Sarah Abdurrahman: My pick this week is the Jim Henson's Fantastic World exhibit currently at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, NY.  The museum itself is definitely worth a visit, with a beautiful building, great "behind the screens" artifacts and a lot of interactive components.  The Jim Henson exhibit, which runs through January, is impossible not to love.  Seeing Henson's work from the beginning brings on all kinds of nostalgia, but it also shows you that he was not just a puppeteer; he really was an innovator with ideas far ahead of his time.  If you are in New York in the next 4 months, it is well worth a visit!

Alex Goldman: This weekend I rediscovered The Sophtware Slump, a great album by the band Grandaddy, who lamentably broke up in 2006. PJ says that I only listen to inaccessible late 90’s indie rock, but I’m happy to report that my love of Grandaddy is evidence that I also listen to somewhat accessible early 2000’s indie rock as well. Take that, PJ.

Chris Neary: My staff pick this week is this article about a plan to reestablish contact with a 40-year-old satellite for the first time in 15 years. The satellite has been out of contact for so long that a team of scientists and engineers in England had to go to the National Archives (at Kew) to find the contact codes.

From the article: …the plan is to test the technology to see if it is still possible to communicate with Prospero before attempting any public demonstration. If the satellite is still alive, some of the experiments might even be working.

The team trying to establish contact calls themselves “astro-archaeologists.”

PJ Vogt: I saw "Attack the Block" last weekend with superproducers Alex Goldman and Chris Neary. When the credits rolled, I turned to both of them and murmured the phrase "staff pick" and they nodded sagely, because they knew it was. It's a sci-fi flick about British kids who have to defend their housing project from an alien invasion. It's enjoyable and manageabley scary (I am a wimp) and a lot smarter than the "housing project attacked by aliens" premise may lead you to believe. Mo-ses, mo-ses!