Fugu Talk

In the entertainment industry, we should remind ourselves what we’re doing isn’t all that important (hey, get over yourselves!). Sure, some people create visual masterpieces and hours of enjoyment, but then again, there are those who can’t even see. That’s where Project Prakash, started by my friend Pawan Sinha at MIT, comes in.

MIT Club of Northern California – Prof. Pawan Sinha – Presentation – 2007 from Hank Magnuski on Vimeo.

Serenity is the by far the leading vote-getter in NASA’s contest to name the Node 3 addition to the Space Station, though Joss Whedon’s Firefly/Serenity fans may be concerned about write-in’s from Colbert Nation supporters.

This being NASA, I think they should take in account not only how cool the Serenity spaceship looks (especially on the Blue-Ray disc I just bought at the Circuit City meltdown), but also a highly-underpraised aspect of the Firefly/Serenity universe – it’s quiet in space! Almost all sci-fi shows from Star Trek to to Star Wars to Babylon 5 to Battlestar Galactica (old and new) feature a cacaphony of engine’s revving, lasers (sorry, phasers) blasting and guns blazing. 2001: A Space Odyssey showed it could be done quietly and scientifically correctly, and Joss Whedon did it again, without playing the Blue Danube.

But I feel obligated also to point out a highly-undercriticized aspect of Joss Whedon’s sci-fi vision – where are all the Chinese? I’m accustomed to the lack of Asian representation in Hollywood, but this is supposed to be world spawned from a great Anglo-Chinese alliance in which everyone swears in Chinese and knows how to use chopsticks. There are so few recognizably Asian characters in the series and movie, I was startled to see an Asian face in the bonus features on the Blue-Ray disc (I guess that was a bonus!).

Joss Whedon’s shows are among my favorite (still not sure about Dollhouse…), but they do have “written by a white Hollywood screenwriter” stamped all over them, much like Paul Haggis screenplays and half the shows on the WB. In contrast, take Battlestar Galactica – the fleet is visibly mixed-race and led by a Latino, and it’s no big deal. Even the Cylons have gender and racial variety (just don’t call them toasters!) Hmm, for the next Space Station addition, I hope they name it Galactica.

This weekend, thanks to Daylight Savings Time, I instantly moved ahead in time one hour. After watching Lost this season, I was disappointed the experience wasn’t accompanied by a blinding flash of light. But it did make me think of some time travel stories that have made an impression on me:

• This year, of course, it’s Lost, that somehow keeps a story that looks like it’s going to veer out of control moving along and constantly suspenseful. The biggest mystery – did the writers plan this all along or were they making it up?
• A Sound of Thunder – the original Ray Bradbury story, not the movie. Gives the “butterfly effect” a whole new meaning.
• Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure
• Timecop – when will Van Damme receive his lifetime achievement award?
• The Robert Heinlein story in which a man travels back in time and fathers himself
• The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode in which the crew travels back to Roswell
• The Star Trek: Next Generation episode in which Data’s detached head is unearthed
• The Futurama episodes that riff on the previous three
• The Terminator
• The Sarah Connor Chronicles – it’s got enough going on that it deserves to be separated from the movies

After getting jolted by an earthquake last night, I tried to find news of it – nothing on TV, although the local stations were all over it an hour later, but I found near real-time earthquake tracking on the USGS site, complete with a map of recent activity:

NCIS has its geek moments, and not just the CSI-like forensics talk or the spy-tech references to encryption methods. In the midst of one of the weekly two, three or four-in-a-row showings on the USA network, I was impressed today by a mention of the open source astronomy viewing program Celestia. I have no idea how it factored into the plot, but it’s a pretty cool program (I mean Celestia, although I must admit NCIS is a guilty pleasure)

The daylight savings shift and shortened sunlight hours have messed up my energy level, but I’m doing well compared to the solar-charged Mars Phoenix Lander, which, with a recent dust storm and the Martian winter, has basically run out of battery.

It had a good run. Here are a few recent images – a dust devil, view beneath the lander, and an instrument waving in the Martian wind.

Science is cool these days. I know this because it’s on TV – prime time, no less.

This first occurred to me when Eureka went on the air, and again when it wasn’t cancelled. Somehow, the network that produces numerous cheap CG dragons and heavily promotes Ghost Hunters comes up with an occasional gem (Battlestar Galactica). But despite the name of the network, Eureka isn’t really sci-fi, it’s an hour-long science appreciation show. Geniuses living together in an isolated yet idyllic community, working on blue-sky projects while munching on free gourmet meals (sounds like a Google recruiting pitch). Not all are nerdy, but most are eccentric enough to fit in at Comic-con, and some are even good-looking, but not unbelievably so (at least with a slight stretch of imagination)

But there are other current shows which glamorize science, many of which involve crime, for some reason. Numbers, CSI, NCIS, Bones…to varying extents they all feature really techy people who are nerdy enough to assure us they must be really good at their stuff. The Big Bang Theory wins the prize for the nerdiest cast of all, but despite that and the goofy intro song, it’s not nearly as awful as I expected, and it somehow still comes off as a celebration of nerdiness. As with the other shows, the science and nerd culture references sound accurate enough that you’d think there must be some ex-physics grad students on the writing staff. Versus standard sci-fi fare, all these shows let you say, “ah, that’s what a forensic examiner/physicist/mathematician does” (insert “good-looking” where appropriate)

And lest you think that the extreme displays of nerdiness don’t exit in real life, there’s Beauty and the Geek. (take the cast of The Big Bang Theory and parachute them into the Playboy mansion with The Girls Next Door, you get the idea) But if you want to see real scientific brains in action (“reality show” is an oxymoron, anyway), there’s a growing number of entertaining real science shows, like PBS’s Wired Science, and Nova Science Now
hosted by the energetic Neil deGrasse Tyson.