Careers in Science

I just moved into my apartment in providence, RI. The east side of the city is fantastic, and I recommend it to anyone that wants to live some place that is a good balance of cheap and pretty. The apartment has a lot of little perks that I really appreciate including a garden in the back overrun with edible plants including a pear tree, fresh mint, and a giant crop of fresh garlic.

We don't have a table yet, which explains why I haven't updated recently, since I need a lot of mouse space to do any delicate sketchup work, but I figured I'd take a few pictures of a model I did before I moved.

The structure in question is unlike most of the ones I have done previously. I figured it would be something like a tech center, a hub of the communications system and computer network of Cydonia. It features 360 windows on every floor, and an enough solar panels on the roof to keep the network on line even if all other power production facilities on the colony were to fail. In the world of Oort Cloud, high yield solar panels are a major export of Earth's Moon. The natural vacuum makes production of these panels much less expensive, and has allowed research into super advanced solar technology to flourish. It is likely that the Lunar corporation holding these patents would license them for production on Mars' moons, rather than ship them across the vast distance between the worlds.
This is a good month for science fiction, a Sony's Sundance offering simply titled Moon appears to be a Twilight Zone-esque piece featuring a lone astronaut who has been working on an isolated mining colony for 3 years, only to stumble upon a corpse weeks before he is scheduled to return home. A corpse that looks identical to himself. What appears to follow can only be described as an isolated descent into madness.

Also debuting this month is District 9. Produced by Neill Blomkamp and directed by none other than Peter Jackson, this film appears to be a piece of social commentary featuring a refugee colony of aliens living in South Africa. Though it does looks good, I was surprised to read reviews comparing to science fiction classics like Aliens, and The Thing.

If this movie lives up to half the hype, it will represent the third film genre Peter Jackson has pulled himself into and excelled. If he keeps this up, he could go down as the Steven Spielberg of the new millennium