Star Trek
zooillogix | October 30, 2009Beautiful and fascinating footage of a Bloodbelly Comb (not a jellyfish, but similarly gelatinous, like my brother) from the Monterey Bay Aquarium's remote operated vehicle. The laser light show comes from tiny transparent, hair-like cilia combined with trace amounts of LSD that will forever remain in your spine.
I could point out that it appears Deep Sea News ran this a few days ago, but we're not talking to them anymore since they went all "academic" on us... I bet they don't even have any shirts with wolves on them.
cevans | August 13, 2009
Recently, Rhizome.org invited me to contribute a long-form article to their Rhizome Writer's Initiative, a new program designed to give emerging and established writers the opportunity to pontificate on the world of new media arts. I was glad to do it, especially when I realized that the exhibition I was to review is called "Beam Me Up" and that the themes it dissects coincide neatly with my recent re-appreciation of Star Trek. I include my finished article here on Universe because I think some of the ideas discussed in it dovetail well with the recent topics here--systems, complexity,…
pontiff | June 1, 2009What in the world is a review for Star Trek doing in Nature Physics? (Thank to reader W for pointing this out.) I mean, at least the review of Angels and Demons has references to physics, but the review of Star Trek, is, well, just a review of Star Trek with no reference physics or science or, well, anything that I could see the audience of Nature Physics relating to.
I'm not saying I don't appreciate the review, or the book/art section of Nature Physics, but doesn't this seem a bit out of place. It is too bad, indeed, because the movie does contain time travel, and as Cosmic Sean…
razib | May 11, 2009I went and watched the new Star Trek movie this weekend. It was alright. Worth the money. But there's one thing that's been getting in my craw about criticisms about the film, so I thought I would air my dissent. Since it's a spoiler, below the fold....
I liked the fact that the time travelers broke temporal continuity and that we're now veering off into an alternative timeline. Time travel was cute when Harlan Ellison came up with it in the 1960s, but it's done, overused and stale. In fact I began to feel years ago that it was a get-out-of-jail card whenever writers didn't have any new…
hrynyshyn | February 26, 2009I owe author Eric Roston a book review. He was kind enough to send me a copy of The Carbon Age: How Life's Core Element Has Become Civilization's Greatest Threat late last year. It took me a while to get around to it, and I regret not reading it earlier.
The Carbon Age is not the best piece of science writing I've ever had the pleasure of devouring. It could have used another edit, for starters, to ensure that new ideas and terms are explained at first occurence rather than several pages later. And I'm not sure that a biography of carbon is enough to tie together disparate chapters on stellar…
rallain | December 23, 2008Clearly, I am not a professional blogger. I am an amateur. This is because I was under the impression that only amateur bloggers could compete in the blogging olympics. When did they change these rules? Anyway, Adam Weiner did a physics-based analysis of the latest Star Trek movie trailer. Here is the trailer:
In the trailer (oh, spoiler alert) a young Kirk jumps out of a car before it goes over a cliff. It does look odd, and that is why I had intended to analyze it. In Adam's analysis, at PopSci.com the basic approach was:
Take the initial velocity of the car (from the clip)
Assume…
grrlscientist | September 24, 2008tags: death by parody, python trek, humor, funny, streaming video
Oh, okay, I see how this is war is being fought! The truly evil scientist from across The Pond has begun cheating by launching a second satirical attack that introduces other characters into the fray! Oh, HO! In view of this egregious war crime, I have no choice but to escalate this war from a limited Shatner Satire conflict into a no-holds-barred all-out War of the Parodies! DEATH BY PARODY! [2:12]
esiegel | May 13, 2008Sometimes, I publish things on this website that are not entirely correct (and when I do, I'll own up to it). Sometimes other people do on theirs. There are bad ways and good ways to argue these points, ranging from name-calling to explicitly explaining where the flaws are in one's arguments, and what the corrections are.
And I had no idea how I was going to articulate this. But then Lucas pointed this chart out to me, and it does a better job of explaining it than I ever could.
You know who could explain this? Captain Picard. Imagine you got to be a Starfleet officer. Here's what he has to…
esiegel | May 10, 2008I'm not someone who gets as excited about science-fiction space shows as many other science bloggers, but I am a fan of the current Battlestar Galactica and, especially, of Star Trek: The Next Generation. But there's one man who stands out as the hero of Star Trek: TNG, and it's the seasoned, savvy, courageous and confident Captain Picard:
Now Patrick Stewart is one cool guy, but he's nothing compared to the starship captain he played. Back in 2001, a band named Dark Materia made a techno song about Captain Picard called The Picard Song, and for me, the combination of bad techno, sound bites…
grrlscientist | November 26, 2007tags: star wars, star trek, lego, streaming video
This is an amusing fan-flick using starships made from legos, showing a battle between the starship enterprise and the x-wing fights from star wars [3:16]