matt.alvarado

An article on if.com.au broke the Meh, no big news that Farscape writer/co-executive producer Justin Monjo is writing a movie spin-off of his cult classic sci-fi show. Oh, and he’s also working on a sci-fi pilot called The Beasts of Valhalla for HBO, and Peter Dinklage is in talks to star.

You know. Boring stuff like that. Who cares about a Farscape sequel? I’m kidding, please don’t kill me.

First, to Farscape. Via if:

In the finale, the protagonists, American astronaut John Crichton (Ben Browder) and peacekeeper Aeryn Sun (Claudia Black) got married and had a baby. In the movie, it’s revealed the boy had special powers which made him the target of the villainous aliens so his parents hide him on Earth.

The plot follows the kid at the age of 19 when his whereabouts have been discovered and he rejoins his parents on their spaceship.

If that happens we’re looking at the return of Crichton and Sun, which should get Farscape fans nice ‘n’ happy. Note that I said “if”: Monjo writing the movie (likely to be a TV movie, I’d wager) is a far different thing than said movie getting a green light and being produced. We haven’t approached Serenity territory quite yet.

And, I’m sorry to be a downer, but we need to keep a similar level of skepticism for The Beasts Of Valhalla, the HBO show Monjo is developing. It’s based on a series of novels by George C. Chesbro and is what Monjo describes as “grounded sci-fi.” Dinklage would play a dwarf detective/NYU criminology professor called Mongo the Magnificent, real name Dr. Robert Frederickson. The Mongo Series, of which The Beasts of Valhalla is the fourth book, takes place in something like the real world, but with genre elements like warlocks and genetically-mutated monsters.

“HBO and Red Hour [Films, which is producing] think he’s the perfect guy for the part and are very excited about the project” says Monjo, who according to the is article is flying to New York next month to meet with Dinklage and beg him to take the role talk to him about the project. Since Tyrion Lannister comes first, the idea is that The Beasts Of Valhalla would be shot as a “post-Game Of Thrones gig for Dinklage after 2016.”

If this ends up happening, Dinklage would go right from filming the final season of Game of Thrones—number seven, according to producer Frank Doelger—to doing this new show. We’d be looking at a gap of approximately zero of Dinklage on our TV/computer screens. Again, this project could linger in development hell and die a quiet death. Or maybe Dinklage won’t even want to do it. Guy will deserve a break post-Game of Thrones, after all.

So both of these could happen, or neither. Or just one. If you had superpowers and could guarantee that one of these projects, but only one, would happen (The Beasts of Valhalla with Dinklage), what would be your call?

(via: io9, Empire)

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Watch out, world. Danielle Lei, future CEO, coming through. The only bad part about this story is that she’s 13 years old, which, if Wikipedia serves me right, would make her a Cadette. The universe doesn’t want me to be able to use a “pot Brownie” headline for this post.

Lei, with her mother Carol’s help, set up shop on Monday outside The Green Cross medical marijuana dispensary in San Francisco. She proceeded to sell 117 boxes in two hours, 37 less than she sold the following day when she unfolded her trestle table at a normal, non-pot-selling Safeway.

Taking advantage of marijuana users’ inherent fondness for munchables isn’t considered kosher by whatever severely unchill Girl Scout exec Tweeted this in response to a (Photoshopped) pic of a similar situation that made the rounds a few weeks back:

If you are wondering, we don’t allow our Girl Scouts to sell cookies in front of marijuana shops or liquor stores/bars.

— Girl Scouts of Colo. (@GSColo) February 12, 2014

And another Tweet, in response to being asked “Why the negativity, man?”

@ManOfEast It is not something we advocate for our youth to be involved in. — Girl Scouts of Colo. (@GSColo) February 20, 2014

Chill out, brah. Have a Tagalong. Enjoy life.

According to Carol, their choice of venue wasn’t just about raking in the most dough. Via Mashable, she

figured this might be a good way to start a conversation about drugs and how some use marijuana as medicine while others just get high.

