Movie Review: 'The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey' ? CBS Philly

?The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey? (credit: Warner Bros. Pictures)

By Bill Wine
KYW Newsradio 1060

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) ? Heaping any more praise on Peter Jackson?s The Lord of the Rings trilogy ? based on the J.R.R. Tolkien novel ? the third installment of which won 11 Oscars with each entry earning a billion bucks, would be gilding the lily.

That said, it?s both surprising and disappointing to report that Jackson?s epic fantasy adventure, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey ? essentially a prequel to The Lord of the Rings ? is an unexpected clunker, a monumental bore.

Oh, it?s technically accomplished. But there?s no emotional point of entry to the story and no zing to any of the cardboard characters. For anyone who has sat through the Lord of the Rings trilogy, this first installment of yet another trilogy, this one set 60 years earlier, is a dispiriting deja viewing experience.

(2 stars out of 4)

J.R.R. Tolkien wrote The Hobbit in 1937 for his own children. As for today?s children, let?s hope for the film?s sake that they don?t mind a level of techno-geeky self-indulgence that loses track of just what it is that allows movies to connect with viewers. Because whatever it is, The Hobbit doesn?t have it.

With a more modest scope than its predecessor, it?s the story of title character Bilbo Baggins, the reluctant diminutive hero played by Martin Freeman, who goes on a Middle-earth quest accompanied by thirteen dwarves ? who lack individuality to an absurd degree ? to reclaim both a treasure and the lost dwarf kingdom of Erebor from the fearsome dragon Smaug.

Ian McKellen returns as the wizard Gandalf, as does Andy Serkis as the CGI creature, Gollum. And returnees Cate Blanchett, Ian Holm, Hugo Weaving, Elijah Wood, and Christopher Lee stop by in a string of glorified cameos. But the magic they collectively conjured in the first trilogy just isn?t there, not by a long shot.

The three-part adaptation that producer, director and co-writer Jackson has concocted with scripters Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Guillermo del Toro seems to take the approach that anything that can be included should be included.

Uh, bad move.

Director Jackson (King Kong, The Lovely Bones, Heavenly Creatures) shot the film at 48 frames per second, partially to accommodate the 3-D process. That?s twice the normal speed, making this the first theatrical film that isn?t 24 frames per second. And, frankly, so what? From this vantage point, it makes the movie look more like a television soap opera than a feature film.

Worse, it makes some of us wish Jackson had lavished the same kind of painstaking care on story, character, and dialogue values.

When all you find yourself noticing are the sets and the backgrounds and the makeup and the special effects, something is very, very wrong. Even viewing The Hobbit as a pure children?s film, it?s an absolute slog to sit through, well over an hour too long. An hour.

And there are still two features to come over the next two years. Yep, Jackson has transmogrified one little book into three big movies. Talk about hubris. Yikes.

So we?ll expect 2 stars out of 4. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is a bloated and tedious down-to-Middle-earth fantasy with much too familiar a Ring to it.

More Bill Wine Movie Reviews

CBS Philly Entertainment News

Source: http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2012/12/14/movie-review-the-hobbit-an-unexpected-journey/

usssa baseball alex o loughlin the godfather cape breton bowling green marysville tornados

Thousands of Hungarian students rally against government

BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Thousands of students rallied on Wednesday against the Hungarian government's planned sharp cuts in state-financed places at universities, blocking peak traffic on one of the main bridges in Budapest and several roads in freezing weather.

The students, staging the second spontaneous protest march through the Hungarian capital this week, are demanding that the government give up its plans to cut funding to higher education and start a public dialogue about the reforms.

Hungary's center-right government is trying to keep the budget deficit below the European Union's 3 percent ceiling amid a recession in central Europe's most indebted economy.

The protest march, which started with a meeting at Budapest's University of Technology and Economics, rapidly grew and headed to the Economy Ministry in sub-zero temperatures.

The students, shouting "Down with the tuition" and "Honk if you are with us", demanded that officials come out to meet them. They also demanded the resignation of education secretary Rozsa Hoffmann. Then they headed onto Parliament.

Police did not interfere.

