Entries from January 2008 ↓

Welcome back!

I went to the store the other day. I was only in there for about five minutes, and when I came out there was a motorcycle cop writing a parking ticket. So I went up to him and said, ‘Come on buddy, how about giving a guy a break?’

He ignored me and continued writing the ticket. So I called him a stupid idiot. He glared at me and started writing another ticket for having bald tires!

Then I really got angry at him. He finished the second ticket and put it on the car with the first. Then he started writing a third ticket!

This went on for about 20 minutes. The more I abused him, the more tickets he wrote. I didn’t care. My car was parked around the corner.

Technorati Tags: humor, jokes, laughs

Carl said Quarantine was a group effort that sprang out of the necessity to make a less expensive episode. Why less expensive, you ask? Well, you see, we had just blown our budget making the amazing VFX sequences for Be All My Sins, and we had to pare back or we would have gone way over budget for the season. So they had to come up with what we call a “bottle episode” – existing sets only, no guest stars. But, as is usually the case, these types of episodes end up relying on wonderful character moments, and Quarantine is no exception.

So the writers sat around, and someone (some say it was Joe Mallozzi, others say it was Martin Gero) came up with the idea that the city locks down and everybody is quarantined in various rooms. Perfect bottle episode. Once that was decided, all that was left was to figure out which characters are trapped with which characters, and what the story line for each “pairing” would be.

I won’t let the cat out of the bag too much, but I will tell you that Carl’s favorite pairing was McKay and Katie Brown, because McKay could be vocal about his nihilistic view of life, which mirrors Carl’s own world view. That reminds me of a study I learned about in college: psychologists have actually proven that pessimists have a more realistic view of the world than optimists… Turns out it’s the positive, happy people that are deluded.

Our thanks to Elyse for this info.

Technorati Tags: SGA, Spoilers: Quarantine Spoilers Below, Stargate Atlanatis 5, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate Atlantis News

Carl said Quarantine was a group effort that sprang out of the necessity to make a less expensive episode. Why less expensive, you ask? Well, you see, we had just blown our budget making the amazing VFX sequences for Be All My Sins, and we had to pare back or we would have gone way over budget for the season. So they had to come up with what we call a “bottle episode” – existing sets only, no guest stars. But, as is usually the case, these types of episodes end up relying on wonderful character moments, and Quarantine is no exception.

So the writers sat around, and someone (some say it was Joe Mallozzi, others say it was Martin Gero) came up with the idea that the city locks down and everybody is quarantined in various rooms. Perfect bottle episode. Once that was decided, all that was left was to figure out which characters are trapped with which characters, and what the story line for each “pairing” would be.

I won’t let the cat out of the bag too much, but I will tell you that Carl’s favorite pairing was McKay and Katie Brown, because McKay could be vocal about his nihilistic view of life, which mirrors Carl’s own world view. That reminds me of a study I learned about in college: psychologists have actually proven that pessimists have a more realistic view of the world than optimists… Turns out it’s the positive, happy people that are deluded.

Our thanks to Elyse for this info.

Technorati Tags: Stargate, Stargate Atlantis

Big Finish productions, who also produces many Dr. Who audio adventures, has teamed up with MGM to produce a series of audiobooks available as online download or CD. The one hour long dramas will feature one main cast member, with possibly an additional cast member. There will be three Stargate SG-1 and three Stargate Atlantis stories. Please note that these are not books that are read aloud but are audio dramas. The current line-up is as follows:

• April 30 – SG-1 “Gift of the gods” written by Sally Malcolm Read by Michael Shanks
• May 30 – SGA “Necessary Evil” written by Sharon Gosling Read by Torri Higginson
• June 30 – SG-1 “Shell Game” written by James Swallow Read by Claudia Black and Michael Shanks
• July 30 – SGA “Perchance to Dream” written by Sally Malcolm Read by Paul McGillion
• August 30 – SG-1 “Pathogen” written by Sharon Gosling Read by Teryl Rothery
• September 20 – SGA “No title yet” written by James Swallow Read by David Nykl

Big Finish Productions will launch their downloading service beginning February 1. For future information on the SG-1/SGA audio dramas (nothing is noted there as of yet), please visit the Big Finish Productions website.

