Beatles. In space!

Did you hear that?

NASA will send the Beatles song “Across the Universe” across the universe on Monday, the agency said.

At precisely 7 p.m., E.S.T. the song will be beamed by the agency’s Deep Space Network of antennas at the North Star, Polaris, which is 431 light years away. The transmission is to mark the 40th anniversary of the recording of the song, as well as the 50th anniversary of both NASA and its first satellite, Explorer I, and the 45th anniversary of the Deep Space Network, which carries out communications between NASA and its far-flung fleet of spacecraft. In a message to the space agency, Paul McCartney, one of the two remaining Beatles, said, “Send my love to the aliens. All the best, Paul.” NY Times

Lyrics of the song after the jump.
Read entire entry

Direct to DVD B5 movies

Not sure if I even have mentioned this here before: Joe Michael Straczinsky (JMS) is producing, writing and directing an anthology series to continue, fill in and expand the stories and characters we’ve seen in Babylon 5. Read JMS’s  latest announcement here.

Ronald D. Moore interview

Back when I was opinion editor/columnist I wrote a column about how relevant the commentary of the new Battletar Galactica is (link), a view that’s only re-affiremed by an interview show-maker Ronald D. Moore gave a few days ago. Some excerpts:

Q: The parallels to the Iraqi war I think are very clear. Did the parallel come from you or some sci-fi executive?

Moore: Fundamentally it came from me and I felt okay from that first weekend of thinking about it, okay this is going to deal with 9/11 and it’s going to deal with a lot of things that we’re going through in this society at that moment. It was just part of the premise. It was always going to be in the show and once you were on that path it just felt like we’re just going to keep doing this.

We’re going to deal with things that happened in our contemporary reality, but just you go through a different prison. The show would never be a direct allegory. Laura Roslin is not going to be George W. Bush. The Cylons are not going to be al-Qaeda, but they were going to have elements of it and part of the opportunity of the show was to move pieces around the game board a little bit. Say, okay well we’ve all experienced this set of events, this set of emotions. What if I move this piece over here and what if I put you over there? How do you feel about it then?…One of the foundational elements of the show is the religious conflict between the two civilizations. The monotheism of the Cylons. The polytheism of the Colonies. You know what is God? What is human? What does it mean to be alive? commingsoon.net

Read the full interview here.