“You put it in terms that they may understand,” Carol said. “I’m not condoning it, I’m not saying go out in the streets and take marijuana [...] It also adds a little bit of cool factor. I can be a cool parent for a little bit.”

Dana Allen, director of marketing and communications for Girl Scouts of Northern California, is similarly unwilling to harsh Lei’s buzz, telling Mashable:

“Girls are selling cookies, and they and their parents pick out places where they can make good sales. The mom decided this was a place she was comfortable with her daughter being at… We’re not telling people where they can and can’t go if it’s a legitimate business.”

The Green Cross isn’t quite ready to let go; they write on their Facebook page that the cookies will be on sale again tomorrow, February 22nd, from 4-6 pm, with half the proceeds going toward “Alzheimer’s related charitable causes. Cookies, cannabis, and charities, what more can you ask for!?”

(via Neatorama, BuzzFeed, picture via The Green Cross)

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New Comic: Kwisatz Haderach

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I related to these graphic design posters a great deal. Except replace “kids” with “cats.” Art Nathan Ripperger is the father of four boys and finds some peculiar phrases coming out of his mouth around them. He writes:

These posters entitled “Things I’ve Said to My Children” feature a phrase that I believe the only reason they left my mouth was due to my children. After hearing the demand of so many that I need to make them available for purchase, I opened shop. Since then it’s been a great creative outlet and lets me share the joy of parenting with like minded people from all of the world.

If you’re interested, he’s selling prints on Etsy.

(via The High Definite)

Previously in Graphic Design

• Graphic Designers Get Snarky Revenge By Illustrating Client Feedback
• Graphic Posters For Your Library Word Nerds
• Geeky Holiday Cards From 801Red

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This is very European:

No Swiss fighter jets were scrambled Monday when an Ethiopian Airlines co-pilot hijacked his own plane and forced it to land in Geneva, because it happened outside business hours, the Swiss airforce said… But although the co-pilot-turned-hijacker quickly announced he wanted to land the plane in Switzerland, where he later said he aimed to seek asylum, Switzerland’s fleet of F-18s and F-5 Tigers remained on the ground, Swiss airforce spokesman Laurent Savary told AFP.

This, he explained, was because the Swiss airforce is only available during office hours. These are reported to be from 8am until noon, then 1:30 to 5pm.

As you may recall, later this year Switzerland will hold a referendum on whether to purchase 18 Saab Gripen fighters to defend Swiss airspace from 8am until noon, then 1:30 to 5pm.

Entertainment Weekly has debuted the first image from Fox’s US remake of the tremendous UK series Broadchurch. The show, dubbed Gracepoint this time around, is being referred to as a “10-episode U.S. event series.” Interesting to see Fox going for a more British-type run. Hopefully that will work in its favor. Breaking Bad’s Anna Gunn had been previously announced to star alongside David Tennant who’s reprising his character from the original series.

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I was going to make a dig at HISHE for tackling a fifteen year old movie, but then I realized that that means there are high school students who were not alive when Episode I came out and now I just want to finish this post and, I dunno, collect a pension check while complaining about how easy young people have it these days.

Previously in How It Should Have Ended

• Thor: The Dark World
• Pacific Rim
• Man of Steel

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To be fair, China’s Yutu rover, or Jade Rabbit, isn’t dead yet. It’s just unlikely to survive the lunar night due to a malfunction. Since discovering the problem last week, Chinese scientists have remained bleak about the rover’s chances. An update on Thursday reaffirmed that we won’t know for sure whether the little (okay maybe not that little) robot will make it for a few weeks.

