Pulsars

Pulsars for Interstellar Navigation.

Argh! I said this like three years ago.

GREEN LANTERN TRAILER!!!!

Okay, okay, I confess the all the capital letters were just to get my buddy Patrick excited and it's a fan made trailer with footage and dialog stolen and worked over from just about everywhere, but it's still fun.

Thursday Night Quotes:

Wife: "You're not listening to me!"

Husband: "My god, you're right. Now why is that? Why would that be...we have a conundrum here. A mystery. The game is afoot. I shall begin my investigation at the nearest pub, don't wait up."
___________________________

Woman of ill repute: "YOU are the man I've been looking for."

Man: "No, I'm his brother. I'll tell him you said hi, though."
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Amazon "Milk" reviews. No, I'm not kidding, too Funny. http://tiny.cc/cU8Oz

Possible Battery breakthrough

Breathing batteries could store 10 times the energy

The key thing about this is not the story itself but the rate at which stories like this are flooding in. Rapid advances on almost every front continue to bombard us.
Speaking of that, when I say "almost every front" even the exceptions are starting to be note worthy. For instance, why do we not yet have streaming video phone technology every where? All of the technology to make this happen is in place right now. You can even set it up yourself with a little know how. Why isn't is readily, commercially available and ubiquitous? Think about it.

U.S.S. Integrity NCC-2112 - Reboot

We are getting ready to relaunch the ship.

This time it will be different and a bit of an experiment.
This time there will be no dues, newsletter or monthly meetings.
We will have the occasional away missions to conventions, museums, renaissance fairs and so on (but to be fair Gina and I never really stopped doing any of that).
This time we will be writing an on going storyline that you can follow (on our new BLOG, Facebook group and Twitter account's) with the characters on the ship getting into (and hopefully out of) various scrapes.
Any real time role playing will have to wait for some kind of acceptable interface.
If you want to see your character in the logs; send me an email with a character name, Star Trek race (Human, Vulcan, etc.) age, desired section (Sciences, Operations, Bartender, Etc), desired rank (no promises) and as much or as little detail as you feel you need. Do not feel limited to whatever you had before, consider this a chance to start over.
Finally, do not worry about the time line or the changes from most recent movie (We got that!). The setting is still a Galaxy Class Starship and Captain Logan is still in Command. Everything that has gone before will serve as back story.

Food for Thought

Excellent Article from New Scientist:
Will designer brains divide humanity?

I like this article because of the ideas it takes for granted.
Consider some of the broader implications of what we're looking at here and I think you will agree that this is worth pondering. Also it raises that underling question; how much enhancement can we take and still remain . . . ourselves?

SNL Star Trek bit

From Facebook

Frank J. Hernandez OH MY GOD!!! I just went to play Star Trek: conquest on my Wii and . . it's .. it's gone, there's nothing there . . erased from existence!
9:15pm · via Blog It · Comment · Like

Timothy Young at 9:48pm May 11
It's been replaced by a younger, hipper game.

Bill Kieffer at 9:49pm May 11 via Facebook Mobile
Did u upload red matter?

Frank J. Hernandez at 10:16pm May 11
The stars look right but . . Vulcan is gone!

Timothy Young at 10:23pm May 11
...as if millions of voices suddenly accepted their fate logically, and were suddenly silenced.

'I drink your dilithium! I drink it up!' STAR TREK SPOILER ALERT!!!

Here it is, my review of the new Star Trek Movie.
Final Warning - Spoilers Ahead:
Do not read this if you haven’t seen it yet.

You know when people make jokes about those really extreme Star Trek Fans. I AM that guy! I have a rule that there is not to be any Star Trek that I don’t know all about. I know more about the Star Trek universe and its lore than, well, than just about anybody. I’m not boasting here, I’m just giving it to you straight. I don’t memorize who wrote and directed which episodes or their original air dates and I don’t claim to be an expert on the behind the scenes, day to day details. Also I don’t look much like the average fan boys the media likes to portray us as, I don’t live in my parent’s basement and I have a wife and a real life - but if you want to know what Warp fields are measured in or discuss the Vulcan Philosophy of IDIC or just about any detail of Starship Operations - I'm your man. Before we talk about the new Star Trek Movie I just think you need to know who you’re dealing with.

To start with I want to talk about what was good in this movie. There is a lot to like here. First and foremost the actors were great. They really manage to capture the characters without coming off like imitations. Second the special effects were just this side of perfect. Also the action was really well done. It is exciting and very cool looking.

