Takamoto, who died on Monday at the age of 81, enjoyed a six-decade-long animation career, first with Disney and then with Hanna-Barbera, creating characters such as Astro, the dog on The Jetsons, and Muttley and Penelope Pitstop from The Wacky Races. He will almost certainly be best remembered, however, for Scooby-Doo, the cowardly dog detective who always finds his courage when a snack is in the offing.
When he was assembling ideas for the character, Takamoto talked to a dog breeder on the Warner Brothers lot and learnt all about the straight back, straight legs, small chin and other features of a great Dane. He then proceeded to ignore every one of these. “I decided to go the opposite and gave him a hump back, bowed legs, big chin and such,” he said. “Even his colour is wrong.”
Ah, Penelope Pitstop and the Ant Hill Mob…remember them?
Dubbed “style-free and fashion deprived,” Britney Spears and Paris Hilton tied for the No. 1 spot on Mr. Blackwell’s 47th annual “Worst Dressed” list released Tuesday.
“Two peas in an overexposed pod,” Blackwell said of the skimpy attire worn by the two celebutantes he called the “Screamgirls.”
Hmm. Shouldn’t their award be for “Least-dressed”?
Other notables on this year’s list include Camilla Parker-Bowles, Lindsay Lohan, Paula Abdul, and Sharon Stone, who was described as “an over-the-hill Cruella Deville”.
Cal Ripken was the ironman who played in 2,632 consecutive games, Tony Gwynn was the hitting machine who won eight batting titles, and yesterday both were elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in near-unanimous votes. But their achievements were overshadowed by the voters’ rejection of Mark McGwire, a slugger who seemed like a modern-day Paul Bunyan before he fell into disrepute because of suspected steroid use.
McGwire’s name was included on just 128 of the 545 ballots cast by baseball writers who took part in the voting, a 23.5 percent showing that fell far short of the 75 percent needed for induction. Because this was McGwire’s initial appearance on the ballot, the vote was viewed as one of the first verdicts to be handed down on baseball’s troubled steroids era, a period that began in the early 1990s and apparently continued unabated until recent seasons.
Providing the best evidence yet for an asteroid belt in another solar system, new measurements pinpoint the location of such a disk of warm dust surrounding the star Zeta Leporis. The dust lies about the same distance from Zeta Leporis as the solar system’s asteroid belt lies from our sun.
Air pollution has killed 3,600 people in just a month in the Iranian capital Tehran, an official said Tuesday, describing the city’s environmental situation as a “collective suicide”. “Pollution has directly or indirectly caused the deaths of 3,600 people in the month of Aban (October 23 to November 23),” said Mohammad Hadi Heydarzadeh, director of Tehran’s clean air committee. He said that the deaths were caused by heart attacks brought on by the air pollution and that the smog was responsible for 80 percent of the fatal heart problems that month in Tehran, one of the world’s most polluted cities.
Britain is considering plans for its own moon shot, based on plans submitted to the body that funds British space exploration. The first, if approved, could be launched by 2010. The first potential mission, “Moonlight”, would see four meter (yard)-long darts fired two meters deep into the moon’s surface from an orbiting probe, giving scientists information about the possibility of “moonquakes” and other data about the moon’s center.
Spaceweather PHONE is an astronomy alert service from the creators of Spaceweather.com. Sign up for our service –for yourself or as a gift for someone else– and we’ll phone you when things are happening in the sky.
When auroras appear over your hometown, your phone will ring. When the space station is about to fly over your back yard, your phone will ring. When planets align … you get the idea. The voice you hear will be Dr. Tony Phillips telling you what to look for and when.
Each phone call comes with a simultaneous email message, so if you miss part of your call or can’t remember the details–just check your email for the full story!
“Vietnam presumably taught us that the United States could not serve as the world’s policeman; it should also have taught us the dangers of trying to be the world’s midwife to democracy when the birth is scheduled to take place under conditions of guerrilla war,” – Jeane Kirkpatrick. Commentary, 1979.”
So fellow Bootribbers, ahead of tonight,- bet you’ve got pop corn ready- the Dear decider-in-chief’s speech, you may be wondering where will Bush get those 21,500 troops for his escalation last try for victory in Iraq?
“Already, a U.S. Army infantry battalion fighting in a critical area of eastern Afghanistan is “due to be withdrawn within weeks in order to deploy to Iraq.
According to Army Brig. Gen. Anthony J. Tata and other senior U.S. commanders here, that will happen just as the Taliban is expected to unleash a major campaign to cut the vital road between Kabul and Kandahar. The official said the Taliban intend to seize Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-largest city and the place where the group was organized in the 1990s.”
And Glenn Greenwald notes Michael Ledeen in National Review confirming:
‘[t]hat an increase in embeds doesn’t necessarily require an increase in overall troop strength.’
“We’ve got lots of soldiers sitting on megabases all over Iraq. They should be out and about, some of them embedded, others just moving around, tracking the terrorists, hunting them down. I don’t know how many guys and gals are sitting in air-conditioned quarters and drinking designer coffee, but it’s a substantial number. Enough of that.
