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Principal photography began Friday, March 26, in New York on Columbia Pictures’/Sony Pictures Animation’s hybrid live-action and animated family comedy, The Smurfs, it was announced by Bob Osher, president of Sony Pictures Digital Productions, Hannah Minghella, president of Sony Pictures Animation and Doug Belgrad, president of Columbia Pictures. We wrote about the movie last summer, but more details have emerged.

Audiences everywhere are in for a Smurfy good time as the Smurfs make their first 3D trip to the big screen. When the evil wizard Gargamel chases the tiny blue Smurfs out of their village, they tumble from their magical world and into ours – in fact, smack dab in the middle of Central Park. Just three apples high and stuck in the Big Apple, the Smurfs must find a way to get back to their village before Gargamel tracks them down. The film is set for release August 3, 2011.

Neil Patrick Harris, Jayma Mays, Sofia Vergara, and Hank Azaria star on camera opposite an all-star voice cast. Anton Yelchin will play Clumsy Smurf; comedy legend Jonathan Winters, who voiced roles in the “Smurfs” television series, will voice Papa Smurf; the adorable (meaning I LOVE HER) Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Katy Perry will play Smurfette; Alan Cumming will play Gutsy Smurf; “SNL’s” Fred Armisen will voice Brainy Smurf; and George Lopez will play Grouchy Smurf.

In the live-action roles, Azaria will play the Smurfs’ nemesis, the evil wizard Gargamel. Harris and Mays star as an expectant couple whose lives are turned upside down when the Smurfs cross over from their magical village to New York City. Vergara plays Odile, Harris’s boss, a cosmetics executive.

The film is directed by Raja Gosnell. The screenplay is by J. David Stem & David N. Weiss and Jay Scherick & David Ronn, based on the characters and works of Peyo. The producer is Jordan Kerner and Ezra Swerdlow, Ben Haber, and Paul Neesan are the executive producers.

Commenting on the announcement, Minghella said, “We’re thrilled with the way our cast has come together. Raja and Jordan and the entire team working on The Smurfs have developed a film with tremendous heart and great comedy and now we have a dream cast to bring the movie to life.”

Adds producer Jordan Kerner, “What a wonderful journey this has been. The time is right for an adventure that will thrill fans and introduce the blue heroes to a new generation, and the technology is here to allow the three-apple-high Smurfs to appear in all their glory on the big screen and in 3D. Columbia Pictures has been magnificent at every turn in their commitment to get The Smurfs to the screen. Our partners at Lafig, including Peyo’s daughter Veronique Culliford, have been with us in the creation of the story and characters every step of the way. It’s a real thrill to begin shooting and working with our compatriots at Sony Pictures Animation. Just wait – the blue invasion is coming!”

It wasn’t easy, but the University of Connecticut Lady Huskies have won their seventh national basketball championship.

After a very ugly first half that ended with Stanford ahead of the Huskies by eight points, superstar Maya Moore stepped up and proved to be the difference in the second half.

The team will be coming to the state Capitol in the coming weeks for the annual Huskies Day, but House Speaker Chris Donovan told Capitol Watch that no date has been set yet.

http://www.courant.com/sports/uconn-women/hc-uconn-stanford-womens-basketball-final-0406,0,2540958.story

they will soon have something in common with gay rights activists, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Brazilians and people of Italian descent. 

   

The album artwork [itsbeenreal.co.uk] of the music album titled “Of the Blue Colour of the Sky” (Amazon) of OK Go contains several artistic visualizations of the song lyrics as well as text from the album’s namesake, the 1876’s book The Influence of the Blue Ray of the Sunlight and of the Blue Colour of the Sky by General A.J. Pleasonton.

The text and song lyrics were analyzed by hand in order to gather data about the grammatical parts of speech and the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. Further explanations of the visuals should be provided “eventually” (unfortunately…).

See also Charting the Beatles, Illinois: Visualizing Music and Astronaut Flickr-based Lyrics Association. From the same artists, see also Literary Organisms.

We were overly excited to try Swype when it was first released, but now it seems its one of many line based on-screen keyboards to come. Just last month SlideIT came into existence, with many excited, we thought it would be the best and the last. It seems pocknow has done a video to prove us wrong.

The video demos the new ShapeWriter in action on what seems like an HD2. The video shows truly how fast an on-screen keyboard can be. Unlike Swype, this new keyboard cost a little cash, and a little being $19. That price tag is a deal breaker for me, that is a little too much for a keyboard I will hardly ever us. This is certainly a good concept, and it seems fast, but with that price, I am sure you’re better off with Swype.

