Godzilla received the 2,271st star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame today to commemorate both the 50th anniversary of his first film and 11/29/04's premiere of the latest offering, "Godzilla Final Wars."

FILM PREMIERES NATIONWIDE ON AUGUST 13TH, 2004

A man who seemingly fit many lives into one lifetime, Tom Dowd was born on October 20, 1925 in New York City. At a young age he excelled in mathematics and physics, leading to his work from the ages of 16 to 20 on the Manhattan Project at Columbia University. In 1946, as a sergeant in the Army Corps of Engineers, he oversaw a team of radiation detection specialists at the atomic bomb tests in Bikini Atoll. After his discharge from Army, he soon began applying his science background to help revolutionize the process of recording music. While working for Atlantic Records, his pioneering work in binaural stereo recording, and later his design of the eight-track console, modernized the recording industry.

Tom Dowd produced and engineered timeless records for artists including Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonius Monk, Cream, Rod Stewart, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Allman Brothers Band, Dusty Springfield and countless other celebrated musicians. Dowd also formed both strong professional and personal relationships with many of these artists, including Eric Clapton, starting with Cream and leading to their working partnership on Layla and Other Assorted Loves Songs and collaborations on several of Clapton's finest solo albums.

Tom Dowd passed away on October 27, 2002, one week after his 77th birthday. He will never be forgotten.

By Dan Florio

X-Files - Ground Zero Book Review

Ground Zero is an excellent addition to the X-Files universe. The story is a nuclear-centered "Monster-of-the-Week" (as in - not part of the Conspiracy Mytharc). Suitably grotesque/unexplainable flash-burning deaths ground the plot firmly in the paranormal genre. Best of all - the novel has all the elements of humor and intellectual irrelevancy that make our Mulder and Scully so much fun.

This X-Files book takes place between the second and third seasons - Scully is still dealing with the death of her father, Mulder is still afraid of fire, and nobody knows which side of the fence Skinner yet sits on.

Award-winning author Kevin J. Anderson has the "voices" of our favorite agents down pat. I am enjoying the X-Files books because of his skill. By comparison, the huge line of Star Trek books were often disappointingly amateurish, with characters saying things that did not resonate with the characters we knew and loved.

Anderson also uses the plot to supply readers with an interesting historical recount of above-ground Cold-War era nuclear testing, which formally ended with the 1963 above-ground ban. The tale of the forced evacuation of Bikini Atoll natives is wrenching, essential to this story that takes Mulder and Scully to a neaby atoll to witness a secret detonation of a fallout-free nuclear weapon. Very intriguing.

It could happen. Such a thing COULD be under development right now. It's not paranoia when eveybody IS out to get you, right?

Barracuda by Mike Monahan is an edge-of-your seat adventure about a recuperating cop who faces a mutant barracuda.

Yonkers, NY (PRWEB) January 17, 2008 -- The gripping crime drama, Barracuda by Mike Monahan, is a modern-day Jaws drama, pitting a wounded cop on a paradise island against a deadly barracuda.

Ever since Jaws, people have been wondering how safe it is to go into the water. Now ex-cop Monahan's white-knuckle thriller Barracuda is about to make the beach an even more terrifying place. Detective Mick O'Shaughnessy is relaxing in the scuba diver paradise of Bikini Atoll, when he finds himself involved in international money laundering scheme, a territorial feud and an impending war between the Russian Mafia and the Japanese Yakuza. Added to this is a mutant barracuda who is snacking on tourists! Can he stop the crooks--and the fish?

Written in whip-smart prose, Barracuda is power-packed with authentic scuba diving knowledge, police procedure and historical detail about Bikini Atoll. Fast-paced and wildly entertaining, Barracuda is truly the catch of the day.

For more information or to request a free review copy, members of the press can contact the author at tarzan82 @ optonline.net. Barracuda is available for sale online at Amazon.com.

In “How Dali Learned to Stop Worrying about Surrealism and Love the Bomb,” Gavin Parkinson demonstrates how all the Surrealists avidly followed the interwar advances in physics of Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, and Louis de Broglie. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, however, only Salvador Dali maintains his “nuclearphilia” and a “mood of curiosity, excitement, and optimism.” The Three Sphinxes of Bikini (left, from 1947) celebrate rather than condemn the nuclear testing conducted by the United States on the Bikini Atoll.

from Art Blog by Bob: http://artblogbybob.blogspot.com/2008/04/grand-inquisitor.html

from Art Blog by Bob: http://artblogbybob.blogspot.com/2007/10/destruction-of-paradise.html

Bikini Atoll, an American thoroughbread racing horse from Fenwick Farms, is a 4 year old homebred. She is by Scatmandu out of Fivetwentyone. Bikini will be running on the east coast the summer of 2008. Her trainer is Mike Zwiesler.

