Lucas really needs to stop recutting this movie...

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New Zealander Rudy Heeman made a hovercraft in his garage. When it hits seventy kph, it starts flying. Heeman homes to sell his invention at $13,000 USD per unit.

via Urlesque

Hello, my name is jellied awful.

Hello Neatoramanauts! We have a new article up on the Neatorama Spotlight blog, an excerpt of Tesla: Master of Lightning by Margaret Cheney and Robert Uth. The two did a fantastic job describing an overview of the life and work of the enigmatic Nikola Tesla.

It is a pleasure and honor for me to be able to to showcase the book and share the intriguing bits of one of the world’s greatest (and most mysterious) inventors.

Bonus: We also have the easiest book contest we’ve ever had on Neatorama. All you’ve got to do to be in the running to win the book is to leave us a comment over yonder post.

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James Cameron's big-budget (and even bigger-grossing) films create unreal worlds all their own. In this personal talk, he reveals his childhood fascination with the fantastic -- from reading science fiction to deep-sea diving -- and how it ultimately drove the success of his blockbuster hits "Aliens," "The Terminator," "Titanic" and "Avatar."

I didn't know such a thing as scientific cookies existed, or even that a round up (or two) were needed to show off all the flavors and possibilities that creative people have come up with. But now I realize I was living in the plain white flour and possibly moldy pantries of mundane cookiedom. Why make a star sugar cookie when you can make a sugar cookie atom?

Luckily, Ms. Humble of Not So Humble Pie is blogging about all the geeky baked goodies she can find, and she's gathered them up in two (so far) round-ups. Of course our inspired cooking pals over at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories are included!

Science Cookie Round Up 1

Science Cookie Round Up 2

More:

Sierpinksi Cookies

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Not too long ago there was word that Red Tails, the WWII movie produced by George Lucas and directed by The Wire’s Anthony Hemingway, would be undergoing extensive reshoots. At the time, the report was that Lucas and producer Rick McCallum were quite unhappy with Hemingway’s material. That seemed dubious, though the idea of reshoots was certainly credible.

Not long after, Lucas said that the report was inaccurate, but didn’t deny it outright. Now there’s more information, and yes, Lucas is directing the reshoots, making Red Tails the first non-Star Wars film to bear his directorial touch in quite some time. (Possibly since American Graffiti, but one has to suspect that he has essentially directed at least small portions of other films he’s produced since then.)

Clarification on the issue comes from this week’s print edition of EW, transcribed by The Playlist. Basically, when the time came for reshoots, Hemingway was already at work on Treme, the new David Simon show set in New Orleans, or at least had a commitment to that show. So Lucas stepped in to direct the new and revamped footage.

Some questions remain from when this story initially cropped up. Yes, reshoots are very often budgeted into a film, especially one that is action and setpiece-heavy. But if that was the case, why wasn’t Hemingway penciled in to handle that duty? And do some of the concerns based on early drafts of the script persist? I.e., does the film need more structure, and does it still feel resolutely old-fashioned? And if so, could that be part of the reshoot plan — make the film feel more current? Or are we just reading too much into this? It’s possible.

John Ridley wrote the shooting draft of Red Tails, which has been a planned Lucas project for twenty years. Lucas conceived the film in the late ’80s but set it aside to make the Star Wars prequels.

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