When [It] Strikes Me

I was a bit busy last week and wasn’t able to do one of the things I really wanted to: write about space and a few extraordinary developments that have been announced or released lately.  Namely, there’s been more fun with exo-planetary systems, Europa and asteroids.

F-Yeah Exo-Planetary Systems

A few months ago I wrote about the discovery of a hot “near-Earth” named GJ 1214b.  The rocky planet measuring about six times the mass of the Earth was discovered at about 40 light years distance using the Radial Velocity method of exo-planetary detection (measuring red-shift of a star to determine slight wobbles caused by a star — in this case, GJ 1214 — orbiting along with exo-planet(s) around their common center of gravity).

Scientists at a conference in France announced this week the discovery of two new exciting sets of exo-planetary systems, each distinguishing in its own way.  The first, which has been observed primarily using Radial Velocity is the discovery of the stellar system with the most known planets outside of our own solar system.  HD 10180, a Sun-like M-Class star sitting about 128 light years away hosts a whopping seven planets.

NASA released the above animation of the planetary system around HD 10180.

Click through for more discussion and discovery. Read more…

I’ve been jamming of late to a new band that a buddy turned me on to. The sound is just epic, with an older, soulful vibe to it. To put it best, it’s the type of tunes that makes you feel happy and somewhat inspired to listen to.

If Calvin and Hobbes is my favorite print cartoon (and it is), then its online counterpart is xkcd.  The brainchild of former NASA robotics engineer Randall Munroe, it is a webcomic that mixes romance, sarcasm, math, and language.  Most of all, it speaks to the sense of humor of the internet and geek culture in general.  Some of it is obscure and flies over my head, but a good number of the comics just hit home and tickle the funny bone.  And, in the case of my favorite all-time comic ever (Spirit, featured in this post), tugs at the heart-strings.

xkcd also features a great online store with some cool posters, pins and apparel.  I rock the “Science: It Works….” t-shirt in my wardrobe (though it admittedly gets less use than it should).  Munroe operates under a solid creative commons license, so I’m hosting several of my favorite comics here, though I encourage everyone to visit xkcd.com and to buy the xkcd: volume 0 book on Amazon.

Click on through to see Part 3. Read more…

In the world of “I Cannot Fracking Wait” debuts, AMC’s The Walking Dead, based on the graphic novel series by Robert Kirkman is pretty much atop my TV list… at least since the premiere of ABC’s V.  Well AMC just debuted a four and a half minute trailer for the series and announced it’s start date: 10 PM on Halloween night, this October.  Can… not… wait….

I think Rubicon might have what it takes to be a real winner and a hit. As such, I’m putting some faith in it and am anointing it with instant recap status.  To read prior Quick Hits for the show, click here on my posts tagged #Rubicon.  Here are my Quick Hits for Episode 1.05, “Connect The Dots.”

At Spangler's wife's charity event, Katherin and Travers finally cross paths.

So in “Connect The Dots” the viewers start to get the first signs of some real payoff for the patience.  Yes, it may not pack the action punch that you’d get in Alias or 24, but we did get some forward momentum and the opening to the path toward some answers.  As I mentioned in my first Quick Hits for Rubicon‘s pilot episode, a show like this can, hopefully, operate like a crossword.  Shooting off clues to be woven into the patchwork thread.

Much as the opening credits paint an image of connecting loosely sprayed dots, the show (I hope) will be something to be collected as a patchwork and layered together in order to simplify the analysis. For the first time, we saw some actual movement to integrate some of the information we’ve learned.  Not the least of which was colliding the worlds of Travers and Katherine Rhumor.

Yes, their first interaction was a bit awkward, complete with a simple flirtation toward each other (even if the widow and widower did so almost reluctantly).  They met at Spangler’s wife’s charitable event (the introduction of which was a bit too compressed in the storyline… in that Travers and the other team leaders were only invited last second), at the bar while ordering vodka tonics.  With it, you had each admitting to somewhat addicted and depressive behavior, with Travers lamenting the moments drinking alone and Katherine referring to her vodka tonics as oxygen.

But it was the second connection that held more weight.  You had Spangler telling Mr. Roy (The Wire‘s Clay Davis) to push off attention from Travers (who was recorded telling Bancroft to stand down) and focusing it on Rhumor (who had rebuffed suggestions from all parties to get rid of MRQ Alternatives, the company her husband had left to her at the last second).  Looking on in the background was Bloom, who apparently was brought into the surveillance by Kale.

