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A woman with three crocodiles strapped to her waist was stopped at the Gaza-Egypt border crossing after guards noticed that she looked “strangely fat,” officials said Monday.

(CBS/AP: “Woman Has Crocodiles Strapped To Body.” [Mar 26, 2007])

Dark side, or alternate reality, or something: NotStarring, the searchable database of actors who were almost cast in the movie roles you know and love. Like: David Bowie and Sean Connery in Lord of the Rings. Or: John Candy as Louis in Ghostbusters? And Eddie Murphy as Winston? Hours of totally useless movie trivia await you (yes, even more useless than your average movie trivia–if you can imagine that).

(Although, if it really matters to you, you should be warned that the database isn’t anything like 100% impervious to rumor and blatant untruths, as far as its verification scheme goes. But you knew that already, right?)

(via WFMU’s Beware of the Blog)

…on soil remediation!

Researchers have developed a prototype that cleans soil by making mud of it and blasting it with ultrasound:

Sound waves travel through water as a series of high pressure waves with low pressure areas in between. The low pressure causes the water to boil and form microscopic bubbles. The high pressure then forces the bubbles to collapse, generating a shockwave that produces localised temperature flashes of more than 4000°C and pressures of about 1000 atmospheres. That is more than enough to break down any complex molecules in the water, Sosa Pintos says.

Trials look to have been involving a “simplified” soil medium, so it’ll be interesting to see if the technique is as successful in the field.

(NewScientist: “Sound blaster cleans contaminated soil,” by Tom Simonite [Sept 6, 2006])

Or not so much youth as longevity. Winning the Nobel prize apparently adds years to your life, maybe:

“Status seems to work a kind of health-giving magic. Once we do the statistical corrections, walking across that platform in Stockholm apparently adds about 2 years to a scientist’s life-span. How status does this, we just don’t know.”

There’s not enough info listed in the article to really dig your teeth into, but the first and likely most obvious question I have is, hello Mr. Correlation v. Mr. Causation? Say what you want about “deserving work,” but what if Nobel prize winners are simply more driven than their nominated, non-winning peers? Ignoring the notion of a status effect, it would make sense that people who are more driven would have more cause to live, and be more likely to keep going when others would give up an wither away.

Just wondering.

(EurekAlert: “New research says winning a Nobel Prize adds nearly two years to your lifespan.” [Jan 16, 2007])

Concert riders can be laughable for any number of reasons–stupid demands, silly specifications, and so forth–but Iggy Pop’s concert rider is pretty much just comedic genius. Maybe genius is a bit too strong, but decide for yourself. It’s stupid, ridiculous, and hilarious, and totally aware of this.

The fact that the specifications for Iggy’s dinner includes the phrase “local cuisine is acceptable, or steak/chicken, endangered species [excluding moths or anything really cute]” tends to make the whole thing worthwhile.

(via TSG)

…and so while looking for a dessert recipe, I discover, incidentally, that Wendy Carlos (yes, that Wendy Carlos) is a serious solar eclipse buff who’s traveled all over the world and seen something like 18 of them. Her page on eclipses (the relatively straightforward-named “Wendy Carlos Eclipse Page”) includes quite a few interesting images, and some anecdotally interesting narrative.

(2006) unter der Regie von Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck - mit Martina Gedeck, Ulrich Mühe, Sebastian Koch, und Volkmar Kleinert. English title: “The Lives of Others”.

Synopsis: It’s before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and East Germany’s Stasi has its hands plenty full keeping track of the thoughts and actions not just of the outright subversive, but of the clean, the believers–of the potentially subversive. Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler gets pulled away from teaching the next generation of secret police and tasked instead to a particularly important mission: listening in on playwright Georg Dreyman, one of the DDR’s only non-subversive writers. All because Minister Bruno Hempf finds Dreyman a potential threat, and because Hauptmann sees potential subversion in everyone; it’s what he teaches, after all.

Review: This is a movie that seems to get human nature right. The actions taking place within it are absurd, disheartening, malicious, frightened, pensive, and totally believable. These characters are not means to an end–furtherances of the plot–but actual (well, “actual”) people, living their confused, erratic lives from day to day, and wondering what’s next.

Everyone’s being watched, or about to be watched, and fully cognizant of it. A woman in an apartment building watches through the door’s peep-hole as secret police as her neighbor’s apartment is bugged. Wiesler realizes this and knocks on her door, which she opens; he threatens her, and when she agrees to say nothing of the operation, he turns to a subordinate and says “send Mrs. Meineke a nice gift.”

There are monsters here, and misguided souls, and victims. What’s interesting is how your certainty of which characters fall into which categories erodes as the movie moves forward, until, at the end, you’re not where you were before. You’re someplace different.

Rating: [••••½] out of [•••••]