In speculation about time travel, the grandfather paradox is the notion that you could go back in time and kill your own grandfather. This would result in you not being born. But if you weren't born, how could you kill your grandfather? Physicist Seth Lloyd of MIT performed experiments with protons attempting to somewhat simulate these conditions and found that the paradoxical problems failed to occur:
By going back and outlawing any events that would later prove paradoxical in the future, this theory gets rid of the uncomfortable idea that a time traveler could prevent his own existence. “In our version of time travel, paradoxical situations are censored,” Lloyd says.
But this dictum against paradoxical events causes possible but unlikely events to happen more frequently. “If you make a slight change in the initial conditions, the paradoxical situation won’t happen. That looks like a good thing, but what it means is that if you’re very near the paradoxical condition, then slight differences will be extremely amplified,” says Charles Bennett of IBM’s Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York.
For instance, a bullet-maker would be inordinately more likely to produce a defective bullet if that very bullet was going to be used later to kill a time traveler’s grandfather, or the gun would misfire, or “some little quantum fluctuation has to whisk the bullet away at the last moment,” Lloyd says. In this version of time travel, the grandfather, he says, is “a tough guy to kill.”
The New Zealand advertising firm Colesno BBDO placed dyed water in specially-marked watercoolers around Auckland to promote the TV show The Vampire Diaries.
At least, I assume that it's just dyed water. Or fruit punch. I mean, it could be blood. So I can't say for sure that it's not actual human blood.
The above video is a trailer for what Kotaku reports is an anime about kids who build Gundam models. It's called Mokei Senshi Gunpla Builders Beginning G. Question: will the company responsible sell models of the kids building models?
Good actors can play courageous heroes -- sometimes because they have that spark of greatness within them. Here's a look at five science fiction actors who played imaginary heroes on screen, but were also real heroes on the battlefield.
James Doohan (1920-2005) played Montgomery “Scotty” Scott on Star Trek (1966-1969). Born in Vancouver, Canada, he joined the Canadian Army at the age of 19. He served in the Royal Canadian Artillery, rising to the rank of captain. Doohan was the first man off his landing craft on Juno Beach during the 1944 Allied invasion of Normandy. He was shot by a German machine-gunner six times, four rounds in one leg, one in the chest, and one in the hand. The bullet aimed at his chest was stopped by a metal cigarette case. Doohan lost the middle finger of his right hand -- a fact that the directors of Star Trek tried to hide from the cameras. When directors needed to show Scotty’s hands, a stand-in was used in Doohan’s place.
Don Matheson (1929- ) played Mark Wilson on Land of the Giants (1968-1970). He enlisted in the US Marine Corps at 16 and completed his high school education in that service. After ten boring months of civilian life, Matheson decided to become a paratrooper. He enlisted in the Army and completed twenty jumps before being transferred to the Criminal Investigation Division in Korea during the Korean War. He suffered abdominal wounds, either by an enemy mortar or grenade, and was awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. When he recovered, Matheson was tasked with investigating heroin trafficking among US forces in Korea. He was so successful that he was recalled stateside to brief senior officers on illicit drug use by American soldiers. Matheson’s skills later served him well as an undercover narcotics officer with the Detroit Police Department.
Patrick Troughton (1920-1987) played the Second Doctor (1966-1969) on Doctor Who (1963- ). He was on Long Island, New York when World War II broke out. His father arranged for him to return to Britain on a Belgian (then a neutral) ship. The ship hit a mine and sank, but Troughton escaped in a lifeboat until a Greek ship picked up survivors. He enlisted in the Royal Navy in 1940, was trained at Loch Ewin, and commissioned as an officer. Troughton participated in daring raids against German shipping off the Dutch coast. He later received his own command and guarded convoys and rescued downed airmen in the North Sea.
Rod Serling (1924-1975) was the producer and writer responsible for bringing The Twilight Zone (1959-1964) to television. In 1943, the day after he graduated from high school, Serling enlisted in the US Army. While still stateside, he became an accomplished Army boxer, but saw more dangerous combat when he was deployed to the Philippines as part of the 11th Airborne Division. During the liberation of that country, he was badly wounded by shrapnel and received the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star.
Serling was haunted by the war and suffered nightmares for the rest of his life. Much of his writing was in response to his wartime experiences, such as the third season episode "A Quality of Mercy", which takes place in the Philippines during the closing days of the war.
Alec Guinness (1914-2000) played Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars. During World War II, he was an officer in the Royal Navy Reserve. He was trained on the HMS Raleigh, a “stone frigate” or naval base in 1941, and then at a similar establishment in Hampshire, before completing his training on Loch Fyne. After getting practical experience on the HMS Quebec, Guinness sailed to Boston in January 1943 to pick up his first command, a landing craft designated LCI(L) #124. He took his ship through strafing runs by German aircraft to North Africa, where he prepared for the Allied invasion of Sicily. On 9 July, he landed 200 men on Cape Passero.
