Actors playing multiple roles in Bond films

Are you a James Bond fan? Or are you a James Bond FAN? If you chose the latter, this might not be news to you. But even as someone who has seen all the Bond films, most multiple times, a number of things on this list of actors playing multiple roles in the Bond universe held some surprises for me.  Given the length of time that the franchise encompasses, it’s easy to miss when things like this happen. And posts like this are one of the fun things about the internet.

Burnouts on a helipad

Red Bull F1 headed to Dubai, for a little crazy. The picture above shows a Red Bull F1 car, with David Coulthard at the wheel, sitting on the helipad at Burj Al Arab. Yes, the same helipad where Federer and Agassi played tennis. It’s a pretty cool image. But then the crazy happens as Coulthard whips the car into a series of donuts. Please keep in mind that there are no fences on the helipad. If the car gets away, it’s a long way down. Have a look at it in the video below, and don’t try this at home, in Dubai, or anywhere else.

What is the most successful category on Kickstarter?

The answer may surprise you. There have been a number of big stories to come out of Kickstarter over the past couple years. Usually those fall in two categories, movies and tech. Even if you don’t use the service, chances are you heard about the Veronica Mars or Pebble projects. But those are both really outliers. The reality is that Film & Video projects succeed at a rate of 39.87%, while Technology runs at 34.56%. The leader has a success rate of 71.27%, and it’s dance.

Part of that will come down to the fact that the dance projects do have a lower average goal of $4,270. Clearly, that bar is going to be easier to clear than the $75,000 of the technology category. But the numbers don’t entirely track that way. Art, for example, has an average goal of $5,100, but a success rate of just 48.9%. And photography, at $7,220 average is just 36.54%. Clearly there is something about dance and its audience that is making it such a success on kickstarter. sfgate.com has a great breakdown with even more numbers. It’s well worth a look.

And that picture at the top? That is from Spaghetti Co, a dance project that I backed on Kickstarter.

The Building Of The Empire State Building

They don’t build buildings like they used to. Curbed NY has a great post featuring a collection of images by Lewis Hine. Hine shot a lot of different things over his career, but this set of his ‘sky boys’ working on the Empire State Building is amazing. To see workers hanging from cables high above the city is incredible. This one is my favorite, but follow the link to see 18 more.

Lucid Stead in Joshua Tree

Artist Philip K. Smith III has made a remarkable piece in the desert. Using mirrors and lights, he has transformed a 70 year old homesteader shack into something magical. Looking at it during the day, the mirrors fool the eyes and make it look like bits of the shack are just floating in the air. At night, the lights come on, giving the whole thing an other-world presence. You’ll find more info, and more pictures, at Coachella Valley Art Scene. And there are great looks at both scenes, as well as some of Smith’s other work, in this video.

New Big Wave Surfing Record?

Carlos Burle may have ridden the biggest wave of all time. The Cannonball record from Friday was pretty impressive, but this is a whole other level of incredible. Racing your Mercedes across the country puts you in danger of getting arrested. Getting towed in to a 100 foot wave puts you in danger of getting killed.

In fact, one of Burle’s fellow competitors, Maya Gabeira, almost died earlier that day. Burle was able to pull her back to the shore and save her life before heading back out and catching the wave you see in the picture. They were part of a crew that had traveled to Praia do Norte, Nazaré, Portugal in hopes of breaking the world record. Severe storms in the Atlantic made for huge waves.

New Cannonball Record

You remember the Cannonball Run, right? If not the actual event that inspired it (the Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash), surely you remember the movies. Well, it’s still a thing, kind of. The official race isn’t run anymore, but there are still people trying to best the coast-to-coast record. And it may have just been broken again.

Jalopnik has a great post on the story of Ed Bolian, who calims to have just made the run in a record time of 28 hours and 50 minutes. In case you aren’t aware, that shatters the existing record of 31 hours and 4 minutes. I use the terms ‘may have been broken’ and ‘claims to have made the run’ because nobody trusts anybody where this record is concerned. Ed did go to the lengths of hiring a company to monitor his location with GPS every minuted of the trip, but others are still skeptical.

Either way, the story is still a great read. And stick around for the comments where the discussion turns to whether or not Ed and his cohorts should be tossed in the clink. Finally, you may also want to have a look at the Wikipedia page for the Cannonball movie. There are some interesting tidbits there, like the fact that the ambulance story was taken directly from the actual run.

Happy Halloween, from Bing

Bing has a little Halloween treat for us today. The search page has gone all creepy, with hidden gems from a number of classic horror movies. I won’t spoil it by revealing which movies are featured. it’s more fun if you try to guess. But, if you do get stuck, there are links to Bing searches for each of them to provide an answer.

And, as a Halloween bonus, here’s the trailer for my favorite horror movie, Jason X.

New da Vinci found in Italy

A lost work by Leonardo da Vinci has been found during the restoration of the Sala delle Asse in the Sforzesco Castle. It is believed that this is part of da Vinci’s work from when he was the court artists for the Duke of Milan, Ludovico il Moro, in the late 1400s.That is the same Duke that commisioned The Last Supper. Work continues to restore as much of the work as possible, with some parts being covered by up to 17 layers of white wash. You can read more about it, and find more photos, at Discovery News.

New pictures from NASA

NASA has released new images from the Chandra Data Archive. October is American Archive Month. As part of that, NASA is releasing a collection of images that have never been seen by the public to highlight the role the CDA plays in the astronomical community. You can read more about that in the official release, where you will also find more images. Here are two of my favorites. Click to enlarge.