Let's hear it for carbon emissions!

Hey, good news! Well, maybe it's not good news, more like a silver lining. To a coffin. Oh sorry, went a little dark there, but according to the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the effect of human civilization on the Earth's environment has at least one upside: it's pushed off the next ice age by another fifty thousand years. Um, hurray?

"You're welcome."

-Pollution

I'm not saying it's off the table
mind you, just not super-likely.

Well, no, this is science, so you have to understand that there's an open-handed slap of reality behind any upbeat headline. Human activity has mitigated the effect the Earth's orbit around the sun naturally has on the climate and in doing so thrown off the cycle of glaciation delaying the next ice age by another fifty thousand years, so a hundred thousand years in total. Still with me? Yeah, me neither, the point is that our massive carbon footprints haven't saved us from roving packs of sabertooth cats or having to hunt mastodons for food. Besides, we'll all be long dead.

'Hillary Clinton: is soft on ice ages. Me? I'll
screw the next ice age with it's pants on. Fact.'

So in many ways, it seems like this news isn't really going to help us much. In fact, it strikes me as a little counter-productive. Like, it's the kind of thing that could get latched onto in an election year as a reason to drag our feet over reducing carbon emissions. Why bother sticking to the Paris climate agreement when our reckless destruction of the environment has created a hazy orange forcefield against the next ice age? Hurray for carbon emissions! Carbon emissions are awesome!

What? Like it's any stupider than the vaccine thing. Anyway, a lot can happen in a hundred thousand years. Our species could be extinct, or maybe we'll have invented warp drive and will be fucking up alien planets. The important thing to keep in mind is that this news isn't really an upside to climate change. If anything, it's another harbinger of our planet's doom. Damn, went dark again. Sorry. Next time we'll talk about Star Wars or something, promise.

I guess what I'm saying is look on the bright side: this will be the ape's problem. 

Today in tenuous connections...

Seriously, fuck you cancer.

As you've probably already heard, cancer, in a characteristically dick move, took noted musician and goblin king David Bowie yesterday. Because cancer, as we've discussed, is an asshole. But on a tangential, quantum universe note, the local newspaper from my hometown of Rochester, N.Y. decided that today would be an awesome time to remind everyone that back in 1976, Bowie was arrested there for having half a pound of marijuana in his hotel room.

Yes. Cops, who I can only assume were among the R.P.D.'s cleverest investigators, went to Bowie's hotel room after a concert and found him and his friends all smoking the pot. Did I mention Iggy Pop was there? Anyway, it was some fine police work, but why bring it up now?

Wait, for real? Just pot? Did they even look in the nightstand?

Rochester: come for the arts and nightlife,
stay for the draconian drug law enforcement!

I suppose when someone talented and influential dies, we all like to feel connected in some way, even if that way is a decades-old drug charge that could have potentially ended his career. At the time, half a pound of pot carried a maximum fifteen year prison sentence and-holy shit fifteen years? Fortunately, Bowie and the others were able to plead famous, (no, really) but still, if I were the city of Rochester I'm not sure I'd want to associate myself with nearly depriving the world of the last forty years of David Bowie's music.

You know, if decisions we make play out in some alternate universe as some physicists wildly speculate, does this mean that somewhere there's some alternate universe out there where David Bowie spent fifteen years in prison in upstate New York on some possession charge and we all sat through a shitty version of Labyrinth starring Mick Jagger, who would have been, at best, a Goblin Duke?

Yes. Other differences between Earth Classic and Alternate Earth include mandatory
casual Fridays, butter-flavored soft drinks and oh, we sold Florida back to Spain.

(source: science)

The Department of Grim Portents

In effort to distract us from the fact that they have yet to discover aliens or invent a warp drive, NASA has announced that they're establishing the Planetary Defense Coordination Office to protect us from potential threats from space. Because fuck space.

"See that? That's space, and it wants
to kill you. Never forget that."

Come to think of it, I was just as
disappointed when they did. Burn!
Take that, 20 year old movie!

Ok, really the PDCO will only look out for a specific threat, asteroid collisions, but still, that's exactly one more space threat than we've ever bothered with before. The office is an extension of NASA's Near Earth Object Observation program, and in addition to observing and cataloguing potential planet-thumpers (it's a technical term), it will coordinate with FEMA. Oh and if you're wondering where the rag-tag team on a desperate mission to use a nuclear bomb and Aerosmith to divert the asteroid come in, you're going to be disappointed. 