"NO BIKINI ATOLL" Tall Bearded Iris:

Domain: Eukaryota Whittaker & Margulis,1978 - eukaryotes

◦ Kingdom: Plantae Haeckel, 1866

▪ Subkingdom: Viridaeplantae Cavalier-Smith, 1981 - Green Plants

▪ Phylum: Tracheophyta Sinnott, 1935 ex Cavalier-Smith, 1998 - Vascular Plants

▪ Subphylum: euphyllophytina

▪ Infraphylum: radiatopses kenrick & crane, 1997

▪ Class: Liliopsida Scopoli, 1760 - Monocotyledons

▪ Subclass: Liliidae Takhtajan, 1967

▪ Superorder: Lilianae Takhtajan, 1967

▪ Order: Iridales Dumortier, 1829

▪ Family: Iridaceae (eye-rid-AY-see-ay) A.L. de Jussieu, 1789 - Iris Family

▪ Subfamily: Iridoideae

▪ Tribe: Irideae

▪ Genus: Iris (EYE-ris) Linnaeus, Sp. Pl. 1: 38. 1753; Gen. Pl. ed. 5, 24. 1754.

▪ Botanical name: Iris 'No Bikini Atoll'

Could this £2,000 crystal-studded swimsuit give you the boost you need on the beach this summer?

By Deborah Arthurs
Last updated at 11:46 AM on 15th April 2009

It's officially British summertime and for millions of women that means the inevitable countdown to baring it all on the beach.

Struggling into a skimpy bikini after a winter of comfort food and covering up is rarely a moment women look forward to.

But what if said swimsuit were a jewel-toned, crystal-studded number worth a staggering £2,000? At Selfridges, women looking to make a serious impact at the seaside can do just that.

The swimsuit - which rings in at an eye-watering £100 per square centimetre - has been dubbed the 'bling-kini', and is likely to attract only those for whom a stick of celery is considered a square meal - and for whom £2,000 is a drop in the ocean.

read more...

SHEARWATER: The Golden Archipelago
The opening song, Meridian, opens with the Bikinian's anthem sung by Bikinians in their church on Kili Island.

"The Golden Archipelago"is the third album in a triptych of mindblowingly beautiful, dense and ambitious excursions about man's impact on the natural world from Austin's SHEARWATER. This time singer/songwriter Jonathan Meiburg turns his attention to life on islands - a world of lushness and austerity, silence and sudden cataclysms. From rising sea levels to displaced populations, Meiburg travels from the Falklands to Madgascar, from the Bikini Atoll to the Tierra Del Fuego. The music matches the grandeur and melancholy of its subject matter. This is an ALBUMalbum. The first 10,000 CDs come packaged with a 50-page perfect-bound book of dossier of records, photos, regulations, and images on islands, displaced peoples, immigration records and more.

Montreal Gazette story (March 2010) about Shearwater

Mike Outram's song "Bikini"

"What really affected me was the disparity between, on the one hand, the 167 Bikinians and their island home, and the naïve power of the US on the other. It’s a pitiful story; staggering and incomprehensible. And, as we all know, it’s a story that’s played out all over the world in countless other ways today."

Download the song

BIKINI ISLAND FURNITURE

Traditionally, living rooms that are uni-directional--or Simpsons style, as I like to call it--are oriented toward a single screen or device. A lot of offices are this way, too. Bikini Island (so named for its atoll-like qualities) is a movable landscape of low, flat elements that are designed for mobile computing. The seats are deeper, because it’s not necessary to be at a particular height to see the screen. Each component is completely ambiguous, without a clear front or back. "The modules have different heights, depths, legs and fabrics, and colors," Aisslinger tells Co.Design. "The project is designed to reflect our heterogeneous lives. [It’s] an in-house landscape for reading on tablets, watching movies on our phones, meditation, and talking."

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1672283/a-couch-system-for-the-tablet-era#1