Please be better than the last one

There's a new preview out for Transformers 3.  Besides having been on-set, I'm just really hoping it's better than the last one.

Deathly Hallows Part 2 Trailer

via AICN / Joblo.com

To watch more, visit tag

The Avengers update

Read the original here.

'The Avengers' Begins: First Set-Photo From Day 1 Of Filming | Inside Movies


Image Credit: Zade Rosenthal

Ah, absence makes the heart grow fonder…

Joss Whedon has spent one day shooting this little movie known as The Avengers, and right now all we have to see from it is this pic from the set. Apparently the actors have chairs that identify them not by name, but by character. (Just me, but I think they should have made Hulk’s twice as big and kind of broken.)

You know the players: Serenity and Buffy the Vampire Slayer geekdom cult-hero Whedon is directing from his own script, and Robert Downey Jr. reprises the role of Iron Man, with Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Chris Evans as Captain America, and Mark Ruffalo joining the Marvel universe as the human half of the Hulk.

Marvel Studios confirms some other casting tidbits: Tom Hiddleston, who plays the villainous, trickster god Loki in Thor, is confirmed to join the cast, along with Stellan Skarsgard, who co-stars in Thor as Professor Eric Selvig, an astrophysicist researching the celestial link between the god-world of Asgard and Earth.

Cobie Smulders, from TV’s How I Met Your Mother, is another newcomer to the Marvel world, playing SHIELD agent Maria Hill, while Clark Gregg, the thread linking many of these movies, is once again playing Agent Phil Coulson. As previously reported, of course, The Hurt Locker‘s Jeremy Renner is in as the archer Hawkeye, and Scarlett Johansson returns as her Iron Man 2 character Black Widow, while Samuel L. Jackson, who kicked off the whole thing with that post-credits cameo in 2008′s Iron Man, is back as the man with a patch, SHIELD mastermind Nick Fury.

The movie is currently shooting in Albuquerque, N.M., and will later move to Cleveland, Ohio, (Why? Does Hulk need something to smash? Kidding, Cleveland!) and New York City. The Avengers will be out May 4, though we’ll be seeing a lot more about it between now and then.

Meanwhile, what do you think of this snazzy new SHIELD logo?

(Twitter: @Breznican[1])

Read more:
‘Avengers’ starts filming today: Joss Whedon writes a letter to his fans[2]
Marvel Studios head talks various ‘Avengers’ spin-offs[3]
Chris Evans on fighting to play Captain America’s wimpy kid alter-ego[4]

References
^ @Breznican (www.twitter.com)
^ ‘Avengers’ starts filming today: Joss Whedon writes a letter to his fans (insidemovies.ew.com)
^ Marvel Studios head talks various ‘Avengers’ spin-offs (popwatch.ew.com)
^ Chris Evans on fighting to play Captain America’s wimpy kid alter-ego (insidemovies.ew.com)

Putting your job into perspective

via Failblog.
It could be worse.

see more funny videos, and check out our Yo Dawg lols!

Never noticed how much people scream "Nooooo!" in Movies and TV

World War Z update

Read the original here.

Zombie Epic World War Z Gets A Living Human Female - Movie News

After a few years shambling around development hell, a feature adaptation of Max Brook's book WORLD WAR Z is finally getting an adrenalin shot, and a leading lady.

TV regular Mirelle Enos will join Brad Pitt in the aftermath of the global zompocalypse. Enos currently stars on AMC's well-received new murder investigation series "The Killing" (which sadly still remains unwatched on my DVR), and was also a recurring player on HBO's "Big Love".

Enos will play the wife of Pitt's WWZ character, a U.N. worker chronicling the undead disaster.

The book, set several years after a war between humanity and a legion of flesh-eating zombies, is told anthology-style through a series of “interviews” with survivors -- Pitt's character is obviously the means for viewers to experience these horrific recollections. J. Michael Straczynski (writer of CHANGELING and creator of "Babylon 5") and Matthew Michael Carnahan (THE KINGDOM, STATE OF PLAY) have each taken cracks at the script.

