A 1979 promo for TMP. Some interesting stuff here… work on the Enterprise model, Klingon battle cruiser models getting exploded (a scene later re-imagined) and Persis Khambatta losing her hair, and not being entirely thrilled by it.
A Sam Jackson-starring movie about money laundering via crappy paintings. Hmmm… This is, of course, not a new idea. It’s actually a pretty obvious one; the value of art is about the most subjective form of monetary valuation you could dream up. Even more than a dollar bill, a painting is objectively nearly worthless,…
If LK-99 pans out as a true room temperature superconductor, it really does seem like it’ll be world changing. That’ll be great: no more need to cryo-cool electromagnets, making maglevs practical and making CAT scanners and the like a hell of a lot cheaper. And making the nightmare scenario of running out of helium much…
So, Disney has spent large, *vast* sums on movies that have tanked. They’ve lost more money in the last year than many corporations will see in their lifetimes (“Lightyear,” “Elemental,” “Indiana Jones,” “Little Mermaid,” etc. contributed to historic losses). So how do they respond to this business apocalypse? Disney Discontinues Physical Media Releases for an…
Starships first not-exactly-successful launch was filmed not only from the ground, but from the NASA WB-57 flying at altitude. Apparently at least five cameras were trained on the launcher; video from two have been released, while three remain classified. i would *assume* that the classified three display some combination of: 1) better tracking 2) Better…
A description of the phenomenon, the physics and history. Includes a discussion of the politics of it, how it’s supposedly misogynistic. But included in the video are a number of old movie clips showing how vocal fry (at least used to) feature a lot in depictions of High Upper Class British Dudes… who are every…
The driving motivation behind everything in the movie “Avatar” was humanity’s need of the mineral “Unobtanium.” It was special since it was a room temperature superconductor, allowing for a lot of advanced technologies. In the movie, humanity would travel light years and wipe out primitive alien civilizations to get it. But recent news suggests that…
“The 13th Warrior” was, shockingly to me, one of history’s great box office bombs… budget was about $100 million in 1999, but it only made about $33 million domestically, less than that foreign. Counting marketing, it lost well over a hundred million dollars. I’ve never understood why this was so; it was a substantially badass…
Color me not just skeptical, but damn near dismissive: Reviving The PBY Catalina For Modern Warfare Is This Company’s Goal I fully support the manufacture of newly designed, modernized PBY “Catalina” flying boats. Damned things were awesome 80 years ago; had I buckets of money, I’d fund the program myself. But *this* program does not…
Study results: unsurprising. Higher Cognitive Ability, Less Concern for Political Correctness – Study Finds As you can see, there was a moderate positive correlation between cognitive ability and support for freedom of speech, and a moderate negative correlation between cognitive ability and concern for political correctness. (The asterisks tell us these results are statistically significant.)…
