Trek Into the Past

So. Star Trek turned 45 last Thursday. Wow.

It's been nearly twenty years since I lost my Star Trek innocence. I wasn't much of a sci-fi fan as a teenager, especially not the teevee shows. I loved Buck Rogers and Battlestar Galactica and... that was just about it. I truly believed most of those shows were horribly corny, with awful special effects and atrocious writing. I was above all that. I would never ever in my entire life become a Star Trek fan. Star Trek fans were pathetic and weird.

Ah, youth. So full of certainty and so full of shit.

Then my friend Ryan spent a few days with us on his summer break from college. This happened at the same time they'd started releasing Star Trek: The Next Generation on VHS. Yes, I am dating myself. Shut up. Anyway, Ryan saw these while we were at Wal-Mart one afternoon and snapped them up with evident glee. His little face just glowed. And he assumed that I, of course, would watch them with him.

"No," I said. "I hate Star Trek."

His face. So shocked. He pitched. He pleaded. He cajoled. He seemed to give up in the face of my continued refusal. I should've known better. Ryan was a man who could hear the word no, but not when it came to entertainment he believed in. And he could be a devious little bastard.

He also knew me very well. Since he was staying at my place with a herd of other friends, he had easy access to both me and backup. So at 8 in the ay-em, when I was still dead unconscious, he came into my bedroom. "We're gonna watch Star Trek."

I think I meant to say something like, "That's nice, dear. I'm going to continue sleeping," but what I really said was, "Groan."

He started in on a let's-watch-Star-Trek-together sales pitch, ending with, "C'mon. Just one."

"If you want me to watch Star Trek," I said, "you'll have to carry me out there."

And so he did. He scooped me right out of bed. He's not the strongest man in the universe, but he was determined. Picture him staggering through my chaotic bedroom, trying to avoid tripping over debris, navigating hazards, while I watched the approaching door with the certainty that I was about to have my head cracked open upon it, if he didn't fall and squish me first. I was about to die because a friend wanted me to watch Star Trek.

We made it to the living room with only minor bruising. He deposited me in front of the television whilst the other houseguests laughed and roared their approval. Ryan may not have been a strong man, but he was a smart man. He stuffed a Coke in my hand, knowing that at this hour and so equipped, I wouldn't have the will to move for at least an hour, and an hour was all he needed. Then he turned on the telly.

The episode, for those interested, was "The Naked Now." Yeah. If you know it, you're already laughing.

By the end of that hour, I was hooked. By the end of summer, I was a full-on fan. I became an officer in our local fan club. I dressed as Deanna Troi for Ryan's next visit (which didn't shock him half so much as the fact that I was wearing makeup). I loved the friend who constantly wore his starship captain's uniform, and didn't think it at all weird that he'd spent months figuring out how to say, "Take your ticket and get on the damned boat" in Klingon. He worked for a boat rental company, it made perfect sense.

I owned the Enterprise's manual. I wrote Star Trek fan fic. I read the books (and to this day, Q-in-Law is one of my favorite reading experiences. Read it. You'll laugh). I watched all the movies. And I discovered a wealth of stories I hadn't even known existed.


Star Trek taught me that sci-fi could be awesome, even in the television industry, even when the special effects weren't all that. It taught me that this genre could tell amazing stories.

I rather drifted away after those halcyon early years of passion. I no longer read the books or write the fan fic. I don't belong to a fan group, or keep up on the new spinoffs, or even all of the movies. But I haven't stopped loving Star Trek.

I'll always want my tea. Earl Grey. Hot.

I'll always want to see them boldly going where no show has gone before, even if I'm not along for every voyage.

Engage.

Goodbye, Our Sarah Jane

Elisabeth Sladen, the actress who played Doctor Who's Sarah Jane Smith, died of cancer today.  Russell T. Davies gives a worthy tribute to her here.  All I've got is this clip from YouTube that doesn't do her justice, and some fangirl memories.