Marc Forster (QUANTUM OF SOLACE) will direct the big-budget Paramount project starting in June, with Pitt also producing through his Plan B company. Recent reports claim the studio somehow wants a PG-13 rating to maximize their potential audience.

Source: Heat Vision[1]

References
^ Heat Vision (www.hollywoodreporter.com)

The Dark Knight Rises Update!

Via DarkHorizons.com, read the original here.

Cotillard, Gordon-Levitt Locked For "Knight" | News
By Garth Franklin Tuesday April 19th 2011 12:54PM

Warner Bros. Pictures have issued a press release today confirming that Oscar® winner Marion Cotillard and Joseph Gordon-Levitt have joined the cast of Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight Rises".

Both actors have been linked to the project for some time now with rumors hinting that they could be playing notable Bat-villains like Talia al Ghul, The Riddler or Black Mask.

The press release however mentions their quite different character descriptions. Gordon-Levitt will play John Blake, a Gotham City beat cop assigned to special duty under the command of Commissioner Gordon.

Cotillard will appear as Miranda Tate, a Wayne Enterprises board member eager to help a still-grieving Bruce Wayne resume his father's philanthropic endeavors for Gotham.

Nolan says "When you collaborate with people as talented as Marion and Joe, it comes as no surprise that you would want to repeat the experience. I immediately thought of them for the roles of Miranda and Blake, and I am looking forward to working with both of them again."

Yes, Please!

Via DVice.com, read the original here.

Seen at last year's CES, we now have some concrete specs on the Light Touch projector that transforms any flat surface into a 10.1-inch touchscreen.

Light Touch uses "holographic laser projection" technology to create a WVGA aka 800x480 resolution display. Infrared sensors are used to track motion. Basically, it works like all the other IR keyboards out there. When the beam of light is broken with your fingers, the projector translates that action into a button or command.

Off the bat, I can think of a million uses for one of these. A Light Touch would be a handy computer in the kitchen. I would never have to ruin a touchscreen with my meat-splattered fingers again.

The projector runs Adobe Flash Lite 3.1, has 2GB of internal storage, a MicroSD card slot (up to 32GB), a 3.5mm audio jack, Wi-Fi b/g, one USB port and a composite video out port.

It's too bad the Light Touch is a "reference product, available to key customers and partners" or else I'd totally consider buying one (at the right price).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Jfpg396Z4DU

Lab creates artificial human skin

Read the original here.

Skin Factory: A Stuttgart Lab's Pioneering Effort To Cultivate Human Flesh - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News

By Johann Grolle

Ever since American scientists grafted ear-shaped cartilage onto a mouse, Heike Walles has dreamed of cultivating human flesh -- and transforming the world of medicine. Though her lab has finally succeeded, EU laws are delaying the introduction of synthetic skin into clinical practice.

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A mechanical arm snaps up a small plastic container full of a sloshing pink solution. A laser beam flits over the liquid, then another robot rolls up on a steel track, motor purring, and drizzles a few drops through hair-thin pipettes. A monitor records temperature, carbon dioxide and humidity levels.

A soft whirring is the only sound in this laboratory at the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology (IGB) in the southwestern German city of Stuttgart. Sterile and sealed behind glass, these machines have just begun to produce an unusual product: human skin.

Each month, this skin factory will produce 5,000 discs of tissue about the size of a one-cent coin, with a projected price of €50 ($72) per unit. The product is a whitish color, almost transparent, though project director Heike Walles says it can also come in shades of brown.

The Birth of Tissue Engineering

The pieces of tissue swimming in their nutrient solution may look less than impressive, but the pilot project here is about more than just manufacturing skin. The process is meant to pave the way for a new era, one in which human tissue becomes an industrial product. The miracle of incarnation, which once only took place in the darkness of the uterus, is now happening under the cold neon light of an assembly facility controlled by robots.