Apparently Mr. Slanty Cam—that’s Mr. Blurry Cam’s brother—spotted a box containing these Flip Slide HD pocket camcorders in a Best Buy. Guess our favorite cheap camcorder line is getting an addition. [Engadget] More »

New wagons dominate 2010 NYIAS
By Nauman Farooq

Generally, station wagons have not been very successful in North America. People on this continent have much preferred to buy an SUV or a cross-over rather than a wagon.

Acura TSX Sport Wagon

So it has certainly come as a big surprise to see all the new wagon models recently going on sale. Honda just launched the Accord Crosstour a few months back, and Subaru came out with another new Outback wagon.

More surprisingly, Cadillac recently launched the CTS Sport Wagon (now also available in “V” trim); Kia has just announced production of their Forte wagon, and now onto the latest addition to this list, the Acura TSX Sport Wagon.

The TSX (which is the European Honda Accord) has been around for a few years already, and while in Europe they had always offered it as both a sedan and wagon, the addition of the wagon in our showrooms is all new for 2011.

At their press conference at the 2010 New York International Auto Show, Acura said that the “TSX Sport Wagon delivers flexible utility and generous interior space – perfect for those with a growing family or an active lifestyle.”

Oddly, in their press-release, they completely forgot to mention exactly how much room this new wagon actually has to offer. Looks like it has plenty of space though.

What is mentioned is that this new sport wagon will only be offered with one engine. While the TSX sedan can be had with either an I4 or a V6 engine, the TSX Sport Wagon will only come with the 2.4-liter, double over head cam (DOHC), i-VTEC, inline four-cylinder engine. This engine produces 201 hp and 172 lb/ft of torque. In the Sport Wagon, only the five-speed automatic gearbox is offered (sedan version can also be had with a six-speed manual), and drive only goes to the front wheels.

So it won’t be the wagon of choice for an enthusiast, nor will it be the choice of vehicle for someone looking to haul a big family, as the TSX Sport Wagon is only a five passenger vehicle. But thanks to its low opening tail-gate and its long, spacious trunk, it will be perfect for carrying pets.

The TSX Sport Wagon will be in showrooms by the last quarter of this year with prices starting around the $35,000 mark.

The Wall Street Journal has a great interactive graphic that sums up the quakes we’ve had so far in 2010. It shows that we’ve had 18 major earthquakes ranging from 4.0 to 8.8 on the Richter scale. The very recent Baja, California quake was 7.7.

In some places we been fortunate enough to see little damage, yet others are still suffering the economic consequences, such as in Haiti and to a far lesser extent Mexico and the U.S. right now.

Here’s a snapshot of what we’ve seen so far.

For more detail, see the interactive WSJ piece here (subscription required) >

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ScienceBlogs^TM just put out a release on their traffic growth. The trend is interesting because after a period of flattening out, 2008-2010 seems to have seen some robust growth again. As I said when I left I do wish SB and many of their bloggers well, and I continue to subscribe to several of their blogs in my RSS as well as the select feed. The network’s robust growth is a positive sign when it comes to the transition of science communication from dead tree to the internet. I know that there’s been a lot of stress on the part of science journalists as to the sustainability of their enterprise, though that is really just a domain-specific instantiation of the issues in journalism as a whole, but until that works itself out the growth and persistence of science blogging and science-related websites is a good thing. There is a calm after the storm of creative-destruction, and the current science blogosphere is laying the seedbed for future renewal. The outcome may be sub-optimal from the viewpoint of labor, but the consumer will benefit.

The growth of internet based science communication means that the pie is growing, and the tide is rising. It isn’t a zero-sum game between SB, Nature Networks, Scientific Blogging, Discover Blogs, etc. My main concern personally is that my readership is still strongly Anglospheric, literally hundreds of millions of Chinese have started using the internet while I’ve been blogging, but very few of them do and can read my content. Due to language constraints this may be a long term structural issue, though the utilization of Google translate + chart heavy posts may be a way to push beyond the Anglosphere a bit. If you want to see the geographic skew, sitemeter is sufficient even with a sample size of the last 100 visitors.

Note: Also, please note that the growth can’t be attributed only to non-science content. Obviously I can’t lay out specific numbers, but blogs which focus on science such as Tetrapod Zoology and Frontal Cortex draw lots of traffic.

(via DM)

The Connecticut Tea Party Patriots group is hosting an April 15 candidates debate in Woodbury, ground zero for the “Dump Dodd”  “No Blumen Way” movement.

