My Review of Star Trek

Do not read if you haven't seen Star Trek yet.

Let's start from the beginning of the timeline. Spock is sent out with a substance called "red matter" which despite its great power apparently requires no more supervision or protection than a single 150+ year old Vulcan. Although just a single drop of "red matter" is apparently enough to create a singularity powerful enough to engulf the ejecta of a supernova, Spock is flying around with what looks like several gallons of the stuff. Spock shows up just in time to see Romulus get destroyed which is just as well as a device powerful enough to engulf a supernova would probably take Romulus with it.

Despite being in the path of an exploding star, The Romulans apparently took no measures to evacuate their citizens even though they have an entire empire in which to relocate people. This leaves a very angry Romulan with a very large starship who proceeds to chase Spock around until they both fall into a black hole.

Despite being described as a mining vessel it is heavily armed enough to destroy a Federation starship with relative ease. It then just sits there for the next 25 years waiting for Spock to show up. There is absolutely no evidence that Spock will ever show up. It seems he would have been just as likely to show up 3,000 years later as 25 years later. What the hell Nero is doing for those 25 years is never explained. How he kept his apparently all male crew from turning against him is beyond me. Just seems like after a few years, or even just a few months, some of the crew would get fed up with just sitting around waiting for Spock. There's no indication that he's any kind of great leader, just the captain of a well-armed mining vessel.

When Spock finally does show up, Nero sets out on his mission to destroy the Federation in order to save Romulus. Completely ignoring the fact he could have simply gone to the Romulan Empire, tell them what was going to happen, and give the Romulans enough of a technological advantage to destroy the Federation several times over before Spock even delivers the red matter.

Something that obviously never occurs to Spock once he exits the black hole is that maybe he shouldn't let Nero get a hold of the red matter. The stuff for creating black holes probably isn't terribly safe in the hands of a Romulan hell-bent on revenge. Isn't it exactly these kinds of situations that auto-destruct is made for? Sure Spock probably doesn't want to die, but it seems that the chances of coming out of this situation alive are pretty low to begin with. Besides, I'm pretty sure Spock has already died once or twice, he should be used to this. Nero proceeds to take the red matter and destroy Vulcan. Good job, Spock.

At Vulcan, Nero proceeds to destroy a small Federation fleet all by himself, thus proving that he really should have just gone to the Romulan Empire 25 years ago, but I guess there's no poetic justice in that. Vulcan apparently has no defenses of its own as they simply wait around for Kirk to show up and shoot at the drill with just a sidearm to stop it. Why exactly they even have to drill the hole is unknown. Seems like a black hole would do just about the same amount of damage no matter where you put it. Also, why in the world would anyone need a mining vessel so big that it could sit in space and drill to a planet's core?

So while Vulcan is being sucked into a black hole, the leaders are hiding in a cave from which they can't be teleported, the only method of saving them. It is later reported that only 10,000 Vulcans survived. Despite being an advanced, space-faring species, they never thought of setting up colonies. I'm starting to think that Vulcans are a bunch of idiots.

Fed up with Kirk, young Spock maroons him on some frozen wasteland of a planet, presumably leaving him to die because, seriously, how does he expect Kirk to survive on that planet? Miraculously, Nero had the same idea, and marooned old Spock on the same planet. He left Spock there to watch Vulcan be destroy as apparently the planet he was on was close enough to see Vulcan, but far enough away to escape the black hole.

Later on, Kirk and Spock are beamed abroad Nero's starship and reveal the interior to be a bunch of haphazardly placed platforms with no guardrails because if there's one thing spaceships lack, it's constant fear of falling to your death.

After all this, we are left with an ending that more or less tells us that the events that took place in every single Star Trek TV series or movie never happened, except Star Trek: Enterprise.

I still gave it a 77 on Criticker.

Save the Economy, Smoke

BBC

Although it's been rescinded, it still pretty odd. Authorities in Gong'an County, China ordered government employees to purchase locally made cigarettes as a way to boost the economy. Probably one of the most short-sighted suggestions ever.

Eurovision 2009

Eurovision is finally here. While the acts were decided over a month ago, I wanted to wait until May to take a look at what was in-store. I'm sorry to say, this year doesn't look like it will be quite as crazy as last year. There are no pirates, puppet turkeys, bearded Frenchmen, or Bosnians carrying live chickens this year. However, there are a few stand out acts I've decided to share with you. These will by no means be the best acts, just the ones I thought were the most interesting.

