I’ve been huge Star Wars fan since childhood, but was a bit disappointed overall with some of the inconsistencies that cropped up when the prequels were released. Keith Martin helps make sense of it all. He ties the prequels together with Star Wars: A New Hope (later to be called Episode IV) in his post “A New Sith, or Revenge of the Hope.” It is packed full of insights, some of which I’ve seen tossed around here and there, but he also adds a bit of humor in just the right places.
If we accept all the Star Wars films as the same canon (as it seems we must) then a lot that happens in the original films has to be reinterpreted in the light of the prequels. As we now know, the rebel Alliance was founded by Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Bail Organa. What can readily be deduced is that their first recruit, who soon became their top field agent, was R2-D2.
Tonight with my wife, I watched an interesting episode of Nova titled “The World’s Smartest Machine.” Romantic, right? You can tell we are a couple of geeks at heart. Being a huge fan of Asimov and his robot creations, I am continually amazed at the progress of robotics and artificial intelligence. As a kid I was playing chess as early as the 3rd grade. I’ve always thought of myself as a pretty good chess player. When I heard about a computer that supposedly could beat a world champion chess player, I was intrigued. Garry Kasparov battled IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer in 1996 and won, however he eventually lost a rematch in 1997. Well, IBM is back at it, this time taking on Jeopardy. Nova takes us behind the scenes with the developers of “Watson,” the next step in AI. I was disappointed when the episode ended and it didn’t say who won. I didn’t realize until logging on PBS.org that the contest actually was taking place while I was watching Nova (on my media center PC). After some frantic Google searches, I eventually came across a Twitter feed with a link to a Youtube posting of the episode. This was not quite 2 hours after the episode aired! Isn’t technology great? I expect the Youtube post to be served a DMCA take down, so watch it soon if you plan on it. In addition to the episode at the end of this post, I’ve embedded the Nova preview and an humorous parody of the challenges Watson overcame during his development. I suggest watching the Nova episode first. If you are at all interested in AI, you must check these out!
There are two more nights to the match, airing Tuesday February 15th, and Wednesday the 16th. Be sure to check them out, along with some live blogging on PBS.org. I find myself rooting for Watson, not because I want to see humans defeated, but because I want to see humans capable of making something smart enough to do it. Who do you think will win? Who do you want to win?
I just recently stumbled upon an interesting site of a girl that loves to make costumes and dress up in them. Quite a few of them are from Sci-Fi, such as The Matrix and my favorite, Star Wars. The Femtrooper costume is probably the geekiest of them all. The stereotypical male costume of the Stormtrooper is ingeniously modified to fit a woman. Of course I don’t know how exposing your stomach would hold up in a firefight against rebels, but it looks good! I wonder what Star Wars would have been like had there been Femtroopers? We might never know except in fan films. There are lots of other pictures on the SithVixen site, check them out.
OK, so a long time ago I was excited to see the Slave Leia girls on Deal or No Deal. Watching it with my wife was somewhat awkward, but she was kind enough to humor me. One of my good friends over at What the Photo sent me an interesting stumble today featuring, get this, a belly-dancing slave Princess Leia! It looks like Amira Sa’id has been doing this for some time now. How I’ve not come across this until now is a complete mystery. For more information, including some interviews and other pictures and videos, visit Amira’s website at http://www.amiradance.com/LeiaLive.html
Check it out!