This means that Heike Walles, the 48-year-old head of the institute's Cell and Tissue Engineering department, has finally reached her goal. A biochemist, Welles has dedicated her entire career to culturing tissue. One image that especially fueled her interest in this futuristic field was the famous photograph from the Vacanti laboratory at Harvard University. There, 15 years ago, brothers Jay and Chuck Vacanti created an ear-shaped cartilage structure and grafted it onto the back of a mouse.

When the Vacantis presented the world with photographs of their project, they also offered a bold vision of the future of medicine. They promised the dawning of a new era in the history of transplant medicine. Since human tissue could be custom-made, they said, there would never be a shortage of donor organs again.

The Vacantis also described how fully functional human hearts would grow in flasks and how livers would rise in incubators like loaves of bread. Chuck Vacanti even said it would be possible to produce entire limbs and provided a sketch of a synthetic arm. The brothers called their new industry "tissue engineering."

The First Pioneering Steps

Drawn by these promises, Walles signed on with the cardiac surgery department at Hannover Medical School (MHH) to learn about the production of arteries and heart valves. But she quickly realized just how naive the visionaries' dreams had been. "Researchers promised far too much at the beginning," she says. "At the time, it helped foster acceptance for the new technology. But, these days, patients and society are disappointed -- and rightly so."

Of course, tissue engineers continued to make headlines. Researchers at the Vacantis' lab then went one better by presenting the public with a heart the size of a cherry that beat away for 40 days inside an incubator. They even transplanted a synthetic lung into a rat that kept it alive for several hours. The scientists also instructed an artist in the art of cultivating tissue so that he could grow a steak in a petri dish. (The artist eventually admitted that the artificial meat had a horrible texture and taste hard-to-define taste.)

Elsewhere, surgeons reported success in human trials as well. In North Carolina, for example, doctors grew bladders from stem cells, which they then succeeded in implanting in children with malformed organs.

In an even more spectacular experiment in the northern German city of Kiel, doctors ventured to reconstruct a patient's jaw after it had been eaten away by a tumor. They designed the desired section of bone on a computer, used the design to fashion a mesh frame of titanium wire, and then sowed this with the 56-year-old patient's bone marrow cells. Then they allowed it to mature in his back muscle for seven weeks before attaching it to his face.

Circulation Problems

Still, all of these efforts were isolated cases and heroic pioneering acts that never made their way into daily clinical practice. Indeed, tissue engineering remains a refined handcraft, one that requires a great deal of tinkering and patience. Bioengineering laboratories now grow dozens of different cell types on spongy, rubbery or gelatinous frameworks, but most of these constructions are not suited for use in humans.

Blood circulation, in particular, has presented researchers with many problems, and attempts have repeatedly failed to produce blood vessels that can supply synthetic organs with oxygen and nourishment.

Cartilage is the only type of tissue uncomplicated enough to be manipulated with relative ease. Each year, surgeons in Germany implant around 600 pieces of artificial cartilage, and the number of patients with lab-grown cartilage cells infused into their damaged knee joints or spinal disks has climbed into the thousands. But scientists looking to make other types of tissue ready for clinical use find themselves facing far greater obstacles.

Part 2: 'Incredibly Difficult, Time-Consuming Work'

Walles speaks about how she also tried one of these projects once. She reaches for a blood-red object on her desk, a tube approximately the width of a finger, with delicate capillaries woven around it. The object is a replica of a trachea transplant Walles once developed with her husband, cardiothoracic surgeon Thorsten Walles.

For example, a suicidal 28-year-old man had swallowed drain cleaner because his girlfriend had left him. Though doctors were able to save his life, his trachea had suffered irreparable corrosion.

The bioengineers at the IGB promised to create a replacement. As their basis, they took a section of pig intestine and the veins that supplied it. Then, they stripped it of its porcine cells until all that was left was a fiber framework, which they sowed with human vascular, connective tissue and muscle cells.

