Disney+ is probably the best thing since Netflix. I was most excited about the Disney+ shows that were coming out with the streaming service. The show that was on my top list was to watch The Mandalorian. My fiancé had been hyped up about this show due to his obsession with Star Wars and I confess I became a fan myself. There are many things that I like about it. Only two episodes have been out and we still don't know any of the characters' names, yet attachment to the show does not lessen. It adds a bit of suspense since we have no idea what name these characters want to go by. Since the day that Disney+ came with The Mandalorian every Star Wars fan has been posted pictures of "baby Yoda;" however, we know that it cannot be possibly the real Yoda since he had passed on in Episode VI — The Return of the Jedi. The show supposedly takes place before the seventh Star Wars and after the sixth, so the empire no longer exists and we see this evidence near the beginning of The Mandalorian where the bounty hunter is offered a very generous reward for his work. He is surrounded by the stormtroopers, but their armor is rusty and lacking the white color in some spots. The bounty hunter sets off on a journey to find this thing that he is supposed to kill, but it takes an unlikely turn as the 50-year-old creature is a small baby and the hire wants him or her or it back alive. The force flows deep within the creature and we know that the bounty hunter is also young because when he witnesses the use of the "force" for the first time, he does not recognize it as the "force." The voice of the bounty hunter is also young, yet he is well-skilled since he is one of the best bounty hunters in the galaxy. While watching The Mandalorian, it felt like watching every other Star Wars movie because of the familiar aliens and the atmosphere that is created by none other than Jon Favreau and his vision is what Star Wars is. Now, I have read other reviews and the mixed feelings do exist, but honestly, I love the series and I wish that Disney was releasing more than they had. There are some moments that made me laugh at loud such as when the bounty hunter comes back to his ship and the small devils known as "jawas" were stripping his ship apart. They did a fast job at it too, because when the bounty hunter got back, his whole ship was basically in ruins and unable to fly or work. The situation gets comedic when the jawas start throwing whatever they can to get the bounty hunter off their ship and then the orb that holds baby "Yoda" is just floating directly behind him keeping up and just watching as this happens. That was too funny. Then, we have a bit of suspense where the bounty hunter runs into a creature and is nearly beaten. When baby "Yoda" steps in, our jaws drop as he beats the creature and retrieves the egg for the jawas to get his stolen ship parts back. This is a show where all ages can enjoy because of the humor and suspense that is put into the show. There have not been any scenes that were not all-ages appropriate. Yes, there is shooting and violence, but not the violence that will scar a child for the rest of their lives. Overall, I'm excited about the next few episodes.

One photo from the newly released The Mandalorian has been speeding around Facebook faster than… well… Yoda’s lightsabering in Episode II: Attack of the Clones (Remember that? Many called it the only good moment in two hours of entitled man-child Anakin’s drippy love dialogue and Padme’s spectacular outfits overshadowing her complete lack of character. As I said at the time, millions on special effects and not a penny on script. But I digress…)

I recently went into the hospital for a heart catheter test. I ended up having a stent placed in the most serious valve of my heart; which was, by the way, 80 PERCENT BLOCKED. I suppose if it is a hundred, that's it. I did it to myself, of course: that all-fat, no-carbohydrate diet I was doing for months and months. I figure I nearly committed ketogenic suicide

Firefly written and directed by Joss Whedon came out 2002-2003. It’s a space western drama about a crew of outlaws in outer space.

I’m a hot mess. Superficially, my life is pretty decent: I have a cute boyfriend, a good job in my field, and a savings account (yes, I just bragged about having a saving account and what?!) But spiritually—it’s like Judas took a dump on the floor of a gas station bathroom after wolfing down five burrito bowls from Chipotle. I’m not even exaggerating. I have this weird hole that I can’t fill. And I always thought that phrase was cliche but for me it’s not. It’s a hole that can’t be filled with recreational drugs, drinking, dick, or quality time with friends. Because on paper I have everything I need to feel... full. But I’m not.

There's a moment in the film, Her when Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) realizes that the relationship he's having with his new operating system is not exactly a private experience. Within the short span it takes for him to fall in love with his sexy AI system, the phenomenon of engaging in a non-human relationship is trending. It's only while paying attention in public, that he discovers AI love has become a socially accepted norm for many people. He was just too lost in his own moment to notice.

