Tabula Rasa

Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa (the video game) was released yesterday, November 2nd, to retailers. I saw a preview for this game a while back and it looked quite intriguing, though I must admit I haven’t been following its development since. Frankly, a game has to completely sweep me of my feet if they expect me to pay a continuous $15 per month to play it. Battle.net found a way to be free of charge, so can you. Alternatively, eliminate the “initial purchase” cost. I would be quite willing to shell out $15 to try it for a month if I didn’t have pay the $50 or $60 “entry-fee”. But this is beside my point.

The sixth episode of Stargate Atlantis aired last night, November 2nd, on SciFi. The episode’s title? That’s right, Tabula Rasa. Now, I know a lot of people who know what “tabula rasa” means (in essence, “clean slate”), but it is still a very rarely used phrase when it comes to popular media. Here, we see it twice on the same day in two supposedly unconnected arms of media.

Though I have no proof to offer you of a connection between the two, you must admit that the coincidence is quite intriguing. So intriguing, in fact, that one would expect it to be at least mentioned on Wikipedia. Sadly, WP has reared its ugly head and shown me once again that it is not a community-edited data log, it is a community-edited-admin-deleted closed forum.

David Hewlett

On a somewhat related note, I was watching Vincenzo Natali’s film Nothing a few months back and I noticed one of the stars was David Hewlett, who plays Rodney McKay on SGA. As it turns out, Hewlett and Natali went to school together (in Toronto, I believe) and Hewlett has starred in many of Natali’s films. This got me thinking about other films by Natali, such as Cypher and my favourite Natali film, and one of my overall favourite movies, Cube. Sure enough, Hewlett stars in both Cypher and Cube, and I hadn’t even noticed until now. (Actually, Hewlett’s co-star for Nothing, Andrew Miller, also starred in Cube; it appears these actors work with Natali quite a bit). Another star in Cube that may be familiar to you is Nicole de Boer, who played Ezri Dax on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Okay, now its back to studying for AER501 as I have an upcoming midterm on Monday morning. Oy =/