Can't Stop Geeking

I’ve always loved Star Trek and Star Wars equally, and I have friends who ask me how is that possible. Well, when I’m in a mood to stretch my imagination and logic and reasoning, I watch Star Trek.  When I’m looking for a fun fantasy filled retreat, I watch Star Wars. And as time has progressed, technology has started to take on aesthetic characteristics of Star Trek. I admint without shame that I have a flip phone attached to my hip and when a call comes in, I flip that bad boy open like I’m on Alpa 177.

Now, it seems, that not all Star Trek tech is feasible with the current technology.  According to a story on MSNBC, traveling at warp speed will kill you because of the bombardment of hydrogen atoms colliding with our body at the speed of light.  This scientist went on to say that light speed travel may be possible, but we will need different technology to do it.  So don’t make any plans to visit Alpha Centauri anytime soon.

image and story from inhabitat.com

I’ve heard fo caffeine being able to give you an extra boost for the day, but I didn’t think it could do the same for a car. This white, 1988 Volkswagen has been altered to run on coffee grounds. So, in the future when we drive to a Starbucks, there’ll be a pump for every type of coffee drink.

I found this story on MSNBC. Inspired by our fascination with UFOs, someone with a little too much time on their hand made this cake in the form of an extra-terrestrial.  The details of how they made it I could not find, but the fact that the party participants tore into this little guy like some birthday autopsy, I just have one question.  Did the birthday boy or girl have to wear one of those lab coats?

photo and story from inhabitat.com

There’s an Austrian architecture firm that has a design for terraced hillside homes. The benefits appear to be many. Built into the hill itself, the houses will require less energy to cool or heat, the roofs provide a mini-lawn, and provides more living accomodations without sacrificing more space with an apartment building. I was in Germany back in 1999 and had seen this concept done with terraced farming. I thought it was a brilliant idea and to see it taken one step further into the realm of housing, it makes me wish I had thought of it.

I don’t know about you, but I always found these commercials to be very clever and real catchy. That is, until I actually tried to get my free report. What I found was actually a bare-bones report and then a huge plug for a service with a monthly fee. Apparently, I’m not the only one. The FTC is making the company behind the website display a huge disclaimer about where to get a truly detailed credit report for free. Hopefully, the commercials will still remain entertaining.

A new texting app came out for the iPhone that deletes the messages from the person’s phone.  “Tiger Text,” that’s what it’s called, stores text on a server for a certain amount of time and then erases it from the texting server.  The reason this works is because the actual message is stored on the server, not the recipient’s phone.  Of course, people are thinking about how this would have kept Tiger Woods in the clear.  So, now the iPhone tagline could be:

“Cheating on your spouse just got easier.”

One day when I was a kid, I was playing in my room with some building blocks, making towers for my baby brother to see and letting him knock them down.  Because I had carpet on my floor, and I was making the tower real tall, I placed some books on the floor to provide a flat surface on which to build.  My dad walked into the room to check in on us and asked what we were doing.  I explained my building enterprises to which my dad replied, “You know you did a smart thing laying the books down, because books are the foundation for your life and all that you achieve.” Without cracking a smile, I said, “I just used them cause they were flat.” He left.

I tell you this story because apparently someone took our conversation and made it into an art piece.  There is a book building in the Modern Art Center in Lisboa.  The books are not glued together or anything like that.  These books could be removed, read and replaced.  Don’t believe?  Take a look at the books.

Fox news took a page from Conan O’Brien (you don’t think they’re courting him too much, do you?). They took celebrity photos and mashed them with politicians, with some comic results. The one that got me the most was the James Bond image. While this one doesn’t use a politician, they took several actors who have played the title role and created the ultimae 007. Now, the fun part comes in figuring out who they used. There have been so many, I don’t think they were able to use a feature from every actor.

Suzanne Choney from MSNBC wrote this article last Friday detailing some research done as to whether the internet is helping or hurting human intelligence. Some say that the access to all the information the internet has is making us smarter in a slightly different way than in years past. Others say that we are using Google as a crutch to do the bare minimum in terms of research. So where do you stand?

Me personally, I think the information on the internet is fantastic. I’ve accessed things and studies topics I wouldn’t normally have been able to. On the other hand, with the proliferation of blogs and other sites put up with faulty information, reading info from one site only doesn’t alkways paint the fullest picture. If you plan to do research, it’s best to gather information from multiple, credible sites.

This is interesting. In an attempt to live greener lives and lower costs, people are turning to a new form of modular housing known as shipping container housing. Those shipping containers you see on the back of semi-trucks? There’s a company in Phoenix starting to make homes out of those containers. They’re stacking and merging containers to give people more space, but you’re still living in a shipping container. I don’t know about this. I don’t think I could get used to living in such a cookie-cutter house. One thing I love about houses is the exterior giving the home personality. I think we would lose that if we went to shipping container housing. Read more about this at inhabitat.com.