Disney plans to release one Star Wars film a year starting in 2015

So everybody figured that Disney wouldn’t only make Star Wars VII. I mean the amount they paid for the franchise is absurd and they are definitely planning on getting their moneys worth. They just announced that every summer starting in 2015, a new Star Wars will be released. If you weren’t sure that Disney was going to ruin the franchise, you probably should be now. How much is too much? We’ll see.

These annual releases will include the other two movies in the new trilogy and several standalone films, which will focus on specific characters from the Star Wars franchise.

The main episodes — VIII and IX — will be released every other summer and a standalone movie will be released during the off years, film sites reported when the news broke during a CinemaCon session in Las Vegas. CinemaCon brings together movie theater owners.

J.J. Abrams, director of the latest Star Trek movies, will direct Star Wars: Episode VII, Disney and Lucasfilm announced on StarWars.com in January. Disney CEO Bob Iger confirmed the standalone films in February, adding that “They are not part of the overall saga.”

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To put it simply

Facebook hires a Pixar Illustrator to re-imagine the emoticon

 

Emoticons have been around ever since the world wide web became fairly prominent in our daily lives. There are thousands of different variations, designs, animals, really any type you can imagine. Facebook, however, thinks that they can do better. They recently hired famed Pixar illustrator Matt Jones to re-invent the emoticon all together.

“Facebook was canny enough to realize that traditional emoticons are quite bland,” says Jones. “At Pixar we consider emotional states every day with every drawing we make. Our work is informed by the years of study we do, constantly studying people’s gestures and expressions in real life.” (To be clear, it isn’t an official collaboration between Pixar and Facebook. Jones is working independently.)

Jones was studying facial expressions for his work on a new film by Pete Docter (director of Up and Monsters, Inc.), which takes place in the mind of a young girl coming of age. The film, referred to as The Untitled Pixar Movie That Takes You Inside the Mind, is set for release in June 2015. Pixar is famous for bringing to life inanimate, and even mundane, objects: lamps, cars, a hockey puck. This film required an extra level of emotional detail. A young girl’s mental state is a complicated thing.

Docter brought in psychologist Paul Ekman, a pioneer in the research of facial expressions, as a consultant on micro-emotions, the small mini expressions that happen between more major ones. (You may have heard of Ekman as John Cleese’s collaborator on the BBC series, The Human Face.) At the same time, Ekman’s protégé, Dacher Keltner, codirector of University of California-Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Program, was starting work with Facebook to improve their emoticons. When Keltner heard about the project at Pixar, he approached the company. That’s how he found Jones.

Keltner started off by giving Jones some of the classic universal emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise) to translate into emoticon-style drawings. He loved what he saw — and decided to up the ante. He handed over Charles Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, which Darwin published 13 years after On the Origin of Species. The book explores similarities between human and animal facial movements, in support of Darwin’s theory that humans and animals have a common ancestor. It became one of the seminal works on the facial emotive expressions.

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Wealth in America

Brazilian Bikini waxes are eradicating pubic lice

As I’m sure nobody wants that guy up there crawling around in their pants, recent studies have shown that not only does shaving/waxing your “downtown city center” prevent the little bastards from sticking with you, but because the trend of removing the carpet and “sticking with hardwood floors downstairs” is becoming more and more common, pubic lice are well on their way to becoming an endangered species. So there you go people, do it for science, and for everybody who is going to be visiting you down there as well.

Waning infestations of the bloodsuckers have been linked by doctors to pubic depilation, especially a technique popularized in the 1990s by a Manhattan salon run by seven Brazilian sisters. More than 80 percent of college students in the U.S. remove all or some of their pubic hair — part of a trend that’s increasing in western countries. In Australia, Sydney’s main sexual health clinic hasn’t seen a woman with pubic lice since 2008 and male cases have fallen 80 percent from about 100 a decade ago.

“It used to be extremely common; it’s now rarely seen,” said Basil Donovan, head of sexual health at the University of New South Wales’s Kirby Institute and a physician at the Sydney Sexual Health Centre. “Without doubt, it’s better grooming.”

The trend suggests an alternative way of stemming one of the globe’s most contagious sexually transmitted infections. Pubic lice are usually treated with topical insecticides, which once included toxic ones developed before and during World War 2. While they aren’t known to spread disease, itchy skin reactions and subsequent infections make pubic lice a hazardous pest.

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Target announces that they’ll price match Amazon year-round

Amazon has been a huge thorn in the side of most brick and mortar retail stores by way of cheaper prices, quick shipping, and a wider variety than any physical store could ever hope to carry. Now a lot of stores have given up competing with the online giant but not Target. Target had the balls to announce they would match Amazon prices for the entire year, as well as most of their other competitors.

The extended policy will also apply to competitors other than the internet retailer, of course, but Amazon has become the main threat when it comes to “showrooming,” a process where consumers visit physical stores to get a quick peek at products before ultimately placing an order online. Target also plans to match rates from Walmart, Best Buy, and Toys R Us if customers should find the same item priced lower there. You might expect that attempting to keep parity with Amazon’s basement pricing would wreak havoc on Target’s financials, but the company says that relatively few customers take advantage of the policy to begin with. Rather, it’s a move intended to bolster the company’s sagging retail performance.

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What a great day for Boehner (in terms of “how many in his own party now hate him” growth)

One more reason dogs are better than cats; they can drive cars. Seriously, there’s video.

Two stray dogs in New Zealand went through an extensive 5-week training program where they learned how to shift and steer a car. This is real life. They started out on little “doggie go-karts” then upgraded to modified Mini Coopers.

For the four-legged competitors, two months of hard work – and a fair few treats – ensured they were raring to get on the racetrack. So when the big day rolled around, the only ones likely to get hot under the collar were any bystanders who spotted a Mini hurtling towards them with a dog at the wheel. Two mutts made history yesterday by driving a car down a racetrack. Ten-month-old beardie cross Porter put his paws to the pedals first, steering the Mini down the straight and then turning a corner.

He was followed by Monty, an 18-month-old giant schnauzer cross, who completed the same feat. As the Mail reported last week, the pair – along with one-year-old beardie whippet cross Ginny – had been taking driving lessons, which began with them learning to steer a wooden cart pulled along on a string by their trainers.

In just eight weeks, they progressed to driving a real car – a modified Mini in which they sat on their haunches in the driver’s seat. Their front paws were on the steering wheel, while their back paws were on levers attached to the accelerator and the brake.

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What do you get for working at LEGO for 25 years? A golden LEGO brick

This golden LEGO has a value of $14,000 and any LEGO employee who lasts 25 years at the company gets one. I wonder if it would fit a regular plastic brick though, that’s the real question.

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Swedish toy catalogue rips apart gender stereotypes and makes people ask why everybody doesn’t do this.

Recently making the rounds in the news and on blogs is this year’s Christmas toy catalog from Swedish Toys R Us licensee Toy-Toy Group. Unlike every other toy catalog, the Toy-Toy catalog doesn’t conform to rigid gender stereotypes about what boys like and what girls like, instead showing boys having fun with kitchen playsets and girls having fun with toy guns. I know, it’s pretty shocking stuff, girls wanting to play with toy cars. Gasp!

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