Time Waits for No Hottie (and Other Ponderables)

Last month, Stephen Hawking's The Grand Design hit bookshelves. A follow-up to his 1998 release entitled A Brief History of Time, his latest embraces new theories about the creation of the universe. In A Brief History of Time, he wrote, "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason--for then we should know the mind of God." In somewhat of a reversal, his newest work indicates, "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going." Many believe he is simply clearing up the nebulous entity he skirts around in his other works in favor of a more direct approach to what he's believed all along. Truly, does this surprise anyone? Makes for splashy headlines, though.

In other shocking?-not-so-much novel news, Louise Patten, writer and granddaughter of Charles Lightoller, the senior-most officer to have survived the Titanic tragedy, has revealed in an interview that coincides with the release of her new fiction novel, Good as Gold, that a steering error was to blame. According to Patten, her grandfather failed to disclose the error during inquiries on both sides of the Atlantic for fear it would mean financial ruin for the ship's owners and his fellow employees with the parent company, The White Star Line. Patten's version of the disaster plays an important role in the story of an ugly duckling conformist who uncovers secrets behind her family's bank and attempts to right the wrongs of her family's past.

Robert Zemeckis, the movie director who brought us Romancing the Stone and the Back to the Future franchise to name a few, is returning to the time travel genre in Timeless. Warner Brothers is keeping the log line under wraps for now. And speaking of Back to the Future, Christopher "Doc Brown" Lloyd has signed on to play a time traveling scientist in a 3D Imax documentary called Time: The Fourth Dimension.

Oh, and remember the Most Attractive Male Physicist's Vote we stumbled across last week? We now have pictures! And voting bubbles. Two days left to cast your vote. Democracy is such a beautiful thing.

The next two weeks I'll be traveling all over New England in search of moderate temperatures, non-cow scenery and history far beyond "Remember the Alamo!" I promise to return with tales of adventure and vacay pictures, ad nauseum, as they relate to all things Vortex.

Be well until then.