http://www.bigfinish.com/index.asp

The super popular Annual GRAND SLAM: THE SCI-FI SUMMIT is coming on April 11-13, 2008 to The Burbank Airport Marriott Hotel (and for regular Creation goers we’re happy to say that the new restaurant row will be opened within walking distance)Grand Slam adds a big one today with the great announcement that BRENT SPINER (Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Data) will be on hand. For the first time on the West Coast Brent will be presenting his new musical CD “Dreamland” for sale. At the Grand Slam convention, only in-person autographed copies of the CD will be offered. At the time of this writing this is the only autographing Brent is planning. Mr. Spiner will be appearing on stage Saturday, he is doing photo ops and offering his CD on both Saturday and Sunday.

Creation Entertainment’s 16th Annual GRAND SLAM:THE SCI-FI SUMMIT comes to BURBANK, CALIFORNIA on APRIL 11-13, 2008 and today we are happy to welcome popular young actor THOMAS DEKKER (John Connor of the brand new hit Fox series TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES and Zach of the equally popular NBC series HEROES) to his first Creation Con! vention appearance. Thomas will be with us on Sunday of the convention. The Creation/Terminator tradition continues: Creation hosted the Official Convention for TERMINATOR 2, where Arnold appeared in costume!

Thomas’ autograph is included on a complimentary basis in our GOLD & PREFERRED WEEKEND PACKAGES (which we think are the best deals in all of fan conventions). For others his autograph and photo ops are available now at our site: CLICK HERE

Thomas joins our already fantastic list of stars appearing at GRAND SLAM! Check out the entire list of attending celebrities!

Technorati Tags: Creation Conventions, grand slam sci-fi summit, John Connor, Science Fiction, Thomas Dekker

This is quite interesting. Found it over at SciFiDude and thought I would share. It’s a pretty nice site with all kinds of interesting SF stuff.

On October 13, 1961 Bill and Teena Mulder had a son whom they named Fox. The young Fox William Mulder was destined to become one of the best and brightest agents ever claimed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. As well as the laughing stock of the country’s foremost investigative agency. Fox’s younger years were filled with the things of normal boys. He loved playing baseball and climbing trees. He also enjoyed Science Fiction, evidenced by the fact that he was known to dress up as Mr. Spock from Star Trek.

Read more

Technorati Tags: Bill and Teena Mulder, Dana Scully, Fox Mulder, X-Files

Besides being one of the most popular series of television shows ever, Star Trek—from the original back in the 1960s all they way through “Enterprise”—has inspired inventors, scientists and anyone who became intrigued with the futuristic technology into making it reality.

In some areas, reality is catching up to fiction much faster than even Gene Roddenberry could have foreseen. Let’s face it… flip phones bear an uncanny resemblance to Captain Kirk’s communicator, don’t they? And the internet… could possibly be a forerunner to Memory Alpha. It is interesting to note, however, that some of the most intriguing inventions from science fiction to reality are in the field of medicine.

Today, the upper echelon of military medical officers are envisioning a basic version of Dr. McCoy’s medical tricorder for field use with the United States military. Not someday far off in the future. Not in the next ten to twenty years. Soon. Maybe before we reach 2010.

The United States Army is starting to use the beginnings of its brand new Land Warrior battle ensemble, which elevates the common soldier in the field from a lowly gear in the works to a leading part of a new approach. The impending success of this endeavor relies on the continuing research and development (R & D) aspect of this ongoing process—Future Force Warrior—which will potentially make significant improvements not only in protecting our soldiers from being injured in the first place, but in treating them after they are wounded.

Casualties from the US military in today’s conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan amazingly hold the record for the fewest “killed in action” (soldiers who die in combat before treatment can be performed) of any war, ever. This is due to two things: advanced body armor that has more protection for the head and torso and much improved field medical care. Field care has been more effective due to better trained medics and Navy corpsmen, and better equipment available to having surgeons available at the battle front.

Because of this, the “golden hour” that they used to talk about has become the “platinum ten minutes”—the amount of time that elapses between a soldier getting wounded and when they get needed medical care.

More advances are being made to extend the armor so it protects arms and legs—the parts most often injured from explosions and fragments of artillery. Eventually, when all the problems have been addressed, would become the FFW standard, which most everyone compares to the full-body armor we see in Star Wars worn by the storm troopers.

