The Ripley's collection, acquired by Ripley's VP Edward Meyer, contains 30 authentic vampire killing kits, 26 of which are currently on display in eight Ripley's museums. Apparently the kits are extremely rare; Meyer says Ripley's are the only kits on public display and the remaining few reside in private collections.

It's interesting to see how the items in these kits compare with vampire-killing tools in modern fiction. It looks like there's a heavy reliance on chemical compounds, and the wooden stakes look more like carved knives that pointy sticks, with handy hilts and tips of metal or bone.

Vampires Beware: Ripley's Believe It or Not! Owns the World's Largest Collection of Authentic Vampire Killing Kits [Ripley's Newsroom via Neatorama]

Call me picky, but the "bob, bop blah, blah bip bip" stuttering, talking-over someone humor that Ben Stiller cranks out in every movie irritates the crap out of me. He's a wonderful straight man kind of actor and even better as a Tom Cruise stand in. But once he starts ripping his patented chripy bips and boops, I'm lost. There is a beyond perfect example of this in the Night Of The Museum 2 trailer, when the Lincoln Memorial comes to life and bip bops through a pretty spot on one-liner. It's sort of funny, but nails on the chalk board for me.

Despite the Stiller-isms, I still have high hopes for Amy Adams as Amelia Earhart, and the same goes for Bill Hader as General George Armstrong Custer. (Please start casting Hader in more things, he's hilarious). Adams commits to any character she's given, and no doubt will make this sequel as sweet as anything. If you haven't seen the original, I highly recommend it as a holiday rental that both you and the wee ones will enjoy. In spite of stammering Stiller.

Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian is out in May of 2009.

The exhibit “Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns & Mermaids” was created by the American Museum of Natural History and is currently on display at the Museum of Science in Boston. The exhibit looks at mythical creatures from all over the world, from Greek legends of cyclopean giants to modern sightings of Bigfoot. It also compares similar regional myths, such as contrasting European images of the unicorn with similar Asian legends.

But the cornerstone of the exhibit examines the real inspirations behind these mythical creatures, displaying various models, animals, and remains. For example, the aeropyornis, a giant, now-extinct bird likely inspired the legends of the roc. Fossilized remains of the protoceratops found in the Gobi desert resemble descriptions of the griffin, alleged denizens of that region. Legend claimed that the skull once mounted in an Austrian town hall belonged to a slain dragon, but was, in fact, the head of a woolly rhinoceros. It might risk shattering your childhood dreams, but it’s also a fascinating object lesson in how “proof” of a creature’s existence has been misinterpreted as well a look at the genuinely remarkable animals that have tread the Earth.

The exhibit will be at the Boston Museum of Science through March 22, 2009.

Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns & Mermaids [American Museum of Natural History via Biology in Science Fiction]

Potter's props and things will be traveling the United States, but they're starting in that Chicago science museum... which makes perfect sense what with all the science in Potter films. The props and costumes from the film are being dubbed "iconic artifacts." There's no doubt that Harry Potter has influenced our culture greatly and should have some place in museums, but this money-making scheme to pollute my favorite museum (home of the creepy hall of babies) with hordes of children is upsetting. More importantly, how is this teaching anyone about science? Has our world blurred the differences between science and magic so much that we'll display Harry's wand and call it technology?

Do I want to go? Sure. But I'm a little thrown off by the location. It's kind of amazing how magic is truly taking over society, what with vampires and wizards, just as real science literacy is on the wane. I'm going out on a limb here, but maybe it's only a matter of time before children stop being able to distinguish between magic and actual feasible tech.

You can buy tickets at the Museum Of Science And Industry for the Chicago opening on April 30 2009.

[Harry Potter Exhibit]

In a museum full of dioramas — stuffed skunks and harmless alligators — the thrills have to come from somewhere. The Climate Change exhibit that was installed on Saturday conceptualizes the changes we're forcing on the planet with facts, figures, and taxidermy. After it is displayed here in New York, it'll embark on a world tour.

The exhibition has already come in for some griping: The Times picked on the selective facts and a misleading timeline of the exhibit, as if something next to a gift shop was going to address the issue in a sophisticated way. The tragic world tour begins with a wall-sized version of the Keeling Graph, illustrating the exponential rise in human-produced carbon emissions. Further on, an entire virtual installation asks you to determine how many trees you're going to plant. You can see the effect of your decision on the world's atmosphere on the accompanying viewscreen.

Opposite a wall of notes from people offering their own solutions (left), is a display of the eventual effects of global warming. Manhattan is swallowed up by the onset of water from the ice caps melting. Because a child isn't able to reuse clothing, we have to burn more fossil fuels, and you can see the rings of several trees that suffer as a result.

