Haven't watched last Saturday's Dr Who yet, so I can defer that to next Saturday, then defer watching next week's for at least a week, maybe more, maybe forever? Starting to wonder whether Amy Pond isn't my favorite companion (aside from Sarah Jane of course) of all (the Doctor's) times.

Not sure how I feel about the Observers being ugly, coercive slavemasters, since I recently acquired a freebie "Observer Hat" at Comic Con. I was thinking about wearing it for the last season - doesn't seem like so much fun now. But, anyway, delighted to see that episode one with an awesome title is getting thumbs up…

Been waiting a long time to see Andre Braugher in a role that will allow him to recapitulate his amazing performances from Homicide (Life on the Streets). Hopefully this will be it.

Have to say I've never really considered there being a division - let alone a hard line one - between science and science fiction. In fact, in my experience, science is often speculative, not to mention fanciful. The distinction between them has always been blurred to me - maybe its from growing up watching Star Trek…

Can't tell from the abstract, but would be good to know if they identified well established plant-derived therapeutics - aspirin, taxanes, digitalis, etc - from the analysis. Perhaps further comparative genomic analyses will enable identification of therapeutically active molecular species, by identifying common gene…

The clip from the Dr Who western episode looked like fun at comic con, but the setup seems awfully familiar (Westworld, Star Trek OK corral episode - also two doctors!). I hope this is conscious, rather than just running out of ideas, especially after dinos on a spaceship.

I only started watching the show a few weeks ago, courtesy Netflix. Just finished season 2 - I'm neither looking forward to the series ending or finding out just how much more bad he's going to get. Taking a few days off to recover from the last two episodes before starting on #3.

On finishing reading this post I stopped by the BBC only to see the headline "Robot learns to recognize itself" - apparently a robot is close to passing the mirror test of self-awareness. Thats how it starts.

Series request, please.

Yes, me too.

These "controversies" arise every single time a Chinese, or other suitably foreign, athlete does better than expected. Always without even a shred of evidence to back up the accusations. Yet, as far as I'm aware, Michael Phelps hasn't been accused of doping and his achievements were, to say the least, spectacular.…

We can at least be confident that Ptolemy stands alone in his appraisal of the universe.

While waiting in line for the Fringe/Dr Who panels (about a mile or so from Hall H!) a little girl painted and dressed as a weeping angel walked by with her mom. The best and definitely the cutest cosplay I saw this year. I really, really, really hope she got in to the panel.

Dwarf galaxy!!

But why employ a looper in the first place - sending your assasination targets back in time anywhere should be enough to remove them from the present. Of course, if there's revenge involved, why not send them back to the height of the Black death in Europe, or Pompeii in AD79, or the Jurassic period with freshly…

I'm biased because i live here, but San Diego really embraces Comic Con in a way that other likely destinations (Anaheim, Vegas, etc) would not - I believe it would truly lose much of its specialness ( if thats a word) and its charm. While waiting in line I had plenty of opportunities to talk about possible solutions…

Since I'm kinda tired of panel moderators who couldn't really care less, here are my two winners in that category;

The end of the panel in which the cast walked to the front of the podium and applauded us as we applauded them was really touching - I'm still wearing my "observer hat" and won't be taking it off for a while.

My personal favorite moment - aside from Karen and Arthur wonderfully imitating each other - was Matt Smith imploring airport security staff not to say (assume brit accent here) "So you didn't bring the tardis this time?" everytime he goes through an airport.

This would be a good time to post your summer reading suggestions - what to read while waiting in line for........ Time travel and teleportation themes might be desirable.