Just when you thought it was safe to forget all about the hype that went on and on and on about Star Wars Episode VII…it’s time for Episode VIII!
Yes, it’s true. So from today on forward, one can expect regulated bombardments of propaganda until the official release date of December 15, 2017. In the general scheme of things, it’s practically overnight, considering the decade-long drought between Episode III and VII (longer if you ignore those first three and go right to Episode VI – 1983).
Rey took her first steps into a larger world in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and will continue her epic journey with Finn, Poe, and Luke Skywalker in the next chapter of the continuing Star Wars saga, Star Wars: Episode VIII, which began principal photography at Pinewood Studios in London on February 15, 2016.
Star Wars: Episode VIII, which is written and directed by Rian Johnson and continues the storylines introduced in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, welcomes back cast members Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Lupita Nyong’o, Domhnall Gleeson, Anthony Daniels, Gwendoline Christie, and Andy Serkis. New cast members will include Academy Award winner Benicio Del Toro, Academy Award nominee Laura Dern, and talented newcomer Kelly Marie Tran.
Star Wars: Episode VIII is produced by Kathleen Kennedy and Ram Bergman and executive produced by J.J. Abrams, Jason McGatlin, and Tom Karnowski. Joining the production crew will be some of the industry’s top talent, including Steve Yedlin (Director of Photography), Bob Ducsay (Editor), Rick Heinrichs (Production Designer), Peter Swords King (Hair and Make-Up Designer), and Mary Vernieu (US Casting Director). They will be joining returning crew members Pippa Anderson (Co-Producer, VP Post Production), Neal Scanlan (Creature & Droid FX Creative Supervisor), Michael Kaplan (Costume Designer), Jamie Wilkinson (Prop Master), Chris Corbould (SFX Supervisor), Rob Inch (Stunt Coordinator), Ben Morris (VFX Supervisor), and Nina Gold (UK Casting Director).
Star Wars: Episode VIII is scheduled for release December 15, 2017.
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So, there you have it! The Force is in force! More updates are sure to follow…
Sure, everyone’s done it. You pick up the phone, take a quick glance at a number you’ve never seen before and dialed it. A voice connects at the other end and it sure sounds unfamiliar. Still, you ask for the person you intended to reach, hoping a friend or a wife or a kid answered the phone. And no, they’re not there because you’ve dialed the wrong number.
No biggie. It happens.
Except when that wrong number happens to originate from the International Space Station.
British astronaut Tim Peake mistakenly called someone and later tweeted about his wrong attempt and apology. I’m sure the person at the other end thought it was a bunch of bored kids pranking and though little of it until the story broke in the news. It just goes to show you that no matter who and where you are, accidents happen, even at the ISS.
But here’s something: do you know that anyone can contact the ISS? That’s right. If you’re a licensed ham radio operator, you have an opportunity to contact the ISS when it’s above your neck of the woods.
As it turns out, there are three ham radios aboard the ISS: an Ericsson MP-X handheld radio, a Kenwood TM D700 and a Kenwood D710.
Credit: NASA – John Phillips at an ISS Ham Radio
Obviously, their frequencies operates on different ones than Houston. Its purpose is exactly the same as Adrian Lane discovered – as a means of public education. Schools, for example, reach out to the inhabitants of the ISS to ask questions.
When astronauts have free time, they choose to make random, unschedule contact with whomever is choosing to reach them. Though their work schedules dictate their availability, an astronaut’s waking period is weekdays between 7:30 am – 7:30 pm UTC during the week, which means during that time they’re generally working. However, at either end of that schedule they might be available, as well as weekends, when more free time is also available.
Crews don’t scan but switch between frequencies, depending upon their location. Since the ISS travels rapidly, a person only has about 45 seconds worth of contact time.
If you are interested in contacting the ISS, visit this excellent website hosted by Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS). It details location prediction maps, frequencies, and everything else you’ll need to set up contact and once you do, how to receive a QSL card to prove it! And though it’s entirely random, you might just get lucky like Adrian Lane.
In celebration of things Episode 7, I’d thought I’d bring you a miscellany of mirth from a few different sources riffing off of things SW. The above video came to me via my FB friends. It’s so silly, so ridiculous, I just HAD to post it.
Secondly, here’s a damn good rap between two baddies:
Say, how’d you like to try your hand at lightsabering? Turn that otherwise defenseless smartphone into a lethal weapon with this:
Who doesn’t love a love story? Here’s Darth’s turn at happiness…or is it?
May you all force your way in to the nearest box office and see SW7! Happy viewing!
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I know this news hardly pales in comparison to the other big release occurring at the end of this week. But hey, those who can really claim to be sci-fi geeks and connoisseurs of wit know where the good stuff is.
