“You will die in seven days.” A strange, disturbing video is carrying a curse. Whoever sees it receives a phone call and seven days later, the viewer dies a horrible death. When Katie Embry (Amber Tamblyn) dies, her aunt Rachel (Naomi Watts) begins investigating the rumors of the tape. When she watches it, a countdown begins as she must find the mystery behind the girl (Daveigh Chase) in the tape and stop the cycle. When Rachel’s son Aidan (David Dorfman) accidentally watches the tape, Rachel must solve the mystery of Samara and where the deadly tape originated.

Directed by Gore Verbinski, The Ring is a remake of the 1998 horror film Ringu which is an adaption of Koji Suzuki’s 1991 novel. The movie was relatively well received and was a blockbuster at the box-office by tapping into the PG-13 horror market. The movie started a big chain of Japanese imports and remakes.

I love a good horror movie, but as an adult, horror movies sometimes struggle to scare. There is something to be said about The Ring which manages to bring scares, a compelling story, and a great cast to a PG-13 film.

The Ring does a good job of scaring without showing much. It plays on the idea of the Bloody Mary type of legend. If you see the video, you’re dead, but the temptation to see the video is also great. With that as a basis, the movie is able to freak out viewers by making them watch this cursed video within the movie. It is all made up, but it plans this hint of doubt in their mind that they are along with Naomi Watts’ character for the ride. She has to solve the mystery of the video to save the viewers.

The Ring also is benefited by strong acting. It gets two good child actors in David Dorfman as the somewhat psychic Aidan, and Daveigh Chase as the creepy Samara that the smart script makes parallels between. Naomi Watts just off of her breakout role in David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. turned an easy role into a much better role and really did a nice job as the mother fighting for her life and her son’s life…which leads to a difficult choice for her character at the rather open ending.

Gore Verbinski does a great job with the visuals in the movie. First he had to recreate a video that was half-way creepy, and he did it with a lot of style. I know that you are supposed to like the original more than the remake, but having seen both Ringu and The Ring, I actually kind of enjoyed The Ring more. The movie is just faster paced and better constructed.

The Ring is a creepy movie. It is scary and full of jumps. It manages to do this while keeping it PG-13. This shows the power of film and how something can be scary without being gory. Unfortunately in the modern market, this wasn’t enough and The Ring was followed by the disappointing The Ring Two in 2005.

A (Arthur) Bertram Chandler is a name that has pretty much disappeared from contemporary SF history, although in the 1950’s and 60’s he was an extremely popular author. Baen Books have recently begun to release his John Grimes novels in omnibus editions, although his most famous stories are those from The Rim World.

The Rim of Space is the first of these. Admittedly rather short, they are great fun, if a little dated.

The stories are very much based on a life at sea, (not too surprisingly, as Chandler’s own background was that of a seaman), and cover the issues caused by long distance travel, the loneliness of the seaman space-traveller, the monotony of the different ports relieved only by the fleeting relationships he (or she) has from port to port.

If all of this sounds a little like ‘the Titanic in space’, to some extent you’d be right: Derek Calver, recently disembarked from the Galactic equivalent of the UK Royal Navy, ups and joins the rather less rigid Rim Runners, a space version of the UK Merchant Navy, looking for adventure. Here, as part of the crew of the Lorn Lady, Calver finds himself one of a ragtag bunch. Captain Engels is an old Spacer, as creaky as his spaceship. There’s also Levine, a Psionic Radio officer; Arlen, the only woman on the ship, a rather remote personality; Bendix the Interstellar Drive Engineer; Renault, the Rocket King; Brentano in charge of Electronic Radio; Maclean the Purser; and Old Doc Malone, the Bones of the operation.

Once the key characters are set up (admittedly rather sketchily on the most part) the book focuses on two of them. It’s not long before we find Calver quickly involved with ‘Calamity Jane’ Arlen and saving her from a hostage situation on the planet Tharn. Calver himself is held as a hostage by spies determined to work against the Federation on Grollor and also involved in a dalliance with espionage operative Sonya Verrill. He then meets lizard-like dinosaur aliens with a liking of tea on Stree to then endure a hurricane whilst having repairs on the marine planet of Mellise. Finally, the Lorn Lady and its crew have a challenge saving the spaceliner Thermopylae off the planet Eblis out on the Rim. It’s all good pulp stuff, and all rather 1950’s British Colonial, in its quaintly old-fashioned manner.

