Misc. items from around the Web

Several things of interest that I don't think I have posted yet:

• Seven robots that would be cool to see fight the Terminator. My bet would be on Deathlok or Death's Head.
• Awful Library Books.
• Toronto Globe and Mail series, The Download Decade. Excerpt: Despite the rapid growth of technology over the past decade, only about one in six human beings on Earth has access to the Internet. When the next billion come online, many of them will not experience the Web through a PC, but rather through smart phones and handheld devices. That new influx of ideas and perspectives is bound to have a profound impact on the next decade of Internet innovation and change how information is disseminated and consumed.
• Alternate covers of Billie Jean:

The Bates - Billy Jean (Michael Jackson Punk Cover) sélectionné dans Musique

Watch more Sessions Under Cover videos on AOL Video

Land of the Lost -- Far Out!

So 30+ years ago, I used to watch Land of the Lost on Saturday mornings. I remember it from then as just a show with kids, dinosaurs, and some other things. On a whim, I got the complete first season on DVD from the library the other day... It is FAR OUT.

Now the acting and effects were silly, but the ideas were really interesting, considering the time and target audience. Some of the same folks who worked on Star Trek (such as David Gerrold, D.C. Fontana, and Walter Koenig) wrote and edited LOTL scripts.

If you need a refresher, a scientist/explorer/archaeologist/whatever (intellectual outdoorsy type) and his teenage son and 10-12-yr-old daughter were on an inflatable raft with minimal supplies when suddenly an earthquake propelled them into an alternate dimension with dinosaurs; at least two semi-intelligent races (one moderately benign, and one that wants to sacrifice them to their deity); mysterious, powerful crystals and Stonehengy pyramids; an ancient abandoned city; and English-language graffiti warning them to "Beware the Sleestaks."

It incorporated elements of Swiss Family Robinson, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Lost World, The Prisoner, and other stuff that I will think of later. Rather than being entirely self-contained, most episodes unfolded and referred back to things learned in previous episodes.

People may not realize that among the Sleestak extras... Future Detroit Piston Bill Laimbeer.

Among the ideas explored:

• If you are somewhere where time is fluid and unstable anyway (i.e., you meet a guy from the Confederate Army who thinks the Civil War is still going on*) and you are a child whose mother died when you were little, and you miss your mother very much, why is it unreasonable to want to have her time travel from when she was healthy to come be with you now?
• If time is fluid and unstable, why wouldn't the adult version of you visit you as a child? Would you-child listen to you-adult?
  
• If you are in a pocket universe and you want to go somewhere else by making a raft and floating down the river, you will eventually come back to where you started. Also, if you stand on a high enough mountain and look off into the distance with binoculars, you will see the back of yourself standing on that same mountain.
• (SPOILER): OK, so try this out (kind of Möbius strippy) -- You learn from an alien ally that in order for the three of you to leave, you must be replaced by three others at exactly the same time, otherwise the imbalance that brought you here in the first place will nver be resolved. So, why not bring in the past versions of the three of you from immediately prior to your falling through the hole in the earth that took you to the waterfall. Therefore, you save your past selves (and thus your current selves) from falling to their deaths, and you get to go back to Earth. However, you sentence your past selves to having to come to the Lost dimension in the first place.

Also -- Sleestak photoshopping.

*Actually, I know some people from the South who think this same thing in 2007 (they also think that Lincoln was a Sleestak) but you know what I mean.

From Around the Web

Items:

• Happy 100th birthday, Robert Heinlein. Excerpt: When one looks to the writings of an SF writer like H.G. Wells to see concepts of what constitutes the best society, one reads polemics against authoritarianism and stories championing the working class. One also reads narratives critical of bourgeois morality and against democracy as we understand it. His non-fiction book, a presentation actually, After Democracy being a prime example of this part of his thought. Wells was a complex thinker, of the Left to be sure, who wrote insightful critiques of the future. When one looks to Heinlein however, it is almost a mirror reflection of Wells. Almost. We still find polemics against authoritarianism, the Bugs in Starship Troopers comes directly to mind, but you also often find examples praising of other authoritative regimes, the Earth of Starship Troopers comes to mind. There are other examples, and to be fair the Earth society in Starship Troopers can be interpreted as a democratic society of a kind, but since Starship Troopers is one of Heinlein's most controversial stories it bears mentioning.
• I totally remember the Ready Ranger pack from when I was in about fourth grade. I never had one, but that's OK, because I think you can do it all on the iPhone now.
• Topics from the Unclutterer. Example: Hate matching up sock pairs while folding laundry? One way to save you time is to have all socks of the exact same color and style. Every six months, throw away all of your white sports socks and replace them with six pair of new, identical white sports socks. Be sure to alternate the style slightly between purges so if an old sock accidentally doesn’t get purged, you can identify it when it tries to sneak back in to your drawer. All of your socks will have the same amount of wear, they all will match, and they will save you time during folding. I'll have to think that one through. I have certain sock-matching procedures I go through that seem to work OK, plus I have my socks with Fred Flinstone on them that I save for special occasions.

Blade Runner Documentary

Long before I wondered if I was actually a Cylon programmed to think I was a human, I wondered if I was a replicant programmed to think I was a human. Here's a real good British documentary on Blade Runner.

Saturday Items

Items:

• Currently watching The Complete History of America, Abridged from the tremendously erudite and clever Reduced Shakespeare Company. We saw them once doing their Great Books show. Recommended!
• Here's a bunch of recordings of Mercury Theater of the Air, best known for the Orson Welles-produced broadcast of The War of the Worlds.
• Here's a cool blog, Fan Cinema Today, all about fan films. I watched a movie the other night called The Sci-Fi Boys about how people like Willis O'Brien, Ray Harryhausen, and Forrest J Ackerman inspired a bunch of kids in the 1950s and 60s to go into the movie business. It included clips from these awesome homemade Super-8 monster movies they (the special-effects-pros-to-be) made when they were teenagers.
• Article on crowdsourcing research on image tagging via video games. For instance, The ESP Game.

Modern Inventions Predicted in Classic Science Fiction

Here's a very well-indexed site about technological achievements from old science fiction that have become actualized in one way or another. For instance, H.G. Wells's prediction of the VCR/DVD player. (Hope it wasn't a Trutech!) Excerpt: He puzzled over this peculiar cylinder for some time and replaced it. Then he turned to the square apparatus and examined that. He opened a sort of lid and found one of the double cylinders within, and on the upper edge a little stud like the stud of an electric bell. He pressed this and a rapid clicking began and ceased. He became aware of voices and music, and noticed a play of colour on the smooth front face. He suddenly realised what this might be, and stepped back to regard it. On the flat surface was now a little picture, very vividly coloured, and in this picture were figures that moved. Not only did they move, but they were conversing in clear small voices. It was exactly like reality viewed through an inverted opera glass and heard through a long tube. His interest was seized at once by the situation, which presented a man pacing up and down and vociferating angry things to a pretty but petulant woman. Both were in the picturesque costume that seemed so strange to Graham.

Not bad for 1899!