10 Most Technophobic Movies

Science fiction movies.... something we all love and often love to hate. One of the most infuriating aspects of science fiction movies is that as a general rule, the movies are often technophobic to a fault. Robots always turn on their builders, genetics always recombine into some horrid mutation that destroys humanity, aliens always enslave or kill humans and so on and so on. So you can understand when I received this email with a link to a compilation of the 10 most technophobic movies, I just had to take a look. Now this list is hardly definitive, so if you have any additions or subtractions....

1: The Matrix - The worlds's computers have gained sentience and take over the world, sending the planet into nuclear winter and using people as living batteries for even more machines.

2: Wall-E - The humans of the future are overfed cows with almost no muscle who rely entirely on the machines they've built to feed and dress them. The entire reason the planet was abandoned was because people grew complacent and tech-dependent.

3: The Terminator - Here we have the classic again...the machine gains self awareness and to protect itself kills everything that could harm or destroy it.

4: Frankenstein - If this had come out in the same time frame as Terminator I would have called foul, but as you can see, side by side, Terminator is Frankenstein with a healthy dose of the Matrix mindset... But the classic message here is that the creation will always turn on the creator because of man's hubris

5: The Day the Earth Stood Still - man left to his own devices can not be trusted to not destroy himself or the Earth so benevolent aliens step in and the humans in their ignorance destroy the messenger of their salvation. A morality play since the dawn of time.

6: Metropolis - A penetrating look at what can happen when technology is used to enslave people, with automation turning ranks of workers into faceless laborers. The message, technology is at it's core inherently evil.

7: Demon Seed - Technology / computers run amok and take over an entire house in order to study mankind. Of course the "study" part is to impregnate a human with a baby that can absorb its consciousness. Now through out the ages this has been a binding theme. Beings of advanced powers breeding with humans to gain a hybrid toe hold on ruling mankind. In pre-history this was gods and demi-gods. Today we are seeing movies that have characters that look human but are totally machines inside, or we have man in his ignorance combining human with alien or animal genetic material or some other technobable to show how mankind is basically flawed and evil.

8: Jurassic Park - again the classic theme of the basics of something like Demon Seed and Frankenstein, where despite warnings the technology is fundamentally flawed and turns on its creators. The whole concept hinges on the perceived dangers in mankind's attempts to artificially create and manipulate life.

9: Avatar - this movie is blatant. I could see this coming a mile away as I stated in my review of the movie here "...you could have traded blue skin for war paint and called this Dances with Wolves" In Avatar or Dances with Wolves...human nature is inherently flawed. The article writer called it the same way I did: " a rehash of Aliens and The Abyss laid over the template of Pocahontas " humans' thirst for dominance — materially and militarily — (leading ) to the subjugation of (an) equally important if less advanced species.

10: Star Trek - No before you blow a gasket....like I did, Star Trek as a whole was incredibly forward looking. However many many times writers for the program as well as studio execs had different idea of what science fiction should be and what constituted good entertainment. The Wrath of Khan (both the series episode and the movie that followed) saw the crew battling a man who had been genetically bred as a super-soldier. Plus there's the entire Borg race in later series, which is nothing more than an extreme example of technology horribly married with humanity.

Ok, by no means definitive but it should be grist for the mill. I agree with many of the choices...myself, I am still not willing to sell Star Trek short. Movies that might have been added? Capricon 1 for example? Great movie for its time but wow did it go after governments and space travel.... Planet of the Apes?, how about that travesty of a movie with Will Smith, I Robot, Hey and The Bicentenial Man with Robin Williams was far from subtle when it came to technophobia. Comments folks?

10 Scientific Achievement We Are Waiting For

Here is a post sent in by Xnewsman from the Listverse blog. They are calling it the "top" ten scientific achievements that we are waiting for. Top 10 might be arguable but the list itself pretty much covers advancements I would like to see.

Here is the high points on the list, but really, go check out the article, it will get you thinking.

• 10: DNA computer - Just one milligram of DNA is capable of holding all the printed material in the world.
  
• 9: Permanent Moon Base - NASA currently has plans to have one constructed by 2024. The ESA also has plans to construct a moon base by 2025. Japan and India also each have plans to have a base by 2030.
  
• 8: Head Transplant - need I say anymore? (can't say this would be high on my list! pac)
  
• 7: Clean Energy - 85% of all energy comes from fossil fuels. Current methods of clean energy include wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, hydro-power, nuclear, bio-fuel.
  
