I forgot to tell you about this. The name Eris has been officially chosen by the International Astronomical Union for the astronomical body so many wanted to be called Xena. (Keck image, left) Eris is the goddess of discord and strife, by the way. The moon of the body, that was tentatively called Gabrielle, after Xena’s sidekick in the TV show (Universal Studios image, right) will be called Dysnomia.
The Xena supporting community will be disappointed about this decision (watch out IAU, they have sharp swords, see image on left), but maybe comforted a little by the fact that Dysnomia is “a spirit of lawlessness”. Recall that Xena was played by Lucy Lawless. (Whatever happened to her, by the way? I think I recall seeing her briefly in something last year.) Anyway, there’s a New York Times article about it, by Kenneth Chang, here. It’s a rather nice account of the saga of the naming, by Michael Brown (of Caltech), who discovered Eris.
Pluto, as part of its initiation into the family of rubble known as the Kuiper belt (a mass distribution so important to understanding our solar system…see here), has been given a number. It is minor planet number 134340. I hope you can remember that. Eris has the number 136199.
-cvj
Xena quand j’ai vue sa série tv pour la première fois je suis tombé sous le charme,elle a changé ma vie je loupe aucun épisode et je voudrais que sa ne s’arrête jamais.Mon souhait serais de l’a rencontré avec Gabrielle.
Mejdo drugoto molq ne slagaite vashata li4na informaciq v komentarite si, taka 4e da e dostypna za vsi4ki. Shte trqbva da q iztriq.
(Междо другото, Ð¼Ð¾Ð»Ñ Ð½Ðµ Ñлагайте вашата лична Ð¸Ð½Ñ„Ð¾Ñ€Ð¼Ð°Ñ†Ð¸Ñ Ð² коментарите Ñи, така че да е доÑтъпна за вÑички. Ще Ñ‚Ñ€Ñбва да Ñ Ð¸Ð·Ñ‚Ñ€Ð¸Ñ.)
-cvj
Xena, Gabriel:
Zdraveite! Blagodarq za vashite comentari. Molq posetete ni otnovo v nai-blizko vreme!
(Здравейте ! Ð‘Ð»Ð°Ð³Ð¾Ð´Ð°Ñ€Ñ Ð·Ð° вашите коментари. ÐœÐ¾Ð»Ñ Ð¿Ð¾Ñетете ни отново в най-близко време!)
-cvj
zdr Xena kak si kak ti e skaype? Molqte,kaji go!
[…cvj deleted personal contact information…]
pliis!
Rene ti si varhovna sas svoite umeniq na toqgata si,i si neveroqtokrasiva.Lusi ti si sa6to mnogo krasiva !
[…cvj deleted personal contact information…]
OTMIMI !
Zdr XENA and GABRIELLE Vie ste nomer1!
Prosto nemoga bez da gledam filma vi XENA warrior princess!
LUSI koga 6te doydete v BG???
LOVE!!!
Xena change my live. After A FRIEND IN NEED I think that xena will live forever in my soul
Xena is the best tv program in the world. I want to by ALL the DVD of the 6 Seasons… But I don’t have so much money… 5 €… It’s not so much, just for a cofee… Sob!
adoro “xena”
gostaria de reseber seus episodios por e_mail…….
There is also 136106 2003 EL61, and 136472 2005 FY9, to go with 50000 Quaoar.
These are your lucky numbers. Watch for them everywhere.
I watched the pilot of Veronica Mars and had to force myself to stay with it to the end, just to give it a fair chance to improve. It didn’t. The one promising angle I could see was the social one, but it was done so heavy-handedly that it became tedious somewhere around the tenth repetition of Veronica’s narrative refrain: “the rich are power-abusing jerks who get away with murder” — literally — “and we poor common folks are just dirt under their feet”. Granted, you can’t be too subtle when your target audience is the teen set, but really…
I think it was a great choice they made: So now instead of naming an astronomical body after the title character of Xena, they named it after a major character from The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy. (Well, at least that was the first place I ever heard of her.) Unfortunately, there’s already an asteroid named Eros, so I hope it isn’t too confusing. (Chaos, love — what’s the difference?)
