Space and the City
Posts tagged Star Trek
Geek Swimwear
Jul 12th
Usually when you hear “geek” and “swimwear,” it’s awesome. This time, clearly not.
SCIENTIST: STAR TREK THE MOTION PICTURE TOTALLY HAPPENED
May 21st
V'GER, SON!
HEY. At lease three way excellent things happened in 1977: I was born, a movie named Star Wars was made by people who actually know how to make good movies and not by people named George Lucas, and NASA launched the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecrafts. Of course, that same year Elvis died and INTERPOL came up with those obnoxious “FBI WARNING” things that you still have to sit through at the beginning of every vhd/dvd/blue-ray; so it’s not like the year was all roses. But on the balance, a pretty good set of 365 considering the Voyager program is so rippingly whips.
A Typical Hot NASA Scientist.
At present, Voyager 2 is about 8.6 billion miles from Earth, carrying with it all manner of scientific instrumentalia and thefamous “Gold Record,” containing recorded greetings in a number of languages, some ‘sounds of Earth,’ and then a music section with Humanity’s greatest hits. Perhaps if you’ve been obsessively watching The West Wing lately, you’ll recall that one of those songs (“Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground” by Blind Willie Johnson) is featured in the episode The Warfare of Genghis Khan after Josh falls for a hot NASA scientist. Oh scientists, how hot you all are (you’ll be stoked to know that Chuck Berry also made the cut for the record).
The probe sends back regular updates to Earth, but in April someone odd happened. It stopped transmitting and then started back up again, but was sending strange messages that scientists could not decipher. Even really hot scientists. I can think of only one possibility. Fortunately, someone more credentialed said out loud what we all were thinking. Tell us about it, The First Post:
German academic Hartwig Hausdorf believes the change could be down to extraterrestrials. He says that because the rest of the spacecraft is still working normally there may be more to the cryptic messages than meets the eye.
“It seems almost as if someone has reprogrammed or hijacked the probe,” he told German newspaper Bild. “Thus perhaps we do not yet know the whole truth.”
MERGE WITH CREATOR YUSS.
YUSS. THE ALIENS ARE COMMUNICATING WITH US USING THE VOYAGER SPACECRAFT! CAN A TOTALLY BALD, TOTALLY SMOKIN’ CARBON-BASED ENVOY WALKING AROUND IN A BATHROBE BE FAR BEHIND? OH CARL SAGAN! OH DON PIANO!
Oh. Wait:
But if Hausdorf is correct in assuming that aliens are trying to send messages there could be trouble ahead, even if they understand the information on the Golden Disk.
Last month, Professor Stephen Hawking, the renowned British astrophysicist and believer in aliens, warned that advanced extraterrestrial life forms would aggressively seek to colonise Earth should humans ever make contact with them.
SIGH. That’s no good. Dealing with an alien invasion is totally a complicated post and outside the scope of this discussion. While most people will likely cite V or Independence Day as the touchstone examples for how to organize our resistance and ultimate liberation, anyone who isn’t considering Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s Footfall is doing themselves a great disservice. Especially considering the latter has aliens that are man-sized elephants. Probably least likely (but somehow still on my to-read list) is Harry Turteldove’s Worldwar series, in which WW2 is interrupted by alien invasion, and we have the upper hand because the aliens hadn’t swung by since the Crusades and weren’t expecting us to be so good at developing killing technology.
Unfortunately Fortunately, it turns out that NASA had some scientists on the job and they were able to figure out what is going on. Boringly, it was just some software glitch, which has subsequently been fixed and totally not having anything at all to do with Explorers. Guh. I think my weekend has been ruined in advance.
Riding Shotgun with the Troops
Mar 25th
If you’re like us, you yourself have been the victim of serious shock and awe when it comes to television coverage of the conflict some uninspired hack thought would sound best described as “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” Live satellite video phones have brought us right to the tip of the leading sword, or at least the back seat of the HumVe right behind the tip of the sword, or at least the back seat of the HumVe kinda behind the big bad tank leading the charge.
While a good percentage of this new coverage style is made possible by the application of enough Star-Trekian technologies to fabricate a Linux cluster, the role of embedded journalists is key as well. Starting with this conflict, and carrying us through Operation Iranian Freedom, Operation North Korean Freedom, and Operation French Freedom (or as it is called in some circles, Operation Freedom Freedom), journalists will actually become an integrated part of combat military units – living, eating, and not shaving with the men and occasional women they are assigned to cover.
So, just like we finagled a press pass at SXSW, The Skyline Network was able to get Ultra-Senior International Foreign Affairs Correspondent De-Luxe Ryan Clark embedded within Coalition armed forces. Unfortunately, TSN does not have the resources to equip our correspondents with hyper-real-time communication gizmos to make these stories timely, accurate, fair or balanced. We did, however, send him on his way with a Smith-Corona typewriter, a disposable camera, and a book of international reply coupons to mail his report in with. – TSN EDITORS
I’m here now in the Iraqi desert somewhere near the gritty city of Mos Isely, currently embedded with the slightly elite members of the 154th Water Purification Brigade. This logistics and supply group is made up largely of reservists from Encino, California and is rather abely lead by a man who’s name appears to be Buddy Weasel, though since I arrived I have been asked to only speak to his hand. I was, however, not originally assigned to this unit.
Less than one week ago I was riding shotgun with the 7th Cavalry of the 3rd Infantry Division. You may recall, this is the group that made the spectacularly incident-free dash across the Iraqi desert’s flat, featureless terrain, which was broadcast in the most pixilated fashion imaginable for almost 15 consecutive and indistinguishable hours on CNN.
At some point, however, relations with the 7th Cav began to deteriorate, most likely due to the incessant use of my typewriter during the few brief moments of peace and respite the soldiers had during these early few days of the war. At some point, they loaded a tank gun with my trusty Smith-Corona and sent if flying deep out deep into the desert ‘as a joke.’ Foolishly, I then took off after then machine, which I located completely intact. However, apparently the 7th Cav was needed in my absence, for when I returned they were long gone.
Fortunately, I will subsequently picked up by a mixed platoon of reservists lead by a special forces major, that story next time.
But in the meantime, what do you think of this new hyper-instant form of war coverage?