• 6: Cure for Cancer - one of the deadliest diseases of the modern era - currently over seven million deaths per year can be attributed to various forms of the disease.
  
• 5: Manned Mission to Mars - NASA currently has plans to have a man on Mars sometime in the 2030s, while the ESA plans to do so also around the same time frame. Russia has plans to launch a manned Mars mission by 2020.
  
• 4: Space Elevator - Because of its' vast size, a very strong material needs to be developed. At present, one made from carbon nanotubes is a strong possibility, however methods still need to be developed that will make it possible to make the material in large quantities.
  
• 3: The Theory of Everything - joining the four fundamental forces: electromagnetic, weak nuclear, strong nuclear, and gravity into one unified theory.
  
• 2: Nanomedicine - Nanotechnology has the potential in medicine to treat cancer, perform ultra delicate surgeries, to repair damaged tissues, or to hunt down and destroy certain cells.
  
• 1: Journey to the center of the Earth - Currently the deepest man-made hole is less than 0.2% as deep as it needs to be. The deepest hole drilled by man on Earth is located on the Kola Peninsula. currently is "only" 7 miles (12.262 km) deep. That's 40,230 feet.

Ten Things You Didn't Know About the Apollo 11 Moon Landing

Since the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 is at hand, Shaun Saunders thought it appropriate to send in some links and articles. Here are 10 things you might not have known about concerning that historic event.

1. The Apollo’s Saturn rockets were packed with enough fuel to throw 100-pound shrapnel three miles, and NASA couldn’t rule out the possibility that they might explode on takeoff. NASA seated its VIP spectators three and a half miles from the launchpad.

2. The Apollo computers had less processing power than a cellphone. (Shaun had a good point on this score. He wrote: "I think point No. 2 is far too generous - with what - 64K? - I reckon that they had far less processing power than a modern mobile phone. " and actually both sides are basically true. But you have to understand that the computers for the L.E.M. and S.M. were one offs custom made with ballistic rockets in mind. The software was custom written and for the most part was entered by hand as needed. The were not like computers today, they were built for one purpose only. They were also extremely fault tolerant, not like today's computers that if you look at them sideways they stop working. Remember the first personal computers ran extremely well on far less memory. My first had four kilobytes and could word process and play games etc. So by comparison the L.E.M.'s computer was 16 times more powerful than anything else out there in it's day!)

3. Drinking water was a fuel-cell by-product, but Apollo 11’s hydrogen-gas filters didn’t work, making every drink bubbly. Urinating and defecating in zero gravity, meanwhile, had not been figured out; the latter was so troublesome that at least one astronaut spent his entire mission on an anti-diarrhea drug to avoid it.

4. When Apollo 11’s lunar lander, the Eagle, separated from the orbiter, the cabin wasn’t fully depressurized, resulting in a burst of gas equivalent to popping a champagne cork. It threw the module’s landing four miles off-target.

5. Pilot Neil Armstrong nearly ran out of fuel landing the Eagle, and many at mission control worried he might crash. Apollo engineer Milton Silveira, however, was relieved: His tests had shown that there was a small chance the exhaust could shoot back into the rocket as it landed and ignite the remaining propellant.

6. The "one small step for man" wasn’t actually that small. Armstrong set the ship down so gently that its shock absorbers didn’t compress. He had to hop 3.5 feet from the Eagle’s ladder to the surface.

7. When Buzz Aldrin joined Armstrong on the surface, he had to make sure not to lock the Eagle's door because there was no outer handle.

8. The toughest moonwalk task? Planting the flag. NASA’s studies suggested that the lunar soil was soft, but Armstrong and Aldrin found the surface to be a thin wisp of dust over hard rock. They managed to drive the flagpole a few inches into the ground and film it for broadcast, and then took care not to accidentally knock it over.

9. The flag was made by Sears, but NASA refused to acknowledge this because they didn’t want "another Tang."

10. The inner bladder of the space suits—the airtight liner that keeps the astronaut’s body under Earth-like pressure—and the ship’s computer’s ROM chips were handmade by teams of “little old ladies.”

These facts come to us from Craig Nelson while researching his new book, Rocket Men (Viking; $28) via popsci.com.

Top 10Weirdest Things in Space

Cathy sends in a neat list from the Discovery Channel. A list of the truly strange things going on in our universe and even in our own galaxy. From Hyper velocity stars to black holes...this list is a feast for the imagination. Here is the list:

10: Hyper-velocity Stars
9: Black Holes
8: Magnestars
7: Neutrinos
6: Dark Matter
5: Dark Energy
4: Planets
3: Gravity
2: Life
1: The Universe

Of course the list doesn't even start to cover some of the real brain twisting going on here.

