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Dr. Ash

Sci Fi

My ‘Star Wars’ confession

FullSizeRender 41I have a confession to make. I watched the original Star Wars movies for the first time last Christmas. I had seen them; they were on TV all the time when I was a kid. But I never sat down and intentionally watched them from start to finish. I remembered snippets: Han cutting open the tauntaun on Hoth, Leia killing Jabba the Hut with her slave-chain, the Ewoks celebrating in their arboreal town. I remembered R2-D2 and C-3PO. But the scenes were all jumbled together and in the wrong places and the wrong order.

My partner, B, was horrified when I admitted that I hadn’t seen the films, so he went out and bought the DVDs, and we watched them on Christmas Day.

I was delighted by the movies. I grew up with Star Trek (with Picard), and I was used to clean, uniformed officers. I liked the grittiness of Star Wars compared to Star Trek. I marveled at the range of alien races and the breadth of landscapes. From dry, dusty lands to icy wastes to lush temperate rainforests. I’m glad I got a chance to watch the originals all in one go. The story was exhilarating, and I had loads of fun.  Continue Reading

S.T.E.M.

While COP21 was happening in Paris, scientists kept churning out climate change research

The UN Conference on Climate Change ran from November 30th to December 11th, 2015.

With United Nations Conference on Climate Change drawing to a close, I wanted to compile a round-up of the climate change news released since the start of the conference.

Before I begin with the news, I found a few non-news related tidbits about the conference. I found this map of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC). It provides insight into the various climate regimes within the convention. I also found this article about climate activism and what drives climate change efforts And finally, this report came out of COP21, and it describes the benefits and trade-offs of low-carbon energy (for the full report, click here).

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Sci-Comm

Dinosaurs at THEMUSEUM- Visit them before they’re gone

Dinosaurs: The Edge of Extinction has been open at THEMUSEUM since I started working, but I only just got a chance go through the exhibition from top to bottom.

The exhibition opened this March and apparently did very well over the summer. Not surprising. Since I’ve been working the floors, it’s always funny how ecstatic the children get when an adult in the group announces that they’re all going to the third floor to the dinosaurs. Everyone loves dinosaurs, right? Continue Reading