Stories tagged science fiction
Science fiction writer Michael Crichton died on Tuesday, November 4. He is famous for such books as The Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man. And Jurassic Park. In recent years he became an outspoken critic of global warming, pointing out what he saw as the unscientific nature of the debate and the rush to solutions which he argued would do more harm than good.
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The Mega Beave Trophy itself: You earned it, Martin.
Courtesy zenA steel-fabricator in Oregon has built an 8-legged, 6 ton, walking vehicle. It seats six, runs on a Chevy V8 engine, and appears to have a mortar mounted on its side. (Or possible it's an exhaust pipe. Whatever.) It's called the Walking Beast.
3 years and $50,000, but you've done something rad, good sir. Something very rad indeed.
I think an award is called for. Let's see...
All right. Science Buzz is proud to present, for the first time ever, The Beaver State Award of Mega, to the very deserving Martin Montesano.
Silent and sinister, they sneak up and attack when you least expect. It's ... the TREES!: Wait a minute…didn’t I see this same plot in Day of the Triffids?
Courtesy sjarvinen
OK, so I, like, never go to movies. Nine bucks for the pleasure of driving for miles, sticking to someone else’s timetable, buying over-priced popcorn, sitting through previews, and crowding into a dark, poorly-ventilated fire trap with a bunch of loud strangers? I fail to see the appeal. Unless the movie features a truly spectacular acting talent, such as Scarlett Johansson or Jennifer Aniston. Then I’m all over it. Otherwise, I’ll just wait for the DVD.
And that goes double for science fiction. Is there a more useless genre? Science is fascinating precisely because it’s true. I walk into a sci-fi flick, and within five minutes I can actually feel myself, everyone around me, and the entire Universe, getting dumber.
(I may be the only person in America who has never seen even one of the Star Wars films, and have not even the slightest desire to ever do so. If that makes me a better person than everyone else, I can live with that.)
Well, apparently there’s this film out now called The Happening, in which trees decide to rebel against mankind by emitting poison gas or something. I probably should have said “Spoiler Alert” up there, but, seriously, I’m doing you a favor by discouraging you from wasting your money on this dreck.
Anyway, a bunch of scientists with a selfless love of humanity and far stronger stomachs than I have viewed this alleged “film” and reported back on five major scientific flaws, which, with any luck, will spoil the film for everyone for all time.
To which the critical mind responds: "Only five?"
Meanwhile, the magazine The New Republic ignores the science and looks at the moral world of the movie and declares it the most reprehensible film they’ve ever seen.
Though Zooey Deschanel is kinda cute…
Popular Mechanics has put together a list of 10 movies that made some accurate predictions about the future – including Gattaca, which foresaw some of the bioethics questions we grapple with in the exhibit Deadly Medicine.
Diorama of the first heart transplant surgery: Is this the future of prisoner executions?
Courtesy Trygve BergeI read a rather fascinating story last night by Larry Niven called The Jigsaw Man. Without giving away the plot completely, it spells out the possible dystopian future we could face as organ transplants become more efficient and common. In the story, society is not able to resist the temptation to harvest organs from criminals who are executed for their crimes. However, as the demand for organs grows, the list of crimes that are punishable by execution grows as well (think traffic offenses). Where does it stop? Well, you can read the story.
This story, written in the late 60s, is a great example of science fiction predicting the future in a small way. We reported recently (Give a kidney, do less time: State deals with organ donation ethics) on California lawmakers considering a law that could give prisoners up to 180 days off their sentence for donating a kidney. If we start trading time of prison terms for organs, why shouldn't we require organ harvesting from executed prisoners? I personally think this would be ethically atrocious but I also know there are allot of people waiting on the list for organ transplants.
What do you think? Do you see any sort of future where prisoners are considered acceptable organ donors, with or without their permission?
Chimpanzees Linked To Human AIDS Pandemic: Courtesy of Mike Wilson at National Geographic
Scientists have long suspected that AIDS originated from wild chimpanzees, but until recently this was merely speculation. Both Nature and National Geographic report that simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), a viral strain remarkably similar to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), was discovered in wild chimpanzees of the sub species Pan troglodytes troglodytes in the jungles of the African country of Cameroon.
Previous to this discovery, there were reported cases of SIV in captive chimpanzees, but researchers knew they needed evidence from wild chimps to prove these apes were in fact a direct link to the human AIDS pandemic. Now they have it.
Beatrice Hahn of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, a key researcher on this project, thinks that it is likely that HIV in humans was contracted from SIV in chimpanzees when humans were exposed to chimp blood during the processing of hunted bushmeat.
Since HIV and SIV are so genetically similar, it is likely that humans contracted the virus from chimps who initially contracted it from monkeys rather than both humans and chimps contracting the virus directly from monkeys which was previously thought.
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Questions for Roberta Geiselhart and Owen Middleton
Questions for Roberta Geiselhart and Owen Middleton
Questions for Roberta Geiselhart and Owen Middleton
Questions for Roberta Geiselhart and Owen Middleton
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