You're Talking about Plutonium on your Blog? What's Wrong with You?

What don't you think that the government is watch you? Sure they don't care much about you, but you start writing about plutonium or building bombs, and someone is going to get an email from a tracking program designed just for you. Don't believe me? Then you're watching the wrong kinds of movies. Movies will tell you that big brother is watching. Let me give you some examples.

The Truman Show (1998)

Look at poor Truman. His entire life is just a TV show. He's the star, and he doesn't even know it. Every element of his life is controlled by a mystical director who has kept his life a secret from Truman even though the entire world knows the truth.

Even though he doesn't know the truth and has had a bizarre string of events that have kept him in fear of leaving his home town, Truman decides to take his chances and go to another town.

Outside of the town-sized studio, there are groups of people who are protesting for the release of Truman.

This is a small example, and just a start. Let's move on to something a little less nice.

The Man with One Red Shoe (1985)

Think that the government isn't interested in your life? That's what Richard Drew thinks too, but he's wrong. When a CIA director (Ross,) who is in jeopardy of losing his job, picks a man at random as a "secret agent with important information," Richard's life becomes filled with complications due to another agent (Cooper,) who wants to take over the director position.

Agents take his apartment apart and mix everything up. Flushing the toilet turns on the sink, and turning on the the sink actually operates the shower. The is also tailed by a beautiful woman who is trying to figure out his secret. He even is almost assassinated several times in the movie.

So how did he get chosen for the distraction? Well, he's wearing one red shoe because his prankster friend steals all of the rest of the shoes.

Enemy of the State (1998)

So what happens when the government wants to get you? That's what Will Smith discovers when Robert Dean gets evidence against a corrupt politician. This politician is able to track Dean using computer technology to learn about everything that he is doing, and the money he is spending. Dean isn't able to go anywhere or do anything easily because of all of the ways that big brother can follow you.

Eagle Eye (2008)

What happens when your twin brother dies under unusual circumstances while working with an experimental computer that is designed to moniter all of the electronic communications on the planet. Not only is it watching everthing you do and say, but it's decided to take over the world. (Of course!)

Unfortunately for you, it needs you to come to the mainframe so it can use you to unlock the code that your brother installed before he died. (Doesn't it suck to be a twin?)

I Robot (2004)

More robots looking to take over? You bet. Isaac Asimov envisioned the possibility that machines would take a look at the world at some point and realize that they could run it better than we could, so why not make a movie about it? (I won't get into how I feel about this movie right now, but maybe another time.)

So look at the trouble you run into when you start doing anything on your blog, let alone something as stupid as writing aobut plutonium. Find something else to write about, OK?

#7 of Top 12 Picard Episodes of Star Trek TNG

Disaster

Picard hates kids. That is one of the first character traits we learned about him. Think about his reaction when Wesley came on the bridge in the first episode. this is one of the few traits that isn't supposed to be messed with. So as a good writer, the writer for this episode decided to put Picard in a position where he had to deal with kids in an emergency without being able to pass them off.

Let's step back to the beginning, and I'll do my best to avoid talking about the rest of the episode since I want to talk about it when I do my list for the rest of the crew.

As a reward for winning the science fair, three young children are given the opportunity to tour the Enterprise with Captain Picard. No one seems excited about that idea, except maybe Counselor Troy.

 So the three kids are Marissa, Jay Gordon, and Patterson. The tour starts off awkwardly with Picard explaining where they will go on the tour and telling one of the boys that they will not go to the battle bridge. Instead he informs them that they will be visiting the hydroponics and the astrophysics labs.

(I will talk about the rest of the episode when I do my Top 12 for the rest of the crew, but for now I just want to focus on Picard and the kids.)

Patterson planted radishes in special dirt and they came up weird. Jay Gordon studied a bug with a very short life cycle. Marissa doesn't get a chance to tell about her project because something happens to the ship and sends the turbo lift crashing down the tubes.  (We find out in the next scene that it is a quantum filament, but that isn't what we are talking about right now.)

So here we are in a moment Picard couldn't have even dreamed about dreading-stuck in a broken turbo lift with a broken leg with three kids.

He has to figure out a way to get the kids out of the turbo lift and to safety, so he promotes all of them. He takes off his command pips and distributes them to the children. Marrisa becomes the first officer, Jay Gordon is dubs science officer, and Patterson is made executive officer in charge of radishes. The trio work together to open up the hatch of the make their way up the shaft to a safe location. Initially, Picard insists that the children can climb on their own, but after hearing the complaints of the crew, Marissa insists that they stay together. Picard works with the kids to climb out of the shaft, and when they start to feel afraid, he gets them to sing "Frere Jaques" as they climb.

