Marvel UK’s YouTube selection includes these five Captain America: Civil War clips that I hadn’t seen before. The first includes snippets from interviews with the movie’s main actresses (Scarlett Johansson, Emily VanCamp, and Elizabeth Olsen).
Captain America: Civil War – In Good Company by Marvel UK
Yay, Sharon Carter / Agent 13!
The second has interview snippets with Chris Evans, Robert Downey, Jr., and the Russo Brothers.
Captain America: Civil War – Brothers In Arms | HD by Marvel UK
Captain America: Civil War – Right To Choose | HD by Marvel UK
Captain America: Civil War – New Recruit | HD by Marvel UK
Captain America: Civil War – The Team Vs Bucky clip | HD UK by Marvel UK
We’ve been in blackout mode, avoiding anything spoilery like the plague. Alasdair Stuart’s Civil War review for Tor.com doesn’t include spoilers, so I did read that one. After tonight, I don’t have to hold back anymore. 🙂
Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.
This May the Fourth, NASA rules. Check out what they posted on the NASA Tumblr account:
“Worlds That Will Make You Believe Star Wars is Real
“The fantastical planets in Star Wars preceded our discovery of real planets outside our solar system… but fiction isn’t too far from the facts. When we send our spacecraft into the solar system and point our telescopes beyond, we often see things that seem taken right out of the Star Wars universe.
“Is there a more perfect time than May the 4th to compare real worlds to the ones depicted in Star Wars?
“Probably not… so here are a few:
What follows is pictures (mostly artists’ renderings) and short descriptions of eight planetary bodies that could serve as models for various locations in the Star Wars universe. And don’t let the photo of Saturn’s moon Mimas above fool you; it’s the most scruffy-looking of the bunch.
NASA’s post isn’t earth-shattering or deep or anything. But it does show a sense of humor, and combines pop culture geekery with science geekery in a very satisfying way. (YMMV, of course.)
I’m gonna go take you to Jabba now follow NASA on Tumblr right now.
Image: Saturn’s moon Mimas (the so-called Death Star moon) via NASA on Tumblr.
Out There is an occasional feature highlighting intriguing art, spaces, places, phenomena, flora, and fauna.
A new project called Monuments of Roman Greece is under development at the University of Oxford. It covers about four centuries, c. 200 BCE – 200 CE, from when Rome began to expand into the Greek area of influence to the height of the Roman Empire, and will result in a series of articles plus a database.
“Under the Roman Empire the marketplaces, streets, gymnasia and theatres of the cities of Greece were full of monuments such as tombs, inscribed stelai and – most numerous of all – statues. There were statues of bronze and of marble, portraying gods, heroes, emperors, kings and local dignitaries. Some of these monuments had already stood for centuries; others were fairly recent. Arguably no urban culture in history, with the possible exception of Rome itself, has set up such vast numbers of monuments in its public spaces. The nearest modern analogy for the amount of cultural material on display in the Roman period polis would be the museum. Yet the analogy falls short – the settings where these monuments stood were not places designed primarily for the passive viewing of works of art, they were vibrant public spaces, alive with the tumult and commotion of the city. If we are to understand the society and culture of these cities it is vital that we understand the impact of public monuments on the people who moved about them in their daily lives.“
The work is carried out by Dr. C. P. Dickenson at the Faculty of Classics, with Prof. R. R. R. Smith as scientific adviser. Both the website and the database are still in progress. Also, it sounds like the final home of the database is not finalized at the time of this writing; however, a browsable version is currently up on the University of Oxford website.
Image: Bronze statuette of a veiled and masked dancer, from the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, bequest of Walter C. Baker in 1971, accession number 1972.118.95, by Eppu Jensen (Greek; 3rd-2nd century BCE)
May the Fourth is a week away! Just time enough to figure out a small something to celebrate Star Wars with, if you’re so inclined. The Makeup Dummy shared a tutorial for a painted t-shirt with a Yoda-inspired quote:
Nice use of negative space on a starry sky. Also, using stickers to create the lettering is clever; it removes the need for messing with stencils (which can be a pain in the hindquarters to make if you don’t happen to have an electronic cutting machine or somesuch).
Bonus project: This wall art piece made with neon rods from a room designed by cityhomeCOLLECTIVE is decidedly lightsaber-like, if you ask me:
“I was here alone and Evan wasn’t going to protect me. He never had. He wanted things from me, like everyone else. But those things were never just what people said with words. Everything about it, instead, was meant to manipulate you to feel something you wouldn’t otherwise feel, and screw up your steady, rational thoughts.”
– Karin Lowachee: Warchild
Protagonist Jos struggles with the pervasiveness of childhood traumas years after the events.
Lowachee, Karin. Warchild. New York, NY: Warner Books, 2002, p. 329.
This wall ad by the Finnish game house Remedy deserves wider circulation:
“Mom always said that playing games won’t get you a job. From Espoo with love since 1995. Thank you Remedy crew, friends, families, Finnish dev community, fans and gamers around the world. This one is for you.”
