Redshirts

Wow, this press release from Cornell University has made me realize that there is another meaning of the term "redshirt" besides the one that comes from Star Trek.

Given the meaning that originated in Star Trek, the press release's title amused me considerably.

Star Trekkin' Across the Journal Publications

That's write: The Firm's song "Star Trekkin'" may well be the most quoted song in scholarly journals. I certainly hope it is, because that would be awesome!

And if you are unfamiliar with this song, then you owe it to yourself to watch the music video on the other side of the link.

Over on the blog entry to which I linked above, reader JimBob points to Spock's quote about Organians: "Fascinating. Pure energy. Pure thought. Totally incorporeal. Not life as we know it at all."

And that is really awesome! Because that brings us back to music: "pure energy" is sampled in the song "What's on Your Mind" by Information Society. I didn't realize that that came from the same line as the modified version in "Star Trekkin'".

Awesome Audi Commerical: 'Battle of the Spocks'

Another of the awesome things that has been circulated amidst Leonard Nimoy's passing is this fantastic Audi commercial from 2013 (or at least the io9 article is from 2013, so I am assuming that the commercial is as well) featuring both Nimoy and Zachary Quinto (who plays Spock in the Star Strek reboot) in a 'Battle of the Spocks'.

There are quite a few great allusions in this commercial.

(Tip of the cap to somebody, but I forgot to scribble down whom.)

"Bank of Canada Urges 'Star Trek' Fans to Stop 'Spocking' Their Fivers"

This story is absolutely fantastic. As a tribute to the late, great Leonard Nimoy, an apparently large number of Canadian Trekkies (or Trekkers, as I suppose they would prefer) have been 'Spocking' their five-dollar bills. Take a look at the story for some pictures that show examples of Spocking, which I think are rather well done. I think this is an excellent tribute. I approve!

(Tip of the cap to several people.)

RIP Leonard Nimoy (1931–2015)

In terms of famous people with whom I feel a connection (to them and/or their portayed characters), today's news really hurts: Leonard Nimoy died today. I am sure many of my fellow nerds/geeks feel the same way. Nimoy is best known, of course, for playing---and often reprising---the character Spock as part of the original "Star Trek" crew. The character of Spock, and several aspects of that iconic character that originated with Nimoy (see the obituaries to which I linked to see the origin of a couple of the things that Nimoy brought to Spock) has had a huge impact on popular culture. But as you can from his Wikipedia entry, he had a very long, successful, and varied career.

The CNN article about his death has some nice pictures and nice tidbits.

In addition to Spock, another more recent way in which I will remember Leonard Nimoy is through his voice acting in Civilization IV when one discovers a technology. (Tip of the cap to Travis Hime for the URL with the clips from Civ IV.)

I would also like to include a very nice quote from Nimoy (which appears in the CNN.com article) in which he describes a visit to Caltech: "I had an embarrassing experience once, many years ago," he told The New York Times in 2009. "I was invited to go to Caltech and was introduced to a number of very brilliant young people who were working on interesting projects. ... And they'd say to me, 'What do you think?' Expecting me to have some very sound advice. And I would nod very quietly and very sagely I would say, 'You're on the right track.' "

(Tip of the cap to a large number of people.)

The Redshirt in Google Doodle

All I have to say is this: Follow this Google Doodle (with a Star Trek theme) to the end, and see what happens to the redshirt...

Inflatable Star Trek Captain's Chair

Clearly, Somerville needs to buy an Inflatable Star Trek Captain's Chair for its Senior Common Room. Is anybody with me?

And if nothing else, I wouldn't mind owning one of these.

(Tip of the cap to Alex Cayco-Gajic. Well, sort of---it was posted on her Facebook wall by one of her friends.)

Fascinating

This video montage is best described using one word: fascinating.

You definitely want to watch the whole thing, by the way.

(Tip of the cap to Rob Neyer.)

What happens at Dragon*Con stays at Dragon*Con

I have arrived in Atlanta. My first Dragon*Con in 6 years starts tomorrow morning!!! 3.5 solid days of gaming and geekery starts morning!!! (That's right. For once, I am actually taking a proper holiday.) Stay tuned for some *awesome* pictures!

My hotel is near where I used to live, and seeing my old apartment complex upon walking out of the metro station felt very weird.

I have pre-registered for 2 games, though I might skip out on one of them because it starts at 10 pm on Sunday, and Monday after the Con ends I will need to prepare my slides for my cow synchronization talk at Georgia Tech on Tuesday. (Once Dragon*Con ends, I am going to switch to my academic visit mode, and I didn't get a chance to make too many of these slides yet, and this is an all-new talk.) The one I will definitely do is the 3.5 D & D adventure called "Into the Nexus" (which is based on the Weis/Hickman series of books on which you think it's based). The one I might not do is in a system called "Spirit of the Century". The adventure seems very cool, but I'm not keen on getting home at 3am on Monday. I'm also going to play in The Cheesegrinder, of course! My pseudodragon monk, who is immune to just about everything (though an anti-magic field would get rid of some of the immunities temporarily, as only some are due to race and monkhood) but can hardly do any damage at all, is ready to go. I finished 2nd overall 6 years ago, and the key is survivability, so we'll see how things go. In making this character, I had to actually look up weapon damage adjustments for tiny creatures! (And, yes, the characters are supposed to be cheesy too.)

As always, I'm also looking forward to the dealer room, the exhibit hall, and the art gallery. I didn't have a digital camera the other two times I attended Dragon*Con, so I expect to take tons of cool pictures. Lots of people will dress up in their finest geekery, so there is also great pleasure even in just sitting down, having some coffee, and people-watching. Plus I have several Firefly, Buffy/Angel, and Star Trek autographs that I'll try to procure. (And I'll try to get pictures taken with these people of course.)

Bring it on.

(By the way, these 3.5 days off constitute a tie for my longest vacation in about 3 years---well, it's tied with the 3.5 days off in a row that I took during my Shanghai trip.)

Separated at Birth: UK Prime Minister David Cameron and Star Trek's Brent Spiner

How could I not notice this before?

The UK's new Prime Minister, David Cameron (as pictured in this article), looks very much like Brent Spiner (as he looked 20 years ago), who played Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Here is a picture of Spiner as Data (with makeup). And here is an even younger Spiner (without makeup).

I don't normally care about UK politics at all, but this resemblance is just way too awesome. How did I not notice this before? Separated at birth!

OK, back to work now...

Update: I came up with this on my own, but evidently I am not the first person to have noticed this. It's still awesome, though...

Three Fascinating Articles

I just read three fascinating articles on CNN.com.

The first one discusses tweeting directly using one's brain to form the letters.

The second discusses differences between men and women with respect to sexual orientation being continuous versus discrete. (There are other things in the article too, but this is what I found most interesting.) Apparently, a bunch of studies are suggesting that it seems to be much more of a continuum in women than in men (and also perhaps that it is more common for a woman to experience a change in location over time).

The third discusses the new Star Trek film. (If you haven't gotten the allusion yet, let's just say that this article is fascinating in a somewhat different manner than the other two.)

KH(Ax)N for x = 1, ..., 100

Courtesy Lemming comes this awesome link, which shows a plot of the number of Google search results for "KH(Ax)N" (I assume the quotes aren't actually in the Google search) as a function of x. Observe the broad spike between about 35 and 50 compared to the numbers outside this range.

This seriously needs to be repeated for "PRECIOU(Sx)" for x = 1, ..., 100...