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New Who, More Science

New Doctor Who is on the way, beginning on April 17th per Airlock Alpha… and yes, according to a lot of other sites as well, including BBCAmerica itself. But Airlock Alpha is a great old site (was Syfy since the ’90s until they sold the name to a well-known cable channel) that deserves all the mentions it can get.

Meanwhile, the Science and Entertainment Exchange has a member who has been making the news for proposing Realism in Sci-Fi may be a good thing. As an example, a movie should only be able to break one law of physics, such as traveling faster than light or backwards in time (even though both of them are allowed for in Quantum Mechanics, String Theory and Brane Theory, we don’t have a workable engineering solution for them yet). This is the intellectual inverse of my current favorite science TV show, called Sci-Fi Science. Each week, they tackle one science fiction concept and look at the engineering it would take to make them happen, based on our current level of technology. I find it interesting to see just how close we come on some of them, like the super-hero suit or building a light sabre.

Fun Videos from new directions

Just a few fun videos, based on modifying observable reality in non-standard ways. The key for both of these is only partly to use the latest evolution in communications and data processing to achieve the desired result. Having the latest tech is good, but what is critical is using that tech in ways never before tried to go for desired results nobody else thought of before. The embarrassing part is how obvious it all looks once you finally see it in action; why didn’t any of us think of that before?

The first is the MIT FlyFire Project, which lives at the Senseable City Lab site. Now that sensors of all types, from static units like traffic cams and mobile units like cell phones are ubiquitous, privacy is right out the window; but new ways of gathering, displaying, and using data are in our hands. The helicopter-optics project itself combines the emergent behavior of the swarm of drones interacting with the environment with the top-down control imposed by the computer orchestrating the display patterns. Learning to program this combination will be challenging but most worthwhile.

The second video is a glimpse at how David Byrne approaches ways to share an appreciation of music. In this instance, by converting an entire building into a musical instrument, and allowing interested parties to sit at the keyboard and play the building. The subtle layer below that one is the fact that every child or adult who sits at a control panel and wrings music (no mater how pitiful) out of a multi-story structure will never again think of it as a box they might be inside of, or as part of the background. From then on, every building they see will become an instrument they might play, which means an interconnected whole that can be manipulated to achieve a desired result. The more people that have that epiphany, the more minds there are working to build our future; and that is a GOOD thing, trust me on this.

Something to Do: Museums

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.

Things to Do: Museums

This week, I thought I would mention a few Science Fiction Museum Exhibits that look like fun. Like Festivals, Museum Exhibits have a limited life span (usually 3 to 9 months) before they are off to another location. Another similarity is the difficulty of finding the things on display (be they films or objects) outside of those venues, at least for a time. Should I call it Rare Ephemeral Things To Do… nope, too cumbersome, and only true sometimes, I am sure.

There are a ton of things I could point to about the various Air and Space Museum locations, like the POP Observatory or the fact that you can still see the IMAX versions of Star Trek 11 or A Night At The Museum in the theaters on the Mall and at Dulles. But what I would like to mention is the ray gun exhibit out by the airport; it is amazing. It is in the room just behind the hall where the original space suit developed by balloonist Jean Piccard (name stolen for the TNG captain) is on display.

If you are in D.C. for that, you will also want to stop by the National Geographic Terracotta Warriors exhibit, where you can meet up close and personal some of the 2,000 year old statues that have guarded the Emperor (and were more recently seen in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.

Another Museum Exhibit to be aware of is the Maidens and Monsters presentation, running now through April 18th, 2010, at the Albin Polasek Museum & Sculpture Gardens in Winter Park, Florida. While the Polasec Museum has a lot going on, this display is something special, with original artwork by N.C. Wyeth, J. Allen St. John, Frank Frazetta, Virgil Finley, Hannes Bok, and many others. These paintings, posters, pastels, and other formats became some of the best known covers of Sci-Fi pulp magazines from the 20s to the 90s; get a glimps here of the wonders in this exhibit. Oh, and did I mention that while you are there you can also play a Theremin?

Touring for a few years now, Out of this World: Extraordinary Costumes from Film and Television, organized by the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, runs from the 6th of February until the 16th of May, 2010, at the Orange County History Center in California. With outfits from the Wizard of Oz, Indiana Jones, Star Trek, and Star Wars, this is a display no Cosplayer can afford to miss!

Things to Watch: DVDs and TV

Best choice for DVD’s this week has to be Duncan Jones’s Moon, filmed on a tiny budget but delivering a huge and powerful story. The creative use of miniatures at a time when everyone is making CGI effects is an entire tale unto itself.

A project that did focus on CGI and Animation to get its results was The Celestial Railroad. The classic Japanese story of riding a train through the Milky Way was used as a good jumping off point for creating a program to project onto a planetarium dome at IMAX resolution, and it is now available in Blue Ray.

For TV, tonight’s season 3 premier of Chuck kicked the series off in the right direction, even if a few details (like the whole Prague decision sequence) were beat on harder than they needed to be. And yes, if you missed it you can watch it online at that link. Later this week, the Discovery Channel Sci-Fi Science series gives you the info you need to build your own working light saber. If you haven’t already been following the series, then last week you missed how to build a Starship. Some of the top physicists in the world are involved with this one, so it is not just fictional speculation, but the real deal.

Alice, Kirkbot

The Syfy Channel ran Alice last month, which won’t actually be available on DVD until March, but was a wonderful interpretation of the book from the same folks who did Tin Man last year. But there is a computer variation of the namesake I wanted to mention here. It comes in the form of the A. L. I. C. E. Artificial Intelligence Foundation which uses an artificial James T. Kirk to drive its point home, as well as the Alice Programming Initiative which allows students to learn basic 3D graphics object-oriented programming while creating their own home-made videos.