"The biggest problem is the dictatorial system which is disguised as democracy, that people do not have a say in their own country's legislation," Balazs Tahi-Toth, 22, who is studying to be an engineer, told Reuters. "This was just the last drop."

Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government announced the planned cuts in higher education last week. From next year it plans to fully finance only 10,480 students, two-thirds fewer than this year. It will partly finance the tuition of 46,000 more and offer subsidized preferential-rate student loans.

Students fear this will shut out many from higher education and force many more students to seek a place at a university in those European Union states where education is free, such as in neighboring Austria. They pledge further protests next week.

"I have three younger sisters who want to go to higher education and it does not seem that we will be able to pay the tuition or take out a student loan... I don't think it would be a responsible idea to become indebted in this debt crisis," said Zsombor Cseh, 22, a student at Budapest's Corvinus University.

"This loan would solve the problem only if we could be sure that we will find a decent job with a decent pay."

The government, which has used a two-thirds majority in parliament to rewrite large swathes of laws including the constitution in ways that critics say cement the ruling party's powers, is denying it is introducing tuition.

"The new higher education concept is based on a system in which the state will finance everyone's studies, either by granting them scholarships or a new type of student loan," the Prime Minister's Office said in a statement on Tuesday.

The students invited Orban for a discussion on Wednesday but he only replied in a brief letter.

At the meeting earlier on Wednesday, students screened videos of Orban from 2007 and 2008 when his Fidesz party was still in opposition and spoke out against tuition - which the then ruling Socialists wanted to introduce. Fidesz initiated a referendum against the tuition and successfully blocked it.

(Reporting by Krisztina Than; Editing by Michael Roddy)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/thousands-hungarian-students-rally-against-government-185027749.html

att libya engadget twin towers gizmodo cnet iPhone 5

Resurrection of extinct enzymes reveals evolutionary strategy for the invention of new functions

Resurrection of extinct enzymes reveals evolutionary strategy for the invention of new functions

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

How does evolution innovate? We exist because our ancestors have had the ability to adapt successfully to changes in their environment; however, merely examining present-day organisms can limit our understanding of the actual evolutionary processes because the crucial events have been masked by the passage of aeons ? what we need is a time machine. Scientists from VIB, KU Leuven, University of Ghent and Harvard have done the next-best thing; by reconstructing DNA and proteins from prehistoric yeast cells, they were able to directly examine the evolutionary forces that have acted over the last 100 million years to shape modern-day enzymes ? biological catalysts that enable organisms to manipulate molecules to their will.

The scientists set out to explore how new genes emerge, how they contribute to the survival of the evolving organism, and how, after a humble start, evolution then refines the function of new genes and hones the efficiency of the enzymes that they encode. One of the richest sources of such new genes is the chance duplication of existing genes. One copy of the gene can then continue to encode the original enzyme, allowing it to perform its original task, while the other is free to change and to perhaps take on a new function; alternatively, the two new enzymes might sub-divide the original task.

Although this pattern of innovation is known to have happened many thousands of times during evolution, the way in which it occurs hasn't been clear. In a paper published December 11 in the online Open Access journal PLOS Biology, Karin Voordeckers, Chris Brown and Kevin Verstrepen from VIB in Leuven, together with Steven Maere from VIB and the University of Ghent, tackled this problem, focusing their attention on the evolution of enzymes that have allowed yeast to exploit changing food sources over the last 100 million years of evolution.

The scientists 'resuscitated' ancestral yeast genes, allowing them to examine the properties of enzymes that existed tens of millions of years ago. The original enzyme originally enabled the yeast cells to survive on a diet of maltose, a common sugar, but duplications of their genes gave rise to new enzymes which opened up the possibility of feeding off other types of sugar in the environment. The resurrection of these enzymes meant that the scientist could build up a detailed picture of their atomic structure and directly determine their ability to break down different types of sugars. Armed with this information, they could work out exactly how the enzymes had changed their specificity and how evolution drove their optimisation.

"We used sequence reconstruction algorithms to predict the DNA sequence of ancestral genes from dozens of present-day DNA sequences. This enabled us to rebuild the corresponding ancestral proteins and compare them with those present today", said Steven Maere.