She was brilliant.  So very brilliant.  I'd never known her - my obsession with Doctor Who begins with Series 1 - but the instant she appeared on the screen in "School Reunion," I didn't need my friend to tell me she was someone special.  You didn't have to know who she was.  She just blazed out from the screen.

It would have been such an honor to have gotten a chance to meet her.  I have to agree with Steven Moffat:

“Never meet your heroes’ wise people say. They weren’t thinking of Lis Sladen.”

We're all going to miss her terribly.  One of the best companions ever.  She was brilliant.

If scientists ever manage to build an actual TARDIS, I can guarantee there'll be one hell of a queue forming to go back to shake her hand.

People With No Understanding of Fantasy Probably Shouldn't Review It

I have now, like every other fantasy fan with tits on the planet, read Ginia Bellafonte's risible review of HBO's adaptation of A Game of Thrones.

I've spent most of the week now trying to determine which planet she's from.  I'm still not sure.  It hasn't got the same color sky as mine, and the fact that she seems to think rape, incest and other varieties of less-than-romantic sex are thrown in to Martin's harrowingly gritty books just to give the ladies something to love frankly concerns me.  I have to question the psychological health of a woman who thinks that's the sort of erotica women go for en masse.  But never mind that.  What's even more ridiculous than her bass-ackwards ideas of why GOT will have sex scenes is her insistence that Martin's epic is somehow about global warming.

Yes.  Really.  Here, for those who don't want to give her the satisfaction of another page view, is her take on the whole thing:

Here the term green carries double meaning as both visual descriptive and allegory. Embedded in the narrative is a vague global-warming horror story. Rival dynasties vie for control over the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros — a territory where summers are measured in years, not months, and where winters can extend for decades. 

How did this come to pass? We are in the universe of dwarfs, armor, wenches, braids, loincloth. The strange temperatures clearly are not the fault of a reliance on inefficient HVAC systems. Given the bizarre climate of the landmass at the center of the bloody disputes — and the series rejects no opportunity to showcase a beheading or to offer a slashed throat close-up — you have to wonder what all the fuss is about. We are not talking about Palm Beach. 

I have to wonder why Blogger doesn't offer Comic Sans as an option, because any passages quoted from Ms. Bellafonte's review deserve to be in said font.  Who here has read Martin's series and thought it was about global fucking warming?   She obviously hasn't.  Read the series, I mean.  And after that bizarre last sentence, which upon fourth reading still makes no sense, she drops the global warming question all together and instead asks why the show's even on HBO.

Because, Ms. Bellafonte.  It is an epic series conducive to adaptation, popular with huge swathes of male, female and otherwise-gendered people.  It's such a gripping story that even those of us who hated it - literally hated reading it - had to keep reading, and are ready to beat George R.R. Martin bloody (sparing his hands and skull) if he once again delays the release of the next book.  Some people at HBO, David Benioff chief among them, believed in its potential and saw the project through.  And HBO stands to rake in the cold hard cash, because, and this is important, not everyone is a sneering, fantasy-hating, too-avante-gard-to-live genius-in-her-own-mind lackwit with culturally piss-poor female friends such as yourself, Ms. Bellafonte.

I mean, seriously.  Not one of your female friends could clue you in?  You have never met one single, solitary woman who would prefer The Hobbit over the latest navel-gazing based-on-the-author's-pathetic-excuse-for-a-life schlock offered up by book clubs that only seem to exist in order to make people who like good books cry?  Not even one?  Do you even leave your house?  Do you even talk to other women?  I have to wonder.

You apparently belong to that pathetic subset of the human population who think it makes them unbearably hip to bash fantasy at every possible opportunity.  You see armor and dwarves, and you're in instant sneer mode, too busy looking down your nose to look beneath, at questions of what it means to be human and what morality is and how twisted society can be that would make your hair curl.  Fantasy can be brutal.  Fantasy can be uncompromising.  And it can make us think in ways we never would have been able to think if the issues had been presented through any other medium.  Unfortunately, it can't get through to the likes of you, Ms. Bellafonte, because you seem to be operating under the assumption that this isn't something good girls should like.  Your fucking loss.  And believe me, it is a loss.

