The animals that scientists experimented with — pinhead-sized worms known as nematodes — stayed paralyzed even when the light was turned off. When exposed to ordinary light, the paralysis wore off

The researchers fed a light-sensitive material — a “photoswitch” known as dithienylethene — to the transparent worms. When exposed to ultraviolet rays, the molecule turned blue and the worms became paralyzed. Using visible light instead made the chemical turn colorless and the paralysis ended [...]

Branda wanted to make clear that this photoswitch would likely not have the same effect on humans. “You’d have to have a huge amount of it,” he explained. “If you did, you might see the activity of cells shut down, which would eventually kill them. Paralysis is just an intermediate step to death in many cases.”

Video at the link.

Link via Discover | Image: Paramount Pictures

Meredith Woerner of the sci-fi blog io9 suspects that this video might be viral marketing for the next Star Trek movie. Ostensibly, it’s a Klingon military recruiting commercial. I’m not sure what is the original language, but thankfully it’s been dubbed into Klingon for your convenience.

via io9

In “The Apple” from the original “Star Trek” series, Captain James Kirk and his crew encounter an idyllic world whose ageless inhabitants feed a computer named Vaal.
It seems like a dandy setup to Mr. Spock, but Dr. McCoy argues that it can’t be healthy to have all your needs met by a “hunk of tin” (perhaps shortly after polishing off a meal created by the Enterprise’s replicator). Eventually, the Enterprise is forced to zap Vaal with its phasers, sending the binary being to an ignoble, smoky end.
The natives are seriously bummed, but Kirk cheers them up by telling them they can now work and struggle and get sick and die just like everyone else. Yay!

Link -via Digg

Klenginem is a German rapper who performs in the Klingon language, mostly modified Eminem songs. Here is his performance of “SuvwI’pu’ qan tu’lu’be”, which is known in English as “Without Me.”

Official Website via Popped Culture

"When I learn something essential," she explained, "I make up a law about it. That way, I never forget."

Neatoramanaut John Farrier of The Zeray Gazette was inspired to write his own personal laws, which he blogged about here:

In the past year, I’ve been intentional about formulating such life lessons. I keep a MS Word document on my hard drive listing these thoughts, and each one goes through a probationary period before being accepted as both true and important. Here are some of the results, including some probationary laws, with explanations:

Just because you’ve done stupid stuff doesn’t mean that you have to keep on doing stupid stuff in order to be consistent. This is a reflection of Harry Browne’s Previous Investment Trap. Consistency is a vastly overrated virtue, and it is better to admit that you were wrong and stop going in the wrong direction.

There is nothing inherently ennobling about hardship. My concept of masculinity long held that a man undertook great and challenging tasks and overcame obstacles. Suffering for a cause is noble. I now think otherwise.

Go where the cheese is. Taken from the book Who Moved My Cheese?, anticipate that shit will fall out of the sky, and be prepared to move as conditions change. Be on the lookout for change, have a backup plan for everything, and implement it immediately when the change occurs. That you do not like the change will not prevent it from taking place.

Link (with a very lively discussion in the comments)

If you were to write yourself personal laws, what would they be?

Origami, the age-old discipline of folding paper into amazing figures, has its own masters, and as this post demonstrates, these geniuses can truly transform paper into any form they desire.

Origami – the traditional Japanese art of paper folding – is something that a geek could really get into. It’s all about visual math, and problem-solving, but with that artistic nuance as well. The origami artists below came up with some very cool designs, which we can definitely appreciate – so check them out!

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geeksaresexy.

If you think those professionally created dog costumes are mean to force pets to wear, then you really ought to see the options people turn to when they don’t just buy the pre-made costumes. I guess this is why Star Trek fans shouldn’t get drunk.

Link

Apparently on the Enterprise-D, there was only one toilet, and the post includes a video of Jonathan Frakes pointing it out on a schematic of the ship.

Link

image by flickr user Richard Freedman used under creative commons license

The small town of Vulcan in Alberta, Canada, has exploited its Star Trek name since the 60s. It’s a pilgrimage site for nerds where the local menus offer foods from Star Trek without explaining what they are for you unenlightened souls who don’t watch the shows.