Overload sets in somewhere between the caps font on everything and the fortieth SUV. Our rich coastal areas will take the most punishment, bringing a vast refugee problem, along with a vast unemployed actor situation, to the middle of the country. The world will change if we don't. Curator Michael Oppenheimer convinces us of the fact that polar bears and other bear species will merge, creating the attractive prospect of a super-bear...strolling through our trash. But hey, climate change might not be all hurricanes and droughts, you know.

What crowds there were in the exhibit — it costs 9 dollars extra to learns how we will all die, per person — were watching a video full of economists that explained, "It's not too late." A second short documentary had no economists, just nonprofit experts opining about what kind of limits should be imposed on the entire world unilaterally, or at least developed countries. For most of the afternoon, this film went unwatched. One sad movie in a depressing exhibition is enough.

While there's a lot of talk about the costs of not doing something, the cost of doing something isn't enumerated. If, as some observers are suggesting, biotechnology could manufacture "carbon-eating" plants, could our strategy of burning coal with reckless abandon actually pay off? Then again, that might just be the carbon emissions talking.

Climate Change Faster Than Anticipated [Telegraph]

Gonzalez-Foerster says that the installation was inspired by the 2005 London bombings as well as the global credit crisis. Visitors are immersed in a grim world where humanity has been forced underground:

Push the plastic barriers aside and you are in some kind of bunk-bed-filled disaster shelter - somewhere between Henry Moore's drawings of communal air-raid shelters in the blitz and the nightmarish dormitories of Soylent Green or Blindness, or of certain scenes in Battlestar Galactica.

Media appears to be the last respite of mankind. Science fiction novels are scattered around the bunks while radios blare. Meanwhile, “The Last Film,” featuring clips from Solaris, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Mission to Mars, plays overhead.

Models of other Tate Modern sculptures, notably Louise Bourgeois’s giant spider “Maman,” were created for the exhibit. These models were made 25% larger than the originals, giving the impression that the artworks have mutated and invaded the last sanctuary for human life.

Images by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty, Ray Tang/Rex Features, and Dominic Lipinski/Press Association.
Sci-fi and shivers: TH.2058 at Tate Modern's Turbine Hall [The Guardian]

Last year, as the "living roof" to the museum was being built, journalists were allowed to visit and take pictures. Here is what the roof you see above looked like just as it was being planted in 2007.

Below, visitors to the museum opening look upward at the flooded rainforest exhibit.

And here, you can see upward yourself and find out what they are gaping at. Those blobs of light you see are the skylights that dot the living roof. So you are actually looking upward through two biosystems: a flooded forest, and a grassy California plain on the roof.

The museum has retained its old shape in front, and many of the beloved exhibits are still there. The albino alligator (and indeed, several other alligators and cute penguins) hang out in an open-air habitat that visitors can peer into delightedly. Or fearfully, if the alligator happens to move.

Museum member Christopher Hsiang noted that there are a few things he misses about the old museum:

They sacrifice content (books/exhibit space) for architectural splendor. Yes, very airy and spacious, [but] where are the anthropology displays and award-winning dioramas? Guess all that went the way of rows of stuffy specimen cases. These days it's more about interactive displays thinly disguised as video games and touch screens.

Still, he says the museum still has a lovely but small library open to the public, filled with reference stacks and taxidermy cases for the nineteenth-century-minded. And, he adds, "The Phillipine coral reef and Northern California coast tanks are big time show-stoppers."

If you're in San Francisco, be sure to check out the new California Academy of Sciences. It's right next to the newly-revamped DeYoung Museum, which looks like something out of a Mad Max movie — all rusting steel towers. So the green Science museum makes quite a contrast with it. Definitely makes a day in Golden Gate Park feel like a battle between two futures.

California Academy of Sciences [official site]

Photo of 2007 living roof under construction by David Paul Morris/Getty Images. All other images by Paul Sakuma/AP.

All six planes were developed for the U.S. military, and some of them flew major recon and combat missions in the Middle East.

• Lockheed Martin/Boeing DarkStar, a stealthy recon plane.
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• AeroVironment RQ-14A Dragon Eye, a hand-launched camera plane.
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• RQ-2A Pioneer, a recon plane that a number of Iraqi soldiers surrendered to in the first Gulf War, the first time anyone ever surrendered to a robot.
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• General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. MQ-1L Predator A, a recon plane that has fired missiles in combat situations.
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• AAI Corporation Shadow 200, another recon plane. The plane on exhibit is called the Screamin Demon and flew missions in Iraq until 2005.
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• Boeing X-45A Joint Unmanned Combat Air System (J-UCAS), one of two scaled down flight test models. This plane is the first built with the intent of using it in a combat role.
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The @Murakami show in Los Angeles had huge numbers of visitors, were you surprised at the large turnout? The line on the final weekend stretched for blocks.

