At 1pm Central time, I’ll be watching … The Giant Spider Invasion. It’s good, right? It’s one of the ones you guys recommended, so I’m sure it’ll be terrific. The description says,
A black hole hits North Wisconsin and opens a door to other dimensions. Giant 15 meter spiders emerge from it, who have an appetite for human flesh! Dr. Jenny Langer and Dr. Vance from the NASA try to save the world.
Totally scientifically plausible, sure.
It’s a giant spider invasion of savings!
Even if you’ve never seen the MST3K version, you’ll know right when to shout, “Packers! Packers won the superbowl! WHOOOO!”
I didn’t vote or comment so you might know this, but they did this one on Mystery Science Theater and it’s pretty great. As I recall, Allen Hale (The Skipper from Gilligan’s Island) plays the sheriff and supposed comedy relief. Everything in this movie is just as cringe inducing as the science. I’m an MST3K junkie, so I’ll probably be thinking of every joke as I’ve never seen this movie without the riffing. :)
OH NO. I haven’t seen it or the MST3K version, so you’re saying I’m going to be judged against their performance? OH NOOOOOOO.
Sad to say, I will probably miss it. This looks like a great choice, though!
I’ve never seen that MST3K episode, so you’ll be setting the standard for me PZ. I EXPECT GREATNESS. No pressure…
Never seen it, but it did decent box office when it came out. Some films manage to overcome bad special effects (e.g. Them!, but that was the 50s, when writing seemed more important). Anyway, almost certainly better than a superhero flick.
“…from THE NASA”? (emphasis mine)
The NASA? Is there more than one? Are we likely to mistake them for one other?
I haven’t read this article from our local PBS outlet (KQED) yet, or watched the short video, but will be doing so. The title is intriguing. It seems appropriate to post here:
Is a Spider’s Web a Part of Its Mind?
The 15m spiders brought to mind a science question. High oxygen levels at the end of the carboniferous period into the Permian led to some giant insects related to dragonflies. My question is were there giant spiders or ancestors at that time also?
I see Megarachne which were huge but weren’t actually spiders and Uraraneida, related with minarets but not quite spiders but I can’t find how big they were.
bcwebb “with minarets”???
Sorry, it just evoked a vivd picture of Urarneida wandering around with a seletion of minarets upon it’s carapace.
@11 I would picture the capital of the great spider empire with its towering minarets.
Well, that was… a bit of a letdown..
One way of doing this -apart from a pure ‘reaction video’- might be to model your broadcasts on Brandon Tenold, in his “Brandon’s Cult Movie Reviews “, showing brief clips while commenting on the film.
(he is an olympic-grade sarcasm dispenser, so you might pick up clues to being a properly rude commenter as well).
The melting gunk at the end was obviously the tissue where the creature stored oxygen (the Earth’s atmosphere not having enough to support a creature without proper lungs).
-Just in: “Texas warns of tap water tainted with brain-eating microbe”.
This is material for a better horror film. And amoebic disease is microscopic, so you don’t need big rubber monsters.
Plot: Rednecks start behaving like violent zombies after drinking brain-eating tap water.
minarets are the spinarets on the spiders in red square.
They spew out the facebook threads that make up the webs of election interference.
Well….that was an interesting brain/finger fart.
Spell check may have contributed.
robro@8 I can guess where they’re going with that, but it seems likely to be part of its peripheral nervous system even if you stretch the definition a bit. Is my pinky part of my “mind”? If I could play the guitar, would that also be part of my “mind”?
It seems like the (IMHO) silly discussions about whether an ant or ant colony is a single organism. I mean we can try to understand how eusocial insects behavior, but the concept of “single organism” is a human invention and just a matter of naming.
A black hole did open up in Wisconsin, its named Scott Walker
Eusocial creepy-crawlies …( looks at footage from nazi rallies. Looks at footage from CPAC) . Interesting how the MAGA hats do not care that they might die if they follow the orange one. It is as if they were one big organism.
(yes, I know the real reason they go without masks is to ‘own’ the liberals. And gays. And SJWs And humans without penises)
Yes. More precisely, part of the physical substrate of yout mind. See Andy Clark Supersizing the Mind.
@20 I suppose, but to me it is all wordplay. Is a piano duet a mind meld? (Some would probably say so, and I am not really interested in having that debate.)
@18 It’s the gravitational force of all those ham sandwiches.