"We searched very specifically for how the yeast adapted to break down various sources of sugar. We found that the primal gene that codes for the protein for the digestion of maltose ? a sugar in grain ? was copied a number of times during evolution. The DNA of some copies changed slightly, resulting in new proteins that could break down different sugars. By modeling these changes in the corresponding proteins, we now understand how just a few changes in the DNA can lead to the development of a completely new activity in the corresponding proteins", said Karin Voordeckers.

"New functional DNA does not appear out of thin air, but is built up gradually from a copy of an existing segment of functional DNA. By reconstructing a piece of prehistoric DNA that was copied several times during evolution, we were able to investigate in detail which changes occur in each of the copies and gradually lead to new functions. As such, our results provide a unique and detailed view into the molecular details of Darwinian evolution" says Kevin Verstrepen.

The scientists propose that the events observed here in the yeast cell's quest for sugar may reflect a general strategy widely used for innovation in evolution.

###

Public Library of Science: http://www.plos.org

Thanks to Public Library of Science for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

This press release has been viewed 62 time(s).

Source: http://www.labspaces.net/125883/Resurrection_of_extinct_enzymes_reveals_evolutionary_strategy_for_the_invention_of_new_functions_

jayhawks wwe wrestlemania oakland shooting mega millions winning numbers autism speaks ubaldo jimenez ncaa final

Ray Dalio Explains The Rare Set Of Circumstances That's Making ...

Dealbook screenshot

At the Dealbook conference, Ray Dalio, Steve Schwarzman and David Rubinstein just wrapped up a panel on investing and markets.

Of particular interest was Ray Dalio, the hedge fund god who has been killing it throughout the crisis.

And so you have to be intrigued that he's bearish.

He's not wildly so (thinks stocks will do better than bonds) but his basic idea is that risk premiums are maxed out, and have to come down. In other words, people have paid up max dollar for all risk assets thanks to the Fed dropping rates to rock bottom. Now that will reverse.

His novel set of circumstances he sees is an economy that faces austerity (due to the Fiscal Cliff, etc.) coupled with a? Fed that's mostly blown its bazooka, and can't get much more juice out of QE (he believes that QE does less and less because the Fed can't push that much that much more money from bonds into riskier assets).

So the novel set of circumstances are:

• Yields can't go down anymore.
• Austerity is coming.
• Economy is running out of steam.
• QE is losing its efficacy.
• Rate turn probably finally coming late in 2013.

So there you go: Rates going up, austerity coming, Fed out of bullets. Bad for risk assets.

Below are our notes from the panel

----------------

-- Dalio: The world is still in deleveraging.

-- Dalio: Sounding bearish: Risk premiums are likely to expand.

-- Rubinstein: Likes energy and healthcare.

-- Rubinstein: Likes China. Suggests buying non-European assets off of distressed European banks.

-- Rubinstein: Investing in sub-Saharan banks.

-- Schwarzman: Likes energy. China. Looks like it's turned, though tough to call bottoms.

Questioner: What are you steering clear of?

-- Rubinstein: There are certain countries that we don't invest in: Russia. Also not keen on Russia.

-- Dalio: It all comes down to interest rates. As an investor, all you're doing is putting up a lump-sump payment for a future cash flow.

-- In all deleveraging, you get through them by having an interest rate that's lower than the growth rate.

-- The big question is: When will the term structure of interest rates change? That's the question to be worried about.

-- Dalio: Effects of QE diminishing as we do more rounds.. We're facing austerity. And growth is flagging. This is an unprecedented risk the economy is facing. A slowdown with very little room to maneuver.

-- Dalio: Back up in rates will probably happen in late 2013.

-- Dalio: The yield curve is certainly at the bottom. And so we're squeezed on where they've gotten us in terms of.

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/live-investors-ray-dalio-david-rubinstein-and-steve-schwarzman-at-the-dealbook-conference-2012-12

bohemian rhapsody bohemian rhapsody spike lee carson daly heejun han donovan mcnabb donovan mcnabb

Sir Ian McKellen -- I Have Prostate Cancer | TMZ.com

EXCLUSIVE

John McAfee is grudgingly back on U.S. soil, after getting booted from Guatemala.

