Thursday Things: Pop Culture Is Reality Edition
30 January 2020. Vol 2 No 5. By Dan McGirt. #25
Welcome to Thursday Things. This week:
It’s a fixer-upper, to be sure. But great views! Photo by Puk Patrick on Unsplash
Animal mayors! The 7 Animals Elected to Office and the Cities That Voted for Them. We somehow missed this November roundup of seven towns that have elected various animals — including dogs, goats, and a cat — as mayor.
Bugs for dinner? NO! Get ready to eat bugs says this article from Engadget. There is a certain segment of deranged individuals who are convinced that we’re all going to stop eating hamburgers, steak, bacon, pork chops, chicken, and other delicious things because “Omg! The world is overpopulated! We all have to eat bugs and algae now!” This will never happen. And I’m keeping an eye on these lunatics who want to force us all to live on cockroach protein so you don’t have to. But, please, enjoy this article about how everyone needs to start eating crickets and seaweed to “save the planet”:
Julie Lesnik, a biological anthropologist at Wayne State University, advocates that we look to get our meat from smaller, more-resource-efficient animals than cattle -- specifically, crickets. She points out that per kilogram, crickets offer roughly the same amount of protein as beef as well as significantly more micronutrients, since you're consuming the exoskeleton as well.
Mmm, crickets! Or we could savor some "cellular agriculture”:
"What we're talking about is taking cells out of an organism like a cow or a chicken, growing them up onto a material called a scaffold, which organizes the scale cells and helps them grow in thick quantities," she continued, "and then feeding them with a variety of different nutrients and minerals in a bioreactor to make a full steak-type product."
Come on over! We’ll throw some steak-type products on the grill!
No. Just no. If you’re voluntarily a vegan or vegetarian, fine and good. But trying to pass off fake meat as a reasonable substitute for the real thing and panic, guilt, or force everyone to eat your lab-grown mush? We all know where that ends …
It’s people! Soylent Green is people!
(Here is all you need to know about Soylent Green if you happen to not get that reference.)
Yippe-ki-yay! A Die Hard board game now exists. Yes, the heartwarming holiday film about a man who just wants to see his wife and children at Christmas, even if he has to kill an entire gang of pseudo-terrorist bond burglars to do it, has inspired a board game to bring the fun and mayhem home:
Die Hard: The Nakatomi Heist is a board game officially licensed by Fox Consumer Products that drops players into a setting familiar to anyone who has seen the film: As New York cop McClane tries to reconcile with his estranged wife, he must navigate a team of cutthroat thieves set on overtaking a Los Angeles high-rise.
The game has a one-against-many format, with one player assuming the role of McClane and the other players conspiring as the thieves to eliminate him from the Plaza.
Available now at various retailers, if you just can’t wait until next Christmas. For Ages 15+. Probably due to all the violence. And bad words.
America’s newest military branch, the U.S. Space Force, unveiled its new logo/service patch this week. It is simply a re-working of the U.S. Air Force Space Command patch that has been around since the 1980s, but many people online and elsewhere noted how closely the patch resembles the Star Fleet logo developed for one of the Star Trek television shows. I believe the particular iteration being circulated dates to Deep Space Nine and first appeared in the 1990s. Of course, the delta emblem (or arrowhead shape, if you prefer) goes back to the original series of the 1960s … whose producers were inspired by the NASA emblem designed in the 1950s. The back and forth flow of ideas and inspiration between the creators of the Star Trek fictional universe and space geeks, scientists, technologists, and others in our purportedly real and non-fictional universe dates back to the very beginning of Star Trek. Whole generations of astronauts, physicists, and inventors were inspired by the show to pursue the careers they chose. The first space shuttle was named the Enterprise as a result of petitions from Star Trek fans (while also paying homage to the historic U.S. Navy vessel of that name). Flip phones were inspired by Captain Kirk’s communicator. (The first flip phone, from Motorola, was called the StarTAC. Seriously. You can’t be much more obvious without infringing on Paramount’s trademarks.) Ideas and inventions first seen in fictional form on the show are now real … or someday soon will be. Transparent aluminum, for example. Do you remember that from Star Trek IV? The Air Force made that happen. And photon torpedoes may be possible too:
Ever since they came out, photon torpedoes have been in all iterations of Star Trek fiction. But did you know it might actually be possible to build one? At least, that’s what students from the University of Leicester are telling us.
Their study, published in student journal Journal of Physics Special Topics, discusses the possibility of constructing a photon torpedo, including the likely material needed for it to work.
As an author of fiction, I’m always excited to see people who were inspired by stories they’ve read, watched, or otherwise enjoyed to make a positive difference in the real world. The 21st century is here. A new generation of Star Trek shows are in production, and the U.S. Space Force may yet be the ancestor of a future Star Fleet. I hope that creative cross-pollination of fantasy and real-world developments will continue. Let’s just not invent the Borg while we’re at it. (Looking at you, Zuckerberg.)
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