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🔗 Television 🔗 Star Trek

Star Trek: Phase II was the initial working title for what officially became titled Star Trek II, an unproduced American science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry as a sequel to (and continuation of) the original Star Trek, which had run from 1966 to 1969. The plans for the series were first developed after several failed attempts to create a feature film based on the property, coupled with plans for a Paramount Television Service (PTS) as a fourth broadcast television network in the United States.

Both PTS and the Star Trek revival were announced in early June 1977, with PTS to debut as one evening of programming each Saturday night and to gradually expand to other nights; a strategy successfully employed by the Fox Broadcasting Company a decade later. Star Trek: Phase II was to be the flagship show, and be broadcast at 8pm EST, followed by a movie of the week starting at 9pm. The initial order was for a two-hour pilot, followed by 13 hour-long episodes.

With the exception of Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock, who had ongoing disputes with Roddenberry and Paramount, the entire regular and recurring cast of The Original Series were contracted to return, notably William Shatner as Captain Kirk. Three new and younger regular characters were created, science officer Lt. Xon, navigator Lt. Ilia, and ship's executive officer Willard Decker. Xon, Decker and Ilia were later influential in the development of characters on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and two of the scripts written for Phase II would be re-developed for use in that series.

Behind the cameras, Roddenberry recruited Trek-novices Harold Livingston and Robert Goodwin as producers. Veterans of The Original Series were few, and included costume designer William Ware Theiss and illustrator Mike Minor. Art director Matt Jefferies was otherwise employed and brought in as a "technical advisor" and to update the design of the starship USS Enterprise. Special effects (on set) were to be by Jim Rugg. Science fiction novelist Alan Dean Foster received the assignment to write the story outline for the two-hour pilot, but, with a looming production deadline and unable to find a suitable writer to develop this story into a teleplay, Harold Livingston took on the writing job himself. Of the remaining 12 script assignments handed out, about half were to veterans of The Original Series.

Pre-production began in earnest, with the emphasis on what would be the standing sets of the Enterprise, which differed radically in layout, design and detailing from those for The Original Series. Many costumes and props, too, were designed. Ultimately, Paramount's plans for its network and Star Trek's TV return faltered, as the low anticipated advertising revenues for the Paramount Television Service indicated that it was not viable, and the Paramount Pictures parent company Gulf and Western's chairman, Charles Bluhdorn, refused to back the plan, resulting in the eventual exit of Paramount chief executive officer Barry Diller. In August 1977 Paramount president Michael Eisner announced—internally—that the two-hour pilot script was to be the long sought-after feature film story. However, In order to prevent negative publicity, the "cancellation" of the series and network was not immediately disclosed and development of the series and its scripts continued for a further five months, during which time tests were filmed on the incomplete Enterprise sets in widescreen format - a clear indication that whatever Star Trek would be, it would not be a TV movie.

On March 28, 1978, any illusions that Star Trek would be returning to television were ended when Paramount announced that instead of a series it would be producing what became the big budget film titled Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), which was itself a massive reworking of the "In Thy Image" two-hour pilot script.

Preproduction work on the series did not entirely go to waste. The standing Enterprise sets would be extensively reworked for the film (and its eventual sequels), and an unfinished admiral's office set's walls became part of the Enterprise cargo deck. However, the visual effects people hired for the feature film decided that the miniatures under construction were not up to the standards of a post-Star Wars feature, and all were scrapped. Director Robert Collins, who had been hired to direct the pilot, and promised he was to direct the feature, was replaced by Robert Wise.

The concept of a "Paramount Network" led by a flagship Star Trek series finally came to fruition in January 1995 when Paramount launched the United Paramount Network (UPN) and the Star Trek: Voyager series.

🔗 Russia 🔗 Russia/technology and engineering in Russia 🔗 Russia/history of Russia 🔗 Gemology and Jewelry 🔗 Russia/visual arts in Russia 🔗 Gemology and Jewelry/Jewelry

A Fabergé egg (Russian: яйцо Фаберже́, romanized: yaytso Faberzhe) is a jewelled egg created by the jewellery firm House of Fabergé, in Saint Petersburg, Russia. As many as 69 were created, of which 57 survive today. Virtually all were manufactured under the supervision of Peter Carl Fabergé between 1885 and 1917. The most famous are his 52 "Imperial" eggs, 46 of which survive, made for the Russian Tsars Alexander III and Nicholas II as Easter gifts for their wives and mothers. Fabergé eggs are worth millions of dollars and have become symbols of opulence.

