Gravity Lens Weblog

Archive February 20 - March 8

Monday, March 8

Ladies & gentlemen, your Miss Gothic Masschusetts for 2004 is Miss Morgan Lee.

A Little T & A(theism): You gotta love a news story that begins with the line "Raelian Women Will Commemorate Women's Day By Marching With Their Breasts Exposed To Protest Against The Repressive Myth Of God."

Recommended Readin': Sandy Starr of Spiked Online examines claims that the denizens of fandom are "infantile and escapist people, and socially inept."

Broward Liston of MSNBC reports on John Glenn's criticism of the President's space plans.

Todd Halvorston and John Kelly of Space.com look at the the growing number of people retiring from the NASA workforce.

Sunday, March 7

Retrocrush pays tribute to the stunning Ava Gardner.

Geek Reference Sites: The Encyclopedia of Known Space. The Encyclopedia of the Uplift Universe. The Marvel Directory of Alien Races. The Adam Warlock Chronicles. The Great Book of Oa.

I wanted to do one of my little link tirades on the subject of domed cities. These architectural beauties have been a visual staple throughout the history of SF ("they must be advanced, Captain. They live in a dome"). Unfortunately I cannot seem to find many sites about them. There are lots of cool images of futuristic cities, but few metropoli under glass (not counting the design work of Buckminster Fuller). If you find any please let me know.

Update: Hey, I found another, and another.

While searching I found this great Mystery in Space cover of aliens hauling North America into orbit. Our lives are dull.

Saturday, March 6

From the Science Journals: Henry Jenkins of Technology Review reports how Evangelical Christians are using the new media environment to promote their own worldview.

New Scientist tells us cell phones may soon provide fake background noises.

BBC Science uncovers the mystery of why time flies when you're having fun.

Friday, March 5

Assorted Items: Neil Gaiman reports that the recent story about Alan Moore distancing himself from the Constantine film is untrue.

Coudal links to the golden age of lechery at the site Vintage Girlwatchers.

SFSIgnal points to Sine Fiction, a site featuring downloadable soundtrack music for an assortment of well known science fiction books. I am reminded of composer Kevin Slick's excellent "score" for James Morrow's Towing Jehovah.

Recommended Readin': In light of the current marriage debate Jodie T. Allen of Reason looks at what else the bible has to say.

Christopher Hitchens chimes in on gay marriage at The Opinion Journal.

Lawrence Lessig of Wired explains how every form of media had its start in piracy.

Also at Wired Amit Asaravala tells how bloggers "borrow" links. (Via Geekpress)

Elise Vogler of Irascible Professor says parents of high schoolers want stupid children.

CNN has a piece on Godzilla's upcoming sabbatical.

Fantastica Daily reports that Gordon Van Gelder has begun a campaign to get Isaac Asimov on a postage stamp.

Thursday, March 4

Funny Items: Modern Drunkard recommends that you get to know your bartender.

Wil Forbis of Acid Logic pitches The Passion of The Christ: The Sequel.

Boing Boing links to this great site of Far Side cartoons recreated with Photoshop.

A Superhero Waiting to Happen: Check out the new toy called the Berkeley Lower Extremity Exoskeleton (BLEEX).

Ronald Bailey at Reason looks at some of Leon Kass' recent antics, and reminds us why the Government shouldn't be trusted in matters of science.

Found this nice gallery of artist Syd Mead's designs. Since I'm in an eye-candy kinda mood, here's galleries for Chris Foss, Jim Burns, Donato Giancola, and Rodney Matthews.

For ear-candy, SciFi.com reviews Barry Gray's soundtrack to Captain Scarlet.

Wednesday, March 3

Rumor Mill: There is a story at Ain't It Cool News that Alan Moore dislikes the script for the upcoming Constantine film so much that he has asked DC to take his name from the creator credits. Shortly after I read this Warren Ellis sent out an email on his Bad Signal service asking if anyone had a copy of the script. Early word is that the film is based on Ellis' Dangerous Habits story arc.

Sign of the Apocalypse: Neil Gaiman informs us that an unstoppable army of monster crabs unleashed by Josef Stalin is marching on Europe.

Yes, news of a once-wet Mars is exciting, but I am far more jazzed over the freaky prospect of Black Holes actually being fuzzy, tangled objects, or the fact that there's "A Disturbance In Jupiter's Clouds."

Cool Lovecraft Site: Dan Clore's Everything You Wanted to Know About the Necronomicon.

Monster Zero informs us that the 50th Godzilla film will be titled Godzilla: Final Wars, feature ten different monsters, and will be the last Godzilla film for several years.

Speaking of the Big G, his history is one of many that can be found at Philip Jose Farmer's Wold Newton Universe Chronology Central. Other timelines include personal favorites Solomon Kane, Hercule Poirot, and Callahan's Crosstime Saloon. Reading all this got me thinking about those big Farmer multicharacter crossovers and the more recent League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Wouldn't it be sweet if one was done with established science fiction characters? What if Buck Rogers, The Stainless Steel Rat, Louis Wu, Barbarella, Santiago, and Perry Rhodan joined forces against the Beserkers and The Shrike?

