Apollo Moon Hoax Mythbusters tonight!

Don't forget to watch, or set the Tivo, for Mythbusters tonight and find out if we really did fake the Moonlandings!

Star Trek is what's killing the space program!?

According to Buzz Aldrin, the lack of interest among "young people" in the space program is due to "all the shows where they beam people around and things like that" because "they have made young people think that that is what the space program should be doing. It's not realistic."

Wow, I'm thinking that would come as quite a surprise to the hundreds of NASA scientists and engineers (myself included) that cite Star Trek in particular and science fiction in general as one of the main things that got them interested in space.

Space and Pop Culture

Interesting article in the NYTimes today on the ways that the space age has influenced Pop Culture

In fact the whole Science Times today is dedicated to "The Space Age" in celebration of the anniversary of Sputnik. Some good stuff in there, well worth a read.

Serenity flys to station

So this blog tends to cover space and pop culture, usually two very different topics, but every once in a while, the two come together and it's beautiful.

Case in point, my friend Flygal pointed me to this site:
BREAKING ATMO - Here's How It Is...
which details the efforts from some of NASA's Browncoats to bring the joys of Firefly and Serenity to the astronauts aboard station.

How shiny is that?

Don't you dare touch my Chocolate!

OMG, it's an emergency! They are out to destroy chocolate as we know it! And by "they" I mean the Grocery Manufacturers of America, with the support of the Chocolate Manufacturers of America and, who else, Hershey Co. Stupid Hershey. Go right now to Don't Mess With Our Chocolate and express your outrage.

"Chocolate is an indulgence that everyone can afford, and it provides comfort, pleasure and happiness. It truly is one of the worlds most unique and special foods.

However, if some members of the U.S. Chocolate Industry have their way, it will negatively change the quality of chocolate you love. Their plan is to change the basic formula of chocolate in order to use vegetable fat substitutes in place of cocoa butter, and to use milk substitutes in the place of nutritionally superior milk. These changes will have adverse effects on the eating, physical and nutritional quality of chocolate, and beg the question: What consumer benefit is associated with implementing these changes? The answer is none.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has a chocolate standard of identity requiring manufacturers to use approved ingredients in making chocolate, and it protects the consumer from any substitution of inferior ingredients. As a result, the Chocolate Industry must obtain approval from the Food and Drug Administration to make any changes.

The U.S. Chocolate Industry, through its Chocolate Manufacturers of America (CMA), and in collaboration with the Grocery Manufacturers Association, have petitioned the Food and Drug Association (FDA) to change the current requirements for chocolate."

Happy Birthday Buffy!

Today marks the 10th anniversary of first airing of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the series, not the crappy movie, that totally doesn't count). Given the way that most of Buffy (the character) birthday's turned out, let's just hope this day doesn't end in tragedy.

Some coverage of the event can be found at TV.com, Whedonesque, and it's even today's featured article at Wikipedia

Jane Espenson joins Battlestar Galactica full time

One of my favorite Buffyverse writers, Jane Espenson, responsible for such classic Buffy "Espensodes" as Band Candy and Triangle will be joining the writing staff of BG full time next season after having written 2 episodes this season (including Dirty Hands from 2 weeks ago). I guess she impressed them. Yay!

Joss Whedon interview

There's a great 4 part interview with Joss Whedon up at Geek Monthly. He talks mostly about the upcoming Buffy Season 8 comics, which I have to admit I am so excited about.

I don't normally read comics. Nothing personal, it's just never been my thing. But I gotta tell you, I would read the back of a triscuit box if Joss wrote it. And then I would re-read it and look for hidden layers of meaning. And then I would go online and see if I could find others who had read and dissected the layers of depth in the triscuit box and had drawn parallels to works on the back of other snack foods and then I would search out those snack foods and read their backs before re-reading the triscuit box once again to ensure that I could fully appreciate the genius that went into the triscuit box. Yeah, it's kind of a sickness.

Also, some of my other favorite Buffy writers are also going to be writing issues of the comic, including Jane Espenson and Drew Goddard. It's going to be so good.

Anna Nicole's final bow - an act of humanitarianism

I haven't said anything about Lisa Nowak yet, mostly because I haven't had anything either insightful or hilarious to say, but I woke up this morning with a somewhat morbid thought that Lisa and her family, not to mention NASA as a whole, must be so grateful to Anna Nicole Smith for dying. Apparently I'm not the only one who thought that, as I stumbled on this blog entry this morning.

I, for one, won't miss the circling helicopters and stupid news vans hanging out at JSC's entry gates.