As reported by our sister site Geekosystem, Jade Rabbit is built to hibernate during the two week lunar night, a period in which sunlight will not directly fall on it. The temperature in its area of the Moon drops precipitously and there’s nothing for its solar panels to pick up. Unfortunately, due to a mechanical problem, the rover was unable to close its solar panels during this most recent shut down, and that leaves it vulnerable. Geekosystem thoughtfully reminds us that there’s no use nyeah nyeahing when adorably named space robots are on the line:

This is the first time a country other than the U.S. or the Soviet Union has attempted to land on the Moon, as well as the first “soft” Moon landing since 1976. It would be very easy to make some awful jokes about how this represents quality of China’s space program, but we’re not going to do that — mostly those kinds of jokes are usually just a liiiittle bit racist, but also because it’s very hard to put things up in space successfully regardless of how technologically advanced you might consider yourselves. I mean, hey, remember about twenty years ago when we programmed a rover with both metric and imperial measurements and it got so confused that it launched itself into the sun? Our track record as a space-navigating nation is not so great, either.

Jade Rabbit and our most recent space obsession the Curiosity Rover share another thing in common: they’ve both been personified by their own social media accounts. In fact, Jade Rabbit essentially gave a farewell address:

Although I should’ve gone to bed this morning, my masters discovered something abnormal with my mechanical control system. My masters are staying up all night working for a solution. I heard their eyes are looking more like my red rabbit eyes. Nevertheless, I’m aware that I might not survive this lunar night.

If this journey must come to an early end, I am not afraid. Whether or not the repairs are successful, I believe even my malfunctions will provide my masters with valuable information and experience.

The sun has already set here and the temperature is falling very quickly. I’ve said a lot today, yet still feel like it’s not enough. I’ll tell everyone a secret. Actually, I’m not feeling especially sad. Just like any other hero, I’ve only encountered a little problem while on my own adventure.

Good night, planet Earth. Good night, humanity.

Okay, Susana, hold it together.

If I really cannot be fixed, when the time comes, I hope everyone will remember to help me comfort [Chang'e, the spacecraft that deposited Jade Rabbit on the Moon's surface].

Shut up, I’m not crying YOU’RE CRYING.

(via Geekosystem, Japan Times, The Independent.)

Tuesday January 28, 2014

Monday January 27, 2014

Meet Clark, the Chicago Cubs first official mascot. He looks like a first year graduate student who’s pretty damn sure that he’s in way, way over his head. This is altogether appropriate.

New Comic: Chasing That Hired

There are a lot of them. Hopefully someone will go through and identify all the fiddly ones like MoviePilot did with the Guillermo del Toro intro (link autoplays).

(via: Bleeding Cool)

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Join Keef's Weekly Round Table for a year and get the 2014 Little Vics/Mega-Mix Calendar absolutely FREE!!

By Christina H  Published: December 10th, 2013  Getty Images So I've been taking some time off from writing columns because I've been busy having a baby. While everyone knows that taking care of babies is a light task no more difficult than a simple newspaper route, I guess it must have been the s

New Comic: Relative Wisdom

In its monthly job report released Friday morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the private-sector added 196,000 jobs in November, seasonally adjusted, and government added 7,000 jobs for a total of 203,000. The official unemployment rate—which BLS calls U3 and calculates in a separate survey—fell to 7.0 percent, a five-year low.

The seasonally adjusted 204,000 job gain the BLS reported for October was revised to 200,000. The September figures were revised from 163,000 to 175,000.

The BLS uses an alternative calculation—U6—to determine the number of workers who have given up looking for a job but still want one as well as those Americans working part-time even though they want full-time jobs, the underemployed. U6 fell from 13.8  to 13.2 percent in November.

The civilian labor force rose by 455,000 after having fallen 720,000 in October. The employment-population ratio rose to 58.6 percent in November. The labor force participation rate rose to 63 percent.

The BLS reported that the number of officially unemployed Americans is now 10.9 million. That tally leaves out millions of discouraged workers who have given up looking for employment and others who want full-time jobs but can only find part-time work.

The number of long-term unemployed, those out of work for 27 weeks or more, remained unchanged at 4.1 million, accounting for 37.3 percent of the total unemployed.

While the situation has improved significantly in the past five years in overall jobs, the quality of many of those jobs leaves a good deal to be desired. Measured in "real" dollars, that is, inflation-adjusted dollars, the median wage of $27,519 in 2012 was $980 less than in 2007 when the Great Recession began. In fact, the median fell by $4 between 2011 and 2012. In fact, the median wage as measured by the Social Security Administration is at the 1998 level.

