series six premiere

The Week in Geek

TARDIS from Wikimedia, by Sceptre, CC 2.5 license

TARDIS from Wikimedia, by Sceptre, CC 2.5 license, click to view source.

The big news is the series six premiere of Doctor Who. We just finished watching it, because we have the Internet, and we’re not afraid to use it. It’s awesome. Is there a bigger word than “awesome”? “Epic awesome,” maybe? It’s pretty damn good, how’s that?

A major cast member dies in the first ten minutes, leaving the Doctor and friends in a race to… prevent it? Make sure it happens? Find out what’s going on? Probably all three. We finally get to see the Silence, although their appearance explains exactly diddly-squat. Amy’s sitting on a couple of big secrets, one of which she spills at the first available opportunity, and the other she has to sit on, lest she destroy all of time and space, because with the Doctor around, you know the consequences can’t be anything less. Rory is in fine form as the sensible one, because someone has to be the grownup, and that’s his job. River turns up, too, and the innuendo between the Doctor and River Song is stepped up a notch.

River: “Oh, I’m quite the screamer. Now there’s a spoiler for you.” With Steven Moffat at the helm, you know the show was rife with fantastic one-liners and plenty of timey-wimey stuff, but the best line?

The Doctor: “You aren’t going to shoot me.”

River: “Doctor, they’re Americans!”

The Doctor: “DON’T SHOOT!”

We’ve waited months for the premiere, so of course it’s a cliffhanger. I’m already dying for next week’s episode!

The other big Doctor Who news is that Elisabeth Sladen died this week. She was my favorite companion. The Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith was the team I grew up with, so this was sad news.

In other geeky news, science found actual physical differences in the brains of self-described liberals compared to self-described conservatives. I read a study a few years ago — can’t remember where, anymore — saying that chemical differences had been found, and although both are indicative of people being at least a little predisposed to one mindset or the other, it probably doesn’t mean humans are hardwired one way or the other and never the twain shall meet. (That’s one interpretation I’ve heard a few places.) If we were, you’d see a lot less of people changing their political opinions over time, I’d think.

There’s a rumor floating around that Google may start renting Chrome machines for as as little as ten dollars a month. It’s an interesting proposition. I’ve been wondering what Google was planning to do with the Chrome OS. The rumors have been flying thick and fast, so grain of salt, but I’ve heard that they’ll use Chrome OS to make cheap tablets, that they’re bringing out a line of netbooks similar to the CR-48, that they’re mothballing it all together, that they’re contracting out to Acer to release Chrome OS netbooks optimized for web-surfing, etc.

Of all the ideas I’ve heard, the rental idea sounds like the best use to me. I love Chrome as a browser, and I’ve been quite pleased with the CR-48. It’s still a bit glitchy, but it’ll do just about everything a standard laptop will do. Since I do a lot of graphic work, and I occasionally wander off to spots where the wifi or 3G connections are sketchy at best, the CR-48 can’t quite be my main machine, but with a standard laptop or desktop at home, this could easily become my sole traveling machine. So, it’s not quite what I’d need for it to be my only computer. The tablet idea could work, since the idea is that Google would install Chrome OS on a cheaper tablet instead of Honeycomb, and bring a low-cost tablet computer to the market as an iPad competitor and/or an Android tablet alternative, but with tablets and smartphones gobbling up so much of the market, I wonder how much longer netbooks and/or laptops are going to be around, really.

Meanwhile, they broke physics again. Researchers at U of M just discovered that, very, very basically, if you beam light through glass in a special, but not very difficult to do sort of way, it makes electricity. Lots of electricity. As in, way more electricity than people ever thought it could. This is huge news for the solar power set in particular. This could make solar power cheap and viable. I’m not sciencey enough to explain it well, so just click through to the article and read for yourself. It’s a quick read, and it’ll blow your mind.

 

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Featured image from Wikimedia.