Hugo Who?

In other Hugo news, the 2006 Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form, went to the Doctor Who 2-parter comprised of "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances." Jolly good, that.

Joss Whedon is My Master

My fellow Whedonites might be interested to know that
Serenity was awarded the 2006 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form. Shiny, eh? The icing on the cake for me was Joss Whedon's trademark hilarious-but-touching acceptance speech, which was read by Morena Baccarin.

Close Encounters of the Cycling Kind

It appears that Brian, like me, has been having dramatic encounters with drivers while biking.

Robots in Disguise

Fans of the Transformers seem to grow ever more alarmed about the upcoming film each time more information leaks out. Most recently, said fans appear to be unhappy with the drawings of Megatron's Cybertronian form that have just appeared online. Die-hard fanatics are most outraged that Megatron is an "alien jet" rather than a gun, as he was way back in Generation One and the original TV series, but I'm not surprised; toymakers Takara and Hasbro are shy about marketing handguns or rifles in this day and age. Most of the other objections to Megatron's design---and to the designs of all the Decepticons and Autobots---center on the baroque anime-like styling. I'm not offended by that; I guess I'm not a real fan.

By the way, Megatron's earthly form has not shown up on the interweb yet. Time will tell what that will look like.

Oh Rye On

In other space news, NASA has announced that the Crew Exploration Vehicle, which it is devloping to carry astronauts back to the moon and eventually on to Mars---syeah, right---will be known as Orion.

Obscure Material

Speaking of proof, NPR recently alerted me to the recently published evidence that dark matter, the mysterious stuff that seems to make up the majority of the matter in the universe (but not the majority of the universe), does indeed exist.

More Proof

Here is more proof that people are idiots. As if we needed more confirmation, right?

Religion and Sexism

This is just stupid.

More Than Meets the Eye

Those in our readership who are nerds and where born between 1970 and 1980---which is pretty much all of you---are probably curious to know exactly how Michael Bay is going to ruin the upcoming Transformers movie, which is creatively titled Transformers and should not be confused with 1986's Transformers: The Movie. Although many fans were gratified to learn that Peter Cullen will be reprising his original-series role as the voice of Optimus Prime...I mean, Optimus Prime---and I must say I agree with that move---they were shocked, shocked that Bumblebee is going to be a 2009 Camero rather than a Bug---which frankly doesn't bother me. Anyway, I can't tell you how, precisely, the ruination will occur. I can, however, point you to these descriptions of the Transformer characters in the film and to these images of some of them, which look pretty good.

Shiny!

Are you a hard-core Whedon-ite? Do you bring a tree into your home and decorate it around the time of the December solstice? If so, you need this.