The reported gain may spur the Federal Reserve Board to begin tapering off its quantitative easing, its purchase of $85 billion in bonds each month.

For more details about today's jobs report, please continue reading below the fold.

Christine Fox, mathematician, weapons specialist, and analyst, was just appointed acting Deputy Secretary of Defense, and while she’s only set to fill the post until a permanent successor is named, it still makes her the highest ranking female Department of Defense employee in history.

With a masters in applied mathematics and experience in both overseeing and evaluating the work of operatives in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is glad to have her:

She helped identify the challenges, choices, and opportunities for reform facing the department during this period of unprecedented budget uncertainty. She will be able to help me shape our priorities from Day One because she knows the intricacies of the department’s budget, programs and global operations better than anyone.

“Period of unprecedented budget uncertainty” is not so uncertainly code for this year’s sequester, but eclipsing budgetary worries is Fox’s bigger claim to fame. Blockbuster movies are, of course, a lot more entertaining and fun than trying to make sense of the sequester.

Back in the 80s, when women in the DoD were still so scarce that hearing heels walking down the hall meant you probably already knew who it was, Fox was introduced to Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, who were then in the process of figuring out what kind of character to use as a love interest in their upcoming project Top Gun. As CNN tells it, Charlie (played by Kelly McGillis in the film) is not exactly a biographical character. But it’s clear that Simpson and Buckheimer were inspired by a very intelligent woman able to command respect in a predominantly male, macho work force.

(via CNN.)

New comic!
Today's News:

Dumbing of Age Book 2 is now available on Comixology!  So now you can read it on that rectangle thing you carry around everywhere.

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Nerd-related “texts from last night” tumblrs might be my favorite thing ever. The newest addition to my tumblr dash? Texts from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Enjoy a sampling…

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This post comes with an even stronger warning than usual that a single study is just a single study; correlation is not causation; and even well-done studies can't account for every possible confounding factor. In other words, You Have Been Warned.

And yet, this study is pretty interesting!

Typical daily hours viewing television and playing electronic games at age 5 years were reported by mothers of 11,014 children from the UK Millennium Cohort Study....Change in adjustment from age 5 years to 7 years was regressed on screen exposures; adjusting for family characteristics and functioning, and child characteristics.

RESULTS: Watching TV for 3 hours or more at 5 years predicted a 0.13 point increase [] in conduct problems by 7 years, compared with watching for under an hour, but playing electronic games was not associated with conduct problems. No associations were found between either type of screen time and emotional symptoms, hyperactivity/inattention, peer relationship problems or prosocial behaviour. There was no evidence of gender differences in the effect of screen time.

This comes via Aaron Carroll, who adds this comment: "Yes, these are young kids, and it’s unlikely that they have been playing much GTA 5 or Battlefield 4. So I’ll look forward to more data. But that this point, it’s hard to point to a large study like this and find a smoking gun. Figuratively or literally."

In other words, if it's a choice between letting your young kids watch more TV or play more video games, go with the video games. Until some other study comes out, anyway.

Piled Higher & Deeper by Jorge Cham		www.phdcomics.com
title: "Spousal Ignorance" - originally published 11/8/2013 Get the new Thesis Fuel Mug, only at the PHD Store

Thanks to everyone who has picked up a copy of he fourth Basic Instructions book, Dignified Hedonism (available in digital and on paper.) I have ordered a supply of books to sign and ship out. As soon as they are available I will let you know. They'll be sold on my store page. The book will cost $15, plus shipping.

I've been contacted by a gentleman from France who's involved in a pretty interesting piece of music software. Watching his demo video, I get the impression he might be a fan of my comic.

As promised, the BBC has released an official statement on those long-lost episodes of Doctor Who recently uncovered. Read on to find out how many, which Doctor(s) they feature, and how you’ll be able to watch them! 

