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remember, kids, it's all thanks to *science*!

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I read an article in the Wall St. Journal about Chicago commuters forced to take trains after highway construction made their already long commutes hideous. The whole article was a bitchfest about how they LOVED driving the hour to work and how much they missed their cars. They whined about waiting in the cold for trains and having to wear more sensable (read: ugly) shoes for hoofing it. One lady had to transport a three layer cake for a coworker's birthday and boy was that akward! Hadn't it occured to this dingle berry to just buy one near her work? The regular commuters complained that the new commuters took the good seats and talked loudly on phones. No talk of a silver linning to the situation, like getting to know neighbors, saving money or the environment,..What a bunch of babies.
--ErinMaru
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April 23, 2006
So the other day I decided to go catch the Boston Museum of Science Star Wars exhibit before it headed out of town, pay a bit of homage to the Trilogy that still has such a visceral grasp on my imagination, with Ksenia in tow.

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Not a bad shot of the Yoda puppet, pity about the shadow...



They had one of the Falcon models, it was cool seeing the detail they put into it. I'm not surprised that the Prequels' CGI never quite captured that dirty "used universe" look the way the original's real models did.



One thing about the Falcon... the audiotour talked about how it's supposed to look like parts were just bolted on, blatant non-standard modifications, and of course in the movies they say stuff like "you came in that thing?" and "fatest hunk of junk in the galaxy"...but it never looked that bad to me, maybe just a bit scuffed, with an oversized radar dish.



They had the model for the "Rebel Blockade Runner", and because of my deepish fanboy knowledge, I was able to search for and confirm a Star Wars easter egg... here's the model...


My flash was able to light up its cockpit, where I had read the original designers had included a little bonus, never seen by the movie cameras...





Hubba hubba! I love how maybe 1%--if that--of the people going through the exhibit would never think to look in there... and it was invisible without additional light (like a camera flash) anyway.

Then we went to the regular exhibits, including the good ol' reliable jumbled Mathematics room... this is the one that made me think "remember kids... it's all due to Mathematics!" Seriously (and maybe LAN3 has an opinion on this thanks to his job) sometimes I worry how shallow-ly most kids and adults take these things, just looking for a visceral momentary diversion...



Hillis et al's famous Tinkertoy TicTacToe computer



Err, if you look really closely at the image below, you can see that you're actually looking at Dolphins... remember, kids, THIS is SCIENCE so pay more attention at school!



This is a closeup from the Lunar Excusion Module (LEM) control panel... I was wondering about the whole Verb/Noun labels... I googled up this explanation. (I also Googled a confirmation that the good ol' Boston Computer Museum closedup and merged with the MoS... sigh, I used to love that place, but I guess since it took me 7 years to notice, I can't complain much.)



Finally, Ksenia behind a giant magnifying glass...couldn't decide which shot I liked more...





Bye!