Science fiction/fantasy
oracknows | October 13, 2007
Will Smith is the last man on earth. The movie is directed by Ridley Scott. The last take on this story (Richard Matheson's post-apocalyptic I Am Legend), The Omega Man, is one of my all time favorite science fiction movies. (Yes, I know it didn't follow the story that closely, but it stood on its own.)
'Nuff said.
oracknows | October 12, 2007
Regular readers of this blog are probably aware of my general opinion about Reiki and other "energy healing" modalities. In short, they're woo, pure and simple. Consequently, one might reasonably ask why I've never featured the woo that is Reiki in Your Friday Dose of Woo. There's a simple reason for that.
Basic Reiki is boring.
Really, I mean it. In and of itself, it just doesn't reach the level of sheer ecstatic nuttiness that I like to feature every week. Oh, sure, there's lots of handwaving about "channeling the universal energy" through the healer to augment the life force of the…
oracknows | September 15, 2007Now here's a church service that I could get into, the Church of the Time Lord. As an article in Metro.co.uk says:
A congregation are to be invited to compare a Time Lord with the Lord of Time at a special Dr Who-themed church service, it was disclosed today.
Teenagers and young people in their early 20s are being targeted for the "cafe-style" Communion service, with music and video clips from the hit series, at St Paul's Church in Grangetown, Cardiff.
The Anglican church was used as a location two years ago for an episode of the series starring Christopher Eccleston as the ninth Doctor.
Fr…
oracknows | September 8, 2007More random weekend chatter...
If a big time Doctor Who fan visits London, what is it that he brings back as souvenirs? Well, I had wanted to bring back a large radio-controlled Dalek to harass my wife with, but I just couldn't figure out how we would get it back on the plane, and I didn't want to spend big bucks to ship it home across the Atlantic Ocean. So, I had to be more modest.
For example, there's this to start out with:
Naturally, when you use it to open a bottle, it cries out "EXTERMINATE!" (That'll discourage you from opening that extra bottle of beer, won't it?)
Then, what die-…
oracknows | August 31, 2007Sadly, I won't be in London for 10 more days. Consequently, I'll be missing something really cool that'll be happening a mere couple of blocks down the street where I'm staying now:
I did, however, purchase a nice cast metal replica of the TARDIS at this shop, the Stamp Centre, which seems to carry a lot of science fiction stuff (particularly Doctor Who paraphernalia) as well as stamps. It's a bit of an odd combination, but it works. In any case, the TARDIS will grace either my desk or my bookshelf.
For those of you who live in London or who will be in London on September 10, though, you…
oracknows | August 15, 2007I'm guessing there will be a lot of--shall we say?--disagreement with this one.
I'm always appropriately skeptical of IQ studies, including this one. However, if you actually believe this survey (and what physician wouldn't want to believe it?), apparently as a profession physicians have the highest IQ.
Heh. I wonder where M.D./Ph.D.'s like yours truly would rank on the scale.
I'm sure that there will be a horde of people telling me what's wrong with the survey and why its results are not valid, but please let me enjoy my little fantasy of intellectual superiority for at least a few minutes…
oracknows | August 13, 2007Since I'm still immersed in grant writing, to start the afternoon off, here's one that I saw a week ago but never got around to answering. It's a question from this week's host of the Skeptics' Circle, Bronze Dog, over at (appropriately enough) The Bronze Blog, who asks:
You've been captured by Daleks. You're their legendary foe who always comes up with some clever way of thwarting their plans for universal domination. They're equipped with a death ray, nigh-impenetrable armor, and a plunger that somehow works as a multitool.
Why don't they just shoot you?
I can answer that one! Although many…
oracknows | August 12, 2007While trying to avoid working on my grant yesterday, I was idly flipping channels. I had planned on killing a few minutes while psyching myself up to go back into the Bat Cave that is my office, ignoring a gloriously perfect sunny day with temperatures in the low 80s, to do battle with the grant application again, when I came across it: The greatest movie ever made!
The movie is called Fiend Without a Face, a low budget science fiction/horror movie from the 1950s.
It's awesome, and I'll tell you why. The monsters are disembodied brains. Yes, this is (mostly) a medical blog, and talking about…
oracknows | July 15, 2007I'm disappointed to find out that Chewbacca is a bad, bad Wookiee:
(CBS) HOLLYWOOD, Calif. A Chewbacca impersonator is accused of sexually assaulting a Marilyn Monroe impersonator in front of the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood in June. The wookie then reportedly evaded arrest, police said.
According to an officer with the LAPD, Chewbacca allegedly took the platinum-coiffed actress's hand and placed it on his private parts as the characters performed for tips from tourists.
Chewie, how could you?
oracknows | July 12, 2007Here's the reason why:
Actor and voice artiste Peter Tuddenham has died at the age of 88 after a short illness.