Who doesn’t remember the iconic show from the latter part of the last century? I used to catch it on Comedy Central, and later on, the former Sci-Fi Channel (now SyFy). It was just so silly, part film commentary, part comedy sketch. I latched on to each episode just to watch a kidnapped janitor and his ‘bot buds watch absolutely horrible films (a goodly portion I had already seen) and wisecrack nonstop.
MST3K’s story reads like a movie plot too. Begun in Minneapolis, MN in 1988 on KTMA, it later moved to Comedy Central and ran for six years until it was cancelled in 1997. A fierce letter campaign to bring it back revived the brilliant show until 1997 on Sci-Fi, when it met its cable demise in 1999. Recipient of the Peabody award in 1993 and named by Time Magazine in 2007 as one of the best television shows of all time (in the top 100), it leaves you wondering why this show was cancelled in the first place. Chalk that up to network execs usual interference with what they want vs. what the creatives envision, and the result is a battle that never ends well, at least for someone.
After the airing of “Danger: Diabolik” on August 8, 1999, MST3K went out of business, although it did go into syndication and if you were lucky, you could pick it up again here and there.
But, like anything worth remembering and savoring, this show had life in it yet. By the modern miracle of crowd funding, the show’s originator/creator, Joel Hodgson, raised $5,764,229 in a month. Add $425,000 raised outside of Kickstarter et voila! We’ll be seeing 14 new episodes in the near future. What’s telling about all of this is show never really went away, it only drifted out to space. Facing a fierce gravitational pull by its devoted fans both old and new, money flowed the instant the Kickstarted campaign started and in the process, broke all crowd funding records.
It still hasn’t been announced when the new episodes will air, but they’ll feature the likes of Patton Oswalt and even Jerry Seinfeld might to do a cameo. So stay tuned! Whether you’d like to revisit old episodes or keep in touch with MST3K happenings, an official channel lives on YouTube. If you’d like to contribute, here’s their dot-com site. It has all the latest information, merch for sale and all the FAQs you’d ever want answered.
Steampunk surrounds itself with proto-modern examples of past ingenuity updated for today. Take, for example, the above video. It’s described as the best steampunk robot of 2014. I didn’t fact-check to make certain it was, I merely took its word. What’s obvious is any steampunking robot has to prove its worth by dancing…and it does…to great accolades from the audience.
A category woefully underrepresented is animated Steampunk. James Lopez, a former Disney animator, has set about to create his dream, Hullabaloo. He crowd funded the project and updates are regularly found on the Hullabaloo Facebook Page and official website. Using 2-D techniques instead of computers, this project does homage to the past by actually recreating it – by hand drawing the cels, just like they did back in the day.
Has anyone seen this? It’s been making a tour of Facebook pages over the globe. How do I know? Just Google it and you’ll see. Here’s dancing of a sort, although I must admit I have no idea what’s the purpose. Sure, the guy in silver seems to be a superhero type, beating up the Godzilla-ish beast, but how does the bear-y thing justify jumping hysterically while clutching Godzilla’s tail? I mean, what’s really going on here?
This, my friends, is a classic. I first saw this Kikkoman anime around the turn of the millennium. A friend sent it to me when emails were still kind of new and fresh, as was the internet. As far as bizarre things go, this one definitely holds the test of time. The accompanying tune is unavoidably infectious – just try to not hum, “Kikkoman, Kikkoman, show you, show me…” It shows even better if you’re altering your own reality through artificial means, too.
Hope you didn’t make any plans to take that much-needed restful vacation to Puerto Rico from September 15-28, 2015. And while that’s the heart of the hurricane season, this wrath-of-nature event’s going to create giant waves not as the result of intense low pressure, but the crashing of a honking huge space rock. Yes, folks, this sucker’s got our name on it and it’s that apocalyptic nightmare we’ve been long warned about. So if any of you were thinking about paying bills or going to college, your time’d be better spent making plans of an otherworldly sort – the kind that involves a sudden belief in religion and hoping that all of those priests, preachers and other sorts are right.
NOT!
Oh geez, here we go again. Once again, life on Earth is going to end. Or that’s what they’d like you to believe on the internet.
So much buzz and inquiry flew around in cyberspace that the American authority on such matters, NASA, had to release a statement that categorically denied our home planet’s days were numbered.
As things go, this latest rumor of our planet’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. There is no asteroid, the Earth is still planning to turn and as far as vacations to Puerto Rico are concerned, it’s still hurricane season and you still might want to check the forecast before you leave.
