We finally have a date.

SpaceX announced they will send the first commercial spacecaft to spacestation into orbit on April 30th. If successful, the unmanned Dragon capsule will dock with the International Space Station representing a major step for space exploration in the Post Dreams era.

Here is how the mission will go down.

As the Dragon capsule approaches the station, astronauts onboard the outpost will grab onto it using the space station’s robotic arm. The capsule will then be attached to the Earth-facing side of the station’s Harmony node. This process is similar to how the unmanned Japanese cargo freighters are manually docked to the space station.

So, who is down for a April 30th meet up?

[Fox News]

First, for a moment, let’s assume the rumors are true and Sophia Myles will return to the Doctor Who franchise as a companion in the post-Amy Pond era.

Many keen eyes will remember Myles as Madame de Pompadour in the superlative season two episode The Girl in the Fireplace, written by current Who boss Steven Moffat. To date, this is my favorite stand alone episodes for a couple of reasons.

• The Doctor got to solve an awesome problem. Self-contained time travel whilst interacting with a real world historical figures whilst trying to decipher an escalating problem whilst not getting killed by murderous robots. Compelling plot, check.

• The Doctor sacrifices himself. If all you do is travel time and space getting in the middle of all sorts of issues, you’re going to have one or two times when the Doctor resigns himself to death. This happens.

But most important to us now.

• The Doctor falls in love. For someone as care free and empathetic as Tennant’s Doctor is this relationship set a crucial touchstone in the character. Of course this dude falls in love with random awesome chicks! Madam de Pompadour is portrayed as the most badass lady to ever live. Of course they fall in love with each other!

There is real, crackling chemistry in these scenes. Unsurprisingly, the actors began a two-year relationship afterward.

So assuming Sophia is back, we have three ways to look at it.

The actress is playing a companion completely unconnected to her former role. Unlikely considering DW’s gleeful habit of splashing around in it’s own history.

The Madam de Pompadour we’ve met returns to the Doctor’s side for adventures. Possible, but I would suspect less likely than my third hypothesis.

Sophia returns as a new character that is somehow connected to the Pompadour we met. Think along the lines of some genetic linage of insanely awesome women. Almost as if she’s a gender double for the Doctor himself. Pompadour is portrayed as The Doctor’s equal in Fireplace, why wouldn’t this new character?

Remember the scene in Fireplace when the Doctor is reading her memories only to realize that she is using the connection to read his? That’s pretty much all you need to retcon a new race of super ladies that happen to look a smoking hot as Sophia.

No matter what, I am pumped. Something I haven’t said about DW in a while.

During the great changing of the guard between Moffat and his predecessor Russell T. Davies if I were to have made a list of Moffat characters that I would like to see revisited in more depth both The Angels and Pompadour would occupy the top. Certainly far ahead of some characters who’ve gotten nothing but screen time in the intervening two seasons. Sweetie.

Besides, a sex super nova character coupled with the current, asexual incarnation of the Doctor? Geronimo.

I think he might have some sort of vitamin deficiency. Second fox related post of the month for those keeping track.

[Animal Oddities]

“Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.”

What a malarky sentence. It’s never safe. Ever. Stop thinking that people. There will always be something in there to kill you.

Take this brand new sea snake discovered off the coast of Australia. It’s venomous and coated in spikes, just in case that first part wasn’t enough.

Though some other sea snakes have spiky scales on their bellies, “no other [known] sea snake has this curious feature,” study leader Kanishka Ukuwela, an ecologist at the University of Adelaide, said by email.

Normally snakes have smooth scales, but each of the newly named Hydrophis donaldi’s scales has a spiny projection, he said.

Scientists cruising shallow seagrass beds in the Gulf of Carpentaria (map) recently captured nine of the rough-scaled reptiles.

Seriously, the ocean is a soup of terror. I will never feel at ease until James Cameron personally murders all of these horrifying little goblins and any others we haven’t accidentally run across.

From here on out, I live my life by the SALTY LANGUAGE PLEASE DON’T CLICK UNLESS YOU WANT TO HEAR CURSE WORDS code of Chris Cooper in Adaptation.

[National Geographic]

There has been a lot to criticize about this season. A lot.

But one thing that’s been beyond reproach for The Walking Dead. They know how to reach a destination, no matter how convoluted the path there might be. Sunday’s episode marked one key thematic shift in the series which to this point had been sorely lacking, events had real consequences and changed the dynamics of the characters.

