star trek
Wednesday various
- The Star Trek: TNG casting that almost was. Personally, I would have loved to have seen Yaphet Kotto as Picard or Wesley Snipes as Geordi.
- It is possible to over-think things, even when you’re Superboy.
- Alligators in the sewers: not just an urban legend anymore!
- I think I’ve discovered a reason to visit Kansas City. [via]
- And finally, we are doomed: The Jersey Shore‘s “The Situation” will make $5 million this year. Maybe their visit to the NY Stock Exchange wasn’t so crazy after all. Still: doomed.
Tuesday various
- Textbooks Up Their Game. The Wall Street Journal looks at the evolving world of the textbook market and the role that e-book volumes will play in it.
The iPad does seem better suited to the textbook market than most other e-readers, if only for its versatility. But I can’t see app-ready editions of textbooks having much widespread appeal (beyond the student who already owns an iPad) or impact, unless the price of Apple’s reader and/or the books comes down significantly. Students are unlikely to pay $69.99 (much less $84.99) for a book they can’t re-sell and that, once the iPad stops working or needs to be replaced, is gone too.
- Daleks voted the greatest sci-fi monsters of all time. It’s a weird list. The original poll was for “Monsters, Supernatural Beings & Fantasy Creatures,” which means picks like Aslan makes more sense — although a CGI lion with the voice of Liam Neeson is a little monstrous, too — but Pilot from Farscape?
- Real or not, I think I can live without J.D. Salinger’s toilet.
- Deconstructing the Twikie. Surprisingly, this hasn’t been done by Cockeyed.com. [via]
- And finally, I’ve really been enjoying Zach Handlen’s Star Trek: The Next Generation recaps:
It can be difficult to convincingly show love in fiction, because the experience of falling for someone is both highly personal and curiously universal; the details and shared moments are what give the feeling texture, but the rush and elation of it are things that we all share. So you’ve got to find some way to make the small moments appear distinct and honest so that the big moments feel earned.
Monday various
- Maslow’s Hierarchy of Robot Needs. [via]
You know, I’m pretty sure I’d never heard of Maslow’s hierarchy before just a couple of weeks ago, and since then I’ve seen multiple parodies of it. Weird how that works. [via]
- Good news for Quantum Leap fans: there will be a new movie. The bad news: it probably won’t be about Dr. Sam Beckett.
- Man, Spock’s back must have been killing him at the end of the day!
- Google says there are 129,864,880 books in the world. If I’m lucky, I read about 50 a year. You do the math. Luckily, I intend to live to be several millions years old. [via]
Of course, Google may just have made that number up, so who knows how much I’ll have to Methuselah-it-up before I get through just what’s already been published. (At least I know I can skip that Justin Bieber book, so that’s a load off my mind.) [via]
- And finally, Guy Walks Across America [via]:
Saturday
Not the most eventful day around. I watched this week’s episode of Doctor Who; you certainly can’t fault Steven Moffatt for not thinking big, not with those last few moments, even if the episode itself was mostly just a FX’ed-up version of past Silurian episodes. (Well, of the tiny handful I’ve seen.) I liked it, though I’m much more curious where that ending is taking us, and I just hope that Moffatt already knows.
I also watched Mystery Team on DVD, since my autographed copy came in the mail today. (I’m a fan of Derrick Comedy and think Donald Glover’s been terrific on Community, so I want to support them.) It was pretty silly, all things considered, but also laugh-out-loud funny.
I was happy to discover that the first episode of Star Trek (the original series) wasn’t laugh-out-loud funny. I’ve never actually seen much of the show, despite having seen plenty of the spinoffs and movies, and now that it’s out on Bluray, it seemed like it was time to remedy that. It’s very obviously dated, but there’s still something to it, and I pretty much enjoyed the episode.
Beyond that? Not much. Just hung out, fiddled around with the iPad, tried cleaning up a virus on my laptop — which is now either gone or has gotten better at hiding — and just enjoying the day off.