Real Life Isn't Star Trek

But sometimes it seems we're getting there.

Objects imagined on TV as science fiction are showing up in reality all the time, twenty, thirty, and forty years later: cell phones. Portable computers. Downloadable music. Robots. Hybridized food. Separating out what's possible from what's impossible is sometimes just a matter of a few decades.

And, sometimes it's obvious that Hollywood doesn't want to waste time on research when there's a good story with a lot of explosions or evil clones to be had.

During my time teaching, I usually opened up my college environmental science classes to wild questions about once a month, and got things like: Can we clone a dinosaur, really? Can we make meat grow on trees? Are we going to all end up cannibals? Is there really a headless chicken factory in the depths of KFC?

(Answers: no; no, not unless you count tofu; no oh no no no; and no, but it's not as unlikely as you'd think.)

I'm teaching again after a four-year hiatus, and talking about the environment always brings up myths from TV and movies; about global warming, about pandemics, about the limits of technology to solve the problems we already have.

So this blog is dedicated to all aspects of that: mocking Hollywood disaster movies for their bad science, talking about appliances you have because some movie writer imagined it and someone else said "Cool!" and what kind of stuff I'm hoping someone invents to save the planet in the next fifty years. Believing is seeing, just a little bit later.