I mentioned last month that Brood X, the prodigious cohort of cicadas that emerge every 17 years to mate and be quite loud about it, are coming this year — possibly near you! For those of you who want more of the science behind it all, here’s Mike Raupp, the “Bug Guy” and avowed cicada fan to give you all the details you didn’t know you needed.
Since I did a post this past September about the “Star Trek Day” panels last September, I figured I’d post it here — and for those of you who can, perhaps you’d like to see some of them live. I’m not sure if CBS/Paramount plan to make this a regular thing or if this was done, in part, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the film Star Trek: First Contact. The action begins at 12…
I will occasionally post about topics involving intellectual property and the public domain, most notably with new works coming into the public domain in the United States every January 1st. That means, in relatively short order, Mickey Mouse will come into the public domain, since his first appearance was in 1928’s “Steamboat Willie.” But whenever Disney and lawyers are involved, you know that no simple answer will suffice. Enter Quincy Stanford over at the Disney…
With the release of WandaVision, we got to see a new genre mashup from the Marvel Cinematic Universe: superheros and sitcoms. Certainly this isn’t the first time there’s been a mashup of superheroes and outright silliness (The Tick is the one that pops in my mind most concretely as it has had several TV incarnations). And the sitcom backdrops in WandaVision actually lay a foundation for some distinct non-comic plotlines (that’s the limit to how…
I think L. Frank Baum (the source of the amended quotation above) would understand. Like books, songs, and many other an enjoyable thing: all things come to an end. Thanks to one of my siblings, I have a glorious poster of assorted iconic film endings hanging in my house. Who doesn’t love a really solid ending to a film? Whether it’s funny, poignant, thought-provoking, or applause-inducing, a satisfying ending is what so often makes a…
Denizens of the Washington metropolitan region share some experiences, like watching Hollywood films where they never get the geography right, there’s some problem on the Beltway, and also… Brood X. And yeah, based on the map above, we’re not alone in dealing with the sudden and noisy appearance of billions of formidably-sized bugs all ready to fly right into your face. Seriously, it’s clear from talking with many of my fellow Americans, they have not…
Star Trek has influenced a lot of scientists and futurists, but recently, NASA namechecked the veteran sci-fi franchise when they talked about the Artemis Accords, a series of principles that they hope all spacefaring nations agree to, as covered by Ryan Britt for Inverse. Good stuff. (By the way, I was rather gratified to know that I already had the tag ‘Space Law‘ and also that there’s a novel called Space Lawyer, which I shall…
What with my biennial Favorite Films sort, I have a soft spot for many an internet film list, especially when it’s clearly crafted with passion (as opposed to, say, the need to fill electronic print space on deadline). So I was totally down with this list from the gang over at The Ringer detailing the top 50 cult films of all time. Now, I would venture that the appear of cult films is often why…
I don’t want ye olde blog to go without updates for too long, but I also gotta take care of some other stuff offline. I confess some of the delay in getting to those offline things has been checking out the many fun articles about all sorts of odd inaugural trivia. Enjoy! (there will be a test Thursday). The Virginian-Pilot The Daily Record WTOP The Seattle Times Perennial favorite Mental Floss
As will surprise no one who’s read my exhaustive ranking of all the Star Trek series, I’ve been watching all the new stuff. And it’s not just because those are going into the sort soon enough. A lot of it has been darn enjoyable in a 4th season Enterprise kind of way. They’re making connections and widening the Star Trek universe into quite the multiverse. Ryan Britt over on SyFy Wire details some of the…