We got video of the computer software mogul entering a swanky hotel last night.? He joked with the photog but was mum about his mounting troubles.? Authorities in Belize -- the place McAfee has called home since 2008 -- want to chit chat with him about the murder of his neighbor.

McAfee told GMA he fled Belize for Guatamala and asked for asylum but his request was rejected and he was returned to his country of origin -- the United States.

If you get deported to the U.S., South Beach is a nice landing spot.? Sure beats Fresno.

Breaking News

The nurse in the Kate Middleton prank call scandal hanged herself with a scarf ... and left multiple suicide notes ... this according to officials in the U.K..

The London coroner handling the case told the court ... the body of Jacintha Saldanha was discovered by colleagues at her hospital living quarters, hanging from a wardrobe door.

The coroner says Saldanha had also suffered "some injuries to her wrist."

Officials also say the nurse left behind 3 notes ... two discovered near her body ... and one near her belongings. The contents of the notes have not been revealed to the media.

Saldanha was humiliated on a global scale in a radio prank carried out by 2 Australian DJs ... who pretended to be the Queen of England. Saldanha bought? their act and connected them to a nurse who was treating Kate Middleton.

The DJs have since been suspended and the station has canceled the radio show.

EXCLUSIVE

Lindsay Lohan is on the verge of losing expensive designer clothes, family heirlooms and potentially embarrassing items ... because she hasn't paid her storage bill and as a result the unit is about to go up on the auction block.

Sources close to Lindsay tell us ... LiLo has fallen behind on paying her monthly bill? ... and now owes roughly $16,000 to the storage company.

The account is now delinquent and the locker can't be opened until the balance is paid in full ... and that's not going to happen because Lindsay doesn't have the cash.? As we reported, her financial situation is so desperate the IRS has frozen her bank accounts because of unpaid back taxes.

So here's the upshot.? If Lindsay doesn't get a big check for XMAS, her storage unit will be auctioned off this month.? We're told she's reached out to family and friends to front her the money but so far no one is biting.

Talk about a good "Storage Wars" episode.

EXCLUSIVE

Miley Cyrus' fiance Liam Hemsworth rocked another man HARD in the face during a ferocious street fight ... and TMZ has footage of the violent altercation.

It all went down early Sunday morning in Philly -- sources on the scene tell TMZ, Liam had just left a bar when he confronted a guy he thought had thrown a rock at him and his friend.

In the video, the punchee is on the ground clinging to Liam's leg ... until Liam plows a fist into his face, and pushes his head down toward the asphalt. Liam's friend helped hold the guy down.

Cops quickly arrived and dispersed the crowd, but made no arrests. Liam took off with his friend.

After the fight, the victim doesn't seem to comprehend he got his ass kicked, drunkenly slurring, "I don't think [Liam] fared much better." (Hint: yes, he did.)

We couldn't track down the victim to ask if he plans to file a police report -- but Philly PD tells us nothing's been filed so far.

By the way, our source on the scene says no one saw a rock get thrown.

We've made multiple calls to Liam's camp ... but haven't heard back from 'em.

EXCLUSIVE

Sarah Palin's son Track is loaded ... TMZ has learned ... saying goodbye to his marriage with his most prized possessions in hand ... guns.

Track Palin and his soon-to-be ex-wife Britta filed divorce docs which tick off who gets what.

-- 23-year-old Track -- an Army reservist -- gets the $30,000 Wells Fargo bank account, $500 in tools, and his $1,000 gun collection.

-- 22-year-old Britta gets her $2,500 bank account and her $4,000 in jewelry.?

TMZ broke the story, the couple filed jointly for divorce in an Alaskan court ... which means they have fully settled their property and custody issues, including child support for their 1-year-old daughter.

According to the doc, Track rakes in $42,800 a year -- and has agreed to pay $642 a month in child support.?Track and Britta have agreed to split any other child-related expenses, including medical and travel.

Britta gets physical custody, and will share legal custody with Track.

The sanctity of marriage.