His vocal talents were used in Doctor Who for The Ark in Space, The Masque of Mandragora and Time and the Rani, but he will also be well-known to cult TV fans for providing the voices of Zen, Orac and Slave in Blake's 7, which was created by Terry Nation.
In addition, Tuddenham was in the Kaldor City audio spin-offs Occam's Razor and Death's Head, which were Doctor Who/Blake's 7 crossovers produced by Magic Bullet.
Tuddenham's voice of Orac was perfect for the character. Combining…
oracknows | June 24, 2007From The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, specifically the chapter The Shadow of the Past, in which Gandalf responds to Frodo's statement that Gollum is an enemy who deserves death:
Deserves it? I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the wise cannot see all ends. I have not much hope that Gollum can be cured before he dies, but there is a chance of it.
I sometimes wonder if reading that quote as a youth was a seed that ultimately lead to my changing my mind…
oracknows | June 16, 2007I must confess that I never really grokked the whole "LOL Cat" thing. I must admit to being a bit puzzled by the phenomenon when it metastasized to ScienceBlogs and some of my fellow SBers applied it to creationists, spurred on by Mark H at denialism.com (althogh I must admit that I nonetheless found the first entry in this post to be particularly amusing).
I should have known that it wouldn't be long before the phenomenon attacked one of my favorite SF/fantasy shows of all time, Doctor Who. So, here they are, LOL Doctor Who Cat Macros. A few that I found amusing are below the fold…
oracknows | May 26, 2007I think I've finally found the religion for me...
(Click the picture to read about the religion! Hat tip to Robster, FCD.)
Moreover, in a direct comparison between Christianity and this new religion, Christianity doesn't come off so good. (The sad thing is, I get each and every reference in this comic.)
Indeed, in the U.K., the sacrament of this new faith is occurring as we speak. We poor U.S. faithful have to wait a few hours to worship, though, at least long enough for the object of our devotion to show up as a Torrent file. (Worse, those who don't know how to use BitTorrent or don't…
oracknows | May 20, 2007It would appear that I must respectfully disagree (or be Respectfully Insolent, if you will) with fellow comic fan Scott over at Polite Dissent.
Two of my all-time favorite comics are Fantastic Four and (believe it or not, given my present day disdain for woo) Doctor Strange. Doctor Stephen Strange, for those of you not familiar with him, started out as an incredibly arrogant and greedy neurosurgeon who was involved in an auto accident in which he suffered nerve damage to his hands that impaired the fine motor control to the point where, while he could function normally in every day life, he…
oracknows | May 13, 2007From a variety of sources, I've learned that the fourth season of Battlestar Galactica is probably going to be the last and that the beleaguered humans will find Earth. Here it is, right from Admiral Adama himself:
iF MAGAZINE: What's coming up for season four?
EDWARD JAMES OLMOS: It's fantastic. I think they're going to discover some very important issues about what the fan base really, really wants to see and what's to understand about this show. We're heading into the final season. This is the final season as we speak. All of us are very saddened by that, but we always knew there was going…
oracknows | March 31, 2007I have to wonder what we Anglophiles did before the invention of BitTorrent. I guess we probably waited months or years for the best British TV to make its way across the pond, usually to be shown on PBS, if at all. Now, I can look forward to the return of one of my favorite shows, Doctor Who, whose modern reincarnation with David Tennant is starting its third series tonight at 7 PM (London time, of course). I like the show so much that, even after BitTorrent-ing the episodes, I still ended up buying the DVDs when they made their way to the U.S., as a means of showing my support for the show…
oracknows | March 11, 2007This one's right up my alley, and PZ, John, Joseph, and Bora have already weighed in. I've been a big SF fan since my very earliest days. (Indeed, one of my earliest memories of SF is reading A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle back in maybe third grade or so. So, when I learned of a list of the Most Significant SF & Fantasy Books of the Last 50 Years, I just had to do like my fellow SB'ers and look at which ones I've actually read. For some of them, I'll also add a brief comment (for example, at least a couple of these books I consider to be highly overrated).
So, here we go. Bold…
oracknows | February 17, 2007As a diehard Lord of the Rings fan since around age 13, I have only one thing to say about this:
They're taking the hobbits to Isengard!
I bet you can't get this out of your head now, can you?
This guy couldn't:
oracknows | February 17, 2007Last week, in the commentary after taking yet another silly Internet test, one that happened to reveal that the supervillain that I'm best suited to be is Doctor Doom, there were others who also tested as Doctor Doom. In order to separate the real Doom from the Doombots, I asked a few simple questions to which Doom would know the answer:
1. Can any of these Doom impostors, without reference to the Internet or other references, tell us the name of Victor von Doom's father and what it was he did for a living?
2. Who was von Doom's faithful retainer back in the early days?
3. What is the vow…