Hulleye Comes By!

articles about the the big black can never get boring. the new york times does a fairly good job of explaining more about the universe.

Mario Livio tossed his car keys in the air.

They rose ever more slowly, paused, shining, at the top of their arc, and then in accordance with everything our Galilean ape brains have ever learned to expect, crashed back down into his hand.

That was the whole problem, explained Dr. Livio, a theorist at the Space Telescope Science Institute here on the Johns Hopkins campus.

A decade ago, astronomers discovered that what is true for your car keys is not true for the galaxies. Having been impelled apart by the force of the Big Bang, the galaxies, in defiance of cosmic gravity, are picking up speed on a dash toward eternity. If they were keys, they would be shooting for the ceiling.

“That is how shocking this was,” Dr. Livio said.

It is still shocking. Although cosmologists have adopted a cute name, dark energy, for whatever is driving this apparently antigravitational behavior on the part of the universe, nobody claims to understand why it is happening, or its implications for the future of the universe and of the life within it, despite thousands of learned papers, scores of conferences and millions of dollars’ worth of telescope time. It has led some cosmologists to the verge of abandoning their fondest dream: a theory that can account for the universe and everything about it in a single breath.

so the sci-fi channel as you can tell lately plays some terrible programming lately. the same can be said for it’s canadian cousin space. so this guy decided since the sci-fi channel isn’t going to play anything half decent, he’s going to find links to all the classic sci-fi he can and provide links to it. it’s all legal and legit and it’s awesome.

Until recently I was able to ignore the abortion that called itself ‘The SciFi Channel’. At least they were using the less respectable ‘Skiffy’ abbreviation to identify themselves (no insult intended at all towards Mr. Ackerman who coined the phrase: maybe they ought to put him in charge…). But no longer. A few short weeks ago the Suits-In-Charge (SIC) decided that their channel needed to reach an audience wider than the ‘geeky young guys’ that science fiction appeals to (their definition of the market, not mine) and so they’ve unilaterally decided to expand the definition. Now, according to these self-proclaimed scions of the genre, the defintion of SF has been reduced to the all encompassing “What If?”

And somehow, ‘What If?’ includes professional wrestling and paranormal reality shows. (Paranormal reality!? Shoot me now, please!) (What if idiots from another galaxy traveled through a wormhole and seized control of all of our television programming?)

Not that I haven’t given SFC a shot. I’ve dutifully tuned in for almost every new series and have at least started to watch their ‘made-for-television’ in-house fare. To tell the truth, sometimes the stories themselves haven’t been all that bad, but SFC seems to be plagued by the curse of the B-Actors. (I’d rather they went the original Doctor Who route - good actors, minimal budget for effects. See, science fiction fans are used to making pictures inside their heads. They don’t need to be shown everything. A hint, a mere suggestion, is often more than enough.)

Oh yes, I know Battlestar Galactica has been a huge success, a phenomena. One that’s now starting to confuse and disappoint even its biggest fans. Why? I think its easy to explain: once you replace ‘good guys and bad guys’ with tens of characters, all of whom have conflicted emotions, there can never be any really satisfactory resolution. Instead of telling a story, you end up mired in detailed characterizations. Too much detail for a late-arriving viewer to be able to pick up on mid-stream. Too much interpersonal BS for anyone to care about any of it over the long haul. Great concept, reduced to little more than office gossip around the water cooler.

But enough of my personal biases.