It's a shame that Splice is being marketed the way it's been.  Based on the trailers I've seen, it looks like a horror movie.  It's not.  It's actually fairly thought-provoking.  I enjoyed it, and I was pleasantly surprised that it was more than some freaky thing escaping from a lab and running around eating people.

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Wherever I go, it is the question on everyone's lips*:

"Nightsky! How's the aperiodic quilt coming along?"

It will not surprise you to learn that it continues to grow... aperiodically.  From its humble beginnings as my something-to-do-in-line-at-Comic-Con handwork (a course of action I heartily recommend, by the way), it has grown to... well, see for yourself, in these exclusive crappy photos that I had to take with my cell phone camera because I am not 100% sure what I did with the real camera.

*n.b. This is not, technically, true. 

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I must preface this piece with the following, as it is quite well-deserved:  Timothy Olyphant, you are amazing.  You look so different in every single film, and you get into each part so well that I often don't even realize you're playing the (super hot) protagonist until I run to IMDB.  You are a fantastic actor, and I applaud you.  Oh, and I must reiterate the utter and complete hotness.  Seriously.  You are unbelievably hot.  Call me.

I was looking forward to seeing The Crazies for a long, long time.  For those not already aware, this incarnation of the film is actually a remake of a version released in 1973.  It's been moved from Pennsylvania to Iowa, but it is, in fact, a remake.

The Crazies is about how incredibly stupid and incompetent the government can be.

Semi-spoilers may follow.

Politics aside, the government manages to royally screw up the transportation of a biological weapon (for which it apparently royally screwed up the creation of a vaccine or a treatment).  It then proceeds to screw up its incredibly stupid transportation fiasco.

For the benefit of humanity, I had a research chemist put together a "how-to" manual for secret government programs that unleash diseases on their own populations because they apparently hire complete idiots.  I call it "Biowarfare Oopsies for Dummies."  Content is his.  Photos added by me.

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Space shuttles are for sale, people.  And as sad as I am that the shuttle program is ending, I'm also curious to see where NASA is going to go with their next program.

Unfortunately, I'm a little short of the $28.8 million price tag as far as my personal funds are concerned.  Wanna split one?

We can keep it in the field behind my house, and the engines are free!  All we need is a few mechanical engineers, and we can start our very own commercial spaceflight business.  Let's give Richard Branson a run for his money. 

Even better, let's actually go through with the plans I gave my university for my degree:  let's equip it with phasers and torpedoes and go build a base on the moon.  

From there, who knows?  I think the grand majority of Cool Space Stuff is going to come from the market at this point instead of from NASA. 

Vulcan, here we come! 

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So you know how everyone from Al Gore to Leonardo DiCaprio has been telling us we're all gonna die for having massive carbon footprints?  And you know how we've been subjected to this drivel for years upon years whilst they zoom about in private jets to meet up in exotic cities for conferences instead of telecommuting to help save the earth?

I've said it before, and I'll say it again:  there are billions to be made by "going green."  That's no exaggeration.  Many people are willing to pay out the nose for something that seems more eco-friendly.  Don't even get me started on the concept of eliminating incandescent bulbs.  Yes, there are (limited) options besides CFLs as alternatives, but CFLs cause severe headaches in a significant portion of the population.  Would Obamacare like to provide me with some Vicodin for hugging some trees?

 

Guess what?

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Well, 2012 has hit theaters, and by now I'm sure half the world is spazzing out over whether or not John Cusack and everyone else is going to die when the Mayan calendar runs out.

Because "THE MAYANS WARNED US!"

Okay, the Mayans did caution us about something (maybe), but fiery apocalypse of doom bears absolutely no resemblance to that something.

The Mayan Long Count calendar (they kept more than one) ends on 12/21/12.  For some reason, everyone assumes that the reason the Mayans stopped there is because the world will also end, so there's really no point in continuing a calendar after that date.  After all, they'd spent all that time mapping out the days until this arbitrary number, and clearly they didn't just get bored with this project and decide to all go sacrifice some hearts on pyramids instead.

Here's what the Mayans actually thought, as far as we can figure out:

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In case you've been living on Mars for a few years (in which case, I hope I can rent out your place), Monk is that TV series often presented with the tagline "Obsessive.  Compulsive.  Detective."  It's about a police officer with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder which was aggravated when his wife was murdered.  It's won many awards and has a decent fan base.