Back in 1982, a rare alignment of all nine planets (back then, Pluto was considered one) occurred. Our entire solar system lined up within a 95° arc, all on one side of the sun in March of that year. This amazing event prompted horrific rumors of devastating earthquakes, shifts in gravitational forces and life as we know it’d go the way of Betamax players (also popular at the time). And no Earth-ending force would be complete without California’s San Andreas fault sliding off the West Coast and offering the residents of Arizona the beachfront property they’d been longing for. Of course, no one would have even given this planetary lineup a second thought had it not been for the book written by John Gribbin, Ph.D., and Stephen Plagemann, called The Jupiter Effect, published in 1974. For some reason, nothing really happened except nighttime sky observers had a fantastic view. Not long after, Gribbin and Plagemann published, The Jupiter Effect Reconsidered, backtracking to say the actual event occurred in 1980 and was responsible for the monumental eruption of Mt. St. Helens. Finally, in 1999, Gribbin admitted he might have been mistaken about the whole thing.
There seems to be no end of apocalyptic predictions, it seems – humankind thrives on them. Most of them seem to revolve around Christ coming again and bible predictions, or some deity wreaking havoc, or even a random event magically pull the plug on our planet. To illustrate, Wikipedia has a fairly comprehensive (although by no means complete) list of popular end-of-it-all predictions. Suffice it to say, we’re all still here.
Why is it seemingly so popular to want life to end on our planet? Lots of reasons. Those in power used it as a means to control less sophisticated types, while others, through limited means of scientific understanding, considered such celestial events as comets to be a omen of death. The same goes for plagues, droughts and other extreme weather events, earthquakes, eclipses and more. I remember as a kid hearing Pat Robertson of the 700 Club predict the world would end in 1982. Why? He was a big fan of the Antichrist and figured that’d be a good time as any for the devil to show up. That, and this prediction bolstered viewers for his popular TV show. Hey, wouldn’t you want the latest details of your demise? Of course, if you were God’s Chosen, you’d be lifted up in The Rapture…and all of his viewers were special, natch.
Alas, as long as humans trod the earth, there will be naysayers for its future. The Assyrians are famously known for making this oft-quoted prediction, way back in 2800 BC:
“Our Earth is degenerate in these later days; there are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end; bribery and corruption are common; children no longer obey their parents; every man wants to write a book and the end of the world is evidently approaching.”
Maybe you read The New York Time’s July 16, 2015 article regarding a fragment of a Russian weather satellite passing near ISS caused one astronaut and two cosmonauts to enter a Soyuz capsule until the all clear was issued. It wasn’t the first time something like this happened, nor will it be the last.
Take a look at the above picture. That’s a graphic representation of all of the flotsam and jetsam from the entire planet’s space industries. First, blame it on the United States and Russia. Then, blame it on any nation that dared test the limits of gravity. Pretty soon, anything as minuscule as a paint fleck to a section of a satellite remained at various levels of orbit, zooming around at 175,000 mph/281,640 km/h. Occasionally bits fall to earth, succumbing to gravity and burning up harmlessly as they enter the atmosphere.
NASA and the Department of Defense keep an excellent log of anything larger than a softball and if any debris comes close enough to the ISS, both Houston and Moscow work together to plan a strategy to keep the inhabitants safe. If a threat is deemed plausible, all are instructed to go into the ISS’s lifeboats – the Soyuz capsules – in case a quick getaway is necessary.
But this poses a larger problem: what’s being done to clean up the mess? Simply ask this question to Google and you’ll get numerous responses on various sites. Space.com has an article listing 7 Wild Ways. Popular Mechanics has its own solutions.Here’s what Mental Floss has to say.
The truth is, nothing’s being done…yet. Sure, the idea’s been kicked around, maybe even a few plans surfaced. It seems getting there and back takes priority over all the mess it takes to accomplish our goals. It’s a junkyard, for sure, and like the neighbor who refuses to let go of all the cars (and their subsequent parts) owned over the past 30 years, it’s unsightly, only getting worse, and isn’t going away.
Of course, there’s been a multitude of sci-fi inspiration drawn from this. Take, for example, the recent movie “Gravity,” wherein Sandra Bullock’s character Ryan Stone finds herself floating in space untethered thanks to a run-in with remains. David Brin’s novel, “Existence” tells the story of an alien artifact tucked among the pieces of debris.
Sadly, this is a commentary on how the inhabitants of this planet choose to deal with exploration and conquering the impossible. Mt. Everest is defiled by the remains of extreme tourism. Roman ruins scattered about their former empire faced years of abuse from casual visitors seeking an up-close inspection.
SpaceX, to its credit, is developing multistage rockets that return to earth to be used in future missions. It’s facing challenges with no successes yet, but it’s not giving up and it’s getting closer with each try. They do seem to be one exception, though.
Until we learn that exploration often results in exploitation and near-irreversable damage, perhaps any further missions might benefit from following SpaceX’s lead. If not, there won’t be any room up there to put a satellite nor will be be safe to remain in any space station.
Writing is hard, let’s face it. Inspiration is short, patience nonexistent. And there you are, sitting in front of your computer, in absolute agony, trying to conjure up an image of a beast that’s the favorite companion of the King of Darcoia, that planet just to the left of Asysamia, right out there in the Booidad Triad. He’s been looking for a pet since his wife left him and his kids pretty much blew him off. What more can a person need than unconditional love from a favored snuggleupicus? Or your favorite little mumuchka?
