What I’m talking about in this case is a story I saw on livescience.com about a mysterious, round object found on the ocean floor between Finland and Sweden. UFO enthusiasts are giddy because circular objects 60 feet in diameter are not usually found on the bottom of the ocean. So it has to be an alien spacecraft right? Right? Not so fast. It could be a number of things, from a natural wonder to some man-made and unaccounted for object.

Either way it would be pretty neat to know what it is. Unfortunately, that probably won’t happen. The team who found it said they don’t have the cash to risk on something that could turn out to be nothing. So I guess Marvin Martian is just going to continue his peaceful existence on the ocean’s floor.

Unfortunately, only the first three of the six reels were located. These reels are currently undergoing the restoration process so they can be viewed, and no doubt studied by historians and film preservationists. I think my favorite part of the find is that Hitchcock was not actually the director of the film. He is credited as writer, assistant director, editor and art director. The director of the film was Graham Cutts. And apparently Cutts was envious of the wunderkind.

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Photographs by Vivian Maier/John Maloof Collection

This one has been in the news for a couple of years, but it’s news to me and it’s really cool. I stumbled across this story this morning via dayriffer.com – an article on motherjones.com details the life and work of a previously unknown photographer named Vivian Maier. She was an amateur photographer and professional nanny who lived in New York and France, but her work largely centers around Chicago in the 1950s and 60s. I’m a bit of a shutterbug myself. I love black and white, portraits/street life, and medium format (square) prints, so Vivian Maier is pretty much my new favorite photographer. Her eye and framing are amazing and her use of natural light and shadow is pretty breathtaking at times. But that’s not what makes this story so interesting…

Vivian Maier was completely undiscovered until just a few years ago. In 2007, a 26 year-old realtor named John Maloof was co-writing a book about Portage Park, a neighborhood in Chicago,when he paid 400 bucks for a box of old photo negatives at an auction house in hopes that he might unearth some Portage Park gems. What he found were more than 100,000 photo negatives taken by a clearly talented, yet unknown Vivian Maier. In fact, he didn’t know who had taken the pictures at all until he came across a short note with Vivian’s name on it. He then learned that she had just passed away a few days earlier at the age of 83.

Photographs by Vivian Maier/John Maloof Collection

Maloof then managed to track down some of the children she had work for as a nanny. To his delight, they all recounted stories of being carted around Chicago by the nanny with her square, boxy Rolleiflex camera. Apparently she was a very quiet woman who lived a very quiet life. She never married and former employers don’t recall her ever receiving personal phone calls even.

Seems like this may be fodder for a movie version of her life story, although unless she had a diary, it’d likely be fairly fictionalized. I’m hoping we have some real deal photographers here that can chime in about her work. I’m no pro when it comes to art, I just know when I like something. Or maybe that’s what it’s all about. Anyway, please share your thoughts here in the comments section.

And have a great day why don’t you?

Shortly after the earthquake in Japan hit, Quakebook was born in the form of a simple Twitter message from a British resident of Japan. Less than a week later, there was an entire e-book created from a group of writers, artists, bloggers and designers from around the world, many of whom relayed first person accounts of the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear disasters. Aside from regular folks, there were also some heavy hitters who contributed, including Yoko Ono, and authors William Gibson, Barry Eisler and Jake Adelstein. How they were able to pull this off in such a short amount of time is a true testament to the dedication of the creators and contributors.

Here’s where it gets even better — nobody had made a penny off of the project, including Amazon.com, who has been selling the e-book for no profit under the official title “2:46: Aftershocks: Stories from the Japan Earthquake.” 100 percent of the money made from the sale of Quakebook goes to the Japanese Red Cross. It’s rare to see such a show of compassion and at $9.99, it’s a great value to boot. Personally, I’m hoping this starts a new model of art meeting philanthropy in times of need. If you’re interested in doing something good today, check out Quakebook and plunk down 10 bucks for the Red Cross.

Josh has talked several times on the podcast about his ashes being shot out of a cannon after he passes away, and I’ve done some research on human cannonballs thanks to an article on daredevils I wrote back in the day. The first human to be used as a projectile was “Lulu” in 1871. This British man dressed in drag and was sent skyward by a catapult at the London Music Hall. The first actual cannon was used by circus pioneer P.T. Barnum in 1880. Another Brit, a real woman named Zazel, stunned audiences when she climbed into the cannon and was shot into a safety net. Barnum used coiled springs to propel her along with a fake bang and puff of smoke thanks to well-timed firecrackers. These days, the springs have been replaced by a compressed air cannon — but they still use a fake bang to give the audience a thrill.

All in, it’s a pretty safe stunt as long as everything is in place like it should be. The article also points out that the human cannonball world record holder said he’d never heard of a safety net not being in place. And this is a guy who has been shot out of a cannon more than 5,000 times without a hitch. At the very least it seems like something somebody should notice before the old fuse is lit.

Very sad and bizarre. What sad and bizarre stories do you know?

He says it best right here:

In Humphreys’ theory, Jesus went by an old-fashioned Jewish calendar rather than the official lunar calendar which was in widespread use at the time of his death and is still in use today. This would put the Passover meal — and the Last Supper — on the Wednesday, explaining how such a large number of events took place between the meal and the crucifixion.

In the end, Humphreys says that science and religion can work hand in hand on this one and give Easter a solid date of April 5th each year. My bet is that Humphreys might sell a few books, but that Easter will continue to “float.”

What do you think about all of this? Or are you just happy to eat eggs?

So, that’s kind of a long winded way of setting up this pretty interesting article from AOL News. It outlines some UFO snooping around that JFK was doing about ten days before he was assassinated. Don’t worry, nobody is trying to make a connection there, but it’s a really interesting read that touches on redacted documents, NASA scientists and the freedom of information act. Regardless of if you believe in intelligent life elsewhere, it’s a fun post from contributor Lee Speilgel and well worth ten minutes.

What do you think about it?

On Tuesday’s show we dove into a hot sous-vide water bath and got cooking with molecular gastronomy. Sorry, I couldn’t resist. Molecular gastronomy is all about breaking the individual components of a recipe down and rebuilding it in a new and exciting way. Why simply slather mayo on a burger when you can form it into a gelatinous ball that explodes when you take a bite? Why make a milk shake with boring ice cream when you can just add the room temperature ingredients and hit it with some liquid nitrogen? We mentioned local Atlanta chef, and Top Chef winner Richard Blais quite a bit because he’s made quite a name for himself here. All in, I love tasty food and if you can be creative with it, then it’s fine by me. Food as art works as long as it tastes awesome.

Yesterday we released a show based on Josh’s article about exploitation films. It’s tough to cover a far-reaching cinematic movement in 45 minutes, but we feel like we gave a pretty good overview of the history of exploitation films along with a few sterling examples. The history part was really fascinating to a film geek like myself — who the first people were to feature nudity, violence and gore in their films, and exactly why they did so.  Nowadays, exploitation themes are rooted firmly in the mainstream, leaving throwback exploitation efforts like Machete and Death Proof to the Tarantino’s of the cinematic world.

So that’s that. Have a great weekend and as ever, be safe out there! Let’s hear from you about molecular gastronomy and exploitation films in the comments.

Despite the fact that these fellas only live a mile from each other in the town of Ayapa, and they have they very own private language, they don’t feel like they have much in common. Go figure. Despite this, a linguistic anthropologist from Indiana University aims to record as much as he can about the language while Segovia and Velazquez are still alive. Too bad he can’t double up on his work by getting these gentlemen in the same room.