Nigeria, Africa yielded 11 master tapes of Doctor Who episodes from the 1960s (nine of which have not been seen for 46 years), according to BBC Worldwide North America. This may be the most exciting geeky discovery ever.

If you’re unfamiliar, the BBC Archive would record over tapes, which is why many thought these episodes were lost forever. According to their press release:

Eleven Doctor Who episodes were discovered (nine of which have not been seen for 46 years) by Philip Morris, director of Television International Enterprises Archive, by tracking records of tape shipments made by the BBC to Africa for transmission. Morris says, “The tapes had been left gathering dust in a store room at a television relay station in Nigeria. I remember wiping the dust off the masking tape on the canisters and my heart missed a beat as I saw the words ‘Doctor Who’. When I read the story code I realized I’d found something pretty special.”

Ok, ok. Enough with HOW they were found. I want to know WHAT was found.

The first recovered story, The Enemy of the World, is a six-episode tale which first aired on the BBC in December 1967. The story features Patrick Troughton as both the Second Doctor and his antagonist (Ramon Salamander), alongside companions Jamie (Frazer Hines) and Victoria (Deborah Watling). Episodes 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6 had previously been missing from the BBC Archives, and were returned by Morris.

Also recovered is the 1968 six-episode story, The Web of Fear. Also starring Patrick Troughton alongside Frazer Hines and Deborah Watling the story introduces Nicholas Courtney for the first time as Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart (who later returns as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart). Episodes 2-6 were feared lost, but now episodes 2, 4, 5, and 6 have been recovered. With episode 3 still missing, the restoration team has reconstructed this part of the story using a selection of the 37 images that were still available from the episode along with the original audio, which has been restored.

While 27 Doctor Who stories are still missing or incomplete, this is a huge win. And guess what? You don’t have to wait for them to be put on DVD. You can watch them right now. “The BBC has re-mastered the tapes, and is making two stories, The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear, now available exclusively on iTunes…Beth Clearfield, SVP, Digital Distribution & Business Development says, ‘For many, this will be their first chance to watch these long-lost Doctor Who stories. We’re thrilled to partner with iTunes in bringing these missing gems back to new and long-time fans after all these years.’”

I think I know a lot of people’s weekend plans.

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Bad News

by tristero

Yes,  the Republican party has sunk to a new low in approval polls.

But what that means is that, on average, 28 of the next 100 cars coming at you on the highway are being driven by people so completely unhinged from reality that they actually think Boehner, Cruz, Cantor, and the rest of that Whole Sick Crew are doing a pretty good job.

That's scary.

.

Whoops.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — With the Republican-controlled House of Representatives engaged in a tense, government-shuttering budgetary standoff against a Democratic president and Senate, the Republican Party is now viewed favorably by 28% of Americans, down from 38% in September. This is the lowest favorable rating measured for either party since Gallup began asking this question in 1992.

New comic!
Today's News:

It’s being reported that a group of Doctor Who fans have uncovered a cache of 106 long-lost Doctor Who episodes in Ethiopia. But what do we know for sure, and what’s just hearsay?

The Mirror‘s Sunday People reports that Whovians tracked down a cache of episodes from the tenures of the first and second Doctors at the Ethiopian Radio and Television Agency, to which they were sold by the BBC after airing on TV only once each between 1964 and 1969. If reports are correct the episodes include “much-loved scenes from The Crusade, The Enemy of the World and The Ice Warriors series.”

The Mirror’s source for this news item is “Doctor Who expert Stuart Kelly,” who says:

“I was told by a friend that the ­episodes have been found in Ethiopia. The BBC is ­negotiating to get them back right now. I really can’t say any more than that.”

On the surface, “a friend told me” didn’t seem particularly promising in terms of a source. And all this is from the Mirror, a British tabloid with a reputation for being less than reliable. But then the far more reliable Radio Times came out and said that, yes,  previous episodes from two stories from the second Doctor’s era have been remastered and will go on sale via digital platforms like iTunes starting on Wednesday.

