The eating of pine nuts can cause serious taste disturbances, developing 1-3 days after consumption and lasting for days or weeks. A bitter, metallic taste is described. In general, a minority of pine nuts on the market present this problem. Though very unpleasant, there does not seem to be a real health concern.
This phenomenon was first described in a scientific paper in 2001. Since the article, experiences of the phenomenon have been reported by hundreds of people worldwide (US, Canada, South Africa, Finland, Iceland, Germany, and many more).
In fairness to the article I doubt I would have believed it, but don’t worry baby because I’m a believer now!!
Everything I’m currently eating has a bitter metallic taste to it, the best I can explain it is like dishwashing liquid in the back of my throat.
Michael Harlan isn’t having a good day, he just wants to work on his car but his girlfriend dumps him and he needs to hand in an awesome science project or face a fail in science. Harlan then does what anyone would do, breaks into an old air force dumping ground on a date with the class nerd and finds an alien engine that is the key to time and space.
Who’s in it?
Science fiction favourite Dean Stockwell’s son John plays the resident motor head, before he was in this he was in John Carpenter’s Christine (ironically enough one of the other characters describes having seen Christine) and he went on to appear in Top Gun and directing films (such as Into the Blue).
Dennis Hopper is probably the biggest actor in the film and he is Bob Roberts the science teacher and spaced out hippy, it’s very cool too because in this film he wears the same costume he wore in Easy Rider.
Danielle von Zerneck is Ellie Sawyer (the female bookish leading lady) who was also in La Bamba.
Fisher Stevens as Harlan’s best friend Vince Latello is the stand out for me, he was also in Hackers, Super Mario Bros (don’t hold that against him) and in Short Circuit.
How does it hold up?
Surprisingly well actually, I was particularly impressed with the stop motion T-Rex that even today on DVD doesn’t look that bad, certainly not Jurassic Park good but it was the 80s. It definitely is a great example of mid 80s science fiction popcorn films and whilst you are acutely aware of watching an 80s film it is still just as much fun. There are some less than flattering gay references which sound so weird to hear now in a film.
Awesomeness?
Plenty of awesomeness, in fact its cup runneth over with awesomeness. One of my favourite lines comes out of this film, when asked by a police officer why he wears his sunglasses at night Vince answers with “because when you are cool, the sun shines on you 24 hours of the day.”
There are mutants from the future, dinosaurs from the past and some brilliant one liners from the Vince character.
Besides, how often do you get to see a T-Rex ripping up a basketball court?
Why watch it?
Well apart from its above average level of awesomeness and my recommendation alone, it is actually a really fun film, a great example of 80s teen science fiction films and has a really likable cast. There are obvious problems with time travel and how it works but as long as you don’t ponder the temporal mechanics then you’ll enjoy it.
Watch out also for its excellent credits at the end, they don’t make them like that anymore!
This is the first in a series where I will be drawing the complete set (as best as I can work it out) of Iron Man armours. Starting with of course one of my favourite suits of armour, the Mark 1.
One of my least favourite story devices in Star Trek is the holodeck and in my opinion some of the worst episodes stem from this piece of tech.
What’s the tech?
According to Wikipedia the holodeck is a room that can simulate objects and people through a combination of replicated matter, tractor beams, and shaped force fields onto which holographic images are projected. Sounds and smells are simulated by speakers and fragranced fluid atomizers, respectively. The feel of a large environment is simulated by suspending the participants on force fields which move with their feet, keeping them from reaching the walls of the room (a virtual treadmill).
Where’s it from?
The holodeck is featured on post Next Generation Star Trek shows, with the exception being Enterprise, although holograms were featured at times generally belonging to alien races.
Similar tech has been seen on Star Blazers and the X-Men’s Danger Room.
So what’s the problem?
Seriously, who is ever going outside again? Here is a device that can generally recreate any environment from a wide range of eras that appears to be completely real. You can go anywhere, be anyone and do anything.
“Um yeah, errrr work? I’m going to be sick today… cough”
Tourism goes through the floor, who wants to risk plane crashes, overthrown Governments and food poisoning when you can just pop into your holodeck and be anywhere and completely control the situation. Don’t like when the sun comes up, fine, reprogram the simulation, heck you don’t even need to know html you just tell the computer what to do!
But people want to experience the real thing, you may cry. Really? Have you seen people stuck in front of the television? Have you ever lost three hours in front of the Playstation? Now imagine that you can live as your favourite character? Imagine you can go to your happy place, for real.
Which brings us to ethical abuses of the system, several times on Star Trek people have discovered holodeck recreations of themselves and have understandably not been entirely flattered. It conjures up ideas of all sorts of ickyness that frankly I could do without.
Prank potential?
Think of the possibilities, your flat mate just ate the last jam filled donut which was clearly labelled yours in the fridge. They fall asleep, you have a holodeck and all the imagination in the world…
Well I wasn’t going to podcast this weekend but then it felt weird not to, so it’s just me flying solo for fortunately nowhere near as long as they usually go!
Listen to the podcast as I reveal deep dark childhood fears, cast aspersions on Andrew as I make claims that his copy of Summer School was a pirated copy (it wasn’t I’ve since remembered, I think) and let you in on some of the new weekly posts that are coming to Quit Your Day Job!
Plus one TMNT 2 reference (for those playing TMNT 2 bingo at home).
