Club Jade

StarWars.com got hold of Uncle Milton Industries’ Executive Vice President Frank Adler to get him to explain the toy that had us all boggling last month.

Martin Anderson over at DenOfGeek.com muses on cellular memory, integration, and other scientific explanations, based on other genre works, for how the titular system of Joss Whedon’s upcoming show, Dollhouse, might work? Will Eliza Dushku eventually realize she’s actually Faith? Dollhouse premieres February 13, 2009 on Fox.

No, USA Today is reporting this one straight, complete with comments from Howard Roffman. The Force Trainer “uses brain waves to allow players to manipulate a sphere.” Naturally.

No, you’re not tapping into some “all-powerful force controlling everything,” as Han Solo said in the movies. But you are reaching out with mind power via one of the first mass-market brain-to-computer products. “It’s been a fantasy everyone has had, using The Force,” says Howard Roffman, president of Lucas Licensing.

…In the Force Trainer, a wireless headset reads your brain activity, in a simplified version of EEG medical tests, and the circuitry translates it to physical action. If you focus well enough, the training sphere, which looks like a ping-pong ball, will rise in the tower.

Call me when they start making the toy lightsabers with real light, okay? (via)

These are for you budding science geeks. Above, Lasers and kinetic energy. (via)

Yes, 3-D holograph technology is swiftly becoming a reality, prompting bloggers to pull out their old “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi.” stills. I’d retaliate with a giant floating head of Palpatine, but I left it on the other computer. Next time!

Gizmodo spotted these Intelligent Monitoring Towers recently installed in Buenos Aires. Their intention is to measure air and noise quality, but is it really that far a jump to consider them collecting moisture on Tatooine? Or at least hanging out in the general vicinity?

Midichloria mitochondrii is a bacteria that infects within the mitochondria named after midichlorians which were probably based on mitochondria in the first place. Have your eyes crossed yet?

Popular Science awards good, bad, and highly implausible movie science. The Island, Fantastic Four, and Batman Begins are all featured. (via SF Signal)

The Air Force is testing transparent aluminum… As Karen Traviss points out, we’re getting damn close to transparisteel!

Also, the testing is at the Wright-Patterson Air Force base… I’ve been there. It’s where the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force is. Totally a must-see for anyone into that sort of thing – it’s huge. (And if you’re lucky, sometimes they give tours of the warehouses of all the stuff they’re not putting up in the main museum. Or at least they did a few years back.)

Rivendell, Minas Tirith, even Lothlórien. But Indonesia? Merry and Pippin got around.