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Featured articles from Futurism highlighting today's trending content.
Interview with Paul Franklin, Director of 'The Escape'
What does an Academy Award winning visual effects specialist do at the culmination of 25 years of career successes and a prolific filmography? If you're the UK-born Paul J. Franklin, you set your certifiably keen eye on a new challenge and go after it full force.
By Futurism Staff7 years ago in Futurism
What is Heterochromia?
Perhaps you've seen someone with different color eyes, or skin with different color pigmentation; this is most likely a condition called Heterochromia. The term derives from the Ancient Greek words "heteros" which translates to different and "chromas" which translates to color. Heterochromia is simply a surplus or lack of melanin in one or more areas of the body. It isn't restricted to simply your eyeballs; it can occur in your hair, skin, nails and even your teeth.
By Sarah McDaniel7 years ago in Futurism
Oh Wait, It Is Rocket Science...
History has demonstrated that the space race was the first endeavor of man – other than war – to challenge our entire scope of scientific and technological capabilities. The crowning moment in this challenge was when Apollo 11 travelled 260,000 miles in space, landed two astronauts on the Moon and returned safely.
By Scott Snowden7 years ago in Futurism
Terence McKenna Unraveled Consciousness
An adamant critic of culture, Terence McKenna was a 20th century shaman that pioneered an in-depth analysis of one's consciousness and the lives we live. He birthed radical hypotheses about the development of the mind, posited "the stoned ape" hypothesis, and declared he had deciphered the nature of time using the I Ching. Mckenna held that individuality and social constructs were detrimental illusions to living a fulfilling life. He was called the "Timothy Leary of the 1990s," inspiring millions of people to question their reality.
By Stephanie Gladwell8 years ago in Futurism
Science Journalist Lee Billings On Life Beyond the Solar System
The history of science can be read as a series of brusque reality checks. Once, we imagined ourselves the center of a small and harmonious universe, gifted with a sun content to revolve placidly around the Earth. In time, however, our real estate was relegated from the center of everything to a hum-drum corner of an unimportant galaxy in a much bigger and more tumultuous universe. Upon closer inspection, our sun was revealed to be just another star, born from a nebula, fated for eventual collapse. At the same time, we came to understand the spark of life, transforming in the process from the mini-gods of a pedantic little empire into nothing more than a consequence of biological randomness.
By Claire Evans8 years ago in Futurism
Buried Screwball Facts About Nikola Tesla
Travel anywhere outside the United States and the name of Nikola Tesla is known. Ask the average person on an American sidewalk? They’re apt to recall the 80’s rock band. Or they’ll nod and mumble about Elon Musk’s motor company.
By Matt Cates8 years ago in Futurism
Woody Allen Sci-Fi Intellectual
“I believe there is something out there watching us. Unfortunately, it's the government.” - Woody Allen This dystopian flavored quote seems more in sync with Agent Fox Mulder of The X-Files or even whistleblowers Edward Snowden or Julian Assange of WikiLeaks. It wouldn’t routinely be attributed to one of America’s funniest comedians and creative film artists. Woody Allen is many things to many people. To Hollywood and the performing arts community, he’s a towering figure, but the Woodman as a sci-fi visionary? It’s indisputable how playful Allen can be with his movies, jokes, books and public persona, but on par with the clairvoyant visual musings and wondrous ideas of Rod Serling, Gene Roddenberry, Steven Spielberg or George Lucas? For his loyal fans, however, the notion he’s a science fiction aficionado, fantasist or futurist isn’t so far fetched.
By Will Stape8 years ago in Futurism
Li Tobler the Melancholy Muse of H.R. Giger
“It may be too simplistic to say that Li Tobler haunts Giger still… but there is no doubting that the simultaneous agony and joy of life with Li Tobler established the dynamic of fear and transcendence which is present in many of his paintings.” Li Tobler was the melancholic tragic muse of H.R. Giger. Her face haunts Giger’s depictions of ethereal women in many of his paintings, often peering forth from the torment of afterlife to a world beyond anything we’ve known. Shrouded in mystery, Li Tobler is Giger’s most familiar face, yet most unknown.
By Natasha Sydor8 years ago in Futurism
Morris Kline Interview
Morris Kline was a slender man, soft-spoken, polite, cultured. For most of his lifetime he was a mathematician, in pursuit of what Alfred North Whitehead called "a divine madness of the human spirit." Yet Kline did not display the madness so often paraded by his fellow mathematicians. He was a champion of common sense, but, as Lord Kelvin put it, "Mathematics is merely the etherealization of common sense." That connection eluded many of Kline's colleagues.
By Futurism Staff8 years ago in Futurism
Astronaut Gordon Cooper Interview
Which would you consider the greatest challenge: steering a racing car to victory? Piloting an experimental aircraft? Whirling in a centrifuge to find out your body's ultimate limits? Keeping in mind the hundreds of intricate details a spacecraft checkout requires while waiting to be hurled into orbit? Astronaut Gordon Cooper took all those challenges. And that was only the first career for a man who then put the future to work.
By Futurism Staff8 years ago in Futurism
E.O. Wilson Interview
The publication of E.O. Wilson's Sociobiology in 1975 was to use a cliché—a landmark event in the history of biology. This enormous volume (697 oversize pages) is a truly remarkable compendium of a vast, widely dispersed literature on the relationship between biology and social behavior throughout the animal kingdom. It ranges from Homo sapiens to the social insects (Wilson is by trade an entomologist; his speciality—he calls them his "totem animal"—is ants). He intended it to be a scientifically respectable, thorough review, so it is full of tables and charts and extensively referenced. On the other hand, it is well written and handsomely illustrated.
By Futurism Staff8 years ago in Futurism