10. Netherlands - Winner of three categories, campiest song, best suits, and best use of Obama in a music video.
9. Ireland - Irish grrl rawk! They seem a little old for this, but I also think Ireland has given up on ever winning again, so it's a good match.
8. Belgium - It was Walloon's turn to pick. Guess, did they go with a French power ballad or an Elvis impersonator?
7. Latvia - Random Latvian rock song.
6. Greece - Sexiest shoulders ever.
5. Switzerland - This is actually a pretty fun rock song, which means it has no chance.
4. Ukraine - After their first win, the Ukraine learned that sex sells and they're not about to give up now.
3. Norway - Cute... the song's alright too.
2. Serbia - Ah yes, the "we've already won once, we can do whatever the hell we want" entry.
1. Czech Republic - Super Gypsy!

If you want to watch any other preview videos, they can be found at Eurovision's Channel on Youtube.

If you want to watch the live show, here's the schedule:
1st Semi-Final, May 12th 9PM CET (or 3PM in North Carolina)
2nd Semi-Final, May 14th 9PM CET (or 3PM in North Carolina)
Final, May 16th 9PM CET (or 3PM in North Carolina)

You can watch it online at Eurovision.tv live or afterwards if you miss it.

Elections in South Africa, kind of more competitive

BBC

According to the BBC, the upcoming election is the most competitive since 1994, assuming you use a loose definition of "competitive". The ANC got nearly 70% of the vote last election, but there's been a lot of controversy so in the polls they're down to a dismal 60%. So really, it's MORE competitive than the 1994 election, when they got 62%.

Friends on Bizarre Foods

In case anyone cares, my friends Robert (Egbert not Cole) and Julli will be on the South Korea episode of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern on April 21st at 10 and 11pm. They are food guides for the part on Korean BBQ or galbi.

First Cousins Bad, Third Cousins Good

Science Blogs

I'll start you out with this lovely article about King Charles II of Spain and how he was insanely inbred. Some of you may remember a post I did almost exactly three years ago about the lineage of the King of Sweden and I was able to connect him to King George I six times. I think I might try a similar thing with King Charles II and see what I get.

Not Exactly Rocket Science

The earlier article let me to this second article which I found fascinating. The gist of the article is that a couple who are third cousins tend to have more children and more grandchildren than other more or less related couples. The mentioning of grandchildren is important as it means that their own children were healthy enough to have their own children, which is not always the case with more closely related couples. However, why more distantly related couples have fewer children and grandchildren is a bit of a mystery.

Rare Movies

I was playing around with Criticker and an interesting idea came to me. When Criticker makes a guess of how much someone would like a movie, it takes the scores of the 1000 people that agree that person the most, finds the ones that have seen some movie, and then takes the top 10 of those to create a prediction.

When looking at a movie, it lists all other people using Criticker that have seen it, but only shows the TCI scores (the measure of how much someone agrees with someone else) for those in that persons top 1000. Therefore, if TCI scores are only shown for say 2 people, then that means out of 1000 people, only 2 have seen it.

So I got to thinking, 1000 people is, statistically, a pretty good sized group. Therefore having just two out of 1000 see a movie means that 0.2% of the population have seen the movie, with a margin of error of 3%. This lead me to wondering, which movies have I seen, that the fewest number of people have seen. There are of course of number of problems in terms of selection bias using this method, but I can deal with it.

The 30 movies I have seen that the fewest number of Criticker users in my top 1000 have thought of ranking (bolded, movies I recommend seeing):
The Baker - 0.1%
Benji the Hunted - 0.1%
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying - 0.2%
Reckless Kelly - 0.2%
The King and the Clown - 0.3%
Animals are Beautiful People - 0.4%
The Cocoanuts - 0.4%
Felix the Cat: the Movie - 0.4%
The Princess Blade - 0.5%
The Wraith - 0.5%
The Court Jester - 0.7%
Norma Rae - 0.7%
Hellbound - 0.8%
Larger than Life - 1.1%
So Close - 1.1%
Monkey Business - 1.3%
Welcome to Dongmakgol - 1.3%
Guys and Dolls - 1.4%
Boxing Helena - 1.5%
I Love You to Death - 1.6%
Ned Kelly - 1.6%
The Black Hole - 1.8%
Fantastic Planet - 1.8%
For Richer or Poorer - 1.8%
Animal Crackers - 2.0%
The Legend of 1900 - 2.2%
Strictly Ballroom - 2.3%
Vanity Fair - 2.4%
Young Einstein - 2.4%
Six-String Samurai - 2.5%