On Huffington Post this week, an article regarding an adorable little creature appeared. She seemed fresh from another planet, ready and willing to charm anyone with her cute face and eyes like those of the Greys/Grays. Was she the product of an experiment, perhaps some intergalactic cross-breeding? Sure seems it, eh? This is exactly the sort of creature you’d see in a parody of space films OR a serious new race of aliens bearing the dual purpose of charming the natives to deceive them cruelly.
Oh yes, another creature that defies explanation – the tardigrade. It’s actually microscopic, but from the looks of it, a tardigrade most certainly bears the features of an alien. It’s so puffy and wrinkly, yet it’s got that cog-like snout – does it adjust the puff/wrinkle setting somehow?
The Blobfish almost reminds me of the cartoon character Ziggy, drawn by Tom Wilson. Got to admit, there’s a VERY strong resemblance. However, before you draw conclusions, what you see is the result of bringing a deep water fish up to the surface, where the pressure is much different. Here’s an artist’s drawing of what a blobfish really looks like deep below the ocean’s surface:
Blobfish hold the distinction of being internet celebrities and rate many YouTube shorts. Here’s a good one that offers not only a little informational tidbit but music inspired by it:
Science calls this Grimpoteuthis, but it’s more popularly known as the Dumbo Octopus. I say it’s one of those creatures where you give it a squeeze and its little snout pops out. Or, one plops it on top of one’s cubicle wall and invites people to ask silly questions about it. They’re actually very graceful swimmers and resemble a sort-of elephant when full grown; the above is a baby.
There’s been a lot of talk about black holes lately and it seems our fascination with them never quits. Even the term ‘black hole’ joined our lexicon long ago (“Can’t figure out what I did with my keys; it’s like they fell into a black hole or something” – c’mon, admit it, you’ve generated versions of this phrase, haven’t you?).
So, strolling around the web, I’d thought I’d make an informal list of things Black Hole:
1. Wired Magazine’s blog entry by Geek Dad, Black Hole Fun – Wired’s Guide to What Sucks – “10 Sci-Fi Movies we’d like to throw in a Black Hole.” The list starts with Disney’s “The Black Hole” movie and goes down from there. I don’t necessarily agree with his choice of the Matrix sequels (true, they were’t as strong as the original, but they had moments) or “Star Trek V” (although it isn’t the best entry in the field, it’s not that bad.), but I completely agree with his assessment of the others. I happened to watch “Lost in Space” movie the other night, mainly because there wasn’t anything else on and I didn’t feel like doing anything else, and MAN, I gotta tell ya, it sucked. I mean, who can honestly grasp the concept/irony of Matt Le Blanc playing a space jockey?
2. Here’s a University in Colorado’s list, current to 2006, of a lot of Black Hole fiction in paper and film. It’s really good. Students get 2% extra credit for finding more sources to add to the list.
3. Just in case you were curious, here’s Disney’s “The Black Hole” film.
4. Noisey – Music by VICE – blogged about Weezer’s lost science fiction rock opera, “Songs from the Black Hole.” I used to be a huge fan of Weezer, until they stopped putting out good music a while ago. Shame.
5. You can get a 2006 forgettable version of “The Black Hole” on Amazon for $1.31. US currency, that is. Apparently, it seems there’s one available for a penny, but it’s a used version.
6. Here’s Wendy Merrill’s advice on the black hole of bad follow up.
10. And, of course, no list would be complete without UFOs and black holes. Here’s an article from the website Open Minds that discusses an Oregon witness says a UFO emitted a black hole sort of energy.
In the New York Times, I read and watched a near tear-jerker of a video from their Robotica series. In this episode, the video tells the story of Beatrice Lipp, a young child who’s suffering from a chronic disease. She’s had one too many visits to the pediatric hospital and is both frightened and stressed. She hates going and misses her life at school and with her friends. To ease this situation, a special friend is brought in to rescue her from the tedium she faces.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology teamed up with Boston Children’s hospital to develop Huggable, a robotic bear that’s absolutely adorable. She interacts with Beatrice and the effect she has is nothing short of amazing. This poor kid transformed from sad to so cheerful interacting with Huggable. Beatrice reaches out to touch the bear, smiles and laughs as Huggable seems to respond to her questions and conversation. Nearby, a programmer keeps watch on the action of both the bear and child and acts as a cyber puppeteer, moving the arms, legs and head of Huggable, even controlling eye blinks.
It’s really a positive step forward in the world of robotics and a lovely video to watch.
The top video is a description of the project from MIT, and although academic, is nonetheless interesting to watch. Please enjoy both.
Moon, Stars and Beyond 