It’s a crazy world we live in. We’re able to literally reach the stars, communicate from one end of the world to the other, and even create self-evolving machines. Technological advancement doesn’t seem to exhaust itself.

Sulily sleeps suspended inside a transparent, cylindrical womb filled with luminous blue fluid. Her suit sticks to her body like a second skin and has knobby nodes that run up the length of her spine and end at the soft helmet's base at the back of her neck. From the center of the helmet, wires fan outward and upward, gathering at the control center at the top of the container. Her mouth and nose are covered by a breathing apparatus with a serpentine root that coils and stretches down to the base of the cylinder.

“Praise be!” It has been 34 years since the controversial, and even banned novel, The Handmaid’s Tale was published (1985), and on September 10, 2019, Margaret Atwood published its sequel, The Testaments. Her latest novel has already garnered critical praise and was named to the shortlist for the Booker Prize.

It's very unlikely that we're alone in the universe. (That is, unless you think that something happened to everybody else.) There are a lot of possible scenarios that might play out when we finally meet E.T. Which ones are we most likely to experience? Read on...

2019 has not been kind to the Amazon Rainforest with more than 40,000 fires across the region this year alone. Scientists from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research have determined that this year alone has seen the fastest rate of burning since the organization began a record-keeping survey on the health of the rainforest in 2013. In fact, the toxic smoke from the fires is so intense that many parts of Brazil now lay under darkness, and in some places, hours before the sun could even start setting.

BANG!

Akira Yoshizawa, a teenager in the nineteen-twenties, quit his factory job and proceeded to turn paper-folding into a fine art. Today, origami kits are common and consist of a booklet of instructions and a set of colored paper. The paper is two-sided with a different color on each side. The instructions, consisting of mostly of arrows and lines, are a part of a worldwide standard of visual language for origami that Akira pioneered. He also invented the wet folding technique, which allows for more sculptural interpretations.

The scene is hard to forget. In a dystopian and devastated world, an army of robots fight men on the ground and air, resisting as best they can.

It’s a crazy world we live in. We’re able to literally reach the stars, communicate from one end of the world to the other, and even create self-evolving machines. Technological advancement doesn’t seem to exhaust itself.

The Major Breakthrough in Artificial Intelligence

I recently went into the hospital for a heart catheter test. I ended up having a stent placed in the most serious valve of my heart; which was, by the way, 80 PERCENT BLOCKED. I suppose if it is a hundred, that's it. I did it to myself, of course: that all-fat, no-carbohydrate diet I was doing for months and months. I figure I nearly committed ketogenic suicide

Those of us who grew up on Star Trek like to think that intelligent alien life will be at least recognizable to us. Even if it's a sentient ball of energy or a shapeshifter, its actions ought to be obvious in person and detectable at a distance. Right?

It's very unlikely that we're alone in the universe. (That is, unless you think that something happened to everybody else.) There are a lot of possible scenarios that might play out when we finally meet E.T. Which ones are we most likely to experience? Read on...

Chapter One

Haunting yet inviting, a phantom tune quietly crept into Nagi's mind. Coming from all directions, the music taunted and beckoned as he tossed and turned in bed. Giving in to the temptation, he rose and walked out the door, his black hair still a matted rat's nest, wearing only a stained grey T-shirt and blue plaid boxer shorts. The cold night air tickled and teased to get a reaction, but Nagi continued walking forward, paying no mind to the lonely weather's games. The sound kept flowing from all directions, giving him no clear path to follow, only the vague notion that he must continue moving.

The two of them returned to the group and they weren’t surprised to see that the group was still charged with energy.

There's a moment in the film, Her when Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) realizes that the relationship he's having with his new operating system is not exactly a private experience. Within the short span it takes for him to fall in love with his sexy AI system, the phenomenon of engaging in a non-human relationship is trending. It's only while paying attention in public, that he discovers AI love has become a socially accepted norm for many people. He was just too lost in his own moment to notice.

If you're old enough, or remember much in your high school history class, you probably remember the golden days of airships. Not so long ago, blimps and their cousins were the darlings of pilots and many a pundit predicted they would take over aviation. But then jet engines stole their place in history and airships were relegated to the logo for a tire company.

