Snail00

Aw you beat me to it

Yes I really like this idea. Why couldnt have aliens visited in the past. Great Setup. Cant wait for this one.

From the looks of it it seems the Aliens may have sent robotic drones as a first wave attack. Still One thing bugs me, in the alien movie Seres: Genesis the aliens have a deadly virus to kill us off. Which is the most efficient way of eliminating your enemy than depending on re-supply of ordinance and man power

This looks promising

A little of Monsters mixed in with Skyline

Hey guys,

just wondering.....what are your guys' opinions on the PG GP-01(fb)? I haven't got one, but was wondering if it was worth it.

I have heard lots of different perspectives on the kit. Some say that it is one of, if not, the best PG out there, while others say that

everyone should stay clear of the the kit.

Any ideas?

I think next to the MK -II its the best out there, but I dont have Red Frame so I cant say with certainty

so the three best are

strike

mk-II and Gp-01

Page 2

Got Tired looking for each specific thread. So I will place them all here under one umbrella

.

honestly, I feel like paying someone to build and paint your model for you is kind of a waste of money. I'm not an excellent painter by any stretch of the imagination, but I could still build a master grade that's good enough for my purposes at a third the price by doing the work myself; and I get the satisfaction and added value of doing the work yourself.

Overtime I noticed I got better. There a lot of aids to make your kit look good. With MGs and PGs they basically painted and you can add "HighLight" Paints here and there, panel lining. and decaling. And flat coat to make it look professional. Anyway back on topic, saw pics and news on the new metal build. I pre-ordered with HLJ. Just what are the differences with Metal Build and SOC and the new SOC mini

There are only two versions. the metal coating and prism coating are the same thing, stores are just using different names.

The Metal/prism coating version is Chromed, the normal version is white with a slight gloss pearl finish.

BTW; I wish people would stop asking "which is the best/better X?" when they're talking about completely subjective things. whether one sculpt or paint scheme is better looking than the other is purely the opinion of the person comparing the two, someone else can't make that decision for you.

If you want to know the difference between two things ask "what's the difference between X and Y?"

funny but right

There was only one GFFMC for a long time until only recently the shiny metallic look was announced. And as anime52k8 said yes its pearl coating. Not the same as HD either. Since I have the Cage MG HD version and the GFFMC I prefer the coating on the HD color scheme. But if the metallic coating is like on the MG Nu Gundam it wont look good. On some gundams it looks great on others its a real distracting

Psyco and Psyco Mk.II are from Zeta y'know. But even though they are metal composite, they aren't 1/100 due to their size (obviously, but still huge anyway).

yup

covering yourself in zombie guts =Brilliant

Not quite. The backpack is different, and so are the back of the legs. But it is 95% recycled from the Char's Zaku II PG. It was made because it was a cheap retool. That and it's a Zaku. There's tons of variants in the MG line...

In my opinion I think Bandai will be branching out into other non hero mecha PGs.

Evangelion was turned into a PG....and the Szabi was too iconic NOT to do as PG. It only makes sense to make Strike Freedom as PG as they can use the Strike frame as a base. I am actually hoping they make more seed PGs especially Infinite Justice. It may be a while but I think within a year or two may start to see the frequency of PGs pick up and see an introduction of Non-Hero Gundams turned into PG. Maybe we even get some Macross Frontier PG kits! WOuldnt that be sweet

Here's a few more pics from scanned from the fine folks at Robot Japan and Toy World.

Thanks for the scans

That is superb. Its nice to get the weathering look without forking out extra $$ as Aoshima did. Also Seems the Canons go as bright as the Big Scale Yamato Model. My SOP doesnt go that bright. Not sure if its just mine.

Will look nice with my collection

Now if only Aoshima will reissue the movie version of Capt. Harlocks ship

My Daughters first Halloween

Yeah, I really like the look and design feel of the ReZEL. It feels like its supposed to be an actual all purpose machine built for combat rather than some uber

crazy main character gimmick filled gundam that we have seen before. I really hope we'll be able to see a PG ReZEL sometime in the future. I think, based on

the great quality of the mg, that a new transforming PG could really boost the line.

Got that STRAIGHT!

