I know I’m months behind the Kool Kidz, but I finally had a chance to watch the new J.J. Abrams Star Trek reboot.  (Minor spoilers ahead, just in case you’re even less hip than I am, and haven’t seen the new Trek yet.)

Liked:

• The visuals were amazing, as is to be expected of current-day CGI.  The space battles were fantastic, exciting, fast-paced stuff.  Favorite shot: the unlucky female crew member of the Kelvin getting sucked out into space through a hull breach, and careening off past the phaser battery that’s firing back at the Romulan ship.
• The set design was also well executed.  The bridge of the new Enterprise makes the Apple Stores look like they were put together by the Amish.  The uniforms approximated the original series’ velvet pajamas without looking either cheesy or like a bad homage. 
• The actors mostly got the characters’ idiosyncrasies down, and created their own interpretations without just doing Kirk/Spock/McCoy/Scotty imitations.  The only one that grated a little was the guy who played Scotty—he had a hard time keeping up a convincing Scottish accent.

Flinched at:

• The science, particularly the “red matter” business.  Ouch.  The stuff is so volatile and powerful that it can generate a singularity, yet you can keep it contained in a Vulcan ship, siphon it off with a needle, and bottle it?
• What was the point of Young Kirk trashing that ‘Vette, other than establishing that James T. Kirk a.) has a severe issue with authority, and b.) really likes hanging off precipices by his fingertips?  (He ends up in that position three or four times in the movie.)
• The Enterprise being put together in a dry dock in the middle of Iowa?  How are you going to get the whole thing into space when it’s done?  Every bit of technobabble related to Trek makes clear that the Enterprise needs her transporters because she can’t make planetary landings.  It made for some awesome CGI shots, though.
• The villain.  I’ve liked Eric Bana since Blackhawk Down, but he doesn’t come off as very menacing or convincingly motivated in this one. 
• Academy cadets staffing a commissioned vessel (the flagship of the fleet, no less!), because the rest of the fleet is busy somewhere else?  Does Starfleet have such an abundance of ships that they have to resort to filling them with trainees in an emergency?
• Kirk being evicted from the Enterprise, shot down onto the desolate ice planet…and ending up literally on top of Old Spock?
• Do a three-man HALO drop with Kirk, Sulu, and a Red Shirt…and give all the detonators to the Red Shirt?  (Hands up, all of you who didn’t see Red Shirt’s fate coming from a mile away.)
• Amazingly creative field promotions—putting cadets above Fleet officers into command positions.
• Promoting a maverick Academy cadet straight to Captain, and giving him command of the flagship of Starfleet?

Overall, however, it was a fun ride, and a mostly well-executed (and much-needed) reboot of the franchise.  I did like how they mostly pulled off the whole “alternate reality” thing, to wipe the slate clean regarding continuity.  It’ll be interesting to see where they take the whole thing from here.

That salty scent you can smell in the air this morning?  That’s the smell of millions of hippie tears, wafting over from the Left Coast, where the students of UC Berkeley demonstrate that Economics isn’t much in demand at their institution.

Look, kids: your home state is broke as shit.  It’s broke because you folks voted yourself free everything with crunchy gratis glaze and no-cost sprinkles on top, and even the super-sized tax rates your state collects aren’t enough to pay for everything.  The money to run stuff has to come from somewhere, and when your state cuts education budgets (see “broke as shit” above), then the only way to keep the lights on is by raising user fees.  But you go ahead and throw your hissy fits because you’re asked to pay for the services you’re receiving, and see how far the sympathy-o-meter gets pegged.  To me, it’s just another conclusive demonstration that your idea of taxation is “Free Means Free To Me”, and “Don’t tax you, don’t tax me, tax that fellow behind the tree.”

(On a side note: even after the rate hike, the bill for a semester at UC Berkeley is $10k per semester.  Compared to other universities in its weight class, that’s a screaming bargain.  Get a scholarship, get a side job, put some elbow grease into it…but stop whining about having to contribute to your world-class education what are basically slightly inflated community college fees in other parts of the country.)

The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology figures out what some of us have known all along: you can’t get rid of everything on airplanes that can possibly be used as a weapon.