The defense attorney paused in his speech, bowed his head, and for a few moments, simply pursed his lips and studied the fists he clenched in front of his chest. Then he lifted his head, simultaneously opened his fists with his palms up, turned and addressed the judge directly.

Creation is not random.

What's going on? I can't breathe! I'm drowning! What the hell? What is this fluid?! Where am I?

I have been thinking lately about death, and I don’t mean in a morbid I want to die way.

A real life waterworld would be even worse than the movie. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the "10 Things That Would Happen If the World’s Ice Caps Melted."

Science fiction writers love a good twisted tale about science gone bad. Even the earliest sci-fi, like Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, started off with a scientist that pushed the envelope too far.

My first loves in life were books. Specifically fantasy novels. I would read them every day before school, after school, and before bed. You could always find a book in my hand. Fantasy as a genre has been around since George MacDonald penned Phantastes in 1858, and there have been hundreds of authors to pen fantasy novels since.

The Lonely Seeker

Yes, this is political. I offer you trigger warnings for language and sexual and racist slurs and comments. Future episodes may also contain rape, abuse, and other unpleasant things.

Just by happenstance, I recently picked up a copy of Trevayne, written by Robert Ludlum. In his introduction, he mentioned that he wrote the book after the Nixon Watergate scandal. In part he says of Watergate: "Here was the government, the highest of our elected and appointed officials entrusted with the guardianship of our system, not only lying to the people but collecting millions upon millions of dollars to perpetuate their lies and thus the controls they believed were theirs alone to exercise." He goes on to point out that their meaning was to keep the country theirs. Not yours or mine, or even the neighbors across the street or across town. Only theirs. "The rest of us were somehow neither relevant nor competent. They knew better, therefore the lies had to continue and the coffers of ideological purity kept full so that the impure could be blitzkrieged by money and buried at the starting gates of political contests."

Wheezy Waiterm, AKA Craig Benzine, is the main host for a geek/nerd Youtube show called The Good Stuff. I don't watch these kinds of shows, because for the subjects I like, it's always above the pay grade of the show hosts and they either wind up pretending they know or understand it, or kiss the ass of some scientist they interview. Then later is what happens when the hapless cast of The Good Stuff have on the greatest fraud in the history of physics, Ronald L. Mallett. Nothing, and I mean nothing of any significance related to time travel has resulted from Ronald Mallett's claims, which are often exaggerated and baseless, if not outright lies, despite the fact he hides behind Einstein like a religious zealot hides his terrorism behind the name of his god. For the record, Einstein didn't even like the idea of time travel and since Mallett is supposed to be such a fanboy for the man, he should know that. And for ALL OF YOU, I don't care if you're a geek, nerd, armchair physicist or some PhD in theoretical physics in some community college somewhere—Guess what? The fact that all the solutions for time travel derived from Einstein's theories require a SPACE PROGRAM should tip you off that they're not exactly applicable solutions to the problem at hand and the answers actually lie elsewhere. That none of you are too swift on that account is probably why you don't realize how insane it makes you all look. Right. INSANE, or have you forgotten the quote that has been erroneously attributed to your favorite genius, pre-Hawking. You know—"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result"? Like, you know, like constantly trying to force relativity to produce time travel results. Good quote. Certainly applies to all of the aforementioned suspects, but no, Einstein didn't say it. After all, as a professional researcher, I check my sources. More on time travel and its dubious links to the theories of Relativity, momentarily.

A conspiracy nut that cannot think critically would have you believing that HAARP is used for weather control. The document “Owning the Weather for Military Use,” found on Global Research.ca states that weather modification is possible as part of domestic and international security without people knowing about it or having a say in how HAARP would be used. HAARP is supposed to generate rain, fog, or storms on earth, but it's not limited to modifying space weather. The seven year drought California faced that has brought PG&E to its knees with the current power shut off crisis of which I’m not personally affected by, is over thanks to majorly wet winters in 2018 and 2019. I’m writing this article to see what facts or fiction can come out of actually researching this stuff instead of taking a Facebook meme at face value. HAARP is actually a project that is studying the properties and behavior of the ionosphere. The research facility went from the hands of the United States Air Force to the University of Alaska Fairbanks on August 11th, 2015.

