Tag: Whimsy

Categories
GeekWire

Mannequin Challenge jumps the shark in zero-G

Mannequin Challenge
Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky stays immobile as he floats in a Superman pose for an out-of-this-world Mannequin Challenge. (ESA via Twitter / Thomas Pesquet)

Standing still for a Mannequin Challenge video is a faddish feat, but floating still in zero-G raises the degree of difficulty to the level of a true challenge. And the crew of the International Space Station proves they’re up to the task.

French astronaut Thomas Pesquet served as the film director for the video, which went viral on social media soon after its release on Dec. 29. On Facebook, Pesquet explained that the video was shot during the six-member crew’s Sunday time off.

Most of the crew members were able to anchor themselves along the walls of the space station’s modules with their feet, but Russia’s Oleg Novitsky (posing as Superman) and NASA’s Peggy Whitson (with the camera) looked as if they had the hardest jobs – that is, staying in one place while floating in midair.

“The result is kind of sci-fi spooky, don’t you think?” Pesquet wrote.

Get the full story on GeekWire.

Categories
GeekWire

Leonardo DiCaprio to Mars? Just kidding!

Barack Obama and Leonardo DiCaprio
President Barack Obama mixed it up with Leonardo DiCaprio during the White House’s South by South Lawn festival. (Credit: White House)

For a time, the Internet was agog over Leonardo DiCaprio’s claim that he’s getting a ticket to Mars – presumably as part of SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk’s plan to send a million people to the Red Planet over the next century.

Then the truth came out: The Oscar-winning star of “Titanic” and “The Revenant” was only joking. Which you could have figured out immediately by watching the video of Oct. 3’s repartee with President Barack Obama and climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe.

Get the full story on GeekWire.

Categories
GeekWire

3 ‘Silicon Valley’ jokes with a kernel of truth

Image: Holo-stache
Coder extraordinaire Richard Hendricks (played by Thomas Middleditch) checks out a virtual mustache in a scene from HBO’s “Silicon Valley.” (Credit: HBO)

SPOILER ALERT: Readers, please note: The following item discusses plot points from Sunday night’s season premiere of “Silicon Valley.” If you haven’t viewed the episode yet, please refrain from reading this story or you will be spoiled. You have been warned.

One of the joys of HBO’s “Silicon Valley” is seeing how it lampoons the archetypes of the tech world: the CEO who’s hailed as courageous for laying off half of the company … the engineers who shorthand their obligatory compliments so they can get right to the cutting remarks … the founder who’s tossed out of his company’s top job because he’s created a company that’s too valuable for him to run.

All this was on display in the series’ season premiere on Sunday night, plus a few tech tropes that seem too outlandish for real life. Or are they?

Check out GeekWire for three gags with real-world tech parallels.

Categories
GeekWire

Gravitational waves spark tuneful tribute

Tim Blais, the singing scientist behind “Bohemian Gravity,” “Rolling in the Higgs” and “The Surface of Light,” is back with another pop parody that’s packed with physics. And this time it’s as big as a black hole – or at least the gravitational waves generated by black holes crashing together.

“LIGO Feel that Space,” sung to the tune of “I Can’t Feel My Face” by The Weeknd, delves into the potentially Nobel-winning detection of gravitational waves by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, better known as LIGO.

Last month’s announcement about the detection set off a wave of wonderment, in part because it affirmed one of the predictions made a century earlier by Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

Gravitational-wave observations are also expected to provide a new way to study the universe’s most dramatic phenomena, such as supernovae, black hole mergers and neutron star collisions.

Get the full story on GeekWire.

Categories
GeekWire

Hillary Clinton goes after the ‘X-Files’ vote

Image: Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton addressed the UFO issue during a meeting with editors. (Credit: @HillaryClinton)

If the truth about UFOs is out there, Hillary Clinton says she’ll be on it as president.

When the Democratic presidential front-runner vowed to “get to the bottom” of the alien-visitation issue, she just might have locked up the “X-Files” vote – while giving her critics one more thing to taunt her with.

Clinton’s comment came at the end of a recent chat with the editorial board of the Conway Daily Sun in New Hampshire, which holds its first-in-the-nation presidential primary on Feb. 9. Reporter Daymond Steer reminded her about a conversation they had about UFOs in 2007, and that perked up the candidate.

“Yes, I’m going to get to the bottom of it,” Clinton reportedly replied.

Get the full story on GeekWire.

Categories
GeekWire

How many martinis? Bond Index tracks 007

Image: SPECTRE stars
Daniel Craig and Lea Seydoux star in “SPECTRE,” the latest 007 movie. (MGM / Columbia Pictures)

Here’s a different kind of Bond index: In honor of the latest 007 movie, “SPECTRE,” Bloomberg Business tracked eight metrics across all 3,053 minutes and 33 seconds of the 24 James Bond films released over the past 53 years.

Among the highlights:

  • Bond is wearing a suit or a tuxedo for nearly 18 hours out of the total 51 hours.
  • He introduces himself as “Bond. James Bond” 26 times over the course of the 24 films.
  • He spends more than 5 percent of his on-screen time flirting, seducing or being “otherwise intimate.”
  • Pierce Brosnan’s Bond set the record for most gadgets used in a film. (16, in “Die Another Day”).
  • Bond or another character orders a total of 16 martinis for him in 24 films. That counts the controversial dirty vodka martini that Bond quaffs in “SPECTRE.”

Get the full story on GeekWire.

Categories
Forbes

Carve a scientist into your Halloween pumpkin

Physicist pumpkins
Symmetry magazine’s pumpkin designs include Paul Dirac-ula, Mummy Noether, Albert Frank-Einstein, Werewolfgang Pauli and Scary Curie. (Photo for Symmetry by Reidar Hahn, Fermilab with Sandbox Studios)

Albert Frank-Einstein? Scary Curie? You’ve got to hand it to the folks at Symmetry magazine: Those science geeks really know how to throw a Halloween party. Or a Christmas party. Or a Valentine’s Day soiree. Their latest holiday tribute to scientific greats takes the form of pumpkin-carving patterns that will impress trick-or-treaters even if they don’t know a thing about Werewolfgang Pauli’s Exclusion Principle.

In addition to Einstein, Curie and Pauli, Symmetry provides templates to make your jack-o’-lanterns look like Paul Dirac-ula (with batty positrons flying in the background) or Mummy Noether (featuring the famous mathematician under wraps).

Get the full story from Forbes.com.