(They stabbed a few dead pigs with various everyday items, such as pens and broken glasses. Shockingly, all of them can inflict lethal wounds.)

Your weapon is that squishy grey mass between your ears—everything else is just a tool.  I know people who are more dangerous with a paperclip and a hand towel than your average soft suburbanite would be with a loaded machine gun.  You can kill someone with a freakin’ paperback, if you have the attitude and the will.  Trying to make society safe by taking away all the sharp, shooty, or pointy things is a fool’s errand.

(Via BoingBoing.)

Lissa has a post up on her impending Lasik surgery, which made me realize an interesting circumstance:

Lasik and plastic surgery are two procedures that are not covered by insurance plans, and therefore almost entirely subject to market supply and demand.   If I want to believe the common criticisms of free market healthcare, Lasik and plastic surgery should be expensive as sin, since the providers can pretty much charge whatever they want.

Yet Lasik and plastic surgery become more affordable with each passing decade.  When my friend Joerg had Lasik ten years ago, he paid almost twice what Lissa is paying now.  In addition, I can call most Lasik providers or plastic surgeons, and I can guarantee you that I won’t have to wait very long for an appointment.

Imagine that: a health-related service that’s subject to the whims of the market…and it’s affordable and available.

my mind my body my choice

Without wanting to touch the middle rail that is the abortion debate (and please don’t kick that one off in the Comments), one of the many things that amaze me is the significant overlap between the “My Body, My Choice” crowd, and the folks who think we should tax fast food out the wazoo and ban smoking…and that carrying a gun to protect the body’s physical integrity is a Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Thing.

what shotgun rounds to use on a werewolf

You use “Wunderbar Werenwolf” shells, manufactured by the German company Potzblitz & Kaputtmacher, which is based in the Black Forest and run by industrious Teutonic gnomes.  Wunderbar Werenwolf shells are hand-crafted from the finest sterling silver, blessed by the Pope, quenched with the blood of unicorns, and packaged in finely-carved bloodwood boxes.  They’re also entirely fictional, which is OK, because so are werewolves.

piccadilly notebooks

Those are knock-offs of the popular Moleskine notebook, the one with the black oilcloth cover and the rubber band to hold it shut.  Piccadillys look and work the same as Moles, but cost less than half as much.  I have a pretty extensive stash in case Borders decides to stop stocking them, and the first draft of the current novel is being written in a large Piccadilly.  So far, it has survived several months of being used daily (and getting hauled to coffeeshops weekly) without showing any wear or defects.

knife skipper

You know those localized versions of Barbie they adjust to local cultural sensibilities?  Well, Knife Skipper is the Skipper they sell in Brooklyn and Newark.

i slapped a kid and his family threatened me

Well, what the hell kind of response did you expect?  Most people get very protective when it comes to their offspring.  You can count yourself very lucky they only threatened you.  I know if you had slapped one of my kids, you would have been looking down the muzzle of a gun.  (And if their mother was in charge of them at the time, your search term would have included the phrase “traumatic amputation”.)

dad toughest job ever t-shirt

I don’t know about “toughest job ever”.  I don’t have to dodge IEDs, get shot at, or pilot a helicopter to ferry troops into  Afghanistan’s mountains.  That said, the job of the stay-at-home Dad is definitely no cakewalk, and anyone who says that stay-at-home parents “have no real job” need to be put in charge of two preschool kids full-time for a month. 

"setting the margins" typewriter

Most manual typewriters have a mechanism to adjust the page margins.  It can be as simple as “Set/Clear” buttons next to the spacebar like on some Olympias, or it may require you to flip up a cover at the back of the carriage and set a pair of little sliders by hand.

lamy 2000 novel writing pen

That’s what Neil Gaiman called his Lamy 2000 once.  From what I can tell, he wrote “American Gods” and “The Graveyard Book” at least partially with the Lamy.  It’s a very comfortable pen with a very smooth nib, and one of my favorites.  My only gripe with it is that even the extra-fine nib doesn’t produce a fine enough line for my preferences.  (I may send mine off to a nibmeister to have the point reground to a true extra-fine.)  Other than that, however, it’s an outstanding design, and the most bang for the buck by far in the $100 price bracket.