Via Topless Robot

USS Enterprise (NCC-1701), the starship in the original Star Trek TV series

To boldly go where no man has gone before, you'd need a really good starship - and to launch Star Trek, the pop culture phenomenon that entertained and inspired millions, you'd need a pretty darned good one! And that is exactly what the United Space Starship Enterprise delivered. Here are 8 Starship Enterprise facts every Trekker should know:

1. Meet the REAL Enterprise (Several of Them, Actually)

(L) The tenth HMS Enterprise, an Arctic survey sloop (1848), painting by WH Browne from the National Maritime Museum online collection;
(R) USS Enterprise at Valcour Island, Lake Champlain, New York (1776) from Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships

Before Star Trek, there have been many actual ships named Enterprise. The very first one of note was a French frigate L'Enterprise, which was captured by the British Royal Navy in 1705 and renamed as HMS Enterprise. It served as a British gun ship until it was wrecked just two years later. After this ship, there were 14 other HMS also named Enterprise (sometimes spelled Enterprize).

The United States have 8 battleships named Enterprise, including the first nuclear powered aircraft carrier in the world. The very first one (before the US became a country, so technically it was a ship of the Continental Navy) was an armed sloop on Lake Champlain in 1775 named the United States Ship (USS) Enterprise.

During the American Civil War, aeronaut and scientist Thaddeus S.C. Lowe built a balloon named Enterprise, to be used by the Union Army to perform aerial recon on Confederate troops.

(L) Enterprise, a gas inflated aerostat (1858); (M) Space Shuttle Enterprise; (R) Artist rendering of VSS Enterprise

And who can forget the Space Shuttle Enterprise? It was the very first Space Shuttle orbiter, built for NASA in 1976. The Shuttle was supposed to be named Constitution, but a write-in campaign successfully persuaded NASA to name it after the Star Trek starship. (Interestingly, the fictional Starship Enterprise was a Constitution-class vessel - coincidence? Hm....)

The last actual Enterprise hasn't been built yet but it already has a name: Virgin Space Ship (VSS) Enterprise and yes, it's an homage to Star Trek. It's a suborbital spaceplane being built by Sir Richard Branson of Virgin for the purposes of space tourism.

Ironically, when Sir Richard offered the first flight to William Shatner, the actor declined and revealed that he's actually afraid of space travel, "I'm interested in man's march into the unknown but to vomit in space is not my idea of a good time. Neither is a fiery crash with the vomit hovering over me." Shatner added that he's not entirely against the idea - he just needed some reassurance. "I do want to go up but I need guarantees I'll definitely come back." (Source)

2. No Rockets, Jets or Firestreams

Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, who pitched the TV show as "Wagon Train to the Stars," didn't tell art director Matt Jefferies what Starship Enterprise should look like, instead he told the bewildered art director what he did not want to see. Starship Concept Art has reprint of a nifty article in Star Trek: The Magazine by Jefferies about the design process:

"In my approach to Star Trek I wanted to be as practical as possible," Jefferies says. "I could tell Gene was serious enough, but I really didn't know where to start. I knew the Enterprise was going to be on the cutting edge of the future, but essentially he gave me the job of finding a shape, and I didn't know what the shape looked like." Although Roddenberry knew a lot about his ship, he had never visualized it, and consequently made the situation more complicated since he couldn't give Jefferies a detailed sense of direction. According to Jefferies, Roddenberry was absolutely clear to avoid any resemblance to a 1960's rocket ship. "Gene described the 100-150 man crew, outer space, fantastic, unheard-of speed, and that we didn't have to worry about gravity. He had emphasized that there were to be no fins, no wings, no smoke trails, no flames, no rocket.

After hundreds of drawings, Jefferies came up with this:

Image via Starship Concept Art

In his honor, the crawl spaces on all of the Starfleet starships on Star Trek are called Jefferies tubes.

3. The Original Name of USS Enterprise

That's right - the iconic starship wasn't always named USS Enterprise ... in the original draft, Roddenberry named it USS Yorktown after a World War II aircraft carrier. The starship was commanded by Captain Robert April, then Christopher Pike, before Roddenberry settled on James Tiberius Kirk.

By the way, William Shatner was the third choice for Kirk. The role was offered to Lloyd Bridges and Jack Lord, both of whom declined it.

4. The Origin of NCC-1701

How did the famous USS Enterprise get its registration number NCC-1701 is the stuff of legend. There are conflicting stories, including one where 1701 is a tribute to Roddenberry's childhood neighbor's house number or that Jefferies got it from the registration number of his airplane.

