It was forty years ago today that Apollo 11 lifted off. A month ago, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter left Earth for the Moon. Congratulations to Professor Harlan Spence of Boston University, whose CRaTER payload is on the LRO, studying the long-term effects of radiation on humans. (I doubt that one of those effects is to turn people into super heroes, like the cosmic rays that created the Fantastic Four!)
The LRO will drop to an orbit of 30 miles above the Moon and take pictures of the Apollo 11 landing site. I’m really looking forward to seeing those. I wonder if anything’s been moved? 😉
Eric’s repaired Xbox 360 has been returned and it’s once again working. Summer is saved! Recently, The Onion had a special segment examining the importance of video games in preparing today’s youth for their inevitable future…
Thanks to the Roku Digital Player, my guilty pleasure has been watching the revived BBC series Dr. Who. I’m almost through the second season with David Tennant, who took over from Christopher Eccleston. The Doctor always has a young lady along for his adventures, and Billie Piper as Rose appears in both seasons.
Dr. Who retains the preposterous stories and hokey monsters of past incarnations, but I’m impressed by the human interest elements of the new series. The love triangle between Rose, her boyfriend, and The Doctor had a curious end. One episode in particular, “Love and Monsters”, uses the ludicrous sci-fi trappings of the last Time Lord as an excuse for memorably quirky character portrayals. The scenes with Rose’s hopeful mum and a younger man are both a funny and poignant. The episode features the delightfully mouse-voiced Shirley Henderson, who is Moaning Myrtle in the Harry Potter movies.
England in the early 60’s was the source of some of the all-time best theme music. The James Bond theme was composed by Monty Norman, but arranger John Barry disputes that claim. A man named Laurie Johnson wrote the theme for The Avengers, and the Dr. Who theme was composed by Ron Grainer at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
This reminds me of the praiseworthy Star Trek fan project, New Voyages. I don’t know how much of an influence New Voyages had on getting the new Trek movie produced, but so far I haven’t seen anything in the trailers that has me dying to see it. For starters, the set for the bridge is a gaudy mess, reminiscent of the way that Batman looked as handled by Joel Schumacher.
Bismo says the buzz about the new ‘classic’ Star Trek movie is that it’s better than the trailers make it seem. It’s been seen in Australia, and also in Austin, TX, where fans who thought they would be seeing a screening of the 27-year-old Wrath of Khan were in for a surprise.