a day in the life of quinn

You know those Calvin & Hobbes cartoons, the best comic strip in the history of comic strips?  Those are looking more and more like a prescient documentary to me. 

guy holding chrome glock

Glocks don’t come in chrome.  You can get one chromed by a refinishing shop, but that would be like putting sparkly metallic paint on a Humvee.  It is, however, my understanding that “Glock” is now a generic catch-all term for “handgun” in some circles, because the word sounds cool in rap songs.

it is not rape if you deserve it

If you live by that maxim, I can only hope that you get arrested and thrown into jail as a rapist one day, which will be the karmically correct way to have that disgusting little piece of wisdom backfire on you.

After a week-long hiatus due to lack of original search terms, the MSTS is back!  Be sure to feed appropriate and original search terms into the Searcholator, so I’ll have ammo for next week.  Now get back to work, cubicle-dwellers!

Friend Mark and I have been tossing around a few concepts for a new SF series called “Cattlestar Britannica.”  The story centers on the titular warship, sole survivor of a devastating Cylon attack on the Twelve Colonies, and her crew’s adventures as she guides a rag-tag fleet of civilian ships to a new home.

As a Sunday treat, I’ll share a preview with you: the episode guide for Season One.

• Episode 1:  The Britannica’s flight to safety is almost foiled at the start when Commander Blairdama apologizes to the attacking Cylon task force for causing offense, and offers the Britannica as restitution. 
• Episode 2:  Ragnar Anchorage refuses to issue much-needed munitions for the Britannica’s guns, as the Office of Health & Safety has determined that weapons are dangerous, and someone could get hurt.
• Episode 3:  Commander Blairdama issues an order mandating five years in the brig for anyone caught onboard the Britannica with a sidearm or a pocket knife.
• Episode 4:  The Cattlestar’s security detachment accidentally shoots 382 crew members on suspicion of being Cylon infiltrators.
• Episode 5:  When Britannica gets boarded by a party of Centurions, the ship’s XO takes desperate measures to hold off the foe:  security cameras and ID checks at every corridor intersection.
• Episode 6:  Cattlestar Britannica receives upgrades–speed bumps in the launch tubes, and roundabouts installed on the flight deck.  When a massive Cylon raid bears down on the Cattlestar, no Vipers can be launched, because all the pilots are in the brig for insufficient profile on their landing skids, or exceeding the speed limit in the launch tubes.
• Episode 7:  Tactical officer Lt. Gaeta gets thrown in the brig for hate speech—referring to incoming Cylons  as “hostile raiders.”
• Episode 8:  Doc Cottle, the ship’s only qualified physician, blows his brains out due to the stress put on him by the “free health care for all” mandate.  An investigation finds that the doctor hadn’t slept since the beginning of the Cylon attack, two months prior.
• Episode 9: A Cylon infiltrator blows himself up on the Britannica, killing twenty-six Marines and civilians.  Commander Blairdama reacts by offering the Cylons a seat on the Quorum of Twelve, and the entire starboard flight pod to set up their own society and justice system.  The Brittanica’s spiritual leaders promptly offer to enforce Cylon religious law throughout the rag-tag fleet.
• Episode 10:  An empty cartridge case is found in the pilot ready room.  Flight ops come to a standstill as the Britannica’s bomb squad is out of action with food poisoning.
• Episode 11:  A budding mutiny is swiftly suppressed by the judicious issuance of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders.
• Episode 12:  A Cylon defector asks for asylum on the Britannica, but ends up committing suicide after sampling the food in the Cattlestar’s mess hall.
• Episode 13:  A CAP flight of Vipers is ambushed by a superior Cylon force.  Hotshot pilot Starbuck is brought up on charges of Firing Back At The Enemy.
• Episode 14:  Some of the Britannica’s mechanics actually manage to fix a broken Viper, and are promptly fired for anticompetitive practices and for making the other repair crews "look bad and feel invalidated".
• Episode 15:  Starbuck manages to capture a Cylon raider, but the craft is scrapped after it can’t be converted to comply with Colonial Fleet safety regulations and right-side steering.  Starbuck is charged with theft.
• Episode 16:  Genius scientist Dr. Baltar comes up with a fail-proof Cylon Detector when he discovers that Cylons have immaculate dental health.

