Three things I've been intending to link/post relating to my three favorite sci-fi series:

1. Wired reports that Caren Golden Fine Art in New York City is hosting an exhibit of crafty Star Trek art:
   

   Mirror Universe, [Devorah] Sperber's show that opens March 20 at Caren Golden Fine Art in New York, consists of crafty Trek imagery pieced together out of beads and spools of thread. The show's title is an allusion to the 1967 Trek episode "Mirror, Mirror," in which the Enterprise crew is swapped with evil doppelgängers, but it also refers to the way viewers are supposed to look at the exhibit's art -- via reflective materials.
   

2. Three lucky bloggers at Concurring Opinions interviewed Ron Moore and David Eick about legal, moral, political, and religious aspects (and more!) of their brilliant re-imagination of Battlestar Galactica. Though I haven't yet had a chance to listening to the whole recording, the beginning sounds excellent.
   
   If you don't watch BSG, but enjoyed the Klingon story arc in Star Trek: the Next Generation, the ST: TNG finale, and/or much of Deep Space 9, Moore was responsible for all of those, and you should be watching BSG too.
   


3. Finally, what if Star Wars had been made in the 60s and had an opening credits sequence designed by Saul Bass?[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z25t-PQDn5A&hl=en]
   
   See also the "special edition" version.

...is Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year for 2007:

Although the double "o" in the word is usually represented by double zeroes, the exclamation is also known to be an acronym for "we owned the other team"—again stemming from the gaming community.

They acknowledge that it's not actually in the dictionary yet, but this honor increases its chances. If it does make it, it will be interesting to see how they spell it.

Among other words: facebook (as a verb), blamestorm (self explanatory), Pecksniffian, and sardoodledom. I've not heard the latter two used at all, so I'm not sure what the methodology was for selecting the winners or even the nominees. Did someone at Merriam simply flip through looking for interesting words to fill out a list?

Debgpi points to a cool Flickr set: spam one-liners. Freelance illustrator Linzie Hunter has turned spam subject headers into whimsical works of art.

I was excited to see a new video from CommonCraft in my Bloglines this morning. If you haven't seen their videos about RSS, wikis, social bookmarking, and social networking, I encourage you to check them out. They're great, fun introductions to the concepts. Last week I did a session for some faculty about web 2.0 tools, and the wikis and RSS videos got them laughing.

So, the new video. It's a little different, but a good reminder of some important safety tips for this time of year.

Marquette Law School's TechBlog points to a handy utility: the iPod Deathclock. Put in your iPod's serial name and some information about how you use it, and get an estimate of the time remaining until you see the sad iPod icon on its screen.

It also provides an estimate of the current battery capacity, which may be a more useful function.

Finally! I finished the Star Trek socks last night and delivered them to their recipient tonight. (Four months after Father's Day when they were promised and a week before his birthday...so I could have planned better, or even just knit faster!)

(If you're not a knitter interested in, er, replicating this pattern, skip the next paragraph!)

I used a standard 60 stitch top-down sock pattern as the base. After the cuff and ten rows of stockinette, I worked in the Starfleet emblem from the middle 26 stitches of Samantha's Baby Trekkie washcloth pattern, starting the pattern at 17 stitches from the beginning of the round on one sock, and 47 stitches from the beginning on the other. (It's designed so the emblem will lie on the outside of each ankle.) To get the emblem in garter stitch, the emblem was purled and all stitches on even-numbered rows were knit. Then I knit another ten rows in straight stockinette, and worked the heels and feet. It felt like one of my more adventurous knitting undertakings when I started, but it was really pretty easy.

If I make them again, I will definitely work the emblem, heel, and toe in a contrasting color. Probably black with a stripe of command red, science blue, or engineering yellow. The yarn is Knitpicks' Essential in Ash. I'm not 100% crazy about it--there are some very slight imperfections to it that seem more noticeable in a solid color--but it's a great yarn for the price, very soft, and machine washable.

Science blog Pharyngula points to to this almost amazing video of a real rocket-powered X-wing taking off.

I say almost amazing because it ends a couple seconds short of being satisfying. The Gizmodo exclusive video that includes interviews with the builders and the Y-wing counterpart video are better quality.

But still. X-wing taking off. An X-wing with an astromech mock-up. At sunset. In the desert. How cool is that?

