One. If ever anyone has fulfilled his childhood dream, it’s Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who did it for the third time this week,as he blasted off on a Russian Soyuz rocket to command the International Space Station (ISS). It’s a dream he has never let go of since he was nine years old.
The Russian space capsule carrying Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn and cosmonaut Roman Romanenko who was seen off by his father, Yuri, who set a record for time spent in space during a mission in the 1970s. They linked up with the space station Rassvet module at 9.09 a.m. ET on Friday after spending two days in orbit.
The docking took place around 410 kilometers above their point of origin, the Baikonur space port in Southern Kazakhstan. The trio joined NASA astronaut Cmdr. Kevin Ford and flight engineers and cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Evgeny Tarelkin, who have been residing at the orbital laboratory since October 26th. Five more months to work on ISS.
CBC News. Dec. 21, 2012, at 8-50 a.m. ET.
Two. Four students in 3D animation are sure to get a perfect grade after a video depicting an eagle snatching a toddler in a Montreal park went viral and generated discussions around the world.
Normand Archambault, Loic Mireault, Antoine Seigle and Felix Marquis-Poulin, students of their fifth-semester simulation workshop class at Montreal’s Centre NAD (National Animation and Design Centre (1992), have come forward to claim responsibility to overnight sensation. The video took 400 hours to create. This video was a hoax created using computer -generated images. For twenty years there were graduated 1500 students choosing their profession in the 3D and digital design industry (video games, movies etc.) I you look at a film like Life of Pi, that’s the kind of skills the students need. It wasn’t all about tricking people.
Watch : “An Eagle swooping down and picking up an infant”
Three. Russians now are pouring the kind of money into the arts that has just built the $700-million (U.S.) Mariinsky II Theatre and as his director Valery Gergiev says, “wants to concentrate more on domestic shows”. – Reuters
Four. Madonna, 54, topped Billboard’s list of highest-grossing live tours, earning an estimated $228.4-million (U.S.) in ticket sales from her sould-out ninth world-wide tour in support of her 12th studio album, MDNA. The singer will wrap her tour in South America this weekend. – Reuters.
Five. Dirty Harry now an official culture icon The U.S. National Film registry on Wednesday named 25 films to be preserved as cultural treasures, from Audrey Hepburn’s 1961 classic Breakfast at Tiffany’s to Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry and sci-fi action movie The Matrix. The list also includes the 1992 female ensemble comedy-drama, A League of Their Own, directed by Penny Marshall, and Born Yesterday, which starred Judy Holliday and was released in 1950, and the 1983 holiday classic A Christmas Story. – Reuters.