Due to a communications breakdown, he did not receive a message that the landings had been delayed an hour, and consequently, his ship arrived at the Sicilian beach alone. Further miscommunication led a Royal Navy commander on the scene to accuse Sub-Lt. Guinness of not being early, but being late, and insinuated that the young officer’s acting career had not adequately prepared him for his military duties. Guinness responded:
And you will allow me to point out, sir, as an actor, that in the West End of London, if the curtain is advertised as going up at 8:00 PM, it goes up at 8:00 PM, and not an hour later, something that the Royal Navy might learn from.
Photos: Paramount Pictures, ABC, BBC, CBS, and Lucasfilm, respectively.
The 501st Legion TK Project is an ongoing project that invites artists to take a life-sized stormtrooper helmet and modify it in creative ways. deviantART user Melita Curphy turned her helmet into a demon:
The horns/teeth, etc are hand sculpted from epoxy clay. The helmet was painted with acrylic with several layers of wet/dry applications...no airbrushing. The forehead eye has been painted with flourescent orange and will glow in certain light. The mohawk is made from high quality National Fiber Technology hair that i hand dyed.
Chein of Eastern Geek took LEDs and camera parts and turned them into a hand gadget that looks a lot like Iron Man's repulsor beam emitters. They don't actually work, but they do flash in a way similar to the movies. At the link, you can find detailed instructions so that you can build your own.
Link via CrunchGear | Previously: DIY Iron Man Arc Reactor Costume
Neil Macdonald put together this amazing interactive infographic cataloging every villain in Doctor Who. The picture above doesn't really do justice to the fantastic interface that he's put together.
Also neat: a comprehensive spreadsheet in Google Docs providing exhaustive information about each and every foe the Doctor has faced.
Ah, the cheesiness of the Silver Age of comics. Chris Sims of Comics Alliance took eight modern DC comic book covers and sent them back in time to the 1960s:
Stretching from the '50s to the '70s, the Silver Age was considered by a lot of people to be marked by the endless status-quo-preserving silliness of Red Kryptonite, imaginary stories and a surplus of talking gorillas. There were rigid rules as to just what characters could and couldn't do ("Everyone knows Superman can never lie..."), and entire stories built around explaining why they were breaking them ("...so why is he telling Lois Lane that he has no super-powers?!").
The London-based design firm Tinker made a computerized version of the children's game hopscotch for the Kinetica Art Fair:
the installation consists of a vertical light display that reflects and responds to play happening on a chalked-out hopscotch game on the ground. users play the game as usual and can watch as their actions on the ground are translated onto the colourful display.
Video at the link.
Link via Gizmodo | Kinetica Art Fair | Photo: Design Boom
Travis, a friend of Urlesque author Cole Stryker, make an excellent guitar body that looks like the Millennium Falcon. Urlesque has many pictures as well as an interview with the artist:
I used a vintage Millenium Falcon toy / playset for the body. As it's an electric guitar, the body material is relatively unimportant (in comparison to acoustic instruments) so i just had to concern myself with building the necessary structural elements of the instrument into the toy.
Since the aging plastic wouldn't be able to withstand the tension of the strings, I pieced together a maple block running from end to end inside the ship. The bridge, neck, and strap pins connect to this piece; while attached firmly with some powerful glues the toy itself is almost entirely cosmetic.
The top of the toy has been routed out for the electronics, including some switch activated LEDs. Those required separate battery packs, which I made accessible using the structure of the toy; one pack is hidden in the original battery compartment while the other is attached to the ramp door that was designed to open.
eBay seller stock2.0 is selling this wooden NES sculpture. There's also a flatscreen monitor on display in the other photos at the link. S/he provides little information beyond "Craftsmanship is so precise it appears to be a functional Nintendo at first glance." But it is a pretty piece of craftsmanship.
"Hows about I blow the front of your face out the back of your head?" Woody isn't just a toy in this illustration by deviantART user lily-fox. She writes:
In the second Toy Story, when Woody's arm gets torn (and then torn OFF holy [redacted]), I winced hard. Obviously it doesn't hurt or anything, it's just a freak-out to have a dead arm hanging there (and kind of hilarious), but it felt like a grave wound. Woody, you've taken your lumps. And you just get right back up, you fine, valiant [redacted]. No wonder you're my hero.
A couple of years ago at Neatorama, I posted a time-lapse video of artist Robert Burden creating an enormous painting of Voltron. He's back again with this painting of Han Solo riding a tauntaun. It's a neat painting in and of itself and reminds me of Abbasid art and medieval manuscript illumination.
As early as age fourteen, Peter Jackson was making films. He was fond of the special effects of Ray Harryhausen as featured in the movies The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and Jason and the Argonauts. Last month, Harryhausen was honored at a banquet of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. Peter Jackson was present, and screened scenes from his youthful production of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.
