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Science!
Top Ten Amazing Chemistry Videos by Wired.com
Do it and watch the Gummy Bear + Potassium Chlorate video. It's a pity that I associate Gummy Bears with these little dudes right here, 'cause it made me laugh and then weep in horror to watch the video. XD;;
Top Ten Amazing Physics Videos by Wired.com
Okay, okay, I'll admit it, this video's on here because Adam Savage (of Mythbusters fame) is in one of them, and he's one of my heroes. And also because these are pretty frickin' awesome.
Bubble Nebula
This guy falls under the 'space porn' category more than anything else, but I'm still pretty impressed.
Hubble's Deep Field Shot Peeks Back Towards the Beginning of the Universe"
This one is a bit of space porn, too, but with the added bonus that a lot of those galaxies formed about 600 million years after the birth of the universe. And we can see them - even though it seems they reside more than 13.1 billion light years away.
I'm sorry, guys, but knowing that I'm looking at images that show the infancy of the universe gives me the chills.
Apollor Moon Rocks Go Missing
Oops? This really became relevant when my university's engineering college celebrated it's 100th or something birthday and invited people from NASA to come out with a moon rock. I hope they find all the missing ones.
Jupiter's Snagged Moon
Jupiter snags a moon...and then lets it go 12 years later.
I only recently realized exactly how important Jupiter is to Earth's well being (acting as a comet deflector of sorts makes Jupiter one of Earth's BFFs), so this is actually really neat for me to read about.
Make the Sun Set Over Hong Kong
I got nothing on this except it's awesome and hypnotic. Sun rise....sun set....
Movies
J.J. Abrams Talks Trek Sequel
Topical Trek Returns in Sequel
The two above articles are related, so this is me discussing both of them: I'm all right with them including a topical storyline (since all of the Treks did it fairly regularly), I just kinda hope that the allegory isn't too heavy handed. There were definitely episodes in TOS (not to mention all of the other series) that obviously were allegorical, and I'm not sure I like that. Subtlety isn't a bad thing.
Don't get me wrong - I've got faith in Abrams and Orci and Kurtzman, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to be a little wary. Star Trek is one of my beloved series. I'd hate to see the sequel tank because the political/ethical/environmental/whatever message was too in-your-face.
Time will tell, though - AFAIK there's not even a finished script yet.
Harrison Ford Mentions that Indiana Jones 5 is in the works
There are days when I feel like the only fan that enjoyed Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (though I'll be the first to admit that was in part because I called everything that was coming, being at least vaguely familiar with the stories surrounding the crystal skulls), but either way I'm kinda excited for a fifth Indiana Jones movie and hope it follows the same trend, where the odd-numbered movies are simply fantastic. *crosses fingers*
James Cameron Talks Avatar
You know, as excited as I am for this film, I think I'm going to try and hold off any and all assertion that it's a doorway into a new way of making movies or watching movies or experiences movies or whatever until after I've seen it. I have a great amount of respect for Mr. Cameron (despite how much I dislike Titanic ) but I also don't think it serves to get too ahead of myself, and I worry that might be what's happening here.
Writing
First!
New Scientist is holding a flash fiction competition for a story set 100 years in the future! Entries must be 350 words or less, are due October 15th, and all of the other information is right there in that link.
I'm thinking I might give it a go. Why not, right? I've got nothing to lose. XD
I suppose I should have posted this on Friday, since I had the idea to do a Friday Meta Post last week, but I didn't. So here I go now.
About two weeks ago I stumbled upon an article by A History of Violence screenwriter Josh Olson. I'm not sure how I stumbled upon it, only that - like many other websites, videos, and articles - I did.
In the article in question, Mr. Olson (who was before this completely unknown to me, but I've also never seen A History of Violence) talks - complete with obscenities (you've been warned) about how he will not read your script. At all. Ever. So don't even bother trying to send it to him, because he will not touch it, much less read it.
He offers a couple of reasons why - one, that it interferes with time he ought to be spent doing much more important things; two, that most writers who pitch him these scripts don't actually want critique (even as much as they say they do) but rather head-pats and ego-strokes; and three, that he does not think he can find a way to tell you what you need to hear without pissing you off. So, he says, he can either say no right away and look like an asshole or he can tell you that you suck later and have you think he's an asshole then, and that having you think he's an asshole right off is better for him in the long run.
On the whole, I find what he has to say reasonable enough, though I firmly believe it could have been said without the swearing, but whatever. (I did have to wonder, though, if he's ever had a good script thrown his way by someone he barely knows. Sure doesn't seem that way, but I still wonder.)
Of course, since this is the Internet, some people take great offense to what Olson had to say, and of course a bit of a wankstorm erupts. I didn't catch all of this, though, as I read the article, made my quick assessment (I dunno that you phrased things in the best manner, but I can agree with your sentiments) and pretty much moved on.