Yes, I know this smacks of disturbed nerdboy wet-dream fanfic. You are invited to post cruel mockery or better suggestions on the Comment Board.

Me, I'm still waiting for the crossover between Mr. A and The Invisibles...

War on Ignorance Update: The Eternal Golden Braid links to the new Berkeley Evolution site.

Ramesh Ponnuru of Tech Central Station takes clone-czar bioethicist Leon Kass to task.

The Raving Atheist lists the real reasons why The Passion is an immoral movie.

Tuesday, March 2

It is March.

The God of the Month is Oshun, Goddess of Secrets.

The Molecule of the Month is EDTA.

The Quantum Muse Artist of the Month is Renee LeCompte.

The Speech Code of the Month is from Colby College.

The Needlepoint Stitch of the Month is the Traméd Hungarian.

The Fungus of the Month is Spinellus Fusiger in honor of Einstein''s birthday.

UGO Comics has a tribute to Jack Kirby on the tenth anniversary of his death.

George Dvorsky at Better Humans looks at the belief that we all live inside of a simulation.

From the Blogosphere: Coudal shows us this archive of Avengers comic strips.

Metafilter links to this gallery of ugly, ugly deep sea fish, as well as the Insectlopedia.

Exclamation Mark points us to Rosebud's WWI and Early Aviation Image Archive.

Monday, March 1

SciFi.com's Webguide links to the fan film Star Wars: Revelations, while SFSignal points us to some leaked pre-production art for Episode III.

Recommended Readin': James Randi takes on many subjects in his weekly column.

Cathy Young of The Boston Globe looks at the culture war over marriage.

Scott Timberg of the LA Times examines America's cultural isolationism.

Michelle Delio of Wired breathes in the air on Mars.

Maggie Fox of Reuters reports of the Bush administrations recent firing of scientists it does not agree with.

Sunday, February 29

Figures.com shows us some upcoming Monty Python toys, including the Minister of Silly Walks, The Lumberjack, and, of course, God.

Friday, February 27

The Body Shoppe: Several modifications to the human template this week. We've heard news stories about artificial lenses, robotic muscles, and a possible substitute for DNA. The age of the modular body is approaching, but as Wired's Angela Swafford tells us, there's still no substitute for the human nose.

Recommended Readin': The Economist updates us on the state of multiculturalism.

Jon Stossel explains the astronomical welfare benefits for the rich at Reason.

Arnold Kling of Tech Central Station questions the wisdom of dead white males.

Mike Wooldridge of BBC finds it necessary to ask "can religion be blamed for war?"

Simon Smith of Better Humans looks at the troubled state of nanotechnology research.

More cool statues from Randy Bowen Designs: An assortment of R. Crumb characters, and this awesome set of Flash Gordon and Ming The Merciless mini-busts.

Grow A Brain linked to the Monty Python Tarot deck (it's actually a gaming deck). Other neat tarot sets floating around the web include the Metrosexual Tarot, the line drawings of Morgan's Tarot, the Alcohol Tarot, the fractal coolness of the Chaos Tarot, and the Lovecraft Tarot.

Thursday, February 26

Here's preview art of the sizable line up for Justice League Unlimited. Here's the story.

Here's a great piece by Robert Roy Britt of Space.com about the music used to wake up the engineering teams throughout the current Mars Rover mission. It includes a songlist.

Special Correspondent "Paoli du Flippi" of Locus tells us the ironic tale of a "speculative fiction" magazine launched by those who look down on speculative fiction. Very funny.

A brief saunter through the site Android World unearthed several items of interest, including this creepy collection of humanoid robot heads, this full-sized Gundam suit, and a company called Robot-Costumes where you can buy or rent a mechanoid to entertain at your function, including this very cool 8 ft. tall Master Blaster.

Other robot-related stuff: there's new robot sculptures at the site of artist Clayton Bailey.

Here's a picture of the world's smallest flying robot.

Check out the video for this proposed zero-gee personal assistant egg-bot.

Geek meter in the red, Captain: Further perpetuating the general (and unjust) belief that comic readers are the saddest folks around, Electric Ferret's Comic Book Universe Battles site is where, basically, a bunch of guys go online and talk (at great length) about theoretical melees between two or more characters that will never meet within the confines of established canons. There's a lot of gaming characters listed that I'm not familiar with, but some of the more whimsical examples include Predator vs. The Road Runner, Mr. Mxyzptlk vs. Star Trek's "Q," Justice Friends (From Dexter's Lab) vs. Super Best Friends (from South Park), Calvin's alter-egos Spaceman Spiff vs. Stupendous Man, and (one for the boys) Vamperella vs. Elvira. Read the whole list here.

