Bele from the planet Cheron in the Star Trek episode “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.”
Venus the Cat, she has to be from the planet Cheron.
The owner insists Venus is not photo-shopped or painted. See video below.
National Geographic
The three-year-old tortoiseshell has her own Facebook page and a YouTube video that’s been viewed over a million times, and appeared on the Today Show.One look at this cat and you can understand why: One half is solid black with a green eye—the other half has typical orange tabby stripes and a blue eye.
How does a cat end up looking like that? Leslie Lyons, a professor at the University of California, Davis, who studies the genetics of domestic cats said she’s never seen a cat exactly like Venus.
“She is extremely, extremely rare,” Lyons said. “But you can explain it and you can understand it.”
Many reports about Venus refer to the cat as a “chimera.” In mythology, a chimera is a mishmash monster made up of parts of different animals. A feline chimera is a cat whose cells contain two types of DNA, caused when two embryos fuse together.
Among cats, “chimeras are really not all that rare,” Lyons said. In fact, most male tortoiseshell cats are chimeras. The distinctively mottled orange and black coat is a sign that the cat has an extra X chromosome.
But female cats, said Lyons, already have two X chromosomes so they can sport that coat without the extra X. That means Venus is not necessarily a chimera.
To find out would require genetic testing, said Lyons. With samples of skin from each side of the cat, “we can do a DNA fingerprint—just like on CSI—and the DNA from one side of the body should be different than the other.”
Cat’s Blue Eye Another Mystery
If Venus isn’t actually a chimera, then what would explain her amazing face?
“Absolute luck,” Lyons said. One theory: perhaps the black coloration was randomly activated in all the cells on one side of her face, while the orange coloration was activated on the other, and the two patches met at the midline of her body as she developed.
Cat fanciers who are transfixed by Venus’s split face may be missing the real story: her single blue eye. Cat eyes are typically green or yellow, not blue.
A blue-eyed cat is typically a Siamese or else a cat with “a lot of white on them,” she explained.
Venus appears to have only a white patch on her chest, which to Lyons is not enough to explain the blue eye.
In my humble opinion the The Exorcist is the most frightening horror movie ever made. Nothing ever created before or since contains the chilling notions and graphic images put forward in that film. The Hellraiser movies get honourable mention.
The Exorcist will scare the meanest, nastiest and badest hombres out there.
William Friedkin’s 1973 masterpiece, The Exorcist, was a landmark in horror cinema, a cultural phenomenon, and (if adjusting for inflation) the ninth highest-grossing film of all time.
The film makes minimal use of music—a stylistic choice which gives the film an air of stark realism despite the supernatural events depicted onscreen. Of the minimal music used in the film, most famous is Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells,” which went on to become a smash so huge that it essentially birthed the Virgin empire.
Before Friedkin settled on Oldfield’s prog masterpiece, he had originally commissioned a score from Lalo Schifrin, who had famously done soundtrack work for Cool Hand Luke, Dirty Harry, and the instantly recognizable Mission Impossible TV show theme.
Schifrin’s atonal Exorcist score was very much in the vein of Krzysztof Penderecki (whose “Cello Concerto No. 1” of Polymorphia was used in the film’s final edit) with the addition of Bernard Herrmann-esque “fright stabs.”
This score was used in an advanced trailer which some have called the “banned trailer.” As the stories go, this trailer literally made audiences sick when it was shown. It’s unclear if the sounds and images were simply upsetting or if the flashing images actually caused seizures in some viewers.
Below the banned trailer and a short film showing audience reaction to the movie.
Boombox is a common term for a portable cassette or CD player with two or more loudspeakers and a carrying handle. Other commonly used terms are ghetto blaster, stereo, jambox, boomblaster, Brixton briefcase, and radio-cassette. A boombox is a device typically capable of receiving radio stations and playing recorded music (usually cassettes or CDs, usually at a high volume).
The first boombox was developed by the inventor of the audio compact cassette, Philips of the Netherlands. Their first ‘Radiorecorder’ was released in 1966. The Philips innovation was the first time that radio broadcasts could be recorded onto cassette tapes without the cables or microphones that previous stand-alone cassette tape recorders required. Although sound quality of early tape recordings was poor, improvements in technology and the introduction of stereo recording, chromium tapes, and noise reduction made hifi quality devices possible. Several European electronics brands, such as Grundig, also introduced similar devices.
Boomboxes were soon also developed in Japan in the early 1970s and became popular there due to their compact size and impressive sound quality. The Japanese brands soon took over a large portion of the European boombox market and were often the first Japanese consumer electronics brands that a European household might purchase. The Japanese innovated by creating different sizes, form factors, and technology, introducing such advances as stereo boomboxes, removable speakers, in-built TV receivers, and inbuilt CD players.
