In Print

Out this week: YOUNG AVENGERS #12 Written by ALLAN HEINBERG Pencils & Cover by JIM CHEUNG "FAMILY MATTERS" As Earth once again becomes embroiled in the Kree-Skrull War, one Young Avenger is mortally wounded - while another must sacrifice his future to keep the planet from being consumed in the conflict. Not even the combined forces of the YOUNG AVENGERS and the NEW AVENGERS can stem the tide of destruction. And in the battle's bloody aftermath, the YOUNG AVENGERS -- and their relationship to their would-be mentors -- are forever altered. The team's new status quo begins here! (Part 4 of 4)

Highly Recommended.

The Global Domination Continues...

Some shots of The Cult from Monday night in Denmark

I'd Like To Buy Some Art

Dali, 1945, The Eye

The "Civil War" Is On

Marvel Comics Civil War has begun. This is a huge story that will have lasting effects on every character in the Marvel Universe. Check out this trailer for background on what led up to the "Superhero Registration Act":

Civil War 1 & 2 are out now from Marvel.

I'd Like To Buy Some Art

Dali, Lugubrious Game, 1929

Global Domination

The first leg of The Cult's Global Domination was completed in Lisbon, Portugal. The tour picks up again on the 23rd in Copenhagen, Denmark and ends up on July 12 in Athens, Greece. A full U.K. tour is in the works for the fall.

Have a listen to: "THE WITCH".

A Meteoroid Hits the Moon

There's a new crater on the Moon. NASA astronomers watched it form: "On May 2, 2006, a meteoroid hit the Moon with 17 billion joules of kinetic energy—that's about the same as 4 tons of TNT," says Bill Cooke, the head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office in Huntsville, AL. "The impact created a bright fireball which we video-recorded using a 10-inch telescope."
Lunar impacts have been seen before--"stuff hits the Moon all the time," notes Cooke--but this is the best-ever recording of an explosion in progress. (See it here)

The Unheard Music

The requests for more Channel 3 keep pouring in, I'm here to please...
"Out Of Control"

I'd Like To Buy Some Art

Dali 1948, Elephants

Big Bang in Antarctica!

Killer Crater Found Under Ice

Planetary scientists have found evidence of a meteor impact much larger and earlier than the one that killed the dinosaurs - an impact that they believe caused the biggest mass extinction in Earth's history. The 300-mile-wide crater lies hidden more than a mile beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. And the gravity measurements that reveal its existence suggest that it could date back about 250 million years -- the time of the Permian-Triassic extinction, when almost all animal life on Earth died out. Its size and location -- in the Wilkes Land region of East Antarctica, south of Australia -- also suggest that it could have begun the breakup of the Gondwana supercontinent by creating the tectonic rift that pushed Australia northward. (Source)

The Gossip - Standing In The Way Of Control

The Gossip bring the bluesy punk funk you need...

The Gossip on myspace.

See their new video here.

The Unheard Music

The first of three unheard bands today is Delta 5. England's Delta 5 emerged as one of the key figures of feminist new wave. Formed in 1979, Delta 5 issued their debut single, "Mind Your Own Business," and found themselves thrust to the forefront of the Leeds post-punk community. With the success of their second single, "You," they mounted a successful U.S. tour. In 1981 Delta 5 issued their debut LP, See the Whirl. The group split shortly after its release. Much of the group's output remained hard to come by until the Singles & Sessions compilation was released by Kill Rock Stars in 2006. (Source)


Here is the song "Colour" from their second single.


Next up is Hunters and Collectors. Hunters and Collectors formed in Melbourne, Australia in 1981. They began as a post-punk band eventually evolving into the intensity and passion of U2. They became known for their live shows and toured to a devoted following until 1999.

Check out "Throw Your Arms Around Me".







And finally, Channel 3. Early 80's American punk rock. 'nuff said.
"You Make Me Feel Cheap"

Aliens On Earth?!

Mysterious Red Cells Might Be Aliens

As bizarre as it may seem, the sample jars brimming with cloudy, reddish rainwater in Godfrey Louis's laboratory in southern India may hold, well, aliens.
In April, Louis, a solid-state physicist at Mahatma Gandhi University, published a paper in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Astrophysics and Space Science in which he hypothesizes that the samples -- water taken from the mysterious blood-colored showers that fell sporadically across Louis's home state of Kerala in the summer of 2001 -- contain microbes from outer space.
Specifically, Louis has isolated strange, thick-walled, red-tinted cell-like structures about 10 microns in size. Stranger still, dozens of his experiments suggest that the particles may lack DNA yet still reproduce plentifully, even in water superheated to nearly 600 degrees Fahrenheit . (The known upper limit for life in water is about 250 degrees Fahrenheit .)
So how to explain them? Louis speculates that the particles could be extraterrestrial bacteria adapted to the harsh conditions of space and that the microbes hitched a ride on a comet or meteorite that later broke apart in the upper atmosphere and mixed with rain clouds above India.
If his theory proves correct, the cells would be the first confirmed evidence of alien life and, as such, could yield tantalizing new clues to the origins of life on Earth.Last winter, Louis sent some of his samples to astronomer Chandra Wickramasinghe and his colleagues at Cardiff University in Wales, who are now attempting to replicate his experiments; Wickramasinghe expects to publish his initial findings later this year. (Source)

Enceladus Hot Spot

Saturn's moon Enceladus might have rolled over on its side sometime in the past, a suggestion that would account for a strange finding made by the Cassini spacecraft.
The moon has a hot spot at its south pole, an area of low density where water vapor shoots into space, Cassini discovered. Heat from within is likely created by the varying tugs of Saturn's gravity as Enceladus' distance from the giant planet changes during the course of its orbit.
But why is there a hot spot only at the south pole?
"When we saw the Cassini results, we were surprised that this hot spot was located at the pole," said Francis Nimmo of the University of California, Santa Cruz. "So we set out to explain how it could end up at the pole if it didn't start there."
Remember Weebles? They wobble but the don't fall down? A similar imbalance seems to have caused Enceladus' cosmic flop, but with a twist.
In the June 1 issue of the journal Nature, Nimmo and colleagues explain that hot material from within Enceladus welled up in one location. Hot material expands and is less dense.
Like all rotating bodies, the moon would be more stable if low-density areas were at the poles and regions of high density were at the equator. So the moon reoriented itself in that manner, the thinking goes.
There is a way to possibly confirm that the moon flipped. Its former leading hemisphere should have had more impact craters than the trailing hemisphere.
If it flipped 90 degrees, the pattern of craters now present would reveal as much. (Source)