🔗 United States 🔗 Socialism 🔗 Urban studies and planning 🔗 Cooperatives 🔗 United States/Washington - Seattle 🔗 Micronations 🔗 United States/Washington 🔗 Anarchism 🔗 Black Lives Matter

The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ or the Zone), also known as Free Capitol Hill, is a self-declared intentional community and commune of around 200 residents, covering about six city blocks in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. The zone was established on June 8, 2020 after the East Precinct was abandoned by the Seattle Police Department.

🔗 Spaceflight 🔗 Physics

A Van Allen radiation belt is a zone of energetic charged particles, most of which originate from the solar wind, that are captured by and held around a planet by that planet's magnetic field. Earth has two such belts and sometimes others may be temporarily created. The discovery of the belts is credited to James Van Allen, and as a result, Earth's belts are known as the Van Allen belts. Earth's two main belts extend from an altitude of about 640 to 58,000 km (400 to 36,040 mi) above the surface in which region radiation levels vary. Most of the particles that form the belts are thought to come from solar wind and other particles by cosmic rays. By trapping the solar wind, the magnetic field deflects those energetic particles and protects the atmosphere from destruction.

The belts are located in the inner region of Earth's magnetosphere. The belts trap energetic electrons and protons. Other nuclei, such as alpha particles, are less prevalent. The belts endanger satellites, which must have their sensitive components protected with adequate shielding if they spend significant time near that zone. In 2013, NASA reported that the Van Allen Probes had discovered a transient, third radiation belt, which was observed for four weeks until it was destroyed by a powerful, interplanetary shock wave from the Sun.

🔗 Anthropology 🔗 Numismatics 🔗 Trade 🔗 Micronesia 🔗 Micronesia/Federated States of Micronesia

The Micronesian island of Yap is known for its stone money, known as Rai (Yapese: raay), or Fei: large doughnut-shaped, carved disks of (usually) calcite, up to 4 m (13 ft) in diameter (most are much smaller). The smallest can be as little as 3.5 centimetres (1.4 in) in diameter. There are around 6,000 of the large, circular stone disks carved out of limestone formed from aragonite and calcite crystals. Rai stones were quarried on several of the Micronesian islands, mainly Palau, but briefly on Guam as well, and transported to Yap for use as money. They have been used in trade by the Yapese as a form of currency.

The monetary system of Yap relies on an oral history of ownership. In the case of stones that are too large to move, buying an item with one simply involves agreeing that the ownership has changed. As long as the transaction is recorded in the oral history, it will now be owned by the person to whom it is passed and no physical movement of the stone is required.

🔗 California 🔗 California/San Francisco Bay Area 🔗 Food and drink

Caffè Mediterraneum, often referred to as Caffè Med or simply the Med, was a café located on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, California, US, near the University of California, Berkeley. The Med was a landmark of Telegraph Avenue history, "listed for years in European guidebooks as 'the gathering place for 1960s radicals who created People's Park'" and as of 2009 described in Fodor's guidebook as "a relic of 1960s-era café culture". It was located at 2475 Telegraph Avenue, between Dwight Way and Haste Street.

🔗 Lists 🔗 Geography 🔗 Rivers

This article lists rivers by their average discharge measured in descending order of their water flow rate. Here, only those rivers whose discharge is more than 2,000 m³/s (71,000 cu ft/s) are shown, as this list does not include rivers with a water flow rate of less than 2,000 m³/s (71,000 cu ft/s). It can be thought of as a list of the biggest rivers on earth, measured by a specific metric.

For context, the volume of an Olympic-size swimming pool is 2,500 m³. The average flow rate at the mouth of the Amazon is sufficient to fill more than 83 such pools each second. The average flow of all the rivers in this list adds up to 1,192,134 m³/s.