Here's Matt Jefferies' explanation when he was asked during a BBC Interview:

NC, by international agreement, stood for all United States commercial vehicles. Russia had wound up with four Cs, CC CC. It’d been pretty much a common opinion that any major effort in space would be two expensive for any one country, so I mixed the US and the Russian and came up with NCC.

The one seven zero part - I needed a number that would be instantly identifiable, and three, six, eight and nine are too easily confused. I don’t think anyone’ll confuse a one and a seven, or the zero. So the one seven stood for the seventeenth basic ship design in the Federation, and the zero one would have been serial number one, the first bird.

5. Land the Ship? Too Expensive, Let's Teleport Everybody Instead!

Photo: Rex Features

Originally, Roddenberry envisioned the USS Enterprise to land on various planets, but it turned out to be too expensive as it would require them to build expensive sets. The next idea was to use shuttles - but when filming began, the full-sized shooting model wasn't ready. So, they came up with the idea of "beaming down" the crew via a teleportation device and thus the transporter was born! (Source)

In 1994, TIME Magazine interviewed Star Trek technical expert Michael Okuda about the intricacies of the transporter:

"It should be possible if we decompile the pattern buffer."

Transporters can send people instantly from one location to another by converting their molecules into energy, then reassembling them. Every living being has a distinct pattern of molecules; the pattern buffer fixes the configuration by adjusting for the Doppler effect -- the apparent change in the frequency of the energy waves caused by motion.

"I'll verify the Heisenberg compensators."

The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states that you cannot know a subatomic particle's exact position and its exact direction and velocity at the same time. To transport people you have to know all those things, so the Heisenberg compensator was devised to overcome that problem. It's an attempt by the Trek writers to signal that they are at least aware of the issue. And how does the Heisenberg compensator work? "It works very well, thank you," says Okuda.

6. The Next Gen Enterprise: Hilton in Space

Jefferies designed the bridge in the original USS Enterprise in the style of a Navy battleship, with specialized workstations for its crew. When set designer Richard James updated the bridge for Star Trek: The Next Generation (restriction: no purple!), Jefferies was asked about the new look. To which he replied:

Gene asked me how I liked the show, and I said that he had taken the bridge of my ship and turned it into the lobby of the Hilton. And I have just never watched any of them since. I’m lost.

Ironically, Star Trek and Hilton actually did come together to create a theme attraction. Star Trek: The Experience opened in 1998 at the Las Vegas Hilton. It closed in 2008 due to low attendance (though it is due to re-open in a different location in 2010).

7. The Original Star Trek Enterprise Prop

Photo: Carolyn Russo / Smithsonian

If you visit the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian, definitely check out the actual model of the Starship Enterprise used in the filming of the original Star Trek TV show.

The hull and one nacelle of the original Star Trek Starship Enterprise model as it was received by the National Air and Space Museum from Paramount Studios on March 1, 1974. Image WEB11192-2009. Photo: Smithsonian (with permission)

The model of the Enterprise was sent to the museum in crates, donated by Paramount Studios five years after the series ended.

Enterprise during its first Smithsonian restoration. SI Neg #74-3977. Photo: Smithsonian (with permission)

The Smithsonian performed extensive restoration to put the starship model back together, and for the first time ever, the photos of the restoration process are available to the public at the museum's blog.

The Museum Registrar Gregory K.H. Bryant has more on this behind the scenes look at the icon science fiction model: Link - Thanks Llori!

8. The Hot-Rod Starship Enterprise

For his movie Star Trek, director J.J. Abrams decided that the USS Enterprise could use a face-lift and worked with artists at Industrial Light & Magic to update the starship - like Roddenberry, he gave a simple directive:

"He wanted a hot-rod type of vehicle, but they also wanted to preserve the Enterprise kind of look," model maker John Goodson said in a presentation at ILM's San Francisco headquarters earlier this month.

"J.J. Abrams kept saying, 'Make it a bigger movie. Make it a bigger shot,'" creative director David Nakabayashi added. "I think that's one thing you see in this film, at least: The stuff I've seen is just everything is big."

SCI FI Wire has the interview with model maker John Goodson and visual effects supervisor Roger Guyett about the new Enterprise: Link

The official website for JJ Abram's Star Trek movie has a nifty 360° panorama of the bridge of the new starship:

Following up on our 8 Starship Enterprise Facts Every Trekker Should Know post, here are some of the neatest Star Trek cakes ever made. Enjoy (Resistance is futile!)

