East of the Sun, West of the Moon

I must’ve missed the news that the new planet was named Xena. Anyway, this followup (The Register) gave me a big chuckle:

Astronomers at the WM Keck Observatory have identified a moon orbiting Xena, a body they argue is the 10th planet in our solar system. They have called the moon Gabrielle, after Xena’s sidekick in the TV series Xena: Warrior Princess.

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The Wikipedia has a page devoted to correcting the Encyclopedia Britannica (CNet):

The collaboratively assembled encyclopedia maintains a page devoted to correcting errors in its chief offline competitor, the venerable Encyclopedia Britannica.

This doesn’t prove Wikipedia’s superiority, of course, but it does underscore one crucial advantage: An online research tool can at least issue corrections after initial publication, in real time–even if they involve mistakes made by somebody else.

Indeed. As a friend put it:

Cute. But no more than cute. <…> It’s just more self-congratulatory stuff, articles written for people who want their world view confirmed.

It’ll become more than cute if we start seeing signs or otherwise get confirmation that the Britannica people are reading the corrections and applying them.

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Nielsen claims that people watch more TV (Reuters) than ever before:

U.S. TV viewership climbed again last season to a record household average of eight hours, 11 minutes a day, Nielsen Media Research reported on Thursday, challenging perceptions that Americans are watching less than they once did. <…> Moreover, Nielsen said the average individual watched four hours and 32 minutes of TV last season, the highest level in 15 years. The figures include in-home viewing levels for broadcast, cable and satellite TV during all parts of the day.

Don’t confuse household with individual, by the way. Given how you calculate an average and knowing that I know quite a few people that watch a lot less TV, that makes me wonder about the extreme couch-potato cases out there.

Better late than not at all?

Last Friday we saw Serenity in the theatre, the movie based on the Firefly TV-series.

It probably helped that we’ve watched and enjoyed the series, but given that, the movie was entertaining from start to finish!

Beforehand I had been wondering if Ron Glass was going to make an appearance, because I’d seen a cast picture at GenCon without him in it, but thankfully he was there along with everybody else (yes, I probably could’ve found that out online but…).

Thanks to MythTV we got to see two more episodes from the TV-series after we came home, so it was an entirely Serenity/Firefly oriented evening. No points for guessing that we’ll buy this one on DVD once it comes out!