New Moon: record breaking ticket sales

New Moon, the second movie in the Twilight franchise, is breaking ticket sales records even before it is released. In the UK alone more than £1 million worth of tickets have been sold before New Moon even opens.

It looks like New Moon and the Twilight franchise really are establishing themselves as the next big thing after the Harry Potter books and movies:

TWILIGHT sequel New Moon has taken �1million before even being released - as the fastest advance-selling film of the year.

Odeon and UCI cinemas reported that it had already sold 143,000 tickets.

The movie, starring ROBERT PATTINSON as vampire Edward Cullen and KRISTEN STEWART as lovelorn student Bella Swan, goes on national release on Friday.

That's pretty good you know, breaking the advance sales records for the year. There are what, four Twilight books so far, this is the second movie only and no doubt the author is pumping out more as we speak: so another decade or more of Twilight to come then, yes?

Who says Allahu Akbar?

Allahu Akbar is one of those phrases which can be terribly misunderstood. In the Islamic world this Arabic phrase is used in a number of different ways.

Literally, Allahu Akbar means "God is the Greatest" or "God is Great". But it's the use of it which can be controversial. It is often used simply as an everyday expression: of joy for example. It can also be a phrase of political (or perhaps religious) import, as when it was used in Iran around the time of the downfall of the Shah.

It is also an integral part of prayers (perhaps in the same sense as the Christian "Amen").

But Allahu Akbar can also be much more than this:

Allahu Akbar can also be used as a fast and colloquial manner of converting to Islam. The simple repetition of the phrase three times, "Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar" is taken by most Islamic jurists as being sufficient expression of the core Islamic beliefs that those who say it are now Muslim. Traditionally (and perhaps anecdotally) those who say this either in battle or afterwards when captured will be deemed to have converted, become part of the Ummah (the Islamic community) and thus no longer be considered as enemies.

Katie and Tom Rumour

The rumour is about Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise that the baby Suri is looked after by hte Church of Scientology. It only comes around to the house so that Katie Holmes can see it on Sundays.

Now not that hands off mothering would be al that unusual amongst film stars, or even simply the wealthy, but once a week seems a little sparing with hte time, doesn't it?

Anyway, if you're looking for more Katie Holmes news and stories there's a blog you should check out. Just click through that link to find it.

Live Earth

So Live earth is coming up next month....I'm looking forward to one band in particular. Nunatak.

In order to get the seventh continent represented they've had to hire the only band actually in Antarctica, which is our boys at the BAS base who make up Nunatak.

There'll be an awful lot of amateurish performances I'm sure at this extravaganze but these guys'll be the only ones who are supposed to be amateur.

Buying a House and a Corpse

There's two things to be noted from this story:

A Spanish bank repossessed a house and put it up for auction complete with the mummified body of the former owner who had missed her mortgage payments, newspaper El Pais reported on Wednesday.

The corpse, preserved by salty air in the seaside town of Roses after an apparent death by natural causes, was discovered by Jorge Giro, who entered the house for the first time on Saturday after buying it at the auction, El Pais said.

The dead woman, described by neighbors as having been in poor health and often absent visiting relatives in Madrid, had stopped paying her mortgage six years ago.

The unnamed bank which eventually repossessed the home never bothered to look inside before selling it.

Sure, the obvious one, that no one checked.

Then the non obvious one. It take 6 years to repossess a house in Spain.

Ringtones Links

"Everybody loves ringtones. So i decided to have a search for the best ringtones sites. Maybe everyone knows Ringophone.com or Ultrasonic-ringtones.com but to tell the truth the best site for free ringtones to download is GoldRingtone.com. Download the best Ringtones for free! Doesn't it sound attractive? The site has a weekly update (as they inform me with their press release) so you can continuously find the best new free ringtones.

The site is simple. The users can download free mp3 ringtones from any carrier. Besides, there are sections for all carriers. You can get free Sprint Ringtones, or free Cingular Ringtones.

Sinbad Not Dead!

Another hoax in Wikipedia:

Wikipedia was again the victim of a prankster, who this time vandalized the profile of US entertainer Sinbad. He posted a entry according to which Sinbad had died of a heart attack on the morning of March 14.

"Somebody vandalized the page," Wikipedia spokeswoman Sandra Ordonez said Friday, quoted by Reuters. "Whoever did this was obviously a prankster. I don't think they did this because they thought he [was dead]." The false entry was caught, and removed, by a volunteer administrator about 30 minutes later, Ordonez said.

Sinbad, whose daughter called him about it, was amused and brushed it off as a "commonplace" occurrence on the easily accessible Internet. "Saturday I rose from the dead and then died again," the Los Angeles-based entertainer told The Associated Press in a phone interview.

Sinbad's page on the free online research tool now carries the message: "This page has been temporarily protected from editing to deal with vandalism."

Wikipedia, which was launched as an English language project on January 15, 2001 as a complement to the expert-written and now defunct Nupedia, has grown into one of the biggest virtual communities in the world, with faithful and enthusiastic members, all driven by the noble purpose of making information accessible freely to any one at any time.

Still a better joke than Recess Monkey's though, isn't it?

China on the Moon?

Even NASA now thinks that the next people to walk on the Moon will be Chinese:

The next humans to walk on the moon may well be Chinese, NASA's administrator told Congress yesterday. He said that the combination of budget cuts and restraints in the NASA lunar program and a determined and well-funded effort by the Chinese made that once-unthinkable possibility a real one.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin told the House Committee on Science and Technology that, based on the status of the Chinese space program and its projected growth, China could land a man on the moon within a decade. Under current projections, a U.S. lunar return would not take place until 2019 at the earliest.

"If they wanted to mount a lunar mission, they could do so," Griffin said. "And yes, they could get to the moon before we return."

The Chinese space program employs about 200,000 people, Griffin said, while NASA has a workforce of about 75,000.

Griffin's assessment came during a day of NASA budget hearings in which both Republicans and Democrats decried a lack of funding for NASA, which has been given many ambitious missions.

The mistake that was made was the absolutely absurd, insane, waste of money that was spent on the Space Station and the Shuttle. Shouldn't have happened, should have carried on with the rockets, more of them, and put a base on the Moon.