Incoming Signals

This really needs “Flight Of The Valkyries” as a soundtrack.

Via Cynical-C.

Every year, TV broadcasts from Earth make it a little further out into space. A star that’s 10 light-years away will just now be receiving shows transmitted in 1999. If there are any aliens out there, here’s what they might be watching.

(via Gerry Canavan)

I love this map of New York, designed to give a simultaneous birds-eye and street-view perspective. It reminds me of Larry Niven’s Ringworld.

(And I guess I’ve been away from this blog longer than I’d thought, considering there was a comment awaiting the “this isn’t spam” approval from nearly a month ago. Sorry, Dave…)

I’ve never been really sold on the idea that Zack Snyder’s movie version of Watchmen would do justice to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ graphic novel. Still, I’m hopeful that it will at least capture something of the spirit of the book, and I have no doubt that the special effects will look great and justify the movie’s existence as a thrill ride, if nothing else. I do worry a little that if the Snyder film is awful it’ll ruin the original comics for me, but only a little. I’ve almost completely forgotten his so-so remake of Dawn Of The Dead (I’d have to watch it again even to remember how it ends, and have never felt the urge even though I own the DVD), but I could describe the plot of George Romero’s original in detail at a moment’s notice. Good art stays with you; mediocre art generally doesn’t. I hadn’t re-read Watchmen for a few years until recently, though in the 1990s I must have gone through it cover to cover and back again 20 or 30 times, flipping around and finding new connections I hadn’t noticed before. Suffice it to say it’s one of my favorites, and I was happy to have the opportunity to write a trivia quiz about the graphic novel for msnbc.com.

• Barack Obama’s Flickr page of behind-the-scenes photos from Nov. 4, the night of the election. (via Kottke)
• The Boston Globe’s photoblog The Big Picture collects a terrific set of Obama images from the early stages of the campaign to the win.

Today’s the day. I’m looking forward to stepping into the voting booth and voting for a candidate for a change. I hope you are too.

Bruce Springsteen, Washington D.C., October 2004:

The BBC reports that Barack Obama has sewn up the support of a group of traditional shamans in Peru by the crushing margin of 9 to 2. Always good to get the religious vote.

A team of British scientists, reports the BBC, is about to start a survey of a mysterious mountain range called the Gamburtsevs, buried several kilometers deep under the Antarctic ice.

“This region is a complete enigma” says Dr. Fausto Ferraccioli of the British Antarctic Survey. “It’s in the middle of the continent. Most mountain ranges are on the edges of continents, and we really can’t understand what these mountains are doing in the centre.”

Of course, anyone familiar with H.P. Lovecraft knows that maybe those mountains are buried for a good reason…

I am forced into speech because men of science have refused to follow my advice without knowing why. It is altogether against my will that I tell my reasons for opposing this contemplated invasion of the Antarctic—with its vast fossil hunt and its wholesale boring and melting of the ancient ice caps. And I am the more reluctant because my warning may be in vain.

A word of advice, guys: If you happen to dig up an uncannily preserved, barrel-shaped creature with tentacles, stop what you’re doing and run.