The boombox was introduced to the American market during the mid-1970s, with the bulk of production being carried out by Panasonic, Sony, Marantz, and General Electric. It was immediately noticed by the urban adolescent community and soon had a large market, especially in metropolitan centers such as New York, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C.
The earlier models were a hybrid that combined the booming sound of large in-home stereo systems and the portability of small portable cassette players; they were typically small, black or silver, heavy, and capable of producing high volumes. The effective AM/FM tuner the coupling of devices such as microphones and turntables.
The development of audio jacks brought the boombox to the height of its popularity, and as its popularity rose, so did the level of innovation in the features included in the box. Consumers enjoyed the portability and sound quality of boomboxes, but one of the most important features, especially to the youth market, was the bass. The desire for louder and heavier bass led to bigger and heavier boxes.
Regardless of the increasing weight and size, the devices continued to become larger to accommodate the increased bass output; newer boombox models were affixed with heavy metal casings to handle the vibrations from the bass.
The 1990s were a turning point for the boombox in popular culture. The rise of the Walkman and other advanced electronics eliminated the need to carry around such large and heavy audio equipment, and boomboxes quickly disappeared from the streets. As boombox enthusiast Lyle Owerko puts it, “Towards the end of any culture, you have the second or third generation that steps into the culture, which is so far from the origination, it’s the impression of what’s real, but it’s not the full definition of what’s real. It’s just cheesy.” The Consumer Electronics Association reported that only 329,000 boombox units without CD players were shipped in the United States in 2003, compared to 20.4 million in 1986.
Although many boomboxes had dual cassette decks and included dubbing, line, and radio recording capabilities, the rise of recordable CDs, the decline of audio cassette technology, and the popularity of high-density MP3 players and smart phones have reduced the popularity of high-quality boomboxes to such an extent that it is difficult to find a new dual-decked stereo. Dubbing remains popular among audiophiles, bootleggers, and pirates, though most tasks are now accomplished through digital means or analog-to-digital conversion technology.
Starting in mid-2010, there are new lines of boomboxes that use Bluetooth technology known as Stereo Bluetooth, or A2DP (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile). They use the wireless Bluetooth technology to “stream” audio to the boombox from a compatible Bluetooth device, such as a mobile phone or Bluetooth MP3 player. An example of this is the JAMBOX, which is marketed as a “Smart Speaker” as it can also function as a speakerphone for voice calls in addition to being an audio playback device.
Interesting cloud formation over the South Dakota Badlands.
Young Orangutan uses a leaf for shelter during a rain storm. Bali, Indonesia.
Cheetah’s scanning for prey on a mound in Kenya. Shift change, when the second one arrived, the first one left the perch.
Wild fox at Chernobyl. Looks like it may be suffering from radiation poisoning.
Coloured mountains in China. Various minerals in the soil create the striking colours.
Massive tornado in Colorado. It narrowly missed the farm yard.
Godafoss Falls, Iceland.
Sunset in Greece.
Beautiful ice cave in Iceland.
Iranian girls on the Iran-Iraq border. A destroyed tank left over from the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980’s. The girl on top of the tank opened her arms in the direction of Iraq in a gesture of defiance.
Mother Cheetah protecting her five cubs, a sixth had been killed by a lion.
Combines in formation, Minnesota.
Beautiful fjord in Norway.
Great scenery on the Polish-Slovakian border.
Salt terraces in Peru.
Terraces in Vietnam.
Striking scenery, Albania.
Whitmore Hot Springs, California.
Wildebeests crossing a river on the Serengeti.
Residential zoning in Tibet. Except for a few holy Monk buildings, nothing gets built to the right of the line.
‘The Revenant’ was a box office breaking movie and most reviews are that it was very good. In the movie the Leonardo DiCaprio character gets attacked and mauled by a mean mother grizzly bear. It is a riveting scene. But not the best bear attack scene in movies. Back in 1997 a movie was released called ‘The Edge.’ It received little fanfare and sort of faded away into oblivion. A few years ago I caught it on TV and was mesmerized.
The survivors are stranded in the Alaska wilderness and ultimately get stalked and attacked by a giant Kodiak bear. This Kodiak (Kodiaks are giant grizzlies) chases them for miles and the characters barely escape until the final showdown. Sensational bear attack scenes.
The Edge is a 1997 American survival drama film directed by Lee Tamahori and starring Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin. Bart the Bear, a trained Kodiak bear known for appearances in several Hollywood movies, also appears in the film as a vicious grizzly; this was one of his last film roles.
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