After the opening credits, Bones' King of Kong-inspired murder mystery was interrupted by three of its characters, Dr. Sweets, Dr. Hodgins, and morbid intern Colin Fisher, talking about seeing Avatar.

Of course, we know that the real reason that Mr. Fisher won these premiere tickets is because 1) Bones is a Fox property, and Fox wants to get Bones fans pumped to see Avatar, and 2) Joel Moore, who plays Colin Fisher, happens to be in Avatar. But the key thing to take away from this scene is that Fisher, science fiction fan extraordinaire, gets it on with a lot with lots of ladies.

And Sweets feels a bit of that Avatar love magic when he waits in line at the premiere (amidst tons of eager folks in blue makeup), in the form of a punky, flirtatious girl named Paine.

Let this be a lesson to you all. Go see Avatar with your significant other, or else they will flash some random stranger in line, then hook up with his skeezy friend.

But the trio does take some time out from their Avatar seductions to actually talk about the movie, having us watch an Avatar promo in the middle of their Avatar promo.

So there we have it. Avatar is pretty and will make you attractive to the opposite sex. And, lest we forget, Fox has kindly reminded us that the movie comes from the director of Titanic, just in case you care about that sort of thing more than hooking up with cute girls in line.

While many of these ossuaries are attached to churches, the reason they were constructed is often practical: where there wasn't enough space for a graveyard (or when an existing graveyard was needed for other purposes), the cleaned bones were instead interred inside buildings and catacombs. However, others were created as a reminder of our mortality, and one listed below (The Skull Tower, located in Niš, Serbia), was deliberately meant to evoke horror from the enemies of the Ottoman Empire. More about these and other ossuaries is available at Atlas Obscura.

Santa Maria della Concezione in Rome, where 4,000 Capuchin friars rest; a plaque inside reads: "What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you shall be:"

Sedlec Ossuary in the Czech Republic, which features some of the most creative uses of human bones. Commonly known as the "Bone Church," it features chalices, candelabras, a family crest, and a chandelier all made from skeletal remains:

San Bernardino alle Ossa in Milan, whose inhabitants came largely from the nearby hospital after the adjoining graveyard proved insufficient:

The Chapel of Skulls in Czermna, Poland, created by a priest and a gravedigger in 1776 as a "sanctuary of silence." The pair spent 18 years amassing and arranging some 24,000 skeletons, often with a Jolly Roger motif:

The Chapel of Bones in Evora, Portugal, with the bones displayed publicly as part of the Royal Church of St. Francis. A cheery inscription reads, "We bones that are here, for your bones we wait:"

The Skull Tower of Niš, Serbia, constructed by Turkish general Hurshi Pasha in 1809 during the Serbian Uprising against the Ottoman Empire. The skulls came from Serbian rebels to serve as grim symbol of the general's victory. 952 skulls were used in the tower, but most of the skulls were pried out and returned to the families of the rebels. Fifty-eight currently remain:

The Paris Catacombs in France, which holds somewhere between six and seven million bodies. This less ornate ossuary was built in the late 18th Century when the city's cemeteries became overcrowded:

[Atlas Obscura]

When Vampire Bill and Angel came out together I nearly bit my hand off I was so surprised. But what's with the knowing look David Boreanaz? You are Angel, and you will always be Angel. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I'd love to see what you guys come up with as a caption for this photograph. What would these two have to say to one another?

Another great little moment from the Emmy's was Michael Emerson winning for Lost, and then going up on stage and creeping us all the hell out. He really is Ben, isn't he? I knew it.

Kristin Chenoweth won for the cruelly canceled series Pushing Daisies, but we already talked about that still her acceptance speech was terrific.

And finally fellow nerd and "I'm A PC" John Hodgman's narrations throughout the evening almost made up for the fact that Battlestar Galactica was completely forgotten in every drama category besides directing, for Daybreak 2, which they didn't win. Still Hodgman's introductory riffs was the icing on the cake....

