Raja's Blog

"This spectacular “blue marble” image is the most detailed true-color image of the entire Earth to date. Using a collection of satellite-based observations, scientists and visualizers stitched together months of observations of the land surface, oceans, sea ice, and clouds into a seamless, true-color mosaic of every square kilometer (.386 square mile) of our planet. These images are freely available to educators, scientists, museums, and the public. Preview images and links to full resolution versions—up to 21,600 pixels across—are located below."

There's also a NASA site with a set of animations: http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/viewrecord?11664

For the first time, I Netflix'd the Bonus Disc as well. It's quite entertaining; the main feature is "Built to Last", a 70+ minute "documentary" (basically, a lot of talking-heads comments from the cast and crew). Again, the cast really liked "Meltdown" and most were annoyed that it was held for the end of season; the original plan was to open the season with it, but when the first Gulf War happened, it was decided to wait until season's end. Craig Charles (who plays Lister) says, reasonably, that it's just a TV show, and that it was done long before the War, in all good faith, so he thinks delaying the broadcast is silly. But he does have other reasons for being annoyed; he has a BBC radio show, and when his good friend musician Edwin Starr died during the war, Craig was not allowed to do a proper tribute, since Starr's best-known (and best) song is the famous "War". Chris Barrie (who plays Rimmer) is the only one who sympathizes with the delay; he says, reasonably, that if a genuine war intervenes, and people are upset about their loved ones being injured or killed, it doesn't seem unreasonable to delay, or even cancel, the broadcast.

There's also a large other set of bonuses, reachable either via an animated menu or a text menu. After failing miserably to navigate the animated menu (it looks like it really needs a mouse), I quickly switched to the text menu.

The bonuses include a pair of longish excerpts (more than 30 minutes, IIRC) of Red Dwarf audiobooks; these seem to have been read by Chris Barrie, who does a truly amazing job of mimicking his co-cast-members. (Surely they'd have credited them if they read their own parts?) The excerpts correspond to two scenes from "White Hole"[minor spoilers]—the "pool room" sequence, and the conversation between "Talkie Toaster" and the optimized Holly. The relationship between the TV show and the books (and audiobooks) seems complicated; for instance, Holly is still a male, and the "pool room" scene of "White Hole" goes into greater detail. What I mean to say is, the books seem to be more interesting than a simple rehash of the TV scripts.

The other major bonus is a 30-minute (minus obligatory commercial time OC) TV show called "Can't Smeg Won't Smeg". Apparently this was an episode of a light-hearted British TV cooking show (called "Can't Cook Won't Cook", I presume). The host of this TV show appeared (in heavy makeup and costume) in a Red Dwarf episode (presumably from a later season), so five Red Dwarf actors (playing six parts ;-) return the favor and appear (in character) on his show. It's light-hearted, at-least-partly-unscripted fun.

Other, shorter, bonuses include a couple of cut-together-with-music bits of video ("Lurve" and "Ace Rimmer 'A Life in Lamé'"); those were amusing, but I cut them off to avoid spoilage (they include bits from future episodes); "Smeg Ups" (bloopers); "Deleted Scenes" (some of which are interesting, none of which are crucial); vintage trailers for the series (which look to be taken from fan VHS tapes, but are quite amusing); some nice silent footage of the spacecraft models; a gallery of stills, including three sets of behind-the scenes production stills, a set of special effects preproduction sketches, costume tests, and VHS sleeves, and Polaroid snapshots; a (seemingly) complete set of music cues for Series Four (e.g., "Main Theme", "Elvis Theme", "Extended Hammond Theme", "Farewell", four "Action" themes, three "Romantic" themes, 12 "Dramatic" themes....), which are almost as good as having a Series Four soundtrack.

Whew! While it may seem silly that I've spent more time detailing the bonuses than discussing Season Four, my goal was to get across the fact that the bonus disc is truly excellent; if I were a bigger fan of Red Dwarf, the bonus disc would be everything I wanted, and (perhaps) reason enough to buy the DVD.