After the Enterprise pulls itself together, Picard sees his child crew again and they give him a plaque that they made to thank him for getting out of trouble. Picard informs the children that they will restart the tour on another date, and the tour will include the battle bridge. As the children are leaving the bridge, Picard gives an order to Riker, addressing him as "Number 1" and he and Marissa both say "Yes sir."

Important elements of this story (or at least parts that I like):

• Marissa starts off as a shy little girl, but develops confidence in herself when she become first officer. She even starts giving orders.
• Jay Gordon insists on being referred to as Jay Gordon rather than just Jay.
• Patterson takes pride in his accomplishments with radishes.

But now what am I going to do with all this plutonium I bought from the Libyans?

What are you doing buying plutonium from the Libyans in the first place? I hope you're wearing a bullet proof vest when they come back for their plutonium later. Didn't you learn anything from Back to the Future?

Wormholes are bad enough, but you want to play with plutonium to make it happen? You don't know how to use your brain, do you? Look at all of the bad things that happen with plutonium:

• The radiation from plutonium can cause cancer and death. Look at Madam Curie. (Sure she was working with primarily with polonium and radium, but it's close enough.)
• Plutonium is one of the key components of a nuclear bomb. That's why the Libyans gave it to Doc Brown after all. Do you want to be responsible for that?
• Sure power plants are great, but what about all of the negative side effects of nuclear power? You've seen the Simpsons and that three-eyed fish.
• Do you want to become Mr. Burns? I don't think I need to say any more on that count.
• If you're just walking around with plutonium, the government is going to think that you are a terrorist. I'm pretty sure you don't want them thinking that.
• Maybe you can manage to create that 1.21 gigawatts of energy to travel through time, but flux capacitor or not, it's just another wormhole and I've already talked about the problems with that. (Look at all the trouble Marty caused by a simple trip back in time.)

So if you're smart, you'll get rid of that plutonium and stop playing around with wormholes.

More Fake rules for being Irish on St. Patrick's Day

A couple of years ago, I made a post listing a set of rules for being Irish on St. Patrick's Day, but since then I've thought of a few other important rules that you need to keep in mind along with the others. Be sure to study them and follow them closely.

1. Like before, the Irish do not need to concern themselves with these rules. They can read them, but the certainly don't need to follow them.
2. All of the previous rules still apply. See that post already.
3. OK, the first thing you have to do St. Paddy's day is roll out of bed and eat some Lucky Charms. If you want to get it right, you might want to have the bowl ready right next to your bed with some milk there too. (Feel free to say "They're magically delicious" with the an Irish accent. It won't make you any more Irish though.)
4. St. Patrick is credited with driving all of the snakes from Ireland, so what are you doing with that snake? Get away from anything having to do with snakes for the day. Don't even talk to a snake handler. Why take a chance?
5. I talked about Shamrock Shakes before, but let's be honest, they are delicious and must be a part of the holiday for you.
6. OK, it doesn't matter if you don't eat meat, you need to eat Corned Beef and Cabbage. Just do it. It's a part of being Irish. (OK, if you're committed to the whole "nothing with a face" way of life, then at least pretend you ate it. OK, just don't make a big deal about it. Maybe you can get one of your veg friends to make up some Corned Tofu and Cabbage.)

So that's it for now. Maybe I'll come up with some more ideas in the future, but that is where we will leave the issue until that time arrives.

So you created a wormhole...

First, congratulations!
Second, what were you thinking? Don't you understand what you have done? How can you be scientific enough to have created a wormhole without having watched enough sci fi to know what's wrong with your discovery?

Let's look at some good reasons why you should shut your wormhole down right now:

Deep Space 9

Oh look, the Federation found a naturally occurring wormhole that is safe and reliable outside of the orbit of Bajor! How exciting!

However, the only reason the wormhole even exists is because of some cosmic jerks called "The Prophets" who keep interfering in everything, but not always to help out.

Oh, and on the other side of the wormhole is this group of conquering and controlling changelings called the Dominion that want to cross over the wormhole and take over our part of the galaxy, but hey, free wormhole.

Stargate

Ancient aliens left a series of gates that connect a huge number of worlds. That's a pretty cool opportunity to explore the universe, wouldn't you say? Too bad the universe is filled with the remnants of the creators of the Stargate, the Goa'uld, that enjoy enslaving humans and using them as hosts for their baby slugs that are their actual selves. (OK we find out later that they didn't create the Stargates, but whatever.)

Oh, they also have lesser slugs that make people into Jaffa, or slave warriors. The slugs keep them strong, healthy, and long lasting, but they don't get a lot of say in their lives.

So pretty much everywhere you can go through the universe in a Stargate has these guys on the other side so exploring sucks, and since you opened the gate, the Goa'uld are obsessed with messing up our world. Double win!

Farscape

So you figured out a way to make a mini wormhole by slingshot off the atmosphere of a planet. Congratulations! Too bad you have no way to control it. It's also a shame that you landed in the middle of a jail break and pissed off the leader of a group of Peacekeepers.