On the not so good front, the reader should be warned that the book has typical 1950’s values towards women, although not as explicit as some books of that time. There are times when the only female of the crew goes off to make coffee and sandwiches for the rest of the crew on the bridge. There’s even a bit of slapping going on – nothing sexual, but some rather unfortunate rough handling of the female natives and the odd slap to and from women. (I‘m not condoning this, btw, but it would be wrong of me not to point it out.) These are rather typical of 1950’s & 60’s SF, but some readers may find such stereotypes rather irritating.

Whilst the general plot is typical pulp, as ever on these things, though, it’s the comments along the way that fill out this tale. There’s death, exciting adventure and a fair degree of contemplation over the result of bringing trinkets to natives, nearly a decade before the evolution of Star Trek’s Prime Directive. Life out on the edge of the galaxy, at the Rim, is quite odd and the crew’s encounter with a ‘Rim Ghost’ is quite memorable, suggesting that life out on the Rim may be subject to alternate variations – a theme Chandler was to return to in later stories.

This was a book that rose above its rather low expectations. Expecting fast-paced, low quality pulp fiction, I was surprised how contemplative and well thought out the book was. It’s a great read, which, although typically 1950’s pulp and thus unlikely to blaze a trail through SF fiction, is entertaining enough to hold interest and make me want me to read more. Surprisingly reminiscent of early Poul Anderson for its literacy and often melancholic mood, this is an old gem that’s worth a read.

Cambie Street is a street in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It is named for Henry John Cambie, chief surveyor of the Canadian Pacific Railway’s western division (as is Cambie Road, a major thoroughfare in nearby Richmond).

There are two distinct sections of the street. North of False Creek, the street runs on a northeast-southwest alignment (following the rotated street grid within Downtown Vancouver). As such, the street direction is approximately 45 degrees to that of the Cambie Bridge, and there is no seamless connection between the two. Instead, Nelson Street carries southbound traffic onto the bridge, and Smithe Street carries northbound traffic away from the bridge. The downtown section of Cambie Street runs from Water Street in Gastown in the north to Pacific Boulevard in Yaletown in the south and is a two-way street for its length.

South of False Creek, the street is a major six-lane arterial road, and runs as a two-way north-south thoroughfare according to the street grid for the rest of Vancouver. This section of the street was originally named Bridge Street, and was first connected to Cambie Street after the first Cambie Bridge opened in 1891; it was renamed Cambie Street after the second Cambie Bridge opened in 1912.

Between King Edward Avenue West and Southwest Marine Drive, the street has a 10 metre wide boulevard with grass and many well established trees on it; the boulevard was designated as a heritage landscape by the city of Vancouver in 1993.

When proposals to build SkyTrain’s Canada Line (formerly known as the Richmond-Airport-Vancouver or RAV Line) along Cambie Street first emerged, they were heavily protested by residents and business owners who wanted to keep the street as a heritage boulevard. They argued in favour of using the existing Arbutus Street rail corridor instead.

Once the decision was made to use the Cambie alignment for the Canada Line anyway, residents along the corridor successfully persuaded authorities to put the rail line in a tunnel instead of running it as a surface route, and to dig the tunnel using a tunnel boring machine. However, due to cost concerns and time constraints, the winning bidder decided to use a cut-and-cover method to build the tunnel – which required disruption to traffic and business along the corridor during the construction. As such, even though it cost less and was much faster than using a tunnel boring machine, the plan drew heavy criticism from area residents and businesses.

During 2006 to 2009, portions of the street south of False Creek were closed to traffic to allow for construction of the line. The cut-and-cover tunnel runs underneath the east side of the street for most of its route. South of West 63rd Avenue, the line emerges from the tunnel and runs on an elevated structure across the Fraser River.

Gregor Robertson, who later became the mayor of Vancouver, was a strong supporter of Cambie Street merchants and spoke regularly about hardships from the Canada Line construction. He called the handling of the rail line construction an “injustice.”

