Tag: star trek

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A brief tutorial in temporal mechanics…

So, as an avid “Star Trek” watcher, I’ve been introduced to the idea of going backward and forward in time, and the effects of each on the present (in the case of “forward,” not very much…). For example, at a relatively early age, I realized that in “Back to the Future Part II,” Marty goes to the future and sees himself (and meets his son), but this is impossible because he wasn’t there to live out his life (because he left the “present” to go to the “future”…), thus producing a paradox, of sorts.

Now comes along “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.” The premiere episode was on Sunday night on FOX, and the second one was on last night (I haven’t watched it yet…). The first episode takes place in 1999, in between the movies “Terminator 2: Judgement Day” and “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines,” which take place in 1991 and 2004, respectively. For “Terminator 2,” Judgement Day (i.e. the destruction of the human race by the SkyNet computer) was to take place on August 29, 1997 – in “Terminator 3,” that date is moved back to July 24, 2004.

Well, at the end of the first episode, they jump forward through time from 1999 to 2007, thus negating all of “Terminator 3.” Never happened. The timeline adjusted itself such that Sarah and John Connor were non-existent between the years of 1999 and 2007. So, if John and Sarah were successful at stopping Judgement Day in 1997, but weren’t there in 2004 to stop it, wouldn’t Judgement Day have already happened (if they jumped to 2007)?

Alright, so this brings up another point: if the machines (in the future) are sending back a Terminator to take out John and/or Sarah Connor, the second that Terminator is sent back in time, the machines should know if they were successful. That is, if nothing changes where they are, then the timeline was not averted and they need to send another one. If things did change, they wouldn’t know about it because they would never know they ever had the problem: things would just be as they always had been.

So, if you really wanted to take out John or Sarah, and you know your Terminator wasn’t successful, why not send another one to the same time point to get two Terminators after them? Or, for that matter, why take out John Connor when Sarah’s around to protect him, when instead you could go after Sarah’s parents and prevent Sarah from ever having a child (or existing, for that matter).

I think, in the end, machines are just stupid. And they need to stop meddling with the space-time continuum, as they obviously don’t know what they’re doing.

That, or the writers of the “Terminator” series should get a hold of a brief tutorial in temporal mechanics…

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Quotes and Links…

On my iGoogle page this morning, the following was my link of the day…and I enjoyed it:

“Equations are the devil’s sentences.”
– Stephen Colbert

On another note, Zachary Quinto will be playing Spock in the new “Star Trek” movie that J.J. Abrams is producing/writing/directing… Honestly, I’m not sure how I feel about this. I mean, I think the guy, with the proper hair, could look the part, and I know he can do “unemotional acting,” but the character he plays in “Heroes” is Sylar…and that guy is evil. There are certain actors that just seem to play good “bad guys,” and it’s hard to imagine their transition to a “good guy” role. I’ve heard they’re envisioning a trilogy for these “Star Trek” movies, assuming this one does well enough, meaning that this guy could be playing Spock for years to come, but still…I just dunno…

In other news, my boss is still out of town, so I’ll be going home early today…maybe play some “Super Mario World” and “Resident Evil 4,” but I also need to get started writing my Prelim. This document will be a 25-page grant that I have to defend in order to “officially enter the doctoral program” here at SLU, so it’s kinda a big deal. I generally know what I’m writing it on, but it’s a little hard getting the ball rolling. I hope to defend in November/December, so I’ve still got time – that, and I don’t have classes to take anymore, so there isn’t much getting in the way of the writing…

…I just need to get started…that’s all…

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Patrick Stewart is a genius…

…a genius at life, of course!

I ran across this video of our good friend, Jean-Luc, singing and dancing… If you aren’t a Star Trek fan, you probably won’t find it all that amusing…but if you are, then it’s well worth the watch…

(For the record, this isn’t a new video or anything…just a good reminder…)

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The Extent of Education

I’m not really sure what made me think about it today, but my head was spinning around the idea of education and the process of learning. You start out in primary school learning the absolute basics, and things get a bit more complicated in high school. At the end of high school, you decide what interests you and what you want for a career. Let’s say you want to learn about cancer…

Well, then you go to the Harvard of the Midwest and you get a biology degree, taking classes that will teach you about general science, but also a little bit about cancer. Assuming you still love cancer (well, learning about it…), then you go to graduate school to concentrate only on cancer…

…here’s the dicey part… Eventually, you reach the end of education…as in…all education as you’ve known it for the previous 20 years… Because now, you realize that, hey, this stuff I’m learning isn’t in textbooks. The answers to a given question aren’t so easy to look up and find anymore… You can’t ask your parents or teacher a question and have them reply: “why don’t you go look it up?”

Why is this? Because no one knows… By the time you hit graduate school, you’re really hitting the “nitty gritty” of the extent of all human knowledge in that specific subject that you were interested in back in late-high school. There is no more that you can learn from a person, a textbook, or even a primary research article… That’s it.

