Yesterday I had the opportunity to present Geeks Without Borders at Gnomedex in Seattle.

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Brilliant mashup of two recent memes:  Double Rainbow and the Hitler videos:

More and more people are running their businesses, quite successfully, as solo founders.  If you happen to follow the world of startups, especially web startups, you’ll know that venture capital is undergoing a change and more startups are being run on less initial investment and that the size of each investment is getting smaller.  More:Royal We: Single Founder Startups | Ginzametrics.

25 years ago today, the original Back the the Future film was released.  It was the top grossing film of 1985.  Here’s some things you may not know about the film:

Although Michael J. Fox was always the first pick to play Marty McFly, Fox was too busy filming “Family Ties” to sign on to the project.  They replaced Fox with Eric Stoltz.   After 4 weeks of filming (and $3 million dollars), the producers and Stotz agreed he wasn’t right for the part and he left the project.  Fox was then cast and they worked around his tight schedule to make the film.

Michael J. Fox is only ten days younger than Lea Thompson who plays his mother, and is almost three years older than his on-screen dad, Crispin Glover.

When Marty pretends to be Darth Vader from the planet Vulcan, he plays a tape labeled “Van Halen” to scare George out of his sleep. It is an untitled Edward Van Halen original written for a movie called “The Wild Life”.

In the sequel the entire ending scene from the original movie was painstakingly re-created, shot-for-shot:

I can’t think of a worse week to open a new attraction in Central Florida…the same week Universal Studios opens Harry Potter’s Wizarding World???

Really guys…TIGHT work.  You really couldn’t of held it a week?

Anyway… (In case you missed it…)

Star Trek Live, a new interactive stage show made its worldwide debut at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex on Friday, June 11, 2010.

“Each 30-minute show will combine special effects, audience interaction and an exploration of real space-age technology. Guests will also see on-screen appearances from Captain Kirk and Spock.

“In the show, the audience portrays new Starfleet cadets assembled for the first day at the Starfleet Academy. As we are introduced to the Academy, the Earth itself comes under attack from a renegade Romulan, leaving the fate of the future itself in the hands of our cadets. The new cadets will have to learn the intricacies of living and working in space, modern space travel and the latest in communication and technology.”

Here’s a gallery of images from the Star Trek Live show

Star Trek Live makes its debut at Kennedy Space Center | Orlando Attractions Magazine Blog.

Absent father, separated from his mother at an early age, unstable moods, unstable interpersonal relationships, dysfunctional experiences of self and others, dissociative episodes, difficulty controlling his anger, drastic shifts in identity….

Infantile illusions of omnipotence.

Sound like someone you know?

It affects 2 percent of adults (mostly young women).

It’s called borderline personality disorder, and Dr. Gupta says Vader has it: What is Darth Vader’s diagnosis? – Paging Dr. Gupta – CNN.com Blogs.

When I read this article about BP defending its response to the Gulf Oil spill, for some reason my mind went to the scene in “A Few Good Men” when Colonel Jessep (played by Jack Nicholson), gives his famous “You can’t handle the truth” speech:

BP, for all of their pompous arrogance, is just like Colonel Jessep.  Replace a few words in that speech with words like Oil, and it might as well be BP’s position right now.

There are over 5,000 offshore oil rigs.  Forget the “accidents”…what happens when Terrorists, or North Korea or…worse… starts torpedoing them?

Think Progress » BP Runs Full-Page Ads In Major Newspapers Defending Its Oil Spill Response: ‘We Have Taken Full Responsibility’.

In the meantime, the company plans this “Top Kill”. Who better to explain it, than Bill Nye the Science Guy?

Last month, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the regulator in charge of the futures markets, approved the applications of the Cantor Futures Exchange and Media Derivatives (MDEX), to serve as contract markets to trade futures in the media market.

Now the CFTC is holding hearings to discuss whether the commission should approve Cantor’s and MDEX’s first contracts involving futures and options based on the opening weekend revenues for the film “Takers,” a movie about bank robbers starring the hip-hop music star Tip Harris (T.I.), and Hayden Christensen (whiny Darth Vader).

These “synthetic contracts” allow traders to bet on the amount of money the movie would make. If the movie makes more or less money than the initial revenue level set by the contract, one side would collect money and the other would lose money. These would be so-called synthetic contracts, meaning that the traders would not own the revenues they were betting on, so they would be purely speculative.

This is all I have to say about this whole idea:

Movie Time at the C.F.T.C. Draws Heated Debate – DealBook Blog – NYTimes.com.

Thought I’d share some of my favorite items in this list compiled by by Phil Pirrello and Scott Collura.

• In this the original draft of the script, the Empire does not attack the rebel base on Hoth. Instead, Wampas attack and infiltrate our heroes’ icy compound.
• Once Luke is taken captive and turned into a frozen Wampa snack, the original draft deviates from the movie we all know and love. How so? Gone is the Jabba-Han subplot and the bounty hunters, and in its place is Solo going after his stepfather, a man named Ovan Marekal. Ovan is a huge political bigwig who’s carefully aligned himself with Darth Vader to protect the people of the galaxy. The Rebels believe that if Han can get to him, he may be able to convince him to fight against Vader, giving the otherwise helpless Rebel Army a fighting chance. Some of Ovan’s backstory would find its way into the character of Lando in the final film.
• Cheers barfly and frequent Pixar voice actor John Ratzenberger had a cameo as Alliance field officer Major Bren Derlin, stationed at Hoth’s Echo Base. You may remember him as the trooper who tried to talk Han Solo out of riding off in search of a missing Luke Skywalker. “Your Tauntaun will freeze before you reach the first marker!,” he shouted. To which Solo replied, “Then I’ll see you in Hell!”
• Alec Guinness is said to have shot all of his scenes in six hours.
• The scene in which a swamp creature grabs R2-D2 was filmed in George Lucas’ unfinished swimming pool.
• After the swamp creature spits out R2, Luke – in the original theatrical cut – says, “You’re lucky you don’t taste very good.” In the Special Edition, the line was changed to “You’re lucky you got out of there.”

100 Things You Didn’t Know About The Empire Strikes Back – Movies Feature at IGN.

When he’s not producing, directing, writing and starring in movies about Wolves, and when he’s not dating Elle MacPherson, not singing in his rock/country band, or  running his casino Kevin Costner is an avid environmentalist, fisherman, and greentech entrepreneur.

While making Waterworld in 1995, Costner was troubled by oil spills like the Exxon Valdez and started developing a system to cruise the surface of the sea and clean oily water. His business partner, John Houghtaling, says:

“The machines are essentially like big vacuum cleaners, which sit on barges and suck up oily water and spin it around at high speed,” Houghtaling said. “On one side, it spits out pure oil, which can be recovered. The other side spits out 99% pure water” [Los Angeles Times].

BP and the U.S. Coast Guard plan to test six of the massive devices next week.

Oil Spill Update: BP to Switch Disperants; Will Kevin Costner Save Us All? | 80beats | Discover Magazine.