The researchers created custom-made transplants of this kind for four patients, of which the 28-year-old was the third. "It was an incredible amount of very difficult, time-consuming work," Walles says. Doing so might make sense for helping a couple of seriously injured patients, she says, but it would be very hard to introduce as a standard technique in clinical practice.

Walles' experience in tissue engineering has only strengthened her conviction that this type of laborious tinkering will never lead to the emergence of a new branch of medicine. Indeed, she believes it will only be possible to create new products satisfying the requirements for widespread medical use if machines can be made to do the arduous, hands-on work now performed by lab technicians.

To that end, Walles set her sights on learning everything she could about stress tests and error analysis from engineers and process technicians. For their part, the technicians now had to teach their robots to handle human tissues rather than the fiber optics and condensers they were used to. The result is a manufacturing process bearing little resemblance to a traditional scientific laboratory.

Legal Hurdles to Testing

This laboratory produces strictly standardized compounds designed to meet legal requirements. In the beginning, regulatory authorities weren't quite sure how to approach these various synthetic cells, organs and tissues. "The question was: What are we really dealing with here? Are these body parts, drugs or medical-technology products?" explains Klaus Cichutek, head of the Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI), the agency within Germany's Federal Ministry of Health responsible for regulating vaccines and other biological medicine products.

Since then, the EU has decided that tissues grown outside the human body -- regardless of whether they are skin, bone, liver or nerves -- are to be treated as pharmacological substances. This means that instead of simply trying out new methods on patients, as is common with surgery, tissue engineers must pass a licensing procedure set forth in pharmaceutical law.

"At the moment, the European Medicines Agency is perhaps our biggest hurdle," says Michael Sittinger, a cell biologist at Berlin's Charité Hospital who has been involved in tissue engineering for 20 years. Sittinger recently patented a type of cell specific to heart tissue that he hopes to use to treat cases of chronic cardiac insufficiency, and he is drafting a proposal for a clinical study.

The tissue engineers in Stuttgart believe that the chances that their industrially manufactured skin will receive approval are very good. Even so, they are not planning on rushing their products into standard clinical practice. They first have their sights set on finding clients in the chemical, pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries before putting them on the market for skin grafts for burn victims or people with wounds that are difficult to heal.

In 2006, the European Parliament passed a new regulation on chemicals and their safe use that drastically increased the number of animal tests required before a product can be approved for market use. Since then, an urgent search has been on for alternative methods of testing how new substances affect skin. This is precisely where the manufacturing facility in Stuttgart could come into play.

In other words, this method of tissue engineering is unlikely to start saving human lives any time soon. But it may stand between thousands of animals and death.

Translated from the German by Ella Ornstein

Too close to home?

Read the original here.

Zack Snyder's Superman Movie Update

Read the original here.

General Zod Will Battle Superman In Zack Snyder’s Man Of Steel | Underwire

Kryptonian bad guy General Zod will square off against Superman in The Man of Steel, director Zack Snyder’s upcoming reboot of the superhero movie franchise.

The role will be played by Michael Shannon[1], most recently seen as a disturbingly flawed federal agent in HBO’s excellent Prohibition-era crime seriesBoardwalk Empire[2].

“Zod is not only one of Superman’s most formidable enemies, but one of the most significant because he has insights into Superman that others don’t,” Snyder said in a Warner Bros. press release Sunday. “Michael is a powerful actor who can project both the intelligence and the malice of the character, making him perfect for the role.”

Want to know more about the character? Read “The Origin of General Zod[3],” a two-page history lesson from DC Comics.

Shannon should bring a hefty dose of menace to the role of Superman’s enemy. But is Zod the right supervillain for the franchise reboot, which is proceeding under the watchful eye of producer Christopher Nolan, with Henry Cavill[4] (The Tudors) set to star as the Man of Steel? Give us your take in the comment below.