Upon rumination, I can only come to the conclusion that your review is the result of a pathological hatred of fantasy combined with a serious lack of insight into the vast majority of your fellow females.  It seems to me to be a cry for help.  You should meet some new people.  People like me and my lady friends, who think nothing of spending an evening geeking out over shows like Buffy, Angel, Firefly, Doctor Who, Battlestar Galactica, and (oh, yes) Game of Thrones.  Speak to women who would move to Middle Earth in one second flat if given half the chance.  Listen to women whose bookshelves groan under the weight of more fantasy tomes than can be listed in one small blog post.  Your sample size has been skewed by the fact your head has been firmly lodged up your posterior.  There are legions of female fans of fantasy and science fiction.  And two things you should have realized before penning something so incredibly stupid from start-to-finish:

1. We don't appreciate being told we don't exist.  And

2.  Trying to review a genre you're clueless about leads only to humiliation.

Keep this in mind the next time you plan to heap scorn upon a show you're reviewing.  Especially if HBO decides to do a Thursday Next series.  Because, while Martin's fans can be brutal, Fford ffans are just downright terrifying.

P.S. I get the impression from your article that you must have obtained a college education of some description.  Were I you, I'd be asking for my money back. 

For further entertaining dissections of one of the dumbest reviews in the history of television reviews, see:

George R.R. Martin's brilliant response (and delightful shout-out to his fangirls).

Annalee Newitz explains why the show's actually targeted at women only.

Geek With Curves demonstrates why you should not piss off someone whose next tattoo is inspired by Joss Whedon.

Margaret Hartmann demonstrates the art of the short, sharp smackdown.

And our own Stephanie Szvan digs in, plus bonus story!

I'm sure I've missed about five gajillion.  Pop your faves into the comments, and/or any ranting you feel moved to.  Epic length comments welcome.  We are talking about fantasy here.

The Difference Between Guys and Gals

I sometimes worry, when writing from male points of view, that I'm getting it all wrong.  Okay, so, granted, I took some BBC quiz thing once that was supposed to measure the relative gender of your brain and came out strongly on the male side.  Spent most of my childhood running wild through the neighborhood with the boys and seemed to hold me own.  But still.  I'm a girl.  Got the parts to prove it.  Got the damned monthly agony to prove it, too, though I wish I didn't.  And I sometimes wonder if my boys are turning out too much like girls.

Livia Blackburne's post On Writing Realistic Male Characters is a bit of a help there.  So is seeing stark yet subtle examples of the differences in the way men and women view the world.

For instance, I've just finished Doctor Who Series Four (for the second time), and something about the end of it was bugging me.  What I'm about to discuss has spoilers, so for those of you who haven't yet seen the show, but plan to, and want their viewing experience to be spoiler-free, I'm putting the rest below the fold.

Birth of the Grand Canyon

Some of my favorite geologists are on teevee!  Wayne Ranney and Ron Blakey got tapped to explain how the Grand Canyon came to be for Naked Science on the National Geographic channel.  Repeats are airing - check your local listings and set your DVRs to stun!  I mean, record!

An Idiot Abroad: Not Just Americans Are Ugly

Ricky Gervais is a terrible, terrible friend.  He played a rather expensive practical joke on his friend Karl, and the result is An Idiot Abroad, a series in which a stay-at-home-Brit experiences the wonders of travel.

So far, I'm learning things.  I'm learning it's not just Americans who can be remarkably close-minded.  I'm learning there's virtually nothing you can't put on a stick and eat.  And I'm learning more about how fortune tellers suck in the gullible.  It seems to have quite a bit to do with scaring the bejezus out of them from the get-go.

It's hysterical.  I think I'll be watching the rest.

What Fascinates You?

So it's another day wherein I have abandoned my normal routine for an afternoon out and a marathon session of Castle.  Look, we've got just over two seasons to catch up on, all right?  And I only get to see it Mondays. 

The weather outside was frightful, so we accomplished our long-postponed tour of Evergreen Hospital, which I shall be writing up tomorrow.  If your local hospital gives tours, take advantage, my darlings: it's impressive.  At least if your facility is as cool as Evergreen is. 

