Martell has the full details, but the gist of it is:

Step 1. Reiff and Voris write Nottingham, a cool retelling of the Robin Hood story in which our protagonist, the Sheriff of Nottingham, uses period forensics to track down a terrorist named Robin Hood.

Step 2. Screenplay is bought, and Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott are attached to the project.

Step 3. Scott vigorously mutilates the story until...

Step 4. A fairly straight retelling of the Robin Hood story, only more boring, hits the theaters.

Again you can read the full story here, along with a discussion of why things like this happen. I actually like the idea of "locking" a screenplay, along Martell's point about how you can tell a Hitchcock or Kurosawa movie simply from the shots and other clear directorial choices.

Al of Londoun ys aflame wyth newes of the grete entertaynment of 'Serpentes on a Shippe,' the which ys perfourmed ech daye by the menne of the gild of beekeeperes (and thus ys ycleped a 'b-movie'). Ich haue just nowe retourned from a trippe to see yt wyth Litel Lowys and Tommy Vske. Whan ich was ther, Tommy founde for me a copye of the romaunce in fyve chapteres on whiche the performaunce ys based, and Ich shal pooste yt heere for yower redyge. (This writer hath a verye good style - ich am reallye jealous. Oon daye, peraventure, ich shalle write sum thyng of Arthur; and yet, the matir of Troye hath alwey ben easier for me.)

Spoyler alert: If ye haue nat yet sene the performaunce of 'Serpentes on a Shippe,' rede nat of the romaunce, for it doth telle of the manye suprises and straunge eventes that happen in the course of the storye, and thus it mayhap shall lessen yower enjoiement of the performaunce yt self.

This week, the 45th annual Congress of Medieval studies in Kalamazoo (it's always in Kalamazoo, which fascinates me to no end) served as the launching point for the blog's eponymous book, which you can buy at Amazon:

Click here to buy "Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog: Medieval Studies and New Media (The New Middle Ages)".

Excited attendees also got to finally (finally!) learn the identity of "the Chaucer blogger," who turns out to be my oldest friend, Sonoma State University English professor Brantley Bryant.

I've actually known about this since soon after he started the blog, but was sworn to secrecy.

I think this is awesome, and am going to be buying my own copy of the book (which has an introduction by Terry Jones, who directed Monty Python and the Holy Grail). Brantley has always been good about conveying the compelling essence of what's cool about medieval topics, as well as the fact that people then were, well, people.

Click here to buy the book.

Seriously. Click. Buy.

The walk-run transition is exactly what it sounds like - the velocity at which we switch from walking to running as we speed up (or vice-versa, of course, as we slow down). As we might imagine, space suits modify the velocity of the walk-run transition. As you may or may not know, this is significant, since a suited individual operating under reduced gravity uses less energy to run rather than walk the same distance, possibly due to "spring" effects of running in a pressurized suit versus the hard work of slogging slowly forward in the same suit.

Carr and McGee modify the usual walk-run transition formula to include an "Apollo" number that factors in the percentage of human-supported to total transported mass. This is significant since a pressurized suit in a vacuum is self-supporting - if you filled a space suit and carefully set it up outside on the moon, it would stand on its own. While this does impart the rigidity that makes walking in a suit so hard, it also means the wearer isn't working to hold the suit's weight up, which in turn modifies the velocity of the walk-run transition.

The practical impact of this is that we now have a formula that is better adjusted to predicting in advance (and presumably manipulating) the walk-run transition velocity for suited individuals...and, as the authors note, "suited" in this sense includes both astronauts in spacesuits and exoskeletons operating on Earth.

So one step closer to Cyclones for all of us.

Carr CE, McGee J (2009) The Apollo Number: Space Suits, Self-Support, and the Walk-Run Transition. PLoS ONE 4(8): e6614. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0006614

You're looking at a mobile phone fitted with an adapter that turns it into a microscope capable of light and fluorescent microscopy, able to resolve cells and microbes, that can be used to carry out field evaluations of malaria, TB, and other conditions that would normally require expensive lab equipment that third-world regions may not have access to.

In their article Mobile Phone Based Clinical Microscopy for Global Health Applications, Breslaur et al have leveraged the ubiquity of mobile phones across the world, including the third world, to provide an invaluable health care tool for areas that desperately need it. In this work, they use their mobile-adapting microscope to identify malaria, tuberculosis, and sickle-cell anemia, including the use of automated image processing:

In addition to the capture and transmission of data, the fact that mobile phones are essentially embedded computer systems offers the opportunity for significant post-processing of images. To demonstrate the diagnostic potential of image processing in this application, we carried out automated bacillus counting of the fluorescent TB images.

