-sing, Lebowski!

Opener: “Mama died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know.”

Book: The Stranger

Author: Albert Camus

Creative Thought Process: In order to sell the whole involuntary-manslaughter thing, start by making the guy seem detached. Okay, more detached. Just a little more. PERFECT!

7. Hole-y Middle-earth, Batman!

Opener: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.”

Book: The Hobbit

Author: J.R.R. Tolkien

Creative Thought Process: In the interest of thoroughness, approach the most epic alternate universe in all of literature by starting with a hole in the ground.

8. Gray-Per-View

Opener: “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”

Book: Neuromancer

Author: William Gibson

Creative Thought Process: Methinks I shall write the greatest opening line ever. Donesies.

9. Out There

Opener: “They’re out there. Black boys in white suits up before me to commit sex acts in the hall and get it mopped up before I can catch them.”

Book: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Author: Ken Kesey

Creative Thought Process: First, open with something that conveys paranoia. Mentioning the ambiguous ol’ “they” is a good start, but driving it home will require something more specific. Hmm…

10. Fragile: Do Not Stack

Opener: “When I was three and Bailey four, we had arrived in the musty little town, wearing tags on our wrists which instructed – ‘To Whom It May Concern’ – that we were Marguerite and Bailey Johnson Jr., from Long Beach, California, en route to Stamps, Arkansas, c/o Mrs. Annie Henderson.”

Book: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Author: Maya Angelou

Creative Thought Process: Casually inform the reader that these children might not be in the best hands. Start by Fed-Ex-ing them 1,600 miles.

11. Hi, My Name Is (WHAT?!)

Opener: “Call me Ishmael.”

Book: Moby-Dick

Author: Herman Melville

Creative Thought Process: Well, you should probably include at least one short sentence.

12. …Goes To-gether Like a Horse and Car-riage!

Opener: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Book: Anna Karenina

Author: Leo Tolstoy

Creative Thought Process: Give the readers an impossibly oversimplified statement about mankind, then sit back and watch them realize that it’s actually true.

13. The Reckonin’

Opener: “You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly.”

Book: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Author: Mark Twain

Creative Thought Process: Write a 43-chapter novel entirely in rural slang. From the perspective of a 13-year-old boy. Who’s uneducated. While you’re at it, make it the greatest novel in American history.

14. Universal Spoof

Opener: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

Book: Pride and Prejudice

Author: Jane Austen

Creative Thought Process: Write sarcastically during an era so prudish that future generations will actually mistake you as being serious.

15. Whatever, Nevermind

Opener: “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”

Book: The Catcher in the Rye

Author: J.D. Salinger

Creative Thought Process: Offhandedly trash-talk the classics, gloss over any specifics, and leave everyone wanting more. Make sure Holden, the narrator, is one hundred percent unable to repeat this technique on women.

16. Great Balls of Fire

Opener: “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.”

Book: Lolita

Author: Vladimir Nabokov

Creative Thought Process: Subtly allude to the fact that the love interest is only thirteen by writing her name in the diminutive, “-ita” form. Throwing the word “sin” in there probably isn’t a bad idea either.

17. Bombs Over Bag-Lady

Opener: “It was the day my grandmother exploded.”

Book: The Crow Road

Author: Iain Banks

Creative Thought Process: Open with a bang. Scratch that – open with a violent human combustion. See where it takes you…

18. Old Man Liver

Opener: “I am a sick man… I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I think my liver is diseased.”

Book: Notes from the Underground

Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky

Creative Thought Process: Start with some creepy character building. Sick? Check. Spiteful? Check. Unattractive? Check. TMI? Double check.