In one of those coincidences that history seems to love, the two greatest generals the United States has produced—Robert E. Lee and Douglas MacArthur—both came to the end of their long and distinguished careers this week… separated by almost a century.

On April 9, 1865, the not-so Civil War ended at Appomattox, Va., as Confederate General Lee surrendered his sword and the 28,000 men under his command to Union General Ulysses S. Grant. The two generals agreed that all Confederate soldiers were to be pardoned. After being given a generous portion of rations, the Southern soldiers were permitted to mount their horses and return to their homes.

With that meeting the bloodiest conflict in U.S. history was over. At least the official fighting had come to an end. In the former Confederacy there’s still a huge market for “The South Shall Rise Again,” “Forget, Hell!” and other mementos of the War of Northern Aggression, as it’s frequently referred to below the Mason-Dixon Line.

Four score and nine years later, on April 11, 1951, General Douglas MacArthur was removed from his position as commander of United Nations forces in Korea by then-President Harry S Truman. MacArthur’s firing followed his public disclosure that the president refused him permission to bomb the bases and supply lines in Manchuria. It was from these lines that Communist China was supplying our enemies in North Korea.

Upon his return to these shores MacArthur enjoyed a hero’s welcome in San Francisco and New York. The following week he addressed a joint session of Congress, concluding his remarks by saying, “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.” And that’s basically what Generals Lee and MacArthur—two of the most honorable men to ever put on the uniform of their country—both did.

—Chip Wood

"This is like deja vu all over again."
—Yogi Berra

The dictum hit me like a shockwave: Buy into President Obama’s healthcare plan or be considered a criminal.

I had seen it before; a time when another young legal scholar became a sensation. Once he was in power a nation waited breathlessly for him to deliver a new age. He did so with guile and determination.

That man was Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and decades after he left office Canada is still reeling.

Trudeaumania hit Canada in the mid-60s. Trudeau was then a young self-admitted Marxist and Harvard grad (yes Harvard!). He was as brilliant as he was ruthless, and he used his Red Guard elitists to sweep away the Liberal establishment. His first priority: healthcare and financial reform.

It didn’t hurt Trudeau that he was French Canadian. That allowed his supporters and the mainstream media to claim that political opponents were acting out of centuries old prejudices.

Trudeau’s liberal government called themselves “libertarian socialists” and their near dictatorial rule spanned from 1968 to 1984. During that time the Prime Minister set his sights on building what he called a “Just Society.”

“It seems evident to me that the regime of free enterprise has shown itself incapable of adequately resolving problems posed in education, health, housing, full employment, etc.,” said Trudeau.

He backed up his words by implementing the Canada Health Act. It prohibited user fees and extra billing by doctors. Yes, the Prime Minister wrote into law that doctors could only make what the government decided they should be paid. Many of Canada’s best doctors immigrated to the United States.

But Trudeau had loftier goals than just healthcare. He declared that intervention needed to be administered, "at the first sign of national economic weakness: to stimulate buying by putting more money in the hands of consumers.”

To that end Trudeau dictated that, “The State should distribute, extensively and resolutely, payments of all kinds: direct aid, unemployment insurance, agricultural assistance and various grants.”

Nationalization and the Suspension of Habeas Corpus
The Trudeau government launched a wave of nationalization programs. None were larger or more devastating than the National Energy Program (NEP) enacted in 1980.

The NEP was set up to remedy spiraling oil costs for Canadians by forcing oil companies operating in Western Canada to sell their petroleum at a discount to the Eastern provinces. It was nothing short of larceny. Eastern Canada received Western oil at a vast discount. It is estimated that the NEP cost Alberta $100 billion. It was such a blatant seizure of wealth that many of us in Alberta joined a secessionist political party.

The March 11, 2008, American Thinker sums up the Trudeau years: “(He) nationalized 25 percent of the petroleum industry and ruined the nascent boom economy of conservative Alberta. He ensured minority group representation at every level of government and instituted French language requirements in remote English-speaking corners of the country. He turned away from the United States and toward a "third way", vowing to make Canada more European, including the imposition metric system.”

Trudeau did all of that and much more.

In October 1970, the terrorist group FLQ kidnapped British Trade Commissioner James Cross and Quebec’s Minister of Labour Pierre Laporte.

When CBC reporter Tim Ralfe asked him how far he was willing to go to stop the FLQ, Trudeau replied: "Just watch me."

Three days later, on Oct. 16, 1970, the Cabinet under Trudeau’s chairmanship advised the governor general to invoke the War Measures Act. The result was widespread deployment of Canadian Forces troops throughout Quebec and the suspension of habeas corpus, giving far-reaching powers of arrest to police.

