Okay, this is my one frivolity before diving into my hell Monday (featuring an unbroken stretch of three back-to-back classes and a committee meeting): According to a Natural Resources Defense Council survey, 78 percent of sinister one-eyed industrialists based in the Arctic have been forced to relocate their powerful underworld shadow governments, with many now…
I’m not sure many people really care that today marks the 10th anniversary of the date that the moon was supposed to have blasted out of Earth’s orbit in the British sci-fi show Space: 1999, but here’s a YouTube clip that presents an alternate opening of Star Trek, redone in the style of Space: 1999.…
In 1970, the gap between shows featuring magic and shows featuring more science-based themes is fairly wide, which may be related to the relative cost of producing the different types of shows; Captain Kirk required pricey sets and a makeup crew while Samantha Stevens just needed a film editor and the ability to wiggle her…
I was on the road (and away from a computer) for the past few days, on a little family outing. My wife brought along a copy of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure #4 that she picked up cheap at a library sale. The cover of this book, originally published in 1979, features a big-jawed space hero in a suit…
Political message? You decide. Blip from Sean Mullen on Vimeo. Similar:AP wins reinstatement to White House events after judge rules government can’t bar its jou…By Inferno's Light #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 15) Dominion / Cardassian edg…In Purgatory's Shadow #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 14) Garak's answers a code…My crowd simulation handles 2000…
Set phasers to “meh”! My wife arranged a visit to The Franklin Institute a couple of weeks ago. We didn’t actually know that this Star Trek exhibit was there. I was ready to pass, in favor of the more educational exhibits, but my wife made it a Father’s Day treat and shelled out enough gold-pressed…
I’ve never been a phone guy. My voicemail recording advises people to e-mail me rather than wait for me to remember to check my messages. Around 2004, I told a class of students that I didn’t use instant messager because I would have nobody to talk to. I got a generous “awww!” of pity from…
With the recent release of the new Star Trek, I started to wonder how is this going to affect the kids? Thankfully, mine have heard of and have watched plenty of the original series, so I didn’t have to worry about their state of mind. But there are a lot of kids out there who…
Last night, I went to see the new Star Trek movie with a member of the computer science faculty. A math professor was hoping to come, but had a change of plans. The previews suggested it would be a bit intense for me to take the kids to see it, but now that I’ve seen…
The cuteness of a tribble, the temper of a mugatu, and the ham of a Shatner. Similar:AP wins reinstatement to White House events after judge rules government can’t bar its jou…By Inferno's Light #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 15) Dominion / Cardassian edg…In Purgatory's Shadow #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 14) Garak's answers…
I know that my bridge playset has long since gone to the big warp core in the sky, and I can’t seem to find the shoebox where I kept my original Star Trek action figures from the 70s. Even as a kid, I remember being frustrated that the playset didn’t really look all that much…
While hiding from the stack of final papers, I took a break in the cafeteria. Some of my colleagues were talking about the new Star Trek movie, and the conversation shifted to what’s on TV now. My daily household duties include putting the kids to bed. My wife doesn’t really do mornings, and homeschooling doesn’t…
The grammar offered an irresistible linguistic challenge. Klingon is difficult but not impossible, weird yet totally believable. Anyone can put on a pair of pointed ears or memorize some lines of dialogue, but learning to speak Klingon requires genuine hard work. Most languages created for fictional worlds involve simple vocabulary substitutions, such as moodge for…
My wife can’t stand computers, but she’s more than an honorary geek because she knows her classic sci-fi. She pegged this scene instantly. In this re-creation from “The Cage,” green-skinned Orion slave girl Vena dances for Captain Pike. Why does Elchesen put in the hours necessary to create such images? “The time involved depends on…
People. This is serious. Is nothing sacred? Matt will play the character of Mondain Minax, a cyber-space explorer and weirding weapons expert who lives more in VR than RL. Minax is a member of the crew of the alien Sontarans space vessel Zero Wing (veQDuj’oH Dujllj’e’) which acts as a foil to the Stargate Universe…
THERE is nothing particularly unusual about the living room of the two-story town house that Scott Veazie shares with his wife in Washougal, Wash., except for one piece of furniture in a corner: a full-size replica of the captain’s chair from the bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise, as seen in the original “Star Trek” television…
I smell trouble. Via Trekmovie.com: Genki’s “Red Shirt” cologne (whose tag line “Because Tomorrow May Never Come” is priceless) celebrates the sacrifices of those often nameless crew of the USS Enterprise. Described appropriately as a cologne for those with a “devotion to living each day as it could be your last” the cologne has top…
As I was putting my 10-year-old son to bed tonight, as usual we had a long, free-ranging, unrushed conversation. Somehow I mentioned the missing Doctor Who tapes. Peter got very thoughtful. “If I had a time machine, I could go back to the moment those tapes disappeared. And I could bring them forward in time,…
Ricardo Montalban (1920-2009). My kids know him as the grandfather in Spy Kids 2 and 3. Let’s hope they lay him to rest dressed in a spotless white suit, in a casket lined in soft, Corinthian leather. He will always be Captain Kirk’s finest foe, the would-be conqueror who first tried to steal the Enterprise…
Forget WALL-E and GORT. Forget sexy Summer Glau and Tricia Helfer in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Battlestar Galactica. OK, don’t forget them. But check it out: Long before Autobots, Fembots, and the Urkelbot, PGA SF authors obsessed over electricity-, steam-, and clockwork-powered machine-men or “robots” (a term introduced in 1921) that might free…