I mentioned in last week’s podcast that I’ll be giving this weekend’s podcast a miss as I had an awful lot of material to cover for the topic: Video game film adaptations. In case anyone wants to play along at home I am watching (hopefully):
Double Dragon
Street Fighter
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li
Mortal Kombat
Mortal Kombat 2
Super Mario Brothers
Wing Commander
I honestly am not sure if I will get through them all as I’ve had a little bother with my ear and it’s been throwing me off my game (yes I will sort through everyone’s comments – sorry been slack!).
I was going to do a really quick podcast on a random, obscure film from my childhood and had settled on the film The Taking of Beverly Hills. Unfortunately the film is really obscure and is unavailable on DVD in Australia and I couldn’t even source a digital copy through my cousin Larry. So I might just have to talk about another film as long as my ear doesn’t explode with a mighty kaboom.
If anyone has a question they’d like me to answer or a topic you’d like to hear me talk about I’m very open to ideas (best get in quick though)!
The other day I was interviewed on the art and craft website Epheriell Designs, it was pretty cool and some reallt interesting questions were asked (I don’t think my answers were as interesting as the questions!) and one of the questions was what my favourite word is, the answer is awesome.
No, that’s the word, my favourite word is the word awesome…
Arjan read the article and picked up on my fondness of the word awesome and sent me this, need I say it, awesome video featuring NPH and I pretty much love it to death even though I don’t watch How I met your mother:
I’m not 100% sure but I’m pretty certain the explosion at the start of the video is the same one in the titles of MacGyver, if it is that is double awesome.
It reminds me of one of my all time favourite teaser posters:
Talking about the equipment featured in Stargate SG1 got me thinking a little about Star Trek and the everyday technology they take for granted in the show that we would find absolutely amazing.
One of the stand outs in Star Trek’s arsenal of super tech is probably the transporter beam. Not a month goes past that I don’t read a story somewhere about how scientists are closer to creating an actual transporter just like in Star Trek.
Frankly I think they should give it all away and focus on something else more important such hoverboards or self lacing Nikes that aren’t made by some poor kid in a third world country. Because even if they work out how to do it, even if science gets so advanced that they can build it, even if they eliminate all flies on the planet so as not to have an unfortunate incident* they still shouldn’t do it.
* the unfortunate incident
Like Ian Malcolm says in Jurassic Park:
“Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
There is no way that they should build a transporter, the reason being is that no doubt due to the efficiency of such a device it would become a mass transit system and people aren’t likely to have transporter pads in every house, heck even in Star Trek Kirk still has to duck down the road from his apartment to get beamed up.
So then we would have transporter stations, most likely modelled off of our current train stations or bus centres.
Now think about the organisations that currently run our equivalent facilities.
Do you want people who can barely get a train to run on time deconstructing you at a molecular level and then shooting you across the planet?
Really?
I mean it’s not going to be things like your so called smart card ticketing systems double charging you because the clouds looked a little different today. You’ll show up at the other station with only one ear and then see how much customer service you get! Worse still think about how frustrating it is when a bus doesn’t show up, now imagine you not showing up!!!
Humanity, and by humanity I mean public transport employees are going to have to become a heck more evolved before I let them scatter my atoms across the universe (and still manage to double charge my smart card).
I was reading an article the other day regarding the staff weapons that are featured in Stargate SG1, the basic idea of the piece was that the staff weapon would be a very ineffective weapon for day to day use and that one would have to be trained from a very young age to be a skilled warrior with one.
There were all good points made in the article and I can see why the SGC (Stargate Command) wouldn’t want to change over from the weapons that they usually use which are Heckler & Koch MP5s (at least up till season four). But I can’t work out why they wouldn’t have swapped over to the other Goa’uld weapon that the team recovered.
The zat’nik’tel (Zat gun) which is a hand held pistol like device that has three degrees of effect when firing upon someone, the first shot stuns a person, the second shot kills and the third disintegrates. Apparently later on in the series they retcon (rewrite history) the disintegration part for some reason.
Even with the stun and kill aspect intact surely this is a superior weapon to the ones that SG1 carry around? One shot and a dude goes done? They make what appears to be half the noise of a machine gun and generally you can short out electrical devices.
It’s the problem I’ve seen over and over especially in but not limited to science fiction and it’s something that us gamers already know, if your enemy has a better gun or weapon and drops it, you pick it up and use it! Imagine playing Doom and looking at the BFG9000 and going nah, I’ll stick with my stupid pistol!?
Over and over in science fiction shows and movies the aliens have awesome weapons and we ignore them and don’t trade up.
I’m happy to entertain ideas though if anyone has any ideas on why in Stargate SG1 they don’t use Zat guns as standard issue?
Remember if you like the podcasts let everyone know, we appreciate mentions in blog posts, retweets, stumbles and any other social media’ish stuff you might have up your sleeve!
What’s it about?
I was reading an article the other day regarding the staff weapons that are featured in Stargate SG1, the basic idea of the piece was that the staff weapon would be a very ineffective weapon for day to day use and that one would have to be trained from a very young age to be a skilled warrior with one.
The zat’nik’tel (Zat gun) which is a hand held pistol like device that has three degrees of effect when firing upon someone, the first shot stuns a person, the second shot kills and the third disintegrates. Apparently later on in the series they retcon (rewrite history) the disintegration part for some reason.