I enjoyed Season Four more than Three. The six episodes this time
through are "Camille", "DNA", "Justice", "White Hole", "Dimension
Jump", "Meltdown". I'd count all of them as classics. While "Camille"
has some bits that drag, it's ultimately built around a truly
outrageous pun. "DNA" presents a machine that lets people (essentially) shift
species; after some thoughtful scenes, it "turns out to be all about
curry." (to quote Mark Walker's Editorial review on Amazon). "Justice"
has the crew finding a suspended-animation pod that might contain a
woman, or might contain a mass-murderer; their visit to a long-lost
penal colony is hilarious. "White Hole" has the crew encountering the
dangerous astronomical title object (warning: Do not get your
astrophysical knowledge from TV comedy) and having to optimize Holly.
"Dimension Jump" presents another parallel universe; in this case, a
much more heroic version of one of our characters comes visiting.
Finally, "Meltdown" has some unbelievably funny moments, though the
ending strikes me as too dark (there's a whiff of genocide implied).

The commentaries are as fun as always. The cast members really liked
"Meltdown" and don't understand why it's much less popular with fans;
for me, it's the darkness of the ending.

Wow. This is the best season of Angel yet. It may turn out to be the best that ever was—I haven't seen Season 5 yet (the DVD hasn't been released in the US) but it will be hard pressed to top this.

By the end of Season Three, Angel was feeling a little safe, even stodgy. Sure, Season Three ended with the characters (somewhat) scattered, and two possibly gone forever—but it didn't take an Einstein to know that they'd be back; the only question would be at what price.

The first few episodes of Season Four reassembled the characters with worryingly few surprises and at worryingly little cost; was the stodginess now a permanent feature? Fortunately, the sixth episode (written and directed by Joss) is anything but stodgy, and the final scene points to something larger. That's paid off in spades by the seventh episode, which begins something that occupies the rest of the season in its twists, turns, and consequences. Along the way, there's some brilliant writing as, for instance, when the characters lose their leader, they fall back on their implicit second-in-command—not knowing that character does not have their best interests at heart.

Angel Season 4, in my view, is as gutsy and risk-taking as Buffy Season 2. Its huge continued plot is epic in scope, and has echoes of some of the best prose stories: There are elements that seemed to me like homages to Lovecraft, and Sturgeon.

The only downside is that the last few episodes are rather clumsy in resolving things; there's some idiot plotting, and one of the smartest characters is uncharacteristically slow on the uptake, presumably to let the writers spell things out for the audience.

The final episode caps off the season, putting the show in a whole new place yet again, and giving a troubled—but beloved—character a bittersweet exit.

No, it's not the hugely influential—and hugely racist—cinema classic; this Birth of a Nation is a fairly amusing graphic novel in an alternate history/utopian SF vein: What if the largely ghetto-ized city of East St. Louis (not to be confused with the shiny main city of St. Louis with the Gateway Arch across the river) had responded to the year 2000 presidential election difficulties by seceding from the United States? It's quite amusing, though the reliance on cheap and easy sources of unlimited energy hurts the plausibility—if you're judging it as SF, anyway. There are also some crudities early on, as the writers put some “stage directions” into the captions, rather than letting Kyle Baker show and not tell. But overall, it's a very entertaining work with a strong African-American slant (both of the writers and the artist are black, as all the people listed in the acknowledgments seem to be), and a moving introduction by Reginald Hudlin, in which he explains that yes, his hometown of East St. Louis really was like this, and dedicates the book to his deceased father.

I can do no better than quote my friend Ignacio:

They did it! they won the X prize!

If you got a free ride in the spaceship one, would you go? ;-)

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/10/1004_041004_spaceshipone_xprize.html#main

See also the nice logo Google has today:

http://www.google.com/

Best,
Ignacio

PS: For those of you in the future, here's the logo: