WIl be there

The Big-E Bang Theory:
[Via Bad Astronomy]

What happens when you take two of my favorite things in the whole world and put them together?

Why, you get my mancrush Wil Wheaton on The Big Bang Theory! Here’s the promo from CBS.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEjMjnHB4pY]

The episode airs Monday, October 19. Squeee!

[More]

I’ll make sure I DVR it so I can watch it again and again. IN the last few months, Wil already made a great guest appearance on Leverage. Then on The Guild. Now this.

He is mostly a writer now and has a great blog to read. He has written about the experience without any spoilers (Here, here and here). His reaction to the promo is about as honest as any of us would be.

Reading his blog caused me to completely re-evaluate my feelings about Wesley Crusher. Wheaton is a good writer and a fine actor.

Technorati Tags: General

‘The sky cries for us’

from NASA

[An earlier version of this was posted at A Path to Sustainable ]

AutoTuned Sagan

[Via Cosmic Variance]

Oddly addicting…a million views and rising!

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I cried watching this. I miss Carl Sagan. No one else has done such an amazing job of demonstrating the joyous experience that is science. And this video definitely helps us understand better our place in the Cosmos.

It also demonstrates the amazing time we are living in. This video is being seen by millions that could never has seen it at all just a few years ago. The creator of the video used software tools that used to cost millions of dollars and required many specially trained people.

That they have been able to mash together bits of Carl Sagan and music into a wonderful, evocative production is simply amazing. But they needed the technologies that have been created over the last generation to be able to completely release their vision.

It is this democratization of virtually all things, the ability to put the tools of creativity and productivity into the hands of almost anyone, that may be the single most innovative/destructive thing in the world today.

Woody Guthrie had a guitar with the words “This machine kills fascists.” On Pete Seegar’s banjo are the words “This Machine Surrounds Hate and Forces It to Surrender.”

I wonder what motto will be placed upon these machines, these tools that are reducing the ability of authoritarian powers, either in business or politics, to control the flow of information and knowledge.

Perhaps ‘Information wants to be free‘ or ‘We can fact check, you ass.’