That’s the schedule for Season One of “Cattlestar Britannica”.  Maybe we’ll come up with enough ideas for me to share the episode guide for Season Two later…

I’m an aviation nut and gadget hound, but even I think that this is a terrible idea:

The Terrafugia Transition, the world’s first car/plane hybrid.

Look, the carnage on our streets should give you a hint why it’s not smart to have the same idiots taking to the sky as well.  I mean, the third or fourth time some Granny confuses the throttle with the flaps, and dive-bombs into the underwear aisle at WalMart at 400 knots, most people will realize that adding another dimension to the afternoon traffic derby only adds more ways to die in fiery collisions…

Here’s something that ticks me off beyond reasonable levels:

Douchebags wearing military uniforms and medals they’ve never earned, pretending they did.

This is different from the Glenn Beck thing, where someone uses a uniform as a prop.  That was annoying, but not nearly as offensive as this particular case, because Glenn Beck never put on that uniform claiming to be an Unteroffizier in the German Army.  No, the douchebag featured in this article represented himself not only as a Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant, but also as a recipient of the Navy Cross, the second-highest decoration that can be bestowed on a sailor or Marine after the Medal of Honor.

There’s a way to earn that uniform, and that’s by going to a Marine Corps recruiter, and taking the hard road that goes through Parris Island or San Diego MCRD.  There’s a way to attain that rank, and that’s by serving with distinction and working your way up the ranks as a non-commissioned officer.  There’s a way to get that Navy Cross, and that’s by performing an action that involves extreme gallantry and risk of life, beyond the call of duty, performed in combat with an enemy force.  There’s a way to get that Purple Heart, and that’s by shedding blood and receiving wounds for your country in combat.

Going to an Army/Navy shop and paying money for a USMC dress uniform and a handful of ribbons is not it.

What is it with people who try to leech honor off the people who earned it legitimately?  The medals on that dorkwad’s chest are just ribbons without the achievement behind them.  A Navy Cross costs maybe $5 to manufacture.  I could make up a trophy for any achievement you’d like, and hand it to you to put on your mantelpiece, but if you have any sense of honor at all, that trophy won’t mean a damn thing to you, because you know that you didn’t do anything to earn it.

A possible year in jail isn’t much of a punishment for that kind of douchebaggery.  A more fitting punishment would be to let him wear that uniform…and then drop him in the middle of Parris Island or Camp Lejeune, after briefing every Marine present on the precise nature of that gentleman’s transgressions.

Update: Turns out he got busted because he showed up at his 20-year HS reunion in USMC dress blues with Lieutenant Colonel oak leaves.  One of his former classmates is a genuine Navy Lt. Commander.  She saw the Navy Cross on his chest, and figured he was playing dress-up, since that particular award is a rare honor.  So she asked the “Lieutenant Colonel” to pose for a picture with her, which he gladly did.  Then she sent the picture to the Feds.

The moral of the story: Don’t claim uniform, rank, and medals you didn’t earn…and if you must try to score some tail at your reunion with a store-bought uniform, trey not to overcook it.  When you show up with more ribbons on your chest than Chesty Puller, and top your fruit salad with a medal whose recipients in the last decade can be counted on both hands with fingers left over, you may just arouse the suspicions of any legitimate vets who may be present.

Update the Second:  Here’s the picture the tool was sending around online to back up his claims of combat service in Iraq and Afghanistan:

The chevrons on his sleeves are that of a Master Gunnery Sergeant, which is the top of the enlisted rank ladder in the Corps.  A 39-year-old Master Gunny would be the youngest E-9 in the Corps, and one with the Navy Cross on his chest would be a Marine Corps legend.  The unrealistically high rank for a guy his age, combined with the astounding number of medals in his fruit salad would scream “poser” to any Marine fresh out of SOI, even without the Navy Cross that tripped this moron up in the end.

To all you current and former soldiers, Marines, airmen, sailors, and Coasties out there:

Thank you.