I know its pretty late and all and most of you have seen it and talked about it but I just finished watching You Shall not Advance and MF Movie and WOW

I Am so impressed. The quality of animation is superb. I have re-watched both at least 3 times in the last two days. Always some detail you missed. MF movie's story line wasn't so bad as I thought it would be. I was hoping they would close of the love triangle between alto and the two songstress fairies. I wish they also gave us more information on the bug aliens. But I enjoyed it a lot.

Evangelion was intelligent as usual. I like how they concentrated on explaining the ways in which humanity went to survive and make sure its sea life also continues. But if Seele and Nerv wanted to bring the end of life via instrumentality why bother preserving the planets animals and restore the oceans from LCL??

I always like SGU

and every episode thus far has been good and better at times. I think maybe the ship could be evil? Its a stretch but it could be. The ship was obviously designed for humanoids with an average height of 6 feet. Control systems easy to figure out and lavatories meant for easy pooping! And the ship implanting or manipulating desires and actions. If Young wasnt meant to be the captain it surely could have chosen one but instead its creating conflict. The episode reminded me of Event Horizon. Pretty Soon they will find a vid of the crew cannibalizing and fornicating

Not sure if its been said but Keanu Reeves is Cowboy Beboop....for 2011 release yet no real news???? http://www.firstshowing.net/2008/07/22/fox-developing-cowboy-bebop-live-action-feature-film/

a new view of the battle pod like aliens

http://www.traileraddict.com/clip/skyline/pool

I like they dont look humanoid but how did they build those advanced ships with all that slobber. Still think the one alien movie The Day the Earth Stood Still was the best along with War of the Worlds

There's being critical and then there's being a troll. The two things are pretty different.

Example:

Critical: Personally, zombies don't do it for me but I checked out the show because I like apocalypse shows.

Troll: Zombies are lame, I can't believe people like them. Maybe if you're a child.

See, you can express your opinions without insulting everyone who has different opinions from you. That's the difference between "Critical" and "Troll".

I dont think what I said was that bad. But ok. And yes I feel Zombies as portrayed in the movies are childish. I loved I Am Legend. Why because I like apocalyptic movies. The zombies in that film didnt look ..... well for a lack of a better word not to offend the sensitive types, funny!

Also Zombie movies dont have to be disgusting to be scary either. Its just disgusting. I like being scared sometimes. But to me.. its just gross and funny. I tried watching Resident Evil and I couldnt sit through that. The cannibals in the Road make for real life zombies very scary cause there is a case in china when a small village went batshit crazy and became cannibals. Thats scary. The whole point of a zombie movie is emotional and scary and I want to like them. Thats why I might check out the crazies movie because its based on that type of movie but its more of a virus that drove people to insanity and turned them into murderous nutbars. I really liked zombie land. Maybe because it was a bit funny and the show does look ok

Actually scientifically zombies are very possible. This is from the little medical and natural science knowledge I have.

It’s a bacterium that feeds off the bonding structure of the white blood cells, and perfectly lives within the fluids that compound within the nervous system to the brain. However as it converts blood, the human heart rejects it, and stops beating, thus the person dies. Although the bacteria still lives on and manages to have control of the brain’s motor, albeit slow as the blood circulation has halted into a thicker substance, so gone are those quick and calculative reflexes. (Sort of like when someone gets high, as the dope slows down the blood circulation, it increases the person’s stupidity.) Sight in Zombies is limited due to dehydration, thus strengthening hearing and scent senses to seek fresh un-mutated blood that the bacteria hungers. And apparently various bacteria can live in open air as long as their within the slightest moisture, so it doesn’t matter if the body is decaying. And finally, a bullet to the brain amputates the bacteria’s control to the whole body. This could very well be the bacteria’s own next step in evolution.

Yeah I found some info on that and post it, interesting stuff and I know of a Fungi that takes over insects bodies and controls their actions to climb into the trees where it then kills the host and grows the spores to only release it again in some unsuspecting host.

Troll...

are you trolling the troll Idiot!

Yeah lets me make a topic and say nothing but good things about

Never discuss anything but love and adoration. Never be a little bit critical.

Obviously you cant read my post. Hypocrite !

goofing off on the internet and found this

kinda funny!

http://www.fvza.org/zscience2.html

January 17, 2006

The Return of the Puppet Masters

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Posted by Carl Zimmer

Are brain parasites altering the personalities of three billion people? The question emerged a few years ago, and it shows no signs of going away.