On March 23, 2009, Robertson testified in a lawsuit brought by Cambie Street merchant Susan Heyes, owner of Hazel & Co., in the B.C. Supreme Court regarding damage to her business from the construction, a lawsuit for which she was awarded $600,000 by the B.C. Supreme Court due in part to the fact that there was insufficient action to mitigate the effects of Canada Line construction on Cambie Street merchants. The award for damages was later reversed at the British Columbia Court of Appeal, which determined that while the project had resulted in a legal nuisance to the claimant, the government had acted within its authority and was therefore not liable for damages. Leave for further appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada was subsequently denied. On the Canada Line’s opening day of August 17, 2009, Robertson said Greater Vancouver needed more rapid transit but the Canada Line was a “great start” and that he was a “Johnny-come-lately” to the project.

At about the same time as Capcom decided to release one of the worst Megaman games ever made they also graced us with one of the finest. Megaman Zero 2 stands as more then just an excellent game, it has knocked off Megaman 3 as my all-time favorite game among the Blue Bombers’ series. It takes everything that made the first one great and – get this – actually adds a whole new host of gameplay elements to a series instead of doing nothing but adding new bosses. Might even be a first for the lineage considering how much cool stuff got added and traditional ways got altered.

Weapon absorption through bosses has returned, but now it actually takes memorization and skill to obtain them. Instead of the typical method of merely beating the boss to acquire new weaponry you now have to score an A ranking on the stage in order to gain access, no easy feat by any means. Certainly don’t expect to beat a stage and then come back later to get good at it, as once a stage is done your rank is stuck and the boss doesn’t reappear. Thankfully, the weapons are completely optional and you still get element powers from destroying bosses no matter what, and now you can also earn new suits that boost your attributes in different ways or give you special powers. Finally, the Triple Rod from the first game has been removed in favor of the far cooler Chain Rod, which works as a grappling hook and can yank enemies and blocks around.

These are the tools you’ll need to survive the levels, most of which are fairly straightforward affairs but each is pulled off beautifully in most every way. Every one is distinct and unique from the previous, even if the enemy listing gets recycled a bit too much. From atop a speeding train to leaping amongst flying ships, they certainly give no sense of repetitious locales. For the most part the music keeps up equally striking, as while a few stages have tunes that seem pulled from a library of generic incarnate a number of them have inspired melodies that best any I’ve heard from Megaman games in years. I actually found myself humming along, something I haven’t done since the days of the NES games.

Missions rarely stray from traveling from Point A to boss, but distractions are numerous and welcome. Mid-bosses are now common and mark a restart point and sometimes they’ll give you a new objective for part of the travel like protecting someone (surprisingly fun!) or finding lost soldiers, none of which are too difficult and often requires a bit of poking around. Searching can often turn up much of the hidden items as well, especially if collecting all the Cyber-Elves is a priority as many are placed in locations that can only be accessed with a high risk of death and a keen eye. The Cyber-Elves are still there to provide extra services like automatically providing an A rank for the stage or cutting down a boss’ lifebar, but they can only be used once and then they’re gone. They can definitely be helpful for some of the stages but I often never even equipped them, let alone used any.

The difficulty has been toned down a bit from Megaman Zero, as continues are no longer limited and the level design is much more solid and elegant. I can only think of one level that delivers cheap shots but, like the rest of the game, it can be overcome through planning and memorization. It just happens to be very painful learning how to make it work right. On the flip side the bosses are still tough and relentless, throwing patterns and attacks that will kill Zero in only a couple of hits and yet that creates a damn good sense of accomplishment after beating some of them. I can think of more then once when I began verbally spouting off, “Yeah! What now?!” after toppling some boss that had all but laughed at my attempts to stop it. Granted, now some people think I’m crazy for talking to videogames, but that’s a small price for getting to tell off a robot master.

Really, is there anything this game doesn’t do well? The Chain Rod can be difficult to handle at times, the translation is less then stellar with spelling mistakes here and there (“form” instead of “from,” “devise” instead of “device”), and the game is built on memorization and repetition, but aside from the bad English those aren’t necessarily detractions in my eyes. For something so clean, stylish, and graceful, I can’t help but love it. It may not have a few things Megaman 3 did (most notably Protoman’s theme music) but in pure gameplay it oozes excellence that helps push the entire family of Megaman games in the direction its been needing for years. Go, play this, and pretend Megaman X7 doesn’t exist.