Then we came home, made obscene amounts of food, and plunked ourselves down for hours and hours of Castle, which plan my cat heartily approved.  I love this show.  I still love it, even though I was slightly afraid they'd hit a second-season slump.  There's no other show quite so good at taking lines that coulda shoulda woulda been cliched and making them not just relevant, but hilarious.  Warps expectations, turns tired tropes 45 degrees and has fun with them, nice sexual tension going - what's not to love, right?

But I'm still trying to figure out why I love it so much.  And the conclusion I've come to is that every regular character is eminently likable.  They're just fun to hang out with.  They're interesting, they're sympathetic, they surprise just enough to stay interesting and not enough to dismay.  It's a delicate balance that's very hard to strike.  And, bonus, even when the show could go there, it doesn't reach for the supernatural.  Seems like every fucking show has thrown in gratuitous supernatural shit since Lost.  Now, I do enjoy the supernatural shit - I'm a die-hard Buffy fan, for fuck's sake - but when it's thrown in willy-nilly, it just irritates me.

So that's now got me curious.  What does it for you, my darlings?  What hooks you on a show?  What keeps you hooked?  And what should I become obsessed with next (aside from House, which is already in my collection)?

Loving Bad Universe from Literally the Second It Starts

I've pseudo-liveblogged my reaction to the premiere episode of Bad Universe.   I didn't watch it live, alas.  Meant to, but I fell asleep this evening (and dreamed I was running away from glaciers - don't ask me why), then woke up too late for the main event.  Besides, the new downstairs neighbors sounded like they were torturing and killing an elephant downstairs.  It turns out they were just preparing for a night on the town, which apparently requires pachyderm sacrifice.  Go figure.  I let them get done with that so's they wouldn't impact (ha!) my viewing pleasure.

And here, raw and unvarnished, my thoughts on the program:

When a science show starts out, "The experiments in this program are conducted by trained professionals.  Do not attempt any of these tests at home," you know there's gonna be mayhem.

"Smells like mass extinction."  HA HA HA HA HA!

License plates, I get, but did they seriously have to pixelate the manufacturer's logo on the truck?  What, did Chevy not pay them for the privilege?  Mark this as the first time I've been curious enough to pause a program so I could google an SUV.

I love they're mixing explosions with the Inverse Square Law - and the Bikini Gage.

The look on Phil's face when that first explosion went off was priceless.  And any show that includes the words, "Let's go do field geology!" immediately makes it to the top of my viewing list.

(Long interval of eating pizza whilst immersed in show.  Do not take lack of commentary for apathy.)

Want a scale-model dry ice comet!

Does Phil really have a warning sign that says "Big Scary Laser"?  Want that, too!

Do not want the show to end.

Um.  The graphic of of Apophis?  Fucking terrifying.

Poor big granite ball.  Ouchies!  But its sacrifice was not in vain - that was motherfucking awesome.

Less than 19 years to save the world.  Good thing Bad Universe is on now!  This has been much more terrifying (by virtue of being accurate) than most ZOMG the world's gonna end! teevee shows.  It might spur some actual action.

More than happy with this show.  If Discovery doesn't make it a regular feature, I'm calling for a mob.  Sharpen your pitchforks and oil your torches just in case.

Kudos, Phil!

It's an Airdate!

Bad Universe airs Sunday, August 29th, 10pm on the Discovery Channel!  Phil Plait's gonna be on my teevee!  I may actually have to watch this one live.

Another peek at the sneak peek is warranted here:

Bad Universe Shall Be Badass!

Phil Plait's Bad Universe shall be coming to a teevee near you soon, but I know the waiting's hard, so here's a taste:



Ah, actual science programming!  This is gonna be a blast.

Bad Astronomy the Series!

Woot!  Yippee!  Phil's finally gonna have a show!

Finally, at last, after many months, I can now officially reveal the project that has kept me so busy over all this time. I think you’re gonna like this… so why not just jump right in to the teaser trailer posted online by a small TV network you may have heard of called THE DISCOVERY CHANNEL!

