Sara Burns: Student & Singer/Songwriter on the Rise
Written by Tilden Brighton
While finals are still looming in the immediate future, it’s not too early to start thinking about how you’re going to reward yourself for getting through the week. There's an incredible amount of movies coming out in the next week, so get your planner out and start deciding which ones you want to go to.
Iron Man 3 – May 3rd
In the third installment of the franchise, Tony Stark is recovering from the events hat occurred in The Avengers by creating suit after new suit with more advancements in order to keep himself safe. After an attack on everything he knows by new enemy Mandarin, Tony is left to his own devices to protect all that he holds dear and to figure out whether he that makes the Iron Man suit or whether it is what makes & defines him.
The Iceman – May 3rd
Based on the real life contract killer Richard Kuklinski, the movie tells the story of his early days when Kuklinski killed over 100 people under the payment of the mob. While on the outside he seemed like the everyday normal husband, father, and pursuer of the American Dream, his inner self was a ruthless, cold, and calculating killer whose arrest shocked everyone who knew him.
And Now a Word From Our Sponsor – May 10th
Adan Kundle, who is a CEO of a major advertising agency, is found unconscious in front of a bank of TVs. When he wakes up in the hospital, he can only speak through advertising slogans. With nowhere else to go, he gets taken in by a friend from the past, Karen Hillridge, and through his occasionally inappropriate catchphrases, changes her relationship with her daughter. All the while, Adan’s business partner Lucas Foster is working to take over Adan’s company by blatantly attacking Adan’s mental capacity.
The Great Gatsby – May 10th
Based on the book by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the movie tells the story of Jay Gatsby through the eyes of his new neighbor Nick Carraway, a Midwesterner just returned from war. It isn’t long before Carraway is dragged into Gatsby’s world of booze, riches, darkness, obsession, and more than a fair share of tragedy as Gatsby becomes enraptured with Daisy Buchanan, the wife of an old-money Yale graduate, who he was involved with in the past.
Star Trek: Into Darkness – May 17th
In this installment of the rebooted Star Trek franchise, the crew of the USS Enterprise is thrown into a proverbial battle of good vs. evil after being summoned back to Earth, only to find that Starfleet has been demolished and that their planet has become a war zone. An incredibly powerful villain known as John Harrison is on a path of revenge and responsible for the outstanding amount of destruction.
The Hangover Part III – May 24th
The third and final act in the Hangover Saga, this movie has no wedding and no bachelor party. After Alan’s father dies, the group decides to take him to get help for his mental issues but things go, as per usual, awry. Doug is kidnapped and the pack must find Mr. Chow in order to trade the man to the gangsters that have taken Doug.
Man of Steel – June 14th
The Last Son of Kryptonite is back in a new movie that focuses on his childhood and his beginnings at The Daily Planet, as well as his burgeoning relationship with the journalist Lois Lane. When Earth is attacked by a force we are unable to defend against, Clark Kent must become Superman and fight to protect the human race, even though some try to stop him from doing so, wary of his powers that make him seem more like the one’s attacking us.
Image Source: http://www.ticketliquidator.
Even if you don’t like taking chemistry, you have to admit that those who are good at it are doing some pretty awesome things, especially when they directly help us out in some way.
It looks like a group of scientists have figured out a couple of ways for you to dislodge that song you have stuck in your heads.
Why do certain songs get stuck in our heads?
The chorus is usually the major part of the song that we know, which is not directly followed by a verse. This is why you can’t stop repeating the chorus in your head. Unfinished thoughts are ones that continue to return as your brain tries to puzzle out what comes next. The group of scientists hopes to use this data in order to figure out more techniques to calm or completely prevent thoughts produced by anxiety of obsessiveness.
Then, there’s a recent article about how to recognize which plastics are harmful to your health and well-being.
Yes, I’m talking about the plastic that drink you just got out of the vending machine is in. The plastic bottles that contain our soft drinks, water, sports drinks, mouthwash, peanut butter, and even that thin layer of film over your microwaveable foods. These bottles are made out of polyethylene terephthalate which contains antimony. Antimony is considered to be safe, but after prolonged use, it can cause chronic health issues such as stomach ulcers.
The large bottles that contain milk, shampoo, detergent, and other cleaners are made out of high-density polyethylene which contain chemicals with estrogenic activity; this also is suspected to cause health problems and has been proven to alter the structure of human cells.