Star Trek Cake by Ace of Cakes - via TrekMovie (note the angry nerd comments)

CakeCentral user Spense uploaded these photos of the Captain Kirk Cake made for the 2009 Star Trek Cake Contest (many, many more cool Star Trek cakes there)

Another one for the CakeCentral Star Trek Cake contest, this one is simple yet very chic: the Star Trek Uniform groom cake by CakeCentral user tenmeows.

USS Reliant Birthday Cake complete with blue LED, by Victoria Sgro-Konopka of SunShine's Cake Creations

Star Trek Communicator Cake by Rick Reichart of Cakelava

This one is quite beautiful: Jonathan Lane's groom cake, over at USS Angeles.

The four sides of the cakes include messages from the Klingons ("Where do you keep the chocolate" - chocolate is an aphrodisiac for Klingons), Ferengis ("You humans still owe us for this cake"), Romulans ("The Praetor says hello"), Cardassian ("Hey, why weren't we invited to the wedding"), Bajoran ("May the Prophets guide you both in your lives together") and Vulcans ("Live long and prosper") - in their native languages.

The Star Trek Enterprise Cake by Edward and Antoni Frys of
European Cake Gallery (ironically, in Texas) - via Cake Wrecks

A Star Trek Birthday Cake by Alix Lewer of Alixs Cakes - a wonderful fondant work!

Star Trek Cupcakes by Clares Cupcakes

Borg Wedding Cake (look at the lil' Enterprise getting phasered!)

And last but not least, the Picard Cake to celebrate Captain Picard Day tomorrow (June 16):

Captain Picard Cake at POWET.TV

Here’s a mashup of the original Star Trek series with the Knights of the Round Table (Camelot) song from Monty Python and the Holy Grail: Link [embedded YouTube clip]

Crafster user Bethany Joyce came up with what has got to be the geekiest oven mitt ever, combining Star Trek and a love for baking. Behold, the Bake It So oven mitt.

Link | More Star Trek Crafts at this Crafster post

Similarly, over at Neatorama’s Online Store: Pac-Man HotHead Ove Mitt

Nimoy felt that there should be some kind of distinctive greeting among Vulcans, analogous to a handshake or a bow. Alan Dean Foster’s novelization, based on an early script, has Spock kneeling before the Vulcan matriarch, T’Pau, who places her hands on his shoulders, like royalty dubbing a knight. But Nimoy didn’t care for this. Previous episodes had already established that Vulcans are touch telepaths. Therefore, a touch on the shoulders would be an invasion of privacy. Instead, Nimoy drew upon his own Jewish background to suggest the now-familiar salute. Back in the 1960s, hippies who watched "Amok Time" thought the salute was a variation of the two-fingered peace sign. But we Jews knew better. The Vulcan salute came not from protest marches, but from the pulpit of Nimoy’s childhood synagogue.

The Vulcan greeting is based upon a blessing gesture used by the kohanim (koe-hah-NEEM) during the worship service. The kohanim are the genealogical descendants of the Jewish priests who served in the Jerusalem Temple. Modern Jews no longer have priests leading services as in ancient times, nor do we have animal sacrifices anymore. (Yes, people really do ask about that!) The sacrificial system ended with the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in the year 70. C.E. However, a remnant of the Temple service lives on in the "kohane blessing" ritual (duchenen in Yiddish) that is performed on certain holy days.

Link – via grow-a-brain

The new Star Trek movie may not have the Klingon language in it,  but Klingons may have the last laugh yet. They have center stage in a renewal of a long-lost art form: the Klingon opera.

Every culture has its epic tales of mighty warriors. Odysseus blinds the Cyclops. Beowulf rips out the arm of Grendel. For Klingons, there’s Kahless, who dices 500 warriors with a sword forged from his own hair and some help from the Lady Lukara. To celebrate their victory, they make love in the ankle-deep blood.

The story of Kahless the Unforgettable is a cornerstone of Klingon mythology, as told in the opera u. Members of the Klingon Terran Research Ensemble — based in The Hague, the Netherlands — have been workshopping u for the last year with an ambitious goal: to mount the first authentic performances of Klingon opera here on earth.

“The first time I read that proposal, I thought they were freaks,” says Jorn Weisbrodt, the creative director for the Byrd Hoffman Watermill Foundation in New York. “But they’re really being very serious. And I think it really is the result that matters, and I found the result quite fascinating and interesting and strange and weird.”