Yes. Wednesday. As in this week.

The new/old episodes “are believed to originate from a haul discovered in Africa,” which corroborates part of the Mirror‘s story, though the amount of episodes we will be getting is a far cry from 106. But there may be more to come. Says the Radio Times:

“A BBC Worldwide spokesman refused to officially confirm the discovery or the ‘speculation’ around further missing episodes.

It is understood that other episodes have also been found, although it is not yet known whether these will be made available.”

There are still a lot of unknowns: How many episodes, total, have been found? How many of them will be released, and when? Assuming the Troughton ones do come out Wednesday morning, will it be worldwide or only, say, only on the UK version of iTunes? We’ll let you know as we find out more.

(via The Mirror, Radio Times)

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I’m happy to be the umpteeth person to tell you to go see Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity, about an engineer (Sandra Bullock as Ryan Stone) and an astronaut (George Clooney as Matt Kowalski) who are set adrift by an accident and must try to survive in space with limited oxygen, on as big a screen as possible. The movie’s sense of movement, whether Ryan and Matt are doing routine work on a space station, towing each other to safety, being tumbled terrifyingly through space, or piloting Soyuz capsules, is remarkable–astronaut Buzz Aldrin described himself as “so extravagantly impressed” by that element of the film. And Gravity is one of only a handful of films I’ve ever seen that makes me feel like the writers and directors fully comprehended 3D capacity as an artistic tool and had real, intelligent command of it.

But what’s stuck with me in the days since I saw the movie, and stuck with me in a way I hadn’t anticipated given some cliches that appeared in the script, was the extent to which this extraordinary move is simultaneously a grand visual spectacle and a very small character study, and a fascinating meditation on the power of talk.

When we first meet Ryan and Matt, she’s a novice, working hard to repair and reboot a piece of malfunctioning apparatus, and he’s a veteran, bopping around in apparatus and making jokes about margaritas while keeping an eye on how close he is to breaking the record for longest cumulative spacewalk. Matt’s a happy chatterbox who rotates through a series of stories about his mythic adventures, who tells Houston that one of their colleagues, having just completed some task, “appears to be doing some form of the Macarena.” He’s keenly attuned to the wonders of being in space, but that doesn’t prevent him from acting as if he’s holding court in a very grounded bar. Ryan, by contrast, is quiet and focused. “I was just happy they didn’t cut the funding for my research,” she tells Matt at some point.

But that turns out to be only one of the reasons Ryan doesn’t talk much: for her, space isn’t as much of a void as the one she faces down on earth, an emptiness that is never fully explained, but is richly and deeply felt. “What do you like about being up here?” Matt asks her. “The silence,” Ryan tells him. “I could get used to this.”

When a cloud of debris knocks them loose from the station, however, Matt’s gift of gab turns out to be a life-saving tool. The ability to hear someone else in your earpiece is a crucial link to sanity. It has biological effects, too: Matt’s able to talk Ryan down from the panicked breathing that’s depleting her oxygen, giving her enough time to survive the trip to the International Space Station. And in the process, he manages to draw Ryan out a bit by asking her what “the good people of Lake Zurich,” her hometown on Earth are doing at 8PM local time. The reason Ryan ultimately fled into space is prosaic, and she says as much when she tells the story, explaining to Matt that “It was the stupidest thing.” There are a number of moments of catharsis in the movie, but for me, none so powerful as the one in which Ryan, who tried to drown herself in silence, opens herself up to the power of her voice, and her own internal monologue.

The gift of Gravity is that it makes the “stupidest thing,” the most basic facts of the Earth’s solidity, the force of gravity itself, into lovely, remarkable things. The real reason to see Gravity on the largest screen available to you, and in 3D is because it’s the rare movie that has a real sense of wonder, not simply about what the Earth looks like from space, but about the lives we live on the ground.

The post ‘Gravity’s Special Effects Are Tremendous, But It’s Also A Smart, Tense Character Study appeared first on ThinkProgress.