Gravity Lens Weblog

Archive September 3 - 25 2005

Sunday, September 25

Boston.com has put up a list of the 50 Top Science Fiction TV shows. It's a one-show-per-page list, so prepare to click a lot.

Friday, September 23

Dial B for Blog celebrates the most glorious of comic book tropes: The Evil Twin!

James Randi's weekly column tells us that general disbelief in the supernatural collides with photos of hot women in the Skepchick 2006 Calendar.

Assorted Science Items: Technovelgy takes us out to an undersea restaurant, and shows us the precursor to the holodeck.

Popular Science has a great story about a bionic man.

Meanwhile Ronald Bailey at Reason looks at some of the arguments over biotech modification.

Thursday, September 22

Michael Simpson of Sy Fy Portal asks Does Science Fiction Need Science? (He's talking about TV and movies, here)

Wednesday, September 21

The Mondolithic Images of the Week are a pair of neat pictures they did for National Geographic Kids Magazine imaging a world 30 years in the future.

Tuesday, September 20

Wil McCarthy of SciFi Weekly theorizes how the huge solar system of the Firefly/Serenity universe might work.

Assorted Items: Author Jonathan Lethem won a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant.” His next project is reviving Marvel's Omega the Unknown.

Looks like we might be running out of hurricane names.

ShelVy wrote in to promote the new pulp SF homage Planetary Stories.

Geekpress links to this story of an Australian man who built up too much of a static charge.

Big Ungainly Helmets: Galactus, Dr. Polaris, Grim Reaper, Arkon, The Wizard, Balder, Ajak, Stryfe, Silver Samurai, Magog, Acroyear, Weapon X, The Star Slammers, Dark Helmet, Immortus, and Tim the Enchanter.

Monday, September 19

Daniel Handlin of The Space Review considers the possible paths of manned exploration in a post-shuttle world.

Twenty top comic book creators talk to InsidePulse about their favorite wine.

Sunday, September 18

What's your favorite word?

New Scientist has put up a feature celebrating The World's Ten Biggest Ideas.

Friday, September 16

Assorted Items: LiveScience introduces us to the world's smallest robot. It is not Twiki.

CNN corrects a story about a German inventor building a car that runs on dead cats.

Grow-A-Brain links to this Uncyclopedia List of Weapons That Don't Exist But Should.

Retrocrush fondly remembers earning cash and prizes selling cards for Captain O.

Thursday, September 15

A moment of silence, please, for Mr. Robert Wise. I took a directing course that he taught once long ago. Executive Suite is still one of my favorite films, while Day The Earth Stood Still and Andromeda Strain remind us that great science fiction films were not always action packed monstrosities.

Recommended Readin': Humphrey Cheung of Tom's Hardware tells us of the popularity of an internet-controlled pellet gun.

Jeff Dillon of Sign On San Diego looks at the relationship between "Katrina and sci-fi."

Prof. Steve Jones of The Telegraph introduces us to the once-SF element Promethium.

Justin Mullins of New Scientist looks at the possibility of controlling the weather. This particular talent has long fallen under the auspices of characters like the Weather Wizard, the Weather Witch, Ororo Munroe, Sir August DeWinter, and Mikkos Cassadine, but there's certainly no shortage of folks who'd like to join those ranks.

Wednesday, September 14

The McFarlane Toys Wallace & Gromit feature is now live.

Tuesday, September 13

It was six years ago today that the moon was thrown out of Earth orbit.

Life Imitates SF: Bidisha Banerjee of Reason discusses how the situation in New Orleans is reminiscent of Samuel Delany's Dhalgren. James Sallis of Boston.com looks at the war on terror through Eric Frank Russell's Wasp.

Jeff Foust of The Space Review checks in on the state of the International Space Station.

And Technovelgy hails the coming of the robotic knee brace.

I forgot to mention this last week, but Warren Ellis' Engine, a forum for "adult-oriented original creator-owned works," is up and running.

Monday, September 12

"My ten-year-old son has a fascination with UFOs and space aliens... but I'm concerned it could lead him to the occult."

Apparently the very cool-looking Solo-Trek Exo-Skeletor isn't dead after all.

The sharp-eyed gentlemen at SF Signal noticed that voting has begun for the 2005 Wooden Rocket Awards at SF Crowsnest. The good news: this year they have added a category for Best Blog. The bad news: if any of my good readers wish to vote for, say, Gravity Lens, they need to sign up for the SF Crowsnest free newsletter. This is to confirm valid email addresses.

This is cool: Elektro the Robot, pride of the 1939 World's Fair, has been restored for exhibit at Ohio's Mansfield Museum. Newsarama remembers his comic book career.

Sunday, September 11

As a man whose wrist is often sore, no not for that reason, I appreciate the ergonomic wonders of the Alternative Keyboard Gallery. Via Coudal.

Friday, September 9

Two words: bionic hand.

Assorted characters who've lost a hand: Aquaman, Luke Skywalker, Torque, TeeHee, Trent, Klaw, and the Grim Reaper.

Thursday, September 8

Here's a neat story from Red Herring about plans for the next generation of military airships. Here's the concept art for one, which looks a lot like an inflatable version of Thunderbird 2.

Recommended Readin': Gregory Anderson of The Space Review argues that SETI researchers are not taking interstellar migration into account.

Jeremy Adam Smith of Strange Horizons gives us his list of the Ten Stupidest Utopias. This is a companion piece to last month's Ten Sexiest Utopias.

Astrobiology has an excellent update on the Mars Rovers Spirit and Opportunity.

The headline reads "Fine Line Revealed Between Creativity and Insanity."

Wednesday, September 7

'Bout Freakin' Time: Car technology that beeps when a driver's attention leaves the road.

Someone's finally invented that neat reader display from Earth: Final Conflict.

And the headline reads "Using Brain Scanners to Figure Out What Women Want."

Tuesday, September 6

A moment of silence, please, for Mr. Bob Denver.

While some claim the comic industry is dying, we can look forward to new books coming out based on the lives of Indian astronaut Kalpana Chawla and Solidarity leader Lech Walesa.

Monday, September 5

Eye of the Goof links to this great BBC list of advertising cliches.

Sunday, September 4

The situation in New Orleans got me thinking about the concept of abandoned cities in science fiction, like The Drowned World, Escape from New York, and Rising Stars. I found this interesting online piece by David Platt on the trope of contemporary cities in ruins.

A moment of silence, please, for guitarist Denis D'Amour of Voivod.