Yes, I was very pleased. It's all thanks to the chief curator Paul, as well as all the others involved. I'm praying that everything goes the same way at Brooklyn too. The expectations of the audience are exploding now, much like in the music industry in the 1970s. In order to meet their expectations, I've got no choice but to keep on running.

You've worked with many medium: sculptures, paintings, animation, the Vuitton purses, etc. What do you enjoy working with the most?

The collaboration I did with Mr. Marc Jacobs was really fun. "Monogrammoflauge," the most recent collaboration, came out of a conversation that I had with Marc Jacobs where I said that I'd like to do something original for the retrospective. The exchange of idea; the process that yields something real in the end. Everything is exciting.

There is a chance to experience an unfamiliar work process when you collaborate with a different industry, and therefore it is extremely exciting. I'm having fun working on my animation right now. That's because I'm excited about the completely new working process of controlling time. Work that takes you into worlds of new media or products. In that moment, as a creator, you are able to experience the pleasure of synapses in your brain linking together in a matter of seconds.

Do you have any specific science fiction influences to your work? Any movies or television shows you grew up watching?

I loved "Galaxy Express 999". When I saw the scene depicting Planet Maetel's collapse, I was moved from the bottom of my heart, and made the decision to work in the field of anime. Also, the amount of influence that the appearance of Star Wars exerted on my generation is tremendous.

I felt sympathetic to the revolution that George Lucas started, and my work has become a re-enactment of that sort of revolution in the art scene.

The S.M.P.ko² piece looks very anime-inspired. Did you draw from any particular project for that?

S.M.P.ko² was a continuation of my figure project, which included Miss ko², Hiropon and My Lonesome Cowboy. All of these characters were thickly wrapped in what I see as particularly Japanese psycho-sexual complexes.

The Tan Tan Bo piece is huge in scale, how did you conceive that piece and finally finish it?

In New Year's of the year that I finished this piece, I was struck with my first spasm of gout. The joint in my toe hurt so much it felt like it had been struck by a hammer, and I truly felt death and the aging of my muscles.

In that moment, I saw the art world's insistence on contextualization as something completely unnecessary, and felt that I needed to make a more honest work that was closer to me, and decided to project myself onto DOB, my imaginary character, and express living pain through him.

The My Lonesome Cowboy and Hiropon pieces stand out as shockingly sexual among your other works. What has been the reaction to them?

It was so positive you'd be surprised. I feel that the fact that I was able to make my debut in America is thanks to those pieces.

Has there ever been any talk of adopting any of your pieces of art into film or tv projects?

I'm already working on one right now. It's an animation called "Kaikai & Kiki." Two episodes of the animation are now on display at Brooklyn Museum as part of the exhibit. I'm also working on a live action movie.

What artists do you enjoy?

Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Andy Warhol, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, J.J. Abrams, Hayao Miyazaki.

Where do you do most of your work?

I work at both Kaikai Kiki's office and studio in Japan, and at our office and studio in Queens.

Has anything changed in the show from Los Angeles to Brooklyn? Will anything be different?

There is a new episode of the Kaikai & Kiki animation, new designs in the Louis Vuitton shop, and some new wallpaper and floor paper, created especially for the Brooklyn space.

Main image is:

727-727, 2006
Acrylic on canvas mounted on board
3000 x 4500 x 70 mm (3 panels)
Courtesy Blum & Poe, Los Angeles
©2006 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

Artist Greg deSantis has also created incredible concept models of a reimagined Nautilus from 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, amazing steampunk British tanks, space pirates boarding a ship through a still red-hot sliced open hole, and even scifi handguns that come complete with their own carrying case.

Sadly, the museum has disappeared and no longer offers models for sale. This is tragic, because these are probably some of the coolest scifi models we've seen, and the attention to detail is incredible. We hope deSantis returns to making these one day, because those tanks would look awesome on our desk.

Chengdu, in Southern China, is one of the country's most important economic hubs. Images by Sutherland Hussey

Sutherland Hussey Architects main page via World Architecture News

The exhibit consists of four zones:
Zone 1: Aliens as imagination. This includes everything from movies in aliens, the movie Alien, and interactive games wher eyou get to stomp on animated monsters.
Zone 2: The science of aliens. Space exploration. Do aliens exist? If they do, where and how? This zone will tell ya.
Zone 3: A giant interactive display that shows you the world of aliens.
Zone 4: Communicating with aliens. How to send and receive signals to other planets. Images by Miraikan

Miraikan main page (Japanese)

Then construction and fund-raising for the building will happen simultaneously until planned completion in 2011. Throughout all that, museum heads are going to be asking locals what they think.