Finger cuffed by death, let’s talk about the most satisfying episode of The Walking Dead… Read the rest of this entry »

Who’s excited for reams and reams of new stories that are likely gloomy, brutal and horrifying only for them to be whitewashed into super child-friendly parables and then re-darkened into adult action-adventure yarns?

Well today is your lucky day!

Over 500 new fairy tales have been discovered in Germany.

Many of the stories in Von Schonwerth’s collection are found nowhere else. The tales include stories for adults as well as children. There are stories about magical animals, princesses, evil witches, farmers and more. In one of the stories a young woman escapes a witch by turning herself into a pond. The witch then drinks the pond and swallows the woman along with it. The woman then escapes by cutting herself out of the witch with a knife.

Pond changing? Witch knifing?

Get Tim Burton on the phone. I’m seeing Abigail Breslin as the young woman. Johnny Depp as a helpful frog who lives in the pond. And for the witch… who would be a good fit?

[Writers Write]

Yup, that’s it. Inside that piece of machinery will be James Cameron as he conquers the freaking ocean. For those unaware, in the next week or so, Cameron will descend for three and a half hours until he settles at the bottom of Challenger Deep, the lowest known point in the ocean.

The mission hasn’t come without a price.

He said the deaths early last month of his two crew members, Mike deGruy and Andrew Wight — both celebrated filmmakers who specialized in carrying viewers into the sea’s depths — initially prompted him to want to scrap the expedition. The two were preparing to film a sea trial of the Deepsea Challenger when their helicopter went down shortly after takeoff from an airstrip south of Sydney, Australia.

“It was a horrible day,” Mr. Cameron recalled. “We felt sick at heart. It caused us to question risk and the meaning of life. I personally did not want to continue at that point, but the team rallied.”

While incredibly sad that part of his crew lost their lives during the process, it’s awesome that Cameron will honor their memory by completing the task they worked so hard on.

[New York Times]

After a man left a grocery store, a fox stalked him and would not leave the man alone until he gave the fox some of his food. This was a fully grown man, by the way, weighing in at over 200 lbs.

“Despite making attempts to escape, the fox persisted and carried out a sustained attack on the food he had just bought from Tesco.

Eventually, Mr Baker claims, he resorted to offering the animal his loaf of garlic bread and the fox scampered off.”

Everybody knows foxes love garlic bread. However, wildlife experts do not think you should give in and give food to foxes, but should try and frighten them away. Perhaps with a weapon of some kind?

“The best thing to use is a water pistol.”

Ah. OK.

[The Telegraph]

An episode of long deliberations and a shocking conclusion.

We debate the shocking end of this week’s Walking Dead AFTER THE JUMP… Read the rest of this entry »

In one corner we have serial entrepreneur, self-admitted wife swapper and daredevil explorer Richard Branson. In the other, the man who leap frogged his own film as the high grossing in box office history, James Cameron.

Their shared mission, to make it to Challenger Deep. The lowest point in the Mariana Trench. Deeper into the ocean than Mount Everest is tall.

Only once has a manned vessel briefly touched the sea bed. But the 1960 exploration only lasted 15 minutes before beginning the ascent back to the surface.

Now, two of the world’s most visible men are ready to return to the bottom of the ocean.

And it looks like Cameron is going to win. Which is freaking awesome.

Not like, kind of cool. Amazing. To use a cliche, it’s so awesome if we saw it in a movie, we’d think it was too cliche. That’s how awesome this is.

What’s more, he’s going to go it alone. In a one man submersible. Since the 1960 mission kicked up such a silt storm it brought visibility down to zero, if successful, he will become the first person to see the Challenger Deep.

Allow me to rephrase that, the director of Terminator 2 will likely become the only person in the entire history of humanity to see this. Hundreds of people have seen our Earth from space. Challenger Deep? The guy who directed Aquaman on Entourage.

I cannot put into words how happy this makes me. It’s the triumph of creativity and will. The world is better for James Cameron being in it.

He plans to spend six hours on the floor, collecting samples before coming back to the surface. Also, he is equipping several 3D cameras for the adventure the footage for which he hopes to burn on national television while he laughs in our faces turn into a feature film.

Awesome.

[CNN]

Is this final proof of the dire Mayan 2012 prophecy? Most likely not.

But it is a totally sweet light beam shooting out of the top of the Mayan city of Chichen Itza. It was taken by a tourist who was trying to capture a lightning strike in the distance. Two picture were fine, the third, is what you see in the video.

Experts say it’s clearly an artifact in the picture. Which is probably right. And boring.

[Yahoo!]