[evil laugh]

[snip]

I’ve been working with the Discovery Channel on hosting a new TV science show called "Phil Plait’s Bad Universe". It’s a three-part program where I dissect issues in astronomy and science, putting claims to the test. 

I first heard the news on Twitter, and I very nearly leapt from my desk, ripped my headset from my head, and danced through the cubicles for joy.  However, it's a tough economy, and such behavior might be frowned on by Management.  So I had to settle for a retweet instead.

I've been hoping Phil would end up on my teevee since the idea for the Skeptologists was first floated (and I still hope that show gets produced).  This is a joyous day indeed!

Alas, the video is broked, but when it's up and running again, I shall post it.  And thee shall have the happy knowledge that actual real science will be aired on the Discovery Channel very soon.  And because it's Phil, we know it shall be entertaining as hell.  Huzzah!  It'll be the baddest universe ever.

Failings of Popular Science Programming

Oy.  Stupid weather.  The jet stream's developed a kink - actually, several kinks - which is freezing the balls off of the southeast whilst making Seattle unseasonably warm.  Warm is nice - except it's deceived something into getting enthusiastic, and hence I've been suffering from a prolonged, very annoying asthma attack that I usually only have to deal with in the spring.  I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place.  If I take medication so I can breathe, I'm too hyped up to sleep.  If I don't take meds, I can't sleep because I can't breathe comfortably.  It's enough to make me almost long for snow.

Since my sleep-deprived brain isn't cut out for any serious work just now, I've been cleaning the geology programs out of the DVR.  It's almost as annoying as the asthma.  When you watch a lot of these in a row, the silly tendencies to over-dramatize really start to grate.

All programs seem to suffer from the following three failings, no matter what channel they're on:

1.  Everything's presented as a crisis.  If they can't hype up the past crises (ZOMG, teh Permian Extinction!!1!11!), they hype future crises (ZOMG, 250 million years from now WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!11!1!! maybe).  Even minor stuff is overblown - in the program I just watched, the future erosion of the Rockies into nothing more than hills was presented as some terrible possible future tragedy, rather than the inevitable consequence of pedestrian forces of erosion.  Sorry, folks.  All mountains are gonna die.  Well-known geological fact.  Geez.

2.  Everything's a mystery, even stuff that isn't mysterious at all.  "Mysterious" forces cause this, and "mysterious" forces cause that.  If there's no mystery these days, well, they just travel back to the early days in geology when things did seem rather mysterious.  When you're so far gone that you're talking about how "mysterious" it is that a cliff is eroding, you're a little too addicted to mystery, there.

3.  They fuck up perfectly easy stuff that anyone with a high school science education should get right.  Such as, you don't radiocarbon date granite to 25 million years old. 

Why can't we just have reasonably accurate science programming that relies on the innate power and drama of science rather than manufacturing melodrama?  And why can't these shows hire some schmo sort of well-versed in scientific matters from the lay-person's perspective to catch the errors that aren't just glaring, but veritably scowling while slapping baseball bats into their palms?  Shit, folks, you could pay me $20 an episode for those services.  At least you'd never be caught fucking up radiocarbon dating again.

Here endeth the rant.  And for those who are about to ask me why I bother, it's for the visuals and the factoids.  Such as, ammonites the size of truck tires littering the Rocky Mountains.  There's enough worthwhile stuff to be going on with.  And it's just the sort of thing that a poor sleep-deprived brain can wrap itself around.

Crystal Delight

Right.  Here's a nice set of crystals.  Guess how big they are.  Go on, guess.  Then follow me after the jump.

Random Observation o' the Day

I'm finally watching Discovering Ardi.  Partway through it, I'm struck by the fact that paleontologist Tim White is practically Vizzini's twin.  It's the mannerisms that really do it.

Look, I was amused.

Ouch. I Just Got Bopped on the Head by Bad Science Programming

I watched a Nova episode before the evening's writing.  It's about a family who has a passel of children who walk on all fours.  The show babbled about reverse evolution.  A lot.

