Doctor Whoa: David Tennant Marries Own Daughter… Well, Sort of.

Actor David Tennant is to marry actress Georgia Moffett. That news is fairly straightforward, albeit devastating for several single women I know.

But the type of viewer who gets confused between actors and the televisual roles they play should just give up now. You see, the pair met during the filming of the 2008 Doctor Who episode The Doctor’s Daughter. Tennant, of course, played the Doctor, while Moffett played his daughter.

Well, sort of.

The character Jenny was in fact created by inserting the Doctor’s hand into a progeneration machine, a device that took a diploid cell (containing copies of chromosomes from both of the Doctor’s parents) and split it into haploid cells (which contain one set of chromosones), using this to create a new life form: a “daughter” who was the Doctor’s direct offspring, but did not have a mother.

(Please note that even though scientists have never achieved the exact same thing with humans or animals, Japanese researchers were able to use this haploidisation a few years ago to produce a baby mouse with two biological mothers and no father.)

However, if you thought this only left the confusion of what race the artificially created daughter of a half-human, half-Timelord has, think again.

To make things even more muddled, Moffett has a famous real-life father. No, not the Doctor Who writer (that’s Stephen Moffat), but actor Peter Davidson. As in… the fifth Doctor.

That is to say, Tennant is marrying not only his on-screen daughter, but also the real-life daughter of his on-screen former self.

We certainly wish the couple all the best. But if they go on to have a daughter, we suggest she might be better off avoiding reruns of a certain sci-fi show to spare them a major identity crisis.



WOW: 8x8x8 LED Cube Display [Video]

Check out this geektastic 8x8x8 3D LED cube by Instructables user chr:

Want to make one for yourself? Then just follow this *ahem* simple DIY guide and you’ll be wowing your friends in no time with your own 3D LED cube!



Crashed AT-AT Snow Fort [Pic]

I know I know the scale is incorrect, but I wanted to be able to climb inside the head and I would have needed heavy machinery to get enough snow to get the body tall enough. I actually measured out my son’s big toy AT-AT to get the different parts to the right ratio, but then that all went out the window when I actually started building it in the yard. At least you can crawl into the head (from the back side), through the neck and up a deck on the body. and then slide down it’s ass. [Source]

[Via NerdApproved]

Greedo the Guido [Picture]

A Mashup between Star Wars’ Greedo and Jersey Shore’s Pauly D by Deviantart user exo-politic-2012.

[Source]

Awesome: Charlie Brown as Luke Skywalker [Pictures]

An absolutely awesome mash up sculpture of two of the most iconic figures in pop culture: Charlie Brown and Luke Skywalker. Enjoy!

[Source: Tom Torrey (Flickr) | Via Buzzfeed]

Phoenix Jones: Real-Life Superhero Vigilante [Video]

Believe it or not, Phoenix Jones is part of a real-life crime fighting superhero brigade named The Rain City Superheroes, and he kicks criminals’ asses at night. Check it out:

Apparently, he’s been doing this for the past 9 months, which incidentally coincide almost exactly with the release date of Kick-Ass. Simple Coincidence? I think not.

Apple takes another step to world dominance

Apple has become the second company in the world worth more than $300 billion. Meanwhile, less formal estimates put Facebook at $50 billion.

It was only last May that Apple overtook Microsoft, with a market capitalization of $221 billion. That figure represents a company’s current stock price, multiplied by the number of stocks in the company. In effect it’s the paper value of the company and the amount it would theoretically cost to take it over completely. (In effect, somebody offering to buy the whole thing, or Apple stockholders all deciding spontaneously that they wanted to sell, would likely distort the stock price.)

The company hit a new milestone when stock markets opened for 2011: at a stock price of $329.60, it’s new valuation is $302.56 billion.

The only real target left — and bear in mind that this is simply paper value, rather than the hard cash of revenues and profits — is to overtake current number one Exxon Mobil at $368 billion, which would either mean the oil giant slipping, or Apple getting a hair over $400 a share. That’s about a 20% further rise, which is a bit of a stretch but could be possible if the company either has some great revenue figures, or if any of the big product announcements this year strike a chord with investors.

Meanwhile Facebook has been valued at $50 billion, though that’s even more of a paper estimate. The logic behind the figure is simply that a report state that Goldman Sachs and a Russian investor have paid a combined $500 million for one percent of the company. Of course, that means the entire valuation is based on a single transaction, so it’s far beyond pinch of salt territory.

Ironically there was said to have been a rule of thumb in the dotcom boom of the late 90s/early 2000s of valuing tech firms at 25 times their annual revenue. The report of the Goldman Sachs deal puts Facebook’s revenue at $2 billion, which works out bang on the money. (Then again, it may not be a coincidence, but rather that Facebook and Goldman Sachs used this method to come up with a “fair price.”)

But while the headlines are about how Facebook now has a higher value than eBay or Time Warner, the real story appears to be that financial regulators are asking whether such stock deals — which will likely see the shares passed on to Goldman Sachs clients — have effectively created the type of market in Facebook stock that is meant to be restricted to Wall Street and other regulated exchanges.

Hello Hannibal Amigurumi [Picture]

“I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.”
– Hello Kitty Hannibal Lecter

[Source: Monsterami]