The Wilcox Family Blog

Courtesy of Netflix streaming over our Xbox 360, my son David (primarily) and I have been enjoying watching Adam-12, the police television series that started the year I was born, and ran for seven years thereafter, and much longer in syndication. Adam-12 was one of my favorite televisions programs when I was a kid, and I remain impressed by its lasting quality, straightforward, honest characters, and clear moral implications. (Director Jack Webb, of Dragnet fame, was clearly not an “everybody’s-doing-it” kind of guy, even in the ’60s.)

Officers Pete Malloy (Martin Milner) and Jim Reed (Kent McCord) from the Adam-12 television series.

In 1978, I was in Mrs. Lovell’s third grade class at Parkview Elementary School, in Easton, Massachusetts.

One day we were reviewing vocabulary with a small reading group after a multiple-choice exercise. The vocabulary word in discussion was heroine, and, among the possible definitions was a medicine.

When the correct answer was given by another student, I suggested, a medicine, getting me quite a troubled look from Mrs. Lovell, who then asked, “Do any of you know what he is referring to?” “Drugs,” answered Dennis, with an implication of disgust.

I’d never heard the female version of hero, but Adam-12 had provided me with an excellent education in the dangers of illegal drug use. In my eight-year-old mind, heroin was a drug, and one obtained medicines at the drugstore, so a drug such as heroin perhaps could be classified as a medicine.

I was too embarrassed by the reactions of my teacher and peers to explain this logic, and the incident eventually became eclipsed by even worse incidents of faux pas that we shall consign to the horrible depths of “the junior high years.”

Adam-12 photograph courtesy of http://www.kentmccord.com.

Today is Nichelle’s birthday. Generally, for reasons which have never been clear to me, it is considered impolite to ask or tell a woman’s age, so I won’t do that here.

A couple of weeks ago marked a watershed moment in MMORPGs: Star Trek Online wrapped up its mostly-open-beta program, and went live with its early-access-for-preorders launch. Delighted with the quality of the game, we sprung for a lifetime membership, which is approximately as costly as paying per-month for a year and a half. (I wish World of WarCraft would offer such a deal.)

The boys and I have been hooked. (Isaac, the weasel, has remained several levels ahead of me, and is about to get a promotion that will give him access to even better ships.) The game features space exploration and combat, and ground exploration and combat. The missions are described as “episodes,” and, like the plots of a television series, often require following unexpected developments and changing tasks as the plot unfolds across planetary surfaces and space. Each player captains his or her own starship, outfitting it with weapons, equipment that gives bonuses, and senior officers who also provide special abilities. I’ve attached a couple of screen shots of the gorgeously-rendered space exploration scenes below. The planets are beautiful, often including moving cloud layers that partly cover the ground below, as well as appropriate atmospheric illumination by the planet’s star, depending on one’s location in orbit.

The USS Naomi, approaching a planet within the Delta Volaris sector.

(My first ship is named the USS Nichelle.)

The USS Naomi, exploring a system in the Delta Volaris sector.

Ground locations are often also highly detailed, with a wide variety of plants and terrain. Some of the outdoor ground locations (there are also caves, and starbase and other complex interiors) sometimes seem very reminiscent of the ToS set locations, although generally with more detail than the show’s budget allowed.

Combat and exploration are both integral to the game. Combat is far more skill-intensive than most MMORPGs, particularly as one commands an “away team” to whom orders must be given, and as space combat works in three dimensions and often against multiple enemies. Some missions automatically draft the cooperation of other players, and nearly everything can be accomplished by choice as a teamwork exercise. Like the best MMOs available, there are also large PVP combat areas where players can earn even more rewards.

The game is still in early release, and is apparently only going to get better, but it still shows some weaknesses of an early release with higher-than-expected levels of demand on its servers, and some frustratingly common bugs, such as the game locking up.

Overall, though, our romps through the Star Trek universe have been delightful, with much future enjoyment anticipated.

Addendum, Stardate 201002.18: I am fully convinced that this game was worth every penny. Even my beloved World of WarCraft has never captured me with this intensity.

Beaming out after an away mission.

Rescuing diplomats taken hostage; the end of a truly well-crafted mission series.

Beautiful environments abound: This is Regulus.

Scanning with my tricorder. What could be better?

Approaching Starbase 114.

We were at Merrimack High School this morning for a meeting regarding some testing Isaac had done over the past couple of weeks. It was just after morning announcements, and as we went to our meeting, the music from Star Wars could be heard coming from every room.

I caught enough of the description playing with an apparent news report to later learn that Merrimack High School had worked with New Hampshire-based filmmaker Jeff Capone to produce a Star Wars parody entitled Star Sports, that won for the Best Parody in the Fan Movie Challenge presented by Lucasfilm and Atom at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con International.