Listeners of the Weird Things podcast may only know Andrew Mayne as the learned, science loving host of a funny audio program. But many others now know him for his fiction writing. His debut novel Public Enemy Zero has lived in the Top 10 in it’s Science Fiction category with a 5 star average from readers.

So what is is about?

The world is out to kill Mitchell Roberts. A strange virus is on the loose sending everyone he comes in contact with into a homicidal rage. From narrowly avoiding getting murdered at his ex-girlfriend’s front door, to a crowded shopping mall turned one-man zombie apocalypse, he’s got to stay a step ahead of everyone around him if he doesn’t want to get ripped apart alive.

He’ll need to use every resource he has, from the advice of a paranoid late night radio host, to his Twitter account and find out why he’s become Public Enemy Zero.

A full-length 90,000 word novel.

Give it a try for only 99¢ at the Amazon Kindle store. You can download and read it on your desktop, Kindle or any smartphone using the Kindle app including iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows 7. Tablets including iPads are also supported.

[BUY IT HERE]

Seriously guys. Don’t panic.

The space rock, which is called 2011 AG5, is about 460 feet (140 meters) wide. It may come close enough to Earth in 2040 that some researchers are calling for a discussion about how to deflect it.

Time to talk to some oil drillers who don’t want to pay taxes again… ever.

[MSNBC]

It’s one of our favorite phenomenons. An etherial happening that captures the hearts and minds of those who see it.

Are the Brown Mountain Lights alien? A reflection? A natural gas formation radiating ambient echoes from the world around it?

Take your pick.

If verifiable science ever pins down an explanation for the orbs which have becomes a fixture of the North Carolina area, it’s going to be awesome. Which is just how we like it.

And we are not alone.

Earlier this month, a sellout crowd of 120 paid $20 a head to attend a symposium on the lights at Morganton City Hall, and there was a crowd outside the door hoping to get in at the last minute.
“It’s a good problem to have,” Phillips said. “I could have sold 500 tickets.”

Our favorite part about this is that eye witnesses to the phenomenon are very reticent to call it anything other than a very unique site to see.

“I didn’t feel anything spooky or look around for Martians or anything like that,” Woody said. “It was just a unique situation. It’s just as vivid now as when I was 12 years old.”

An unexplained happening that reminds you of fond childhood memories. This might be the most heart warming Fortean occurrence in history.

[Associated Press]

There is a flaw with AMC’s The Walking Dead. It’s an unfortunate one.

Consistency.

With a lot of shows, this isn’t all that important. Comedy, episodic drama or stories that take regular time jumps of weeks or months between installments (a la Mad Men) can sometimes stretch things.

Characters don’t have to carry every little wound with them.

The problem with The Walking Dead is that it’s central theme is about a new, suffocating reality that all of our characters have to adjust to. The sum total of their changes matters. Consistence in the action and decisions of each character create human decisions we either agree or disagree with.

This is how we decide to root for or agains the characters.

What’s disappointing is that even in an episode that is supposed to bring back into play decisions certain characters have made in the past, it rings hollow. They’ve changed their minds so many times, why should we think that this time it holds any weight?

Full review AFTER THE JUMP… Read the rest of this entry »

David Morrissey will play The Governor in The Walking Dead’s third season. Doctor Who fans will recognize him as the confused Victorian era faux-ctor from the 2008 Christmas special The Next Doctor.

Although certainly memorable, we didn’t see many of the beats one might assume would be worked into TWD’s chief baddie.

Let’s roll a clip!

Why is this a big deal?

In the source material, The Governor represents the high point for quality in the series. Without spoilers, the character is brutal (like Uday Hussein brutal) while showing a troubling knack for keeping his citizens safe and happy. As his name implies, there is a strong commentary on governments in crisis and the myth of the benevolent dictator.

These are themes that elevated TWD from a story about zombie survivors into something you tell your friends about. The Governor has been a character ripe with fan speculation fodder since the original AMC pilot. Even more so when original character Merle Dixon chopped off his own limb (The Gov only has one arm) and ran away.

It’s a meaty role. Or at least it could be one if written correctly.

I’ve written a bit about how much I’ve enjoyed the series as it has strayed from the roots of the comic. Where as I thought it was a great idea to keep Shane alive longer to milk his dramatic tension possibilities, The Governor is a character so strongly written he could be played closer to his original incarnation.

As for Morrissey? Who knows.

He is not an fan-pander (Fander? Can that be a word?) stunt cast like Tom Savini. Then again, he’s also not an immediate home run like John Hawkes.

I hope Morrissey does the character justice and more specifically, I hope the show is on a tear by the time it’s most compelling character welcomes our survivors into Woodbury.