Zach Galifianakis escorted Mimi Haist to the "Hangover Part II" premiere and after-party in 2011.
Zach Galifianakis' character, Alan, is always doing the unexpected in the "Hangover" movies -- and the actor is apparently the same way in real life.
Galifianakis has helped an 87-year-old Los Angeles woman climb out of homelessness, finding her an apartment and paying her rent, and he has escorted her to premieres of his films, the New York Daily News reports.
The actor met Elizabeth "Mimi" Haist in 1994 when he visited the Fox Laundry laundromat in Santa Monica, Calif., where she volunteered, subsisting on tips from customers, the Daily News reports.
Just two years ago, he learned Haist was homeless and had been staying with various friends. Galifianakis arranged a small apartment for her, paying her rent, and introduced her to actress Renee Zellweger, who furnished the apartment, according to the newspaper.
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Mimi Haist at the Santa Monica laundromat where she met Zach Galifianakis.
In a 2010 interview conducted in the laundromat, Haist told Richard Stearns from Partners Trust Real Estate Brokerage that she had "no family left."
Before Monday night's Los Angeles premiere of the actor's new movie, "The Hangover Part III," the Daily News reported that Galifianakis would be escorting Haist to the event. "I?m looking forward to it," Haist told the Daily News. "I like the excitement of it."
Although Galifianakis was very visible at the event on Monday, there was no confirmation that Haist went as his guest. The premiere itself was overshadowed by the shocking news out of Oklahoma, where a devastating tornado hit Monday.
"Just like with any disasters, you feel silly doing a red carpet thing,"Galifianakis told USA Today.
The actor noted that celebrity hoopla always seemed strange to him, but especially in the storm's wake. "All of this is very bizarre to me and silly," he told USA Today. "The worship of celebrity culture is bad for our culture, to be honest. ... But as far as Oklahoma, obviously, you just hope and pray that things will turn up."
Rock Center: Zach Galifianakis talks to Brian Williams about 'Hangover' films
The actor delighted fans by signing autographs and at one point, climbing into the trunk of a car as if he was going to ride home there before jumping out to ride in the car's back seat.
Reuters
Zach Galifianakis climbed into a car trunk briefly at the Los Angeles premiere of "The Hangover Part III."
Galifianakis' character plays a major role in the final film of the "Hangover" trilogy, which opens May 23.
"If you talk to people who love these movies, they?ll often say they wish they had a friend like Alan, and that?s largely attributable to Zach," director Todd Phillips told the Philippine Star. "He has such sweetness behind his eyes, that he can say and do most anything and you?ll think, ?Oh, he didn?t mean it like that.? So he gets away with all sorts of things."
Slow earthquakes: It's all in the rock mechanicsPublic release date: 20-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: A'ndrea Elyse Messer aem1@psu.edu 814-865-9481 Penn State
Earthquakes that last minutes rather than seconds are a relatively recent discovery, according to an international team of seismologists. Researchers have been aware of these slow earthquakes, only for the past five to 10 years because of new tools and new observations, but these tools may explain the triggering of some normal earthquakes and could help in earthquake prediction.
"New technology has shown us that faults do not just fail in a sudden earthquake or by stable creep," said Demian M. Saffer, professor of geoscience, Penn State. "We now know that earthquakes with anomalous low frequencies -- slow earthquakes -- and slow slip events that take weeks to occur exist."
These new observations have put a big wrinkle into our thinking about how faults work, according to the researchers who also include Chris Marone, professor of geosciences, Penn State; Matt J. Ikari, recent Ph.D. recipient, and Achim J. Kopf, former Penn State postdoctural fellow, both now at the University of Bremen, Germany. So far, no one has explained the processes that cause slow earthquakes.
The researchers thought that the behavior had to be related to the type of rock in the fault, believing that clay minerals are important in this slip behavior to see how the rocks reacted. Ikari performed laboratory experiments using natural samples from drilling done offshore of Japan in a place where slow earthquakes occur. The samples came from the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, an international collaborative. The researchers reported their results recently in Nature Geoscience.
These samples are made up of ocean sediment that is mostly clay with a little quartz.
"Usually, when you shear clay-rich fault rocks in the laboratory in the way rocks are sheared in a fault, as the speed increases, the rocks become stronger and self arrests the movement," said Saffer. "Matt noticed another behavior. Initially the rocks reacted as expected, but these clays got weaker as they slid further. They initially became slightly stronger as the slip rate increased, but then, over the long run, they became weaker."
The laboratory experiments that produced the largest effect closely matched the velocity at which slow earthquakes occur in nature. The researchers also found that water content in the clays influenced how the shear occurred.
"From the physics of earthquake nucleation based on the laboratory experiments we would predict the size of the patch of fault that breaks at tens of meters," said Saffer. "The consistent result for the rates of slip and the velocity of slip in the lab are interesting. Lots of things point in the direction for this to be the solution."
The researchers worry about slow earthquakes because there is evidence that swarms of low frequency events can trigger large earthquake events. In Japan, a combination of broadband seismometers and global positioning system devices can monitor slow earthquakes.
For the Japanese and others in earthquake prone areas, a few days of foreknowledge of a potential earthquake hazard could be valuable and save lives.