Shoot me now.  Here's why (h/t):

Nobody thinks that the Hobbit is “reverse evolution,” because such a thing doesn’t exist.  While some interpretations conclude that Flo has an australopithecine-like wrist, that doesn’t mean that it’s identical to an australopithecine, or even that the wrist is identical to an australopthecine’s wrist.  What it means is that, in a statistical analysis, the capitate groups more closely with australopithecines than with modern humans.  The Hobbit’s trapezoid also groups more closely with those from chimps and gorillas than it does with humans, but again, this doesn’t mean that it was identical.

Furthermore, not only are there no cases of “wholesale reversions” in primate evolution, but I’ve never heard of such a thing happening in any lineage at all!  Sure, there are atavisms, or reversions back to a “primitive” trait, but those result in a descendent with an ancestor-like trait, not a perfect duplicate of the ancestor.

“Reverse evolution” doesn’t happen.  Once an animal evolves, it can’t un-evolve.  It can loose traits, or re-evolve a basal trait, but a human isn’t going to “reverse evolve” into an australopithecine, and a bird isn’t going to “reverse evolve” into a dinosaur.  That bird may re-evolve teeth, but that wouldn’t make it a dinosaur.  The analysis of the wrist may lead us to the conclusion that the ancestor of the Hobbits left Africa before our modern wrists had evolved.  It may even lead us to the conclusion that the Hobbits left Africa with a modern wrist and then evovled a wrist that looks more primitive, but even that’s a stretch.  What it doesn’t lead us to conclude is that the ancestor of the Hobbits left Africa and then reverse evolved back into Australopithecines.

Can we please stop the reverse evolution babble now?  KTHXBAI.

Let us also stop this talk about "the gene" for bipedal walking.  It's not likely to be a gene, for fuck's sake.  We're talking a host of genes, a gaggle of genes, a veritable crowd of genes, that give us the ability to walk on two feet:

Again, unfortunately, the atavism angle is emphasized. This is good copy, but we should be skeptical of this. It is possible, but that does not imply it is probable. It seems that the 17p mutation is a loss of function which has had wide pleiotropic effects. I am skeptical that the ancestral gene shifted from null function to a new function. As Carl Zimmer pointed out bipedalism is a complex and exceptional trait which resulted in the retrofitting of a host of other aspects of our morphology and physiology. Though it might not have emerged in a classic gradualistic fashion, it seems unlikely to have been the result of a single positive mutation around which modifier genes evolved over hundreds of generations.

Oh, and there's this, too. Which kind of says exactly what I was thinking the whole time I suffered through this tripe.  Look, if even a two-bit armchair biologist like me can figure out  within five minutes that a buncha relatives walking on all fours = pathology, not reverse evolution and/or mutant bipedal gene, then you should've figured it out too, Nova.

Nova.  I like you.  You're a nice show, and you do some really great things, but you really butchered this one.  I hope we don't have to have this talk again.

Mystery Solved

A few days back, I mentioned that the commercials for the new season of The Shift contained an unidentified promo song. No one on the intertoobz could figure out what it was or where it came from.

A day later, Dave from Investigation Discovery hopped into a forum where folks were bitching and promised he'd find out. And Dave came through:

And the answer is . . . . .

The Shift's Season 2 theme from the promos is called "Something Is Wrong"

It was recorded & produced by David Ayers & Felix Tod, the MC Vocals & rhymes are by Skeme and the publisher is West One APM (ASCAP).

More details to come on availability of this track outside of THE SHIFT's promos . . . which comes back for its second season on Wednesday, September 30at 10 PM on Investigation Discovery!

More elements are going to be online soon - but check the series' website out at http://investigation.discovery.com/t...the-shift.html to learn more.

Thanks for all your enthusiasm for The Shift promos - and be sure to check the show out!

Dave

Dave, you are so my hero!

By the way, if you like cop shows, three reasons to watch this one. 1) It takes place in Indianapolis, IN, which is a rather interesting place; 2) the detectives are fascinating; and 3) the cameras aren't horribly intrusive.

