I’m not sure what to make of this xkcd comic; after all, I’m active in 3 of these categories, including the top one, and I do take a lot of elevators…
So I’ve been posting a little light this week because I’ve been in San Antonio on business. Now that the work is done, and I’m heading home, I thought I’d post just a few pictures of the highlights…
While on vacation, I stumbled across one of Brian Lumley’s early novels, Khai of Khem, a fantasy adventure story set in pre-historical ancient Egypt. One of the major plot points of the story is the idea that Khai has, in essence, already lived a reincarnated life in the future, and his knowledge helps him fight his foes. That reminded me of a few other horror tales in which reincarnation is a major plot point, and it seemed worth a post to discuss them!
Okay, one more post tonight (I’m really bored). I stumbled across a fascinating article (h/t Pigspittle, Ohio) about the oldest human-powered means of transport: ice skates made of bone. Apparently ice skating may have started in about 3000 BC in Southern Finland, which has a high density of lakes (and mosquitos, as I can personally attest).
I find this especially interesting because I’m an avid figure skater. (I’m also getting the girlfriend involved.) The early skating was apparently not for fun, though, but to minimize energy expenditure in travel. The results were published in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society of London.
I’m in San Antonio this week for work, and a bit bored. Drawing inspiration from Blake Stacey’s writing of “found poetry”, I hereby present my own brief poem (Found poetry is the practice of taking phrases from other sources, in this case search terms people used to find my blog, and making a poem out of them):
No need to applaud, thank you, thank you…
P.S. If someone hasn’t made this idea a blog meme yet, they should…
While I was in a bookstore over the holidays, I stumbled across a relatively new publication by author John Grant, Corrupted Science: Fraud, ideology and politics in science. I snapped it off the bookshelf without a second thought (well, one second thought, which I’ll mention below), because I’m fascinated by frauds, crackpots and crazies in the sciences. I just finished the book last night, and my highly unscientific verdict… amazing!
If you care to hear a few more details than that, look below the fold…
I’m a sucker for distinctive character actors who carve themselves a nice niche doing weird and dark roles. Today is the birthday of another such actor: Clancy Brown!
If you haven’t seen Clancy (you have), you’ve certainly heard him: he’s done a seemingly endless collection of voice-overs for animated films, including the voice of Mr. Krabs in Spongebob Squarepants, the voice of Lex Luthor in the 1990’s Superman series, Mr. Freeze in the 2004 The Batman series, and Long Feng in my beloved Avatar: The Last Airbender, among others.
Most people would recognize him as the evil immortal Kurgan in the movie Highlander, as well as the corrupt prison guard Captain Hadley in The Shawshank Redemption. He’s appeared on Lost, ER, and the short-lived Earth 2.
Finally, I’m looking forward to his turn in the upcoming animated Conan movie, Red Nails. Happy birthday to Clancy Brown, and best wishes for future endeavors!
Over Christmas, I gave my mom and sister a special gift: My sister and I had recorded Friday Night Videos on several videotapes back in the 80’s, and I still had the tapes. I converted them to DVD and presented them to my family.
Among the gems I had forgotten about on the tape was Men at Work’s classic song and video, It’s a Mistake, a biting and very funny anti-war polemic. This was the golden era of music videos: you’ll note there isn’t a scantily-clad woman to be found in the entire video! The song and the video seem even more relevant in Bush’s America than they did in Reagan’s America.
The video is below the fold. I didn’t upload my own copy, I simply found someone else online who already had. I love the internets!
Science and technology have progressed rapidly over the past fifty years, and access to this knowledge and opposing viewpoints has grown rapidly as well, thanks to the internet. Unfortunately, not all of these opposing viewpoints are reasonable, and many come from genuine crackpots. For the non-technical reader, it can be difficult to separate the legitimate science from the crazy nonsense, both because the actual science often sounds crazy (invisibility cloaks, for instance) and the crackpots can mask their nonsense with plausible-sounding technobabble. How does a non-specialist distinguish between a legitimate scientist and a crackpot?
This question motivated me to write this post, “A Brief Field Guide to Scientific Crackpots”. We will look at a number of common attitudes possessed by such cranks, any of which should raise warning flags if encountered. Hopefully such a list will help people navigate the often treacherous world of scientific thinking without colliding with pseudo-scientific icebergs.
One of the unexpected gifts my girlfriend got me this Christmas was Max Brooks’ Zombie Survival Guide, a how-to manual on surviving encounters with the living dead. It was a sweet gift, and one she’s already suffered for greatly: I was running around for days quizzing her and taunting her about her zombie holocaust preparedness! (“Do you know the best vehicles to look for when your town is overrun? I do!”)
Anyway, the book was published in 2003, but many people may not have given it a look-see, so I thought I’d do a review anyway.
The author of Skulls in the Stars is a professor of physics, specializing in optical science, at UNC Charlotte. The blog covers topics in physics and optics, the history of science, classic pulp fantasy and horror fiction, and the surprising intersections between these areas. 
Skulls in the Stars 