Tidbits II.

This can only end in tears.
We've hired a woman who can sneer and say "Star Trek" at the same time.

Just when you thought it was safe.
Yes, it's the movie sequel you've dreamed of, the followup to Piranha 3D - what else but Piranha 3DD.  Ms. Smith, who was responsible for me seeing the previous iteration in the series, has already issued an invitation to see the film, and I feel some kind of obligation to my blog - an oblogation, perhaps - to see just how much worse it could be.  (Actually, Laurie was kind enough - sure, let's call it "kind" - to send a link to the preview, for those of you with a morbid sense of curiousity:)

Everyone who would name their son "China" please raise your hands.
I finished Railsea, the new China Miéville novel that I bought at Borderlands Books in San Francisco, and sadly, it never quite made it for me.  My friend Colin also agrees that it lacks the kick of some of his other books. But I still don't think he should go back to the New Crobuzon series until he's ready to, too many sequels seem to have been written just to make a buck off an earlier success.

 "Charles always wanted to build bridges."

Length of Golden Gate Bridge:  8,981 feet.
Distance from Alcatraz to shore:  6,600 feet.   

Hey, that scene at the end of X-Men III would actually work!  (Well, at least in terms of distance.  Unless Magneto is supporting the bridge constantly, it couldn't stay up like that, that's not how suspension bridges work.)

Hey, they're doing the Trash Compacter at 1:20!
Again, how much worse could things get?  If you thought the Kinect Star Wars Dance mode thing was bad, look at this:

"We thank you for your patience."

"What we want to see before commercial operations is no surprises. We could reach no surprises relatively quickly or we could take a while to get there." 

Virgin Galactic Chief Executive George Whitesides

Although Sir Richard Branson was originally planning to take his first orbital flight by the end of this year, it was announced today by Virgin Galactic that they are expecting to finish developing their rocket engine "within a month or two".  That rather fuzzy timeline, coupled with the need for actual flight testing, will probably push commercial flights to the end of 2013.  (Which, let's be honest, may well mean the start of 2014.)

Wow - I've heard of flight delays, but this is ridiculous...

- Sid

P.S.  Just a reminder, froods, tomorrow is Towel Day!

Archeo-logical.

I'm currently reading Jack McDevitt's The Engines of God, which among other things deals with an archeological investigation of an extinct alien race. Although the archeological team has implausibly* managed to develop a partial knowledge of the alien language, they also rely on visual cues and dating techniques to establish developments and setbacks in the alien society.

At one point, there's a reference to the aliens losing some very basic knowledge due to dark ages at various points in their history, to the point of rediscovering twice that their world was not the centre of the universe. Really, thought I? I wonder if the later societies revere the earlier more accomplished cultures? This wouldn't require writing as a key - Western architecture owes a strong debt to classical Roman and Greek roots, via the British Empire and Napoleonic France. We also display frequent use of Roman numerals and Latin tags - again, information that could be observed and compared, rather than based on being able to read any of the words involved.

Later, they're examining an enigmatic alien structure, and one of the characters comments that "...you’d expect the central tower to be the tallest of the group. Not the shortest. They just don’t think the way we do.”  Part of the bias toward higher central towers in our culture is a legacy of our collective militaristic background. Castles are constructed with a higher central keep so that if the walls are taken by the enemy, the defenders can retreat to the central fortifications and still maintain the advantage of height.  Architecture with lower central features might well indicate a less bellicose cultural background.

Ha, maybe I should have been an archeologist - or a science fiction writer.

- Sid

* I'm sorry, but I'm completely sceptical about the possibilities of translating a completely alien language without some sort of Rosetta Stone.  For the alternative viewpoint, recommended reading is H. Beam Piper's short story Omnilingual, in which scientific constants such as the table of elements provide an initial point of access for translation.  Which might well work, but you'd be a long time figuring out Shakespeare from that.

Plus popcorn sales.

Here we are, the global financial situation is in a state of near-chaos, there's record unemployment in countless countries, and yet, and yet, there was enough spare money floating around for The Avengers to pull in an international box office total of over 1.25 billion dollars to date. 

Perhaps Greece should make a superhero movie.

- Sid

P.S.  Yes, that's right, the original 1963 lineup of the Avengers did not include Captain America, Hawkeye or the Black Widow, and Ant Man and the Wasp didn't make the cut for the movie.