We really like this retro futuristic style so couldn’t wait to post these nice images with this outstanding way. We can see either how they have the round, circular and organic shapes defining a big part of the futurist style that is replete of this type of lines. Dare to apply this kind of style in your interiors they will be completely renovated by other way to see the world!

Bernie Sanders has burned himself into the hearts and minds of young, idealistic Americans across the country and as his poll numbers indicate, his message of a more economically balanced nation waiting in the wings just a vote away is resonating with a lot of people.

In order to further his cause, Bernie describes himself as a democratic socialist and many young, naive people who don’t really understand what a socialist is, believe him. But he is not a socialist.

Bernie Sanders is a lie. He’s a fraud. Or, he’s a coward. Or all of the above. But make no mistake about it, he’s no better than Hillary Clinton because he will do and say whatever he has to in order to serve the masters of the universe just like she does. And his “revolution” is as much of a sham as Ron Paul’s used to be.

All you have to do is look back at Libya and research Bernie’s role in the illegal, immoral operation and you will see what Bernie Sanders really is. Then go to the polls and look for “none of the above”

Socialists do not call for the neoliberal regime change of other extremely popular socialist leaders like Muammar Gaddafi was and they certainly don’t call them “a terrible dictator” , “a thug and murderer ” or co-sponsor legislation in the senate to have them removed from power.

“Look, everybody understands Gaddafi is a thug and murderer,” Sanders said to Fox News. “We want to see him go, but I think in the midst of two wars (in Iraq and Afghanistan), I’m not quite sure we need a third war, and I hope the president tells us that our troops will be leaving there, that our military action in Libya will be ending very, very shortly.” Politifact

For all the blather coming from Bernie about how we are being taken advantage of by Big Banking and finance, he pales in comparison to a real socialist leader. Even his dreams and his goals fall short of the achievements Gaddafi made real during his lifetime.

• In Libya a home is considered a natural human right – a home owned by the resident, not a bank.
• Education and medical treatment were all free
• Gaddafi carried out the world’s largest irrigation project
• It was free to start a farming business
• A bursary was given to mothers with newborn babies
• Electricity was free
• Cheap petrol
• Gaddafi raised the level of education
• Libya had It’s own state bank – Libya had its own State bank, which provided loans to citizens at zero percent interest by law and they had no external debt
• The gold dinar

Here is part of the Senate resolution co-written by the ‘socialist’ Bernie Sanders:

(7) urges the United Nations Security Council to take such further action as may be necessary to protect civilians in Libya from attack, including the possible imposition of a no-fly zone over Libyan territory;
(11) welcomes the outreach that has begun by the United States Government to Libyan opposition figures and supports an orderly, irreversible transition to a legitimate democratic government in Libya.

So not only did Bernie Sanders support the brutal “no fly zone” imposition that ended up killing thousands of Libyan civilians, but he also supported the use of regime change terrorists, the so-called “Libyan opposition”, that Obama and Clinton used to first destabilize the country, then to wreck it.

Repeatedly in this document and in subsequent interviews in the media, Bernie Sanders referred to Gaddafi as a “dictator” and the government in Libya as one that lacked any form of democratic legitimacy. These are both 100% lies.

Gaddafi was not a dictator. He held a largely ceremonial position as leader of the revolution.

The changes in Libyan leadership since 1976 culminated in March 1979, when the GPC declared that the “vesting of power in the masses” and the “separation of the state from the revolution” were complete. Gaddafi relinquished his duties as general secretary of the GPC, being known thereafter as “the leader” or “Leader of the Revolution.” Wiki

The government of Libya under Gaddafi, the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, was a direct democracy and was comprised of three levels of leadership:

• Basic People’s Congress
• District Congress
• General People’s Congress

The People’s Hall where the General People’s Congress met, was burned as a result of Hillary Clinton’s invasion and regime change in 2011.

Muammar Gaddafi enjoyed the support of 90+% of the people in his country and even the MSM here in the states had to reluctantly admit that as Hillary’s bombs were dropping on those people.

