If you didn’t want to to slug Casper Van Dien before for just being in the cast of the first Starship Troopers, you’ll change your mind with this quote:

“Ed has a dark, sick sense of humor that is absolutely wonderful and just delicious. If you’re sick,” he continues with a laugh. “I love that sense of humor, I love the way he writes. I love that most people miss stuff when they watch his films or even read them. They go ‘Wait a minute, was that supposed to be like that? Because it’s really pissing me off.’ Starship Troopers had a sense of humor, Robocop had a sense of humor and this new Starship Troopers has the political fascism like the first one - and then some - it also has a religious twist that I think only Ed can do really well.”

Ugh.

Via Livescience.com:

The concept of a superlens came originally from Sir John Pendry in 2000 - although Milton and his colleagues Nicolae Nicorovici and Ross McPhedran conducted closely related studies back in 1994 - and the concept has been studied extensively. Yet no one had realized the cloaking properties until they were discovered through the research by Milton’s team.

The concept of a superlens cloak is a long way from a workable device, but the integrity of the mathematical concept has sent some experimentalists into the laboratory to try and turn the theory into reality. So far, the groups working in this area are not ready to publish papers, but they’ve accomplished enough to keep trying.

“We’re along way off from the Star Trek* device but some of the experimental results achieved so far are surprising and exciting,” Milton noted.

*RAH was a Star Trek fan, making this on topic.

Moriarity at Ain’t It Cool News reviews the upcoming “Project Moonbase and Others:”

All in all, I’m probably more than a little bit biased about PROJECT MOONBASE. I guess it’s hard to be objective when you feel like you’ve found the equivalent of buried treasure. After more than 50 years, we have a side of Heinlein’s body of work that we’ll never glimpsed before, and—most shockingly of all—some of still holds up pretty damn well.

PROJECT MOONBASE AND OTHERS will be released July 28th.

I’ve read everthing OTHER than the title story about a dozen times. I’ll be buyign this one as soon at it comes out, though. Any unread Heinlein is a treasure to collected as soon as possible.

The news:

Author Robert Asprin died in his New Orleans home on Thursday at the age of 61. No cause of death has been announced.

“Bob passed away quietly in his home in New Orleans, LA. He has been in good spirits and working on several projects, and was set to be the Guest of Honor at a major science fiction convention that very week,” said his family in a statement.

Asprin is best know for his fantasy novels including ‘Myth Adventures of Aahz and Skeeve.’ He also co-wrote the ‘Time Scout’ novels with Linda Evans.

So, I’m flipping through channels last night, and I landed on TBS and they’re playing that God-awful movie.

The bugs are shooting plasma out of their asses at the orbiting starships. The captain of the Rodger Young issues this helpful order “Evasive maneuvers.”

One of many reasons to hate this movie.

But then, how many times did they use “attack pattern delta” or some such tripe in Star Trek?

Feh.

For those who don’t know, this blog started as a static Web site dedicated to refuting those who claimed Robert Heinlein was a fascist.

It’s easy to do, considering that “fascist!” is almost always a kneee-jerk reaction when liberals encounter anything more conservative than thay are. The idea that someone could write a book lookinn into a world in which military service is necessary to be considered a voting citizen fits that description.

I’ve neglected this blog for too long. I’ll be adding some content soon.

Is Hollywood capable to doing an accurate representation of a Heinlein novel?

Leave Robert Heinlein Alone. Please stop making crappy as Starship Troopers Movies. Please quit bleeding the legacy of a perfectly good novel. Please, Just Leave Robert Heinlein Alone!

I dunno. Hollywood really mucked up “The Puppet Masters,” a novel I think would work really well as a mini-series. But that’s nothing considered the campy, poorly acted farce that was “Starship Troopers.”

[tags]Heinlein, Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein[/tags]

A blogger evokes Heinlein — and interestingly, the Bible — to defend the 2nd Amendment:

Most of us are aware that the heroic actions of a brave woman at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado a few days ago saved the lives of perhaps scores, or even hundreds, of people. However, her bravery would not have counted for much had she not been armed.

[snip]

The right and, yes, obligation of personal self-defense is entrenched in both Christian and American tradition. People who would deny citizens the right to arm themselves are either naively ignorant or deliberately duplicitous. As Robert Heinlein said, “An armed society is a polite society.”

America’s Founding Fathers agreed with Heinlein. Thomas Jefferson said, “No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.” He also said, “Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”

Arthur C. Clarke, Famed Author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Turns 90Wired News - 4 hours ago… last surviving member of the "Big Three" of science fiction authors (the other two members of the geeky coterie were Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein). …

Original post by Robert Heinlein - Google News