Link – via npr

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by CheeseDuck.

But I do think that Star Trek is a fairly progressive/liberal science fiction franchise. It’s a basically hopeful vision of the future. It offers up a future earth that has survived war, terrorism, and ecological disasters and forged a global government of representative democracy (we are never told this, but it must be some form of federalist system to avoid tyranny). Hunger and poverty have been overcome. Most diseases have been conquered and high quality universal healthcare is available for all. Education is free and the world is highly literate with most people going beyond secondary education. It’s a clean energy society that is eco-friendly. (In Star Trek IV, the Enterprise crew in their stolen Klingon ship actually go back in time to the 20th C. to keep whales from going extinct–and in the process save the earth of their future.) There is finally global racial harmony. And, despite the micro-mini-skirted uniforms that reflected the fact that the original series was made in the ’60s, we finally have gender equality, too.

Link

Image by Flickr user Tim Williams used under Creative Commons license

The bully. He alternates between jolly and grouchy — but even his jolly side is a little scary sometimes. He enjoys "teasing" his subordinates, especially anyone who’s different in some way, like having funny-shaped ears. "Notices" his female underlings a little too closely. He does give an inspiring speech about risk-taking, but that’s usually just to drag you into some weird body-switching scheme that will leave you with a weird rash for a month. He’s also the original "I want it done yesterday" boss, who’s "sick of hearing the word ‘can’t.’"

How to handle him: If he yells, yell back. Say "Dammit" a lot. If he asks how long something will take, exaggerate by at least 200 percent. If he starts cracking jokes at you, just ignore it, and he’ll probably go away. But never, ever make fun of him back. (I’ve totally had this boss, like twice, and thinking of him as Captain Kirk really helped.)

Link – via Miss Cellania

To help promote its new movie, Star Trek invited graffiti, special effects  and pop artists from all over the world to "re-interpret" the USS Enterprise. This one above is by Jeremy and Claire Weiss, model by Quantum Mechanx.

Link – via diskursdisko

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by diskursdisko.

Question: How many ears does Picard have?
Answer: Three. A right ear. A left ear. And a final front ear.

Question: What did the blonde Klingon say?
Answer: "It was a good day to dye."

Question: What is Thomas Riker’s dating philosophy?
Answer: "If at first you don’t succeed, try Troi again."

More here: Link | If you like that, you should visit the Shaggy Dog Story Archive

Our very own John who blog at The Zeray Gazette has, and he’s given it some serious thoughts:

… my usual interpretation of the economics of Star Trek: they were unrealistic, as they eliminated the first law of economics — scarcity. Thanks to the replicator, there is virtually no need to manufacture anything. Although there were a few objects, such as latinum or yamok sauce, that could not be replicated, there was essentially nothing that your replicator could not provide for you — including more replicators.

Link

Come to think of it – how would a money-less economics of the future a la Star Trek work? Who’ll do the scut work?

No?

Well if you did, now you can!

Coming out to promote the new Star Trek movie is a new line of Trek fragrances from Genki. I’m not kidding. The three scents include Tiberius ("difficult to define and impossible to refuse"), Red Shirt ("Because tomorrow may never come"), and Ponn Farr (after a Vulcan mating ritual).

Genki’s “Red Shirt” cologne (whose tag line “Because Tomorrow May Never Come” is priceless) celebrates the sacrifices of those often nameless crew of the USS Enterprise. Described appropriately as a cologne for those with a “devotion to living each day as it could be your last” the cologne has top notes of green mandarin, bergamot, and lavender, with base notes of leather and grey musk.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by jarrahpenguin.

When Go!Animate emailed me about letting Star Trek fans create their own space adventures using officially licensed images of Star Trek characters, I was intrigued. Now, I’ve never done any animation in my life (unless you count making flip books in elementary school), so I didn’t know quite what to expect.

Even without any creative skill and after only watching their demo video once, I was able to make my first animation, the short clip above in about twenty minutes (kudos to the Go!Animate creators, their point-and-click online animation tool is quite easy to use!).

Best of all, you too can make your own Star Trek animation – and when you do, please let us know the URL in the comment!

Earlier this year Devorah Sperber’s Star Trek art was featured in a show at Caren Golden Fine Art in New York. The show, entitled “Mirror, Mirror”, takes its name from a classic episode but also refers to the way viewers are meant to view the art – via reflective materials. The unique artwork is comprised only of beads and thread.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by whitespace.