In my case, though, I'll mostly be doing it for Dave. But it really is a good show.

One thing I learned from The Shift marathon I watched Sunday: there's a damned good reason to hire women as detectives. How many men would haul off and hug a suspect? How many male suspects would accept that hug and then start babbling a confession, complete with telling where they buried the body, as if they were admitting to Mommy that yes, they'd been a bad, bad boy? Extraordinary. Let that be a lesson to the ladies: don't be afraid to be feminine in a traditionally "male" job. It can absolutely work in your favor.

Anyway. Mystery solved. Moving on, now...

Things You Should Never Try At Home

I've been clearing out the DVR whilst catching up on household chores and framing the various bits of art I picked up during my vacation. It's hard to fast-forward through commercials when your hands are full. Usually, I pay no attention to the blather, but it's a little hard to ignore a scuba-diving cat.

If you watch teevee, you might have seen that ad for HowStuffWorks.com. There's some dude steering a cat in diving gear around a pool. I know that people do bizarre things, but this is the first time I've seen a man retain his hand after dumping a feline in several thousand gallons of water. It caught my interest. And in these days of the intertoobz, I could find out if this was clever CGI or true insanity.

Turns out the cat really does dive:

So what does Hawkeye do when she's scuba diving? Sometimes she bounds around along the pool's bottom like Neil Armstrong on the moon's surface. She hasn't quite figured out how to swim underwater, even though she's a proficient surface swimmer. This is where Alba comes in. He'll typically hold Hawkeye's tank and lead her around the pool while she hangs around, checking everything out. According to Alba, scuba diving relaxes her -- the weightlessness of being underwater could be a welcome change from the gravity-bound shackles of dry land.

Apparently, since the commercial came out, people have been requesting scuba gear for their cats. I won't be among them. Granted, my rotund little beastie could use the exercise, but I value my limbs. I do not want to have to explain to curious members of the public just how I became a multiple amputee.

Besides, Hawkeye's owner isn't honoring requests for kitty scuba outfits. He knows the vast majority of cats wouldn't appreciate the opportunity to obtain a fish-eye view of the world. He only ever stuck his cat in scuba gear because she started swimming on her own.

It just goes to show there's an oddball in every bunch, dunnit?

For those of you who haven't overdosed on cute lately, watch and aw:

What Does Torchwood Have To Do With DADT?

So glad you asked. Cujo's got your answer.

I love it when pop culture and political news can be combined into teachable moments, don't you?

Evolution in Action

So I'm watching Mythbusters, and they're doing a myth about a skydiver falling on a seesaw. While gathering data for the experiment, they calculate the terminal velocity of a skydiver wearing a camera suit.

For those who have no fucking clue what the difference is between a regular skydiving suit and a camera suit, welcome to the club. I'd not known there was a difference either.

















Normal suits, like those on the right, ain't got wings. Camera suits, on the other hand, do. Well, flaps, anyway. And those itsy-bitsy wings have a measurable effect. The terminal velocity of a skydiver is roughly 124 mph. But the Mythbusters measured the terminal velocity of a skydiver in a camera suit as 114 mph. What good is a 10 mph difference? Well, it opens up some additional options:

If you plan on spending a great deal of time in the air, you should consider a skydiving suit called a camera suit. This kind of suit has an added feature: wings that give you more control to slow down your descent when desired. This is especially desirable if you decide to strap a camera on your helmet for videotaping the experience, since you can slow down and pan when you want to.

That makes skydiving in a camera suit a rather dramatic demonstration of the principles of evolution in action. Think of flying. The most usual objection raised is, "What good is half a wing?" Camera suits don't even include half a wing. It's a pathetic little flap that looks totally useless. Yet it conveys greater control over airspeed. And when you're falling out of a plane trying to film other people falling out of planes, that's a critical advantage. Extrapolate that to falling out of trees, and you can get a better understanding of the incremental change that can lead from skin flap to full wing and powered flight.