"If Michael Emerson weren't on television right now, he would be in New York City, having a fancy cocktail with me. That is, until S. Epatha Merkerson walked into the room, then he'd blow me off. That's a true story." -On Michael Emerson's victory in the Best Supporting Actor, Drama category

Read more Hodgemanisms over at NY Magazine.

Monday
Mondays stay their relatively lowkey selves with the new schedule and, if anything, become even more quiet for SFTV; Heroes and Chuck, both on reduced seasons, end up sharing the 8pm timeslot on NBC (Heroes' 19 episode fourth season goes first, with Chuck's 13 episode third season replacing it in the spring of 2010), with Heroes and Lost alum Jesse Alexander's new show Day One taking up the 9pm timeslot on NBC in 2010. Otherwise, it's a light night, although honorary io9 shows House on Fox and The Big Bang Theory on CBS keep on keeping on (Although BBT is being moved to 9:30pm).

Tuesday
Feel free to go outside or catch up on some cable shows on Tuesdays; Fringe has been moved away from its original timeslot, and until Fox premieres reincarnation crime procedural Past Life in its former 9pm slot midseason, there's almost nothing to see here (The exception being ABC's Better Off Ted, which will start its new 9:30pm slot as soon as Dancing With The Stars finishes). Move along.

Wednesday
Just like Tuesday, we're grasping at straws here until midseason, when new Fox drama Human Target will premiere at 9pm (It'll be replacing Glee, which I shamefully have to admit having loved the preview of last week. Don't judge me). Of possible interest: ABC's Eastwick, which adapts (and, more than likely, homogenizes) the John Updike novel/Jack Nicholson movie The Witches of Eastwick, may turn out to be more interesting than the "Desperate Housewives meets Bewitched" show I'm dreading. Not currently scheduled, but almost certainly on Wednesdays in spring 2010, the final season of Lost.

Thursday
Okay, this is the night to be thankful for TiVo, or else to make some hard choices as to what to watch and what to torrent Hulu later. ABC's new Flash Forward will air Thursdays at 8pm, which is the same timeslot as the CW's equally-new-but-probably-less-good Vampire Diaries and the not-SF-but-kinda fifth season of Bones on Fox (Also, not SF at all but still potentially worth watching at 8pm: NBC are doing more SNL Weekend Update Thursday). 9pm, you'll have to choose between Fringe in its new timeslot on Fox or Supernatural in its old timeslot on the CW; Annalee's head may explode, but this is one of those occasions where my love of multiverse stories makes a choice surprisingly easy (Sorry, Winchester Bros.).

Friday
With more networks pushing more "hit" shows to Friday, I can't quite tell if that means that the old "Friday is where shows go to die" school of thinking is over, or that networks are trying to kill off some shows quietly (Hi, Ugly Betty!). There're only a couple of shows in our target demographic here, though; Smallville takes up residence for its please-God-final season at 8pm on the CW, while Dollhouse starts all over again in its old timeslot, and we keep fingers crossed that (a) it has a stronger start to the season than last time, and (b) more people tune in live this time (Seriously, DVD sales and Hulu views aren't going to keep this thing alive for a third season, people).

Saturday/Sunday
Both nights are incredibly quiet, especially following this summer's burning of remaining episodes of shows we love (Don't forget, Pushing Daisies' final three episodes begin May 30th at 10pm on ABC, and Kings is back on Saturdays next month), but we're hopeful that that'll change as various shows begin to become so unpopular that they get dumped there. Call us cynical, but we'd rather just say realistic...

Still Unscheduled
We know that ABC's V remake is a go, but it's not been given a home yet; looking at the schedules that've been announced, there's theoretically space for it on Mondays following the end of Dancing With The Stars, but somehow I'm not sure that the network would really want to pair it with The Bachelor... Perhaps they're waiting to find out when Lost is returning, to make an Elizabeth Mitchell one-two punch, or perhaps details are still being worked out about exactly how the rebooted V will work (We've heard rumors of a six episode season, a thirteen episode season and a full season so far, after all). Wherever it ends up, I wouldn't expect to see it until midseason at this point.

