About Christopher Peterson

http://www.chrispeterson.info

Geek, dad, maker of things on the internet

Posts by Christopher Peterson:

Aliens 1986 movie backdrop

Aliens: hyperlseep, how to terraform, and Blade Runner reconciliation w/ Josh from LSG media

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Featuring guest co-host
Josh from LSG Media headshotJosh from LSG Media

Love

Love! For James Cameron and Aliens. And the great utilitarian design of the spaceship interiors. Great world-building.

Hypersleep

Cryosleep? Ice sublimation and mummified Sigourney Weaver. Hibernation. How to shove pine cones up your butt, chug some Nyquil, and turn into a bear. Cryogenic specimen preservations: sperm! DIY fecal plugs for hibernation.

Private space industry

The rise of private space industry. Going dystopian.

Planetary operations

Planet? Moon? The delineation between planets and moons and looking forward to the future when we get confused again. Demoting Pluto to planetoid. Terraforming Mars. Sad news on Martian CO2 supplies for atmosphere creation. Crater settlements and whether or not you need a roof. Atmospheric density limits for human comfort and thriving.

Xenomorphs

But are they really called Xenomorphs? The throwaway line in Aliens that spawned decades of confusion.

Send the robots

Always send the robots. Unless you are an evil corporation with shady goals. Milk robots…?

Blade Runner connection

Blade Runner and Aliens are the same universe. The separate lines of technological development that yielded replicants and Aliens’ “synthetics.” Blade Runner 2049’s anime prequel and how that informs the universe crossover.

Links

Aliens: iTunes | Amazon
Josh’s shows on LSG Media: Science Fiction Film Podcast | The X-Files Podcast
Josh’s escape room in Massachusetts: Mass Escape
Jurassic World, Jurassic Values by Mike Hill: YouTube

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Wall-E: biodegradable plastics, waste management, and space cattle

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Space settlement

The economics of leaving Earth. Settling the inner and outer solar system. The Expanse. Space cattle and other space resources (water, mineral).

Garbage – in spaaace!

Garbage in space aka space junk. Cleaning up space junk. Giant nets as a major cleanup strategy.

Garbage – on Eaaaarth!

Modern waste management. What to do with municipal solid waste. Leachate. The difference between dumps and landfills and the interesting energy-reclamation technology involved in cutting edge WTE facilities.

Plastic

Massive plastic appreciation. How plastics ushered in the modern world. A lament for wasteful use of “disposable” plastic products. Microplastics in the water. Biodegradable plastics. The discovery of plastic-eating bacteria. Speeding up nature to digest plastic now. The coming plague of plastic-eating bacteria.

“De-evolution”

This isn’t a thing! There’s no end point that is being retreated from – life just adapts to pressures, ongoing.

Handling failure

Revisiting our past failures. Combating cynicism by just kind of ignoring it.

Links

Wall-E: iTunes | Amazon
The Water Fountain You Pee In: YouTube

Ready Player One movie backdrop

Ready Player One: virtual reality haptics, digital economies, and optical trickery w/ Jolene Creighton

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Featuring guest co-host
Jolene Creighton headshotJolene Creighton

Fandom

Identity according to interests. Fiction as personal and social mirror. Cultures and subcultures and super-niches.

The “Stacks”

Ad-hoc city large-scale construction. Kowloon Walled City.

Virtual Reality immersion technology

VR treadmills vs slippy-feet (Virtuix Omni). Looking silly. Scaling and translation from real-world input to virtual worlds. Manual and body haptics. Simulating moistness. Nard-stimulation for good and ill.

VR spatial awareness

Directional trickery in virtual reality. Tricking people into experiencing smaller real-world spaces as much larger in virtual reality. Saccade-driven Redirected Walking for VR.

Resolution of virtual worlds

Pixel densities and optical foci. Continuity of experience and detection of the difference between virtual and simulated worlds. Finding the clever “hacks” that will enable us to more deeply immerse ourselves in VR experiences.

Sharding

Virtual world scale and sharding vs mon-worlds.Virtu

Value systems

Real virtual economies and responsibility.

Links

Ready Player One iTunes | Amazon
Ready Player One (book) by Ernest Cline iTunes | Amazon
Saccade-driven Redirected Walking for VR YouTube
A Real Life Haptic Glove (Ready Player One Technology Today) by Smarter Every Day YouTube
The Infinadeck Omnidirectional Treadmill by Smarter Every Day YouTube
Kowloon Walled City interactive feature WSJ
The Brookhaven Experiment Steam

Man From Earth Holocene: hunter gatherer nostalgia and trading intestines for brains w/ Adrian Falcone

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Featuring guest co-host
adrian falcone headshotAdrian Falcone

The Man From Earth

Our love for the original. Considering the sequel. People talking in a room.