As numerous bloggers and listserv posters have mentioned this morning, the emoticon is 25 years old today. Library Boy points out Carnegie Mellon's official emoticon anniversary page with a short essay by emoticon creator Professor Scott Fahlman.

Cnet also has an essay on the history of the emoticon from Vladimir Nabokov proposing there should be a typographical symbol for a smile in 1969 to speculation whether avatars will "kill the emoticon star."

What's your favorite smiley? The original :-) has been expanded in many creative ways, but I generally stick to the economical nose-less smiley and its frowney sibling. Simple and direct. :) I've mostly resigned myself to the automatically translated upright circle smiley that Outlook insists on--it still looks like it could have come from a typewriter--but I can't stand the over cute cartoon smileys that completely miss the point.

However you prefer it, happy birthday, dear :) !

Two great posts to recommend:

First, Wil Wheaton linked to his Geek in Review column this week where he reports that he has been at the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in Seattle working on a documentary for the 20th anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I didn't even know such a place existed! Wil's appreciation of science fiction goes way beyond his role in ST:TNG:

These are but a few examples of the real power that science fiction has to address current events in a context that's safe and acceptable for most audiences, while speaking very seriously about them to others. They illustrate why SF endures and resonates with casual and hardcore fans. Whether it was written one hundred years ago, or just published last month, SF can give us warnings about the future, hope for the future, or just blissful escape from the present, into fantastic worlds that are light years away – but as close as our bookshelves.

But do click through and read on for his appreciation of Trek.

Meanwhile, back in quasi-topicality land, Dave Hoffman at Concurring Opinions reviews a number of books, as well as current themes and trends in fantasy. One of the latter is something I'd have thought a contradiction in terms until he explained it.

The premises of hard fantasy seem to be: internal consistency in the use of magic; deep research into the cultures the book introduces; realism in mundane aspects of living (an army requires food); and an acceptance that societies usually evolve.

. . . .these latest hard fantasy forays are significantly better than most of what came before. . . .It’s just that when you stack these books together, the project of reading fantasy stops looking like escapism and starts to look more like social commentary.

I've always preferred hard science fiction to fantasy in the sci-fi section, but it sounds interesting. That said, I've finally finished The Silmarillion and removed it from my "currently reading" list, and I don't think I'll be ready for more grim and difficult fantasy reading anytime soon. Tolkien may not meet the requirements for hard fantasy, but it was sufficiently exhausting learning in tedious detail just how NOT about nobility and light his elves really are. Quite the eye opener.

I confess that I read it mainly for the Tolkien geek cred, and because I'd bought an illustrated hardcover edition a few years ago. There were parts I enjoyed a great deal, but if I were to make a recommendation on the matter, I'd suggest reading the Ainulindale, Valaquenta, Akallabeth (the Downfall of Numenor), and Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age, all of which appear in the same volume and none of which are part of The Silmarillion proper. The first two are the Middle Earth creation myth. In The Silmarillion itself, I'd read the first eight chapters, then skip to Of Beren and Luthien, and that would be pretty much it; there's more than enough there to enhance reading The Lord of the Rings with deeper appreciation of its back-mythology--where Sauron came from, the nature of Gandalf, why Aragorn's lineage is special, etc.

I admire Tolkien's creation, but I freely admit I haven't got the stamina or interest to keep track of the divisions of elves and the grievances and grudges held by the elves whose names begin with F and their descendants, whose names also all begin with F. Not to mention everyone's alternate names, and the names that get changed due to character traits or capture. And then, of course, the names and alternate names of all the places. Constantly flipping to the index/glossary interfered with my enjoyment of the story, and it made the travelogue sections of LOTR seem like page-turners in comparison.

I got acquainted with the steampunk concept through visits to Caledon, the 19th century sim in Second Life. Thanks to the Wired Table of Malcontents blog a few weeks ago, I've been greatly enjoying Eric Poulton's delightful steampunk renderings of Star Wars characters. Check out Han Solo and Mr. Chewbacca to the right.

Eric has just illustrated Sir Obi Wan Kenobi, and his textual description of the character is at least as inspired as the artwork:

As a young man in the days of the Republic, Sir Obi Wan Kenobi was an agent for the Jedi League of Force Champions. He is intimately acquainted with the dark side of the force, as he spent nearly a decade undercover within the Sith Brotherhood, secretly trying to uncover the identity of the organization's Patriarch....