References
^ Michael Shannon (en.wikipedia.org)
^ Boardwalk Empire (www.hbo.com)
^ The Origin of General Zod (www.dccomics.com)
^ Henry Cavill (www.wired.com)

I don't need these specifically....

But I would like glasses that are sweet in some way. Read the original here.

Brazilian Cops Spot Bad Guys In A Crowd Using Cyborg-Style Shades | Gadget Lab

The Brazilian police force is getting a little bit Terminator on its citizens. Well, on its criminals at least.

No, they haven’t built a humanoid killer, they’ve just taken a cue from the augmented, analytical sight capabilities of cinema cyborgs. In the next few weeks, Brazilian police will begin testing pairs of “RoboCop” glasses, which can identify a criminal’s face in a crowd of people.

“To the naked eye, two people may appear identical,” says Major Leandro Pavani Agostini, chief of military police in Sao Paolo. But these powerful shades can scan up to 400 faces per second, up to 50 yards away, using 46,000 biometric points to identify an individual and ensure a correct match.

Faces are scanned with a tiny camera in the glasses then checked against a database of known criminals. A red light pops up if a perpetrator is found, and the cop can apprehend them without the need for questioning or requesting documents.

The settings of the glasses are adjustable, so if a crowd is more sparse and spread out, it can identify faces as far as 12 miles away at a slower rate.

Rio de Janeiro will be host to the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games, so these “RoboCop” glasses could prove to be a very useful safety measure.

Brazilian Police Debut ‘RoboCop’ Glasses[1] [AOL News via PopSci[2]]

Will GI Joe 2 suck as much as the first one?

Dark Horizons reports:
"G.I. Joe 2" director Jon M. Chu tells The Deadbolt that his upcoming sequel to 2009's live-action take on the toy brand will lose the gloss of the first film in favour of something more grounded.

"I think it's not just another action movie. Maybe the first one was that, but we're really trying to break it down and take the shine off and show that my Joes were the ones in the mud, the sand and the trees and in the epic worldwide adventures. Each one had individual talents. So we really want to bring the experience of what I grew up with playing with these toys. What it feels like so that kids now can be reintroduced to the Joes and experience it in a different way. This is like down and dirty Joe for me" he says.

What Barney Should have been....

Bond is back in business

Sony to provide financing to make next 007 movie. via Joblo.com

He's been out of action for a while, but James Bond will soon be reporting to M for his latest assignment, courtesy of Sony.

We've heard plenty about BOND 23 over the past few months, including potential actors as the villain and a theoretical release date. But with MGM's unstable financial situation, nothing could officially happen.

As announced today, Sony will help put the Walther PPK back in Daniel Craig's hand:

"Sony Pictures Entertainment will remain in the James Bond business after reaching an agreement with MGM to co-finance and theatrically market and distribute Bond 23 worldwide, it was announced today by MGM Co-Chairmen and Chief Executive Officers Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum and Sony Pictures Chairman and CEO Michael Lynton and Co-Chairman Amy Pascal. Sony will release the next film in this iconic franchise on November 9, 2012 throughout the world except for select International territories, where MGM will directly oversee distribution.

Sony Pictures and MGM look forward to Sony Pictures co-financing and distributing Bond 24 on a similar basis.

“After successfully working on the re-launch of the James Bond franchise withCasino Royale and Quantum of Solace, we could not be more proud or privileged to continue our association with Barbara Broccoli, Michael G. Wilson, Daniel Craig, and the talented teams at EON and MGM,” said Pascal."

Director Sam Mendes (AMERICAN BEAUTY, ROAD TO PERDITION) is presumably still behind the camera on 007's latest mission.

Shopping Deal!

Get the deal here.
32-inch VOJ320M 1080p LCD HDTV from Vizio for $319.99 today at DELL.

Childhood Ambition

Sounds like this little girl has ambition AND knows how to gain power...

Why there's no Star Trek on TV

Read the original here via AICN.

X-MEN’s Bryan Singer Pitched A STAR TREK TV Series??!!