Nostalgia

The coming-on of the bronze age. Grocking the rate of progress w/ Dominick Perry. “Free time” in hunter-gatherer societies. Nostalgia as a way to bridge from what was old and comfortable to what is new and scary.

Cro-magnon

Anatomically modern humans vs socially modern humans. The evolutionary advantage of controlled fire and beginning to cook food. Getting away from all-day mastication and looooooooong intestines in favor of the big brain on Brad.

Primitive Technology

Getting boy without modern technology. The earliest evidence for humans cooking with fire. Differentiating human-controlled fire from millennia ago from other sources (like iguanas, or wildfires).

Growing old

Life expectancies over time. Appreciation for antibiotics. Life expectancy vs lifespan. Evolving into a centauranarian.

Jesus

Less-than-generous portrayals of religious characters. Third-act surprises. Jesus vs the antichrist.

Resolutions

Resolutions?

Links

The Man From Earth: Holocene: iTunes | Amazon
Primitive Technology: YouTube
The Man From Earth: iTunes | Amazon | Decipher SciFi

Arnold Schwarzenegger Predator movie backdrop

Predator : preposterone, light manipulation, and Aliens vs Predator vs Blade Runner

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Testosterone

Preposterous amounts of testosterone. Preposterone. Ahhnold and Carl Weathers. The muscles from Brussels in spaaaaace.

Invisibility

Picking a chunk of the electromagnetic spectrum to be invisible within.

  • Spatial light manipulation
  • Temporal light manipulation
  • Spectral light manipulation

Predator vision

Seeing in infrared! Interactions between optical camouflage and optical receivers. Why doesn’t all the life on Earth have heat vision? Heat-tracking evolution. Pit viper heat sensors. Human heat-tracking. Biology absorbing infrared. Seeing in greyscale. Wet clay camouflage and effectiveness over time. Mythbusting. Infrared-blocking materials.

Predator physiology

Aliens vs Predator for top monster. Ears…? Bleeding. The rainbow of different blood colors available on Earth. Green blood. Luminescent blood. Figuring out why only arthropods seems to have mandibles, and lamenting the lack of them in macro predators.

Shared Universe

Appreciating that Blade Runner is pretty much officially the same world as Predator now.

Self-destructing technology

Techno-scuttling. Destroying advanced technology to keep it out of enemy hands. Super-expanding polymers. Amazon delivery drone automatic “dispersal.”

Links

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Q&A #3: glacial surge, myth vs legend, and underground nukes

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Episode: 150

A collection of responses to feedback and addenda from supporter Jeremy. Basically, a review of some things we missed in a few episodes and an expansion on others. 🙂

Volcano

Fault types review. Flood basalts as hot spot lava spam. The Deccan Traps. Vulcanism as a possible explanation for dinsoaur extinction (Wargames).

The Last Jedi

Progress in millitary tactics. The triumph of guerrilla tactics. Politeness in chess. Mt St Helens sound waves. High-energy events.

Black Mirror Season 4 Part 1 – Arkangel

Implantable devices. API development.

Philip K Dick’s Electric Dreams

Lojban. Constructed languages. Esperanto.

Transformers the Last Knight

Unfavorable reviews. Myth vs legend vs fable as given to us by an actual folklorist. Colonialism and the lens of cultural study. Swole Jesus. Zeus’s promiscuity. Anti-intellectualism.

Stargate

“Gopher nukes.” Tactical nuclear yields. Nuclear testing and Godzilla.

Men in Black

Alcohol! Low-alcohol beverages in history instead of water. A History of the World in Six Glasses, again.

Lost in Space

Climate change and glacial surges.

Annihilation

The Color Out of Space – by HP Lovecraft: iTunes | Amazon

Tron

Programming languages, where to draw the line behind low and high level.

A Quiet Place

Sound localization without pitch. Inaudible High-Frequency Sounds Affect Brain Activity.

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A Quiet Place: echolocation, cochlear implant vs hearing aid, and aliens

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A Quiet Place

Episode: 149
What: Be quiet or the monsters will kill you

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Escape From New York: ultralight aircraft, escape pods, and fusion reactors

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Escape From New York

What: are you a bad enough dude to save the president?

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Universal Soldier : face-kicking cyborg technologies and micro drone insects

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Universal Soldier

The government turns sometimes-naked Jean-Claude into a cyborg sorta. And hijinx ensue!

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Enemy Mine : Episode 146

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Enemy Mine

What: A human and an alien struggle to get past their differences.
Directed by: Wolfgang Petersen
Starring: Dennis Quaid, Louis Gossett Jr., Brion James

Show Notes

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