For slow slip events, collecting natural samples for laboratory experiments is more difficult because the faults where these take place are very deep. Only off the north shore of New Zealand is there a fault that can be sampled. Saffer is currently working to arrange a drilling expedition to that fault.
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The National Science Foundation and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft supported this work.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Slow earthquakes: It's all in the rock mechanicsPublic release date: 20-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: A'ndrea Elyse Messer aem1@psu.edu 814-865-9481 Penn State
Earthquakes that last minutes rather than seconds are a relatively recent discovery, according to an international team of seismologists. Researchers have been aware of these slow earthquakes, only for the past five to 10 years because of new tools and new observations, but these tools may explain the triggering of some normal earthquakes and could help in earthquake prediction.
"New technology has shown us that faults do not just fail in a sudden earthquake or by stable creep," said Demian M. Saffer, professor of geoscience, Penn State. "We now know that earthquakes with anomalous low frequencies -- slow earthquakes -- and slow slip events that take weeks to occur exist."
These new observations have put a big wrinkle into our thinking about how faults work, according to the researchers who also include Chris Marone, professor of geosciences, Penn State; Matt J. Ikari, recent Ph.D. recipient, and Achim J. Kopf, former Penn State postdoctural fellow, both now at the University of Bremen, Germany. So far, no one has explained the processes that cause slow earthquakes.
The researchers thought that the behavior had to be related to the type of rock in the fault, believing that clay minerals are important in this slip behavior to see how the rocks reacted. Ikari performed laboratory experiments using natural samples from drilling done offshore of Japan in a place where slow earthquakes occur. The samples came from the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, an international collaborative. The researchers reported their results recently in Nature Geoscience.
These samples are made up of ocean sediment that is mostly clay with a little quartz.
"Usually, when you shear clay-rich fault rocks in the laboratory in the way rocks are sheared in a fault, as the speed increases, the rocks become stronger and self arrests the movement," said Saffer. "Matt noticed another behavior. Initially the rocks reacted as expected, but these clays got weaker as they slid further. They initially became slightly stronger as the slip rate increased, but then, over the long run, they became weaker."
The laboratory experiments that produced the largest effect closely matched the velocity at which slow earthquakes occur in nature. The researchers also found that water content in the clays influenced how the shear occurred.
"From the physics of earthquake nucleation based on the laboratory experiments we would predict the size of the patch of fault that breaks at tens of meters," said Saffer. "The consistent result for the rates of slip and the velocity of slip in the lab are interesting. Lots of things point in the direction for this to be the solution."
The researchers worry about slow earthquakes because there is evidence that swarms of low frequency events can trigger large earthquake events. In Japan, a combination of broadband seismometers and global positioning system devices can monitor slow earthquakes.
For the Japanese and others in earthquake prone areas, a few days of foreknowledge of a potential earthquake hazard could be valuable and save lives.
For slow slip events, collecting natural samples for laboratory experiments is more difficult because the faults where these take place are very deep. Only off the north shore of New Zealand is there a fault that can be sampled. Saffer is currently working to arrange a drilling expedition to that fault.
###
The National Science Foundation and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft supported this work.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
We're geeks. We get it. Our phones, be they Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, or Windows Phone, are among the most important things in our lives. We use them for everything, all the time. But in some situations our phones can get in the way, like on a first date. So, from one geek to another, I'm going to share ten basic tips on how to keep your smartphone from ruining a potentially great new relationship... by keeping it in your pants!
Here are the bullet points, watch the video for the details!
Don't use your phone during a first date. Your attention should be on the person you're with, not the device in your hand.
Turn your ringer off. Turn vibration off. Turn notifications off. Go into bedside mode, do not disturb mode, or whatever it takes to keep your phone quiet.
Turning your phone away isn't as good as putting it away. Really, it has to be out of sight to be out of mind.
If you're expecting an emergency call, be upfront about it. Knowing really is half the battle.
$#!+ happens. If you forget to turn your phone off and it goes off, apologize, put it away, and get back to your date.
If your date leaves the area, that's not an excuse to jump back to your phone. If you do decide to text your friend, make sure you don't get caught.
And don't post anything to a public social network your date might see, especially not without their consent.
If your date leaves their phone behind, that's also not an invitation to start snooping. Take a deep breath and leave their phone alone.
Pay attention to your date. Keep eye contact. Use their name. Make sure they feel like the most important person in the room.
Know when to break the rules. If your date wants a picture, to bump phones for contacts, to set up a second date, then do it!
There they are, my tips for how to have a great, phone-free first date. I'd love to hear your tips too, so hit up the comments and tell me what you think! (Especially if you have any juicy phone-related dating stories to share!!)
Microsoft PowerPoint facilitates presentation design with zero constraints. And startups like Prezi provide well-designed templates and other features to help you communicate what matters. Now an Israeli startup called?Emaze?is trying a different take by offering a much simpler templating system for presentations that are intended to make you be concise.
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Public release date: 20-May-2013
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Microsoft PowerPoint facilitates presentation design with zero constraints. And startups like Prezi provide well-designed templates and other features to help you communicate what matters. Now an Israeli startup called?