Richard Dawkins puts it this way in Climbing Mount Improbable:

The way to think of the gradual evolution of a flying squirrel is this. To begin with, an ancestor like an ordinary squirrel, living up trees but without any special gliding membrane, leaps across short gaps. However far it can leap without the aid of any special flaps of skin, it could leap a few inches further - and hence save its life when it encounters a gap of critical distance - if it had a very slight flap of skin, or a very slightly increased bushiness of the tail. So natural selection favours individuals with slightly pouchy skin around the arm or leg joints, and this becomes the norm. The normal leaping distance of an average member of the population has thereby been increased by a few inches. Now, any individuals with an even larger skin web can leap a few inches further. So in later generations this extension of skin becomes the norm. For any given size of membrane, there exists a critical gap such that a marginal increase in the membrane makes all the difference between life and death.

And what the fuck do flying squirrels have to do with birds, you ask? Excellent question. Meet Microraptor:

Some scientists believe that bird flight evolved when ground-dwelling dinosaurs began to take to the skies. In contrast to this ‘ground-up’ theory, the ‘trees-down’ camp believes that tree-dwelling dinosaurs evolved flight to glide from tree to tree.

And this is exactly what Microraptor did. It lacked the muscles for a ground take-off and couldn’t get a running start for fear of damaging its leg feathers. But a computer simulation showed that Microraptor could successfully fly between treetops, covering over forty metres in an undulating glide.

It is unclear if Microraptor could truly fly or was just an exceptional glider. Certainly, its body plan shows many features that would make its avian descendants such great aeronauts. It had a large sternum for attaching powerful flight muscles and strengthened ribs to withstand the heavy pressures of a flight stroke.

Its long, feathered tail acted a stabiliser and rudder and its tibia (shin bone) was covered in smaller, backwards-facing feathers. Modern birds of prey carry similar feather ‘trousers’ and Chatterjee believes that they helped to reduce drag by breaking up turbulent airflow behind the animal’s leg.

It could be that Microraptor’s biplane design was just a failed evolutionary experiment. But Chatterjee thinks otherwise. He believes that the biplane model was a stepping stone to the two-wing flight of modern birds. As the front pair of wings grew larger and produced more lift, they eventually took over the responsibilities formerly shared with the hind pair.

You can easily imagine the gradual progression. Dinosaur feathers evolved to keep the little buggers warm. Some of the little buggers hung about in trees. The little buggers who hung about in trees and developed feathered skin flaps were better gliders, meaning better hunters and escape artists. And so it goes, generation by generation, until you end up with something like this guy:


Pretty awesome, innit?

So we've gone from camera suits to squirrels to dinosaurs to falcons. Bet you never thought skydiving could demonstrate the principles of evolution so well (aside from in the strict Darwin Award sense, o' course). Were I a science teacher, I'd be taking definite advantage of that. Talk about your sense of wonder!

Tip o' the shot glass to the Discovery Channel for airing both The Dinosaur Feather Mystery and Mythbusters. They haven't got clips of Grant and Tory's adventures with camera suits up yet, but they've been kind enough not to have YouTube pull down the vids from their documentary on dinosaur feathers. Catch Microraptor on the wing at the 5 minute mark:

Gawd-Awful Teevee

Back when I was just a young 'un, walking to school in my bare feet uphill both ways with the snow knee-deep even in May, there was this show called Battlestar Galactica. It warn't the same show you kids watch, now. This 'un had unicorns and pig-ignorant Cylons and really awful space battles, and every inhabited planet had humans what spoke the same language as the heroes.

Yup.

Even the Teevee Guide channel described it as a "Big-budget sci-fi flop that was more than a bit reminiscent of Star Wars."

Wal, I dunno 'bout that. If you're comparing it to Episode II, mebbe.

But we loved us that show. We loved it like we love a big ol' tub of horrible stinky cheese. Sometimes, ain't nuthin better than a heaping helping of stinky cheese. Besides, we didn't have all them reality teevee shows to load up on. We had to get our gawd-awful teevee where we could, and we was grateful for what the good lords at ABC gave us. Grateful, I tells ya.

You kids these days just don't have no appreciation for classic cheese.