The Trudeau government gave the appearance that martial law had been imposed. With far-reaching powers police arrested and detained, without bail, 497 individuals. All but 62 were later released without charges.

Four decades have passed since Trudeau imposed martial law on Canada and it has been 30 years since he nationalized Canada’s oil industry. But even south of the border the cataclysm still echoes. It gains a growing resonance as an American president unleashes his plans for a just society.

“The Obama election’s implications for us are possibly just as fundamental as was Trudeau’s for Canada,” said Michael Krauss, professor of Law at George Mason University. “What if we became Canada?”

I have bad news for Krauss; America is going down that same ruinous path with President Obama. It is hard to conclude otherwise, especially in light of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro declaring last month that the passage of American healthcare reform was "a miracle" and a major victory for Obama’s presidency.

It seems Obama is the kind of leader that Cuba can embrace. (Castro certainly had a close bond with Trudeau. Before he attended Trudeau’s state funeral in the autumn of 2000 he declared three days of mourning in Cuba.)

Just how far to the left President Obama will steer America remains to be seen, but the fact that America is seriously tilting to port is undeniable. Riding roughshod over the Constitution is just one step. Others include the president’s determination to grow government and redistribute the nation’s wealth.

Furthermore, it is naïve to think that Obama will be gone in less than three years. Many a Canadian, especially us out here in the West, believed Trudeau would be a one-term prime Minister. But Canadians got used to collecting Trudeau dollars. By the time he faced his first re-election in 1972 enough Canadians had bought into the prime Minister’s “Just Society” that he would go on to serve another 12 years.

Look for the Dollar to go Loonie
When Trudeau took office in 1968 the Canadian dollar was selling at par with its U.S. counterpart. By the time Trudeau left office in 1984 the Canadian dollar was selling for just 70 cents U.S. That was the Canadian dollar’s first significant devaluation in a century.

In fact, during the Trudeau years the Canadian dollar lost more than half of its purchasing power. Canadians got healthcare, but not one of them could say it was free.

The same scenario could unfold in the U.S., especially if the midterm elections don’t go the Republicans’ way next fall. It is amazing what the majority will sometimes accept and even encourage. I know because I have seen it happen. Not in Cuba… right here in Canada.

Action to take: Accumulate 1-ounce Canadian Gold Maple Leaf, American Gold Eagle and South African Gold Krugerrand coins.

Yours for real wealth and good health,

John Myers
Myers’ Energy and Gold Report

Just days after officially closing their doors in the face of stern criticism and overwhelming financial concerns, officials with Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) plan to release a letter this week stating that the controversial anti-poverty group is alive and well.

"You will continue to hear from ACORN—in the mail, on the web and in the media," says the letter, which was provided to The New York Times. "And we need your continued support to counter the vicious antifamily, anti-minority, anti-immigrant attacks of the Republican right."

The message, which will be emailed out to more than 120,000 members of the organization, states that 16 new allied organizations have already been formed around the country and employees of the now defunct nonprofit group will continue to fight for healthcare reform, affordable housing and immigration reform.

The news of ACORN’s resurgence comes to no surprise to Republicans, who have insisted over the last few weeks that the decision to shut down operations was a scheme to evade its deteriorating reputation and receive taxpayer money, Fox News reports.

Representative Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) concluded that "ACORN is attempting to rebrand itself without instituting real reforms or removing senior leadership figures that need to be held accountable for wrongdoing."

According to a recent study published in the April issue of the journal Otolaryngology: Head and Neck Surgery, Chinese acupuncture may be a safe and effective treatment option for those afflicted with persistent post-viral olfactory dysfunction (PVOD), a condition commonly linked to an upper respiratory tract infection.

Currently, there is no validated pharmacotherapy option for PVOD, which affects approximately 2 million Americans each year and often leads to a temporary loss of the sense of smell and permanent damage to the olfactory system.

In the study, the research team recruited 15 patients with PVOD and treated them with 10 weekly 30-minute sessions of acupuncture. Following the therapy the participants had their sense of smell analyzed with the Sniffin’ Sticks test set, and their data was compared to a group of control patients also suffering from PVOD who did not undergo acupuncture.

The investigators found that eight patients in the acupuncture group significantly improved their sense of smell, while only two participants in the control group achieved the same result.

The study’s authors concluded that "the observed high response rate of about 50 percent under [acupuncture] was superior to that of spontaneous remission, and offers a possible new therapeutic regimen in postviral dysosmia."

