Wednesday’s night’s episode of Lost was a clip job, leaving unanswered some burning questions about the show’s resident physicist, Daniel Faraday, that we hope will be answered soon.
One question that had occurred to me can be answered. Is Daniel a descendent of Michael Faraday, the 19th century English physicist, chemist and (until recently) featured star on the back of British 20-pound notes? The writers of Lost like to have fun with historical names (John Locke and Jeremy Bentham, for instance, and Daniel Faraday’s own mother, Eloise Hawking). But the original Faraday had a special interest in electromagnetism, so the thought crossed my mind: Could Daniel be his great-great-great-grandson?
First, I want to assure anyone who’s not been to New York City that Grand Central station is never as empty as it was in Tuesday’s episode of Fringe. I’ve been there at 4 a.m., and even then, I’ve never been alone on the platform. I know it was a dream sequence, but I thought you should know.
While we wait for the Doctor Who specials to air on US television screens, the nice people at the BBC sent us this clip of David Tennant‘s guest appearance on Top Gear in a segment known as “Star in a Reasonably Priced Car”. If you don’t know this British show, Top Gear is to cars as SportsCenter is to sport — wry, cleverly written, and fanatic in the best sense of the word. (A DVD of the show’s 10th season was released this week, from whence this segment comes) It turns out that although David Tennant may be a master of time and space when he plays the Doctor, third gear is another matter…
Any Dream Will Do is a reality competition for aspiring West End actors/singers trying to land the lead in a new London production of Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. The host is a somewhat subdued (compared to his late night show) Graham Norton. The judges include Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber himself and your very own Captain Jack Harkness.
Whether or not musical theater reality competitions are your cup of tea, one episode of this show will leave you wondering, “How does the BBC find a dozen talented singers in the UK, while American Idol can only produce one in a much larger country?”
Well, now we know what you get when you combine a wasp, a bat, a gila monster, and a tiger into one giant nasty thing: asexual reproduction! OK, not really, that just happens to be what happened on last night’s episode of Fringe (spoilers below.)
Friday night’s episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chroniclesdelivered the goods—a twisty episode, crammed with action, plot, and emotion, all leading up to a terrific set up for the third season (if there is one, and I really hope there is).
The series has long-featured a T-1001 model terminator with unknown motives. For those of you not up on your terminator model numbers, the T-888 models features your classic Arnie-style metal endoskeltons wrapped in human flesh, while the T-1000′s are made from ‘liquid metal’ of the sort featured in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. These terminators can form themselves into pretty much any shape they like, and real world researchers are already trying to develop materials with similar properties.
In Robin Hood fashion, the insecure hero, Kröd Mandöon (played by Sean Maguire), leads the struggle against the evil rule of Dongalor, a local king with big ambitions. Kröd is aided by a none-too-bright pig-man, an utterly ineffective wizard, the very gay Bruce, and his sexually liberated pagan warrior girlfriend. (A note on these last two characters—there’s a very fine line between ironically parodying how women or homosexuals are portrayed in a genre, and simply exploiting stereotypes anew. Once established, I hope these characters are given room to grow.) Not surprisingly, the funniest character so far (I’ve only seen the premiere episode) is the villainous Donglar, played by Matt Lucas of Little Britain fame. Lucas chews up the scenery, and plays perfectly off his trusted advisor Barnabus, the closest thing the show has to a straight man. It’ll be interesting to see if the show can sustain the humor of its premise over the course of an entire series, but I’m looking forward to seeing how these characters play out.
How often does the techno-babble utterly fail? Seriously, how often does a TV scientist explain a mysterious new phenomenon, McGyver together a device to tap it/diffuse it–and then totally strike out?