I first encountered this idea while working on my book Parasite Rex. I was investigating the remarkable ability parasites have to manipulate the behavior of their hosts. The lancet fluke Dicrocoelium dendriticum, for example, forces its ant host to clamp itself to the tip of grass blades, where a grazing mammal might eat it. It's in the fluke's interest to get eaten, because only by getting into the gut of a sheep or some other grazer can it complete its life cycle. Another fluke, Euhaplorchis californiensis, causes infected fish to shimmy and jump, greatly increasing the chance that wading birds will grab them.

Those parasites were weird enough, but then I got to know Toxoplasma gondii. This single-celled parasite lives in the guts of cats, sheddding eggs that can be picked up by rats and other animals that can just so happen be eaten by cats. Toxoplasma forms cysts throughout its intermediate host's body, including the brain. And yet a Toxoplasma-ridden rat is perfectly healthy. That makes good sense for the parasite, since a cat would not be particularly interested in eating a dead rat. But scientists at Oxford discovered that the parasite changes the rats in one subtle but vital way.

The scientists studied the rats in a six-foot by six-foot outdoor enclosure. They used bricks to turn it into a maze of paths and cells. In each corner of the enclosure they put a nest box along with a bowl of food and water. On each the nests they added a few drops of a particular odor. On one they added the scent of fresh straw bedding, on another the bedding from a rat's nests, on another the scent of rabbit urine, on another, the urine of a cat. When they set healthy rats loose in the enclosure, the animals rooted around curiously and investigated the nests. But when they came across the cat odor, they shied away and never returned to that corner. This was no surprise: the odor of a cat triggers a sudden shift in the chemistry of rat brains that brings on intense anxiety. (When researchers test anti-anxiety drugs on rats, they use a whiff of cat urine to make them panic.) The anxiety attack made the healthy rats shy away from the odor and in general makes them leery of investigating new things. Better to lie low and stay alive.

Then the researchers put Toxoplasma-carrying rats in the enclosure. Rats carrying the parasite are for the most part indistinguishable from healthy ones. They can compete for mates just as well and have no trouble feeding themselves. The only difference, the researchers found, is that they are more likely to get themselves killed. The scent of a cat in the enclosure didn't make them anxious, and they went about their business as if nothing was bothering them. They would explore around the odor at least as often as they did anywhere else in the enclosure. In some cases, they even took a special interest in the spot and came back to it over and over again.

The scientists speculated that Toxoplasma was secreted some substance that was altering the patterns of brain activity in the rats. This manipulation likely evolved through natural selection, since parasites that were more likely to end up in cats would leave more offpsring.

The Oxford scientists knew that humans can be hosts to Toxoplasma, too. People can become infected by its eggs by handling soil or kitty litter. For most people, the infection causes no harm. Only if a person's immune system is weak does Toxoplasma grow uncontrollably. That's why pregnant women are advised not to handle kitty litter, and why toxoplasmosis is a serious risk for people with AIDS. Otherwise, the parasite lives quietly in people's bodies (and brains). It's estimated that about half of all people on Earth are infected with Toxoplasma.

Given that human and rat brains have a lot of similarities (they share the same basic anatomy and use the same neurotransmitters), a question naturally arose: if Toxoplasma can alter the behavior of a rat, could it alter a human? Obviously, this manipulation would not do the parasite any good as an adaptation, since it's pretty rare for a human to be devoured by a cat. But it could still have an effect.

Some scientists believe that Toxoplasma changes the personality of its human hosts, bringing different shifts to men and women. Parasitologist Jaroslav Flegr of Charles University in Prague administered psychological questionnaires to people infected with Toxoplasma and controls. Those infected, he found, show a small, but statistically significant, tendency to be more self-reproaching and insecure. Paradoxically, infected women, on average, tend to be more outgoing and warmhearted than controls, while infected men tend to be more jealous and suspicious.

It's controversial work, disputed by many. But it attracted the attention of E. Fuller Torrey of the Stanley Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. Torrey and his colleagues had noticed some intriguing links between Toxoplasma and schizophrenia. Infection with the parasite has been associated with damage to a certain class of neurons (astrocytes). So has schizophrenia. Pregnant women with high levels of Toxoplasma antibodies in their blood were more likely to give birth to children who would later develop schizophrenia. Torrey lays out more links in this 2003 paper. While none is a smoking gun, they are certainly food for thought. It's conceivable that exposure to Toxoplasma causes subtle changes in most people's personality, but in a small minority, it has more devastating effects.

