This weekend I went to Santa Fe with my college roomates. Our plans included walking, wine, galleries and good eats, but of course some science-related moments popped up amidst the art and the appetizers...
When sending mail to a secret laboratory... While on a restaurant tour of some of Santa Fe's best eateries, we stopped into La Casa Sena Wine Shop and Lounge. Turns out that in addition to some lovely bottles, the wine shop is also know for its address, 109 E. Palace. This was where all the mail from Los Alamos was sent during the Manhattan Project so that no one would find out why a whole bunch of physicists were sequestered on a mesa 35 miles outside Santa Fe. For more on the history of the Manhattan Project, check out Jennet Conant's 109 East Palace.
Sci Fi Art Canyon Road features gallery after gallery, so we spent one early afternoon strolling through town checking out the artistic offerings. My favorite by far was Chalk Farm Gallery, which bills itself as "The world's leading gallery for visionary art." It was a treat to see fantastical works by Daniel Merriam, Robert Bissell and Michael Parkes up close. I was particularly thrilled to catch an exhibit from science fiction and fantasy artist Stephan Martiniere, who has done work in a variety of entertainment fields including feature films, animation, video games, theme parks, editorial, commercial and book covers. His work as a concept artist for live action films includes such movies as Star Wars Episodes II and III, The Time Machine, Red Planet and I,Robot. Seven 36" x 24" fine art canvas giclees of his pieces were on display - I wish I could have jumped into them to explore some of the worlds he's dreamed up.
World Too Near Pic from www.martiniere.com, where you can purchase the artists' work and find out more about him.
While not strictly science-related, I saw Inception last night and had to post about this smart, gorgeously shot movie that will satisfy your desire for
popcorn action thrills as well as provide some more deeply nourishing
food for thought. If The Matrix, 2001 or Blade Runner hold any fascination for you, get your butt into a theater to check out Christopher Nolan's latest. I won't give away any other details from the film because you should see it without
knowing too much about it, but I'll just add that Nolan (The Dark Knight, Memento) continues to remain one of my favorite filmmakers.
2)ONLINE SHOWS: JOE GENIUS
If you don't feel like hoofing it to the theater for your entertainment, check out Joe Genius, the new online show from Revision3. As described by their PR materials, "Joe
Genius highlights home-grown Newtons who experiment, tinker, and yes,
blow stuff up in the name of science. And it's all caught on tape! Join [comedian]
Jonah Ray as he whizzes through these geniuses' most epic failures and
thrilling successes -- and of course, the science behind it all."
The
show features online vids from citizen scientists and students - some
that go well, others which go horribly wrong. The first episode focus
on chemistry, and includes such experiments as mixing rubbing alcohol
and chlorine, concocting homemade rocket fuel, and an endeavor titled
"watermelon versus liquid nitrogen."
Much like G4's new show It's Effin' Science,
the show approaches science like an extreme sport, accompanied by
comedic commentary. I am curious about the very last line of the show,
which states that the show is "brought to you in part by the National
Science Foundation"...interesting...will let y'all know when I find out
more...
3) PBS'S HISTORY DETECTIVES
The PBS show History
Detectivestraces the history, mythologies and family legends
behind found objects. This year, as part of the 8th season space-themed premiere, the show made a
direct interactive pitch to viewers to help solve the mystery of whether
or not a miniature piece of collaborative art was snuck aboard the Apollo
12 space mission, possibly created by Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and others. It's a story of collaboration between engineers and artists, cryptic telegram messages and the fascination with getting a teeny bit of oneself up into space. The show's producers ask the public to help solve the mystery
here and over 170 viewers have already done so.
Many folks get through the hot summer by heading out to the pool club. The folks at the NSA have a different idea of how to blow off steam. A post
on Wired's Danger Room blog details how NSA staffers get down
& dirty after work. Turns out that hacking at top levels during the
day isn't enough for these guys - they continue their exploits in 12
different "Learned Organizations" after the work day is done. From the Wired post:
Most of the clubs revolve around cryptoanalysis, communications
analysis and language translation. Which is pretty much what employees
at the NSA do from 9 to 5 — and, it seems, still shell out $15 in
annual fees to do on evenings and weekends, too. But at least on evenings and weekends, snacks are involved...
The clubs offer more than chips & dip. In addition to the work
they do, the Crypto-Linguistics Association (CLA) has an International
Cookbook; the KRYPTOS Society has an annual literature contest; and the
Crypto-Mathematics Institute (CMI) has a fondness for word puzzles.
I'd love to sit in on a meeting of the Pen & Cursor Society (P&CS), which sponsors
“creativity seminars,” where members are invited to “explore childhood
memories,” “break rules!” and “fertilize the garden in which you grow
ideas.” I'd even bake some killer cupcakes if they'd let me come play, but alas, the clubs are only open to NSA Staff.
In celebration of science fiction author H.G. Wells' 143rd birthday, Google has featured several cryptic logos over the past month, culminating in today's design.
Ben Parr's post on Mashable chronicles the stealth campaign, which included an earlier 'o' abduction, crop circle logo, and various corresponding tweets.
Wells is generally credited with popularizing the concept of time travel in his novella The Time Machine. But is time travel really possible?
-Listen to this July 2009 story on Minnesota Public Radio featuring Ronald Mallett, a professor of physics at the
University of Connecticut and the author of Time Traveler: A
Scientist's Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality. Director
Spike Lee has acquired the rights for a film he plans to write and
direct. Mallett's work has some of its inspiration in Wells' The Time Machine, which he first came across as an 11-year old in the midst of mourning the sudden death of his father. He thought if he could just build a time machine, he could go back in time and warn his dad about what was going to happen and prevent his death...
-In a 2006 MSNBC article, theoretical physicist Brian Greene (The Elegant Universe) and John Cramer, a physicist at the University of Washington, discuss the realities of time travel.
-Courtesy of the internet, go back in time to NOVA's 1999 special on the topic. The companion website includes text & audio from Carl Sagan, an Einstein thought experiment and a "time travel" glossary.
It started with today's Daily Dose e-mail from Flavorpill, which via io9.com, featured a link to Kyle Cassidy's photo series "Where I Write."In this project, Cassidy takes a look at science fiction and fantasy
writers in their native habitats. His subjects include titans such as Frederik Pohl, Piers Anthony and Ben Bova.
While visiting Bova's site, I stumble across a link to an essay he wrote on tor.com about the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. Alas, when I click, I get the dreaded 404 article-not-found error. But the site, which I am unfamiliar with, is intriguing - the tagline is "Science Fiction. Fantasy. The Universe. And related subjects."
I pass up a post called "Buzz Aldrin is so GANGSTA" (so true!) to click on a tribute to one of my favorite sci fi authors, Octavia Butler. She passed away in 2006, and on July 22nd she would have been "62 and awesome," as described by writer Nisi Shawl. In the piece, Shawl talks about Butler's charismatic personality and her commitment to the increased representation of people of color in the fantastic genres. Butler's "Xenogenesis" series is still one of the most thrilling, sensual pieces of sci fi writing I've ever read.
