Category: Not-politics

Star Trek premieres… in Kuwait.

I meant to post on this story about the Star Trek movie and crew over the weekend, but never got around to it until AoSHQ reminded me:

I am in the Army and currently deployed to Kuwait. We have a movie theater on post that shows “second run” movies, meaning that we get the movie about a week or two after they are released in the states. At times, a special effort is made to show the movie here on the same date it is released in the states. With that being said, I was shocked to see the movie schedule that was published for the first half of April. According to this schedule the new Star Trek movie will have a “special premier” on April 11th. I found it very hard to believe that we would be able to view a big “summer time blockbuster” movie that won’t premiere in the States for another 27 days.

Sure enough, the movie actually did get played today and I was able to get in to see it not just once, but twice. Not only did the movie arrive in Kuwait, but J.J. Abrams and most of the “bridge crew” cast (Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, John Cho, Eric Bana and Karl Urban) were here as well.

Continue reading Star Trek premieres… in Kuwait.

Line of the Day: Cane toads and reality TV.

Well, lines:

If the cane toad can survive so much, then it can evolve, and the signs are that it’s already doing so. The evidence was buried in last week’s report, but I underlined it and I’ve got it here in front of me. This is the bit you probably haven’t heard yet, but I think it might be crucial. As the advance guard of the cane toad army moves west, its leading members are developing longer and stronger legs.

Have you got that? The cane toads are getting bigger and smarter. Soon they’ll be learning to drive. There is a school of thought, not necessarily paranoid, which holds the opinion that cane toads with human skills have already penetrated the Australian media and are even appearing as presenters of reality television shows.

Yes, I’ve mentioned cane toads before. I apparently have an unhealthy fascination with the species.

Book of the Week: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

It being Sunday, we shall remove Rules for Radicals and replace it with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance – Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!: as I noted earlier, this book delivers on its promise.

I would also like to revisit this post, mostly because I’m pleased with the way that it had turned out…

60 Minutes produces a worthwhile segment on the DEKA Arm.

The DEKA arm being a prototype for a prosthetic that’s just… impressive:

When Americans are wounded in Afghanistan or Iraq, no expense is spared to save their lives. But once they’re home, if they have suffered an amputation of their arm, they usually end up wearing an artificial limb that hasn’t changed much since World War II.

In all the wonders of modern medicine, building a robotic arm with a fully functioning hand has not been remotely possible.

But as 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley reports, that is starting to change. One remarkable leap in technology is called the DEKA arm and it’s just one of the breakthroughs in a $100 million Pentagon program called “Revolutionizing Prosthetics.”

And this is just the first step; the next is wiring up these things to a patient’s nervous system, or at least coming up with a way for the prosthetic to detect impulses from a patient’s nervous system. Read/watch the whole thing: it’s both engrossing and very, very cool.

There is nothing in this video that should make me think “Cthulhu Mythos.”

And yet, it does:

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. 10am Saturday morning, the day before Easter, thousands of kids waited and watched while the easter bunny dumped tens of thousands of eggs from a helicopter at Harvest Hills Park. The eggdrop was put on by Northview Church in Oklahoma City and was free to the public.

Possibly it’s because of the bunny suit.

Via Blue Crab Boulevard.

Bob Kerrey cleans out a nest of New School demonstrators.

Bob Kerrey is done.

And not in the “he’s on his way out the door” sense.

The kids at the New School in NYC screamed, ranted, and raved at him back in December. Then they chased him through the streets (just a reminder; Kerrey’s a disabled war veteran). He didn’t do anything about that at the time, but Kerrey must have noticed with some interest the way that ‘arresting the petulant man-children’ seemed to work out for NYU, because when the New School protesters came back for a second go the college President decided to just call in the cops to clear things up and be done with it. Which the cops did. Continue reading Bob Kerrey cleans out a nest of New School demonstrators.

A month of Lovecraft is Missing filler…

…which promises to be above the usual webcomic filler: various cultural artifacts as part of “an informal survey of serial storytelling” and lots of guest blogs from other people doing Lovecraft-themed webcomics. Sounds like fun.

I’d also like to note again that Tour de Lovecraft really is an immensely accessible survey/refresher of Lovecraft’s work.