What are Peacekeepers? Well they look like humans, but they are engineered killing machines that no one in that part of the universe likes. So thing leader guy is now obsessed with killing you because his brother died when you jumped into space. You've got friends, but they don't always trust you to know what is going on, and you have to stick a bug in your mouth to brush your teeth, but at least you have Muppets to hang out with.

The Mote in God's Eye (and other books)

So it's far in the future, and you get to have and use this awesome Alderson drive that only works between stars, but only if you find the right start point. (Super difficult wormholes) You get to travel between worlds, but you have to deal with intergalactic wars and such problems.

Then this strange ships shows up and almost flies into a sun. It turns out that it has come from a region of space called the Mote which happens to be in God's Eye. So you jump in your ship and travel to the place the ship comes from, and you find a group of aliens you call the Moties, and they seem nice, but they probably aren't so nice. Maybe they are looking for a chance to take over your part of the galaxy too.

Wrinkle in Time

If you've read this far, you'd better know what a Tesseract is. Basically it's a wormhole without needing a ship. Sounds cool, right? It is until you end up on a 2-D planet and almost get crushed or you go to a planet with a giant brain thing that wants to use your baby brother to take over the universe.

Wrap up

So you managed to figure out how to create a wormhole, that's great, but now, you need to shut that thing off ASAP! Who knows what terrible things might burst through that thing. It's going to be a terrible thing for everyone. These are just a few examples of how things can go wrong, and I didn't even get into wormholes that get people lost. (Voyager, Lost in Space, etc.)

Of Chicks and Peas

A few days ago, I asked my friends on Facebook for ideas on what to post next on Random Opinions. I got several ideas, but two in particular that I though would work well together.

• a chick pea is neither a chick nor a pea
• Chick names for my chickens

What would happen if I tried to do both posts at once? How random would that be?

So let's look at the chickpea side of things first for a moment. This comes from a classic Mike Myers skit from Saturday Night Live, Coffee Talk.

In the skit, Myers plays Linda Richman, a talk show host who often gets distracted and instructs the audience to "talk among yourselves" with some random topic. One of those topics was "a chick pea is neither a chick nor a pea."

So how does that tie with the second comment? Just by the slightest of threads since they both have the word "chick" in them.

So how can we tie these two disparate ideas together? Why through randomness, of course.

• Chicks are not peas, but that doesn't mean you can't name a chick Sweet Pea.
• Chickpeas are also known as garbanzo beans. The word garbanzo comes to English from Old Spanish as Calavance, a word that I think would make a good name.
• Apicius was a Roman gourmet that was fond of these legumes. Wouldn't Apicius be a great name for a chicken?
• Charlemagne wrote about chickpeas, so why not name your chick after him?
• Nicholas Culpeper noted "chick-pease or cicers" are less "windy" than peas and more nourishing. So why not Culpeper?
• Venus is associated with chickpeas.
• There are two varieties of chickpeas-Desi and Kabuli.

That's 8 names and it should get you well along. If you want more, or you have other suggestions, feel free to post a comment below.

#8 for Top 12 Picard Episodes of star Trek TNG

Tapestry

The crew of the Enterprise is a cohesive unit that works and lives well together. they have managed to form a tapestry of their own, but what happens when a member of that crew is given a chance to change something from their past? How will that impact the present?

As the starting element of the story, Captain Picard discovers that he has died as a result of the malfunction of an artificial heart that was implanted during his days at Starfleet Acadamy. He had been in a fight with some Nausicaans and gotten stabbed through the heart.

Well, we assume that he dies because the next thing we know Picard is standing in a large, empty white space with Q. Picard rejects the notion that Q is God or that Q has any benevolent reasons for bring Picard to this space.

Q makes an offer to prevent this accident from happening. All Picard has to do is go back in time and stop himself from being in the fight with the Nausicaans. Picard agrees since the man he was isn't someone that he is complete proud of.

This episode is great because we get to experience Picard as a young cadet and get to know some of the people that shaped his career in Star Fleet. Picard does change his past, and avoids getting stabbed, and annoys his friends. Picard then finds himself in the present, but a very different present.

He is just a junior officer working in Astrophysics. Riker and Troy inform him that there isn't much chance that his career will ever advance beyond that point. Q explains that the fight with the Nausicaans was an important point in Picard's life that taught him about his mortality, forced him to be proactive in his life.

Q gives Picard the chance to go back a second time and put history back on the correct path. Picard accepts and gets in that deadly fight. This solves the mystery at the end of the fight because young Picard laughed as he saw he'd been stabbed, and the reason was because it was the older Picard relishing making things right.

Picard then wakes up have been saved by Dr. Crusher. He then wonders as he recovers if he actually went back in time or if it were all a dream. Probably only Q has the answer to that question, and I'm sure he wouldn't give a straight answer.