When you see Logan getting adamantium injected into his bones via giant scary syringes in Wolverine tonight, it may seem like pure science fiction. But it's not. Johnson & Johnson has just announced a new bone graft material called HEALOS Fx, which doctors can mix up into a soft, moldable state and then inject using a hollow needle. The HEALOS Fx forms a scaffolding material where new bone cells can grow, eventually knitting the break together.

From a release about the treatment:

The new HEALOS Fx is a bone graft option for precise placement into difficult-to-reach surgical sites, particularly around pedicle screws and the interbody space, said Kornelis Poelstra, M.D., Ph.D., University of Maryland Shock Trauma, Baltimore. HEALOS Fx, which has a cohesive consistency when saturated with the patient's bone marrow, provides both a continuous scaffold for bone formation and the osteoprogenitor cells needed to initiate new bone growth. The material is reabsorbed and remodeled into new bone as part of the healing process.

Apparently the material hardens enough to become a graft in less than a minute after injection. I quail at the idea of recreational uses for this technology. But I will note that it does seem perfect for growing little horns on your forehead, or spurs on your arms.

via Medgadget

Last night's episode of one of our favorite guilty pleasures was educational all 'round - Where else would you find out that all forward thinking scientists are hot, polyamorous and capable of murder? - but this particular tidbit, proving once and for all (well, kind of) that dipping something in liquid nitrogen won't make it super brittle, was as fine an example of educational television as I've seen since the last episode of Look Around You.

Bones [Fox]

Star Trek is released May 8th.

Disease and Danger [Yahoo! Movies]

Design by the amazing Stephanie Fox.

House
We admit it; we think that this show is already sci-fi. We've had to resort to trusting the writers - and Polite Dissent's Dr. Scott - that everything they mention on the show is real, because our knowledge of medical science is practically non-existent. But House offers everything we want in a television show: snark, soap opera and screwed-up characters. It's only one small step for man away from being Battlestar Galactica! And that's before you get to the illnesses of the week and the curious, convoluted explanations behind them. Science fiction-ish, at least.

Bones
Put aside the same-quasi science that House employs (Seriously, they could be making up everything on this show and we wouldn't know) and there's still a compelling reason why this show should be classified as sci-fi: They have their own holodeck. We'll let Slate explain it:

Angela is responsible for designing the single goofiest piece of faux-scientific technology I've seen on TV: a 3D hologram program that projects not only the revolving image of a reconstructed victim, but the likely scenarios of the killing, onto an ultra-groovy light table in the soaringly modern digs of the Jeffersonian Institution. Why these renderings can't be done on a regular computer screen, or sketched on a cocktail napkin, is never clear, but they look cool as hell.

Yes. Yes, they do... And that one piece of equipment - combined with the ridiculous inventions and experiments occasionally carried out in the name of science, and wholescale embrace of nerditry in general - is enough for us to claim this as Stealth Sci-Fi.

Numb3rs
It's not enough that mathematical genius Charlie Eppes does work for NASA, or that characters disappear because they're going off to spend six months on a space station? Okay, maybe not - although, really, writing someone out because they're going to spend time on a space station is pretty awesome - but what other show employs real mathematicians to work out the complex number-crunching necessary to explain each episode's deus ex chalkboard? It may not be sexy, it may not have time-travel or giant monsters attacking Rob Morrow, but still; we're calling this one some kind of science fiction.

24
With nuclear bombs, weaponized viruses, computer hackers taking down the country's infrastructure and whatever else Jack Bauer finds himself involved in on an annual basis, 24's world is definitely a parallel Earth with more than its fair share of super-science going on. Add to that the seemingly superhuman Bauer himself - a man who can shake off a heroin addiction by will power alone, and who isn't afraid to bite out a man's jugular vein if necessary - and we're convinced that this show is at least as sci-fi as Jericho... and also needs to crossover with Fringe immediately.

