I have a terrible confession to make, one that may drive away many readers: I am tired of Star Trek. I was a kid when the original series aired, I watched them religiously, I still have nothing but fond memories of it all. By the time Star Trek: The Next Generation rolled around, though, I was at the point where I was watching reruns to mainly groan at the bad science and the cheesy special effects, and ST:TNG didn’t help — more bad acting, more terrible writing, more ludicrous plots written by people who seemed to have more of a background in soap operas than in science fiction. All those other series that were subsequently shat out? I didn’t even watch them.

I know. I should be drummed out of the old SF nerd club. I feel terrible for not being able to share in the pleasure so many people still get out of the series, but you all go right ahead. Have a good time, while I roll my eyes at all the Trek worship.

I would rather see something with a fresh take. Something that is genuinely about ideas, rather than milking a comfortable old story to death.

But still, here’s something I did enjoy: a site that catalogs all the reused props from Star Trek. You need a strange futuristic device on a desk? Add some odd lighting to a CD rack. Glue random geometric shapes together, spray paint them silver, and done–we’ll find a use for it. Rearrange the shapes, you’ve got something new.

Nothing goes to waste. You can use them same props in different series!

Kudos to the props department for their creativity and economy. This I could enjoy reading, even as I’ve lost all interest in the plots of the stories they support.

Probably.

I’m sorry, but my Zone of Utter Ignorance is much, much larger than this.

Since FDotM mentioned how social media can cut into your book-reading time, I thought I’d say that for me, it isn’t true. I can read a book any time I want, and I do. It is my custom to read for an hour before bed, or sometimes over lunch, and I chew through books pretty fast.

Sometimes I pick up trash reads. The latest was one called Pistols: A Deep Sea Thriller (hint: you know it’s going to be a throw-away when they need to include the genre in the title; sometimes you can just look at the cover). It’s totally ridiculous. It’s about stomatopods that are exposed to toxic waste and swim around, snipping people in half and cooking them with high intensity sonic bursts. My favorite part was when the scientist character has to explain why they also have toxic slime, and starts babbling about ubiquitination, before he has done any kind of analysis of tissue, or even seen one of the monsters. Cheesy, but sometimes you need something silly.

I’ve also been on a Madeline Miller kick lately, and that’s definitely not cheesy trash. I recently re-read The Song of Achilles, which was magnificent and nearly made me cry. Circe is also really, really good and well worth your while. I’m going on a collecting trip in the old Lake Agassiz lands up north this weekend, and picked up her short story, Galatea for those moments when I’m not chasing spiders.

See? Being an internet nerd is not incompatible with actively reading for entertainment.

Go ahead. Prove your bookworm cred by telling me all the stuff you read for fun. Don’t be shy, and admit to your popcorn reading as well as your high-brow stuff.

Trudy and Doug (of Oglaf fame) post amusing sketches on their Patreon sometimes. This one is high art, it made me laugh and cry at the same time.

Every year, I start teaching genetics by having the students do lots of math, and statistics, and probability calculations. It’s the most difficult part of the class for many of the students. But look! SMBC has a new pedagogical method!

If this works, it’ll revolutionize my classes. Hire a stripper to walk around lamenting that she doesn’t understand Poisson distributions or how to get a p value from that set of data, and presto, we’re done!

Except for one catch. I just checked my class list, and 71% of my students are young women, maybe some are lesbians, but that isn’t recorded in the class data.

Would it work if I traipsed around the classroom in a unitard?