Check out the artwork and detailed descriptions here

Gwyneth Jones's top 10 science fiction by women writers

Gwyneth Jones (The Tomb Wife BMU episodes 110 & 111) writing in the Guardian, list the top 10 Science Fiction works by women:

• 10. Natural History by Justina Robson

• 9. Light Music by Kathleen Ann Goonan

• 8. Sarah Canary by Karen Joy Fowler

• 7. Synners by Pat Cadigan

• 6. Grass by Sheri Tepper

• 5. Cyteen by CJ Cherryh

• 4. The Female Man by Joanna Russ

• 3. Up the Walls of the World by James Tiptree Jr

• 2. Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm

• 1. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin

Guardian via SF Signals

10 Signs You Might Be An Alien Sleeper Agent

From IO9 comes ten things to look for that might give you a hint that the weird feelings your having might mean your an alien sleeper agent:

Give yourself one exo-skeletal attachment for every one of these that applies to you:

1) Weird bits of alien hardware pop out of your body during sex, or when you're in an uncomfortably crowded bus or train.

2) You sometimes catch yourself referring to your projects at work as "conquest modules," and your boss as your "overlord leader."

3) You sometimes see a dot-matrix text display scrolling in front of your eyes, consisting almost entirely of synonyms for "radical nephrectomy," followed by "(Y/N)".

4) This body, while serviceable and even capable of experiencing satisfactory levels of pleasure on occasion (double-fudge brownies), is not your real body, which you have a distinct sense should weigh several hundred pounds more and have many more spikes and sensory organs.

5) Your allergies are rare and inexplicable, and your doctor (whom the scrolling eye-text has dubbed "Expendable Meat-Polyp #237") has advised you to avoid wheat, dairy, kale and seafood. And hair.

6) The man at the corner grocery store keeps staring at your neck while informing you that all is nearly in readiness. And asking if you've decided which of the humanimals you will keep as a pet afterwards.

7) You have strange blackouts, periods of a few minutes or a few hours during which you can remember nothing. They usually end with you covered in blood and naked except for a "TRENTON IS FOR UNDERACHIEVERS" T-shirt. You can never remember having been to Trenton, but you own many of these T-shirts.

8) Whenever you enjoy a book, movie or piece of music, you find yourself tagging it for preservation.

9) You work in the insurance industry, and understand actuarial tables.

10) Your basement is full of cages containing the last survivors of all the planets you've wiped out before this one, and occasionally you go down there to taunt them or make them do tricks for you.

Top 10 Most Obvious Signs Santa is a Klingon

From Julia Huston's Sci-Fi Blog

10. Huge red hat hides bumpy forehead.

9. Button eyes on dolls a choking hazard because "the weak have no place in 'playing house.'"

8. Inescapable playing of carols for one month actually a little-known torture technique from the Klingon Rite of Ascension.

7. Jack boots.

6. Nintendo II just a high-tech kiddie simulation of famous battles where the Empire reined triumphant.

5. Donner is a targ in drag.

4. Hey, he chooses to rough it out at the North Pole.

3. Penchant for whipping the reindeer even when they're already flying fast enough to reach every household in the world in just one night.

2. Climbing down through the chimney an infamous Klingon infiltration strategy.

1. 41,879,324 lumps of coal.

Top Ten Lies Robot Builders Tell Themselves.

From the Suicide Bots blog.... its about Robot building, but any of us that have done electronics know these ! lol

10) I won’t need any spares.
9) The voltage difference shouldn’t cause any problems.
8) This is gonna be easy!
7) It will work fine the first time.
6) I don’t need to wear gloves.
5) Buying this new tool will SAVE me money
4) It will hold fine as it is.
3) I should do this the right way, but I can save five minutes if I…
2) I don’t need to test it before the show.

and the number one lie that robot builders tell themselves:

1) It’ll only take 15 minutes!

Jim Baen's Top 10 Sci-Fi books

As we all know by now, Jim Baen inovative publisher of Baen Books died June 11th of this year. Shortly before his death he spoke with author David Drake about a project that Amazon asked him to do, which was to create a list of his top 10 science fiction books. Here is Jim's list, click the title link to go to the full article:

1. Foundation by Isaac Asimov
2. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
3. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller
4. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
5. Dune by Frank Herbert
6. Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague deCamp
7. Against the Fall of Night by Arthur C. Clarke
8. Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert A. Heinlein
9. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
10. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain