1964 MODEM demo

1964 MODEM demo (YouTube)

The Jones Hall marquee caught my attention with “Music of Star Trek and More Sci-Fi”. They’ll be playing themes from the various Star Treks, including the new movie. They’ll also play the themes from 2001: A Space Odyssey and Battlestar Galactica. I wonder if they will play the theme from Red Dwarf.

If music isn’t enough, there’s a costume competition.

And the Houston Chronicle Dollar Concert will be playing Holst’s “The Planets”

If you prefer music from video games, see the Gamer MusiCON 09.

The Terra Cotta Warriors are on exhibit in The Houston Museum of Natural Science

From yesterday’s 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast podcast:

…if an object were to fall into a black hole it would actually get stretched out and then ripped apart. There’s a great word for that; do you remember what the word for that is, Cameron?

Cameron: I believe it has something to do with Italian cooking…

Robert: It does — spaghettification,

I saw Star Trek last night.  It was surprisingly amazing. Rotten Tomatoes rate it at 95%.  It compares well to Ratatouille at 96%, and the incredible The Incredibles at 97%.

Before watching the movie, having seen only the trailers, and paid little attention to review and commentary, I complained this Star Trek movie is nothing like the original.  It’s a just modern action adventure.  That’s consistant with the reason for the release delay.

Star Trek broke the unspoken rules of time travel fiction:

• always restore the time line
• don’t speak to or meet yourself from the past or future
• don’t tranfer knowledge back through time

Doing this is as revolutionary as breaking the fourth wall. Back to the Future restored th time line at the end of the first and third movie.  Star Trek: Voyager always reset the time time too.  I like interest in Star Trek during Voyager, and am not familiar with all it’s details and Janeways big cheap to return home in the end.  Except for Janeway’s Search for Home, episodes had no permanant affect.  The cast ended where they began.  I recall Friends offten ended in the same predicament they began in.  This was almost tiresome in Gilligan’s Island, except for everyone’s unhuman patience with Gilligan restoring the castaways to standedness; must be some Vulcan in their distant ancestry.

Star Trek: Search for Zefram Cochrane, er, First Contact, the Borg attempt to use time travel to manipulate critical past events to their advantage.  We see a glimpse of the the Borg do to Earth, but the time is restored to the familiar. the timeline is also restored in ST:TOS “The City on the Edge of Forever”.

This time in the Star Trek prequel, the time is left altered.  Contrary to elder Spocks advice:

• he graciously meets and talks with his younger self
• shows Scotty his formula before Scotty devolops it

Now that I think about it, Scotty transfered knowledge in Star Trek IV (Search for Whales) to make the aluminum glass plate.

But for the paradox, how did destroying the ships and villan pivitol to this time travel sequence of events not restore the timeline?

article with videos at Wired.com.

Doctors who work in Houston’s busiest maternity ward say they’re expecting an especially bustling June, leading some to conclude that Hurricane Ike was the perfect storm for making babies.

It’s been eight months since Ike knocked out the region’s electricity, leaving many with no television, Internet access or other distractions for days, if not weeks. Now there’s a curious bump in the number of women who are rounding out their third trimesters of pregnancy.

– Chron

CNN has an article on visualizing the inside of a black hole.  It references a website with AVI and MOV video files, so I dropped the Flash video from CNN.

Now, if the LHC really could generate black holes, they could make a little side profit offering self guided tours inside the man black holes.  How long would it take to find the exit considering the effects on time?

Anyone who’s dropped a stack of balls sized small, medium and large will understand the inevitable importance of size in collisions. These IISH videos illustrate with small and mid-size cars. The second focuses on the Smart Car ForTwo. It spins more than a whole turn after the frontal offset collision, but handles that scenario well for such a small car. Because of the emphasis on affordability, many small cars don’t perform in collisions as wells as the Smart.

IIHS also provides a few other videos. Understanding Car Crashes demonstrates inertia with a dummy seated on the back of a pickup that drives off. The same video demonstrated inertia with the tablecloth yanked out from under a stable setting, a trick that appeared in Ratatouille.

And for good measure I include the Chevrolet Volt.  Since it’s engine is just a generator for the electric drivetrain, I wonder if it’s be accessorised for using the car as a generator.  Why buy one when you can just use the cars engine? (Generators: Walmart, Home Depot)

Telsa has electrified a ForTwo.

Yes, this post’s title parodies atom smashers. Well, cars are made of atoms.