Assorted Items:

SF Signal linked to this CNN story about scholarships for people who speak Klingon.

"The Panel" at Silver Bullet Comics poses the question "Do bad comics really exist?"

Ronald Bailey of Reason tells us about the debate over the rights of frozen severed heads.

BBC Science reports that scientists have measured the shortest interval of time ever.

New Scientist is saying oral sex causes cancer. If this was true, I'd be long dead by now.

Tom McMahon hates us. Why else would he link to a site full of scary clowns?

Wednesday, February 25

Here's a neat Alien Chestburster statue, and here, on the other end of the spectrum, is an Alien plush. I also like this bust of Marvel monster Fin Fang Foom.

Space Stuff: Red Nova gives us the details about an exploding neutron star.

Leonard David of Space.com previews the upcoming asteroid collision preparedness drills.

Philip Shropshire makes "a left argument for space" at Better Humans.

I would personally support any space exploration strategy that established long range plans for space elevators, orbital habitats, terraforming Mars, mining the asteroids and the Kuiper

belt, constructing a viable Ringworld or Dyson sphere, dispatching a fleet of Von Neumann probes, and colonizing the galaxy in my lifetime. Is that really too much to ask?

Fat Tuesday, February 24

Robert Berry of Retrocrush wants people to write in and answer an interesting question: What is your favorite part of a song? Example: the organ solo from In A Gadda Da Vida...

Christopher A. Duva of Arbiter Online makes a plea for an atheist homeland. In that case he may want to check out this exhaustive list of plans and attempts to establish new countries based on a variety of motivations and ideologies. I tell ya, the idea of a floating high-tech independant ship-state is intriguing. Hmmm, Pattersonia...

Celluloid Skyline is stylish site dedicated to the mythical New York City only seen in films.

Nothing good can come from a news story that starts "US military creates second Earth." No, it's not an Earth 2, merely a computer generated replica of the planet (which some folks believe we're already living in). Following that thought, it's been a while since we've heard any suggestions that there might be a Counter Earth matching our orbit behind the sun. This concept has made possible such wonderful geek-fodder as Journey to the Far Side of the Sun and the god-like High Evolutionary of the Marvel Universe. Unfortunately it also inspired the testosterone-laden rape-fest of John Norman's Gor novels.

And, to be fair, there are those who demand that the Earth is fixed and unmoving.

This week's Mondolithic Image of the Week is of the ant-like Swarm Bots.

Starting next week cartoonist Peter Bagge will be providing Weekly World News with a weekly strip based on the adventures of their freakish mascot Bat Boy.

Monday, February 23

Science Stuff: New Scientist tells us about attempts to transmit smell via the internet.

Canoe explains how brain cells are being grown on microchips.

Richard A. Muller of Technology Review looks at the future of robotic space exploration.

Michael Moyer of Popular Science explains what a 10 dimensional universe is like.

Alain de Botton of the Telegraph gives us a brief history of the soul.

Sunday, February 22

Recommended Readin': James Randi looks at the rise in exorcisms in his weekly column.

Charles Paul Freund of Reason wonders what happened to the Space Age.

Pejman Yousefzadeh of Tech Central Station asks: Wither Libertarianism?

Colin McEnroe of the Hartford Courant shows some pride in his Neanderthal heritage.

Dave Barry has some language questions.

Coudal links to LUPEC: Ladies United for the Preservation of Endangered Cocktails.

Deep in the bowels of my youth I often burned off hours at a time playing with my Major Matt Mason toys. I also had a bunch of alien figures of the same scale and build, and until now I was unaware of what they called. Well, quite by accident, I discovered that they were the Colorform Outer Space Men. These trippy-looking aliens hailed from each planet in the solar system. I also found this neat X Entertainment article about the line.

I also spent some time hopping around the Starship Modeler site, where I was quite impressed by both this replica of the pirate zeppelin from Laputa, and this well-painted recreation of the cycle race from Tron. Further model-site browsing brought me to the page of Gerry Anderson modeler Martin Bower. There I discovered that he had worked on this spectacular Martian War Machine for a War of the Worlds photonovel which, sadly, was never released.

Strangely, none of the above shows up anywhere on the Geek Hierarchy (via Geekpress)

Saturday, February 21

This year's Noreascon in Boston will feature the Retro Hugos, awarded to science fiction from 50 years ago. Rich Norton of Locus looks at the possibilities.

And speaking of retro, I have been lax in my duties in failing to report that TV Land has been showing Batman, Superman, and Shazam! episodes Friday and Saturday late nights as part of their TV Kitschen, hosted by Martin Mull and Fred Willard.

Lastly, found a neat French site dedicated to scream queens called Les Filles De L'Enfer.

Friday, February 20

Interesting piece from The Economist about linguists studying a group of deaf children in Nicaragua developing their own language.

Friend Dave sends along this Jack Chick tract which proves that Catholicism is false.