Now I’d like to talk about the things I was okay with. I was okay with the Spock love interest. I was okay with the changes to the timeline and, yes, I’m even okay with recognizing that the “Enterprise” series and this movie are now the only true canon. Everything else (and I mean everything else) are washed away and must be reset.

Fine.

So here we are - all disclaimers in place and ready to go.
First a minor technical note - I really did not like that when we are on the bridge there is apparently a search light spinning just out of frame and regularly blinding us. In fact I hated this. I thought, when I saw this in the trailers, that is was just for the sake of the trailers - but no that’s the way those scenes are shot.
This is as I say and by comparison a minor technical note.

Here is an prime example of what I really did not like about the new Star Trek movie.
It all starts when Spock says about Kirk; “Get him off the ship” and no one asks, ‘I’m sorry acting Captain, is something wrong with our brig?’

Spock arbitrarily decides to send Kirk, his First Officer at his point ‘overboard’ in what looks like a single man escape pod onto the ice planet Delta Vega.
You know, because Star Fleet officers do that kind of thing all the time.
Wait though, we’re not done. We then have a drawn out scene with the ice creatures of Delta Vega (there’s always a bigger ice creature) and then ‘Professor McGuffin from the Exposition Institute’ shows up and saves him. By which I mean Spock Prime, who has been marooned on the same ice world by Nero, by complete coincidence, so he can watch the destruction of his home world, which he does, unaided, even though it’s in another star system, just happens to be right where Kirk is! Not merely on the same forsaken planet, but literally just a short run from where Kirk’s pod lands.

Wait though because we’re still not done. On the nearby base, also shipped off to the gulag Delta Vega for screwing up, by Admiral Archer no less, they find Scotty.
(Why not just have Baltar and Six show up as angels and tell us they arranged the whole thing.)

After this we have the horrible Scotty beams himself into the Enterprise’s water system scene (reminiscent of Charlie and the Chocolate factory) and his unlikely escape. I won’t go into how many things are wrong with that scenario but I trust my point is made.

Another thing that really stretches the imagination is Kirk going from Cadet directly to Captain of the Enterprise. Who knows though, maybe Spock Prime put a good word in for him.

There are other plot holes that one could fly a Galaxy Class Starship through but these are illustrative of the overall problem.

Having said all of this though, I want to also say that it is clear to me that this film is going to be wildly popular. JJ Abrams seems to have really struck a chord with the Zeitgeist in this movie and all of my nitpicking and ranting aside, people really love this film. As I said there is a lot to like about it. I just wish they had put a little more work into the plot issues. I mean Spock Prime was from the future for crying out loud, if he had worked his way to Delta Vega from wherever Nero had dropped him off because he knew Scotty was stationed on Delta Vega at that time or something, anything, it would have been so much more believable and enjoyable.

Overall though I give the movie Six out of Ten and, of course, I will see it again, and again, …..

Gina on the set!

"Today we will be Marching, up and down the square."

The Singularity of Ray Kurzweil

This is just one part of a series but I thought I'd put it up here as food for thought.

Fun with Trek.

Warning: Not work safe!
No Eating or Drinking and please keep your hands and feet inside the ride at all times.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (Pon Farr Edition) from Darth Mojo on Vimeo.

Thanks to Karen for sending this our way.

"Star Trek" review from The Onion

Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As 'Fun, Watchable'

h+ Article on Transcendent Man

by Ben Goertzel
Link here.
Another really good article. I can't wait to this. I'm just hoping I don't have to travel to far to see it. Who knows though maybe it will have wider release than I expect.

"Vulcans Never, Ever Smile" More from Newsweek

http://www.newsweek.com/id/195083/page/1
This one is not as objectionable . . . but I'm still angry at the last one.
Also this one has a bit of a spoiler so don't read it if you don't want to know anything going in.

Newsweek: "We're all Trekkies now" . . yeah, sure.

First of all it's "Trekkers" and second of all 'NO, you're not'. You may want to be but those of us who have been trekkers all along really resent you late comers jumping on the Runabout now after breaking our balls about it all these years.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/195082

This is just like the RUSH (The Band, not the fat radio clown) is now cool thing.
Bad news idiots! RUSH was always cool, you were just too damned stupid to realize it at the time.

Elementary, my dear Watson.

IBM builds new AI system to take on humans at the game of "Jeopardy".
I think the natural language part of this will be the most impressive.
Exciting stuff though.

Brian as First Officer

Brian G. sent this over.

Good stuff! Just like the old days.

Sadly the auto play code must be embedded because I can't see it to turn it off.
Oh well, there's always the "Stop" Button.

Trek yourself.

Strange but kind of fun.