One day perhaps…. time is hard to come by…. but sometimes when trapped in a hotel room on a trip, unable to sleep or read…. jetlagged….. it’ll come on! Or some other circumstance…. Yes, of course I loved Buffy….
Thanks!
-cvj
It sounds a bit too teenager-oriented, but it’s worth watching nonetheless. It’s about a high-school girl whose father is a private detective (formerly a sheriff). Her best friend was murdered and her dad lost his sheriff job after (with good reason) trying to pin the murder on the girl’s father, a wealthy head of a software company. Veronica ends up helping solve various mysteries, including (eventually) her friend’s murder. This doesn’t capture the feel of the show very well, though. It owes a lot to film noir, and there’s some great writing and acting. A good litmus test for whether you’ll enjoy the show seems to be whether you liked (the good early seasons of) Buffy. (The second season is harder to recommend; the dialogue remains witty and sharp and the good actors are still around, but the plotting is weaker. So definitely start with season 1 if you want to give it a try.)
Nope. Never heard of it, unfortunately. What is it?
-cvj
Perhaps you also saw Lucy Lawless in Veronica Mars, one of the most well-written but underrated shows on television. (Unfortunately, the episode she appeared in was part of the worst stretch of the show; the first season was great, anyway.)
Sounds a lot like our real world… which is why I find it interesting. Why does space always have to involve aliens? There’s enough of that out there, and frankly, it’s so often a little tedious. But each to their own….
A well-written drama examining the human condition can be arbitrarily high on the “interesting” scale without having to resort to aliens. I think they more or less hit the spot in the first season…. they were beginning to lose their way in the second…… I do not know about the second half yet.
Cheers,
-cvj
Agreed, I’m just saying she can now probably afford to be picky, as in “I’ll consider a Battlestar Galactica, but don’t bother calling about a Hercules in Space… err, Andromeda :eek:”.
For some reason Battlestar Galactica has failed to grow on me. Can’t quite put my finger on it. Technically excellent, good writing, large ensemble, quirky characters… and yet, no sparkle.
Maybe it’s the backstory that’s just too thin. A single race slugging it out with its own Terminators could be a B-plot in a B5 episode, or a tale recounted in Quark’s bar on DS9. Where are the aliens? These people have been perfecting starships forever (to the point that moving a whole fleet to a new system every half hour is a problem of keeping the personnel awake, not of technology) and yet they were content to stay put around a single star until the cylons nuked them off their lazy asses?!? Somehow I have a hard time (1) buying that premise and (2) feeling sorry for them.
I guess I could root for the cylons — certainly the more interesting and capable of the two sides — but then again, why would a sensible AI even bother exterminating a species as unenterprising as those humans? Just let them rot in their own little system and go conquer the galaxy!
So basically it’s a tale about a myopic, unenterprising race being exterminated for no particular reason by a myopic, only slightly less unenterprising race. Riveting stuff.
I have long been a member of the Erisian Liberation Front– dedicated to the Babylonian Chaoists who plant termites at the foundations of civilizations. Now civilization goes and names a distant orbiting body after our goddess.
As for Lucy, she must need something as she is appearing on that Celebrity Duets nightmare of a Fox television production.
You’re right about the pay, probably. But some people work because they like the work, not because they only want the money. Anyd yes…. you are absolutely rigth about whree I saw her. I compleltey forgot. Thanks! Which reminds me. Probably about time to get the dvds of the second half of season 2 of BG. Saw the first half when they released it, and it looked to be unable to meet the very high standards set by season one, but frankly that is not surprising.
-cvj
You probably saw Lucy Lawless playing D’Anna Biers in Battlestar Galactica.
BTW, I see Xena ran for six seasons, 134 episodes… what’s the pay for the lead actor of a fairly successful fantasy show? We are obviously not talking Friends here, but if she averaged even just a modest 30k/episode and took care of her finances, she doesn’t really need to work anymore. 🙂