Star Sports – Theatrical Trailer

We ran into this problem when registering Naomi for kindergarten, and now, changes in government regulation require Isaac’s school to provide this information as well. According to the school:

1. The school is no longer allowed to report race as “not reported.” This means we are required to report your child’s race starting with the 2009-2010 school year.
2. The US DOE has modified the collection and reporting requirements for racial and ethnic data starting with the 2010-2011 school year. They now use a two-part question.

Amusingly, the questions the school is required to ask are as follows:

Now, how in the heck are our children going to pick a primary ethnicity?

Okay, I’m being lazy today … so much I ought to write about, but I’ll just post “‘Me, too!’ like some brain-dead AOL-er.”

Perspective via a sort of palindrome. (Brought to my attention by Paul Weston.)

Homeschoolers versus the Home-Schooled.

The Known Universe: In Persepctive.

Nichelle has been experimenting with making custom cakes for the kid’s birthdays. Like most things she attempts, she’s done great right out of the box. She invented some cool new techniques this time, and I was able to lend some engineering expertise.

Halo “Warthog” Cake, made by Nichelle.

Halo “Warthog” Cake, made by Nichelle, with model for comparison.

Here's a ballerina cake Nichelle made for Naomi.

Here are my non-predictions for 2010 (things that are guaranteed not to occur this year):

(1) Popular musicians will realize that Auto-Tune is a waste of time, and rather than sounding “cool,” they sound depressingly similar to every other Reggae-imitating popular musician on the planet. Complex harmonies and skill will mark a new breed of popular musicians.

(2) Political and religious debate, regardless of the slant or extremes of one’s viewpoints, will be thoughtfully and factually engaged in. Conspiracy theorists will look at the hard facts and science, and admit that they were completely wrong about everything from Obama’s birth location to the moon landings to 100,000-mile motor oil.

(3) Everyone filing taxes will check the box on his or her IRS return that reads, “Check here to donate $1 to the Presidential campaign fund.”

(4) Hillary Clinton will apologize for being unjustifiably rude to the student at whom she lashed out in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Rush Limbaugh will admit he is disgustingly pompous and makes conservatives look terrible. Jessie Jackson will promise he will never run for political office or try to get a peace treaty signed in the Middle East.

(5) Congress and the Senate will refuse to allocate pork into any legislation, and will account for every line of every regulation passed, determining to do what is right for the country as a whole.

(6) Peter Ruckman will unequivocally recommend the ESV for adults, and the NLT for younger children.

(7) Hollywood will create films, rather than remake them.

(8) The American legal system will espouse justice; the guilty will be appropriately punished, and the innocent freed. Nuisance and other patently ridiculous lawsuits or compensation claims will be declined by every lawyer who is presented with one, regardless of the fee offered or potential winnings.

(9) NASA will be given more money than the combined budgets of the film industry.

(10) Palestine will be given an independent state; in return, the Palestinian Authority will effectively police its own charges, and terrorist attacks on Israel will cease.

(11) Apple will slash prices on all its products, and open its operating system to run on virtually any computer. Steve Jobs will announce, “Yes, our products are good, but you people are stupid to pay so much for them.”

(12) Massachusetts drivers will become polite and demure.

(13) Soccer will replace American football as the most popular American sport, as millions of American football fans realize that watching an hour of commercials and another hour of people walking around doing nothing is not nearly as exciting as a real game in which the clock never stops.

(14) Sports fans will no longer claim participation in, nor credit for, their favorite teams’ victories. (“We” will not win or lose.)

(15) Americans will stop whining, and realize just how fabulous a country we have. Further, they will universally take an active part in its politics, and realize that political and community participation and individual responsibility should occur far before and in far greater degree than complaining.

(16) StarCraft II will be released. (Just kidding … I think.)

From an article in The Daily Telegraph:

Using DNA taken from … skin samples [preserved in liquid nitrogen], the scientists were able to replace the genetic material in eggs from domestic goats, to clone a female Pyrenean ibex, or bucardo as they are known. It is the first time an extinct animal has been cloned.

Young Spanish ibex (Capra pyrenaica), Sierra de Gredos, Spain Photo: Jose Luis GOMEZ de FRANCISCO/naturepl.com

Just seven of the embryos resulted in pregnancies and only one of the goats finally gave birth to a female bucardo, which died a seven minutes later due to breathing difficulties, perhaps due to flaws in the DNA used to create the clone.

In 2029, the 900-foot asteroid Apophis, will miss Earth by only about 18,000 miles. To put that in contrast, the moon is an average of 238,857 miles away, center-to-center, or about 234,000 miles surface-to-surface. (The moon, of course, has a slightly elliptical orbit, so that’s just an average.) If that doesn’t set up the right mental image, take a look at the animation below, from an article on Wired Science.

Below you’ll see some beautiful video compiled from the STS-129 mission launch. (STS stands for space transportation system, and is the designation for NASA’s own Space Shuttle.

STS-129 Ascent Video Highlights from mike interbartolo on Vimeo.

STS-129 video highlights as compiled by the SE&I imagery team here at JSC from all of the ground, air, ET and SRB assets.