Welcome to my first ever Movie Trailer Premise Review. Due to a confluence of recent events (ticket prices are going up/banks are no longer lending) I can no longer afford to review actual films. So, I’ve decided to watch TV trailers for upcoming titles and review the premise of these movies instead. Today we’ll be taking a look at James Cameron’s AVATAR. What I’ll attempt to do here in a few thousand words is live up to the concise genius of Southpark, which was able to sum up everything I…
Tag Science
William Kamkwamba: Human Dynamo
I love the story of Srinivasa Iyengar Ramanujan, the Indian genius who taught himself mathematics and went on to create sublime proofs, capturing the attention of the world’s greatest mathematical thinkers. One-in-a-million prodigies like this seem to be sprinkled throughout time and geography, their distribution as random as it is sure. Just as a few people are born that grow over seven feet tall, the far reaches of the bell curve flashes with the odd Newton, Mozart, or William Kamkwamba. Never heard of the last? Born in Malawi, and unable…
Sci-Non-Fi: Augmented Vision
The Star Trek Communicator became the Nokia RAZR, yet people still mock sci-fi for being too “out there.” What makes us uncomfortable in fiction soon becomes a necessary crutch in real life. I found out yesterday that a friend of mine is having his knees replaced. I wasn’t surprised, just asked how long the re-hab would be. “A few weeks,” he said. “Then they’ll last ten to twelve years before they need to be replaced.” Like rubber tires. Which must have seemed just as unusual to buggy aficionados. Which probably…
How science fiction becomes science fact
My publisher and I were talking last night about the uncanny habit science has of catching up with developments first mentioned in science fiction. We both agreed that this seems to happen quite often, but after giving it more thought, I’ve changed my mind. I’m not really sure that’s the case. Of the billions of concepts dreamed up each year in the genre, how many become viable? Several thousand? I don’t see prescience there, I see statistical chance. In fact, science fiction writers (whether it’s TV, film, or literature) tend…
We are too big to understand
I’ll never forget the realization that came with my first foray into astronomy: we are much too small to matter, or to understand anything. Deep within The Reader, I’ve stumbled upon a series of clues. Taken together, they suggest that I was quite right to lament our stature, but wrong to think that we are too big. The truth ended up being so obvious that I feel the fool for not seeing it earlier. The evidence is all around us, even as I write this. Stephen Jay Gould, one of…