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The crossroads of life and tech

Tag Archives: Movies

Transformers – A Classic Updated

Autobots, Transform and Roll Out!Last night was my opportunity to check out the new Transformers Movie. Being a child of the 80′s who grew up with Optimus and the boys I have been looking forward to this movie ever since I saw the first trailer over a year ago.

I’m not one that likes to have the classics messed with. So I was understandably apprehensive when I saw Optimus Prime was lowered and tricked out with lights and flames. Having seen the movie now, none of that bothered me. Admittedly, I’m not quite as big a fanatic as this guy.

DecepticonsThe film is action packed and brings back oh so many memories of childhood. Many of the names are the same from the old series, though some of them have assumed new forms, Devastator and Frenzy to mention a couple.

Recommendation: Go See Transformers. It’s well worth the time and money to catch this movie on the big screen. This is destined to be one of the classic action/sci-fi movies of all time.

To tide you over until you can go, check out the revised trailer and theme song done by the boys of Black Lab. A masterful job.

Sedins Star in NHL Commercial

Swedish TwinsThe new myNHL advertising campaign has a couple of new spokesmen: the Sedins! Starting next week a new commercial for the NHL will debut on national TV. It was shown for the first time tonight on Hockey Night in Canada.

Check out the “Swedish Twins” spot right now on Canucks.com!

This ad is quite amusing. Kelly Hrudey speaking on HNIC said that the way they got the twins to perform in this spot was that they lied to them. It wasn’t until they were in the middle of shooting that they twins found out about their little dance routine.

Edit: 2007-02-20 :: I’ve redirected the link to YouTube as the Canucks.com link no longer works.

Hawking: Warp Drive the Key to Survival

Speaking after being awarded the Copley medal in England last week Prof. Steven Hawking spoke out about the need for mankind to extend its footprint outside the Sol system. His proposed method for making this happen: matter/antimatter annihilation to propel a craft to near-light speeds.  This is the method popularized in the television (and movie) series’ Star Trek.

The key difference between Hawking’s proposal and the Warp Drive technology used in the Star Trek universe is the degree of speed.  Star Trek uses matter/antimatter annihilation to move a craft at many times the speed of light, something which Hawking and most other theoretical physicists consider to be impossible based on the physical universe as we understand it.  In Hawking’s proposal this technology would be used to reach sublight speeds which are very close to the speed of light.

His estimate is that with the ability to travel just below the speed of light, a craft could reach the next nearest star in about 6 years. A vast improvement from the 50,000 years it would have taken the Apollo rocket series (assuming it could ever carry enough fuel).  As far as organizations like NASA are concerned, faster-than-light travel is speculative at best.

Maybe this is yet another one of Gene Roddenberry‘s visions coming one step closer to reality.

Global Warning: An Inconvenient Truth

This past May, a new documentary film premiered in Los Angeles, the film entitled An Inconvenient Truth. Though many films premiere in this town, its especially fitting that this film would premiere there as the focus of the documentary is global warming and Los Angeles has one of the most polluted airsheds in North America.

The documentary is based on a slideshow presentation that Gore used as the basis for the film. He has been evangelizing about this topic since the 1980s, and has taken an active interest in the topic since the late 1960s.

The film itself is very good. We went a couple of weeks ago and all came out of the theatre in a noticably more sombre mood than when we went in. Don’t get me wrong this isn’t a particularly depressing movie, but it demonstrated and provided scientific evidence some of which dates back over ten millenea.

Go see the movie. Go visit the website. Go find the book. Learn what’s in there, most of it isn’t rocket science and we’ve already heard it before. But we’re not listening, and it always helps to hear it again. Alright… thats enough from me. Conserve your power, drive your electric car, and use your recycled cloth shopping bag to buy your organic groceries.