In Conversation

Show Notes: Episode 12

This show is about the new year, the new Tron, and new reasons for nerds to be angry.

This Week in Star Trek

80-Year-Old Publish Trek Guide

As the writer of the six-book series “Star Trek Reader’s Reference to the Novels,” the 70-year-old with several advanced degrees has read and summarized nearly 80 Trek-themed novels. You could say she’s gone where no woman has gone before.

For years, she taught a college-level science fiction class based on “Star Trek.” She retired in 1998 from her post at a Midwestern community college, where she taught for 27 years, following eight years at the grade school level.

Verizon Says “Think Star Trek”

Analysts say that in the coming months, as popular smartphones like the iPhone begin to migrate to other carriers, wireless carriers will have to rely on pushing their network as a key way to lure new subscribers and retain the ones they have.

Before closing out the session, [Ivan Seidenberg, the chairman and chief executive of Verizon Wireless] advised attendees that when thinking about the future of Verizon Wireless to “think Star Trek,” he quipped.

Avatar Kinect is Poor Man’s Holodeck

This new software allows for really dork avatar-to-avatar meetings online, but could be awesome for people who would like to do some computer animation, but don’t have any technical skills.

Home Town Hero

Amazing Memory Man

60 Minutes recently aired a special on people with hyperthymesia, or superior autobiographical memory.

The first person ever identified with this ability is Jill Price, who says she feels haunted by the never-ending stream of memories and hasn’t wanted to meet any of the others.

Next was Brad Williams, a radio news anchor and reporter from La Crosse, Wis., who isn’t bothered by his memory. He says it comes in handy at work and playing trivia games.

Things the participants had in common:

• Able to remember specific days of their lives by date
• Enjoy categorizing their memories
• Hypochondria
• All three men are lefties
• None are in long-term relationship aside from Marilu Henner, but she is twice divorced

One study participant said, “Because I know that I’m gonna remember whatever happens today, it’s like, all right, what can I do to make today significant? What can I do that is gonna make today stand out?”

Home State Zeroes

Mythomatic

The Hipstamatic backstory is lore in the Hipsta community. The story starts in North Central Wisconsin in 1982 where brothers Bruce and Winston Dorbowski came up with an idea for bringing photography to the masses cheaply. Inspired by an old Russian plastic camera and the Kodak Instamatic, they worked from their small riverfront cabin, developing and hand-producing the all-plastic cameras which they called Hipstamatic.

In 1984, Bruce and Winston were supposedly killed by a drunk driver on their way home from signing a lease on a new building that would have been their manufacturing plant. The Hipstamatic was never mass produced.

Nerds on the Aisle

Tron Guy Shut Down by Big Cinema

TRON Guy a.k.a. Jay Maynard was told to keep his costume at home. Though he’s been doing his internet gig since 2004, theater management though insisted that he would not be allowed to see the movie if he came in his suit. Maynard believes because his fabulous costume is “too distracting” because it lights up.

Rare Exports

What’s more metal than demonic Santa? This premiered on the 22nd in DC at the Landmark E Street Cinema, so Jerry and I will be seeing it soon and will present our review on the show.

The King’s Speech - Historical Fiction

The critically acclaimed King’s Speech is riddled with errors.  First and foremost it fails to inform the viewer that David, a.k.a. Edward VIII, was a Nazi sympathizer:

And, as a way of presenting his political views, we see him make a single foolish comment about the Nazis. What the film never mentions is that Edward VIII was an ardent admirer of Hitler and of fascism, and a proponent of appeasement long after Germany moved onto Polish soil and hostilities began in earnest. Edward lived in continental Europe with Simpson after abdicating; following the German invasion of France, he absurdly asked the Nazis to look after his house. Eventually, the British government convinced the couple to move to the Bahamas, where he became governor. The idea was to keep the pair far away from the Nazis so as to prevent Edward from cutting any deals with Hitler.

The film also neglects to tell us that Churchill supported Edward throughout the abdication crisis.

Finally, Bertie is shown as concerned about the Nazis before becoming king in 1936, but actually fully endorsed Chamberlain’s plan of appeasement, going so far as to violate royal protocol and invite him to the balcony of Buckingham Palace after he gave a significant chunk of Europe to Hitler.

The Movie That Could Have Been:

A king fights against a stutter and his dastardly, treasonous brother, while eventually sloughing off his old instincts for appeasement. He even overcomes his distaste for Winston Churchill—the politician who bent over backward for that very same brother—and lends his steadfast support to Churchill’s aggressive policy against fascism.

Nerd Rage

Jack Cafferty: Internet is for News

We - meaning those of us in television news - may soon go the way of the dinosaurs.

A new report shows that the Internet is gaining on television as Americans’ main source of national and international news.

The Pew survey shows overall 41% of those polled say they get their news from the Internet - that’s up 17 percent from just three years ago.

Television still tops the list as the main news source at 66%, but that number is down significantly from 82% as recently as 2002.

NewSouth Books Teaches America’s Schoolchildren the Meaning of Irony

NewSouth Books’ announcement that it is bringing out a desecrated edition of “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” — in which faceless editors at this distinctly vanilla-flavored publisher will have excised every one of Mark Twain’s brilliantly seditious employments of the evil word “nigger” — has caught the fleeting notice of bloggers and pundits around the country.

Anti-Vaccine Quacks Must Be Stopped

The British medical journal BMJ, which published the results of its investigation, concluded Dr. Andrew Wakefield misrepresented or altered the medical histories of all 12 of the patients whose cases formed the basis of the 1998 study — and that there was “no doubt” Wakefield was responsible. The journalist who wrote the BMJ articles said Thursday he believes Wakefield should face criminal charges.

However, Wakefield said his work has been “grossly distorted.” Speaking on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” he said Wednesday he is the target of “a ruthless, pragmatic attempt to crush any attempt to investigate valid vaccine safety concerns.”

Anderson Cooper Must Be Stopped

After thousands of birds mysteriously fell out of the sky in Arkansas on New Year’s Eve, it was only natural that Anderson Cooper turned to an expert for an explanation.  Enter Kirk Cameron.

“Well, I first think that they ought to call a veterinarian, not me. You know, I’m not the religious-conspiracy-theorist go-to guy, particularly,” Cameron said. “But I think it’s really kind of silly to try to equate birds falling out of the sky with some kind of an end-times theory.”