Hi again everyone! Holidays had me completely out of the creative zone, but I’m back to tell you about the science of mental disorders. However, before that, I am going to start with a more broad post about how scientists find out about the brain.

“Corporal Stevens,” crackled the radio of my re-entry pod, “Come in, Corporal Stevens.” It crackled again, followed by a brief period of radio silence.

“I'm sorry, Sir—but are you completely mad?” My assistant, Jonathan, asked me on a particularly brisk Thursday morning as I enlightened him to my proposition. We were walking in the park opposite the Venusian Experimental Celestial Colonisation Laboratory in which we both worked. “You want to—what?” he asked again, in utter disbelief.

“If this boat hits one more swell, I swear I’ll hurl that slop they called breakfast back up on the deck.”

It seems like an annual tradition that a critically-acclaimed sci-fi from an auteur will be released to either adoration or derision or both from a general audience. Gravity, Interstellar, The Martian and Arrival all earned acclaim and were generally well-received by audiences, but then Blade Runner 2049 and Annihilation faltered at the box office and the latter did not even receive international distribution, instead being bailed out by Netflix while a studio reluctant to even release the film barely marketed it at all. I think the box office results of Ad Astra will be carefully examined by studios to see whether this genre is worthy of being financed as original films’ performance at the box office continues to trend downward. What’s also interesting is that this film is a holdover from 20th Century Fox—now Disney owned—which could be completely reshaped itself under new management. Ad Astra’s release was pushed back numerous times which was concerning as it could have been a sign of studio apprehension, as the film is a clear financial film relying on star power, word of mouth audience response and marketing. The September release date the film was given was clearly a clever choice however, as only one franchise heavyweight was released, so it was mostly a level playing field between mid-budget original films, which was quite refreshing and I hope becomes the case more often. The film has performed better than expected, crossing more than 100 million worldwide, but it still stands to lose money, it’s box office performance similar albeit slightly better than another space-based film, First Man. These auteur-driven films go against typical Hollywood filmmaking, but it’s saddening to see such a lukewarm audience reception for a more creative take on the genre and going against convention.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is my favorite video game of all time. Hands down, there is no other. I'm sure many will disagree and that's fine, they're probably not as big of a Star Wars geek as I am. But, this game made my childhood.

Encounter stars Luke Hemsworth as Will Dawkins. Will lives in his sister’s, Teresa (Cheryl Texiera), garage, sadly recreating the image of his late daughter and his still living former wife, Jessica (Anna Hutchinson), in sad clown paintings. Will was left paralyzed by the accident that killed his daughter and the overall trauma was more than his wife could bear. To say that Will’s life is one of ongoing despair would be an understatement.

One of the great ironies of Stephen Hawking’s death was that fact that his most revolutionary contribution to science, Hawking radiation, suggests that nothing in our universe can last forever.

There is a belt of rocks, AKA a planet that has not yet formed, that orbits the Sun. It orbits between Mars and Jupiter.

The universe is a huge place and people exist in a small part of it. The area human beings, animals, and other creatures occupy is what is referred to as the Solar System. It comprises formations which we recognize as planets, satellites that orbit these planets, and an average-sized star that we identify as the Sun. The four inner planets of the solar system are known as ‘Terrestrial Planets.’ This is because their major components are metals and silicate rocks. The other four planets are identified as ‘Jovian’ planets. Also, you can refer to them as ‘gas giants.’

As more and more people are learning about the benefits of clean energy, the more popular solar energy is becoming. Solar energy is basically able to provide all the energy a home needs when it comes to running the appliances in the home. When installing a solar energy system in a home, most installers advise homeowners to also add the solar battery. A solar battery makes it convenient to run high capacity appliances. Not only can solar energy take care of all of our needs when it comes to enjoying electricity in the home, but they do it in a clean way.

Introduction

Flying cars. Jetpacks. Rocket boots. Just some of the many predictions for future tech that the predictors and science fiction got slightly wrong. However, there are some predictions for the future that have indeed come to pass. So what are the ones that they got right, what are the ones they got horribly wrong and what are the ones that still could yet come to pass?