In space, no one can hear you laugh your ass off: Galactica bloopers!

As we prepare for Sci Fi's airing of the concluding ten episodes in the fourth and final season of its surprisingly spectacular "reimagined" Battlestar: Galactica series, I have found what I think is an excellent way to mark the occasion. The end-of-season blooper reel has been a tradition in television productions since at least the 1950s, and fans passing around copies of such compilations of outtakes, goofs and fluffs from genre-series has also been a tradition since the original Star Trek series' notorious blooper reels first made their way onto the convention circuit in the 1970s. So as to keep both traditions alive and well while giving you an excuse to see Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell, Katee Sackhoff and company cheerfully making absolute doofs of themselves, I give you...
Season Three's Gag Reel

For those of us in the States waiting on Eleven-terhooks: The new Doctor is finally official

SPOILER ALERT: DON'T read this if you haven't yet viewed the Doctor Who Confidential episode (either by download or on BBC America at some point) that releases this information and want to wait until then!
( C'mon, you know you're dying to find out who's going to [try to] fill Dave's extra-large trainers! )

Happy 5th birthday, Spirit and Opportunity: Keep on truckin', little buddies

CNN reports here that NASA's plucky little Mars rover 'bots, Spirit and Opportunity, are now into their sixth year (!!) of exploration and testing, nearly five years past their originally engineered lifespans. Spirit landed on the Red Planet this date in 2004, with its sibling following just 21 days later. In that time:

They [have] returned 250,000 images, covered more than 21 kilometers (13 miles), climbed a mountain, descended into craters, struggled with sand traps and aging hardware and survived dust storms...

And given SF authors like Kim Stanley Robinson and Ben Bova much more research material for their Mars novels, too. You go, little fellas. Keep on showing the rest of the world that good old American know-how and engineering still rule the spaceways. And a great big "attaboy" to the folks at JPL and the rest of the gang responsible for building and launching these hardy steel-and-silicon explorers.