Top Chef
Everytime someone talks about "molecular gastronomy," it's clear that Bravo's foodie companion to Project Runway has some hidden roots in science fiction. Admittedly, very hidden, but we all know it's there. Plus, come on. Padma's definitely a Terminator. You can see it in her cold, steely stare whenever she tells someone to pack their knives and leave.

Explaining just why the movie is worth the wait, Abrams said,

It’s blessed with a wonderful optimism and an incredibly alive and invested cast. While the visual effects are gonna be unbelievable, the movie is working right now with only 50 of our 1,000-plus visual effects finished. It’s funny, it’s scary, it’s dramatic, emotional and entertaining–all without having the stuff you’d think a movie called "Star Trek" would require.

So, unless he's been misquoted, is he actually saying that the movie is good even though it doesn't have any of the traditional Star Trek trappings, or that it's good even before you get to those trappings? Because, if it's not the latter, then all of a sudden I'm very curious to see what he's come up with. But more importantly, what are "the stuff you'd think a movie called 'Star Trek' would require?" We know that the movie features the classic Enterprise crew, and also aliens who may or may not be Romulans. Spoilers promise scenes on Vulcan and in Starfleet Academy (involving the Kobyashi Maru test, apparently), and I'd bet my bottom dilithium crystal that there's going to be a space battle or two in there at some point. What classic Star Trek checkboxes haven't been ticked yet? Here're our suggestions:

A Technical Disaster Aboard The Enterprise: You have to give Scotty something to do, after all. Our suggestion would either involve a faulty photon torpedo tube or else shields failing at a critical moment. For any other chief engineering officer, it would take days to fix... but our heroes don't have days.

A Sultry Alien Woman Who Wants To Learn About This Thing Humans Call Love: Kirk wouldn't be Kirk if he wasn't romancing the alien ladies, after all. Bonus points if said romancing will (a) involve a moment where Kirk grabs the alien by the arms before planting one on her extra-terrestrial lips, and (b) solve some diplomatic problem without the need for violence. Also, if said sultry alien happens to be bright green? All the better.

(Extra bonus points if Kirk is also seen propositioning Starfleet Academy students and/or Enterprise crew members at some point. Keeping sexual harrassment lawyers busy even in the 24th century; good work, James Tiberius.)

Klingons: Look, Romulans and Vulcans are all well and good, but if there's one alien race that's really been a must for Star Trek, it's the Klingons. I don't care if they're just in the background of a lot of scenes, or if they just pop up in the middle of an important scene and demand Kirk's head on a platter for crimes against the Empire, but it's Star Trek; there really has to be some ribbed-head action at some point.

Doctor McCoy Dispenses Some Non-Medical Advice: Perhaps more a movie-staple than original TV Trek, we're still going to feel ripped off if Bones doesn't get to offer some calm advice about the human cost of some particular dilemma somewhere during the movie. Along similar lines, Spock Experiences A Human Emotion That Probably Involves Him Smiling, To Show That Even Stuffy Aliens Are Just Like Us, Really: If that one doesn't appear at the end of the movie, we're going to be asking for our money back.

Abrams: Star Trek Is Worth The Wait [TrekMovie]

According to Science Daily:

Hydrogels, which are considered to be the state-of-the-art in tissue design, are made from polymers that swell in water to form a gel-like material. They interact with growth factors much like demineralized bone matrix does, providing scaffolding for bone cells to proliferate and form new tissue.

Seems obvious that after this bone-growing scaffold is perfected for treating injuries that it would become the body modder's dream substance. People could grow Hellboy horns, protective chest plates, or foot bones that could withstand a lifetime of high-heeled shoes.

Hydrogels Provide Scaffolding for Growth of Bone Cells [via Science Daily]

As with the previous set of posters, these four combine to form a pop-art Starfleet insignia. Between these promo posters and the original announcement poster, someone at Paramount is very good with the graphic design.




The images were released at the con and put online by TrekMovie.com, who promise more coverage from the convention, including "a potential movie spoiler." Stay tuned...

VegasCon 08: New Star Trek Movie Posters With Four New Cast Images [TrekMovie]