Now Trending: Martha Stewart’s latest love affair – drones (really)

DRONING ON

All of a sudden, the drone industry has an unofficial spokesperson: Martha Stewart.

To the surprise of a great many people, the lifestyle diva has penned a glowing essay on modern drone technology that appeared this week on the Time magazine website.

And the way Martha sees it, drones can be a "useful tool."

As Stewart relates in her own words, last year she received a drone fitted with a high-definition camera for her 72nd birthday last year.

After a brief introduction to "the mechanics of operating the contraption and a few words about its idiosyncrasies, I loaded the appropriate app on my iPad and went down to the beach."

The result: "In just a few minutes, I was hooked."

In the same essay, Stewart reveals she has since employed the drone to take photographs all over her 153-acre farm in Katonah, N.Y., including a shot of a vegetable garden that "looked very much like my Peter Rabbit marzipan-embellished Easter cake, which was designed without the help of a drone."

In recent months, the use of drone technology has become a topic of debate as more individuals and companies have expressed a desire to use the flying devices for commercial and other purposes.

The online retail service Amazon.com has stated on repeated occasions that it wants to make deliveries via drones. At least 14 other U.S. companies want to do likewise.

At the same time, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has strictly banned the unauthorized commercial use of drones due to safety concerns. Currently, drone operations "not for hobby or recreation" are authorized on a "case-by-case" basis, according to FAA regulations.

In her carefully worded essay, Stewart skirts around the implications that could arise with drone technology being made available to the average person.

In her own words: "I could not even begin to fathom even a fraction of the social, ethical and political challenges the widespread use of drones would create."

As it turns out, Stewart has been pushing the drone cause for the past few months.

In May of this year, Stewart raved about drones in an interview with Vanity Fair. She's also rhapsodized about drones on her blog, which she's routinely augmented with drone-captured photos of her farm and the invitation to readers to weigh in on the topic.

"I'd love to know what you think about the photos, but also what you think about drones and the various ways they can be used in the future!" says Stewart on her blog.

Even more recently, Stewart has taken to social media to share the drone-love.

Earlier this month, Stewart deployed her Twitter account (@MarthaStewart) to reach out to her three-million followers with the tweet, "Interest in seeing photos of my home taken by drones crashed the servers. If u tried to comment and could not try now."

And earlier this week, Stewart issued a simple three-word tweet – "Drones are trending" – that has since been retweeted nearly 1,000 times.

As should be expected, the Twitter-verse was quick to react to Martha's love affair with drones.

Twitter user Zack Handlen (@zhandlen) opined, "I can't help but think that Martha Stewart saying she loves drones is some kind of warning."

There was also this tweet from David Pierce (@piercedavid): "Martha Stewart and drones are best friends and I find that TERRIFYING."

Then there was this tweet from Sam Brannen (@csis_sam): "One thing @MarthaStewart didn't mention in her article on love of drones: she broke current law with commercial use."

Of course, the Twitter user known as CMRN KNZLMN (@ckunzelman) made a pretty good point with the tweet, "I wonder if Martha Stewart will be so hype on drones when people start using them to track celebrities constantly."

And for Martha Stewart, that might not be a good thing.

RATINGS DIP

This week's season finale of The Bachelorette notched record-low ratings south of the border. According to the Nielsens ratings company, Monday's night's wrap-up episode drew eight-million U.S. viewers, which is down from last summer's finale number of 8.9-million. More importantly, the finale was the lowest-rated U.S. audience in Bachelorette broadcast history. ABC's followup special After the Final Rose attracted 8.2-million U.S. viewers.

Source: USA Today

BIG SCREEN

Glee star Harry Shum Jr. will take one of the lead roles in the long-awaited sequel to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Best known for playing Mike Chang on Glee, Shum will assume the role of Tie-Fang in the sequel, which is set 20 years after the events of the original 2000 film. Shum recently wrapped filming the action movie Revenge of the Green Dragons opposite Ray Liotta.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

BRANCHING OUT

Actor-director Spike Jonze will tackle a guest role in the fourth season of Girls. The Being John Malkovich director has signed up to appear in the upcoming season of the HBO series playing a character named Marcos. Jonze joins a growing list of season-four Girls guest players that includes Jason Ritter, Gillian Jacobs and Zachary Quinto. The fourth season of Girls is expected to debut in early 2015.

Source: TVLine

LINEAGE SHOCKER

Modern Family star Jesse Tyler Ferguson uncovered some dark secrets while researching his family tree on the TLC series Who Do You Think You Are. On the first day of shooting, and with the assistance of the show's lineage experts, Ferguson was shocked to discover that his great-grandfather was accused of murdering his own aunt at the turn of the century. "It was overwhelming," said Ferguson, "because when I've watched the show as a fan, there's usually this big reveal, this important part of the puzzle, near the end of the episode. And here we are dealing with it in the beginning."

Source: People

DIESEL-FUELED

Treat yourself to Vin Diesel's heartfelt interpretation of the Sam Smith hit song Stay With Me. The burly action-movie star was doing TV interviews this week in support of his new movie Guardians of the Galaxy when an interviewer asked him to sing a few verses of the song. Diesel complied and delivered the chart-topping hit in letter-perfect form – even hitting all the high notes.

Source: TMZ