As the fight continues to preserve students’ and faculty’s rights to carry hidden weapons on United States campuses, an organization supporting gun rights is planning a protest rally against laws and policies banning licensed concealed guns on school premises.

Students for Concealed Carry on Campus (SCCC) is sponsoring the event, which begins today and will last until April 9. It comes in response to some colleges’ refusal to allow students to discuss the issue and others imposing such bans, the organization has said.

"Colleges aren’t content to ban the right to self-defense anymore," said David Burnett, a spokesman for SCCC. "Now they’re trying to suspend the right to freedom of speech."

Burnett also stated that schools that are banning weapons have yet to implement proper security measures, such as metal detectors, to ensure their students’ safety.

"Until they can take responsibility for our safety and guarantee our protection, colleges can’t be allowed to deny us the right to self-defense," he stressed.

According to SCCC, during the five-day-long event college students across America will strap on empty holsters in an act of silent protest.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has praised the signing into law of legislation that will end Oregon’s ban on teachers wearing Islamic head scarves or the religious attire of other faiths.

The lifting of the 87-year-long ban will go into effect after the 2010-11 school year and follows a February vote of 51-8 in the Oregon House of Representatives. To become law, the bill had to be signed by Governor Ted Kulongoski.

"This change in the law protects the rights of educators of all faiths," said CAIR national communications director Ibrahim Hooper.

He added that his organization has consistently defended the right of Americans of all faiths to wear religious attire in the workplace, in schools, in courtrooms and as customers in public venues such as banks.

Currently only Nebraska and Pennsylvania prohibit their teachers from wearing religious clothing at work, and CAIR has called on their legislators to "follow Oregon’s example of respect for religious freedom and diversity."

In addition to the Muslim organization, a number of interfaith groups, civil rights groups and bar association organizations, including The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, have joined in the appeal.

I need a good laugh tonight. Could we just tell some jokes and whoop it up?

An innovation at Ping.fm now lets users direct a blog feed to all of their social networks automatically.

“A blog post can automatically go to up to 50 social networks,” said Loic Le Meur, CEO of Ping.fm’s corporate overlords, Seesmic.

This new feature is a real-time feed effected by Superfeedr, a service that transforms a wide variety of feeds into normalized XMPP or Pubsubhubbub format.

Sponsor

According to the Seesmic blog, a user enters their feed into the RSS section of their Ping.fm dashboard, and the service sends the information as a status update to all of their social networks.

Currently this feature, which is powered by Superfeedr, only carries a single feed but Le Meur said the company is working on expanding it to allow multiple feeds within a couple of weeks.

“We are testing with (just) one right now,” he told us. “We will add several soon after we scale one. Ping.fm has 700,000 users so (are being) careful!”

Discuss

So far no reports of any tsunami danger, though parts of Indonesia’s previously hit areas were temporarily evacuated.

—

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — A 7.7 earthquake shook Indonesia’s northwest island of Sumatra early Wednesday, prompting a brief tsunami warning and sending residents rushing for higher ground. There were no immediate reports of widespread damage.

The quake struck at 5:15 a.m. (2215 GMT) and was centered 125 miles (205 kilometers) northwest of Sibolga in Sumatra at a depth of 28.6 miles (46 kilometers), the U.S. Geological Survey said. It had earlier said the quake measured 7.8.

The Indonesia Meteorology and Geophysics Agency and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Honolulu issued tsunami warnings following the quake, but lifted them two hours later.

“So far no damage or casualties have been reported and the situation is under control,” Aceh Governor Irwandi Yusuf said.

At least five strong aftershocks measuring up to 5.2 were recorded, the meteorology agency said.

The quake, which struck as people in the region were preparing for morning prayers, caused panic in North Sumatra’s capital of Medan and other cities in the region. Electricity was cut in Medan and Banda Aceh, provincial capital of Aceh.

People in several cities along the southeastern coast of Sumatra as well as Sinabang on Simeulue island and Gunung Sitoli on nearby Nias island poured into the streets and rushed to higher ground after the quake.

“Rumors about a tsunami panicked villagers living near the beach,” said Eddy Effendi, a resident in Nias district of North Sumatra province. “They ran away on motorbikes and cars or by climbing the hills. There was panic and chaos everywhere, but I don’t see serious damage or injuries in my village.”

Residents in Sibolga said the shaking lasted more than a minute and utility poles in the area were knocked down.

A 2004 tsunami triggered by a magnitude-9.2 earthquake in the same region killed 230,000 people in a dozen countries on the Indian Ocean basin.

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