This is an impressive development that hopefully will be put into production quite rapidly. As comments already present on the article note, this is important as a public health development for much of the world and it promises to be a pretty cool device for biology hobbyists, too.

The article:

Breslauer DN, Maamari RN, Switz NA, Lam WA, Fletcher DA (2009) Mobile Phone Based Clinical Microscopy for Global Health Applications. PLoS ONE 4(7): e6320. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0006320

In this work, ants of the species Cataglyphis cursor were faced with a series of potential rescue situations, including:

• A trapped Cataglyphis cursor from their own colony
• A trapped Cataglyphis cursor from another colony
• A trapped ant from another species
• A trapped prey animal
• A trapped Cataglyphis cursor from their colony, chilled into inactivity
• No trapped animals

The results were quite specific: The ants only attempt to rescue active members of their own colony. They do this by digging away at surrounding sand, tugging on limbs (but not antennae!), and biting at the nylon snare trapping the ants.

This is fascinating work that brings up even more exciting future directions for research. As the authors conclude:

In sum, our findings establish that, in Cataglyphis cursor, rescue behavior not only is directed exclusively toward nestmates but also the nestmate must be active. Thus, rescue behavior necessarily depends on some form of actively produced eliciting stimulus, already known to be a pheromone in several ant species but one that contains a component unique to each colony.

What is the "help me" signal? Is that snare biting highly specific, or part of a general clearing of foreign matter from the problem area? How complex (versus, say, programmed) is this behavior?

I've also reposted their supporting videos to YouTube under PLoS One's Creative Commons license. They're worth a look:

You can read the original article by clicking here.

They describe a straightforward method for handbuilding a chemically inert, reusable laminar flow chamber in about an hour. I'm not currently in a position to need a laminar flow chamber, but this is a nice set of directions for anyone who might want to do some microfluidics work without having to go to a machine shop for expensive, custom-made flow assemblies.

Pretty much how I feel whenever I see a "free hugs" sign. Perhaps I'm a misanthrope - I always want to just plant a solid kick in the person and keep moving.

Having read it just now, I'm really nonplussed.

Rather than go on at length, let me point you at my more extensive complaint about sticking to continuity at the expense of good storytelling. Let me quote the Flash from this very comic:

That's my point. Death isn't necessarily the end. Not in this line of work. You. Me. Clark. Ollie.

Indeed, somewhat ridiculously most members of the Justice League have died and come back. This is the superhero comics version of the soap opera "everyone having sex with everyone" problem. All the rescinding of story points in service to never, ever resetting the world fundamentally devalues the stories, and it makes the whole thing a tasteless mash that I don't care for at all.

And this is independent of the writers. I like Geoff Johns. Still, I find nothing appealing in this "event."

I'd much rather see the DC universe reset, say, once a decade, than to see the stories devalued and the characters turned into hapless telenovela players rather than the interesting characters they honestly good be.

Or, more simply, I would pay to read a brand-new take on the Batman story every couple of years.

• Irish breakfast at The Field, watching hurling on Setanta (in fact, the hurling quarterfinals, which true stalwarts watched from 6am onward in the pub)
• Visited with Ryan Claytor of Elephant Eater Comics and learned that Ryan will be teaching multiple courses on making comics in the mid-Michigan area
• Tried and failed to get into the spotlight on Bill Willingham (in retrospect, his Eisner win made that a foregone failure)
• Picked up two trades worth of Tiny Titans from new Eisner winners Art Baltazar and Franco; showed them littlestar's old (circa early 2000s) Patrick the Wolf Boy sketch
• Stopped by to talk with Dave Kellet to show him littlestar's 2001-era Arthur sketch; ended up picking up the original art for a Sheldon strip
• Spent a while (perhaps two hours?) in the San Diego Children's Animation festival room; saw mostly good stuff that I'll comment about at length later
• Stopped by Chris Sanders and picked up his sketchbooks and Kiskaloo
• Did some other wandering to round out littlestar's "need to see" list
• Picked up the Girl Genius Omnibus (collects volumes 1-3)
• Signed up for next year (we will refund if we get to continue our pro status)

Looking over an editor's shoulder as they review potential artists is really educational. I was, first and foremost, impressed by the politeness, civility, and helpfulness of the editors. They saw work that ranged from professional quality drafting done on appropriately formatted comics pages all the way to blue ball point pen on college rule. In each case, the editor honestly and yet politely appraised the work, and capped the review with helpful advice on the areas the artist might want to address next.

