According to the official Doctor Who Experience web site, Matt Smith proposed to his girlfriend in front of the Tardis, and she accepted. Of course, it was a totally different Matt Smith, not the actor playing the Doctor at all. But how many folks would have read the whole article if I said that bit in the headline? *grinz*
The Space Shuttle Discovery made a flight around town the other day before landing at Dulles Airport on its way to its new home at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. A friend of mine grabbed this picture as it circled the airport for the second time.
Starting today and running until October 2nd, the Science Museum in London is running the Player Live Gaming Festival. This event is broken into a couple of pieces, with the first part on September 28th being an adults-only presentation. It includes a smartphone driven scavenger hunt, a “silent disco” in the computing and math area and a round of speed dating in the temporary exhibit section. The Punk Science and Pub Quiz events also look pretty entertaining. The second round, on October 1st and 2nd, will effectively turn the museum (or at least the shipping gallery) into a life size game of Battleship. If more museums did this kind of thing we might find more people interested in learning. The museum is located on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, London.
Today, September 25th, is Museum Day; the museums you can find from that Smithsonian locator link are all free to the public today. All you have to do is download a ticket, print it out, and take it with you to get free access for two adults to any one of hundreds of museums coast to coast. Which should be a good warm up for next month’s event…
This one looks very interesting; from October 10th to the 24th this year the USA Science & Engineering Festival will take place in the Washington, D.C. area. Billing itself as the the country’s first national science festival, it already has over 500 organizations signed up to participate, and will end with a two day Expo in the nation’s capital. This event will give science & engineering groups the opportunity to present themselves to the public with hands-on science activities to inspire the next generation of researchers and developers. The teams involved are wide ranging, and include such diverse outfits and events as the 4H National Youth Science Day, the You Can Do The Cube competition, a presentation from Hollywood Movie Physics, and the Versatile Mr. Freeze from FermiLabs, to name but a few. And yes, you can follow them on a boatload of social media tools, including Twitter.
This time around I would like to invite anyone who can get there to visit the new exhibit at the San Diego Air & Space Museum. Actually, this museum has a lot of great exhibits and is really worth some time, but I am thinking specifically of the Science of Aliens presentation. Strangely enough, I could not find the actual exhibit dates (start and finish) on their web site; hopefully they will correct that soon. Also, this museum is part of the Smithsonian Institution Affiliations Program, so be sure to bring your membership card for the usual discounts and improved access.
Did you know Leonard Nimoy got his start in science fiction as the third zombie in Zombies of the Stratosphere? You can learn about that, his new roll in Fringe, tidbits about Trek XI and XII, and more at his interview on Subspace Communique. If you want a bit more, try the LA Times: Nimoy on William Bell article. The word from EW’s Michael Ausiello is that NBC may have decided to move up its scheduled launch of Chuck from March to possibly as early as the end of this month. If they do that, it increases the odds of their buying more than the 13 episodes they originally signed up for. Good news indeed! In Dublin, Ireland is a place that seems to be a science museum crossed with an art gallery. Called the Science Gallery, they just opened up a new exhibit entitled What If…?. In this exhibit they explore possible developments in technology, and each entry has its own Twitter hashtag they ask you use when leaving comments. Here are highlights from their Science Gallery Youtube Channel of their last exhibit, Bubbles: Don’t Burst Them.