They uh, they won't be doing that. The office is more about giving us fair warning than it is actually defending us against anything. If space wants to kill us, I guess there's not a whole lot anyone can do about it. But hey, it a better plan than anything the dinosaurs came up with.

Pffft...idiots.

We'll need the time to organize and
then rig the space ark lottery.

Ok, so realistically we're not going to be able to stop an incoming object and if it's large enough all the FEMA trucks, rapture shelters and bottled water in the world aren't going to save us. So what's the point? Other than the slightly more badass name? Eh. It's mostly organizational. PDCO also coordinates what was a bunch of separate, inefficient NASA offices, and Planetary Defense sounds way better than Inter-Office Team-Building, especially when you're asking Congress for money. Besides, it's not unreasonable that we'd want as much warning as possible. 

Sure , extinction level event, riiiight.
Kiss our loved ones goodbye? Ok,
we'll get right on that Brian...

Or is it? If the Planetary Defense Coordination Office actually does spot a world-ending threat coming in, say one that will wipe us out completely, and then they tell us about it, are we better off? I mean, aren't we going to, you know, explode into a planet-wide orgy of panic and chaos the likes of which we've never seen? I wonder if they shouldn't have some kind of blissful ignorance protocol by which they let us know at the last possible minute. We do, as a species, kind of hate spoilers.

The last time a flaming ball of extinction rained down upon us was sixty-five million years ago so you could say we're kind of due, but then asteroids don't really keep a schedule. We're talking about space rocks flinging around the solar system at tens of thousands of miles per hour so it's just as likely to happen today as it is another million years from now. 

Above: Later today, or next week, the point is you don't know. Enjoy!

Peter Steele: Spin Wizard

Connecticut: "Come for the fall
foliage, stay for the heroin..."

"These are the things we have done: Number one, I've got a bill in to the legislature right now to take the traffickers. Now the traffickers, these aren't people that take drugs, these are guys that are named D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty. These type of guys they come from Connecticut and New York, they come up here, they sell their heroin, then they go back home." 

-Governor of Maine Paul LePage

opening his face-hole

Now wait, because here comes the shitshow...

"Incidentally, half the time they impregnate a young, white girl before they leave. Which is a real sad thing, because now we have another issue that we've got to deal with down the road."

-Words that came out of Maine 

Governor Paul LePage's mouth

"Nyaahh, see?"

-Noted mobster

Shifty McGee

Yeah, right out of his mouth, although my problem is with his communication director who thinks we're all idiots. But we'll get to him. First of all, Shifty? Is Maine being overrun by heroin-peddling mobsters from the 1930's? Secondly, half the time? Really? Like 50%? And finally, holyshitwhatthefuck? The Governor's comments have been widely called out for being racist and I guess state-ist, and they are. But we've heard Governors spout insensitive and outright disgusting bullshit before, so what makes this particularly egregious?

Why the response offered by the Governor's staff which presumes that everyone who had a problem with LePage's racist remarks will fall for some half-assed misdirection:

"The Governor is not making comments about race. Race is irrelevant."

-Peter Steele, LePage's communications director,

apparently using an Old Jedi Mind Trick

Peter Steele just wants to know
 why you hate children so much?

Yes he godddamn is making comments about race and if race is so irrelevant, how come he's bringing it up? Steele goes on to say:

"What is relevant is the cost to state taxpayers for welfare and the emotional costs for these kids who are born as a result of involvement with drug traffickers. "

-Steele, explaining that 

uh...hang on...did he just? 

I'm confused, is Peter Steele suggesting that we shouldn't worry about Governor LePage's racism because it's distracting us from the more important issue of caring for hypothetical children that 'young white girls' are having with hilariously named drug dealers? Holy shit, Peter Steele is clearly some kind of spin wizard.

Pretty much.

Adverpology!

Boooo! Go back to your
outdoor activities!