Since the troops are so well off why is Michael Ledeen and his neo-con cohorts not in Iraq doing chores?
The creator of Scooby Doo died: UK Independent
Ah, Penelope Pitstop and the Ant Hill Mob…remember them?
or just no taste? Yahoo
Hmm. Shouldn’t their award be for “Least-dressed”?
Other notables on this year’s list include Camilla Parker-Bowles, Lindsay Lohan, Paula Abdul, and Sharon Stone, who was described as “an over-the-hill Cruella Deville”.
for employment discrimination: bbc
(can you tell I’m sick of the “sell the surge tonight” news crap?)
Hall of Fame reject: NYT
Providing the best evidence yet for an asteroid belt in another solar system, new measurements pinpoint the location of such a disk of warm dust surrounding the star Zeta Leporis. The dust lies about the same distance from Zeta Leporis as the solar system’s asteroid belt lies from our sun.
Air pollution has killed 3,600 people in just a month in the Iranian capital Tehran, an official said Tuesday, describing the city’s environmental situation as a “collective suicide”. “Pollution has directly or indirectly caused the deaths of 3,600 people in the month of Aban (October 23 to November 23),” said Mohammad Hadi Heydarzadeh, director of Tehran’s clean air committee. He said that the deaths were caused by heart attacks brought on by the air pollution and that the smog was responsible for 80 percent of the fatal heart problems that month in Tehran, one of the world’s most polluted cities.
Britain is considering plans for its own moon shot, based on plans submitted to the body that funds British space exploration. The first, if approved, could be launched by 2010. The first potential mission, “Moonlight”, would see four meter (yard)-long darts fired two meters deep into the moon’s surface from an orbiting probe, giving scientists information about the possibility of “moonquakes” and other data about the moon’s center.
Here’s the climate change political roundup:
Japanese Finance Minister Koji Omi called Monday for a new system to manage the global environment that went beyond the Kyoto Protocol and included the United States, China and India. He said that the Kyoto Protocol covered only about 30 percent of the world’s total current carbon emissions and that the ratio was projected to decline further as emissions from developing countries increased. While the European Commission has unveiled a new energy strategy, calling on member states to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by at least 20% by 2020, the chief economist of US car firm Chrysler joins ExxonMobil as a corporate dinosaur, attacking the “quasi-hysterical” European attitude to global warming and belying the green façade the firm is presenting this week at the Detroit Motor Show. And in a quiet first yesterday, the first news release out of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under Bush has said unequivocally that a buildup of greenhouse gases is helping warm the climate, in a story noting that 2006 was the warmest year ever recorded in the contiguous 48 US states. And California will create the world’s first global warming pollution standard for transportation fuels, ratcheting down fuel carbon content 10 percent by 2020 under a plan put forward by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger Tuesday, furthering his split with the Bush (mis)administration. Finally, the Washington Post has a piece today noting that Sen. Barack Obama is coming under criticism from environmentalists for supporting expanded use of coal. [WTF!]
…back to the science:
A new study of a fish called the eelpout examines closely the way in which a warming climate stress fish stocks and lead to changing fish populations. Warmer water can carry less dissolved oxygen, leading to stress on cold-water species and their relative decline.
Scientists studying global warming have long wondered where some of the carbon dioxide we emit was going; there seemed to be a “sink” for it that their models hadn’t accounted for. Now comes news of one: Melting Arctic sea ice allows the newly-exposed ocean to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, offsetting some global warming effects, scientists said in Jamaica. Ice melting during the last 30 years tripled the amount of carbon dioxide the Arctic Ocean can absorb.
I thought you’d like this – I think this is the coolest thing ever!
On another note, the brightest comet in 30 years, Comet McNaught, will be visible tonight. Check out this fantastic picture from that page:
On that “new Way Forward” from the guy who promised he wouldn’t ‘nation build’, Andrew Sullivan recalls a quote from the late Jeanne Kirkpatrick:
Those of us who are wavering should read
“Bush’s Rush to Armageddon.”
No longer tin-foil: The Big Question of the Day: Should we allow the creation of embryos which are animal-human hybrids?
That forgotten FL-13 election in dispute: Dem Christine Jennings’ challenge got a boost.
Appeals court receives letter from Congressional Committee (h/t: TPM)
So fellow Bootribbers, ahead of tonight,- bet you’ve got pop corn ready- the Dear decider-in-chief’s speech, you may be wondering where will Bush get those 21,500 troops for his escalation last try for victory in Iraq?
TWN finds the answer in the Baltimore Sun: same old mistakes “Pulling Troops from Afghanistan.”
And Glenn Greenwald notes Michael Ledeen in National Review confirming:
Since the troops are so well off why is Michael Ledeen and his neo-con cohorts not in Iraq doing chores?
Michael Ledeen to put down his designer coffee, turn off his air-conditioning or heat, and go enlist.