Musings of a Babylon Lurker

Update, and visit to DK

Sunday, September 6th, 2009 | cons, general, scifi | No Comments

Just back from holidays in DK

Got the blog software updated to the latest version.

I went to the small Danish convention “Fantasticon” (organised by the Danish Scifi association Fantastik)

Nice little con with about 150 people, Guests of Honour were British authors Charles Stross and Gwyneth Jones. Thinking of going to the Easetercon in London next year, and possibly the Eurocon in Stockholm 2011.

Tags: events, scifi

Colliding Planets !!

Monday, August 10th, 2009 | astronomy, science | No Comments

The Spitzer InfraRed Space Telescope, launched a few years ago, has , more or less by accident found the remains of – not one – *but two* rocky planets around a star about 100 light years away.

The two planets, one estimated to be in the order of Earth sized, the other Moon sized , appear to have collided probably a few thousand years ago, very recent in astronomical terms.

More detail can be found at Bad Astronomer Blog

This is, as far as I know, the first, however indirect, evidence of Earth/Moon sized planets.

That is not all : A few days ago it was reported that the Kepler Space Telescope, launched this year, had detected the atmosphere of a planet orbiting another star

Exciting times indeed.

Tags: astronomy, exoplanets

Star Trek and Babylon 5

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 | Babylon 5, star trek, writing | No Comments

I have – slowly – started to write on an article – my thoughts on the comparison between Star Trek (all series and films) and Babylon 5 for the Danish Trekkies Magazine “Subspace”.

I will post some comments along the way

Tags: Babylon 5, star trek, writing

Long time no see

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 | blog, books, events, film and tv, general, novel, scifi | No Comments

It has been a while since I last had an entry here, things have been a bit hectic.

I became a supporting membert of the Anticipation Worldcon 2009, and with that came the right to vote on the Hugo Awards.

So for a month I was – among other things – busy reading 4 of the nominated novels, listening to the short stories, and a few other things.

Also, I have been more active building some radio equipment, and have had a successful attempt of receiving the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

I went to see the new Star Trek movie with a friend in Denmark, and finally I have been active learning more Tai Chi and Qigong.

Some of those activities will result in some new entries in the near future. Right now I am taking it a bit easy – and watching the new “Torchwood” series : “Children of Earth”. The first episode looks very promising, so let us hope that carries through the whole story.

Tags: busy, general, scifi

Asked and answered

Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 | Babylon 5, books, scifi | No Comments

Just ordered the new Asked and Answered (part 1) book, containing an organized archive of J. Michael Straczynski’s communication with the fans on the Internet, regarding the creation of the Babylon 5 TV series.

And now …. we wait …..

Tags: Babylon 5

So much for freedom and Democracy in France …. hmmm !

Sunday, May 10th, 2009 | general | No Comments

An employee of the French broadcaster TF1 was fired for writing to a member of Parliament …

see this SlashDot article

So he got fired for having an opinion and writing to his MP from his *private* email, not even from his work.

what comes next ?

Tags: censorship, freedom

Looking at Hugo Awards nominees 2009

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 | cons, events, scifi | 2 Comments

This year I decided to become a supporting member of the Worldcon/Anticipation that takes place in August in Montreal, Canada.

With a (supporting) membership of the Worldcon comes the right to vote on the Hugo Awards, the science fiction fans’ own awards.

Not just that, this year a big part of the nominee’s works are made available to the voters, so last week I downloaded the “Hugo Voter’s package 2009″, a zipped file of about 180 MB.

The file contains 4 novels, several novellas, short stories , a graphic novel (as far as I can see, have not opened that file yet), and other contributions, in order to facilitate an enlighttened voting process.

Now I am very happy that I got myself an eBook reader – it would be far too tiring reading that much on the iPod Touch. Still I am not tied to the computer screen, but can read anywhere I want – the Sofa or lazy chair is a good place.

I started reading “Saturn’s Children” by Charles Stross, partly because I expect to see him at a small local con (Fantasticon) in Copenhagen this year.

With 4 novels and all the other material I have a quite sufficient amount of reading to do before the Worldcon, even if I am not going to Montreal. I would like to go to a Worldcon once, especially if it takes place somewhere in (Northern) Europe.

Tags: Add new tag, Hugo Awards, scifi, worldcon

New record for Gamma Ray Bursts

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 | astronomy, science | No Comments

On April 23th the most powerful gamma ray burst ever recorded was detected by the Swift telescope. More about can be found here at NASA’s site.

With that type of bursts we look back in time, this time more than 13000 million years, this belongs to the earliest generations of stars in the known Universe. Impressive.

Tags: astronomy, cosmology, gamma ray burst

Doctor Who Easter Special – super short – spoiler free

Saturday, April 11th, 2009 | Doctor Who, film and tv, scifi | No Comments

I have just been watching the first of the 2009 “Doctor Who Specials”.

I enjoyed the story quite a lot, and had some really good laughs at the more comedic elements. hilarity in a nutshell.

This is one of the things I love with Doctor Who : It tells a good story without taking itself too seriously.

Tags: Doctor Who

Science and imagination

Monday, April 6th, 2009 | blog, science | No Comments

I just stumbled over an article in the “Bad Astronomy” blog, a reply to someone claiming that science is devoid of imagination.

I particularly like the “boiled down” version of the reply :

“Without imagination, science is a dictionary”

since without imagination science (and technology would never have brought us anywhere, certainly we would not be discussing the topic on the Internet.

Tags: imagination, science