It was also useful, of course, to see how things vary by editor and by day. I saw Dustin Nguyen turned away by an editor on Friday, only to be given a card by an editor on Saturday (Dustin then went on to draw WildCATS, The Authority, and now draws Batman).

This time around at the portfolio review, I was the "old hand" on site, hanging out with many people who were new to the process - some because they were simply new, being young, and some who were turning away from the traditional career paths they'd followed for many years. I walked them through what was going on, but it occurred to me that the review process can use a bit of a primer. I'm not talking about a primer on how to make a portfolio, which is covered well in many other places, but a primer on what your San Diego Comic Con portfolio review experience is going to be like.

Where the review happens

These days, portfolio review happens in the portfolio review area (naturally). This has, for a number of years now, been in the Sails Pavilion that separates the two halves of the upper floor of the convention center. It's the same area that houses the autograph areas and the free junk tables. The review area has a number of little cubicles where reviews happen, as well as too few chairs in the middle. If you stop in at any random time, you'll see people being reviewed by company representatives in the cubicles, and a host of hopefuls milling about around the chairs.

When reviews happen

Formally, portfolio reviews start at 11am, with a second wave starting at 3pm. Some companies run for many hours (11am-3pm is a common schedule), others just run for an hour. Signups start half an hour before portfolio review begins. Thus, signups for 11am reviews start at 10:30am, and for 3pm reviews at 2:30pm.

Note that I said "formally." Informally, people cluster around the area, hoping to be early in the schedule for one or more reviewers, and to hit as many reviews as they can on the day. In some prior years, signup sheets were simply left out, which meant that people would do whatever they could to make it to the portfolio review area to sign up. This year, signup sheets were not made accessible until half an hour before the reviews began, and were not simply passed around (instead being walked around by a convention volunteer).

The important point here is that you simply don't need to rush around looking for a magical line to be in if you're waiting for signups. Just sit as near as you comfortably can to the reviewer you care most about.

Signing up for a review

The way it worked this year was that at 10:30am, the volunteers in front of each review cubicle told the people in front of that cubicle "You are in line for this company." Thus, if you sat in front of Disney, you were in line for Disney. They then walked through that crowd with the signup sheet and took people's names down. Note that they didn't stop people from signing up on multiple sheets. The effect, however, is that you can pretty much guarantee that you'll be in the first twenty-five or so names on the list you most care about, and then you're just gambling on the others (where you may end up fortieth).

For reference, I was twenty-second on my signup list (by dint of just being relaxed and getting into line slowly). I was seen at just under two hours into the review period.

So make sure you wait in front of your first choice, as that may end up being your only one for that period, depending on the speed of the reviewers. Also, bring something to do. I worked on a screenplay while I waited.

Special cases

This year, Wizards of the Coast simply had a drop box. Drop your portfolio off, they'd call you back if they wanted to talk to you. It probably goes without saying, but have copies of your work that you can leave behind.

Marvel also wants you to drop off work (at their booth), and posts names of people it wants to talk to.

DC requires that you attend one of their "DC Talent Search" panels if you want the opportunity to be reviewed. These panels happen on each full day of the convention (that is, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday).

In summary

• Pick your top target for each review period and wait nearby
• Don't rush toward each new line; signups honestly do start half an hour before reviews
• Have a leave behind
• Read the company's listing in the con guide to see what their review requirements are
• Relax

• Authentic Irish breakfast at The Field, watching Peil on Setanta (we have not yet reverse-engineered the rules for Peil from watching it at the pub, but it seems like the inspiration for Quidditch)
• Did my only portfolio review of this year's Con (10am to 1pm for about five minutes of review)
• Pointed an out-of-work newspaper cartoonist at halfpixel for advice on how to monetize his skills online
• Tagged along with littlestar to various floor locations
• Saw 1" square pieces of Harry Potter costuming on auction (starting at a mere $300/piece)
• Walked through Disney's impressive Alice in Wonderland prop and set display on seventh

• Second and last day of inauthentic Irish breakfast at Hennessey's
• Failed to make it into any panel I was interested in; I'm underestimating crowds this year
• Ran into Jane Espenson; told her I think she's an excellent writer; found out she's now twittering
• Saw trailer for Gamer; it actually looks pretty interesting
• Saw serious woman with cute puppet; puppet made me smile, my smile made her smile
• Best con costume so far (from yesterday); little girl in pink princess dress with lightsaber strapped to her waist
• Narrowly avoided being run down by John Cho's retinue
• Checked out Military Madness: Nectaris, which is coming out on PS3, Wii, and Xbox.
• Picked up a tribble at the Paramount booth
• Helped littlestar acquire chibi Kingdom Hearts trinkets