I can’t think of any, (eliminating of course, those inevitable mid-episode first attempts, where the cast has often overlooked some crucial piece of the puzzle that they figure out by the end), except perhaps for a failed attempt to stop an epidemic on an episode of Babylon 5 way back in 1995. But that’s the kind of cliche-breaking madness we’re coming to expect from Fringe. In last night’s episode (warning, spoilers follow!), our heroes were faced with the inexplicable presence of a boy who had somehow survived for 70 years in a sealed underground vault. The boy was mute, though he seemed to understand English well enough, so our resident mad scientist Dr. Walter Bishop (literally mad. Non-fans may not know, but he was in a psychiatric hospital for years) donned his white lab coat and got to work. His neuro stimulator (“What can’t it do?”) was supposed to read the boy’s brainwaves and convert them to speech, but aside from a voice-like noise, it simply didn’t work. And then…the plot moved on. No more neurostimulator. On with the show!
But I do wish someone had at least given poor Dr. Bishop a nice sip of cognac and a there-there pat. Science is nowhere near achieving what he was trying to achieve. (more…)
Just a short note to say that if you’re one of those people who haven’t liked the pace of the current season of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, then make sure you get caught up, because Friday’s night’s episode paid off for faithful viewers with not just one of the best episodes of the series, but one of the most memorable episodes of televised science fiction, period. This Friday’s episode is the season finale, and with the show’s current breakneck momentum, it looks to be a can’t miss. Here’s hoping the show gets picked up for another season.
Over on 80 beats, my colleague Eliza Strickland points out some interesting research on an autonomous laboratory. A group of four networked computers connected to a range of lab equipment was left alone to tease out some aspects of yeast genetics. The computers came up with some hypotheses about how various genes operated, then came up with experiments to test these hypotheses out. The upshot was a number of minor, but worthwhile, advances in our knowledge of yeast biology.
Teaching a computer how to learn is a perennial topic in artificial intelligence research, and one that’s long been mined in science fiction. The moment when the computer demonstrates it has learned how to learn is usually a pretty significant moment in any story it’s in, not least because it is one of the Laws Of Science Fiction that once a computer has started to learn, it will continue to learn at an ever accelerating rate. (A corollary of this Law states that if the computer isn’t already self-aware, sentience will arise by the end of the next chapter or act at the very latest.) Interestingly, the “My God! It’s learnt how to learn!” moment seems to be dwelt on by movie and TV shows (Wargames, Colossus, Terminator 3) much more than it crops up in literary science fiction. In literary science fiction, artificial intelligence is often simply presented as fait accompli. So does anyone have recommendations for a good literary treatment of the birth of an A.I.? (Frederic Brown’s 1954 short-short story “Answer” is of course taken as a given classic of the genre).
Sometime in the future, a group of renegade scientists and technologists will take a time machine to now. They're spilling the secrets of tomorrow here at Discover's Science Not Fiction blog.
▪ Malcolm MacIver is a bioengineer at Northwestern University who studies the neural and biomechanical basis of animal intelligence. He consults for sci-fi films (Tron Legacy, Joss Whedon's The Avengers), and was the science advisor for Caprica. He covers AI and robotics for Science Not Fiction.
▪ Kyle Munkittrick (Web, Twitter) is program director at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. He covers transhumanism.
Wednesday’s night’s episode of Lost was a clip job, leaving unanswered some burning questions about the show’s resident physicist, Daniel Faraday, that we hope will be answered soon.
First, I want to assure anyone who’s not been to New York City that Grand Central station is never as empty as it was in Tuesday’s episode of 
Well, now we know what you get when you combine a wasp, a bat, a gila monster, and a tiger into one giant nasty thing: asexual reproduction! OK, not really, that just happens to be what happened on last night’s episode of 
Friday night’s episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles 
We don’t normally cover fantasy on Science Not Fiction, but I thought I’d make an exception for tonight’s premiere of 
How often does the techno-babble utterly fail? Seriously, how often does a TV scientist explain a mysterious new phenomenon, McGyver together a device to tap it/diffuse it–and then totally strike out? 
Just a short note to say that if you’re one of those people who haven’t liked the pace of the current season of 
Over on 80 beats, my colleague Eliza Strickland points out some 