Published on: Apr 09, 2011 4:34:02 AM CDT
I am Hercules!!

Jonathan Frakes was talking to UGO to promote something he directed called “Bar Karma,” and there was an interesting bit buried deep in the interview:
UGO: It’s been a few years since Star Trek's been on TV. How much longer do you think until it makes the leap back to the medium it started on?

Frakes: I had a Star Trek that I developed for TV, and we were told in no uncertain terms that they said no to a Bryan Singer television Star Trek, they said no to a William Shatner television Star Trek. They feel at CBS Paramount that they don’t want to make the same mistake that’s been made before, which was watering down the brand by having a TV show and a movie. That’s what happened with Star Trek: Nemesis, and that’s why I think Star Trek: Enterprise didn’t last the way they expected to. It was the classic corporate greed of “we've got something good, so let’s continue to milk it” and we milked it so dry that the fans had no appetite for a movie. So I think what they’ve done by taking time off before the Abrams Star Trek, and they're doing it again because they haven’t even begun to shoot the second one, is a much smarter business plan. Much to my chagrin! Not that I wouldn’t love the Titan, or the Rikers in Space, or any of those shows on the air.

Bryan Singer is the guy who directed “X-Men” and “Superman Returns” and has been trying to get a “Battlestar Galactica” project off the ground for more than a decade (never mind that Ronald D. Moore just finished doing that). Singer’s no stranger to TV -- he had a hand in the creation of “House” and “Dirty Sexy Money” -- but I think this is the first I’m hearing of Singer’s interest in Star Trek.

Could Frakes be talking about Bryan Fuller (creator of “Dead Like Me” and “Pushing Daisies”)? Because I know Fuller, a veteran of “Voyager,” has long been public about his desire to launch a post-Abrams “Trek” TV series.

If anybody out there gets a chance to talk to Frakes, Shatner or Singer, kindly ask what kinds of shows they were pitching.

Was Frakes pitching a series based on the “Star Trek: Titan” novels centered on Captain Will Riker?

Was Shatner pitching a series based on his novels about a resurrected James Kirk?

Find all of UGO’s interview with Frakes here.

What's your email signature like?

Read the original here.

Legal Disclaimers: Spare Us The E-Mail Yada-Yada

“IF THIS e-mail is received in error, notify the sender immediately.” “This e-mail does not create an attorney-client relationship.” “Any tax advice in this e-mail is not intended to be used for the purpose of avoiding penalties under the Internal Revenue Code.” Many firms—The Economist included—automatically append these sorts of disclaimers to every message sent from their e-mail servers, no matter how brief and trivial the message itself might be.

E-mail disclaimers are one of the minor nuisances of modern office life, along with fire drills, annual appraisals and colleagues who keep sneezing loudly. Just think of all the extra waste paper generated when messages containing such waffle are printed. They are assumed to be a wise precaution. But they are mostly, legally speaking, pointless. Lawyers and experts on internet policy say no court case has ever turned on the presence or absence of such an automatic e-mail footer in America, the most litigious of rich countries.

Many disclaimers are, in effect, seeking to impose a contractual obligation unilaterally, and thus are probably unenforceable. This is clear in Europe, where a directive from the European Commission tells the courts to strike out any unreasonable contractual obligation on a consumer if he has not freely negotiated it. And a footer stating that nothing in the e-mail should be used to break the law would be of no protection to a lawyer or financial adviser sending a message that did suggest something illegal.

So why are the disclaimers there? Company lawyers often insist on them because they see others using them. As with Latin vocabulary and judges’ robes, once something has become a legal habit it has a tendency to stick. Might they at least remind people to behave sensibly? Michael Overly, a lawyer for Foley & Lardner in Los Angeles, thinks not: the proliferation of predictable yada-yada at the bottom of messages means that people have long since stopped paying any attention to it.

Base Jumping, AKA, I don't have enough balls to ever do this

Ever had a bad day?

Read the original here.