From what we've heard so far, there are some pretty neat things about the redesign already. For example, it's going to have anchor galleries—rooms designed around a particular art piece. It's also going to have a sleek modern-meets-tropical-vegetation type of thing going, with tree-lined plazas and verandas. Grandmas in bikinis are currently not part of the blueprint, but hey, with enough community interest, they very well might be. Keep an eye out. Images courtesy of Herzog & de Meuron

Miami Art Museum to Unveil Design for New Building [NY Times]

Walt Disney once said, "Tomorrow can be a wonderful age. Our scientists today are opening the doors of the Space Age to achievements that will benefit our children and generations to come. The Tomorrowland attractions have been designed to give you an opportunity to participate in adventures that are a living blueprint of our future." However, it looks like that blueprint is sponsored churros and Coca Cola, and has no clue what it's doing. Which might not be too far off from the actual future we're heading towards as a society.

Tomorrowland has been reworked and relaunched three times by Disney since the park opening in 1955, with the most recent facelift happening in 1998. But 10 years haven't even passed since then and the park feels incongruous and meandering, plus the "Rocket Rods" attraction that replaced the boring "People Mover" hasn't worked since 2000, yet it still sits there, looking like a heap of junk. Visitors to Tom Morrow's (an animatronic goof-bot voiced by Nathan Lane) "Innoventions" seek the exits within moments of entering what used to be the kitschy but cool "Carousel of Progress." Mostly because they take everything that is cool about science and make it as much fun as getting a root canal. Plus, "Star Tours" feels like it's about 20 years too old, which it is.

Over the past few years they've attempted to zap some life back into Tomorrowland by adding Buzz Lightyear's Astro-Blasters, which is basically a video game turned into a ride (riders get a gun and "blast" aliens with it throughout the ride, which keeps track of your score), and the Jedi Training Academy, which is a stage show aimed at turning tots into lightsaber-wielding badasses. They get to face off with Darth Vader, who could quickly turn them into padawan-cutlets if not for the cutesy power of the Force. it just doesn't work for a place that's supposed to be showing us what the future is like. You mean, we get to see more Star Wars in the future? George Lucas will be so pleased.

What's really sad is that it's been 20 years since Space Mountain opened, and that's still the coolest attraction in Tomorrowland. With all of the gee-whiz special effects and design innovations we've had along the way, Disney chose to upgrade Space Mountain for a limited time last summer with music from The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Give us a break. It's high time that Tomorrowland started living up to its name and wowing us with the possibilities of unknown worlds and the wonders of science.

Here are a few places that manage to get it right:

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• The Science Fiction Museum: Located in Seattle, this museum dedicated to all things science fiction is massive, fun, and has a roof made out of glass so you can see the stars at night. It's couple with Paul Allen's Experience Music project, and will keep you entertained all day.
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• The Hall of the Universe at the Rose Center for Earth and Space: This giant explorable hall feature a circular staircase that tells you how the universe formed as you climb up. It's housed inside the giant glass and steel cubic Rose Center, and shouldn't be missed if you visit New York City.
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• The Exploratorium: San Francisco's huge science museum near the Golden Gate Bridge recently got a makeover, and it puts an strong emphasis onto hands-on exciting experiences about science. It might look like ancient Roman history outside, but inside it's a whole different world.
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Ackerman caught the scifi bug back in 1922 when he saw the film One Glorious Day, where a homeless spirit takes over the body of Professor Ezra Botts. A few years later he bought his first copy of Amazing Stories and his life was changed forever. He later formed "The Boys Scientifiction Club" in 1930, and began his lifelong pursuit of being science fiction's number one fan. Well, male fan anyhow. "Girl-fans were as rare as unicorn's horns in those days," he says.

However, that was only the beginning of his obsession. He also coined the phrase "sci-fi," wore one of the first ever fan costumes to a convention (he called it a futuristicostume), received a special Hugo award in 1953 for being the "#1 Fan Personality," and has amassed a collection of science fiction memorabilia that was so big, it has now become a part of the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame.

He also launched and edited the magazine Famous Monsters Of Filmland which inspired the likes of George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Billy Bob Thornton, Peter Jackson and Tim Burton. Today he resides in the "Acker mini-mansion" located in Hollywood where he holds court over a smaller collection of items, and gives weekly tours every Saturday. As far as fans go, he sets the benchmark for dedication and staying power.