You shouldn’t be scared for your safety. You should be aware of this information.
Just read the label: plastic designated with a 7, 3, or 6 you should avoid but ones with a 1, 2, 4, or a 5 are relatively safe in moderate exposure (see full article.)
Want more science insights that can help you directly in your daily life? Check out AsapScience on Youtube. They have a numerous amount of videos packed with information just like this.
They also have videos explaining why your brain works the way it does; one answers the question of 'which came first, the chick or the egg?'
The videos are usually less than five minutes long; that’s enough time to have your life changed for the better.
Image Source: http://www.ohiosci.org/
Baz Luhrmann has really gotten The Great Gatsby fans all balled up as of late, and dag nabbit am I ready for all of this baloney to be over.
He not only ruined Christmas by moving the release date of his Fitzgerald adaptation from December 2012 to May 2013, but Luhrmann too squashed awesome rumors that Jay-Z was working on the score for the film.
He also used MY theme song, Jay and Kanye’s Watch the Throne track “No Church in the Wild” for his teaser trailers, which was just plain rude seeing as he didn’t ask me if that was alright.
In the words of Hova’s main squeeze, no one man should have all that power.
However, after announcing that Jay does in fact have an official connection to The Great Gatsby—he’s titled as executive producer of the film’s soundtrack—and revealing that the picture will open the Cannes Film Festival on May 15th, Luhrmann is beginning to gain back my trust.
This is great news for Leo, seeing as he asked me to the May 10th US premiere and doesn’t want any date-director drama.
If you’re looking for a Fitzgerald fix and have already read The Great Gatsby six times like me, two relevant (and incredible) books have gotten totally lost during the hype of this movie:
The Paris Wife, historical fiction and New York Times bestseller by Paula McLain, is set in Chicago, 1920 (of course). The novel narrates the whirlwind romance between Ernest Hemingway and Hadley Richardson—the power couple in the fabled “Lost Generation” that includes Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and last but not least, F. Scott Fitzgerald. How casual.
Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald is another historical fiction by Therese Anne Fowler, this time giving its readers an insight to the romance between her and F. Scott Fitzgerald (duh). Much like McLain’s novel, Fowler narrates both stories of the Lost Generation and of the years before Fitzgerald finds fame.
Image Source: http://www.impawards.com/2013/great_gatsby_ver6_xlg.html
You are not free.
But here, I'll focus on the technological side of things. With the advent of social media and the rapidity with which information can be shared, I figured there would be a fast, widespread change in the fundamental way the world operated. And to an extent, this is true – only today would you be able to read the president's Twitter account or see an inaugural speech streamed on YouTube. It seems that times have certainly changed, but in this era of media freedom, I can't help but ask, how free are we really?
Writer Evgeny Morozov seems to think we only enjoy, or at the very least utilize, a small portion of our power through the internet. In an awesome video put up by RSA Animate, one of his many talking points is recognizing intended versus actual usage. Think of it this way: Although there is the occasional video advocating a particular religious/political/social view, how many more cat videos are there, or videos with entertainment as the main draw? Morozov takes it a step further and posits that a majority of internet users spend their time looking at porn instead of collaborating in any meaningful way, and he appears to be correct. According to OnlineMBA, around $3 million is spent on porn every second. That's right, not minutes, seconds. So how is an average internet user's time really being spent? Caught in a vortex of questionable content or something more sinister?
In any case, it's important to remember that government officials are able to access much of the same content you are, which means that your super-secret Facebook group you joined may not be so super or secret after all. But even if it is, what chance does it have of effectively creating change? Or is that even really the point? It seems that when individuals try to spread or acquire certain types of information through the net, they are thrown in jail, and, when faced with seemingly insurmountable odds, may resort to killing themselves.
Aaron Swartz faced 50 years in prison for essentially downloading JSTOR articles.
The average amount of time served for statutory rape is 9 years.
WTF. Is this the cost of faux freedom?
Now I won't sit here and pretend to have a solution, but reading about laws like SOPA being shot down is encouraging. At the very least it shows that internet users do have some power in their keyboards. But with SOPA being repackaged and reintroduced as CISPA, how long will it be until the voices of those fighting for internet freedom are lost in a cavalcade of Harlem Shakes and cute cats?
If you want to know more, check out Morozov’s TED Talk segment.
Image Source: http://futureblue.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/online-education-spreading-knowledge-across-the-web/