One might think that a series bringing obsessive-compulsive disorder to light would be seen as a step forward as far as mental health is concerned.  In this case, the opinions are mixed.  Monk's OCD is compounded by a large number of severe phobias.  But often, the thought process associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder is what allows him to succeed where others have failed!  That's good!  Right?  .....right?

Maybe not.

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Readers, consider this your friendly neighborhood Public Service Announcement. I know this has been out there for a while, but with winter upon us (or in my case, a bizarrely extensive fall) the urge to go out and tan for that healthy glow is probably more tempting for those of us in the North. But Don't.  Resist! Because the news is not good. Tanning beds DEFINITELY cause cancer. And I have a feeling that Britain is already suffering the consequences of our love affair with tanning, and the rest of the world is not far behind. 

 So here are the facts if you didn't read the articles:

Cancer rates increase by 75% when you use ultraviolet tanning beds before the age of 30. Your friends who tan are staring Melanoma in the face, and Melanoma isn't going to blink first.**

In Britain, skin cancer, in particular Melanoma (the deadliest kind) has become the leading cancer diagnoses in women in their 20s. To put that into perspective, Melanoma USED to only be common among people over the age of 75. 

First of all, it's absolutely shocking that cancer rates increase 75% when you use ultraviolet tanning beds. Shocking and scary. I don't know about the rest of you, but when I was in college in the great midwest, there was  a huge population of people who tanned in winter. We're talking weekly pilgrimages to the tanning salon. How many of them are going to develop cancer just because they wanted a bronzer skin tone? And the people who provide tanning as a service? They're still denying a link exists. We warn people about tobacco and alcohol, but nobody is slapping Surgeon General Warning Labels up in the cancer emporiums that are beauty salons. They're not even getting Mr. Yuck stickers. (Although, that's a tempting idea...)

Now that you've been warned, allow me to subject you to my editorial thought process.

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Shrinky-Dinks, I love to make them shrink!

How terrific is this?  Freshly-minted UC Merced professor Michelle Khine was in a bind. Her area of research was microfluidics--an emerging field that, from the sound of it, is like a cross between electrical engineering, chemistry, and steampunk--but she was missing a chip fabricator, a rather important bit of equipment if one is researching microfluidic chips.  Which she was.

But Prof. Khine had, in addition to the bucket o' brains needed for her Ph.D. and research career, that wonderful indie DIY sensibility that people I admire so often have, and she decided to build her own damn chip fab.  Since she dealt with the minute, she'd have to start with a full-sized design and then shrink it down... shrink it down... hmmm...

Not since Silly Putty was used to defeat fingerprint scanners has the world of childrens' toys contributed such a cool hack to the world of science.  Prof. Khine printed her circuits onto Shrinky-Dink plastic with her laser printer*, then sang the Shrinky-Dink jingle** as she stuck it in the oven.  Presto! Negative mold for one's microfluid chip, all ready to go.

Is this great, or what?  I think I need a very large research grant to investigate the possible scientific applications of the rest of the toy store.

* which, for those of you didn't know, doesn't use ink that soaks into the paper, but rather toner powder that's electrochemically bonded to the paper surface.  If your toner unit is busted, the powder won't fuse properly, and you can flake off chunks of the stuff off of your printouts.  (This lends a certain postmodern quality to one's term papers.)  The important part here is that the toner on the Shrinky-Dink clumped to itself as it shrank, and formed a little raised ridge like a line of frosting.

 ** It is true that I have no proof of this, but come on--wouldn't you?

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I have a confession to make:

I still have imaginary friends.

But, you say, imaginary friends are for kids! And not just for kids, but for kids who are lonely, or otherwise lacking something emotionally fulfilling somehow!

My readers, we have entered a new era in the research and study of imaginary friends, thanks in a large part to research by a Dr. Marjorie Taylor of the University of Oregon in Eugene. For those of us who are writers and always wondered if we were going a little bit crazy because our characters are wandering around the house, the results are good! It looks like it's okay, and we're not alone!

