Quickies
Skepchick Quickies 5.22
On May 22, 1826, the HMS Beagle departed for its first voyage. If the name sounds familiar, it’s because this is the ship that carried Charles Darwin (albeit on the second voyage) and he wrote a book about it called The Voyage of the Beagle.
- How Close Is This Star Trek Tech? – The science and fiction of the latest Star Trek movie. (If you’ve seen it, leave your opinions in the comments!) From CriticalDragon1177.
- You Are Less Beautiful Than You Think – A fascinating followup to the Dove campaign.
- Statement of Objection to Center for Inquiry CEO Ron Lindsay’s Actions Regarding Feminism – From Heina.
- 9 Questions That Atheists Might Find Insulting (And the Answers) – From Michael. Related: the Wolf Blitzer incident (although I thought the woman handled herself wonderfully). From Amy.
- Inhofe: Tornado aid ‘totally different’ from Hurricane Sandy aid – The difference is that in this case, his state is the one that needs the money. Classic.
- Who’s Your Daddy? The perils of personal genomics – First sentence: “First Jackie learned her brother Alex was her uncle. Then things got a little weird.” What!
- Girl Expelled For Science Experiment Has Criminal Charges Dropped, Is Now Going To Space Camp – From Amy.
- Surprise, Surprise: Hollister Discriminates Against the Disabled.
- Braco to cast silent healing gaze in Boulder Wednesday, Thursday – Wow, how come I’ve never heard of this guy before now? From Stacey.
- 2013 National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest – I love these photo collections. Numbers 7, 8, and 11 are my favorites (and number 24 is adorable!). Number 30 is totally that scene from The Lion King.
BONUS: How to bully God (from Zoltan).
Weirdly, I didn’t hate Star Trek as much as I have lots (AND LOTS) of complaints about it. I just was disappointed. Mostly from story laziness more than anything else. Oh, and I guess you have to wait until The Next Generation to see women in Starfleet’s senior command.
Oh, and on behalf of NJ, despite Inhofe’s (and Coburn’s and many other Oklahoma reps) being prickly about our governor hugging the black guy president before the election, the state that gives the most in federal revenues and receives the least spending in return is absolutely ready to provide as much aid as possible. Again. For the state that has repeatedly received disaster relief before. Because that’s what fellow citizens do for each other.
– Start with your typical insanely-sexy summer blockbuster.
– Add a small pinch of female characters, making sure not to put in enough that they might be in danger of doing something useful. In fact, two is a good number, plus three or four extras who do nothing and never get more than a half-second of camera time.
– Bring to a slow boil and wait for the basic understanding of science to float to the top. Skim it off and throw it in the garbage, because who needs it? Cold fusion bombs totally freeze supervolcanoes all the time, and nobody’s ever seen a picture of the Earth from the Moon, so let’s just put them about twenty feet apart so they look neat.
– With a soup strainer, pick out the globs of plot consistency and… I don’t know, feed them to your dog? Everyone loves a movie that could have resolved the entire plot twice in the first twenty minutes if anyone had paid attention but then goes on for two more hours anyway.
– Sprinkle with references to the Original Series. And by sprinkle, we mean you should be using a dump truck. However, do NOT mix them in. Leave them sitting on top so they’re really pointed and obvious whenever they show up, because subtlety is for girls, and we don’t have girls in this movie.
– Microwave the entire mixture until it’s got lens flares coming out of places that don’t even normally shine. It’s the future, why WOULDN’T every single light on the bridge be shining like the inside of a nuclear reactor?
Recommended serving: Go see it on cheap night with that gift card you’ve still got hanging around from Christmas.
I guess I will just wait until it comes out on TV or Netflix then. What a bummer.