Good news, science fiction aficionados!  NBC Universal is auctioning off the Raptor spacecraft pictured here (NOTE: spacecraft cannot actually jump through space, or fly, or do anything, actually).  Since the top eBay bid of $28,100 didn’t meet the asking price, it will instead be sold at a live auction in May.

But that (along with a Viper fighter) is merely the largest offering — an auction company named Propworx has been selling about 150 “BSG” props a week on eBay:

[Operations manager Curtis Short] been surprised by the surge of humanity that’s been bidding on some of the items. “Last week we had some rank pins that sold for $4,500.  People collect all the pins for the ranks — and also, patches are really big.” [...]  You can purchase a napkin from Joe’s Bar for only 99 cents, a Caprican Imperial cigar box for $82.00, or a genuine tool set from the Hangar bay workbench for only $32.  And for $102.50, you can be cuffing your kinky date with genuine Cylon handcuffs.

Yes, and by “kinky date” they mean “RealDoll modeled after Tricia Helfer.”

[boing boing]

Ah, nothing cheers me up on a Monday like a good corporate re-branding story.  That’s what the Sci Fi channel is doing, as the NBC Universal property will announce today that it’s changing its name to “Syfy.”  You see, the term “sci fi” is associated with geeks and losers and assorted people who masturbate to Deanna Troi fan fiction, whereas a made-up homonym is totally going to change people’s impression of the network.

“The name Sci Fi has been associated with geeks and dysfunctional, antisocial boys in their basements with video games and stuff like that, as opposed to the general public and the female audience in particular,” said TV historian Tim Brooks, who helped launch Sci Fi Channel when he worked at USA Network…

[Sci Fi president Dave] Howe said going to Syfy will make a difference. “It gives us a unique word and it gives us the opportunities to imbue it with the values and the perception that we want it to have,” he said…

“When we tested this new name, the thing that we got back from our 18-to-34 techno-savvy crowd, which is quite a lot of our audience, is actually this is how you’d text it,” Mr. Howe said. “It made us feel much cooler, much more cutting-edge, much more hip, which was kind of bang-on what we wanted to achieve communication-wise.”

The sad thing is that this is totally going to work.  The Web and text messaging have made it okay to make up new words (Uproxx?  WTF is that?) and misspell things for the sake of brevity, so the greater populace is going to love this.  And if there’s one thing that TV executives are good at, it’s thinking that most people are idiots.  Dave Howe just earned himself a six-figure Christmas bonus.

I f-cking wish.

Good news, everybody!  The United Nations has solved every single international crisis on Earth!  Or at least that’s what I’m assuming, since that’s the only logical reason why the U.N. would take the time to have a panel on “Battlestar Galactica.”  From the Chicago Tribune:

On March 17, there will be a “Battlestar” retrospective at the U.N. in New York and a panel discussion of how the show examined issues such as “human rights, children and armed conflict, terrorism, human rights and reconciliation and dialogue among civilizations and faith,” according to Sci Fi.

On the panel will be two “BSG” executive producers, stars Mary McDonnel and Edward James Olmos, the special representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, the deputy director of the New York office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the assistant secretary-general for policy planning.  And best of all…

The panel will be moderated by “Battlestar” fan Whoopi Goldberg.

Wow.  I can hardly believe the last Administration went to war without the U.N.’s approval.

“Kierkegaard would be a good boyfriend, but I’d cheat on him with Nietzsche”

This week’s episode of “Battlestar Galactica” was called “No Exit,” which happens to be the name of Jean-Paul Sartre’s most famous play.  Televisionary also noticed some similarities in the plot and investigated further:

The title seems to be a deliberate allusion to ["No Exit"], given the episode’s use of Ellen Tigh, John Cavil, and Boomer in a similar fashion as the three characters (Garcin, Ines, and Estelle) in Sartre’s work, which provided the basis for his most quoted aphorism, “Hell is other people.” (And the Cylon centurion who helps Ellen out of her goo bath? Clearly a nod to the Valet in Sartre’s play.)  [Yes, "clearly" -Ed.] …

“Yes, the title is a nod to Sartre’s ‘No Exit,’” wrote [script supervisor Ryan] Mottesheard in an email to me. “(And, yes, I am just that pretentious.) Aside from the obvious thematic overlap, there are myriad superficial similarities… I’m just glad to have garnered an entry under the ‘No Exit’ Wikipedia page.”

Wow, that’s pretty heady stuff for a show that’s devolved into the theme of “Everyone’s a cylon!”  I’m more impressed by the episode of “Rock of Love” that was based on Waiting for Godot (Hint: Godot was a negative STD test).