Along with the excellent company of children between the ages of 3 and 7 (and sometimes even 12-17 if you include the sublimation into "dear diary" entities as mentioned in this article which I swear to you I read once in full for an informative speech in college, but am thankful the abstract still contains the most cogent information!), we can add writers to the list of people who are allowed to have imaginary friends! Let me tell you, I breathed a sigh of relief.

The mysterious researcher Dr. Seiffge-Krenke (man do I wish I could read German, googling her brings up tons of information that isn't written in English), also found that it was the more socially competent and creative adolescents who had these sublimated imaginary companions rather than the social misfits, as previously believed.

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Hold the Phone my friends, and read this: The Structure of Scientific Evolutions.

This editorial/article/discussion/piece discusses two Darwinist explanations of God and religion. Basically they both come down to "People created religion" it's just the question of how it happened which is argued, and whether God was involved or a byproduct. I'm not sure I agree entirely with either camp, or any of this, but it definitely makes me think about it, which I always love. And now I'm about to get a little bit geeky, because I'm going to go back to the Thor comic book by Marvel and do a little cross quotation. (And yes, this is an example of how eclectic I can be--God, science, and The Mighty Thor all in the same post!)

When they relauched the Thor title with J. Michael Straczynski at the helm, this was the premise for Thor's return from the grave (or the void, if you prefer):

 "It is not for the gods to decide whether or not man exists--It is for man to decide whether or not the gods exist."

And when I read it, it blew my mind wide open. Because I'm kind of a geek who loves a good thought provoking comic book read, and because there is too much truth in that statement for it to be ignored.

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Remember The Invisible Boy from the movie Mystery Men?  You know, the kid that was only invisible when no one was looking at him?  Yeah, that's not so much a new and exciting superpower, women who love sci-fi have long known that power and we keep trying to get rid of it! 

On the off chance you missed a certain article that has been making the rounds of the blogosphere, women are destroying science fiction.  Women and our girl cooties are forcing the manly men who love science fiction to think about their feeeeeeeelings.  And relaaationships and oh my god the fact manly men doing manly things doesn't always help.  Oh noes!  I mean my god, man the fact that boys might actually like other boys is preposterous and obviously the work of those evil manipulative women that are banging on the door of our guys only club!  The horror!  The madness!  It's the death of science fiction as we know it!!  Pretty soon they'll be doing things like calling it SyFy!

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Apparently, there's a war on science fiction happening.  Thankfully, Spearhead has published an article to make us all aware of a very tragic situation.

Let us begin simply with the first paragraph, which is about enough to make me build some sort of projectile device for launching flaming tampons:

Science fiction is a very male form of fiction.  Considerably more men than women are interested in reading and watching science fiction.  This is no surprise.  Science fiction traditionally is about men doing things, inventing new technologies, exploring new worlds, making new scientific discoveries, terraforming planets, etc.  Many men working in the fields of science, engineering, and technology have cited science fiction (such as the original Star Trek) for inspiring them when they were boys to establish careers in these fields.

To coin an Internet meme, O RLY?

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Let me start by saying that I love Deceiver.com.  It's full of entertaining posts and comments and covers more than just pop culture.  Although pop culture kinda sets itself up for this sort of thing.  My favorite of their recurring themes is "We're All Gonna Die From Global Warming!"  Anytime this title pops up, I know what I'm about to read is going to be both informative and priceless.

Y'see friends, I have a tree-hugging older sister who thinks Michael Moore is the Messiah.  Every time the family gets together for the holidays, I have to sit through another long, loud lecture about the global warming and the trees and the Republicans and the lunar cycle and whatever the latest craptastical "documentary" happens to be.  Last holiday, it was "Wal-mart:  The High Cost of Low Prices," which I found myself unable to sit through without the urge to fling things at the television (as often occurs during moments of severe emotional response ranging from stupid non-answers in political debates to seeing my high school lab partner on Law and Order).  At any rate, she is in love with Michael Moore and Al Gore and would probably have ten thousand of their children and then make them go plant trees in the rainforest and picket around Wal-mart's corporate headquarters or something.

But I digress.  We're all gonna die from global warming.  And in an effort to save us from ourselves, the House has passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act.  Said bill does some nice things.  Sort of.  It creates a bank to hand out clean energy development loans.  If put into effect, this will likely end in catastrophe.  Or have we forgotten  so quickly how well this whole "bailout" concept worked?

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