A year later, Torrey and his colleagues discovered one more fascinating link. They raised human cells in Petri dishes and infected them with Toxoplasma. Then they dosed the cells with a variety of drugs used to treat schizophrenia. Several of the drugs--most notably haloperidol--blocked the growth of the parasite.

So Fuller and the Oxford scientists joined forces to find an answer to the next logical question: can drugs used to treat schizophrenia help a parasite-crazed rat? They now report their results in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London (press release). They ran the original tests on 49 more rats. Once again, parasitized rats lost their healthy fear of cats. Then the researchers treated the rats with haloperidol and several other anti-psychotic drugs. They found that the drugs made the rats more scared. They also found that the antipsychotics were as effective as pyrimethamine, a drug that is specifically used to eliminate Toxoplasma.

There's plenty left to do to turn these results into a full-blown explanation of parasites and personalities. For example, what is Toxoplasma releasing into brains to manipulate its hosts? And how does that substance give rise to schizophrenia in some humans? And even if the hypothesis does hold up, it would only account for some cases of schizophrenia, while the cause of others would remain undiscovered. But still...the idea that parasites are tinkering with humanity's personality--perhaps even giving rise to cultural diversity--is taking over my head like a bad case of Toxoplasma.

Update 2/9: link to new PRSL paper fixed.

Comments (98) + TrackBacks (7) | Category: The Parasite Files

To bad it's a Tamashii exclusive, lets wait and see how 1/100 Metal Build version turns out.

Metal build???

I'm not familiar with zombie fiction. But

I assumed that dead is dead but there seems to be some remnant memory going on. For example, the kid that picks up the teddy bear in the beginning (which was an awesome way to start the show, the torn of face that revealed the braces was pretty effective.) and Morgan's wife returning to the house.

This is probably in the books so don't spoil for me what it is. Even in a spoiler tag because I'll be reading comments on episodes aired. Thanks!

I recommend it to non zombie apocalypse fans like me or even people that aren't big on horror. I didn't really think it was that scary even though I can say that it's gory and surprising. The one thing I wasn't expecting was that it's really emotional. Someone previously mentioned a great scene that was unexpectedly heart felt. There were a couple of scenes actually. Seems silly typing about it but it makes the show better than what it should be.

Dont get me wrong I like the concept of Post Apocalyptic movies. The Road really had me sitting in the dark and brooding, and cannibalization surfaced a fact of survival. In I am Legend. I watched the struggle of a man racked by guilt and going nuts alone in the world. Even others like Mad Max or Planet of the Apes. And this is why I did watch it. But the concept of Zombies going around duh uuuuuu ummm aaaa makes me laugh pretty hard. I guess its just me. PS I also liked Denzil Washingtons movie of the last bible thumper on earth even though I am an avid agnostic

So I really dont understand the fascination about zombies, ware wolfs, and vampires. Pretty lamo monsters to scare a 9 year old maybe. Space monsters Yeah

Monsters like giant sharks and crocs yeah. And even ghosts and corporate executives can be scary.

Now I watched last nights show and it fascinates me more of what the last man standing would do in an empty world. That is why I loved I Am Legend. It took it at from a scientific standpoint. The so called zombies were created from a mutated gene strain to cure cancer. They are allergic to sunlight, and have avaricious appetite for meat.

But they move fast, can be shot other than the head and display drone intelligence. And they are alive not dead corpses.

In Zombie movies they are DEAD. Dead being decaying mass of flesh, sinew and bones. So that being said why do they need to eat?

All you will need to do is let them starve and they would waste away. Why does a DEAD thing need to eat. So as I saw in last nights show very disgusting to put on TV so early, is a women clearly torn from the waist showing signs of heavy decomposition crawling in the park and either recognizing her boyfriend cop as dinner or someone she knew so is she alive? And magically she dies with a bullet in her head. So is the body dead and the brain alive? If that is the case does the body waste away until there is only brains left rolling around and looking for FRY! So the birds are eating the corpse are they going to be zombies too. And they move so slow. You mean to tell me you cant napalm them to hell? This and the whole concept of Zombies is very childish. Although I loved I am Legend and the Road which is very unsettling for a post apocalyptic movie.