I dunno…it’s just kinda weird knowing that you could be asked a question and it isn’t simply a issue of not knowing the answer: it’s not knowing the answer because the answer hasn’t been discovered yet by anyone on Earth. Once in graduate school, you’re really at the “final frontier” (insert Star Trek reference here…) of human knowledge on a given subject. So when you’re called an “expert on cancer,” it’s really true because you’ve learned just about 95-99% of everything that can be learned about it.

These are the thoughts I have when studying for exams… 😛

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Evil more fundamental?

So, an intriguing perspective, as pointed out by “ST: Voyager” in an episode titled “The Darkling“… The episode basically centers around a malfunction in The Doctor such that he goes all Jekyll and Hyde on the crew and attacks people…

…anyway, here’s the important part… The Doctor goes on this rant about evil, essentially describing evil as more “fundamental” than good. The argument went from a physics perspective such that light involves photons, which is made up of particles (yes, light has mass…weird, eh?), yet there is no corresponding particle for dark. So, if there were no particles of light, there would only be dark. There is no corresponding force to go against light, at least as far as particle physics goes.

I guess it’s just an interesting idea, ’cause I’d always heard the argument that you can’t have good without evil, and vice versa, because our notion of “right” and “wrong” requires that opposing force. How can one define “evil” without a “good” to counterbalance it? Our notion of “evil” requires that you know what is bad and what isn’t, and to know what isn’t, you have to have a sense of “good”…confused, much?

Well, using the argument from physics, actually, light (i.e. “good”) is the force encroaching upon what would be there otherwise (i.e. “evil”). If there were no light, there would only be dark. You can’t not have dark (w00t!, double-negative). But you can not have light.

So, thusly I ask: is evil more fundamental than good?

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Chekov for Majority Whip!

From tonight’s episode of “The Daily Show”:

“This President has listened to some people, the so-called “Vulcans” in the White House, the ideologues. But you know, unlike the Vulcans of Star Trek who made decisions based on logic and fact, these guys make it based on ideology. These aren’t Vulcans; there are Klingons in the White House…But unlike the real Klingons of Star Trek, these Klingons have never fought a battle of their own. Don’t let faux Klingons send real Americans to war!”

— Rep. David Wu, (D) – Oregon

You know, I very much enjoy Star Trek analogies, but seriously…this is the floor of the House of Representatives. Even I wouldn’t try that…and to come from a Democrat, no less…not helping us keep the majority, yo…

For the record, Jon Stewart then followed up the blurb by interviewing Leonard Nimoy (“Spock”) and George Takei (“Sulu”) about it, and it was quite hilarious…

You can watch the video here!

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Fooling around…

“We’re like the Cleavers…except we’re religious…and we like to fool around.”

Rev. Eric Camden; “7th Heaven”

Yes…that kind of “fool around”… What a show… I certainly never thought it’d last 11 seasons…and I certainly never thought I’d hear a pastor say such things…

Keep in mind, he was also in “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” and became a non-corporeal life form…

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I, Borg…

So, I was sitting in class this morning and we were learning about the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system(s). Overall, these are part of the autonomic nervous system, which includes the parts of the body that are not under our control, including the heart and the lungs. Generally, the circuitry is relatively simple in concept, yet does include some more complicated features. As in, depending on the system, the sympathetic side of the system will be excitatory (as in, turn “on”) while the parasympathetic will be inhibitory (as in, turn “off”).

My word choice of “circuitry” was on purpose, of course, and that brings me to the point of the posting… I find it rather interesting how I developed interests in two radically different things that are completely related in function: computers and the brain. I’ve been interested in all things “tech” for many a year now, building new computers, installing alternative operating systems, etc…and now I’ve begun a graduate school journey largely focusing on the central nervous system and its function within the body. Just as computers talk in “1s” and “0s” (i.e. binary), the nervous system works very similarly where connections are either made or not made, allowing for basic functions like movement and memory.

I guess I just don’t know whether my interest in these seemingly disparate subjects came from. Was I first fascinated by computer circuits or neuronal circuits? Or, was my interest in some facet inherent to both? Or, on a larger scale, is this how all our interests and hobbies come together? Do people get interested in one subject and then learn about a related one…or do they get interested in some concept that ends up leading to the two different subject areas?

…or maybe this is just a stupid question… Regardless, these are thoughts I had in class and figured I’d share them… 😛

P.S. The subject heading is, of course, a Star Trek reference, where the “Borg” are a synthetic race of cyborgs representing the perfect marriage of organic life and machine. The more I learn about the nervous system, the more you realize that Man and Machine are more similar than we would otherwise realize…

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A few links…

For those of you who missed the Daily Show a few nights ago, and have seen the new Geico commercial with Little Richard, you should check out his interpretation of George Bush’s 9/11 speech…

Secondly, there’s apparently a show in Britain called “Extras,” about extras on TV shows who try to get their scripts read by famous actors… Well, they did a bit with Patrick Stewart, and it’s amusing…

Mom, you should watch both… Actually, everyone should watch the first one, and anyone who cares about Capt. Picard should also watch the second…