I extremely nerded out and pleased and squeeified to announce that I’ll be at w00tstock! At Comic Con. On stage.
I know.
w00tstock, for those helplessly normal of you out there, is the premier nerd event in the Orion arm of the Milky Way. Hosted by singers Paul and Storm, Mythbuster and My Close Personal Friend Adam Savage™, and my long-standing and partially-requited nerdcrush Wil Wheaton, w00tstock is billed as "Three hours of geeks and music", which is apt enough. Everyone I know who has gone has raved about it. (more…)
I am a hardened geek, a nerd who strides across the planet with 20 km boots, a dork of such vastness that I can crush you into oblivion with my HP calculator before I even hit Enter.
Yet I was reduced to near-normalcy in comparison by listening to this [some brief NSFW language]. If you are a Trek fan, specifically of TNG, and are a fan of Wil Wheaton, Jonathan Frakes, and/or LeVar Burton, then you need to drop whatever you’re carrying — a Steuben crystal, a cooler with a transplant heart, your bowl of Quisp — and listen to that. These three men are all +20 for geekery.
And next year, by Grabthar’s hammer, I’ll try to go to Phoenix Comic Con.
Like astronomy? Like The Guild? Like Fwhil Fwheaton? Then you’ll love this:
This is the latest in a series of pretty funny videos from Spitzer Science Center called IRrelevant Astronomy. They’ve had lots of great folks on them, including Felicia Day, Sean Astin, and Betty White! Awesome.
In this one, Amy Okuda (Tinkerballa from The Guild) is the actor, and Wil voices the robot as well as a slightly more cheesy (not evil) version of himself. These are great videos, fun to watch, and also edumacational. I highly recommend them. Watch this one through all the way to the end…
"Star Trek: The Next Generation" premiered my first year of grad school, and the last episode aired my last year. It bookended my career as a student getting a PhD in astronomy, and so it has personal meaning for me. Also, I simply loved the show. And I mean love like grown-up love; I accepted its faults as well as the times it exceeded the sum of its parts.
On reddit, I found a link to this video, an interview with Marina Sirtis (Troi) and Jonathan Frakes (Riker), and if you’re a TNG fan, it’s a must-see. It’s simply wonderful.
It starts off a little goofy and fun, and ends really quite warmly. They seem like genuinely nice people — and if you read Wil Wheaton’s Memories of the Future you’ll find out they really were. That’s nice to know.
That is a model of the USS Enterprise-D from Star Trek: The Next Generation, created using an ion beam that guides vaporized chemicals and deposits them into a given shape. The amazing thing is that this model of the Big Little-E is only 8.8 microns (millionths of a meter) long! For comparison, a human hair is about 50-100 microns across. This image is magnified 5000 times.
I wonder if it comes with a tiny Wil Wheaton, too?
My first thought was that Sheldon might trip up because he is so well-versed in physics that it might actually impede his ability to analyze Trek science. However, we know that his analysis of comic books is fearsome in its depth and grasp of minutiae.
Wil, on the other hand, ate my lunch when I attacked him over Trek physics. In fact, I still haven’t forgiven him. So I should add the obligatory CURSE YOU WIL WHEATON!
Which makes me think that perhaps I should side with Sheldon, if only because we have both been bested by Wil. But sadly, in this case, my skepticism has me at an impasse. I simply don’t know.
So, BABloggees, what say you? Would the Enterprising young Wheaton outmaneuver the Big Banger Sheldon? Perhaps we’ll find out soon enough.
Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He's written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic and fights the abuse of science, but his true love is praising the wonders of real science.
The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking, movie reviews, and all that) can be found here.
Contact me: The Bad Astronomer "at" gmail "dot" com
"If things worked the way I wanted them to, any reporter about to do another 'sensational' story on deadly meteors would consult this volume, and bang! common sense would find its way into the news. How strange would that world be?" -- Adam Savage, Mythbusters
"Reading this book is like getting punched in the face by Carl Sagan. Frightening, but oddly exhilarating." -- Daniel H. Wilson, author of How to Survive a Robot Uprising
w00tstock, for those helplessly normal of you out there, is the premier nerd event in the Orion arm of the Milky Way. Hosted by singers Paul and Storm, Mythbuster and My Close Personal Friend Adam Savage™, and my long-standing and partially-requited nerdcrush Wil Wheaton, w00tstock is billed as "Three hours of geeks and music", which is apt enough. Everyone I know who has gone has raved about it.