Don't worry everybody, Hasbro's ridiculous omission of Rey from the Star Wars: The Force Awakens version of Monopoly was totally not sexist. In fact, you're insane if you even suggest it. What the hell am I talking about? Oh, well originally the tie-in Monopoly set only included the characters Finn, Luke Skywalker, Kylo Ren and Darth Vader who-spoiler alert-isn't in the movie at all. The move invited fan backlash and accusations of sexism as it looked like Hasbro left Rey out because including her would make it a girl's toy and girls have no business enjoying Star Wars.

Damnit poster, I wanted
to be surprised! 

The company has since explained that the real reason the central character of the movie was left out was to avoid spoilers:

"The Star Wars: The Force Awakens Monopoly game was released in September, months before the movie's release, and Rey was not included to avoid reveling a key plot line that she takes on Kylo Ren and joins the Rebel Alliance [sic]."

-Hasbro, on how we're stupid idiots
for having ever doubted them

Yeah, bet you feel like a jerk now. Hasbro was just trying to keep the movie's big twist, you know, that the protagonist is female, under wraps and now the secret's out. I hope you're happy.

Spoiler alert: thimble.

Wait, wah? Since when was Rey a secret? And how would a half-inch game token give away the plot line? I mean we all knew Daisy Ridley was in the movie and that she had a major role. She was all over the trailer, the poster, other tie-in merchandise and the internet as a whole had been dissecting every scrap of information released right up to the release date. And besides, the movie was an almost beat-for-beat remake of A New Hope, so it's not like J. J. Abrams was super concerned about plot twists.

"Yeah, we love product!"

-Some kid

It seems like the classy thing for Hasbro to do here would have been to admit the glaring oversight, include the Rey token and move on, which they did. Sort of. I mean, the character is in the Monopoly set now, but admitting mistakes isn't a very business-y thing to do. The closest they come is an adverpology:

"Fans will see more Rey product hitting the shelves this month, including 6 and 12 inch Rey action figures. We are thrilled with the popularity of this compelling character and will continue to look for ways to showcase Rey across all our product lines."

So they're not so much sorry as they are thrilled to showcase Rey now that everybody has noticed that they left her out because of some weird notion that Star Wars is for boys and that kids must gender-identify with Monopoly. Lame guys, lame.

A group shot of female Star Wars fans at the...wait, that can't be right,
they must have gotten lost on their way to a My Little Pony conven-

-tion, wait, male Pony fans? Female Star Wars fans?
Ow! My worldview! I don't know what to believe in anymore...

And Ununoctium for the win!

Hey look, new elements! The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry have just given their blessing to four, count'em four new elements that scientists have just made up.

"Aaaaaand...radium! Science: achieved."

-Marie Curie circa 1898

Pictured: Element 113. To gaze upon it is to
invite madness and death. (source: science)

You heard me, made up. The elements, created by researchers from the U.S., Russia and Japan were created in a lab and do not exist in nature which is weird because you know, elements, right? Like, an element is, by definition, the fundamental building block of something, so how come they needed to make it in a lab? Shouldn't they have found it somewhere? Preferably in the form of some sinister, glowing orb buried deep under the earth in some kind of ancient vault? Maybe with a curse on the door? I mean, showmanship. 

Behold: an adorable chimera
known as the Cat/Dog!

And if they are the fundamental building blocks of whatever, what did they make it out of? Even fundamentaler building blocks? According to this, the researchers shoved atomic nuclei together and then recorded the new elements in the fraction of a second in which they exist before they decayed into nothingness. So again, I'm not a scientist but isn't that a little like stacking your pets and saying that you've discovered some new, magical creature? At least until the hissing starts.

But you know, that's cool, new elements. I suppose the IUPAC knows what they're talking about and I should probably just take their word for it. After all, they're not the International Union of Explaining Science to Me.

Speaking of, why haven't I been assigned my own team of scientists whose
sole job is to explain science to me? Seems like kind of an oversight. 

Above: Iron as represented by Fe,
because shut up, that's why.

Oh, but they are however the organization in charge of naming the elements and as such they've invited the researchers to come up with names and nonsensical atomic symbols for their brand new elements. Which, well, I guess they did discover them but still, I think we should put it to a vote on the internet, seems like that would be the democratic thing to do. I mean we crowdsource planet names now, and the IUPAC are the people who came up with flerovium and spell sodium with an 'n' so why not put it out there? With that in mind, I'd like to propose mythril, or adamantium, or-oh! I've got it: Calcium II: The Quickening. You know, I think I just figured out why we don't let just anyone name elements.