Remedy (of the Max Payne and Alan Wake fame) designed this ad to celebrate their April 05, 2016, launch of a new game, Quantum Break, reportedly the most expensive entertainment production ever made in Finland.
The ad’s irony at one’s own expense sounds very Finnish to me. In Finland, it’s a little embarrassing to be successful or rich, and Finns don’t tend to draw attention to their achievements. At the same time, as a Finn, it’s very satisfying to see Finnish game companies grow up into mature businesses with large, world-wide audiences.
It’s also high time for people to recognize that storytelling is an integral part of human nature and that games are just as viable a medium for telling stories as are myths, songs, novels, image-based art, and the like.
“‘There is food in the wild,’ said Strider; ‘berry, root, and herb; and I have some skill as a hunter at need.’”
For this month’s dinner, we take up Strider on his offer and imagine what sort of a meal a ranger could have created in the wild at the best of times. This is what Strider might have cooked up for a party of hungry Hobbits if they hadn’t been running for their lives from ringwraiths: pan-braised game hens with root vegetables on a bed of green leaf and herb salad with fresh blackberries for dessert.
Cooking would’ve been done with a cast iron spider, and light-weight wooden plates and small utensils wouldn’t add too much to the burden. Small pieces of fabric and sacks provide storage, and a rough piece of firewood functions as a makeshift stool or table. Everything is laid on rich, deep blue wool blend that nods towards Aragorn’s high status as the heir of Elendil.
“On the verge of débuting his late, lamented sci-fi series ‘Firefly,’ which was cancelled after less than one season of Fox mismanagement, Joss Whedon remarked that his goal was not to create ‘grownup’ TV but to ‘invade people’s dreams’ – to create mythologies, which last so much longer than the mortal form of a TV series. Cult shows, such as ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘Community,’ often have this quality: they shrug off the condescension that people have toward their ‘lower’ genres, using their constraints to find a greater freedom. When you look at a show like that from a distance, it might seem too narrow to contain much of interest. But it’s so much larger when you’re on the inside.”
– Emily Nussbaum
Two thoughts. One: Ha, Joss Whedon wants to do a George Lucas. Two: Just like, say, fly fishing might look narrow on the outside, there are hidden depths and intricacies in just about any hobby or interest. Not sure why it’s still such a surprise to those condescending types.
Nussbaum, Emily. “Fantastic voyage: ‘Doctor Who,’ ‘Community,’ and the passionate fan,” The New Yorker (June 4 & 11, 2012) 127.
Serving exactly what it sounds like, the Quotes feature excerpts other people’s thoughts.
The first trailer for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is out!
ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY Official Teaser Trailer by Star Wars
I’m delighted to see Felicity Jones cast as a protagonist. I enjoyed her performances as The Unicorn in Doctor Who (season 4, episode 7, “The Unicorn and the Wasp”) and as Catherine Morland in the 2007 adaptation of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. According to IMDB, also Alan Tudyk, Forest Whitaker, and Mads Mikkelsen are among the cast. Mikkelsen seems to have been busy with genre roles lately – first Doctor Strange and now Rogue One.
Rogue One is the first in a series of spinoffs outside the episodic Star Wars core collectively known as the Star Wars Anthology Series. If this trailer is anything to go by, the series should be a lot of fun.
At this writing, the release date is set to December 16, 2016. Can’t wait!
Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.
A team of archaeologists has unearthed a potential new Viking site in Newfoundland, Canada with the help of satellites. Dr. Sarah H. Parcak, an archaeologist, space archaeologist, and Egyptologist, lead the effort to take infrared images from space to find new archaeological sites.
According to The New York Times, while searching the coastlines from Baffin Island (in the Canadian territory of Nunavut, west of Greenland) to Massachusetts, she found
“hundreds of potential ‘hot spots’ that high-resolution aerial photography narrowed to a handful and then one particularly promising candidate — ‘a dark stain’ with buried rectilinear features.
“Magnetometer readings later taken at the remote site […] showed elevated iron readings. And trenches that were then dug exposed Viking-style turf walls along with ash residue, roasted ore called bog iron and a fire-cracked boulder — signs of metallurgy not associated with native people of the region.
“In addition, radiocarbon tests dating the materials to the Norse era, and the absence of historical objects pointing to any other cultures, helped persuade scientists involved in the project and outside experts of the site’s promise.”
Point Rosee is approximately 700 km (approximately 400 miles) away from L’Anse aux Meadows, the only currently confirmed Viking site in North America. The Norsemen staying at L’Anse must have traveled further south, though, because butternuts and worked pieces of butternut wood – which are not native to Newfoundland – were found among the Norse objects at the settlement.
CBC News reports that evidence of a Norse-like hearth and 8 kilograms (approx. 16 pounds) of bog iron was found at Point Rosee during a dig in 2015. It isn’t yet known for sure whether the site was a temporary base camp or a settlement, or whether it even was associated with Vikings. If confirmed, Point Rosee would be the second known Viking site in North America.
The evidence is still clearly on the scant side. Digging at Point Rosee is to resume this summer, so maybe they’ll find more.
As a sidenote, isn’t it so cool that we now have space archaeologists?!
Co-Geeking 
