Yearly Archives: 2005

Scientist Fiction

Oddly Enough

Here is the link: The Pentagon’s New Goal: Putting Science into Scripts

Here is Kerrigan’s rant as I could not have said it better myself:

ummmmm…..so rather than fund education, let’s just make movies and have the kids learn from them instead! because we all know how much accurate science there is in movies – hell, I watched enough ER to get my degree in medical science!

Anyway, that’s not quite the point of the article, ’cause the Pentagon wants the movies to inspire kids to study science and stop the brain drain, but if you inspire them and then refuse to educate them, you haven’t done a whole lot.

the return of penguin lust

Film

Patrick pointed out a New York Times article on “conservatives flocking to March of the Penguins”:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/13/science/13peng.html because it “affirms traditional norms like monogamy, sacrifice and child rearing”, not to mention (ugh) intelligent design. “Hooey” is the word that comes to mind, mostly because I saw the same film and didn’t feel even a twinge of neocon longing.

Don’t let a few kooky fans get in the way of seeing the film, though. It’s an extraordinary documentary on a fascinating subject, and well worth the price of admission.

more power! [cackle]

Space

SpaceX, one of the new private space race competitors, has announced the “Falcon 9″:http://www.space.com/news/050908_spacex_falcon.html project, a launch vehicle with enough oomph to send big satellites into orbit or supplies up to ISS. Better yet, launches could be as cheap as $20 million each, which puts it smack in the middle of “Space Prize”:/mt/archives/000412.html territory. Go SpaceX!