Anyway, the important thing to note here is that these elements finally fill out the seventh row of the periodic table which I gather is kind of big deal. For some reason. Probably gambling related, because. You know, that team of scientists who explain things to me would come in pretty hand right about now.

Pictured: Kosuke Morita from the Japanese research team who
discovered element 113, and in doing so won chemistry Bingo.

To boldy infringe...

Hey remember the good old days when you could just up and make a crowd-funded fan movie based on intellectual property owned by a massive corporation? No? Well, you could until Paramount suddenly decided it wasn't cool.

"Copyright schmopyright, go nuts." 

-Paramount Pictures official stance

on fan-films, until like, Wednesday

Remember the one about Newt Gingrich
and his slave-children on the moon?
You don't? I see how it is.

What the hell am I talking about? Remember back in June of 2014 when we talked about-huh? You mean you don't commit every post on this blog to memory or periodically review older posts on the off chance that a topic might come up again? I...I had no idea. I guess the truth comes out, huh? I suppose I should be glad you told me but still, stings you know? Anyway, here, click on this. Or just wait until I give up and summarize for you, like I always do. You know, we should really have a long talk about where this relationship is going.

You heard me.

Ok, so back in June of 2014, a group of trekkies released a sort of teaser trailer for their homemade Star Trek movie, Axanar. It's based on some vaguely referenced space war that happens after Star Trek: Enterprise (the one with Scott Bakula) but before the original Trek series. Anyway, because fans are hungry for new Star Trek that isn't all rehashed plot lines, explosions and Beastie Boys soundtracks, the project took in a ton of funding, beating its Kickstarted goal by all the money in the world (or something).

Fan-made Star Trek isn't anything new, nerds have been doing it for years. Sure, a lot of it is poorly acted fanon filmed in front of a green screen in someone's laundry room, but some of it is pretty well done.

Of course the laundry-room stuff outnumbers
the professional stuff by a fairly wide margin.

They got Chekov, Uhura and, uh,
Cameron from Ferris Bueller's
Day Off...it's a long story.

The New Voyages series has authentic-looking sets and impressive special effects and Of Gods and Men stars a Comic-Con's worth of former cast members lending it an air of legitimacy even if the story is an an incoherent jumble of fan fiction. The important thing is that up until now, Paramount has apparently not minded if serious fans want to shoot their own Star Trek shows as long as they don't make any money off of it. But then suddenly they did mind. Like, out of nowhere.

"We're simply leveraging our branding
so as to better monetize our content."

-Business

On Wednesday, Paramount and CBS announced that they'd be suing the shit out the people behind Axanar. How come?

"The producers of Axanar are making a Star Trek picture they themselves describe as a fully professional independent Star Trek film. Their activity clearly violates our Star Trek copyrights, which, of course, we will continue to vigorously protect."

-Paramount explaining that they're suing their

 own fans for having good production values

The company is asking for an injunction and damages which, wait, damages? How are they 'damaged' by it, if hasn't even come out yet? Hey, can the fans sue for sitting through Nemesis? That was pretty damaging...

Pictured: A scene from Star Trek: Nemesis in which Captain Picard
is menaced by his clone, who's also a vampire I guess. It's kind of a blur.

Again, a zero percent chance of confusing
 fan-made Star Trek for the real thing.

Ok, Paramount does kind of have point. I get that they've got to be able to exercise control over their intellectual property. There's a new movie coming out this year and a new series in 2017, but c'mon. This film was not going to 'dilute their brand' of whatever the company is afraid of. Nobody's going to mistake fan films for official productions. Also, Axanar was going to be freely available on the internet, it's not like they're taking money away from Paramount. If anything, cracking down on it will do more to damage the studio in the long run.

I mean, they're suing the very fanbase that's kept Star Trek popular (and profitable) for like fifty years. These are people who love Star Trek so much they're willing and eager to put on ill-fitting costumes and immortalize their geekery on the internet for all time. Not for money, but for the love of their nerdom. Going after them is not only a dick move, but it also seems like it'd be bad for business.

To be clear, this is a fandom that spends weeks sewing costumes,
spirit-gum-ing forehead-ridges to their face and making their own
bat'leths. What I'm saying is, don't make an enemy of these people.