EXCLUSIVE

There are now 2 agencies prosecuting Lindsay Lohan at the same time, and sources connected with the cases tell TMZ they are DIVIDED over whether Lindsay should be sent to the pokey.

Chief Deputy Santa Monica City Attorney Terry White is prosecuting Lindsay for allegedly lying to cops last June after her car crash on Pacific Coast Highway.? Lindsay -- who's been charged with 3 crimes in connection with the accident -- could face 19 months in jail if convicted on all counts.? But sources connected with the case tell us ... White would be satisfied with COMMUNITY SERVICE because the crimes aren't that big a deal.

But here's the rub.? The L.A. City Attorney wants to throw the book at Lindsay for allegedly violating her probation in the jewelry heist case.? She could get 245 days in the slammer for the probation violation.? Sources connected with the case tell TMZ ... L.A. prosecutors will ask Commissioner Jane Godfrey to sentence Lindsay to AT LEAST 200 days behind bars.

Although, as we first reported, the Commish believes in rehabilitation whenever possible, she is not against sentencing criminals to time behind bars.? So the stage is now set for a showdown.

Your move Shawn Holley.

TMZ TV

The two hot chicks from the group t.A.T.u. -- famous for sucking face -- finally reunited ... older, yet actually hotter. But did their lips reunite too? Fingers crossed!

Check out TMZ on TV -- click here to see your local listings!?

EXCLUSIVE

Gabriel Aubry was officially told today what we already reported ... he will NOT face criminal charges for the Thanksgiving Day fight with Halle Berry's fiance.

Instead, the L.A. City Attorney's Office has decided to hold an informal hearing with Gabriel to discuss his brawl with Olivier Martinez.

TMZ broke the story ... Halle, Olivier and Gabriel's attorneys all agreed to settle the matter and avoid a messy criminal trial.

As we told you, investigators believe Gabriel was actually the aggressor ... despite getting his face bruised and bloodied during the the fight.

Gabriel could end up getting anger management classes after the City Attorney hearing -- or simply told not to do this again.

No date's been set for the hearing.

TMZ TV

Aretha Franklin 'fessed up to us that she sings in the shower -- like millions of other people -- yet Harvey is so astounded ... he sees the plot of a hit movie! The eyes are often first to go.

Check out TMZ on TV -- click here to see your local listings!

EXCLUSIVE

When Nirvana reunites tonight in NYC -- with Sir Paul McCartney replacing Kurt Cobain on vocals -- Courtney Love won't be cheering ... she'll be yelling obscenities, because she's pissed about the gig.

Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic are playing at the 12-12-12 benefit concert at Madison Square Garden -- their first show together in 20 years -- but Cobain's widow tells TMZ she is "not amused" about Paul's involvement.

Courtney is clearly more of a Lennon fan, than McCartney because she added ... "Look, if John were alive it would be cool."

Love is also upset at Krist and Dave for calling tonight's show a Nirvana reunion because she says Kurt was the heart and soul of the legendary band.

For the record ... Sir Paul and the guys will be playing a brand new song they wrote together. It's unclear if they will cover classic Nirvana songs.

Breaking News

John McAfee?-- the millionaire who created McAfee Antivirus software -- has been released from custody in Guatemala ... where he was arrested for allegedly entering the country illegally, while still considered a "person of interest" in a Belizean murder case.

After his release, 67-year-old McAfee told reporters, "I'm free. I'm going to America." He said he plans to catch a flight to Miami.

Guatemalan immigration officials have already escorted McAfee to the Guatemala City airport.

As we reported, McAfee has been on the run ever since he was named a person of interest in the murder of his neighbor in Belize -- where McAfee had been living for several years.

McAfee's lawyer has said returning the software mogul to Belize could effectively be a death sentence ... because McAfee "has denounced authorities."

Source: http://www.tmz.com/2012/12/11/ian-mckellen-prostate-cancer/

gas prices rising stars challenge star trek 2 kathy ireland brooke mueller all star weekend lent

Indiana Jones 'crystal skull' may be hoax

An archaeologist in Belize has filed a lawsuit against the makers of the film "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," alleging that the movie profits off references to an artifact illegally stolen from the country.