19. Prose In Different Area Codes

Opener: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

Book: A Tale of Two Cities

Author: Charles Dickens

Creative Thought Process: It was earth, it was sky, it was sun, it was moon, it was salt, it was pepper… Um…

20. That Peaceful, Queasy Feeling

Opener: “My mother is standing in front of the bathroom mirror smelling polished and ready; like Jean Naté, Dippity Do and the waxy sweetness of lipstick. Her white, handgun-shaped blow-dryer is lying on top of the wicker clothes hamper, ticking as it cools. She stands back and smoothes her hands down the front of her swirling, psychedelic Pucci dress, biting the inside of her cheek. ’Damn it,’ she says, ’something isn’t right.’”

Book: Running with Scissors

Author: Augusten Burroughs

Creative Thought Process: Throw the reader into the body of an innocent young kid. Drop some hints that mom may be a lot of work. Buckle up; this ain’t The Brady Bunch.

21. Nowhere Man

Opener: “Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.”

Book: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Author: Douglas Adams

Creative Thought Process: Put the readers in their place. You know, light-eons away from anything of significance.

22. A Nicens Little Title

Opener: “Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo.”

Book: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Author: James Joyce

Creative Thought Process: What haven’t you tried yet ah yes baby talk that will be new.

23. Road Trippin’

Opener: “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.”

Book: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Author: Hunter S. Thompson

Creative Thought Process: Dropkick the readers into chaos. Right after dropping some… ahem.

24. Shark Bait Hoo-Ha-Ha!

Opener: “He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.”

Book: The Old Man and the Sea

Author: Ernest Hemingway

Creative Thought Process: Write about an old, grizzled man’s man who takes on an entire ocean. To distract everyone from the fact that mother used to dress you as a girl.

25. Scottish Rogue

Opener: “The sweat wis lashing oafay Sick Boy; he wis trembling.”

Book: Trainspotting

Author: Irvine Welsh

Creative Thought Process: If readin aboot heroin junkies disnae make ya sweat, readin throo mah brogue will.

By Chuck Squatriglia

The Bugatti Veyron is, once again, the fastest production car on the planet.

Bugatti says an orange-and-black Veyron 16.4 Super Sport achieved an average top speed of 267.8 mph at the hands of test driver Pierre Henri Raphanel. Stop and think about that for a moment. That’s more than 393 feet per second and almost 4.5 miles per minute. Even Bugatti’s engineers were surprised.

“We took it that we would reach an average value of 425 km/h (264 mph),” chief engineer Wolfgang Schreiber said in a statement. “But the conditions today were perfect and allowed even more.”

Raphanel made his record-setting run at Volkswagen’s test track in Ehra-Lessien, Germany, in the latest version of the greatest automobile ever made. He had one hour to make back-to-back runs in each direction. The speedo hit 427.933 km/h against the wind and 434.211 with it. That came to an average of 431.072, which by our math is 267.8 mph.

And that was more than enough to take the title back from Shelby Super Cars and the Ultimate Aero, which had held the record since peeling off an average of 256 mph in 2007. Raphanel set the record on June 24; Bugatti announced it on July 4. Bugatti says Guinness was on-hand to verify the record, and we imagine the guys at SSC will not take this sitting down.

As the name suggests, the Super Sport is a hot-rodded version of a car that already has too much of everything. The 16-cylinder engine has been tweaked and tuned with bigger turbochargers (four, count ‘em, four) and intercoolers. Bugatti says the engine is good for 1,200 horsepower and a staggering 1,106 pound feet of torque.

The carbon-fiber monocoque is stiffer yet lighter, the suspension has been stiffened and Bugatti says the car is capable of 1.4g of lateral acceleration. The body has been revised, and the engine draws air through a pair of NACA ducts in the roof instead of two big scoops.

Bugatti plans to begin building the Super Sport this fall. The first five off the line will be identical to the record-setting car. The remainder will have the top speed governed at 415 km/h (257.8 mph) “to protect the tyres,” Bugatti says.

Our own Joe Brown drove the Veyron 1.6 Grand Sport last year; his review is definitely worth reading.

Photos: Bugatti

Got carbon? How about downforce?

The carbon monocoque is lighter, the suspension is stiffer.

Huge NACA ducts replace the scoops found on earlier models.

 

 

                                             

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