I found out how much of a knot this twisted many people's knickers into once this article popped up on io9.
That article, as well as the longer, list-format essay posted by Mr. Scalzi right here, go into some of the potential legal ramifications this could have on their careers.
Guys, I actually made this face: D:
Now, I’m currently more of a fanwriter than I am a writer. I have issues getting my original fiction off the ground, and on the off chance that I do, I’m always worried that it’s just not original enough (my last origific entry falls into that category in a big, big way. I am terrified it's going to smack to everyone of being just like something else - some book, some movie, some game, some whatever - and that I'm never going to get anything published because it's all been done before a hundred times over, and no matter how original I think that piece might be it's just too like the things that have influenced it. Basically, please shoot me now. A nice hypospray sedative might do the trick, but so too would a nice shot to the head or even one of my extremities - just not my right hand, I need that to draw, my one other shot at a talent).
Because of that nagging self doubt, I’d love for a real, living, published writer to read over some of my original work and tell me - honestly - whether or not I have any potential in me at all. I think I do, and my family and some of my friends think I do (I’d say all of my friends think I do, but that might be a little pretentious of me) and I’d say some of my classmates thinks I do, as well, judging by some of their reactions to my work.
But none of those people - not my friends, my family, or my peers - are active in the same parts of fandom I am. They don't all read the same books or articles I do, or watch the same shows or movies or documentaries as I do. My influences are not as obvious to them as, say, a J.R.R. Tolkien influence might be, or an H.P. Lovecraft influence might be, or even a JK Rowling or Neil Gaiman influence might be. So I think I’d need to hear this, this big question of whether or not I have any potential at all, from some who is familiar with these influences while at the same time possesses the authority and the experience to tell me how much further I need to go before I stand even a remote chance at getting published.
So I, frankly, would love to have the opportunity for someone like J.J. Abrams or John Scalzi or Orson Scott Card to read what I have written, because they could tell me things from a perspective I don’t have access to normally. And some days I daydream about how that kind of scenario might unfold. But even when I was much younger and quite naïve and quite convinced I was some kind of prodigy (man am I ever glad I outgrew that way of thinking) I would never, ever have wanted to send them my work. Not, originally, because I thought it might become an issue for them, but because I didn’t want to have to face the polite “I’m sorry, I don’t have the time for this right now, but have some nice paraphernalia relating to what I’m currently doing in consolation” that I was sure I’d get…from their agent, or their assistant, or whichever poor soul they had on their payroll to deal with mail.
Or, since I have an on-again, off-again relationship with writing fanfic, because I didn’t want to get sued. After all, fanfiction seems to fall into a very gray area of copyright law. Frankly, I'm not sure that it's at all legal. Thankfully, most creators/studios are willing to turn a blind eye as long as people aren't dumb enough to try and make any sort of profit off of whatever they're writing. (It might not quite be fanfiction, but does anyone else remember the whole debacle surrounding the Harry Potter Lexicon? I sure do! And boy, did that end well.) Admitting that I write fanfiction might not be the...bad idea it once was (plenty of new writers I'm familiar with started out as fanwriters) but to me it's never felt like the best idea ever.
So hearing that people do this, that people pitch both original and what amounts to fic ideas at writers - and fairly regularly, it would seem - appall me. Just because you find yourself marginally linked to (by however many degrees of separation) someone who happens to either be in a position to help you or to pass on your name to those who could doesn’t mean you have the right to abuse that connection!
And now that I’m aware that the legal ramifications might not fall against me, but against the people producing that which I might be writing for, I’m even angrier. So you write, say, Stargate fanfiction and you find out John Scalzi, one of your favorite writers, has gotten a gig working with Stargate: Universe and you decide to pitch him a storyline you’ve been crafting for that universe. Should be awesome, right? He’ll read it, maybe pass it along to the producer or some of the actors, and boom! - you’re in business. Next thing you know you have your own fans and are the ultimate Big Name Fan.
Yeah, no.
I’m pretty sure this is most likely an American scenario, because we are quite the litigious folk. But apparently, even if Mr. Scalzi writes you an email to the effect of, “I’m sorry, but I cannot look at this,” he has still acknowledged that he knows you emailed him your work and if a storyline resembling what you conceived - either as an original piece or as a fan piece - pops up somewhere else with his name attached, you could sue and even if you couldn’t win, you could at least waste a hell of a lot of time and possibly ruin that writer’s love of writing forever.
In any case, I find that sending my work to a writer, assuming they are kind enough to read it and possibly hook me up with an agent, is taking the easy road in. And if I become a published writer one day, I want to have fought for it like the best of them.
So, uh, don't send Josh Olson your script. He won't read it. And John Scalzi will be very sore with you. And David Gerrold might get a restraining order.
...You guys, this is why I'm only going to do this once a week. I started this at nine. It's now 12:32 and I'm still not sure I'd call this a well-written essay.