Hulleye Comes By!

Since the beginning of time, people have created myths to explain things that we can not understand. Modern psychology now explains a phenomenon where our brain will even create its own images, theories and even memories to fill in blanks and complete a ’story’ in our mind.

There is a scene in the Wizard of Oz (when Dorothy and Scarecrow meet the Tin Man in the apple woods just before they all set off towards the emerald city) whereby a shadow is seen below one of the trees. Myth holds that a munchkin committed suicide on set and the original filming captured this. MGM have always maintained the shadow seen in the frame was a bird. Over time, the quality of the film had deteriorated such that the shadow is no longer visible on most dvd/vhs copies sold in the past few decades.

However, the legend of the munchkin suicide has persisted, most recently highlighted by Irvine Welsh in a play called Babylon Heights which tells the ’story’ of the dwarves who played the munchkins - it follows the main story of unrequited love but also the victimisation the dwarves felt at the hands of the remaining crew. The play is very much in the theme of Gregory Maguire’s Wicked which retells the story of the witches in the movie.

The munchkins were dwarves recruited from various worldwide casting agencies but Judy garland herself was reported to have said the small stature actors were billeted away from the rest of the cast due to their indulgences in “sex orgies, drunken behaviour and general dwarf debauchery.” Despite this, it is generally accepted that the myth was exactly that, a myth. Possibly the cast in their mystification of the dwarves created the myth. Logically any suicide would surely have been spoken of by other crew members. Rumour has it, CSI might make a visit to archives to uncover the story. Then again, rumour has it the whole hype was resurrected to coincide with the 50^th anniversary video release of the movie in 1989.

Next week sees the general re-release of the Wizard of Oz in its restored format. Each frame has been “cleaned” pretty much as one would take a layer of varnish off a master. Only people who saw the original cinematic release in 1939 will have seen the film as intended by the director, in all its colourful glory. As for the shadow scene… yes you can see it much more clearly but it does look more like a bird, a plane or even a UFO! Not a hanging munchkin…

I’ve just come back from a special screening and as someone who has seen this film more times than I can possibly count, I guarantee you, that until you have seen this version, you have not seen The Wizard of Oz.

view the so called scene - watch the middle of the screen and look into the woods. please comment - and if you see the re-release, do let me know what you thought!!

i love the wizard of oz :)

A Polish exchange student spent six months with a fundamentalist Christian family in the US and didn’t have such a good time.

“When I got out of the plane in Greensboro in the US state of North Carolina, I would never have expected my host family to welcome me at the airport, wielding a Bible, and saying, ‘Child, our Lord sent you half-way around the world to bring you to us.’ At that moment I just wanted to turn round and run back to the plane.

Things began to go wrong as soon as I arrived in my new home in Winston-Salem, where I was to spend my year abroad. For example, every Monday my host family would gather around the kitchen table to talk about sex. My host parents hadn’t had sex for the last 17 years because — so they told me — they were devoting their lives to God. They also wanted to know whether I drank alcohol. I admitted that I liked beer and wine. They told me I had the devil in my heart.

 Keep reading. It gets better.

Also known as ferroelectric ice. From Physorg:

Various forms of ice have been found in many locations within the frigid reaches of our galaxy, from interstellar clouds to comets, moons, and planets. But a particularly intriguing and rare type, “ferroelectric” ice – ice crystallized so perfectly that it can sustain a giant electric field – has never been detected by astronomers.

A recent study, however, has produced evidence that ferroelectric ice, also known as ice XI, likely does exist out there. Performed by a team of scientists from the U.S. and Japan, the study revealed a very narrow range of temperatures in which “normal” ice can transform into ice XI in nature. The research was led by Hiroshi Fukazawa, a scientist at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency.

Normal ice, which forms all natural snow and ice on Earth, is known to scientists as “ice Ih,” where the ‘h’ stands for hexagonal, the shape of the molecular crystal. In ice Ih, the bonds between the hydrogen and oxygen atoms are oriented randomly, resulting in a crystal that looks fairly messy. At very low temperatures, however, the bonds begin to line up and point in the same direction; high pressure enhances this ordering effect. As a result, the tiny electric fields naturally carried by each water molecule add up to produce one large field…

The United States is one of the few countries in the world whose currency isn’t distinguishable by blind people. Most other nations use raised text, different-sized bills, or other methods to assist blind people in spending their money. If a recent decision by a federal court in D.C. survives appeal, however, that will soon change. Under Sec. 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, federal programs cannot deny ‘meaningful access’ to people with disabilities. Because blind people are unable to distinguish U.S. currency without assistance, the court held that they are denied meaningful access to their own money. U.S. District Judge James Robertson ordered the Treasury Department to come up with ways for the blind to tell bills apart. He said he wouldn’t tell officials how to fix the problem, but he ordered them to begin working on it.”

via /.

The first five episodes of Arrested Development are now streaming for free on MSN.com, with the rest of the series being added over the next 12 months. I highly recommend watching it.  Tost gave it to me as a wedding present. One of the best gifts I got.

A blind man suffering déjà vu. It sounds like a contradiction in terms – but the first case study of its kind has turned the whole theory of déjà vu on its head. Traditionally it was thought images from one eye were delayed, arriving in the brain microseconds after images from the other eye – causing a sensation that something was being seen for the second time. But University of Leeds researchers report for the first time the case of a blind person experiencing déjà vu through smell, hearing and touch.

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a long time ago i mentioned space elevators. i guess they’re back in the news. unfortunately though, the reason is humans might not survive space-elevator travel thanks to the whopping dose of ionising radiation they would receive travelling through the core of the Van Allen radiation belts around Earth. the first floor might just prove a bit too deadly.

They would die on the way through the radiation belts if they were unshielded,” says Anders Jorgensen, author of a new study on the subject and a technical staff member at Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, US.

Space elevators had been planned to be anchored on an ocean platform near the equator, with the other end tied to a counterweight in space.

At the equator, the most dangerous part of the radiation belts extends from about 1000 to 20,000 kilometres in altitude. The region did not hurt the Apollo astronauts in the 1960s and 1970s because their rockets delivered them swiftly through it.

For a space elevator travelling at the current proposed speed of 200 kilometres per hour, however, passengers might spend half a week in the belts. That would hit them with 200 times the radiation experienced by the Apollo astronauts.