But the item in question, a real-life crystal skull, may not be a Belizean artifact carved by the ancient Maya people at all, but rather a hoax perpetrated by a self-styled 20th-century adventurer.

The story starts in the 1930s, when explorer Frederick A. Mitchell-Hedges claims to have found the skull somewhere in Central America. Or maybe it starts in the 1920s: That's when Mitchell-Hedges' daughter, Anna, now deceased, recalled finding the skull in the ancient Maya city of Lubaant?n in Belize, though the exact date varied with the telling of the story.

The skull is smaller than the life-size ones seen in the Indiana Jones film (which are also, spoiler alert, alien in origin). It stands about 5 inches (12.7 centimeters) high, 7 inches tall (17.8 cm) and 5 inches (12.7 cm) wide. The skull is made of beautifully clear polished quartz, with a lower jaw that detaches.

Since it surfaced, the skull has been the subject of many legends. It's said to get its glassy sheen from the efforts of five generations of ancient polishers. It's also been attributed magical powers, from the ability to repel witchcraft to the ability to kill on command. [ Full Coverage: The Myth of the Mayan Apocalypse ]

Some have contested the truth of the Mitchell-Hedges tale, however: Smithsonian anthropologist Jane MacLaren Walsh has examined the Mitchell-Hedges skull and finds that it was carved with high-speed, diamond-coated tools from the 20th century.

"The Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull is not ancient; not even very old. It was probably made in Europe in the 20th century, and was not polished for five generations. It is not powerful, not scary and not at all what it purports to be," Walsh wrote in 2010 in Archaeology, the magazine of the Archaeological Institute of America.

Walsh's investigations of Frederick and Anna Mitchell-Hedges' claims about the skull's discovery also turned up many inconsistencies, she reported. It was likely bought from an antiquities dealer in London in 1943, Walsh wrote.

The Maya did leave other amazing artistry behind, including a carved limestone monkey skull and elaborate painted murals.

The lawsuit of the crystal skull
The new lawsuit, however, takes the Mitchell-Hedges' claims as truth and argues that by removing this alleged artifact from Belize, Frederick and Anna broke the country's laws. Archaeologist Jaime Awe, the director of the Institute of Archaeology of Belize, filed the lawsuit on behalf of his country.

"The primary goal of the litigation is to: (a) preserve and return the artifact to the people of Belize; (b) to enforce the nation's rights to the artifact and the profits derived therefrom; and (c) to make known to the global community that while a relatively small, yet vibrant and growing nation, Belize will take whatever action necessary to preserve, and prevent the exploitation of its culture and cultural artifacts/landmarks," Awe's lawyer Adam Tracy wrote in an email to LiveScience.

1. Science news from NBCNews.com

   1. Long-extinct lizard named after Obama

      Science editor Alan Boyle's blog: The mass extinction that killed off the dinosaurs also did in lots of lizards ? including a newly identified creature that's been named Obamadon gracilis in honor of President Barack Obama.

   2. Zombie movie rises up from LHC's backyard
   3. Space calendar takes the Science Geek prize
   4. No snow for America's first Christmas

"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" name-checks the skull, with Indy talking about how he and fellow archaeologist Harold Oxley were obsessed with the find. [ 10 Modern Tools for Indiana Jones ]

"As the epicenter of Mayan culture, combined with the fact that the known crystal skulls were pilfered from the country, Belize is of the position that the physical artifacts, together with the nomenclature tied thereto, are properties of the people of the Belize," Tracy said.

As such, Awe is suing Paramount Pictures, Lucasfilms and Lucasfilms' new owner Disney for illegally profiting from the skull's likeness. He is also suing the Mitchell-Hedges family for the return of the skull, which is now in possession of Anna's widower, William Homann, in Indiana.

Many mystical skulls
The Mitchell-Hedges' skull is not the only mystical skull out there. There's a Mitchell-Hedges lookalike in the British Museum in London. (Walsh suspects that the Mitchell-Hedges' skull was a copy of the British Museum version). The Musee du Quai Branly in Paris holds another large skull, and a third is in the catalog at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. That Smithsonian skull is approximately life-size at 15 inches (38 cm) tall.

