This Week in Geekdom



Hi guys. Happy Lunar New Year and Imbolc/Candlemas! It's been a little bit since the blog has featured any sort of new post, and for that I apologize. A couple weeks ago I got a promotion that, amongst other things, will free me from the cycle of quarterly battles with the workish Elder Hydra. Woot! While I'm very excited to move on to new challenges, this final battle with the Elder Hydra, as if somehow sensing my impending departure, morphed into a boss fight. Fortunately, that combat has come to an end and the Hydra's regenerative malice will no longer wreak havoc on me and, by extension, the blog. <insert victory music here>

There have been a couple new developments during the recent radio...err...digital silence and these will be featured in their own posts as we get back to a normal publishing schedule. So let's get down to the Week in Geekdom!

Movies

The past few months have seen a veritable torrent of rumors concerning the plot, work schedule, and casting of the still-untitled Batman vs. Superman movie. On Friday Warner Bros. decided to add some actual confirmed facts to the fray with this official announcement.

Speaking of projects that are surrounded by a froth of rumors, the latest news to come out of development talks for Star Wars: Episode VII is this potential casting tidbit. Errrr, not feeling great about this one.

How is the forthcoming Peter Pan origin movie like the TV series Arrow? Well, for one, the two share a producer but said producer (Greg Berlanti) claims that the similarities do not end there.

JJ Abrams' pair of Star Trek films may be a point of heavy contention for franchise fans, but the alternate timeline presented in the movies is but one of many directions that cinematic Trek could have taken. Read here for a detailed description of Beginning, the Star Trek movie that never was. 

Science/Technology

Last month, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia made this potentially landmark ruling that would, if left unchallenged, change the composition of the internet forever. While this has gone largely unremarked upon by the media at large, the guys at Daily Kos attempt to depict the consequences with this cartoon.

It's a merging of cosmic forces that's still billions of years away, but scientists believe that these images of existing galaxies can provide us with a glimpse into the far-flung future.

Cortana may soon have life beyond the Halo series. If Microsoft has its way, Cortana may attempt to challenge Siri for interactive mass-market AI supremacy.

Ooooh...magnetic monopoles
The latest issue of the journal Nature details this effort to create and photograph a synthetic magnetic monopole whose existence was predicted nearly 85 years ago.

10 of the most commonly circulated urban legends about NASA (and the subsequent debunking of said myths).

We've chatted a few times about the potential applications for ultrathin and ultralight materials and this phenomenon may be the key to making such compounds possible.

Want to take a course with Carl Sagan? Well, the Library of Congress will now let you do just that.

General Awesomeness

We may not be anywhere near the point of being able to build Jaegers, but Sagawa Electrics has put together this Appleseed-inspired mechanical exoskeleton.
  
We have a date for International TableTop Day 2014! Mark your calendars and have your dice bag ready on Saturday, April 5th!

The Middle Earth Project has been toiling away to create a 1:1 virtual recreation of the eponymous Tolkien world. See what they've been able to complete so far.

This is what 2013 looked like as viewed from orbit:


As always, best wishes for an awesome week ahead!

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