And yet, Bernie continued to lie about what he was and the kind of government Libya had. And that behavior hasn’t changed. He recently supported Obama’s terrorist campaign in Syria, said we should support Saudi Arabia militarily (a REAL dictatorship) and even said “the world must stand up to Putin” echoing the Obama administration’s propaganda against Russia. He’s still doing the same thing now that he was back in 2011.

With regards to Libya, Bernie never mentions the fact that so many corporations here in the states and in France wanted what the Libyans had. He never mentions the fact that the masters of the universe wanted that Libyan Central Bank for themselves. He never mentions the fact that Gaddafi was going to use the Gold Dinar to essentially kick our imperialist asses out of the whole of Africa and empower, truly empower, the small nations of the continent to stand united against our influence and that of the World Bank and the IMF.

Our “socialist” hero never mentioned any of that. Instead, he lied about Gaddafi being a “dictator” and a “thug” while he petitioned the UNSC to bomb Libya into submission and patted Obama on the back for sending in our Takfari terrorists, calling them “opposition” members.

Recently, Bernie called out Clinton during a debate about being so willing to force regime change on other countries with military force.

“I think — and I say this with due respect — that I worry too much that Secretary Clinton is too much into regime change and a little bit too aggressive without knowing what the unintended consequences might be… So I think, yeah, regime change is easy, getting rid of dictators is easy. But before you do that, you’ve got to think about what happens the day after.” Bernie Sanders

I’m sure this went over quite well with Bernie’s uninformed following.I’m sure they squealed in delight when he said it, thinking it means something other what what he said.

If you read it, he’s not saying Hillary illegally forced a regime change on nations in service to the masters of the universe but rather, that she didn’t PROPERLY PLAN the aftermath. Is he saying this to appeal to young people who aren’t really listening and to those same masters Hillary serves suggesting he could do it better? Draw your own conclusions.

Some might say in his defense that he didn’t know all of this when he backed Hillary’s move in Libya. Well, it’s his job to know, especially before co-sponsoring that piece of legislation or calling Gaddafi what he did back in 2011 as Killary was gearing up for a bombing campaign in Libya.

Some might say he was doing what he had to in order to remain in office, since we all know what happens to legitimate leftists and anti-imperialist congress people and senators in this country. Just ask Cynthia McKinney or Paul Wellstone about that.

For that matter, just ask Gaddafi, JFK or Martin Luther King Jr. what happens to left leaning leaders in this world when they go too far. You can toss in Mohammad Mosaddegh and Salvador Allende for good measure as well if you like.

Or how about Eugene Debs? He ran for president as a real socialist five times. The last time, from his prison cell where he was detained for sedition.

Bernie Sanders will never confront Clinton on the subject matter that she should be confronted on. The email server scandal is proof of that as are his milk-toast attacks on her regime change operations. He wont mention the donations to the Clinton Foundation from a Ukrainian oligarch just prior to her beginning a regime change operation in Ukraine. And he wont mention all that missing money from the Haiti relief fund or the dictatorship she set up in that country since the disaster.

In short…

“I want to thank Bernie for bringing in so many young people to the democratic primaries…” Hillary Clinton, during the last presidential debate.

“On our worst days, (Hillary and I) are better than the republican candidates everyday” Bernie Sanders, during the last presidential debate.

Bernie Sanders is not running a campaign to be president. He is serving as a sheep dog, directing all those young, idealistic, disenfranchised American voters back to the warm embrace of the Democratic Party on behalf of Hillary Clinton.

That’s why he doesn’t attack her on the issues that she is the weakest. That’s why he deliberately avoids going for the jugular.

Just like he did back in 2011 when warmonger Clinton was making ready to regime change a truly socialist and very successful and popular government in Libya, Bernie Sanders is dutifully playing a role in support of our imperialist agenda.

That’s not a socialist. What he is, is shameful. He’s a carnival barker and nothing more. He’s just one more one dimensional character in the freak-show that is the 2016 Presidential Election and when the circus comes to town down here in Florida, I’m voting “none of the above” because in this case, the least worst candidate is as empty and soulless as all the rest. And that’s a fact.