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Art for Nerdy Children
I wish I’d known about Tiffany Ard when we were decorating Shadowboy’s nursery. She creates “artwork and nursery decor for serious science nerds,” including beautifully whimsical posters illustrating important scientific laws and formulae (there’s even one featuring a squid!), “Nerdy Baby” flash cards, and “Books for Wee Nerds”. (I particularly love the “Pat Schroedinger’s Kitty”…
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Interview an Author
To help advertise the launch of the new Voyager Books Website, Harper Collins has asked six science fiction/fantasy blogs to interview a selection of Voyager’s authors. They’re inviting their readers to suggest questions to ask each author. Big Dumb Object will be interviewing Cory Doctorow. Futurismic will interview Kim Stanley Robinson. SFF World has Robin…
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This Sounds Like the Beginning of a Joke
Four Russians, a German and a Frenchman are all sealed inside a research facility…. Last Tuesday, six people entered a Habitrail-like series of living modules in a Moscow research lab, where they will spend the next 105 days exploring what a lengthy trip to Mars would be like. They’ll eat dehydrated food and breathe recycled…
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ThinkGeek Knows What People Want
ThinkGeek (“Stuff for Smart Masses”) sends out periodic newsletters featuring new products. Every year on April 1 they also send out a similar newsletter featuring fake products…which are juuuust plausible enough to seem realistic. Last year one of their hoax products was the 8-bit tie, a necktie that looked like it was rendered in a…
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The CFSC is Getting Fancy
The Crotchety Old Fan’s Classic Science Fiction Channel is expanding its offerings, and he’s also experimenting with video playlists. The first one, “ARMAGEDDON OUTTA HERE,” kicks off at midnight with A Boy and His Dog and progresses through 24 hours of gems like The Omega Man, Day of the Triffids, and Dr. Strangelove. See this…
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Science Fiction/”Dallas” Mashups
FanboyFilms put together this ST:TNG opening sequence done in the style of “Dallas:” Which inspired kalleanka71 to do something similar with Star Wars: These both make me terribly, terribly happy. Almost happy enough to overlook the fact that half the YouTube audience is too young to remember “Dallas.” (via BoingBoing)
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Send Your Name to Mars
Here’s an inexpensive and clever way to enhance interest in the space program: NASA is allowing individuals to send their names to Mars. Fill out the online form, and your name will be included on a microchip that will go to Mars in 2011 on the Mars Science Laboratory rover. You even get a nice…
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Tribble Craft
io9 recently mentioned a tribble sale, wherein props from the Deep Space Nine episode “Trials and Tribble-ations” were being auctioned off. If you don’t have the wherewithal to purchase a real one, furry objects rather similar to tribbles (but only coincidentally, as I don’t need a visit from a ravening pack of Paramount lawyers) are…
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So Much for The Naked Orbital Chef
NASA astronaut Sandra Magnus has been spending the last four months learning to cook in zero-G. She’s been keeping a journal of her experiences, doing things like cooking chopped onions in leftover foil pouches and using duct tape to keep crumbs from floating away and clogging air vents. Her experiences to date have been “slow,…
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The Secret Life of AT-ATs
Nick Drummond got a new “pet” recently, and has been documenting its behavior as it settles in. He has a whole photoset devoted to its antics, and it’s a sweetly charming glimpse of what AT-ATs do when no one’s watching. I predict an upsurge in AT-AT popularity once people realize what wonderful pets they make.…