Scotty Beams Up To That Great Starship In The Sky

James Doohan, who played Montgomery Scott (a.k.a Scotty) in the classic Star Trek died today at the age of 85. Known for his ability to do a job in 1/5 the time it would take any other Chief Engineer on any other starship, Scotty had a knack for saving the day. Perhaps it was just a practice of under-promising and over-delivering, but whenever he would give Kirk an estimate on how long it would take to fix something or rig something up the rogue captain would always cut that estimate down to a ridiculous fraction of Scotty's estimate.

A great example of this:

Kirk: "Scotty, what's left?"
Scotty: "Just the batteries. I can give you impulse power in a couple minutes."
Kirk: "We don't have a couple minutes."


And Scotty's secret revealed:

Kirk: "How long to re-fit?"
Scotty: "Eight weeks. But you don't have eight weeks, so I'll do it for you in two."
Kirk: "Do you always multiply your repair estimates by a factor of four?"
Scotty: "How else to maintain my reputation as a miracle worker?"
Kirk: "Your reputation is safe with me."


Link to bio on Montgomery Scott

Link to StarTrek.com article on James Doohan

Death Star Subwoofer

Check out this posting on Ebay for a kick-ass custom sub modified to look like the original Death Star.

Robot Camel Jockeys

Qatar is testing the first robot camel jockeys to help phase out the use of child-slave-camel-jockeys. Quote from theage.com article:

"Activists say there are about 40,000 boy jockeys, some as young as 4, who are either bought from their parents or kidnapped from their home countries and taken to the Gulf to ride. The boys live in bleak conditions and are underfed before races to keep their weight down.

In Qatar, ruling sheikhs have responded to calls for banning the use of boy jockeys by embracing robots as the best solution."

Here's another photo of a freaky, more child looking version (which I think bears a striking resemblance to Mr. Bill).

Here's what appears to be some bad concept art. What, they don't have CG in Qatar?