Besides the Yuri’s Night App I mentioned yesterday, another great way to track all your best Space buddies on tonight’s 50th anniversary of man in space is using NASA Connect. On that link you will find all the best Social Media interfaces to them, including Twitter, Facebook, UStream, Foursquare, and MySpace. There are also links to their YouTube, Flickr, and Gowalla sites you should bookmark and visit. They have some in house communication resources like NASA Tweetup and NASA Chat where you can sometimes find entire gatherings of people during various events. And that is without mentioning NASA Apps, NASA Blogs, and NASA e-Books. Bottom line, this is the single place you need to be able to find to connect and collaborate with NASA.
When the clock hits midnight we kick off Yuri’s Night, celebrating 50 years of manned space flight. April 12th, 1961 is when Yuri Gagarin became the first human to leave this planet, and there are parties all over the world to celebrate, as there are every year. You can check out what events are close to you at the Yuri’s Night Web Page, or through your phone. For the phone, the Apple App can be found here, or just search the apps store. With any other flavor got to the Yuri’s Mobi pages.
Who is John Galt? If you have been asking this question since the mid 1950’s, the wait is over. The Ayn Rand sci-fi classic Atlas Shrugged is finally seeing widespread release on the big screen this week. It is flagged as Part 1, hopefully that means there is a Part 2 on the horizon as well. Before the ’70s the number of genre books recognized as actual Literature across the decades could be counted without having to take your shoes off, and this masterwork was one of them. Since the 70’s a tendency to claim one’s work was a normal drama about the human condition that just happened to have a setting on another planet with a protagonist from another dimension became the PR ploy du jour for serious literature authors. Just in case you haven’t read this, take a peek at the trailer. As usual, it gives you a set of scenes and dialog meant to encourage you to buy a ticket, but this one also gives you momentary images of a huge number of world-class actors who all wanted to be in on the production. You don’t see that without a world class story and incredible characters to drive actors to excel at their craft, so I have high hopes for this one.
The feel-good family friendly choice for this week is Rio, about a non-flying Macaw (raised in a cage in a small town in Minnesota) who travels to Brazil to meet a girl, and gets a LOT more than he bargained for. The animation is from the same team who did the Ice Age series, so get ready for non-stop visuals and action of the highest caliber. I’m thinking, one film Friday, one Saturday.
Top of the list this week is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1. There is a related package release covering multiple movies, but to me it makes sense to wait until you can get them all in a single box, if you have not been picking up each one as it comes out.
Ga Rei Zero is the story of the Paranormal Disaster Countermeasure Headquarters, a team used by the Japanese Ministry of Defense to protect the homelands from threats supernatural and paranormal. After a disastrous encounter they find themselves at risk of being absorbed into an equivalent organization reporting to the Ministry of the Environment. Also out this week, Needless Collection 2 takes place in the mutant ghettos after WWIII.
Carl Sagan has been one of my heroes for a long time, so imagine my delight when Jessica Palmer posted this animation created by Adam Winnik based on Sagan’s monolog Pale Blue Dot. Enjoy!
Ga-Rei-Zero will be released this Tuesday; here is a taste…