Unfortunately for believers in the Central American occult, not a single one of these skulls has been found to be authentic. The British Museum skull was likely made in the 1800s, according to the museum, based on tool marks left behind from the carving. Likewise, tests carried out on the Paris skull in 2007 and 2008 found it to be a late-1800s forgery. The Smithsonian skull, which happens to be the artifact that got anthropologist Jane MacLaren Walsh interested in investigating crystal skulls, was also carved with modern jewel-cutting equipment. [ 9 Famous Art Forgers ]

To test the authenticity of the Mitchell-Hedges' skull, Walsh used high-powered microscopy, ultraviolet light, computerized tomography (CT) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). A real artifact from Central America, created before the arrival of Christopher Columbus would have been carved by stone implements and abrasive sand, Walsh wrote. These tools leave marks that look rough under the microscope. But the Mitchell-Hedges' skull revealed microscopic cut marks that were unmistakably smooth and straight, the telltale signature of a metal tool augmented by diamond.?

It remains to be seen whether the skull's veracity will play a role in the Indiana Jones lawsuit.

"The government of Belize does not believe the skull is fake," Tracy told LiveScience. "As such, I do not foresee any further testing of the artifact."

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas or LiveScience @livescience. We're also on Facebook and Google+.

? 2012 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/50161954/ns/technology_and_science-science/

president day lin j.r. smith espn jeremy lin sleigh bells meek

Health and Fitness: Holistic Health Care Tips For Every Individual ...

By Celia Hall

It is important to be healthy all year round in every aspect of the body. Many fitness programs offer people to be physically fit, but there are no other options which will help other aspects such as the spiritual aspect and the mental aspect to be equally healthy than most people in the group. It is important to maintain the correct balance of the body.

One of the ways to be healthy is to eat nutritious foods. Studies have recently uncovered specific herbs and vegetables which contain a lot of the microbes and organism that the person will need. Have a variety of fruits, nuts and vegetables on the daily diet which will help in sustaining and providing the body with the much needed nutrients.

One of the keys to healthy body inside and out is to adjust the acidic issues that the body may have in some way or the other. The proper balance of the acid and alkaline can be possible with a proper diet that should be able to address the issues concerned. Bacteria thrive in an acidic body that could make it possible for the people to let themselves inside.

There are many ways to achieve this condition. One of the best ways to begin is with the mind. It has been proven that pessimistic thoughts could affect the way the brain wires itself and consequently, people experience ill health. A person should indulge in positivity through spiritual means or philosophical means. Foods like chocolate may also give the person some dopamine which is a happy hormone.

The spirituality is an important aspect in the development of the person. Most of them should be able to get the things done to most people in the group. For some, it can be achieved by reading a holy bible. There are also others who needed to understand the meaning and the scripture which is supposedly written to tell the purpose of existence.

Being productive enables the person to feel good and make sure of the things that the person has in the end. It will also stimulate the mind with entertaining ideas which will be realized. Most of the people in the group love to have something. This will induce positive thoughts on the person which would have a significant effect on the overall health of the person.

Relationships with family and friends are just several of the paths which will make life sweeter than imagined. People should be able to get more on the facilities that are being provided by some people in the area. There could be more citizens who are motivated to stay heathy. Most of the people should be able to accommodate the things that it needed.

The belief in a higher power will generate a holistic view of life. The aim of the person should help other people do the things that they want to have. This is an essential step to meet the holistic growth which is generally growth on all sides of life. Karma can exist as an ideology that most people would want to have.

There are plenty of opportunities for people to avail of the holistic health care. People can do the things that they aspire to do at one time. The person has the overall control on their lifestyle which would make it a bit more different to others. One should take the necessary steps to feel good.

About the Author:

Read more about How The Holistic Health Care Method Can Improve Life visiting our website.

Source: http://health-and-fitness4you.blogspot.com/2012/12/holistic-health-care-tips-for-every.html

seahawks Felix Baumgartner Little Nemo gawker earthquake today earthquake today Romney

Source: http://muvoapug.posterous.com/health-and-fitness-holistic-health-care-tips

Dave Brubeck dallas cowboys frankie muniz today show x factor x factor Duck Dynasty