It’s worth taking a browse through the data just for kicks. I learned that the population of Canada is expected to rise above 44,000,000 before 2050, and that France has 300 nuclear warheads in their arsenal.

What’s really fantastic though, is that using the Google Docs API (or by exporting the data to a spreadsheet) you can mine any of this data for other applications – I’m excited to have all this raw data to manipulate and chart out. Big nerdy fun! Here’s a graph of the 30-day average measured size of the ozone hole (plotted out in Excel… yuck):

So I’m finally watching through Season 4 (at least, the first half) now that it’s on DVD, and there’s an episode called “The Ties That Bind” that really takes the grating and bleakness level of BSG up to the max, with a constantly wailing baby through about a third of the episode and the crew sweating buckets in every shot. The episode is so unwatchably dreary and unforgiving I’d tell you to skip it, except a couple of important things happen that you kindof have to see.

To make it slightly bearable, I think they threw a couple of winks and nods in for people watching closely.

Firstly – I’m not sure if this is meaningfully intentional or just for fun – someone in the star painting department decided it’d be clever to throw in a bunch of recognizable constellations. I haven’t noticed any accurate starfields in previous episodes, but when this Basestar warped into the shot I was in front of my big screen staring at a huge image of Orion, so it kindof stood out. I drew in some lines so you could catch it in the screen cap. The thing is – Orion’s stars only line up to form it’s familiar hourglass shape when viewed from within a few light years of Earth, not from deep space. In fact, as the camera pans, you can see the Big Dipper, Andromeda, and a couple of other familiar (nearby!) night-time arrangements, either making me a huge nerd, or revealing that the Cylons are right on top of Earth.

Then – a troubled gang of crew members have a meeting in a room they take great pains to reveal as 1701D. A familiar number to anyone who’s ever watched Star Trek TNG repeats for 15 years. *sigh* Supernerd. I’m not sure that the number -means- anything in this context, which is weird because it’s such a jarringly upbeat thing to contrast against the sinister events afoot.