I was delighted to hear that Queen Elizabeth invites 10,000 people “from all walks of life” to her four garden parties. Can this mean there’s a chance for each of us? Watch the videos of the garden parties in London and Edinburgh, Scotland and choose which one you’d like to attend. Perhaps you prefer the sedate grandeur of the Buckingham...
Who Does Prince Harry Look Like? James Hewitt Myth Debunked
Watching Prince Harry in the first part of Harry’s Arctic Heroes (BBC One), in which Prince Harry accompanied four wounded soldiers on an expedition to the North Pole in April, I was struck by his resemblance to the Windsors – not the Spencers – despite the red hair that runs in his mother’s family. Now 26, Harry’s face has matured...
UFOs Are Unidentified – I’ll Say That Again, Unidentified – Flying Objects
Extra-terrestrials buzzed London last week – except they almost certainly didn’t. On 17 August one of the local (south London, UK) news websites announced: “UFO spotted in Croydon town centre”. Predictably, the article accompanying this headline was illustrated with a picture of flying saucers. One reader soon joked that aliens had flown to Croydon from the other side of the...
Gadget Review: Amimon’s WHDI Stick
If you are thinking of setting up a home theater and don’t want to worry about where to put your media playback equipment relative to the TV, a WHDI device could be the answer. Wireless Digital Home Interface is a technology designed to wirelessly connect video playback devices to displays. Members of the WHDI consortium, which includes Hitachi, Motorola, Samsung,...
The Rendlesham Forest UFO Revisited
It’s been called Britain’s Roswell, and it’s back in the news. Rendlesham Forest is in Suffolk, England. It stands close to what was once a twin military airbase (RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge) used by the USAF under the command of Colonel Ted Conrad. In the early hours of a late December morning in 1980 members of a security patrol...
How Gwyneth Paltrow Saved My Life on 9/11
It was one of those pristine blue-sky New York mornings, and Lara Lundstrom, a 24-year-old account manager at Baseline Financial Services, decided to rollerblade on the Hudson before work. She knew if she was quick, she could get in some sweat time and make it to her job on the 77th floor of Tower 2 of the World Trade Center...
Exposed: The 100-Year-Old Riddle Behind Theft of the Mona Lisa
It all began in 1976 when I read a book about famed Italian Renaissance painter Leonardo da Vinci. On a page about the Mona Lisa, it said: ‘On August 21, 1911, an Italian workman named Vincenzo Peruggia stole the painting to take to Italy.’ I was immediately hooked. As a recent film school graduate from Temple University in Philadelphia, I...
Bile Bear Farm Horrors: Mother Bear Kills Cub and Then Itself
If the Sarah Mclachlan ASPCA ad for abused animals makes your heart sink, the idea of caged bears kept under inhumane conditions to have their gall bladders milked daily for use as a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) might bring you to tears. Even more heart wrenching is a recent report of a mother bear killing her cub and herself to...
Comics: The Return of the Good Duck Artist
He’s widely regarded as one of the most skillful storytellers to have worked in comics—or any medium for that matter—over the course of the past century. His stories have influenced and inspired the work of an uncounted number of his fellow creators from across the globe, including such notable celebrities as George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, and yet his name...
The Horsemen: Riders on the Storm
When the doors open on this year’s edition of the annual Wizard World—Chicago show, thousands of fans will flood the show floor, looking for their chance to see and speak with the best and brightest creators in the industry. And, if they look very carefully amongst the various booths and throughout Artists’ Alley, they can meet the rising stars of comics...