🔗 Physics 🔗 Astronomy 🔗 Time 🔗 Holidays 🔗 Festivals

A solstice is an event occurring when the Sun appears to reach its most northerly or southerly excursion relative to the celestial equator on the celestial sphere. Two solstices occur annually, around June 21 and December 21. In many countries, the seasons of the year are determined by reference to the solstices and the equinoxes.

The term solstice can also be used in a broader sense, as the day when this occurs. The day of a solstice in either hemisphere has either the most sunlight of the year (summer solstice) or the least sunlight of the year (winter solstice) for any place other than the Equator. Alternative terms, with no ambiguity as to which hemisphere is the context, are "June solstice" and "December solstice", referring to the months in which they take place every year.

The word solstice is derived from the Latin sol ("sun") and sistere ("to stand still"), because at the solstices, the Sun's declination appears to "stand still"; that is, the seasonal movement of the Sun's daily path (as seen from Earth) pauses at a northern or southern limit before reversing direction.

🔗 United States 🔗 Biography 🔗 Computer science 🔗 Telecommunications 🔗 Systems 🔗 Biography/science and academia 🔗 Cryptography 🔗 Cryptography/Computer science 🔗 Electronics 🔗 Systems/Systems theory 🔗 Telecommunications/Bell System 🔗 Cycling

Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30, 1916 – February 24, 2001) was an American mathematician, electrical engineer, and cryptographer known as "the father of information theory". Shannon is noted for having founded information theory with a landmark paper, "A Mathematical Theory of Communication", that he published in 1948.

He is also well known for founding digital circuit design theory in 1937, when—as a 21-year-old master's degree student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)—he wrote his thesis demonstrating that electrical applications of Boolean algebra could construct any logical numerical relationship. Shannon contributed to the field of cryptanalysis for national defense during World War II, including his fundamental work on codebreaking and secure telecommunications.

🔗 United States 🔗 Religion 🔗 Islam 🔗 Discrimination 🔗 African diaspora 🔗 United States/Texas 🔗 Religion/Interfaith 🔗 Dallas-Fort Worth 🔗 Islam/Islam and Controversy

On September 14, 2015, 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed was arrested at MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas, for bringing a disassembled digital clock to school. The incident ignited allegations of racial profiling and Islamophobia from many media sources and commentators.

The episode arose when Mohamed reassembled the parts of a digital clock in an 8-inch (20 cm) pencil container and brought it to school to show his teachers. His English teacher thought the device resembled a bomb, confiscated it, and reported him to the principal. The local police were called, and they questioned him for an hour and a half. He was handcuffed, taken into custody and transported to a juvenile detention facility, where he was fingerprinted and his mug shot was taken. He was then released to his parents. According to local police, they arrested him because they initially suspected he may have purposely caused a bomb scare. The case was not pursued further by the juvenile justice authorities, but he was suspended from school.

Following the incident, the police determined Mohamed had no malicious intent, and he was not charged with any crime. News of the incident went viral – initially on Twitter – with allegations by commentators that the actions of the school officials and police were due to their stereotyping of Mohamed based on his Sudanese ancestry and Muslim faith. Afterwards, U.S. President Barack Obama as well as other politicians, activists, technology company executives, and media personalities commented about the incident. Many of them praised Mohamed for his ingenuity and creativity, and he was invited to participate in a number of high-profile events related to encouraging youth interest in science and technology. Although Mohamed was cleared in the final police investigation, he became the subject of conspiracy theories – many of them contradictory, citing no evidence, and conflicting with established facts – which claimed that the incident was a deliberate hoax.

On November 23, 2015, Ahmed's family threatened to sue the City of Irving and the school district for civil rights violations and physical and mental anguish unless they received written apologies and compensation of $15 million. This lawsuit was dismissed in May 2017 for lack of evidence. The family also sued conservative talk show hosts Glenn Beck, Ben Shapiro, and another Fox News commentator for lesser amounts on the grounds of defamation of character. Both cases were dismissed with prejudice for First Amendment free speech reasons. In late 2015, his family decided to accept a scholarship from the Qatar Foundation and move to Qatar.