Closer to implementation are other FFW elements that will definitely become standard issue in the next few years. These include systems that monitor the soldier’s vital signs, sleep, and fluid intake constantly, so that information is immediately available to any medic. It may be possible for this device to signal that a medic is needed should the vital signs indicate injury.

Okay, it’s not a tricorder, maybe it’s better.

Soldiers will also be equipped with electronic dog tags that contain updated medical histories, so treatment can take into account any allergies, medical conditions, drug interactions and recent treatments the soldier has had. Updates will be made as each treatment is given, so if a soldier is transported from a field hospital to a more permanent facility, the new physicians will have all the information on that patient.

Each member of the military will also have a personal first aid kit. These kits will contain a one-handed tourniquet and bandages that have the ability to instantly clot blood, since blood loss is the leading cause of death on the battlefield. Each soldier will get advanced first aid training, and one in every six soldiers (at least) will be trained as a Combat Life Saver. With everyone trained to some degree, soldiers will be able to assist each other until medics can arrive. This also adds one more layer of medical support in combat.

While the troops are getting more training, so are the medics and corpsmen. As the medical personnel can access more data on each injured soldier, they’ll also be able to communicate with surgical teams on the battlefront to provide the best triage they can to their injured charges.

Some of these things are already being used in Southwest Asia, and most will be implemented in a matter of months. Other important upgrades coming along will include:

• A testing kit that uses biomarkers to determine if the brain is injured, and if so, how severely
• Automatic controls built on the ventilators, allowing a level of resuscitation only available in intensive care units
• Small hand-held ultrasound units to diagnose internal injuries
• A digital encyclopedia of diagnostic and treatment protocols that can be carried right into battle
• Portable oxygen generators that can convert ordinary air into medical-grade oxygen
• A system that will identify and diagnose ten biological warfare threats quickly, including plague, anthrax and smallpox
• Methods to provide replacement blood without using whole blood bags requiring refrigeration
• A self-contained training simulator for medics (okay, it’s not a holodeck, but it’s a start)

While these new techniques and equipment are being implemented to provide fast, effective care to combat soldiers, they can be used just as effectively to civilians and enemy combatants.

Before the current conflict in Iraq, the US military medical teams were not trained to deal with children, the elderly, or with diseases not common among young, physically fit members of the military. Today, and even moreso in the future, this kind of care will be a part of the training and equipment in our armed forces to take with them to war areas as well as to disaster areas to provide humanitarian and relief missions.

While some of today’s soldiers are still in uniform, we may see the future of our military and civilian research and development surpass what the medical team on Star Trek could do. Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, the Surgeon General of the Army, has written that he thinks one of the “most exciting possibilities in modern medicine” will be the ability to repair or re-grow damaged or lost tissues and limbs. “Regenerative medicine,” he says, is the the basis of some promising research that he feels certain “has implications for military medicine in the near future.”

Dr. McCoy’s sickbay on the Enterprise was around 200 years in our future… the 23rd century. It could be that good old “Bones” might find himself as outdated and old-fashioned in the middle of the 21st century as he thought we were during the television series.

Technorati Tags: 21st Century medicine, cell phone, gadgets, Star Trek, tricorder

Stargate Atlantis actress Rachel Luttrell welcomed her first child, a son, in mid-October. Rachel announced the name on her website with the following message:

For those of you who where interested in the name of my son, it’s Caden. His middle name is Dar. And, yes, I will post a pictures of him soon. He is a looker and I have asked him (a bit early, I know) not to use his powers for evil : ) .

Technorati Tags: Caden Dar, Rachel Luttrell's Son, Rachell Luttrell, Stargate Atlantis

Stargate Atlantis actress Rachel Luttrell welcomed her first child, a son, in mid-October. Rachel announced the name on her website with the following message:

For those of you who where interested in the name of my son, it’s Caden. His middle name is Dar. And, yes, I will post a pictures of him soon. He is a looker and I have asked him (a bit early, I know) not to use his powers for evil : ) .

Technorati Tags: Racehel Luttrell, Stargate Atlantis

SciFi has started a new Get in the Gate contest for Stargate Atlantis.

Only ten entries allowed. US residents only. Must enter during prescribed time period 21 years or older. Contest runs from January 4, 2008 to March 14, 2008.