This followed Katherine’s continued efforts to look into her husband’s activities.  Although we’re only privy to the conspirators being aware of Katherine refusing to sell off MRQ, she had been slowly digging and learning.  In this episode, she paid a visit to MRQ’s headquarters.  MRQ Alternatives ended up being a clothing company.  But I’m not sure we should have expected much beyond that, as Katherine suspected, it was a drop of sorts.  In her quick examination, she was drawn to and examined a news clipping stating that “CCNY Professor Bradley Ruled Suicide.”  Perhaps the most revealing thing to us was that Katherine continued to be affirmed of her husband’s love for her, using their anniversary as the combination lock entry (despite the fact that Master Lock does not, to my knowledge, allow customization of locks of the variety that Katherine cracked).

In any respect, click on through for my quick hit thoughts on the episode. Read more…

I think Rubicon might have what it takes to be a real winner and a hit. As such, I’m putting some faith in it and am anointing it with instant recap status.  To read prior Quick Hits for the show, click here on my posts tagged #Rubicon.  Here are my Quick Hits for Episode 1.04, “The Outsider.”

The episode provided no new insights into the "clover" conspiracy, but did feature Miranda Richardson (as Katherine Rhumor) to a greater degree.

There are some distinct disconnects with the character of Will Travers, who he wants to be and where he actually is. These were made readily apparent in the most recent episode. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet, as this is a show that is still trying to find its voice and the nature of its characters.  Even the characters themselves are trying to make sense of things, as reflected by the competing, book-ended unrequited smiles from Travers and his across-the-courtyard neighbor-lady.  Both are trying to see who they are, and who the other is.  In doing so, each commits somewhat of a gaffe.

Indeed, there are maddeningly simple screw-ups in Rubicon, so far. These may simply be situations where accuracy in settings don’t matter that much to the producers, but easy errors belie the idea that Rubicon is a show that, like Mad Men, seeks to nail the details. It certainly has the feel of a top notch period piece set in a very pen-and-paper intelligence community. There is also a great focus, at least early on, at paying attention to the details in developing characters.

And yet there are so many careless errors. From a set design perspective, we have three in this very episode that were hard to miss. The first was that Travers and Spangler travel by Acela to Washington DC. Except instead of shooting at Penn Station (where the Acela operates), they shot in Grand Central Station at the Metro-North hub and platforms. Fine, middle America might not notice the difference and might find Grand Central more elegant than the linoleum of Penn Station. That doesn’t mean it isn’t deliberately sloppy.

Click on through to keep reading. Read more…

If Calvin and Hobbes is my favorite print cartoon (and it is), then its online counterpart is xkcd.  The brainchild of former NASA robotics engineer Randall Munroe, it is a webcomic that mixes romance, sarcasm, math, and language.  Most of all, it speaks to the sense of humor of the internet and geek culture in general.  Some of it is obscure and flies over my head, but a good number of the comics just hit home and tickle the funny bone.  And, in the case of my favorite all-time comic ever (Spirit, featured in this post), tugs at the heart-strings.

xkcd also features a great online store with some cool posters, pins and apparel.  I rock the “Science: It Works….” t-shirt in my wardrobe (though it admittedly gets less use than it should).  Munroe operates under a solid creative commons license, so I’m hosting several of my favorite comics here, though I encourage everyone to visit xkcd.com and to buy the xkcd: volume 0 book on Amazon.

Click on through to see Part 2. Read more…

Two quick and interesting lectures on psychology and neuroscience for your Tuesday lunch hour. First up is psychologist Barry Schwartz, talking about freedom of choice and its impact on the human psyche and collective culture. Filmed at TedGlobal 2005 in July 2005.

Watch a lecture about happiness, after the jump. Read more…

Click through to enhance your midichlorians levels with some completely unnecessary, but nonetheless interesting information on Star Wars, courtesy of the folks at Online PhD.

Read more…

This is really less an infographic about information and more a cautionary tale about the possessive and obsessive nature of Wiki-editors. Sure, some of these are downright funny, but some are also reflective of dissociative behavior patterns and, well, political battles.

InformationIsBeautiful.net has taken the data from Wikipedia and created a visualization thereof to show the online encyclopedia’s most heated debates. Some of which are actually about things other than UK English and Americanized English spelling conventions.

The Wikipedia entry for the lamest edit wars is, in and of itself, also a good read.

Click through to see the graphic (for full sized, click the image). Read more…