How A Captain Got Sucked Out Of A Blown-Up Cockpit Window And Everyone Survived

Jesus Diaz[1] — 

There are times in which an airplane decompression may not be dangerous[2]. But when your captain literally has half of his body out of one of the cockpit window, his face "banging against the window [from the outside] with blood coming out of his nose and the side of his head", all while the plane—with 81 passengers en route to sunny Málaga, Spain from Birmingham, England—is " spiralling down at 80 feet per second with no autopilot and no radio"... well, maybe then it istime to panic.

That's exactly what happened to Tim Lancaster on flight BA5390, when he was piloting a 43-tonne British Airways BAC 1-11 airliner at 17,000 feet, on June 10, 1990.

Fortunately, Nigel Ogden—a flight attendant who was getting out of the cockpit when the windshield blew away—didn't lose his cool[3]. As the explosive decompression "made the whole cabin mist up like fog for a second" and the "plane started to plummet", Nigel thought it was a bomb. Later, it was discovered that the cause for the explosive decompression was an improperly installed window pane, which has been replaced 27 hours before the flight. When Nigel turned around, the scene was terrifying:


I whipped round and saw the front windscreen had disappeared and Tim, the pilot, was going out through it. He had been sucked out of his seatbelt and all I could see were his legs. I jumped over the control column and grabbed him round his waist to avoid him going out completely. His shirt had been pulled off his back and his body was bent upwards, doubled over round the top of the aircraft. His legs were jammed forward, disconnecting the autopilot, and the flight door was resting on the controls, sending the plane hurtling down at nearly 650kmh through some of the most congested skies in the world.

Everything was being sucked out of the aircraft: even an oxygen bottle that had been bolted down went flying and nearly knocked my head off. I was holding on for grim death but I could feel myself being sucked out, too. John rushed in behind me and saw me disappearing, so he grabbed my trouser belt to stop me slipping further, then wrapped the captain's shoulder strap around me. Luckily, Alastair, the co-pilot, was still wearing his safety harness from take-off, otherwise he would have gone, too [take notes, Ryanair[4]—JD].

Soon, the pressure equalized, but Tim was still out of the plane and the wind start getting in the cabin at about 630km/h (391mph) and -17ºC (1.4ºF). The co-pilot struggled to gain control of the plane and he did it, taking down to 11,000 feet in two minutes—where there was more oxygen. But Nigel was still holding Tim and the situation was still critical. The plane may have been stabilized, but the captain was still hanging out of it.


I was still holding Tim, but my arms were getting weaker, and then he slipped. I thought I was going to lose him, but he ended up bent in a U-shape around the windows. His face was banging against the window with blood coming out of his nose and the side of his head, his arms were flailing and seemed about 6 feet [1.8 metres] long. Most terrifyingly, his eyes were wide open. I'll never forget that sight as long as I live.

Amazingly, with the help of another flight attendant, they were able to pull him back. And even more amazing: Tim as more or less ok, frostbitten and with some bones fractured, but alive. In fact, back in 2005 he was still in active, flying for EasyJet. The BA plane landed without any other problem—even while they feared that a catastrophe could happen if there was more damage. It was 07:55. Only 18 minutes had passed from the explosive decompression till the planed landed on Runway 02 at Southampton Airport. To everyone in that cockpit, it felt like hours.

Read the whole account as told by Nigel to Julia Llewellyn Smith in the Sydney Morning Herald. [SMH[5]and Wikipedia[6] via The Atlantic[7]]

References
^ Click here to read posts written by Jesus Diaz (gizmodo.com)
^ airplane decompression may not be dangerous (gizmodo.com)
^ didn't lose his cool (gawker.com)
^ Ryanair (gizmodo.com)
^ SMH (www.smh.com.au)
^ Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)
^ The Atlantic (www.theatlantic.com)

I hope it's as good as the first one...

Note to self.  Beware parties with monkeys.  Don't lose future brother-in-law.  No Tattoos.